An Early Nominalist Critique of Platonic Realism Ibn Hazm's Metaphysics of The Created Corporeal World

An Early Nominalist Critique of Platonic
Realism: Ibn Ḥazm’s Metaphysics of the

Created Corporeal World*
Ali Humayun Akhtar
Bates College; email: aakhtar@bates.edu
 Abstract
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-Ahwāʾ 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),
HTR 112:4 (2019) 541–554
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542 HARVARD THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
 Keywords
history of science, scholasticism, nominalism, Neoplatonism, Ashʿarism, Ẓāhirism
 Introduction
Ibn Ḥazm (d. 456 AH/1064 CE) of Cordoba was one of the most influential scholars
of Ẓāhirī jurisprudence in the medieval Islamic world, and his parallel contributions
to Arabic belles-lettres, Arabic linguistics, Greco-Arabic logic (manṭiq), and Islamic
theology have inspired a rich body of research.1 One aspect of Ibn Ḥazm’s work that
has received less attention is his critique of Platonic realism, which forms the basis
of his understanding of the world as one of divinely created corporeal existence
devoid of immaterial universals. From a comparative perspective, Ibn Ḥazm’s
appeal to logic in his nominalist critique was pioneering in its early chronology.
At the same time, his nominalism was largely in agreement with the metaphysics
of key theologians and philosophers who preceded him. Specifically, some of Ibn
Ḥazm’s arguments echoed those of al-Bāqillānī (d. 403/1012), whom Ibn Ḥazm
quotes throughout Al-Fiṣal fī l-Milal.2 Ibn Ḥazm’s arguments on topics such as
the creation of the world ex nihilo also harmonized with the work of al-Kindī (d.
256/870) and his followers.3 Al-Kindī’s work in turn resembled the late antique
philosopher Philoponus’s (d. 570 CE) critique of Proclus’s (d. 485 CE) Neoplatonic
doctrine on the pre-eternity of the world.4 From the perspective of those who came
after Ibn Ḥazm, the Cordovan thinker’s analysis predated several key episodes
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); 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).
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.
ALI HUMAYUN AKHTAR 543
in the history of medieval nominalism, including the careers of Abelard (d. 1142
CE) in Paris and al-Ghazālī (Latin: Algazel; d. 505/1111) in Baghdad. Ibn Ḥazm’s
work thus offers yet another window into the medieval Arabic link between late
antique Hellenistic philosophy and early modern Latin Scholasticism and, from
the perspective of world history, sheds further light on the enduring connections
that existed around the European and Middle Eastern Mediterranean world, despite
massive changes in empire.
As this study illustrates, Ibn Ḥazm’s critique of Platonic nominalism culminated
in an explicit rejection of the contemporary Aristotelian-Neoplatonic notion of
universals. In his work, he argues that a “universal intellect” (al-ʿaql al-kullī)
or “universal soul” (al-nafs al-kulliyya) has no existence or meaning except as a
linguistic reference to the sum of all particular intellects and souls, which he argues
are just corporeal accidents in bodies. For him, the philosophers’ cosmological
theories amount to a form of ontic dualism that is not faithful to axiomatic
knowledge, sensory observation, and logic. According to Ibn Ḥazm’s theories,
sound axioms, sensory knowledge, and logic together help a sound, inquiring mind
distinguish between what is necessarily true, possibly true, and necessarily false.
For Ibn Ḥazm, who rejected the philosophers’ mind-body dualism as necessarily
false, the universe has a chronological beginning in time and space and is not
pre-eternal. The universe is spatially finite, corporeal in both its air-like invisible
aspects and visible aspects, and devoid of any immaterial “universal” phenomena
such as the so-called non-particularized abstract formal “universal intellect” and
“universal soul” of Greco-Arabic philosophy (falsafa).
These positions had far-reaching consequences in Islamic political history. Ibn
Ḥazm’s approach offered a key counterpoint to both Greco-Arabic philosophy
and various philosophically oriented theological movements, such as the Fatimid
caliphate’s approach to Ismāʿīlī Shiism. Ismāʿīlī theological works transmitted under
Fatimid political patronage drew on select Neoplatonic doctrines in psychology,
which undergirded the Fatimid caliph’s claim to semimessianic (mahdī) leadership
as a kind of philosopher-king—that is, a philosopher-guide of Muslims in
accordance with a conception of Islamic prophecy interpreted through the lens of
Neoplatonic psychology.5 There were echoes of this political theory among some of
the followers of the Cordovan scholar Ibn Masarra.6 The Ismāʿīlīs’ harmonization
of Neoplatonic psychology and Islamic prophecy drew, ultimately, on the writings
5
Paul Walker, Early Philosophical Shiism: The Ismāʿīlī Falsafa of Abū Yaʿqūb al-Sijistānī
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993) 3–67; Farhad Daftary, The Ismāʿīlīs: Their History
and Doctrines (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992) 144–255.
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).
of the Baghdad Peripatetics among the Greco-Arabic philosophers (falāsifa). These

