Project
Research Group Grammar – Logic – Rhetoric
GENERAL AIM
Grammar – Logic – Rhetoric is an interdisciplinary contribution to the history of ideas centered around the disciplines of grammar, logic, and rhetoric in Arabic-Islamic culture 800-1100. While the core of this project is dedicated to a historico-philosophical investigation of these three disciplines, they are contextualized by parallel inquiries into the historical, cultural, theological, and juridical spheres, as well as by consideration of their social significance. Grammar, logic, and rhetoric form an excellent reference point due to the pivotal role of language within Arabic-Islamic culture and the struggle for its interpretation across diverse social groups.
STRUCTURE
The Research Group consists of four fellows: a Group Leader, a Postdoc collaborator and two Doctoral Students, each focusing on different disciplines. The cross-disciplinary and topical division of the team members is as follows:
Group Leader: Language and Logic
Postdoc: Language and Law
Doctoral Student 1: Language and Theology
Doctoral Student 2: Language and Philology
RESEARCH AREA
The three disciplines of grammar, logic, and rhetoric each refer to different scholarly perspectives on linguistic expressions and hence on objects uniquely positioned at the interface of social interaction and scientific reflection on the medium of this interaction. Consequently, these disciplines provide an efficient means for revealing the prevailing notion of the nature and function of language – this latter particularly in connection with the form of human speech considered predominant in a given society – at the crossroads of philosophy, religion, and social reality. Regarding the period under consideration, it is important to note that since the late 8th century, the reception of the Corpus Aristotelicum played a crucial role in the emergence of scholarly debates in the field of philosophy of language.
The intellectual context of this process, however, is characterized by the slightly earlier rise of ‘religious sciences’: areas of theoretical consideration circling around Islam and its implications for common life in society. In this connection, not only do Islamic theology (kalām and ḥadīth) and religiously based jurisprudence (fiqh) arrive on the scene, but also a particular ‘science of language’. A chief aspect of the ‘science of language’ is grammar (naḥw) which, in sharp contrast to the Latin-Christian realm, does not rely upon the Corpus Aristotelicum but rather belongs to a different scientific paradigm than logic. The situation is even more complicated when it comes to rhetoric. In contrast to grammar, rhetoric is not only part of the religious sciences (where it is addressed as ʿilm al-balāgha), but also of philosophy (under the name of khaṭāba, as a sub-part of the Corpus Aristotelicum). Accordingly, rhetorical questions are the study of two competing camps, namely, religious scholars and philosophers.
Owing to the fact that discussions about language involve various social groups, their impact reaches far beyond the narrow field of science and philosophy proper. As such, the debates surrounding Qurʾān exegesis and theology often have direct influence on controversies regarding philosophy of language (both of grammarians and logicians), and vice versa. This becomes obvious in the quarrel concerning the question of whether language originates from divine inspiration or human convention. One of the roots of this debate is interpretation of the Qurʾānic verse ‘And He taught Adam all the names’. The respective answers, in turn, have far-reaching implications for the theological question of whether the Qurʾān is to be considered eternal or temporal. This, however, is one of the major theological conflicts characterizing the 9th and 10th centuries, and is closely related to the debate over the status of divine attributes.
Similarly, the relation between theology and logic determines the role of logic in the field of law which is based primarily on the interpretation of Qurʾān and ḥadīth. Thus, the impact logic has on legal reasoning corresponds to the role it plays in the analysis of these writings, which is to say, to the degree it is accepted as a standard method in theology. Already these few examples reveal the presence in early Islamic culture of an intricate web of interrelations between society and science in general, between the different language-based scientific disciplines, as well as between the various competing social groups and their corresponding scientific spheres. For this reason, only an interdisciplinary team of researchers will be in the position to explore this field appropriately in its multi-dimensionality.
It is clear from the foregoing that several of the sciences are centrally concerned with language; and moreover, that to discover what role language, in all its diverse facets, played in Islamic society, one cannot content oneself merely with the study of these language-related disciplines, but must also investigate their impact on other aspects of society. Therefore the planned Research Group is organized to support a thorough epistemological examination of the language-related sciences against their socio-cultural background. Accordingly, the Group will study the specific place and status of language in law and theology as well as logic and philology – thus merging the various perspectives on language in Arabic-Islamic culture in a truly interdisciplinary fashion.