Ibn Rushd's Tripartite Framework of Discourse and the Architecture of Religious Truth
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.47766/tharwah.v4i2.2484Keywords:
Ibn Rushd, Averroes, discourse, the Architecture of Religious truth., Tripartite , hermeneuticsAbstract
This paper examines the philosophical contributions of Ibn Rushd (Averroes, 1126–1198 CE), focusing on how his tripartite theory of discourse: demonstrative, dialectical, and rhetorical, functions as an architecture for securing assent to religious truth across different classes of believers. These three modes of argument reconcile philosophical reason with Qur’anic revelation, without reducing either to the other. Drawing on Ibn Rushd's major works, particularly Faṣl al-Maqāl, Kashf ʿan Manāhij al-Adilla, Tahāfut al-Tahāfut, and his Commentaries on Aristotle, alongside contemporary scholarship, this study argues that Ibn Rushd's tripartite theory of discourse is not merely a taxonomy of communication styles but a structured epistemology, each mode of discourse i.e. rhetorical, dialectical, and demonstrative corresponds to a distinct cognitive capacity among believers, and yield legitimate, though unequally certain, assent to the same underlying truth. Rhetorical, dialectical, and demonstrative discourse yield practical assent, provisional belief, and certain knowledge respectively; yet all three, on Ibn Rushd's account, deliver genuine access to truth rather than three competing truths. What distinguishes them is not what is known but how securely, and on what grounds, it is held. Ibn Rushd further argues that philosophy and religion cannot genuinely contradict each other, because both are paths to truth, and truth cannot contradict itself.
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