Ibn Taymiyyah & Wittgenstein on Language

Abstract

This paper studies the linguistic philosophy of the Ḥanbalī theologian Ibn Taymiyyah (d. 1328) – and the latter’s student Ibn al-Qayyim (d. 1350) – bringing it into constructive dialogue with the ideas of the twentieth century philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein (d. 1951). As Ibn Taymiyya’s theory of language is situated within and emerges from his broader attack on the Aristotelian view of language upheld in classical Islamic intellectual thought (as well as in European philosophy), it becomes rewarding to read Ibn Taymiyyah alongside Wittgenstein, whose account of language was also couched within a broader attack on Aristotelianism.