philosophers likewise interpreted Islamic prophecy through Neoplatonic doctrines
on the soul’s intellectual ascent to the universal soul, of which the particular soul
is a part, according to Neoplatonic psychology.7 Ibn Ḥazm disagreed with these
Neoplatonic outcomes of Aristotelian logic in a way that paralleled the way Islamic
theology’s most influential school of thought—namely, Ashʿarism—likewise came
to assimilate Aristotelian-Avicennan logic while contesting some of its Neoplatonic
conclusions. As shown in this article, Ibn Ḥazm strictly rejected Neoplatonic
psychology and cosmology in a way that contrasted not only with earlier politically
influential philosophical movements, but also with the more eclectic philosophical
theologians of later Ashʿarism.
Drawing on evidence in Al-Fiṣal fī l-Milal wa-l-Ahwāʾ wa-l-Niḥal (The
Book of Opinions on Religions, Heresies, and Sects) and his Marātib al-ʿUlūm
(Categories of the Sciences), the next two sections of this study examine how
Ibn Ḥazm articulated his nominalist critique of Platonic realism in the context of
a larger critique of ontic dualism.8 A true scholar of Islam should turn to logic-
oriented deductive methods and scriptural evidence to ascertain the possibilities
and, more importantly, the limits of human knowledge about the created world
and the divine realm.
The first section of this article examines Ibn Ḥazm’s critique of ontic dualism
and his argument in favor of a world of created corporeal existence. The second
section examines his most direct argument against Platonic universals, where he
argues that the universal soul and universal intellect are simply the sum total of
corporeal souls and intellects that function in the body as corporeal accidents.
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) 211–38; 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.
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.
 Discrete Space and Time and the Corporeality of the Finite World
Ibn Ḥazm’s critique of contemporary theological and philosophical movements
describes a world very different from the pre-eternal world found in contemporary
Neoplatonic Arabic and Latin texts. He argues that the world was divinely created in
time out of nothing (ex nihilo) and that the ontology of this created world is entirely
corporeal in its visible and invisible air-like manifestations. Paradoxically, he argues
that the sound basis for his seemingly antiphilosophical claims is the philosopher’s
own Aristotelian logic. Ibn Ḥazm thus sets out to demonstrate philosophically what
slightly earlier Ashʿarī theologians such as al-Bāqillānī argued dialectically about
the created world, namely, that it is created ex nihilo and is made up of discrete
corporeal parts, to the exclusion of the philosophers’ pre-eternity and material-
immaterial dualism. However, there were major differences in how Ibn Ḥazm and
earlier Ashʿarī theologians came to these conclusions. Apart from his appeal to
logic, there was also his eschewal of atomism.
The omission of atomism and the appeal to Aristotelian logic were elements
that distinguished Ibn Ḥazm’s metaphysical system from those of the Ashʿarī and
Muʿtazilī theologians who preceded him. In Iraq, Muʿtazilī atomists such as Abū
l-Hudhayl and Muʿammar debated in the ninth century CE whether the atom—
defined as the indivisible part (al-juzʾ alladhī lā yatajazzaʾ) of the body—can itself
be characterized by the corporeal dimensions of length and depth that define bodies
more broadly.9 The intervention al-Bāqillānī (d. 403/1012–1013) made was to
argue, in agreement with Abū l-Ḥusayn al-Ṣāliḥī (fl. late third/ninth century), that
the atom is indeed a corporeal object (ḥazz). Still, even upon agreeing on the atom’s
corporeality, theologians still debated whether there could be unoccupied spaces
between atoms, and therefore whether there were voids, as the philosophers claimed.
Surprisingly, atomists among the theologians ultimately accepted the possibility
of an incorporeal vacuum or a set of voids, which for Ibn Ḥazm was logically
impossible and represented the erroneous outcome of the philosophers’ dualistic
ontology and poor application of logic.10 In appealing to logic in the formulation
of a unique philosophical metaphysics that departed from both atomism and the
philosophers’ ontic dualism, Ibn Ḥazm distinguished himself from both his Ashʿarī
and Peripatetic predecessors several decades before al-Ghāzālī popularized his own
philosophical theology that echoed Ibn Ḥazm’s method. What follows is a closer
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).
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) 199–272; 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]).
examination of Ibn Ḥazm’s method for explaining the discrete character of space
and time, as well as the corporeality of the finite world. At the start of this method
is the argument for the world’s creation ex nihilo.
One of the key arguments that runs through Ibn Ḥazm’s presentation of the
creation ex nihilo—against the common philosophical claim of the pre-eternity of
the world—is his rejection of the idea of a void or pre-eternal absolute space outside
of matter. Connected to his rejection of a void is his rejection of the understanding
of time as a universal concept that can be understood independently of space. In
his seemingly modern representation of finite space and time, Ibn Ḥazm builds
an argument based on his claim that space and time are inherently connected to
each other and are only meaningful in terms of the category of body—that is,
corporeality.11 In other words, he argues that time and space only have meaning in
the measurement of bodies, which are finite and discrete. His conclusion is that the
entire created world as it exists in time and space is corporeal and spatially finite,
implying that God as the Creator, while immanent, transcends in some manner the
created world’s corporeality. This argument stands in contrast to the philosophers’
cosmologies of the One or First Cause that is the noncreative logical source of
pre-eternal emanating causality. His argument also contrasts with the metaphysics
of the Akbarian Sufis and many of the later Ashʿarīs, who began to draw openly
on Neoplatonic cosmologies following al-Ghazālī’s and Ibn ʿArabī’s influential
turn toward philosophy.12 It agrees, however, with the metaphysics of al-Bāqillānī,
whose atomistic theories spoke of time as noncontinuous and divisible into discrete
moments (awqat, ānān).13
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.
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) 77–111;
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) 70–111; 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) 6–16; Annemarie Schimmel, Mystical Dimensions of Islam (Chapel Hill: University
of North Carolina Press, 1975) 263–73; Julian Baldick, Mystical Islam: An Introduction to Sufism
