The Poison of Philosophy 309
on the basis of the fact that fire possesses a power (quwwa) to burn, then
the knowledge that every fire necessarily possesses this power is a uni-
versal judgment as well. Someone may argue: ‘The stuff of fire (al-ṣūra
al-nāriyya) must include this power, and whatever lacks this power is
not fire.’ Though this statement may be true, it does not conclusively
ascertain that all things possessing this power will burn everything they
encounter, albeit this is usually the case. (The burning ability of fire)
is the object of analogy (qiyās al-tamthīl), categorical syllogism (qiyās
al-shumūl),^237 custom, and imperfect induction – that is, if we grant them
this. But how could this be the case when it is known that fire does not
burn salamander stone, hyacinth, and objects coated with manufactured
material? I do not know of any universal proposition that is based on
sense perception which cannot be refuted, though universal propositions
are not sensory. A sensory proposition would be of the type ‘This fire
burns’, since only particular things are perceived through the senses.^238In this paragraph of his “Refutation of the Logicians,” Ibn Taymiyya
appears less apodictic in asserting the causal efficiencies of things. His
remark, however, that perhaps not everything will burn when it comes
in contact with fire does not at all deny “burning” as the natural dispo-
sition of fire, but only states that there are things that have the natural
disposition not to be consumed by fire. In fact, Ibn Taymiyya and the
Peripatetic logicians agree on this. He himself admits it by asserting
that one can also reach this truth by categorical syllogism.
In the frame of Ibn Taymiyya’s discussion of man’s will (irāda),
which serves him also as a proof of God’s existence, he again appears
as a “moderate realist” as far as causality is concerned. He also accepts
the Aristotelian tenet of the impossibility of an infinite regress in
regard to final and efficient causes. After having established that every
soul, i. e., every living being, has feeling (shuʿūr) and will, he distin-
guishes between the thing that is wanted because of something else
(murād li-ghayrihi) and the one that is wanted for itself (murād li-naf-
sihi/li-dhātihi). To the former belongs food, for instance. It is wanted
237 Qiyās al-shumūl is an unusual term for the categorical syllogism and perhaps
coined by Ibn Taymiyya himself, Hallaq, Ibn Taymiyya, p. xiv. The common
one is qiyās iqtirānī or qiyās ḥamalī. R. Brunschvig assumes that Ibn Taymiyya
wants to underline the claim that it encompasses the universal (Pour ou contre
la logique grecque, p. 324).
238 Al-Suyūṭī, Jahd al-qarīḥa, pp. 314–315; Hallaq, Ibn Taymiyya, pp. 142–143. (I
follow his translation; the Arabic terms in angular brackets are my additions);
Ibn Taymiyya, al-Radd, p. 300 (the end of the paragraph is a little longer and
the wording differs slightly).
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