Adrien Candiard
PhD candidate in Islamic studies, Paris
Wednesday June 15ᵗʰ, 2016
The theory of knowledge according to the Andalusian theologian and jurist Ibn Ḥazm (d. 456/1064) seems to be paradoxical at first glance. On the one hand, he is an enthusiastic defender of the use of reason in theological discussions. And on the other hand, he has a literalistic reading of the revealed and transmitted texts.
In fact, Ibn Ḥazm adopts Aristotle’s theory of knowledge, based on axioms and on the logical demonstration of new knowledge derived from these axioms, with the difference that he considers the revealed texts to be axioms, not knowledge that should be tested by reason.
The logical result of this theory of knowledge is that the demonstrative evidence is the reason itself, not its exercise, implying that there is no more difference between faith and knowledge, between God and the science of God, and generally speaking, between science and the mere accumulation of knowledge.
For Ibn Ḥazm, if the non-Muslim and the deviant Muslim refuse the demonstration of the truth of Islam, they cannot be but liars or hypocrites, because their very own reason has to tell them that Islam is the truth.