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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 September 2019
This study examines how Ibn Ḥazm (d. 456 AH/1064 CE) articulated his nominalist critique of Platonic realism in the context of a larger rejection of ontological dualism in philosophy. It draws on evidence in Al-Fiṣal fī l-Milal wa-l-Ahwāʿ wa-l-Niḥal (The Book of Opinions on Religions, Heresies, and Sects) and his Marātib al-ʿUlūm (Categories of the Sciences). In response to those who “claim to follow philosophy (falsafa),” and in dialogue with earlier theologians and philosophers such as al-Bāqillānī (d. 403/1012–1013) and al-Kindī (d. 258/873), Ibn Ḥazm redefined the universal soul (al-nafs al-kulliyya) and universal intellect (al-ʿaql al-kullī) as linguistic references to the total of all particular souls and particular intellects, which he defined as corporeal accidents inhering in the body. Ibn Ḥazm’s identification of souls and intellects as corporeal was part of his larger conception of the world as discrete and finite in both space and time. The world, in other words, is measurable in numbers and therefore limited by the volume of its visible and invisible air-like corporeality to the exclusion of philosophical notions of a perfect void or prime matter. In his additional critique of contemporary Muslim epistemology and the theologians’ reliance on dialectical argumentation, Ibn Ḥazm held that a true scholar of Islam should turn to logic-oriented deductive methods and scriptural evidence together in order to ascertain the possibilities and, more importantly, the limits of human knowledge about both the corporeal created world and the ontological unknown (ghayb) of the divine realm.
I thank Dr. Everett Rowson (New York University), Dr. Marion Katz (New York University), Dr. Maribel Fierro (Spanish National Research Council, Madrid), Dr. Kenneth Garden (Tufts University), and Dr. Andreas Schwab (Heidelberg University) for their insights on an earlier version of this article. I also thank the anonymous reviewers for providing critical feedback.
1 Early studies of Ibn Ḥazm’s work by Goldziher, Asín Palacios, Arnaldez, and Chejne, as well as a recently published volume edited by Adang, Fierro, and Schmidtke, offer key starting points for understanding the historical and intellectual context of his work across these disciplines. See Ignaz, Goldziher, The Ẓāhirīs: Their Doctrine and Their History: A Contribution to the History of Islamic Theology (ed. and trans. Wolfgang, Behn; Leiden: Brill, 2008)Google Scholar; Miguel Asín Palacios, Abenházam de Córdoba y su historia crítica de las religiosas (5 vols.; Madrid: Real Academia de la Historia, 1927–1932); Roger, Arnaldez, Grammaire et théologie chez Ibn Ḥazm de Cordoue: Essai sur la structure et les conditions de la pensée musulmane (Etudes musulmanes 3; Paris: J. Vrin, 1956); Ibn Ḥazm of Cordoba: The Life and Works of a Controversial Thinker (ed. Camilla Adang, Maribel Fierro, Sabine Schmidtke; Handbook of Oriental Studies Section 1; The Near and Middle East 103; Leiden: Brill, 2013).Google Scholar
2 Schmidtke has traced Ibn Ḥazm’s abundant references to al-Bāqillānī, whose adherence to both Mālikī jurisprudence and Ashʿarī theology likely facilitated the reception of his Ashʿarī theological positions among the largely Mālikī scholars of al-Andalus (Sabine Schmidtke, “Ibn Ḥazm’s Sources on Mālikism and Ashʿarism,” in Ibn Ḥazm of Cordoba [ed. Adang, Fierro, and Schmidtke] 375–402).
3 Hans Daiber has shown that while Ibn Ḥazm and al-Kindī’s works harmonize philosophical methods with conclusions favored by the theologians, the Cordovan was nonetheless a critic of Kindī’s seemingly unsystematic application of logic (Hans Daiber, “Al-Kindī in al-Andalus: Ibn Ḥazm’s Critique of His Metaphysics,” Actas del XII Congreso de la U.E.A.I. (Málaga, 1984) [Madrid: U.E.A.I., 1986] 229–35; idem, “Die Kritik des Ibn Ḥazm an Kindis Methaphysik,” Der Islam 64 [1986] 284–302).
