Ibn Khaldun’s Theory of Social Change

Abstract

In this article I shall compare and contrast Ibn Khaldun’s ideas aboutsociohistorical change with those of Hegel, Marx, and Durkheim. I willdiscuss and elaborate Ibn Khaldun’s major ideas about historical andsocial change and compare them with three important figures of modemWestern sociology and philosophy.On reading Ibn Khaldun one should remember that he was living in thefourteenth century and did not have the privilege of witnessing the socialdislocation created by the industrial revolution. It is also very difficult tocategorize Ibn Khaldun within a single philosophical tradition. He is arationalist as well as an empiricist, a historicist as well as a believer inhuman agency in the historical process. One can see many “modem”themes in his thinking, although he lived a hundred years beforeMachiavelli.Lauer, who considers Ibn Khaldun the pioneer of modem sociologicalthought, has summarized the main points of his philosophy.’ In his interpretationof Ibn Khaldun, he notes that historical processes follow a regularpattern. However, whereas this pattern shows sufficient regularity, itis not as rigid as it is in the natural world. In this regard the position ofIbn Khaldun is radically different from those philosophies of history thatposit an immutable course of history determined by the will of divineprovidence or other forces. Ibn Khaldun believes that the individual isneither a completely passive recipient nor a full agent of the historicalprocess. Social laws can be discovered through observation and datagathering, and this empirical grounding of social knowledge represents adeparture from traditional rational and metaphysical thinking ...