Philosopher
Afdal al-Din al-Khunaji
1194–1248
Also known as Afḍal al-Dīn al-Khūnajī, al-Khunaji, Khunaji
Judge and logician, among the greatest in the Islamic world after Avicenna, whose objections to Avicenna's logic set the course of later logic and philosophy in Arabic.
Afdal al-Din al-Khunaji was born in 1194 in Khunaj, in what is now northwest Iran, a town almost destroyed by the Mongol invasions. Moving to Cairo, he worked there for most of his life as a judge, eventually chief judge of the city, and taught at one of its most prestigious colleges; a spell in Seljuk Anatolia ended when the Mongols arrived there too.
He wrote little, as his judicial work left him short of time, and besides logic wrote on theology, medicine and pathology. He died in 1248, aged about fifty-four. His significance lies above all in logic, where his revisions to Avicenna shaped later developments in the Islamic world.
Key ideas
- Revising Avicenna
- Khunaji became the central figure in reworking Avicenna’s logic, raising many objections against him and against Fakhr al-Din al-Razi, whose writings nonetheless gave him much to build on.
- Objects of thought
- Avicenna held that the subject of a true affirmative statement must exist, somewhere. Khunaji widened the domain of what can be talked about, letting any concept be combined with any other to form the subject of a true proposition.
- A bold logic and its limits
- Later logicians soon saw that his essentialist reading had a startling result, something Khunaji had anticipated for conditionals: Abhari argued that on it every universal proposition is false and every particular one true.
- Tradition
- Arabic and Islamic
- Region
- Khunaj, Cairo and Anatolia
- Branches
- Logic
- Period
- Later Islamic
- Themes
- Logic and argument
Influences
Influenced by
Afdal al-Din al-Khunaji1194–1248
Influenced by
Afdal al-Din al-Khunaji1194–1248
Where these links come from
- Afdal al-Din al-Khunaji argued against Avicenna. Source: Behnam Zolghadr, Afḍal al-Dīn al-Khūnajī, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- Afdal al-Din al-Khunaji drew on and argued against Fakhr al-Din al-Razi. Source: Behnam Zolghadr, Afḍal al-Dīn al-Khūnajī, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Key works
- The Disclosure of Secrets as to the Obscurities of Thoughts (Kashf al-asrār ʿan ghawāmiḍ al-afkār)
Sources
- Behnam Zolghadr, Afḍal al-Dīn al-Khūnajī, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy