Ibn al-ʿArabī between two renaissances: genealogies of a double-truth theory

This article sheds light on the influence of tenth-century Baghdad’s philosophical circles – regarded as the architects of what is know nas the ‘renaissance of Islam’ – on Ibn al-ʿArabī (d. 1240), and particularly on the theory of knowledge in his later work. This theory envisioned distinct spheres of inquiry, tools, purposes and methods for natural sciences and religion. The article argues that this division strongly resonates with the increasingly pronounced version of the ‘double-truth theory’ that shaped science and philosophy in Europe from the fifteenth century. It thereby invites a broader historical contextualization of Ibn al-ʿArabī’s epistemology. On the one hand, it offers an analysis of Ibn al-ʿArabī’s philosophical background that goes beyond the Brethren of Purity and extends to their rivals within the same intellectual milieu of tenth-century Baghdad. On the other hand, it calls for a prehistory of the double-truth theory that reaches beyond Averroism and European renaissance.