A Critical Analysis of Textual Historicity in Abu Zayd’s Thought in Light of the “Spirit of Meaning” Theory in Transcendent Philosophy

Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd’s theory of the “historicity of the text,” which emphasizes the primacy of cultural context in textual formation, reduces the revelation to a historically bounded linguistic message. By producing a rupture between the textual horizon of meaning and the horizon of the contemporary interpreter, this approach raises serious challenges for the efficacy and dynamism of the language of the Qur’an. The present study, with a critical approach, evaluates Abu Zayd’s linguistic model on the basis of the theory of rūḥ al-maʿnā (spirit of meaning) in Transcendent Philosophy (al-Ḥikmah al-Mutaʿāliyyah). The findings indicate that Abu Zayd’s theory rests on two fundamental errors. First, an ontological rupture between text and author: by treating the text as an independent historical product, Abu Zayd separates it from its author’s trans-historical subjectivity. In contrast, in the rūḥ al-maʿnā model the text is a manifestation and existential continuation of the author, and a union between text and author is established that guarantees the persistence and vitality of meaning. Second, a spurious dualization of maʿnā and maghzā: Abu Zayd holds that maʿnā (meaning as a historical signified) is imprisoned in the past and must be contemporized by constructing a new maghzā (interpretive significance). By contrast, the rūḥ al-maʿnā theory, by explicating the mechanism by which words are instituted for the spirit of meaning, demonstrates that the signification of Qur’anic words is not constrained to the material-historical instances of the period of revelation; rather, words  are instituted for  general functions  and universals. Accordingly, textual meaning possesses a fluid referential capacity that, without requiring a separation between maʿnā and maghzā, can be applied to novel instances in any temporal context.

کلیدواژه ها:

the Qur’an ، Historicity of the text ، Abu Zayd ، Rūḥ al-maʿnā theory ، Transcendent Philosophy ، al-Ḥikmah al-Mutaʿāliyyah ، Maʿnā and maghzā ، hermeneutics