Ibn Taymiyya’s Epistemology: The Fitra

 

Ibn Taymiyya (1263-1328)’s epistemology is based on sense perception, reason, and report/revelation i.e. the Quran and Sunnah, with sense perception being the most straightforward as it provides and immediate sense of particulars while reason works with abstraction and inference. Therefore, he may be classified as an empiricist. However, the centerpiece of Ibn Taymiyya’s epistemology is the concept of the fitra. The fitra can be described as the natural disposition given to mankind created by God to recognize Him along with other a priori truths. Without the fitra, neither speculative reasoning would be possible, nor demonstration, discourse or language. Ibn Taymiyya allows that certain beliefs be sufficient for knowledge independent of inference with the fitra as the God given apparatus to do so.

For Ibn Taymiyya, the best argument for the existence of God is not through syllogisms but through the signs recognized by the fitra. The syllogistic arguments for God prove a necessary being but the proofs through the fitra prove His particular nature. The signs of God in the natural world results in an immediate grasping of the consequent belief in God if the fitra is intact just as sunlight is a sign that the sun exists. These signs can be within one’s self or cosmological or phenomenological signs. Therefore, God can be known through sense perception – both internally and externally. Through the natural disposition of humanity created by God to form beliefs about Him, our sense perceptual faculties are disposed to make non inference based beliefs about God from perceiving His signs in the world.

“The created beings that indicate the creator are concomitant with its Creator, therefore it is not possible that they exist without the existence of their Creator, just as He cannot exist without His knowledge, power, will, wisdom, and mercy.” (Ibn Taymiyya, Majmoo al Fatawa)

Natural reason can lead to the existence of God as well. Just as the fitra allows for knowledge of the half being less than the whole without experience i.e. a priori, the existence of contingency necessitates a necessary being.

“It is known by the fiṭra which God created His servants upon and by the purity of reason (ṣarīḥ al-’aql), that what is temporally originated cannot come into being without an originator” (Ibn Taymiyya, Majmoo al Fatawa, 3:202)

However, this knowledge can be acquired through intuition a posteriori as well. Knowledge of God is something that is already known as it is necessary knowledge and these arguments show how it arises but individuals may act against their fitra as well. According to a leading scholar of Ibn Taymiyya, Dr. Jon Hoover, “[f]or Ibn Taymiyya, the fitra is the religion of Islam, but in potentiality rather than in actuality” (Encyclopaedia of Islam Three, pp 104-106). Therefore, the fitra is the potentiality to recognize God, where God both provides the signs and creates a natural ability to read the signs as coming from Him. According to scholar of Ibn Taymiyya, Jamie B. Turner, this definition of the fitra protects his epistemology from circular reasoning,

“In this case – where the prior knowledge is taken to be a kind of knowledge of God one has in potentia, in one’s ability to recognize God when God prompts one to know Him – there is no circularity.” (Turner JB, 2021, pp 7)

Rational argumentation for the existence of God may be used to convince those whose fitra may have been corrupted and thus require inference.

         “The establishment and recognition of the Creator is innate [and] necessary in the souls of all people (fiṭrī ḍarūrī fī nufūs al-nās), even though some people have done something to corrupt their nature (fiṭra) such that they need an inference (naẓar) to achieve knowledge [of God]. This is the opinion of the majority of people, as well as the skilled debaters (ḥadhāq al-nuẓẓār); that knowledge of God is sometimes achieved by necessity [i.e. in ‘basic’ fashion] and other times by inference. (Ibn Taymiyya, Majmoo al Fatawa, 16:328)

For Ibn Taymiyya, the Qur’an makes reference to the natural signs in creation and thus acts as the external prompting for the fitra to respond and reflection over the Qur’an’s evidences may be achieved and thus perfects the fitra so we may worship and love God alone. The Qur’an is not only for the layman but for the philosopher as well.