4 See n. 15.
5 Paul, Walker, Early Philosophical Shiism: The Ismāʿīlī Falsafa of Abū Yaʿqūb al-Sijistānī (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993) 3–67Google Scholar; Farhad, Daftary, The Ismāʿīlīs: Their History and Doctrines (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992) 144–255.Google Scholar
6 Maribel Fierro has argued that Ibn Ḥazm’s overall intellectual trajectory can be understood in the context of both his early intellectual formation at the Umayyad-ʿĀmirid court and his later encounters with ambiguously political-theological leaders like the Masarrī Ismāʿīl b. Al-Ruʿaynī. Against this backdrop, the Cordovan eventually came to the conclusion that the legal sphere should not be exclusively controlled by jurists (Maribel Fierro, “Why Ibn Ḥazm Became a Ẓāhirī: Charisma, Law and the Court,” Hamsa: Journal of Judaic and Islamic Studies 4 [2017–2018] 1–21).
7 Ibn Ḥazm and his students in the 5th AH/11th CE century were scholars who emerged from a predominantly Mālikī jurisprudential context, when Ashʿarī speculative theology and the Neoplatonic doctrines of the scholar Ibn Masarra were influential among these scholars. Samir Kaddouri and Camilla Adang have each traced the widespread appeal of Ibn Ḥazm’s writings among the scholars, drawing on refutations written against Ibn Ḥazm and on bio-bibliographical evidence about his students. See Samir, Kaddouri, “Refutations of Ibn Ḥazm by Mālikī Authors from al-Andalus and North Africa,” in Ibn Ḥazm of Cordoba (ed. Adang, Fierro, and Schmidtke, ), 539–600; idem, “Ibn Ḥazm al-Qurṭubī (d. 456/1064),” in Islamic Legal Thought: A Compendium of Muslim Jurists (ed. Oussama, Arabi, David, S. Powers, and Susan, A. Spectorsky; Leiden, Brill, 2013) 211–38Google Scholar; Camilla, Adang, “The Spread of Ẓāhirism in Al-Andalus in the Post-Caliphal Period: The Evidence from the Biographical Dictionaries,” in Ideas, Images, Methods of Portrayal: Insights into Classical Arabic Literature and Islam (ed. Sebastian, Günther; Leiden: Brill, 2005) 297–345.Google Scholar
8 The editions of these two works by Ibn Ḥazm used in this article are: Ibn Ḥazm, Al-Fiṣal fī l-Milal wa-l-Ahwāʾ wa-l-Niḥal (ed. Muḥammad Ibrāhīm Naṣr and ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Umayra; 5 vols.; Beirut: Dār al-Jayl, 1995); and Ibn Ḥazm, Marātib al-ʿUlūm, in Rasāʾil Ibn Ḥazm al-Andalusī (ed. Iḥsān ʿAbbās; 5 vols.; Beirut: al-Muʾassasa l-ʿArabiyya lil-Dirāsāt wa-l-Nashr, 1980–1983) 4:61–92.
9 Dhanani has offered an overview of two main types of atomism among the speculative theologians, with an explanation of how they depart from Hellenistic forms of atomism, in Alnoor, Dhanani, The Physical Theory of Kalām: Atoms, Space, and Void in Basrian Muʻtazilī Cosmology (Islamic Philosophy, Theology, and Science 14; Leiden: Brill, 1994).Google Scholar
10 Abdelhamid, Sabra, “Kalām Atomism as an Alternative Philosophy to Hellenizing falsafa,” in Arabic Theology, Arabic Philosophy: Essays in Celebration of Richard M. Frank (ed. James, Montgomery; Leuven: Peeters, 2006) 199–272Google Scholar; idem, “The Simple Ontology of kalām Atomism,” Early Science and Medicine 14 (2009) 68–78. Pines’s early monograph on the subject remains an influential starting point for comparative analyses of kalām and Hellenistic forms of atomism (Shlomo Pines, Beiträge zur Islamischen Atomenlehre [Berlin: Heine, 1936]).
