Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī

Ashʿarī theologian, exegete and philosopher who criticised and reshaped Ibn Sīnā’s logic; Ibn Khaldūn names him as the first author of the new logic of the later handbooks, and al-Kātibī wrote commentaries on his al-Mulakhkhaṣ and al-Muḥaṣṣal.

Life

Fakhr al-Dīn was born in Rayy, according to the preferred report on 25 Ramaḍān 543 (6 February 1149). His first teacher was his father, ʿUmar, a preacher and Ashʿarī theologian. After his father’s death he studied in Simnān and then, in Rayy and Marāgha, theology and philosophy with Majd al-Dīn al-Jīlī, who also taught Suhrawardī; the Stanford Encyclopedia notes that al-Jīlī, his teacher in logic, may have been a student of Ibn Sahlān al-Sāwī. He travelled widely in Khurasan, Transoxania and as far as India, debating Muʿtazilīs, Karrāmīs and Ismāʿīlīs and winning the patronage of the Khwārazmshāhs and the Ghurid sultans, and in 600/1203 he settled in Herat, where he taught many students and died on 1 Shawwāl 606 (29 March 1210).

His greatest fame is in theology, Qurʾān exegesis (Mafātīḥ al-ghayb) and legal theory (al-Maḥṣūl), but he wrote on philosophy, logic, astronomy, medicine and mathematics as well. Ibn Khaldūn wrote that he was the first theologian to treat logic as a science in its own right rather than merely an instrument, and that the ‘new way’ of logic, long and wide-ranging, began with him and was continued by Afḍal al-Dīn al-Khūnajī, so that ‘the books and ways of the ancients have been abandoned’. The Stanford Encyclopedia describes his logic as above all a development of Ibn Sīnā’s Pointers (al-Ishārāt), presented with Ibn Sīnā’s own methods but with a dismissive tone: of his own compact account of the modals he wrote that, for all its brevity, it is ‘more explanatory and better verified’ than Ibn Sīnā’s. He was the first to distinguish the ‘externalist’ and ‘essentialist’ readings of a proposition such as ‘every J is B’, a distinction that runs through the later handbooks, including the Shamsiyya.

His logic is contained above all in al-Mulakhkhaṣ fī al-ḥikma wa-l-manṭiq and in Lubāb al-Ishārāt, his reworking of Ibn Sīnā’s Pointers, in which, as noted on this site, he reduced Ibn Sīnā’s ten ‘paths’ of logic to six. He also wrote a commentary on the Ishārāt and one on Ibn Sīnā’s ʿUyūn al-ḥikma. Najm al-Dīn al-Kātibī, the author of the Shamsiyya, commented on two of his books: on al-Mulakhkhaṣ (al-Munaṣṣaṣ fī sharḥ al-Mulakhkhaṣ) and on his theological summa al-Muḥaṣṣal (al-Mufaṣṣal fī sharḥ al-Muḥaṣṣal). His explanation of logic as the study of ‘second-order’ properties of notions, and his view that assent is the sum of three perceptions rather than the judgement alone, became standard reference points of the later handbooks.

Works

• al-Mulakhkhaṣ fī al-ḥikma wa-l-manṭiq المُلَخَّصُ فِي الحِكْمَةِ وَالمَنْطِقِCompendium of logic and philosophy; abridged by Ibn al-Labbūdī; commented on by al-Kātibī (al-Munaṣṣaṣ). The logic part has a modern edition with commentary by A. Karamaleki and A. Asgharinizhad (2002).eser
• Lubāb al-Ishārāt لُبَابُ الإِشَارَاتِ — üzerine İbn SînâA reworking of Ibn Sīnā’s al-Ishārāt wa-l-tanbīhāt (Cairo 1326).eser
• Sharḥ al-Ishārāt wa-l-tanbīhāt شَرْحُ الإِشَارَاتِ وَالتَّنْبِيهَاتِ — üzerine İbn SînâCritical commentary on Ibn Sīnā’s Pointers, answered by Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī and Sayf al-Dīn al-Āmidī.şerh
• Sharḥ ʿUyūn al-ḥikma — üzerine İbn SînâOn Ibn Sīnā’s ʿUyūn al-ḥikma, written for his student Muḥammad b. Riḍwān, ruler of Shirwān.şerh
• al-Muḥaṣṣal (Muḥaṣṣal afkār al-mutaqaddimīn wa-l-mutaʾakhkhirīn) المُحَصَّلُSumma of theology; commented on by al-Kātibī (al-Mufaṣṣal) and criticised by al-Ṭūsī.eser
• al-Mabāḥith al-mashriqiyya المَبَاحِثُ المَشْرِقِيَّةُHis large work of philosophy.eser

Reception

Through al-Khūnajī, al-Abharī, al-Urmawī and al-Kātibī his changes to Ibn Sīnā’s logic entered the handbooks of the thirteenth century, the Shamsiyya among them; even the short Indian handbook al-Mirqāt still sets ‘the Imām’s’ view of assent against that of ‘the philosophers’.

He was answered and criticised by Sayf al-Dīn al-Āmidī, Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī, al-Abharī, Sirāj al-Dīn al-Urmawī and Ibn Taymiyya (TDV).