The Poison of Philosophy 299
For Ibn Taymiyya, fiṭra has different connotations and is never
described as such in his two refutations.^200 In the context of his discus-
sions on the different ways of cognition, he clearly uses it in the univer-
salistic sense of “innate intelligence” every human being is bestowed
with by God. He holds that “rational knowledge is based upon sound
and healthy natural intelligence”^201 and that as long as the innate intelli-
gence is sound, it will not be affected by either a change of faith (iʿtiqād)
or by passions.^202 In his refutations of the logicians, he mostly presents
fiṭra as not being comprised a priori knowledge, but as being activated
through the inner and outer organs of perception.^203 Sound fiṭra could
200 Several aspects are shown by Nurcholis Madjid, Ibn Taymiyya on Kalām
and Falsafa, pp. 65–77; Hoover describes some of these various connotations
mainly on the basis of other works of Ibn Taymiyya: Ibn Taymiyya’s The odicy,
pp. 39–44. For Ibn Taymiyya’s use of fiṭra in the sense of an inborn monothe-
ism, see Hallaq, Ibn Taymiyya on the Existence of God, pp. 55–66, and as
a cornerstone in regard to assert the freedom of choice, Holtzman, Human
choice. For other universalistic and exclusivistic interpretations of fiṭra in
Muslim theology and philosophy, see Josef van Ess: Zwischen Ḥadīt und The-
ologie. Studien zum Entstehen prädestinatianischer Überlieferung, Berlin and
New York 1975, pp. 101–114 and Gobillot, Geneviève: La fiṭra. La conception
originelle; ses interprétations et fonctions chez les penseurs Musulmans = Cahier
des Annales Islamologiques 18 (2000).
201 Mabnā al-ʿaql ʿalā ṣiḥḥat al-fiṭra wa-salāmatihā (Ibn Taymiyya, al-Radd,
p. 323; al-Suyūṭī, Jahd al-qarīḥa, p. 321; Hallaq, Ibn Taymiyya, p. 150, I fol-
low his translation).
202 Ibn Taymiyya, Darʾ taʿāruḍ al-ʿaql, vol. 1, p. 168. Ibn Taymiyya makes this
statement in the context of asserting that clear, “uncontaminated” reason can-
not contradict the scripture. For a French translation of the whole chapter
(ninth aspect of the 44 aspects concerning the refutation of the rationalists’
claim of the priority of reason over revelation), see Michot, Vanités intellectu-
elles, pp. 615–616.
203 Ibn Taymiyya, Naqḍ al-manṭiq, p. 194; idem, al-Radd, pp. 316, 108–109;
Hallaq, Ibn Taymiyya on the Existence of God, p. 58. Elsewhere in Naqḍ
al-manṭiq, however, Ibn Taymiyya presents the self-evident first principles as
directly bestowed by God upon the souls at the beginning (p. 202, Hallaq, Ibn
Taymiyya, p. xxxi); a passage in al-Radd might be interpreted in the same vein
(pp. 302–303). Ibn Taymiyya’s terms are ambivalent about knowledge of God’s
existence; an expression such as that the fiṭra testifies (shahidat) to it suggests
a posteriori knowledge (Darʾ taʿāruḍ al-ʿaql, vol. 3, p. 129), whereas the expres-
sion of its “being rooted” (markūz) in the fiṭra (ibid., vol. 3, p. 72) suggests a
priori knowledge. In his Risāla fī al-Kalām ʿalā al-fiṭra, Ibn Taymiyya devel-
ops a concept of fiṭra that does not depend on the senses (idem, in: Majmūʿat
al-rasāʾil al-kubrā, al-juzʾ al-thānī, Beirut 1972, pp. 345, 348 et passim; French
translation: Gobillot, Geneviève: L’Épitre du discours sur la fiṭra (Risāla fī-l-
kalām ʿalā-l-fiṭra) de Taqī-l-Dīn Aḥmad Ibn Taymīyya (661/1262–728/1328).
Brought to you by | Nanyang Technological University
Authenticated