Philosophy and revealed law: two answers

This lesson asks you to compare how different philosophers have answered the same big question. The question here is how philosophy relates to revealed law. The museum offers little for this: the title of one treatise by Ibn Rushd, as al-Zirikli lists it, and Ibn Khaldun's refutation of philosophy, each attributed to its author. It sets out no argument of Ibn Rushd's, so your class will need the texts. ¹

Before comparing, check that the two records answer one question. Then compare what each states, a title that speaks of accord and an argument that refutes. Note who states each, and in which record.

Follow one argument step by step. The record of Ibn Rushd reports, from the Encyclopaedia of Islam, that in the Fasl al-Maqal he defines philosophy and holds that the Law itself establishes the legitimacy of rational speculation, whose perfect method is demonstration ². He argues that the believer is obliged to speculate rationally about beings, within the capacity of each person, and that this obliges him to examine the works of the ancients, so that forbidding the examination is contrary to the Law, provided the person has a keen sense of the truth and religious and moral qualification ^{2 3}. Because people give assent through demonstrative, dialectical or rhetorical discourse, the article says, God addresses them through all three ³. Write the claim, then each reason in order, then the condition he attaches.

On how philosophy stands to the revealed law, the records hold two attributed answers. Ibn Rushd, as the article reports, argues that the believer is obliged to examine the works of the ancients ³. Ibn Khaldun holds that the philosophers' proofs are universal mental judgements, whereas external existing things are individuated by their matter, so there is no certainty that the mental conforms to the external ⁴. Each meets an objection. Ibn Khaldun's point stands against Ibn Rushd, though his chapter names Aristotle, al-Farabi and Ibn Sina, not Ibn Rushd. Against Ibn Khaldun the record of his refutation gives no reply by a philosopher: it says the replies of the philosophers are not recorded there. No verdict is given.

The Encyclopaedia of Islam insists that, for Ibn Rushd, there is one truth, not two expressions of it in the languages of reason and imagination, and that this differs from the later double truth of Western Averroists ⁵. It says the agreement of law and reason is a practical agreement of two methods toward one conclusion ⁵. The same article reports that Gauthier attributed to him a doctrine close to al-Farabi's, in which one truth has two expressions, abstract and symbolic ². Scholars therefore read the Fasl differently, and the article's own reading is one of them.

The museum holds the Fasl at two removes. The record of the work rests on al-Zirikli's list, which counts it among Ibn Rushd's printed works and gives it as on the accord of wisdom and the revealed law ⁶. The argument above is the Encyclopaedia of Islam's summary, which adds that only a small number of his works survive in Arabic, among them the Fasl with its appendix ². Ibn Khaldun's chapter reaches the museum as a summary that presents it as his own view ⁴. Ask what a student would need to read to check either account.

Ibn Rushd calls demonstration the perfect method of rational speculation, and Ibn Khaldun says universal mental proofs give no certainty about individuated things. Which of the two would you defend, and what is the strongest objection the other could make to you?

• Fasl al-Maqal: the treatise as al-Zirikli lists it, among Ibn Rushd's printed works.
• Ibn Rushd: the Fasl, the Kashf and the Tahafut as the Encyclopaedia of Islam sets them out.
• The refutation of philosophy: Ibn Khaldun's chapter, with its three objections.

Put Fasl al-Maqal and the refutation of philosophy in a two-column table: the question, the answer, and who states it in the record.