11 Ibn Ḥazm’s criticism of Aristotelian-Neoplatonic cosmological doctrines resembles the later European nominalist critique. Griffel soundly notes that al-Ghazālī’s nominalist argument stands at the beginning of the development of the historical nominalist critique of Aristotelian-Neoplatonism in Arabic, Hebrew, and Latin philosophy. Ibn Ḥazm’s critique noted here, however, was contemporary with al-Ghazālī’s and may have been earlier. See Frank, Griffel, Al-Ghazālī’s Philosophical Theology (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009) 97–110.Google Scholar
12 A notable counter position would suggest that some aspect of human ontology such as the soul is connected to the divine world. According to Chittick’s interpretation of Ibn ʿArabī’s elusive language, Ibn ʿArabī sometimes appears to argue that God is pure Being and that everything partakes in Being. These kinds of doctrines help explain how he and his followers were ultimately accused of espousing monism and pantheism. William, Chittick, The Sufi Path of Knowledge: Ibn ʿArabī’s Metaphysics of Imagination (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989) 77–111Google Scholar; idem, “Rūmī and Waḥdat al-wujūd,” in Poetry and Mysticism in Islam: The Heritage of Rumi (ed. Amin, Banani, Richard, Hovannisian, and George, Sabagh; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994) 70–111Google Scholar; Alexander, D. Knysh, Ibn ʿArabi in the Later Islamic Tradition: The Making of a Polemical Image in Medieval Islam (SUNY Series in Islam; Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999) 6–16Google Scholar; Annemarie, Schimmel, Mystical Dimensions of Islam (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1975) 263–73Google Scholar; Julian, Baldick, Mystical Islam: An Introduction to Sufism (New York: I. B. Tauris, 2012) 50–85Google Scholar; Muhammad, Rustom, “Is Ibn Arabi’s Ontology Pantheistic?” Journal of Islamic Philosophy 2 (2006) 53–67.Google Scholar
13 Richard, M. Frank, “The Ašʿarite Ontology: I Primary Entities,” Arabic Sciences and Philosophy 9 (1999) 163–231Google Scholar; idem, “Bodies and Atoms: The Ashʿarite Analysis,” in Islamic Theology and Philosophy: Studies in Honor of George F. Hourani (ed. Michael Marmura; Albany: State University of New York Press, 1984) 39–53, 287–93.
14 In his Kashf ʿan Manāhij al-Adilla, Ibn Rushd criticizes specifically this numbers theory in his defense of the notion of a perfect void and eternity of the world. See Barry, S. Kogan, “Eternity and Origination: Averroes’ Discourse on the Manner of the World’s Existence,” in Islamic Theology and Philosophy (ed. Marmura, ), 203–35.Google Scholar
15 Al-Fiṣal fī l-Milal, 1:57.
16 Ibid.
17 Ibn Ḥazm’s argument closely echoes John Philoponus’s argument that the number of years that have passed since Socrates’s lifetime has increased and that therefore an understanding of time as infinite would problematically mean that one infinite quantity is bigger than another. Adamson calls this Philoponus’s “counting argument” and shows how it plays a role in al-Kindī’s argument for the creation of the world ex nihilo, which Adamson analyzes in various sections of al-Kindī’s extant writings. Between the writings of Ibn Ḥazm, al-Kindī, and John Philoponus, al-Ghazālī clearly had a model among earlier philosophers and philosophical theologians (Peter, Adamson, al-Kindī [New York: Oxford University Press, 2006] 75–98).Google Scholar
18 Al-Fiṣal fī l-Milal, 1:57
19 Ibid., 1:63
20 Ibid., 1:73
21 On the use of the term “accident” among the early speculative theologians, see Richard, Frank, The Metaphysics of Created Being According to Abû l-Hudhayl al-ʿAllâf: A Philosophical Study of the Earliest Kalâm (Istanbul: Nederlands Historisch-Archeologisch Instituut in het Nabije Oosten, 1966) 1–53Google Scholar. Ibn Ḥazm developed this method in an original way even prior to its appearance in al-Ghazālī and the later philosophical Ashʿarī theologians’ works, and it has antecedents in the writings of philosophers like al-Kindī and al-ʿĀmirī. Rowson offers a picture of these developments in early falsafa in Everett, K. Rowson, A Muslim Philosopher on the Soul and Its Fate: Al-ʿĀmirī’s Kitāb al-Amad ʿalā l-Abad (New Haven: American Oriental Society, 1988Google Scholar). Michot offers a picture of developments centuries later in Yahya Michot, “L’avicennisation de la sunna, du ṣabéisme au leurre de la ḥanifīyya: À propos du Livre des religions et des sectes, II d’al-Shahrastânî,” Bulletin de Philosophie Médiévale 35 (1993) 113–20.