(New York: I. B. Tauris, 2012) 50–85; Muhammad Rustom, “Is Ibn Arabi’s Ontology Pantheistic?”
Journal of Islamic Philosophy 2 (2006) 53–67.
13
Richard M. Frank, “The Ašʿarite Ontology: I Primary Entities,” Arabic Sciences and Philosophy
9 (1999) 163–231; idem, “Bodies and Atoms: The Ashʿarite Analysis,” in Islamic Theology and
More specifically, in arguing in favor of the creation of the spatially finite world
in time, Ibn Ḥazm offers five points. What connects his points is the claim that
space and time, as finite and noncontinuous measurements, are reducible ultimately
to numbers, an argument that Ibn Rushd (Averroes) explicitly rejected.14 Time, Ibn
Ḥazm argues, is continuous only insofar as time is the total sum of the individual
parts that al-Bāqillānī similarly understood in terms of discrete moments (awqāt,
ānān).
Ibn Ḥazm’s five points hinge on the fundamental point that the measurability
and enumerability of sensory objects in terms of time and space is apparent (ẓāhir)
to the senses, and that the notion of a nonfinite pre-eternal world problematically
renders that empirical measurability meaningless. What follows is a closer look at
his points. The first of his five points argues that the finality of everything in the
world in time and space is explained by the fact that time and space are discrete.
That is, the world is simply the total sum of its parts measured in terms of a limited
amount of time and space, and time likewise is simply its parts measured in terms
of individual limited moments. He argues that what makes this point necessarily
true is sensory evidence, which cannot account for any other explanation.
We see this [finitude of space and time] by sense and with the eyes. The
finitude of man is apparent (ẓāhir) [to the senses] based on [both] his surface
area from one end of his body to the other and [based] on the time of his
existence. We likewise see this based on the fact that the finitude of acci-
dents are apparent (ẓāhir) according to the finitude of the person carrying
[the accident].15
This argument likewise appears in his second point, which similarly emphasizes
the fact that the finality of an individual part of a thing in the world is apparent to
the senses, both in terms of the numbers used to measure that thing and in terms
of its finite number of qualities and modalities.16
The third point breaks down the problem of comparing infinite quantities, which
he does not believe exist in the world. While a correct finite understanding of time
based on sensory evidence suggests that the totality of time through the first year
of the Hijra (1 AH/632 CE) is less than the totality of time through the period of
the Andalusī Umayyad caliphs (334/945), an incorrect conceptualization of time
as nonfinite or infinite would make this sound comparison of two unequal time
periods meaningless in accordance with the sound argument that an infinite quantity
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.
15
Al-Fiṣal fī l-Milal, 1:57.
16
Ibid.
cannot be aggregated. The argument echoes a similar one made by al-Kindī and
John Philoponus.17
Ibn Ḥazm also gives the example that, according to what “sense necessitates,”
the total number of individuals in all of mankind combined with the total number
of all individual horses in the world are necessarily greater than the number of
individuals of mankind or horses taken separately. “If individuals have no end to
them, it would have to be true that what has no end is more than what has no end,
and that is both senseless and impossible.”18 In other words, sensory evidence
points to the origination of the world in time following its nonexistence—that
is, the creation of the world ex nihilo. Building on the implications of the third
point, his fourth point identifies again how a flawed understanding of time as
infinite renders that measurability and enumeration of time meaningless, which is
problematic given that this measurability and enumeration are demonstrably true
phenomena according to sensory evidence. The fifth and final point highlights that
any recognition of a sequence of existent things, from second to third and fourth,
would be meaningless if one were not able to identify a first in that sequence.
The lack of a first in any sequence contradicts sensory evidence, which measures
and orders things discretely in terms of numbers. Therefore, sequences are a
demonstrable reality. Like a Muʿtazilī or Ashʿarī theologian, but also like many of
the Greco-Arabic philosophers, he turns to the Qur’an for substantiating evidence,
specifically in a verse stating that when God originated the world, “He encompassed
everything in number.”19
The culmination of this analysis is Ibn Ḥazm’s rejection of the philosophical
notion of a perfect void and eternity in the corporeal world of sensory experience.
This point harmonizes with his broader rejection of Neoplatonic universals, which
will be seen in the second section of this study. He summarizes his conclusions
as follows:
Time and space (makān) according to them [that is, the philosophers] are not
what we understand time and space to be. Space according to us is the thing
that confines what is spacialized on all or some sides, and it comes in two
types: either [1] a space constituting the structure of the spacialized thing in
that space, like a water well in [space bounded by] the earth or like water in
[space bounded by] a basin, or [2] a space that constitutes the form of the
thing spacialized in that space, like [the space created by] bodies inhering
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).
18
Al-Fiṣal fī l-Milal, 1:57
19
Ibid., 1:63
in water. As for what time means according to us, it is the period of the ex-
istence of a body that is stationary or in movement. [Time] can also be the
period of the existence of an accident in the body, and so what prevails [as
true] is that [time] is the period (mudda) of existence of the sphere (falak)
and what is in it of the [celestial and sublunary] things it contains. They [the
philosophers] argue that “universal time” and “universal space” are different
from what we have defined above as time and space.20
Ibn Ḥazm’s argument culminates in the claim that space is a measure of corporeal
things that are in turn measured in terms of time. He accepts, therefore, the discrete
conception of time and space in al-Bāqillānī’s atomistic metaphysics and rejects
the contemporary Greco-Arabic philosophers’ use of Platonic universals to define
time and space in terms of concepts like pre-eternal time, prime matter, and a
perfect void. In the next section of this article, Ibn Ḥazm’s critique of those who
misunderstand the concept of universals is articulated as a critique of those who
“claim to follow falsafa” in their conception of the soul and intellect in isolation
of the body.
 Particular Souls, Particular Intellects, and the Alternative to Platonic

