From Certainty of Error to Dialectic of Defeat: Sociological and Metaphysical Causes of Dominance in İbn Arabi and Ibn Khaldun

Abstract

Both Ibn al-Arabi’s universe and Ibn Khaldun’s prosperity are a loud network of relations that revolve around reason and spites. The interpretations they make about the nature and structure of these relations allow us to see the contrast between the worlds of two different thinkers. In this sense, although Ibn al-Arabi and Ibn Khaldun are the children of a single civilization, their depictions of the scenery they watch are different. When we look at any common subject that both are interested in, it will immediately be noticed how the conceptual and terminological world has changed the frame of explanation. While Ibn al-Arabi’s picture is a universe with all its dimensions, the frame of Ibn Khaldun is the social prosperity. This article sets out the route of comment on “defeating and being defeated” as the main path in order to compare the approaches of two different thinkers. While one constructs the case of defeat with terminological choices such as knowledge, ability, confirmation, acuity of belief, exonerate, similitude, polytheism, tawhid, unity, abundance, the help of god, concussion, breach, the other uses the concepts of predominance, invasion, oppression, dominance, courage, wildness/savagery, social solidarity, bedouin-ḥaḍar community.