Licit Magic — GlobalLit Working Paper №4: Al-Rāzī’s Discussion on The Meaning of Speech [Kalām] & Its Origins
Introduction & Translation
By Bakir Mhd
Read the full working paper here.
Known as one of the Sultans of the theologians, Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī (1150–1210) was a Persian Sunnī scholar of Arab origins who was renowned for mastering various disciplines including but not limited to exegesis [tafsīr], principles of Islamic jurisprudence [uṣūl al-fiqh], theology [kalām], logic [manṭiq], astronomy [falak], cosmology, physics, anatomy, and medicine. This paper delves into al-Rāzī’s discussion on semantics and its relation to the foundations of languages by examining multiple views on the composition of speech. By raising the rather simple question as to what constitutes speech (kalām) and what does not, al-Rāzī presents us with a terse, yet enlightening presentation of rhetoric’s very building blocks, the word. His focus then moves to the vexed issue of whether the waḍʿ or establishment of speech is through divine revelation or human convention?
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