Ibn Taymiyya on Reason and Revelation

Carl Sharif El-Tobgui, PhD (McGill University, 2013), is Associate Professor of Arabic & Islamic Studies at Brandeis University. He has published on reason and revelation in Islamic theology and legal theory, including "From Legal Theory to Erkenntnistheorie" (Oriens, 2018).

Acknowledgements


List of Figures and Tables





Mise en Scène





Introduction


 1 Contours of a Conflict


 2 Why the Darʾ taʿāruḍ?


 3 About This Work





Part 1 Reason vs. Revelation?





1 Reason and Revelation in Islam before Ibn Taymiyya


 1 Reason and Revelation, Reason in Revelation


 2 The Early Emergence of Rationalist and Textualist Tendencies: The Case of the Law


 3 Early Theological Reflection and Contention


 4 The Muʿtazila


 5 Non-speculative Theology and the Legacy of Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal


 6 The Miḥna and Its Aftermath


 7 Nascent Ashʿarī Thought and the Early Kalām


 8 Philosophy


 9 The New Kalām and Subsequent Developments


 10 Kalām and Falsafa in the Wake of al-Ghazālī





2 Ibn Taymiyya: Life, Times, and Intellectual Profile


 1 The Life and Times of Ibn Taymiyya (661–728/1263–1328)


 2 Intellectual Profile


 3 Character and Contemporary Reception


 4 Ibn Taymiyya’s Works


 5 The Historiography of the Darʾ taʿāruḍ: Ibn Taymiyya’s Assessment of the Intellectual Legacy He Inherited


 6 The Darʾ taʿāruḍ in Context: Ibn Taymiyya’s View of Previous Attempts to Solve the Conundrum of Reason and Revelation





3 On the Incoherence of the Universal Rule and the Theoretical Impossibility of a Contradiction between Reason and Revelation


 1 Ibn Taymiyya on the Universal Rule and the Variety of Responses It Has Elicited


 2 The Result of Figurative Interpretation (taʾwīl)


 3 Specious Rationality and Its Discontents: Reason in a Cul-de-Sac


 4 Ibn Taymiyya’s Project: Refuting the Universal Rule


 5 On Reason Grounding Our Knowledge of Revelation


 6 Knowledge vs. Conjecture: Conclusiveness Is What Counts


 7 Not “Scriptural vs. Rational” but “Scripturally Validated vs. Innovated”


 8 Further Arguments Regarding the Rational Contradictoriness of the Universal Rule


 9 On the Universal Rule’s Incompatibility with the Status and Authority of Scripture





Part 2 Ibn Taymiyya’s Reform of Language, Ontology, and Epistemology




4 Ṣaḥīḥ al-Manqūl, or What Is Revelation

 1 Taʾwīl and the Meaning of Qurʾān 3:7


 2 The Centrality of Context and Ibn Taymiyya’s “Contextual Taʾwīl”


 3 The Salaf and the Authority of Their Linguistic Convention (ʿurf)


 4 Analysis of Terms to Detect and Correct for Semantic Shift


 5 A Case Study: The Terms wāḥid, tawḥīd, and tarkīb





5 Ṣarīḥ al-Maʿqūl, or What Is Reason?


 1 What Exists? Ibn Taymiyya’s Account of Reality


 2 How Do We Know What Exists? The Primary Sources of Knowledge


 3 The Realm of the Mind: What Exists fī al-adhhān?


 4 The Structure of Reason






6 Reason Reconstituted: The Divine Attributes and the Question of Contradiction between Reason and Revelation


 1 Rational Inference and the Question of Qiyās al-ghāʾib ʿalā al-shāhid


 2 Ibn Taymiyya’s Reforms Applied: The Question of the Divine Attributes


 3 Concluding Reflections





Appendix A: Summary Outline of the Darʾ taʿāruḍ


Appendix B: Detailed Outline of the Darʾ taʿāruḍ


Glossary of Arabic Terms


Glossary of Proper Names


Bibliography


Index of Arabic Passages

Index of Ḥadīth

Index of People and Places

Index of Qurʾānic Verses

Index of Subjects