Universals
Ibn Ḥazm’s most explicit critique of Platonic universals is found in his discussion of
the soul and intellect, which he believes the philosophers misidentified as incorporeal
as a result of their weak application of Aristotle’s otherwise sound logical tools. His
analysis constitutes an application of his previous positions on space and time to the
wider debate about mind-body dualism. Drawing on logic-oriented philosophical
language to a greater degree than contemporary theologians, Ibn Ḥazm accepts the
philosophical term “universal soul” (al-ʿaql al-kullī) but redefines it according to
his materialist nominalist metaphysics. For Ibn Ḥazm, the universal soul is simply
the total sum of all particular souls, which he identifies as a corporeal “accident”
inhering in the body in the terrestrial world. His use of the term “accident” mirrors
the term’s use among both Ashʿarī and Muʿtazilī predecessors.21 However, where
the Ashʿarī atomistic ontology posited a soul that was constantly re-created from
one moment to the next, Ibn Ḥazm rejected the notion of continuous extinction and
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) 1–53. 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, 1988). 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.
re-creation across these moments and additionally drew on scriptural references

to argue that all created corporeal souls come into existence prior to the human
bodies in which they inhere.22 His goal in the analysis that follows, however, is to
correct the philosophers’ misunderstanding of the soul and help them understand
that the universal, and in this case the universal soul, is not an incorporeal concept
but rather the sum total of corporeal instances.
Ibn Ḥazm’s argument begins by pointing out at length that if souls were not
distinct, then the knowledge of all individuals would be equal. Rather, he states
that the concept of the “universal soul of man” is simply the species of soul under
“universal soul,” which is a logical genus identifying the total sum of particular
souls in existence.
The truth [however] is what we mentioned, that the soul of every individual
is other than the soul of another, and that the souls of people are different
souls under the larger genus of the human soul, and that the “universal soul”
of man [specifically] is [simply] a genus below the species of the “universal
soul” [of all creatures], under which fall all of the living things as different
individuals carrying different characteristics. [These souls] are [subtle] bodies,
and any other understanding is not possible. . . . The soul has been under-
stood [by the philosophers] to be either outside the sphere (falak) or within
the sphere. If it were outside the sphere, that would be false based on the
proof of finitude of the corporeality of the world. One cannot find something
beyond the end of the world, because if there were beyond it something [like
the philosophers’ understanding of the “universal soul”], then [the end of
the world] would not be the [true] end, as it is necessarily true that there is
nothing outside the sphere, which is the end of the world, [where] there is
neither void nor space.23
Ibn Ḥazm rejects the philosophical notion that there is either a pre-eternal
“universal soul” or void beyond the finite time and space of the corporeal world,
and that the corporeal souls of the world have any celestial existence. The divinely
created world is a self-contained sphere (falak) of corporeality, beyond which he
indicates is the ontological unknown (ghayb). The discrete noncontinuous nature of
souls is akin to the discrete nature of time and space, which means that individual
souls are separate entities that do not partake in any common universal existence.
If one were to use the term “universal soul,” therefore, the term simply refers to the
logical category of souls, not some ontological incorporeal reality in philosophical
cosmology. His rejection of contemporary philosophical interpretations of the
“universal soul” and “universal intellect” as forms of immaterial emanated
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.
23
Al-Fiṣal fī l-Milal, 5:217.
existence follows from his rejection of ontological immaterial-material (incorporeal-

