Against the Greek Logicians

A sustained critique of Aristotelian logic by the Damascene jurist and theologian Ibn Taymiyya, known in English mainly through Wael Hallaq's translation of al-Suyūṭī's abridgement. Ibn Taymiyya targets the two pillars of the logicians' method. Against their theory of definition he argues that no definition can capture the essence of a thing, that the line drawn between essential and accidental attributes is arbitrary, and that definitions only distinguish one thing from another; people come to know concepts in other ways. Against the syllogism he argues that it yields nothing that cannot be known without it, and that its universal premises themselves rest on knowledge of particulars. He holds that universals exist only in the mind, while everything that exists outside it is particular. He defends reasoning by analogy as no less sound than the syllogism, and holds up the arguments of the Qur'an as clearer and more effective.

It is one of the most forceful premodern critiques of Aristotelian logic, and its empiricist and nominalist arguments invite comparison with later European critics of scholastic logic.