Ibn Khaldun’s Theory of Social Change A Comparison with Hegel, Marx and Durkheim

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 ...