Original scientific paper

https://doi.org/10.21464/sp31205

Falsafa: A Labyrinth of Theory and Method

Nader El-Bizri ; American University of Beirut, Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Civilization Studies Program, PO Box 11–0236, Riad El Solh, LB–1107 2020 Beirut

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Abstract

This paper examines the theoretical underpinnings of methodologies that are used in studying falsafa (or what is commonly known as ‘Arabic cum Islamic Philosophy’). The aim is to think about the prospects of renewing selected leitmotifs from the constellation of hybrid philosophical traditions in falsafa, while transcending the conventions of mainstream academia and scholarship, with their bent on documentation, archiving, and the composition of comparative studies and commentaries. The thematic orientation of this inquiry does not follow the directives of mediaevalists in historiography, philology, lexicography, codicology, and palaeography, along with their associated biographical/bibliographical instruments. We do not, therefore, focus on specific pre-modern authors or texts, or ponder over the techniques of establishing critical editions, annotated translations, or analytic, historical, and comparative commentaries. We also do not seek to situate a given philosophical legacy within its channels of textual transmission, or to explore its course of development within a particular intellectual lineage. Our inquiry is rather orientated within this specific conceptual exercise by phenomenological hermeneutics and critical analytics of the theoretical underpinnings of methodologies that aim at examining essential questions in ontology and epistemology in connection with falsafa. This points to transcending mere comparativism through a radical form of questioning that refracts intellectual traditions with one another based on substantiated historical channels of transmission by inheriting past philosophical legacies within contemporary pathways in thinking. Such an undertaking addresses multifactorial hypotheses that emerge from the humanistic disciplines in terms of theoretical disputations and interrogations over the essence of modernity and of probing the hitherto locked possibilities of potentially rooting contemporary thought in inherited intellectual legacies, and also in benefiting from modern thinking in exploring the history of ideas in Islam as a living tradition.

Keywords

comparatisme; falsafa; méthodologie; modernité; religion; science; tradition

Hrčak ID:

185355

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/185355

Publication date:

14.2.2017.

Article data in other languages: croatian french german

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