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The philosophical dispute on whether logic is a part of philosophy or just an Organon, initiate a further philosophical debate on the very connection of logic to a given philosophical and metaphysical systems. The first part of the paper offers an analytical account of how Ibn Taymiyya (1263-1329 AD.) looked at Aristotelian logic especially Aristotle's theory of syllogism and his theory of definition. In the second part I tried to offer a synthetic account of Ibn Taymiyya's logic and how his criticism was constructed upon five underlying rules and principles. While the third part offers some explanatory comments on the issues of intellect and the possible contradiction between reason and revelation and how Ibn Taymiyya looked at it.
I. The Critique of Aristotelian Definition (Nadhariyat al-Hadd)
Are there any metaphysical elements in the Aristotelian Theory of Definition?
Ibn Taymiyya(661-728 AH./ 1263-1329 AD.)considered logic as a fundamental part of philosophy and not as a tool or an Organon that must be learned before philosophy and applied in philosophization.1According to this approach logic shares the philosophical presuppositions and the very metaphysical themes of any philosophical system. Aristotelian logic, according to Ibn Taymiyya, is not immune to this defect.
Ibn Taymiyya clearly mentioned that his aim was first to refute the metaphysics of the philosophers but he noticed that their logic is the foundation of their error:
"But it has become clear to me that much in their views on logic is the source of their errors in metaphysics, such as their theory of quiddities being composed of attributes they call essential; their discourse about confining the means of acquiring knowledge to the definitions, syllogism, and demonstration they have expounded; their theory of definition by means of which concepts are formed; and their theory of the forms of the syllogism and their apodictic subject-matter."2
Ibn Taymiyya's criticism of Aristotelian logic centered around two theories: The Aristotelian theory of Syllogism (.Nadhariyat al-Qiyas) and the Aristotelian theory of definition (.Nadhariyat al-Hadd). Let's look first at the issue of Aristotelian definition in its connection to his metaphysics.
Aristotle (384-322 BC) discussed definition in his Organon; in his book called "Topics" Aristotle defines definition in this way: "A definition is a phrase signifying a thing's essence." Aristotle's theory of definition presented...