corporeal) dualism.
Ibn Ḥazm breaks down the problem of universals more broadly by unpacking
philosophical discussions of form: “The form is undoubtedly the mix of a substance
with its constitution . . . substances are not found nor even imagined independently
of [the universal form].”24 That is, one can speak of a form in terms of its universal
and in terms of how it is part of the constitution of a substance. However, since
a universal is nothing but a category and has no ontological value distinct from a
substance, then there is no reality to a universal form independent of a corporeal
substance. In what also anticipates Ibn Taymiyya’s rejection of philosophical
concepts of universals, Ibn Ḥazm then argues that the universal is simply the totality
of the particulars as they exist and are witnessed.25
Ibn Ḥazm reconceptualizes the philosophers’ universals as particular accidents
inhering in the body, whose materiality cannot be imagined to have some abstract
existence. This counterargument appears most clearly in his rejection of prime
matter as an incorporeal universal. Matter in the abstract sense is simply a kind
of mental reference to all particular instances of corporeality and, therefore, is
meaningless in isolation of corporeality.
Matter (hayūla) is the body itself carrying all its accidents, but only the an-
cients [among the Hellenistic philosophers] singled it out by this name as they
spoke of it in isolation of all its accidents and in isolation from form, isolating
it from its accidents even as there is no way for [matter] to exist devoid and
stripped from its accidents. Its existence cannot even be conceived as such
. . . it is nonsense that is impossible, just as the “universal man” and all the
species and the genera are nothing but their [particular] individuals, which are
the bodies as they are [and that they adhere in]. The genus [of body] is in fact
the genus of [these] bodies, which comprise the [totality of] individuals of
the accidents. The species is [simply] the species of the accidents and nothing
more, because our speaking of the “universal man” as more than the species
only means that we are speaking of the individuals of man and nothing else.
Likewise, our saying “universal red” means the individuals of red where red
is found and nothing else.26
Like the soul, prime matter is not an incorporeal form that inheres in a body but
rather is a corporeal body as it exists in actuality with its accidents. Matter is not
conceivable as a universal “prime matter” distinct from the actual accidents that
24
25
Hallaq discusses Ibn Taymiyya’s critique in Wael Hallaq, Ibn Taymiyya against the Logicians
(Oxford: Clarendon, 1993) xlv–xlviiii. 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, 2015); 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.
26
give quality to particular bodies. Likewise, man as a universal is nothing but the
category of man, just as the universal form of the color red is simply the category of
red and carries no distinct ontology. In Ibn Ḥazm’s analysis of the intellect, which
follows, he further builds his argument that the universals of the philosophers only
exist as corporeal accidents inhering in the body.
Ibn Ḥazm’s analysis of the intellect calls attention to those “who claim knowledge
of philosophy (falsafa),” who are unwilling to recognize that intellect is always a
corporeal accident. For the philosophers of his lifetime, cognition was explained
by the presence of the intellect in animate beings, and the cognitive move toward
cleverness was explained by the ascent of the particular intellect to the universal
intellect in stages that included contact with the Active Intellect. In the work of
Ibn Ḥazm, in agreement with the writings of the early speculative theologians, the
state of a person’s intelligence is explained by the specific combination of corporeal
“accidents” such as cleverness and stupidity in the body. The philosophers, in other
words, miss the fact that intelligence is made up of the mix of and even opposition
of various accidents:
Some of those who claim knowledge of philosophy (falsafa) have argued
against this point. They say that with regard to the intellect [that they con-
ceptualize as a substance and not accident], the only opposite is in its very
existence, meaning its lack of existence.27
In contrast, Ibn Ḥazm argues that “the intellect exists but encounters stupidity
that in turn exists alongside knowledge [as an accident], and it likewise encounters
ignorance.”28 That is, intellect is an accident of the soul that gives it a certain quality
that is offset by other accidents, like stupidity. In what reflects the central role
he assigns to scripture as a source of knowledge about the world’s ontology, he
asserts that the philosophical conception of intellect—namely, as a substance that
is connected with a particular sphere—is foreign to the Arabic-language notion of
intellect as ʿaql, which he interprets in scripture’s linguistic context as the locale
of discernment and application of virtue. His emphasis on the Arabic-language
conception of “intellect” illustrates his belief that scripture’s references to “intellect”
are more useful than the ancient philosophers’ conceptions of “intellect,” which
he believes are laden with meanings derived erroneously from logic and which
Arabic-language writers imposed on the Arabic-language scriptural text. In short, he
argues that Arabic-language writers uncritically redefined the scriptural conception
of “intellect” in accordance with Greco-Arabic philosophy’s lexicon.29 In contrast
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,
with this paradigm, he finds scripture’s own references to “intellect” to be more

