Al-Ghazāī on the Signification of Names

Kukkonen, Taneli

doi:10.1163/156853410x489718

Cited by 6 publications

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“…More importantly, to quote T. Kukonnen, an expert on al-Ghazali: "Al-Ghazali contends that of the three modes of existence, existence in particulars regularly enjoys primacy, because whenever a form or shape present in the imaginary faculty (al-khayal) corresponds to an actual object of cognition, it will have arisen through one's perception of some actual existent." 16 Hence, al-Ghazali not only did not dismiss the object or the referent from the equation, but he established its primacy over the linguistic or conceptual. Illustrating this with our fruits example, between the signifier 'fruits', the meaning it triggers in our mind and the reality of the fruits themselves, it is the latter that is of primary importance.…”

Section: Al-ghazali's Standard Theory Of Significationmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Contribution of Early Muslim Scholars to Semiotics: Selected Highlights and Implications

Berisha¹

2017

ICR Journal

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In a previous article I have argued that the contribution of early Muslim scholars to Semiotics needs to be unearthed and highlighted. Semiotics is broadly defined as the study of signs or sign-use behaviour leading to communication and understanding between humans in society. Semiotics emerged in the early twentieth century as distinct from mainstream philosophy or philosophy of language. As an institutionalised academic discipline, semiotics has acknowledged the implicit contributions of earlier scholars from antiquity, the middle ages and early modernity. However, to date the contribution of Muslim scholars is conspicuously absent. Hence, in this article I intend to recapitulate perspectives from selected Muslim scholars in order to obtain a more balanced notion of sign-function and its potential implications. This is where the unique contributions of al-Ghazali (1058-1111) and Ibn Barrajan (n.d.-1141) come in, whose perspectives are reflected in key modern approaches to sign models and their interpretational tendencies. The article suggests that there is a need to explore the legacy of Muslim scholars in the field of semiotics in a much more systematic and comprehensive way, given that sign-based thinking (or the ayah doctrine) is a major theme in the Quran.

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Section: Al-ghazali's Standard Theory Of Significationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Kukkonen notes that for al-Ghazali the question of naming is "fundamentally ontological and he treats it as such." 19 Here the ontological treatment of signs is illustrated with another early Muslim thinker, the twelfth century Andalusian, Ibn Barrajan of Seville.…”

Section: Ibn Barrajan On the Ontology Of Signsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Contribution of Early Muslim Scholars to Semiotics: Selected Highlights and Implications

Berisha¹

2017

ICR Journal

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“…Al-Ghazālī's semantics is already discussed in his "Intentions of the Philosophers" (Maqāṣid al-falāsifa). Moreover, as Kukkonen has shown (Kukkonen 2010), the semantics in the Maqṣad bears traces of the Peri hermeneias and Organon tradition, mediated through al-Farābī (d. 339/950) and Avicenna's (d. 427/1037) philosophies of language. His semantic discussion on what it means to assign a name (ism) to a thing (shayʾ) is built on the Graeco-Arabic Peri hermeneias tradition, and al-Farābī's commentary on Aristotle's theory of signification is treated as a theoretical problem in Peripatetic Avicennan fashion.…”

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Al-Ghazālī’s Virtue Ethical Theory of the Divine Names: The Theological Underpinnings of the Doctrine of Takhalluq in al-Maqṣad al-Asnā

Casewit

2020

J. Islam. Ethics

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Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī’s (d. 505/1111) al-Maqṣad al-Asnā fī Sharḥ Maʿānī Asmāʾ Allāh al-Ḥusnā (“The Highest Aim in Explaining the Meanings of God’s Most Beautiful Names”) is more than just a commentary on the ninety-nine names of God. In setting out to expound on a virtue ethical theory of the divine names, the Maqṣad in effect amounts to a sustained theological meditation upon one of the most fundamental paradoxes of monotheism: how to locate and affirm both divine incomparability (tanzīh) and comparability (tashbīh). In order to avoid any semblance of theological immanentism, or “the affirmation of God’s comparability” (tashbīh), al-Ghazālī begins by positing that an unbridgeable chasm, or irreducible “disparity” (tafāwut), separates the Lord from the servant. This chasm accounts for a disconnect not only between God’s unqualified Essence and the human being, but also between the transcendent meanings (maʿānī) that reside in the Essence and our limited apprehension of those transcendent meanings in the mind. At the same time, he insists that this chasm does not annul the ethical relevance and ontological reality of the attributes (taʿṭīl). Rather, the latter are somehow comparable (tashbīh) and do serve as prototype for human ethical conduct. In addressing this apparent paradox, al-Ghazālī’s Maqṣad exudes a palpable theological anxiety. This article explores the ways in which he addresses this theological conundrum by grounding his treatise in Ashʿarī theology and Sufi ethics. It closely analyses his cautious use of diction, hyper-systematised exegetical methodology, and staunch commitment to a set of hermeneutical principles which serve to undergird his virtue ethical theory of the divine names. Later generations of commentators picked up on al-Ghazālī’s theological anxiety, and critiqued the work for excessive immanentism (tashbīh), excessive transcendentalism (tanzīh), or excessive hermeneutical systematisation (takalluf).

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Al‐Ghazālī

Kukkonen¹

2021

The Encyclopedia of Philosophy of Religion

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Abū Ḥāmid Muḥammad al‐Ghazālī (1056–1111 ce ) stands as perhaps the single most impactful intellectual in Islamic history. Al‐Ghazālī contributed in decisive ways to discussions in Islamic theology, philosophy, legal theory, and practical spirituality; his work continues to be read to this day by scholars and laypeople alike. Overshadowing everything else is the monumental Revival of the Religious Sciences ( Iḥyāʾ ʿulūm al‐dīn ), a sprawling mid‐career work that appropriates materials from across a range of genres in service of what al‐Ghazālī calls the “science of the path of the hereafter.” But the surface‐level approachability of al‐Ghazālī's writing conceals philosophical depths, at the same time as it glides over sticky conceptual problems. Both aspects of al‐Ghazālī's thought – its philosophical fecundity and its vagueness when it comes to key internal tensions – are important in gauging al‐Ghazālī's significance and impact.

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Al-Ghazāī on the Signification of Names

Cited by 6 publications

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The Contribution of Early Muslim Scholars to Semiotics: Selected Highlights and Implications

The Contribution of Early Muslim Scholars to Semiotics: Selected Highlights and Implications

Al-Ghazālī’s Virtue Ethical Theory of the Divine Names: The Theological Underpinnings of the Doctrine of Takhalluq in al-Maqṣad al-Asnā

Al‐Ghazālī

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