“The distinction between the Qur’anic and the kalām theological methods is indeed that God commands worship of Him … He did not limit it to mere affirmation, as is the objective of the methods of kalām … the Qur’an [in contrast] relates knowledge of Him and service to Him. So, it combines the human faculties of knowledge and practice … [kalām methods] secures merely the affirmation and acknowledgment of God’s existence. (Ibn Taymiyya, Majmoo al Fatawa, 2:12)

Furthermore, his epistemology is externalist,

“The significance of these moves that Ibn Taymiyya makes in emphasizing the epistemic centrality of fiṭra and in broadening foundational knowledge, is in terms of the externalist epistemology that it implies: faculty-based approach to knowledge acquisition. In all such cases outlined above, these foundational beliefs obtain their status not (necessarily) in virtue of some reasons accessible to a subject, but because they are a consequence of one’s faculties operating properly, grounded in fiṭra. For on his scheme, “the proper functioning of all our epistemic faculties […] is predicated in all cases on the health and proper functioning of the fiṭra” (El-Tobgui 2020, 271), and it is in virtue of fiṭra that a human’s “knowledge of truth […] and the recognition of falsehood” is grounded (Ibn Taymiyya 2014, 49). For according to Ibn Taymiyya “children are born with sound fiṭra, which if left sound and intact, will make them choose knowledge (ma’rifa) over its denial” (Ibn Taymiyya 1979, 8:385). Thus, a central common-sense philosophical intuition is maintained here because the sorts of “common-sense” beliefs we hold (e.g., about the past, other minds, or the external world) are thought to be grounded in our natural cognitive dispositions as human beings, not in virtue of some collection of proofs.” (Turner JB, 2023, pp 6-7)

Ibn Taymiyya’s externalism is grounded on the purity of the fitra and his epistemic and methodological priority is always given to it and therefore is a broad and moderate version of foundationalism instead of being purely foundationalist. Classical foundationalism is based on the foundation of self-evident truths that do not require further justification or validation from other beliefs. As Ibn Taymiyya states,

“The proof which leads to knowledge through discursive reasoning (bi’lnaẓar) must be one that goes back to premises known necessarily from the fiṭra (muqaddimāt ḍarūrīyya fiṭrīyya). For all knowledge that is not known necessarily (ḍarūrī) must go (back) to necessary knowledge (ḍarūrī). For if rationally inferred premises are always established by other rationally inferred premises, it will lead to circularity or an infinite regress. (Ibn Taymiyya, Dar’ ta‘āruḍ al-‘aql wa-l-naql, 3:309)

There must be an intuitive primordial knowledge which God initiates in a person’s heart/mind and the aim of all proofs is to go back to it and therefore it is necessary not inferential but foundational. There is also knowledge based on mass report of testimony. For Ibn Taymiyya, the fitra is that disposition created by God which guides human cognition to form certain types of beliefs in the appropriate circumstances, steering it to the acceptance of principles that are natural for humans to accept.

“In taking fiṭra to be the ultimate ground of the warrant of one’s beliefs, the Taymiyyan scheme allows for a more moderate and broader version of foundationalism, perhaps similar to the sort we see defended by Reid and Plantinga. On the Taymiyyan scheme, a number of beliefs can be foundational whether the belief in question be “sensory (ḥiṣṣīyya), experiential (mujarraba), demonstrative (burhaˉnīyya), or by mass transmission (mutawaˉtira ̣ )” (Ibn Taymiyya 2005, 133). These beliefs can be, using Plantinga’s terminology, properly basic with respect to warrant because they are a natural output of fiṭra: a direct consequence of the human being’s cognitive disposition functioning as it has been designed to do so. This fiṭra-based foundationalism allows for broadness when predicated on fiṭra, as opposed to narrowly restricting foundational beliefs, and grounds them in a proper function-esque epistemology. Further, this foundationalism is moderate in that it allows for potentially fallible belief sources to nevertheless produce foundational knowledge. Ibn Taymiyya admits that our sensory faculties (al-ḥiss al-baˉṭin aw al-ẓaˉhir) and intellect (‘aql) may succumb to error (ghalaṭ), but are nonetheless in essence sound (ṣaḥḥa). This he states is because “God created His servants upon fiṭra” (Ibn Taymiyya 2014, 45). In other words, when unimpaired, fiṭra will generally guide our cognition to truth even if it may at times be distorted. Moreover, these matters of distortion are something identifiable and known. Hence one can distinguish between those beliefs that are the products of sound cognition and those which are not…Hence, the moderate nature of a fiṭra-based foundationalism.” (Turner JB, 2023, pp 9-10)