Ibn Khaldun’s Theory of Social Change

Abstract

In this article I shall compare and contrast Ibn Khaldun’s ideas about sociohistorical change with those of Hegel, Marx, and Durkheim. I will discuss and elaborate Ibn Khaldun’s major ideas about historical and social change and compare them with three important figures of modem Western sociology and philosophy. On reading Ibn Khaldun one should remember that he was living in the fourteenth century and did not have the privilege of witnessing the social dislocation created by the industrial revolution. It is also very difficult to categorize Ibn Khaldun within a single philosophical tradition. He is a rationalist as well as an empiricist, a historicist as well as a believer in human agency in the historical process. One can see many “modem” themes in his thinking, although he lived a hundred years before Machiavelli. Lauer, who considers Ibn Khaldun the pioneer of modem sociological thought, has summarized the main points of his philosophy.’ In his interpretation of Ibn Khaldun, he notes that historical processes follow a regular pattern. However, whereas this pattern shows sufficient regularity, it is not as rigid as it is in the natural world. In this regard the position of Ibn Khaldun is radically different from those philosophies of history that posit an immutable course of history determined by the will of divine providence or other forces. Ibn Khaldun believes that the individual is neither a completely passive recipient nor a full agent of the historical process. Social laws can be discovered through observation and data gathering, and this empirical grounding of social knowledge represents a departure from traditional rational and metaphysical thinking ...