Necessity and the Logical Turn in Arabic Debate Theory: Ādāb al-Baḥth Encounters Avicenna's Logic of Causation
Résumé
Recent scholarship by Rahman and collaborators, inspired by Suhrawardī's Illuminationism, has undertaken a dialectical expansion of Avicenna's logic, opening new avenues for exploring both its potentials and limitations. This project is particularly significant in light of Avicenna's dismissal of dialectical reasoning within Islamic debate theory (Risāla fī taʿaqqub al-mawḍiʿ al-jadalī), 1 revealing what he took to be a tension between the formal rigor of logic and the, according to him, vague features of Islamic debate practice.
This tension becomes most visible in the "logical turn" in adāb al-baḥth, where debate theorists drew upon Avicennian modal logic to articulate the principles of legal causation. In this process, Avicenna's syllogistic framework was not merely applied but imaginatively reworked: its elements were woven into systematic structures that both extended and transformed his logic (see Young, 2021a,b,c). 2 The turn thus operates on two levels at once, functioning as both a critique of Avicenna's skepticism toward juridical dialectics and a constructive reconfiguration of his logical legacy. This paper examines this intersection, with particular attention to how the logical turn in debate theory coincided with efforts to produce a streamlined taxonomy of argumentative moves. This dual movement illuminates the interplay between formal reasoning and rhetorical practice, showing how classical logic was simultaneously preserved, adapted, and creatively reinvented to meet the demands of juridical and scholarly discourse. By tracing these developments, the paper highlights the inventive strategies through which scholars negotiated inherited theoretical structures alongside emerging methods of argumentation, offering a fresh perspective on the enduring and adaptable legacy of Avicennian thought. 1
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