The Evidence of Meaning (bayān al-maʿnā) in the Ẓāhirī Approach to the Qur'an

Abstract

The article carries on the project of a ‘Philosophical Qur'anology’, referring to the possibility of approaching the Qur'an as a philosophical book. Here I will focus on the concept of bayān, exploring the role of language in understanding more thoroughly the Qur'anic idea of God in relation with philosophical topics as ontology and epistemology. My idea is to read Qur'anic obviousness through the pair-couple of ẓāhir and bāṭin in order to make meaning ( maʿnā) manifest (in the sense of the Latin verb: ostendere) in the immediateness of its evidence. The proposed approach is grounded in Ẓāhirī rules of interpretation, which claim to be wholeheartedly faithful to the apparent meaning of the text, but through the a-letheia (‘disclosure’, in Heidegger's terms) of the manifested and the clear truthfulness ( haqīqa) of the content. Taking the thought of Ibn Ḥazm as a starting point, the article will explore Averroes' method through the lenses of the Moroccan philosopher Muḥammad ʿĀbid al-Jābirī. I will try to show that bayān does mean first of all that a text is clear in the language wherein it has been revealed or however expressed. As the source of all revealed lights is the Arabic language, the Arabic Qur'an is in itself clear and explains itself. The evidence of the Qur'an is the emergence of meaning from the clarity of the text. To provide an illustrative example, al-Ghazzālī's interpretation of the Light Verse will be shortly addressed.