Ibn Khaldun's epistemology
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- book type: الفلسفة
The Arab thinker, Taha Hussein, and the French translator of Ibn Khaldun's Muqaddimah de Slane, complain about the ambiguity and contradictions of Ibn Khaldun's writings. In fact, Ibn Khaldun is far from their appreciation, as his writings are very clear compared to other writers of his time and culture. It can be attributed to the ambiguity of Ibn Khaldun, which de Slane complains about, to the fact that the latter studied Ibn Khaldun from a “static” angle, while Ibn Khaldun looked at social phenomena from a “moving” angle.
According to Ibn Khaldun, the same thing can be seen as good and bad, beneficial and harmful. This is a shockingly contradictory opinion for those who view things through Aristotle's logic.
Ibn Khaldun lived in a culture completely different from ours, and the truth is that he attacked most of the intellectual tendencies and position complexes of his time. However, we cannot understand his point of view unless we study those tendencies and values that he first attacked. In order to understand the true meaning of Ibn Khaldun's theory, it is necessary to put ourselves in his shoes and look at the world through his eyes.
One of the main objectives of this study is to refute this idea, which I consider to be invalid from any scientific basis. Ibn Khaldun, exactly like any thinker, is the son of his time. Despite the appearance of high creativity in his social theory, it is the end product of a long series of Islamic intellectual movements. It is no exaggeration to say that his theory was a kind of synthesis between conflicting ideologies and sectarian beliefs in Islam. It is not surprising to find such a theory appearing in Islamic society, but it is somewhat strange to find it appearing so late.
The current thesis deals with four topics that constitute the most important themes around which Ibn Khaldun's theory revolves. We will present these topics from the angle of dualities - one point to another. We will use Weber's concept of the "ideal type" extensively when discussing these binaries.