sound and in agreement with his understanding of “intellect” as an accident.
In sum, Ibn Ḥazm’s argument about universal forms, which states that the
universal intellect and universal matter are simply the logical genus of intellect and
the logical genus of matter without any existence independent of their existence
in the corporeal world, is fundamentally an argument about the world’s ontology
and brings us back to the original discussion of his overall method. Ibn Ḥazm
seeks to incorporate Aristotelian logic into a sensory understanding of the world
in terms of sensory possibilities, impossibilities, and necessities, making space for
a logic-oriented approach to scripture in order to add further information about
sensory possibilities. In this case, he finds the world’s ontology to be necessarily
corporeal and therefore rejects immaterial conceptions of notions like intellect and
soul. He concludes that intellect and soul are accidents in contrast with the most
fundamental assumptions in Greco-Arabic philosophical cosmology, elements of
which were adopted by a variety of theological groups such as the followers of
Ibn Masarra, the Fatimid Ismāʿīlīs, and the Andalusī philosophical Sufis. While
he agreed with the Ashʿarī theologians on the corporeality of the soul, he differed
in his departure from their atomistic understanding of its existence. That is, on
the one hand, he agreed that there was no immaterial world of souls and intellects
pervading the celestial and terrestrial world. On the other hand, where those souls
and intellects existed—namely, in the terrestrial world—they were corporeal
accidents of the body that endured across units of time and were not coming into
and out of existence. In the end, Ibn Ḥazm’s analysis of the “universal soul” and
“particular soul” sought to rein in the influential cosmology and psychology of the
philosophers by identifying how Aristotelian logic could be used to the exclusion
of many of its widely held outcomes in Platonic realism. That al-Ghazālī in Iraq
attempted a similar endeavor just a few decades later illustrates how widespread
the nominalist critique of Platonic realism had become in its Arabic context, where
Hellenistic philosophy met Arabic-language Muslim, Christian, and Jewish theology
and produced a variety of new and enduring applications of Aristotle’s logic.
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.
 Conclusion
Ibn Ḥazm found the philosophers’ understanding of universals illogical, from
absolute time and absolute space in a perfect void to the universal soul and
universal intellect as incorporeal existences. In nearly the same terms used later by
al-Ghazālī in the Incoherence of the Philosophers and Scandals of the Esotericists,
he blamed the philosophers’ imitation (taqlīd) or inheritance of doctrines from
previous generations for their adherence to this dualism. In his attempt to reform
philosophy, his metaphysical system offered a much stricter critique of Platonic
realism than the one found among later philosophical theologians after al-Ghazālī,
who began to oscillate between the metaphysical systems of the early nominalist
Ashʿarīs, the Neoplatonic philosophers, and the increasingly Neoplatonic Akbarian
Sufis. Ibn Ḥazm’s world, devoid of hypostases and contemporary conceptions of
universals and immaterial souls and intellects, was a self-contained sphere (falak)
of corporeality created by God and described in prophecy, which left the nature
of God to the realm of the truly unknown (ghayb). Ibn Ḥazm’s unique synthesis
of philosophical methods and theological conclusions helps illustrate how deeply
Peripatetic reasoning came into dialogue with Muslim, Christian, and Jewish
theologies in the Arabic language, and how the outcome of this dialogue produced
multiple early and innovative predecessors of key concepts in modern quantum
mechanics theories such as the chronon: the notion of a quantum of time, central to
current theories in physics that conceptualize time as discrete and noncontinuous.

