Abu Zayd Abd ar-Rahman ibn Khaldun
1332–1406 · Islamic Philosophy · Prominent
Ibn Khaldun was a fourteenth-century Tunisian historian and statesman who watched dynasties rise and rot, and found a pattern in it. Hard tribes take power through fierce group loyalty, asabiyya; three or four generations of city luxury dissolve it, and hungrier outsiders move in. He set this out in the Muqaddimah in 1377 as a science of how societies work, which makes him an early sociologist.
Signature
The position Ibn Khaldun is most identified with in the Profiler:
- Order
- leans Vertical
- Time
- Cyclical Return
Positions on the 5 axes the sources answer
- Society
- leans Collectivism (25 on a 0–100 scale from Collectivism to Individualism)
- Meaning
- leans Inherent (75 on a 0–100 scale from Constructed to Inherent)
- Order
- leans Vertical (25 on a 0–100 scale from Vertical to Horizontal)
- Conviction
- mildly leans Certain (63 on a 0–100 scale from Uncertain to Certain)
- Allegiance
- leans Local (25 on a 0–100 scale from Local to Global)
15 of 20 axes are left blank: the sources do not answer them, or Ibn Khaldun refused the framing. Nothing is imputed; a blank is not a middling score.
Foundational questions
- Theology
- Non-Trinitarian Monotheism
What is your position on the existence and nature of God or gods? - Government
- Monarchy / Confessional State
What is your ideal form of government? - Highest Good
- Justice
What is the highest good? - Good and Evil
- Natural Emergence
What is the fundamental nature of good and evil? - Knowledge
- Sense Experience
What is the ultimate foundation of knowledge? - Ethics Basis
- Divine Command
What is the ultimate basis of ethics? - Beginning of Things
- Creation ex Nihilo / Eternal First Cause
What is the origin of reality? - Time
- Cyclical Return
What is the fundamental shape of time? - Authority
- Divine Revelation / Natural Law
What is the legitimate source of authority? - Death
- Ascent of the Soul
What happens at death? - Human Nature
- Political Animal
What is human nature? - Primary Bond
- Nation
What is your primary bond and loyalty?