22 Drawing on scriptural references, Ibn Ḥazm locates the existence of these corporeal souls prior to their inherence in corporeal bodies in the barzakh. For a comparative overview of theological positions on the soul, see E. E., Calverley and I. R., Netton, “Nafs,” in Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition, Online (ed. Peri Bearman et al.), http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/1573-3912_islam_com_0833.Google Scholar
23 Al-Fiṣal fī l-Milal, 5:217.
24 Al-Fiṣal fī l-Milal, 5:217.
25 Hallaq discusses Ibn Taymiyya’s critique in Wael, Hallaq, Ibn Taymiyya against the Logicians (Oxford: Clarendon, 1993) xlv–xlviiiiGoogle Scholar. Ibn Ḥazm and his successors made this argument on notably rationalist terms. Several historians have soundly noted the “rationalist” dimensions of Ibn Ḥazm’s analysis, including Andrea, Baer, Ibn Ḥazms Rationalismus Widerlegung der Skepsis. Übersetzung und Kommentar (Hamburg: Kovač, 2015Google Scholar); and Arnaldez, Grammaire et théologie. This position contrasts with the enduring interpretation of Ibn Ḥazm’s Ẓāhirism as “antirationalist” in some scholarly works such as Majid, Fakhry, Ethical Theories in Islam (Leiden: Brill, 1991) 4–5.Google Scholar
26 Al-Fiṣal fī l-Milal, 5:200.
27 Ibid.
28 Ibid., 5:198.
29 This point harmonizes with both positions in the scholarly debates in the 5th/11th century about the comparative superiority of grammar and logic, which al-Kindī’s student al-Sarakhsī (d. 285/899) had written about. In the most famous manifestation of this discussion in the 4th/10th century, a debate took place between the Basran grammarian Abū Saʿīd al-Sīrāfī (d. 368/978) and the philosopher Mattā b. Yūnus (d. 328/940) at the court of Ibn al-Furāt, the vizier of the caliph al-Muqtadir. Among the questions at stake was the extent to which a specific language and its grammar, whether Arabic or Greek, is not only a medium of expression but also a specific epistemic system within which logic takes on unique dimensions. In al-Sīrāfī’s words in defense of the superiority of grammar, as noted by al-Tawḥīdī, “logic is grammar, but it is understood by language.” Ibn Ḥazm agrees here, noting what he sees as the deficiencies of Greco-Arabic logic’s inheritance of undemonstrated Greek-language concepts such as “intellect” (nous), whose semantic range is less accurate than the Arabic language’s pre-Hellenized meaning of “intellect” (ʿaql). In agreement with Mattā, however, Ibn Ḥazm still argues for the essential role of Aristotelian logic, albeit with a more skeptical approach, in understanding Arabic language and grammar. On al-Sarakhsī, see Gerhard Endress, “The Debate between Grammar and Greek Logic,” Journal for the History of Arabic Sciences 2 (1977) 106–18. Al-Tawḥīdī recounts this debate and al-Sīrāfī’s comments specifically in Abū Ḥayyān al-Tawḥīdī, al-Imtāʿ wa-l-Muʾānasa (ed. Aḥmad Amīn and Aḥmad al-Zayn; 3 vols.; Beirut: al-Maktaba al-ʿAsriyya, 1953) 1:107–28.