The Formation of Arab Reason: Text, Tradition and the Construction of Modernity in the Arab World (Contemporary Arab Scholarship in the Social Sciences)

480 Pages·2011·1.89 MB·English

by  Mohammad Abed al-Jabri

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The Formation of Arab Reason
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CONTEMPORARY ARAB SCHOLARSHIP IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES
Series ISBN 978 84885 207 5
The Contemporary Arab Scholarship in the Social Sciences (produced by I.B.Tauris in
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MohammedAbedal-Jabri
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Contemporary Arab Scholarship in the Social Sciences, Vol 5
The Formation of Arab Reason
Text, Tradition and the Construction of Modernity
in the Arab World
By Mohammed Abed al-Jabri
Translated by the Centre for
Arab Unity Studies
I.B.Tauris Publishers
In Association With
The Centre for Arab Unity Studies
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The translation and publication of this book was made possible by the generous financial
support of the Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum Foundation.
The opinions and ideas expressed in this book are those of the author and do not
necessarily reflect those of either the publisher, the Centre for Arab Unity Studies or the
Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum Foundation.
Published in 2011 by I.B.Tauris & Co. Ltd
6 Salem Road, London W2 4BU
175 Fifth Avenue, New York NY 10010
www.ibtauris.com
Published in association with the Centre for Arab Unity Studies
Distributed in the United States and Canada Exclusively by
Palgrave Macmillan
Centre for Arab Unity Studies
‘Beit Al-Nahda’ Bldg. – Basra Street – Hamra
PO Box: 113-6001 Hamra
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Copyright © 2011 Centre for Arab Unity Studies
The right of Mohammed Abed al-Jabri to be identified as the author of this work has been
asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patent Act 1988.
All rights reserved. This book, or any part thereof, may not be reproduced, stored in
or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written
permission of the publisher.
Contemporary Arab Scholarship in the Social Sciences, Vol. 5
ISBN: 978 1 84885 061 3
A full CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
A full CIP record is available from the Library of Congress
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: available
Typeset by Ellipsis Books Limited, Glasgow
Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham, UK
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Contents
Foreword vii
PART 1:
Arab Reason ... In What Meaning?
Preliminary Approaches
Chapter 1: Reason and Culture 3
Chapter 2: Arab Cultural Time and the Problematic
of Development 35
Chapter 3: The Era of Codification: The Authoritative
Referential Framework of Arab Thought 59
PART 2:
The Formation of Arab Reason:
The Epistemological and Ideological in Arab Culture
Chapter 4: The Bedouin, the Maker of the Arab World 83
Chapter 5: Legitimising the Legitimiser (al-tashri¯ʿli-l-musharriʿ)
1: The Codification of ‘Opinion’ and ‘Legitimisation’
of the Past 109
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vi THE FORMATION OF ARAB REASON
Chapter 6: Legitimising the Legitimiser
2: Analogising According to ‘Precedent’ 133
Chapter 7: The Religious ‘Rational’ and
the Irrational of ‘Reason’ 159
Chapter 8: Resigned Reason 1: Within the Ancient Legacy 195
Chapter 9: Resigned Reason 2: Within Arab-Islamic Culture 225
Chapter 10: The Introduction of Reason into Islam 269
Chapter 11: The Crisis of Fundamentals and the
Fundamentals of the Crisis 311
Chapter 12: A New Beginning . . . However! 365
Conclusion: Knowledge, Science and Politics in Arab Culture 413
Bibliography 439
Index 449
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Foreword
This book deals with a subject that should have been addressed a hundred
years ago. The critique of reason is an essential and primary part of any
initiative for renaissance. However, in the modern Arab Renaissance
(al-Nahd.ah), matters have proceeded differently; and, perhaps, this is the
most important factor in its continual faltering to date. Is it possible for
us to engender a renaissance with other than a renaissance mind – a reason
that does not engage in a comprehensive review of its instruments, concepts,
conceptions and views? If so, then this book should have been only one
link in a long chain of books and research spanning a whole century. In
such a situation, it would have most certainly benefited from the works
preceding it. It would have been informed by them, avoided repeating their
errors and indeed endeavoured to contribute to the edifice they had begun
to construct, even if it may have perceived that this edifice was in need
of deconstruction and rebuilding. It would have been sufficient as an
aspiration to inaugurate a new discourse in a subject, that is not ‘new’,
but rather a renewed discourse.
The reality of the situation, however, is the opposite of what it should
be; and the result is that we – in this work – not only suffer from the
absence of previous pioneering or other subsequent attempts but instead
suffer to an even greater degree from the effects of this dearth and its
reflection on the subject itself. During the past one-hundred years, there
have been conceptions and opinions and ‘theories’ dedicated to Arab culture
in its various branches, including those that have delineated particular
readings of the history of this culture – Orientalist readings, salafist
readings, nationalist or Leftist ones – oriented by previous models or
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viii THE FORMATION OF ARAB REASON
capricious and circumstantial ideological influences which led them to give
attention only to what they desired to ‘discover’ or to ‘prove’. When Arab
reason (al-ʿaql al-ʿarabi¯), in the sense which we intend here, is the reason
which was formed and shaped within Arab culture, and which itself is –
at the same time – that which endeavoured to produce and reproduce it,
then the requisite critique – or at least as we wish it to be – demands
liberation from the imprisonment of prevailing readings and considering
the givens of Arab-Islamic culture in its various branches without being
bound by the pervading points of view.
From this standpoint, the dual task that inspires this initiative to inau-
gurate work is: directing attention towards the history of Arab-Islamic
culture, on the one hand, and an initial consideration of the entity of the
Arab reason and its instruments, on the other. Thus, the initiative is divided
into two separate yet complementary parts: one dealing with ‘the forma-
tion of Arab reason’ and the other with the analysis of the structure of
Arab reason. The first is dominated by formative analysis and the second
entails structural analysis.
Let us take a brief look at the first part of this book, while indicating