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An Early Nominalist Critique of Platonic Realism Ibn Hazm's Metaphysics of The Created Corporeal World

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An Early Nominalist Critique of Platonic

Realism: Ibn Ḥazm’s Metaphysics of the

HTR 112:4 (2019) 541–554

of the Baghdad Peripatetics among the Greco-Arabic philosophers (falāsifa). These

 Particular Souls, Particular Intellects, and the Alternative to Platonic

re-creation across these moments and additionally drew on scriptural references

existence follows from his rejection of ontological immaterial-material (incorporeal-

with this paradigm, he finds scripture’s own references to “intellect” to be more

You might also like

An Early Nominalist Critique of Platonic Realism Ibn Hazm's Metaphysics of The Created Corporeal World

Uploaded by

Copyright:

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An Early Nominalist Critique of Platonic Realism Ibn Hazm's Metaphysics of The Created Corporeal World

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Copyright

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An Early Nominalist Critique of Platonic Realism Ibn Hazm's Metaphysics of The Created Corporeal World

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Copyright:

Available Formats

An Early Nominalist Critique of Platonic

Realism: Ibn Ḥazm’s Metaphysics of the

HTR 112:4 (2019) 541–554

of the Baghdad Peripatetics among the Greco-Arabic philosophers (falāsifa). These

 Particular Souls, Particular Intellects, and the Alternative to Platonic

re-creation across these moments and additionally drew on scriptural references

existence follows from his rejection of ontological immaterial-material (incorporeal-

with this paradigm, he finds scripture’s own references to “intellect” to be more

You might also like

 Particular Souls, Particular Intellects, and the Alternative to Platonic