Philosophical Perspectives on Modern Qur'anic Exegesis - Key Paradigms and Concepts - Massimo Campanini
3: Tafsīr and Ta’wīl
Philosophical Perspectives on Modern Qur'anic Exegesis - Key Paradigms and Concepts - Massimo Campanini
Massimo Campanini [+]
University of Trento
Massimo Campanini was born in Milan in 1954. He graduated in philosophy at the University of Milan in 1977 with a thesis on Giordano Bruno’s thought. Later he obtained a degree in Arabic at the Institute for the Middle and Far East of Milan in 1984. Lecturer in history and institutions of the Muslim world at the University of Urbino and of Arabic culture at the University of Milan; reader in History of Islamic countries at the Oriental University in Naples; presently, he is Associate professor of Islamic studies at the University of Trento. He published about 100 scientific articles and 30 books, a few of them translated in Spanish, Portuguese and Serbo-croatian. In English he published The Qur’an: The Basics 2nd edition (Routledge 2016), Introduction to Islamic Philosophy (Edinburgh University Press 2008) and The Qur’an: Modern Muslim Interpretations (Routledge 2011).
Description
While tafsir is the “traditional” commentary, ta’wil involves a hermeneutical approach of “disclosure”, that can be literary or philosophical, or religious and spiritual. Unfortunately, Islamic thought did not develop ta’wil enough. The science of ta’wīl remained within the limits of “thinkable” and “thought” in Mohammed Arkoun’s terms. A new ta’wil implies that the veil of appearance must be removed to show Truth, decoding “signs” that refer to a world of symbols that must be interpreted. Nasr Abu Zayd’s method is particularly extolled.