Islamic Disputation Theory

Larry Miller is a scholar of medieval Islamic philosophy, with particular emphasis on the relationship of Greek and Islamic philosophers and the development of the scholastic method in Islam. This book is the product of years of intense engagement and study of Aristotelian logic as well as the works of Islamic philosophers, theologians and jurists.

• 1. Theological Dialectic (Jadal).- 2. Dialectic and Arabic Philosophy.- 3. Dialectic (Jadal) in Jurisprudence.- 4. The Ādāb Al-Baḥth.

“Very few unpublished PhD dissertations have had a formative influence on a field. One of the precious few is Larry Miller’s Princeton dissertation from 1984 on Islamic disputation theory. It proposed an original and compelling account of the development of the discipline, from the earliest extant Arabic works … to the composition of classic madrasa handbooks … . It … has served as the starting point for all later studies of Arabic/Islamic dialectics in European languages.” (Khaled El-Rouayheb, Journal of the History of Philosophy, Vol. 61 (3), July, 2023)