The Poison of Philosophy 297
in order to utilize it in the knowledge of that which is higher than
mathematics”.^194 Nevertheless, mathematics do not gain his profound
respect; in fact, he places it below the natural sciences, because he
regards it as being restricted to the intramental world and without use
for the main aim of the human being: the knowledge of God and the
perfection and salvation of the soul.^195
The other category of universals that Ibn Taymiyya judges infal-
lible is religious commands and prohibitions, such as “the two univer-
sal statements” (qaḍiyyatān kulliyyatān) of the Prophet Muḥammad:
“Every inebriant is an alcoholic beverage, and every alcoholic beverage
is prohibited.”^196
Thus Ibn Taymiyya accepts these two kinds of universals as certain,
i. e., the revealed truths that, as a matter of fact, concern mostly the
moral sphere, and the so-called self-evident first principles that involve
some basic aspects of the extramental world. Still, there is a third cat-
egory of universals that, on the level of his epistemology, contradicts
his denial of universals in rebus, namely the universal propositions that
are related to the “empirical matters” and that attribute essences and
causal efficiencies to things (see chapter 11.2).
10.2. The “Uncontaminated” Reason (ṣarīḥ al-ʿaql)Ibn Taymiyya’s great scepticism toward universals won by inference
and referring to the physical and the metaphysical world, however, is
194 Ibn Taymiyya, al-Radd, p. 136; al-Suyūṭī, Jahd al-qarīḥa, p. 240; Hallaq, Ibn
Taymiyya, p. 58.
195 Ibn Taymiyya, al-Radd, pp. 133–134; al-Suyūṭī, Jahd al-qarīḥa, p. 238; Hallaq,
Ibn Taymiyya, pp. 55–56. Ibn Taymiyya admits arithmetic to be a necessary
science for the shares of inheritance, “but it is not a science that is sought for its
own sake, nor does the soul reach perfection by means of it.” (Ibn Taymiyya,
al-Radd, pp. 136–137; al-Suyūṭī, Jahd al-qarīḥa, p. 241; Hallaq, Ibn Taymiyya,
p. 59). For Ibn Taymiyya’s validation of astronomy see Michot, Vanités intellec-
tuelles, p. 605; Michot, Yahya J.: Ibn Taymiyya on Astrology. Annotated Trans-
lation of Three Fatwas, in: Journal of Islamic Studies 11 (2000), pp. 147–208.
196 Ibn Taymiyya, al-Radd, pp. 110–112, 299, 355–357; al-Suyūṭī, Jahd al-qarīḥa,
pp. 225, 328–328; Hallaq, Ibn Taymiyya, pp. 38–39, n. 52, 157, n. 287–288 Ibn
Taymiyya refers to the Hadith transmitted by Muslim (kullu muskirin kham-
run wa-kullu muskirin ḥarāmun) (Muslim b. al-Ḥajjāj al-Qushayrī: Ṣaḥīḥ
Muslim, Liechtenstein 2000, vol. 2 (Kitāb al-Ashriba) bāb 7 (pp. 875–877, here
p. 877); Wensinck, Arent Jan: Concordance et indices de la tradition musul-
mane, Leiden 1936–1988, vol. 2 (1943), p. 79).
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