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The linguistic construction of reality: Toshihiko Izutsu’s semantic hermeneutics of the Qur’ānic Weltanschauung

Solihu, Abdul Kabir Hussain (2010) The linguistic construction of reality: Toshihiko Izutsu’s semantic hermeneutics of the Qur’ānic Weltanschauung. In: Japanese Contribution to Islamic Studies: The legacy of Toshihiko Izutsu Interpreted. IIUM Press, Kuala Lumpur, pp. 17-39. ISBN 978-967-5272-63-9

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Abstract

Toshihiko Izutsu introduces semantic structural analysis to study the structures of the Qur‟ānic worldview. According to this theory of analysis, each language contains a peculiar weltanschauung which causes its speakers to view the world in a way different from the speakers of other languages. Thus by analytic study of the conceptual key-terms of a given language, it is possible to grasp the weltanschauung of the people who use that language as a tool of conceptualizing and interpreting the world in which they live. He employs this semantic theory to examine how the Qur‟ānic key-terms and its particular linguistic categorization of nonlinguistic reality represent subjectively its weltanschauung and its vision of reality. Such semantic approach to the Qur‟ān indicates that its Arabic language is internally coherent, a self-sufficient system of words into which all words have been integrated with an entirely new systemic interpretation; yet it is culturally and historically conditioned, from Jāhilī (pre-Islamic) period to Qur‟ānic era, and thus it is a subjective elaboration of reality. The focus of the present study is to examine critically from ethical and theological perspectives the semantic method Izutsu applies to the Qur‟ānic key-concepts in his two works, God and Man in the Qur’an and Ethico-Religious Concepts in the Qur’an.

Item Type: Book Chapter
Additional Information: 4608/2537
Subjects: B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BP Islam. Bahaism. Theosophy, etc > BP1 Islam > BP100 Sacred books > BP130 Works about the Qurʼān
Kulliyyahs/Centres/Divisions/Institutes (Can select more than one option. Press CONTROL button): Kulliyyah of Islamic Revealed Knowledge and Human Sciences > Department of General Studies
Depositing User: Dr. Abdul Kabir Hussain Solihu
Date Deposited: 28 Sep 2011 12:54
Last Modified: 22 May 2012 09:56
URI: http://irep.iium.edu.my/id/eprint/2537

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