340 Georges Tamer
translated into Arabic.^58 At best, isolated skeptical thoughts could have
indirectly reached the Abbasid society.^59 This, of course, does not mean
that Islamic civilization did not know situations “that independently
may have given rise to intellectual developments that were similar, or
at least receptive, to Stoic, Sceptic, and other ideas”.^60
Beyond this, the explicit claim – very often pronounced by con-
temporary Muslim scholars – that Ibn Taymiyya was a nominalist and
empiricist who foreshadowed British empiricism appears groundless
by a comparative study of the sources. Of course, striking similari-
ties between Ibn Taymiyya’s views and teachings of British empiri-
cists can be identified; the equivalence of analogy and syllogism exists
in Mill and Locke; Mill and Hume emphasize the role of induction
and analogy, based on empirical experience and sensual perception, for
knowledge; Mill and Locke even consider the axioms of mathemat-
ics and logic derived from particulars.^61 Other similarities are captured
by Ṭabaṭabāʾī; Anke von Kügelgen indicates even more.^62 These par-
allels, nevertheless, seem limited in regards to their function within
the philosophical system of each one of these thinkers: Francis Bacon
places the empirical methods for obtaining knowledge in the service
of technology;^63 Locke and Hume consider knowledge primarily to be
58 See Hallaq, Ibn Taymiyya Against the Greek Logicians, p. xli. See ibid., pp. xxxix–
xxxx; Gutas, Dimitri: Pre-Plotinian Philosophy in Arabic (Other than Pla-
tonism and Aristotelianism). A Review of the Sources, in: Wolfgang Haase (ed.):
Aufstieg und Niedergang der Römischen Welt, vol. II. 36.1, Berlin and New
York 1994, pp. 4939–4973, here 4943.
59 Van Ess, Josef: Skepticism in Islamic Religious Thought, in: Charles Malik (ed.):
God and Man in Contemporary Islamic Thought, Beirut 1972, pp. 83–98, espe-
cially pp. 84, 86–87. [The article was first published in Al-Abhath 21 (1968),
pp. 1–18].
60 Gutas, Pre-Plotinian Philosophy in Arabic, p. 4948. See his critique of propo-
nents of a “hidden tradition” of transmitting Greek philosophical ideas into Ara-
bic, ibid., pp. 4944–4949, and his rejection of the views in van Ess, Skepticism in
Islamic Religious Thought, in: Charles Malik (ed.): God and Man in Contempo-
rary Islamic Thought, p. 94. See on the influences of Stoic ideas in Islam: Jadaane,
Fehmi: L’influence du stoicisme sur la pensé musulmane, Beirut 1968.
61 This topic has been investigated by Nicholas Heer: Ibn Taymiyah’s Empiricism,
in: Farhad Kazemi and Robert Duncan McChesney (eds.): A Way Prepared.
Essays on Islamic Culture in Honor of Richard Bayly Winder, New York and
London 1988, pp. 109–115.
62 Von Kügelgen, Ibn Taymīyas Kritik an der aristotelischen Logik, pp. 216–217.
63 Milton, John R.: Bacon, Francis, in: Craig, Edward (ed.): Routledge Encyclope-
dia of Philosophy, London 1998, 2003, http://www.rep.routledge.com/article/
DA002SECT1, accessed February 06, 2012.
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