the necessary clarifications.
This part is comprised of two sections: the first consists of preliminary
approaches and resembles an introduction and initial remarks. The second
is an analysis of the components of Arab culture and, moreover, the forma-
tion of Arab reason itself. It may have been necessary to begin with com -
parisons by means of which and through which we define our general
conception of the subject: What do we mean by ‘Arab reason’? What is
its relation to Arab culture? What is the nature of the ‘movement’ in this
culture and how is its time delimited (i.e., its relative cultural timeframe)?
Subsequently, how we should posit – chronologically – the problem of the
beginning: the beginning of the formation of Arab reason and the culture
to which it belonged? And to what authoritative frame of reference should
it be connected? The matter pertains, then, to defining the subject and
tracing the features of the view upon which we depend, along with acknowl-
edging the content of some operative concepts employed in the research.
The discussion in these matters takes up the first three chapters.
As for the second part of this book, we move the research into the
components of Arab culture, the epistemological systems that underpin
it and conflict within it. Our aim in this initial phase of the research is
to summarise and excerpt these systems as being methods and visions
and not to study them for their own sake – that which will constitute
the subject of the second part of this book. In this process of ‘excerpting’,
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Foreword ix
we have charted a formative course and followed the ‘development’ of
Arab culture as a whole – from the beginning we have carefully selected
the branches of this culture – nah.w (syntax), fiqh (jurisprudence), kalaˉm
(theology), balaˉghah(rhetoric), Sufism and philosophy – as interconnecting
and conjoined rooms of a single palace, where some lead to others through
doorways and windows – and not as separate tents in remove, erected
on a plain without fences or corrals, as in the case of the prevailing view.
We have engaged in a foray within the passageways of Arab culture, a
critical tour, directing our attention during it towards the foundations of
these passageways and their supporting columns, and not towards their
exhibition.
However, there was no doubt, when traversing formative horizons, about
the necessity of dealing in some sort of way with the material substrate
of knowledge and its hidden ideological content. Research into the ‘forma-
tion of Arab reason’ is the subject of this part of the book, and it demands
attention, as we have stated, towards the history of Arab culture, towards
its origins and divisions, towards its bases as well as its paths. If culture,
any culture, is in its essence a political process, then Arab culture – in
particular – has never been, at any time, independent or above political
and social conflicts; but, rather, it was continuously the primary field in
which these struggles transpired. Cultural hegemony was the first point,
and at times, the single one, recorded on the schedule of works of every
political or religious movement. In fact, every social force aspired to political
control or desired to preserve control. It was from this standpoint that an
organic relation developed between the ideological struggle and the epis-
temological clash in Arab culture; and, it is a relation that we could not
ignore or minimise its significance or its effect, as in doing so the analysis
would lose its formative dimension – that which confers upon the subject
its historicity.
If we take into complete consideration that this organic relationship
came about between ideology and epistemology in Arab culture in regard
to formation, this obliges us to be aware at every moment of the sides of
the struggle – the thing which enables us, or so we imagine, to be liber-
ated from the ‘official’ history of Arab culture, which involves the culture
supervised by the state or that rotating in its orbit and which ignores or
is oblivious to the ‘counter-culture’ – the culture of opposition. And, in
the best of conditions, it exhibits it – disconnected and removed – on the
margins of ‘history’ – this is, at a time when one of the two cultures was
delimited, at every moment, by and through its relation with the other.
There was no doubt, then, about taking them into consideration together
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x THE FORMATION OF ARAB REASON
from the perspective of action and reaction. Here we would hope that the
committed, engaged reader will understand in one way or another – either
consciously or unconsciously – the struggles and conflicts of the past. We
have spoken here without any complexes and without preconceptions. It
was not our goal and never our intention to secure victory for one side
over the other – as we consider the past to belong to all, and we see that
its struggles should be put behind all, neither should they remain with
them nor before them.
Just as it is not possible to separate culture from politics in the ex -
perience of Arab culture – otherwise its history would have come to exhibit
scattered disparate things without a spirit or a life of their own – so it
would have been impossible while we were searching for the formation
of Arab reason to ignore the unreasonable and irrational in order to pay
attention to the rational alone. Rather, we have followed both of them
together in their growth and their mutual influence; and, more than that
and more importantly – in our view – we did not attempt to grasp reason-
ableness in any form for this or that piece of the unreasonable in Arab
culture. Instead, we have respected the nature of each piece and have
connected it to the structure – the primordial origin from which it branches
and to which it belongs.
Finally, it must be indicated that we have consciously chosen to deal
with ‘scholastic’ culture alone; we have left aside the popular culture of
parables, stories, superstitions, myths and so on because our initiative is a
critical one, because our subject is reason and because the issue with which
we side is rationality. We do not, here, assume the stance of an anthropo-
logical researcher whose subject remains before him perpetually as a subject;
but instead, we assume towards our subject the position of the aware, self-
conscious, subjective self. Our subject is not a subject for us except to the
extent that the self is a subject for itself in a process of self-criticism.
Our project is a goal, then; and, we do not practise criticism for the sake
of criticism but rather for the sake of liberation from what is dead and petri-
fied in the entity of our reason and our cultural heritage. The goal is to open
the way for life so that its cycles can continue within us and so that it can
re-cultivate its seeds within us . . . and perhaps it may do this soon.
Casa Blanca, February 1983
Mohammed Abed al-Jabri
College of Literature,
Rabat