Islamic Theology, Philosophy and Law

306 Anke von Kügelgen

11.2. Empirical Matters and Natural Efficient Causation:

Ibn Taymiyya as a “Moderate Realist”

Ibn Taymiyya’s great concern with empirical matters (mujarrabāt) cer-
tainly has to be seen against the background of the treacherous ground
he entered with this subject, namely the question whether or not natu-
ral efficient causation exists. Ibn Taymiyya affirms its existence and
speaks even of “universal propositions.” It is in this part of his theory
of knowledge that he explicitly and implicitly confirms an essential
tenet of Peripatetic epistemology, namely man’s capability to grasp the
essences of things, i. e., the universals in rebus. He starts by explaining
that

the generality of people has experienced that drinking water brings

quenching and that decapitation brings death and that a strong blow

causes (yūjib) pain. The knowledge of this universal proposition (hādhihi

al-qaḍiyya al-kulliyya) is empirical (tajrībī). The sense apprehends one

particular quenching and the death of one particular person and the pain

of one particular person. The universal proposition that the same would

occur to everyone who would be treated similarly is not known by sense,

but by what is composed by sense and reason, and the sense here is not

the hearing.^230

Reading this paragraph, one is reminded of Ibn Taymiyya’s rigorous
denial of the possibility of establishing true universal propositions by
abstraction through the observation of particulars, because no one is
able to observe all particulars (see chapter 10.1). It looks like a plain
contradiction and so does the consequence of this part of the Peripa-
tetic epistemology on the ontological level. Ibn Taymiyya continues
his explanation of empirical matters as follows:

Those who do not affirm the causes (al-asbāb wal-ʿilal) among the kalām

theologians, like al-Jahm [b. Ṣafwān] and those who agree with him in

this, like Abū al-Ḥasan [al-Ashʿarī] and his followers, take the known

[relation between two things] as a connection of one thing to the other

[which is due] solely to the volition of the Mighty and Willing, without

one being the cause (sababan) of the other or generating (muwallidan)

it. Instead, the majority of the intelligent people (al-ʿuqalāʾ) among the

Muslims and non-Muslims, the Sunnites among the kalām theologians,

the jurists, the traditionists and the Sufis, and the non-Sunnites among

230 Ibn Taymiyya, al-Radd, pp.  92–93. Ibn Taymiyya’s whole elaboration on
empirical matters is missing in al-Suyūṭī’s summary.

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