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Language between God and the Poets: Ma‘na in the Eleventh Century
At publication date, a free ebook version of this title will be available through Luminos, University of California Press's Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more.
In the Arabic eleventh-century, scholars were intensely preoccupied with the way that language generated truth and beauty. Their work in poetics, logic, theology, and lexicography defined the intellectual space between God and the poets. In Language Between God and the Poets, Alexander Key argues that ar-Raghib al-Isfahani, Ibn Furak, Ibn Sina (Avicenna), and Abd al-Qahir al-Jurjani shared a conceptual vocabulary based around the words ma'na and haqiqah. They used this vocabulary to build theories of language, mind, and reality that answered perennial how to structure language and reference, how to describe God, how to construct logical arguments, and how to explain poetic affect.
In the Arabic eleventh-century, scholars were intensely preoccupied with the way that language generated truth and beauty. Their work in poetics, logic, theology, and lexicography defined the intellectual space between God and the poets. In Language Between God and the Poets, Alexander Key argues that ar-Raghib al-Isfahani, Ibn Furak, Ibn Sina (Avicenna), and Abd al-Qahir al-Jurjani shared a conceptual vocabulary based around the words ma'na and haqiqah. They used this vocabulary to build theories of language, mind, and reality that answered perennial how to structure language and reference, how to describe God, how to construct logical arguments, and how to explain poetic affect.
296 pages, Kindle Edition
Published August 28, 2018
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About the author
Alexander Key
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There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name
Alexander Key is Assistant Professor of Arabic and Comparative Literature in the Division of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages at Stanford University.
There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name
Alexander Key is Assistant Professor of Arabic and Comparative Literature in the Division of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages at Stanford University.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
July 29, 2020
This book is about a vocabulary used by and familiar to Muslim scholars, but has been making western scholars scratching their heads since the time when Orientalism began. This word is "maʿnā".
Because of their inability to understand this word, and impose upon it their own conceptual frameworks, they have been accusing the Islamic tradition of being incommensurate, incoherent, lacking stable language, mumbling incomprehensible arguments, etc. They sometimes translate "maʿnā" as meaning, accident, idea, cognition, intent, etc.
For them, these usages are too divergent to consider the word as being stable, and to be able to use in academia where the precision of terminology is crucial to get the idea across and intact. Furthermore, to them, the fact that this word is being used in all Islamic sciences - from lexicography, theology and logic to literary criticism - proves its empty content.
However, in this book, it demonstrates how, if a proper approach is taken (in this case, Wittgenstein's method) to understand this word "maʿnā", then the whole corpora of Islamic tradition can gradually explain itself from the shades of obscurity. And how the nature of the Arabic language itself is markedly different from European (especially English) languages.
It is true that maʿnā is all of the above. But the diverse usages do not necessarily mean that the word itself (and by extension, the language Arabic) is not semantically stable. Arabic is like how the Quran portrays it to be: a strong tree whose roots anchor deep into the Earth's crusts and whose branches scrape the skies. All of the meanings of the word maʿnā, however divergent, are deep-rooted in its original meaning.
Also, this goes to prove that it is not that the word is empty. If a tool is useful in many different types of tasks, it only implies - on top of the tool's own multipurpose ability - that the tasks themselves share a similar nature. In other words, all of the sciences in Islam are connected to one another by a single thread. To put it more differently, there is unity (waḥdah) in the knowledge produced in Islam. — feeling awesome.
Because of their inability to understand this word, and impose upon it their own conceptual frameworks, they have been accusing the Islamic tradition of being incommensurate, incoherent, lacking stable language, mumbling incomprehensible arguments, etc. They sometimes translate "maʿnā" as meaning, accident, idea, cognition, intent, etc.
For them, these usages are too divergent to consider the word as being stable, and to be able to use in academia where the precision of terminology is crucial to get the idea across and intact. Furthermore, to them, the fact that this word is being used in all Islamic sciences - from lexicography, theology and logic to literary criticism - proves its empty content.
However, in this book, it demonstrates how, if a proper approach is taken (in this case, Wittgenstein's method) to understand this word "maʿnā", then the whole corpora of Islamic tradition can gradually explain itself from the shades of obscurity. And how the nature of the Arabic language itself is markedly different from European (especially English) languages.
It is true that maʿnā is all of the above. But the diverse usages do not necessarily mean that the word itself (and by extension, the language Arabic) is not semantically stable. Arabic is like how the Quran portrays it to be: a strong tree whose roots anchor deep into the Earth's crusts and whose branches scrape the skies. All of the meanings of the word maʿnā, however divergent, are deep-rooted in its original meaning.
Also, this goes to prove that it is not that the word is empty. If a tool is useful in many different types of tasks, it only implies - on top of the tool's own multipurpose ability - that the tasks themselves share a similar nature. In other words, all of the sciences in Islam are connected to one another by a single thread. To put it more differently, there is unity (waḥdah) in the knowledge produced in Islam. — feeling awesome.
May 14, 2019
note though that this rating is coming from a non-specialist, so I’m evaluating Key’s book in terms of what I personally find interesting and useful in it — I’ve been recommending sections from it to people and will continue to do so, because even if I’m not equipped to follow the intricacies of all of his arguments (the theology chapter in particular went over my head) I think the conceptual project he’s undertaking is extremely useful and would resonate with work in a lot of different fields.
August 5, 2022
Interesante
Es un libro que te enseña muchas cosas te enseña xomo esta estructurada el idioma de una forma poética que dices bueno
Es un libro que te enseña muchas cosas te enseña xomo esta estructurada el idioma de una forma poética que dices bueno
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews