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

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I thank Dr. Everett Rowson (New York University), Dr. Marion Katz (New York University), 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.

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 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...