The Curse of Philosophy 341
a psychological process;^64 Mill ascribes to natural sciences the ability
to explain everything that happens in the world.^65 In deep contrast to
these cosmetic similarities, for Ibn Taymiyya the object of knowledge
is the real existent in the external world; each and every thing has its
specific quiddity which can be captured only through sensual percep-
tion. Abstraction can only produce vulnerable individual knowledge.^66
Ibn Taymiyya’s basic empiricist approach is not a vehicle for the devel-
opment of natural science and technology, but serves a religious agenda
based on his conviction that the knowledge of essence, as such, is both
naturally possible for God and completely impossible for humans.
Finally, acknowledging sacred writings as the ultimate source of secure
knowledge, Ibn Taymiyya takes a course which European empiricists
could simply never share.
2. Ibn Taymiyya’s Averroistic Attitudes
In Islam, Ibn Rushd (Averroes) and Ibn Taymiyya represent two con-
trary fields of knowledge with antithetical approaches to the relation-
ship between religion and rationality: Ibn Rushd established his philos-
ophy on Aristotle’s works, on which he diligently commented; truth,
for Ibn Rushd, was strictly apodictic. On the other hand, Ibn Taymiy-
ya, as it has been made clear in the previous section, rejected Aristo-
telian logic; for him, truth was what is clearly attested by the Koran
or the Hadith. In addition to their difference in method and position,
their legacies took remarkably different paths: Ibn Rushd’s works, in
their Hebrew and Latin translations, fertilized rational discourses in
Europe through the 19th century, almost until the time they were re-
discovered by Arab intellectuals in the Eastern Mediterranean.^67 Ibn
64 Copleston, Frederick S. J.: A History of Philosophy, vol. 5: Hobbes to Hume,
London 1959, pp. 108–109, 263–264.
65 Copleston, Frederick S. J.: Modern Philosophy. Empiricism, Idealism, and Prag-
matism in Britain and America, London 1959, pp. 50–92; see von Kügelgen, Ibn
Taymīyas Kritik an der aristotelischen Logik, p. 217.
66 This view is shared by von Kügelgen, Ibn Taymīyas Kritik an der aristotelischen
Logik, p. 218.
67 See Niewöhner, Friedrich and Sturlese, Loris (eds.): Averroismus im Mittelal-
ter und in der Renaissance, Zurich 1994; von Kügelgen, Anke: Averroes und
die arabische Moderne. Ansätze zu einer Neubegründung des Rationalismus im
Islam, Leiden 1994; Tamer, Georges: Averroism, in: EI3, http://static.ribo.brill.
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