خلاصة:
The Pakistani scholar Fazlur Rahman disagreed with the German philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer on elements of philosophical hermeneutics as they bear upon interpretation of texts ‒ in this case, the interpretation of the Qur’ān. Rahman proposed a “double-movement” theory of Qur’ānic interpretation through which he hoped for the revival and reform of Islamic intellectualism in its encounter with Western modernity, but also with difference from Islamic orthodoxy’s conceptualization of ijtihād. In this paper, I examine Rahman’s concerns as they relate to Gadamer’s general approach to understanding history and textual interpretation. Rahman argued that if Gadamer’s thesis concerning the fore- structure1 of human understanding is correct, then Rahman’s theory has no meaning at all. I conclude that there is reason to see Rahman’s theory as consistent with Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics, albeit with some modification given Rahman’s focus on psychologism and objectivity as part of his approach to Qur’ānic interpretation.
ملخص الجهاز:
On the one hand, Rahman accepts a constructivist view of historical understanding, consistent with the Kantian critique; but then he seemingly contradicts this view by believing a reproduction of authorial intent acces- sible to contemporary Islamic understanding when otherwise a construc- tivist view entails only what Gadamer’s hermeneutics allows ‒ namely, a productive understanding that involves a fusion of horizons within which prejudice unavoidably but positively contributes methodologically to all truth claims.
”27 There are several epistemological presuppositions operative in this remark: that one “objectively” knows the Qur’ān to be the divine word, notwithstanding its status as a text subject to human interpretation, including the interpretation that issues from the man, Muḥammad; that this divine word is delivered through the Prophet’s mind, such that one knows the ideas operative therein, and so thereby has access to the intentio of an “author” ‒ that is, the human author that Muḥammad is as “messenger”; that this text is indeed objectively known as Allāh’s (SWT) response to an historically identifiable and identified moral-social situation; that in particular one can have objective historical knowledge of the moral-social situation of Arabia and Meccan society for the period between 710 and 732 AC; such that one can somehow know all of this and, by implication, find this knowledge instructive for our contemporary understanding and interpretation of the Qur’ān; and, furthermore, such that insofar as the Qur’ān remains in principle a regulative guide in our appropriation of religiomoral values, this knowledge can reasonably inform our own individual and collective response to the moral- social situation of our present.