Timing Critique in Arabic

This article examines key ideas from the work of two Moroccan philosophers—Muḥammad ‘Ābid al-Jābirī and ‘Abd al-Raḥmān Ṭaha—in light of larger problematics inherent in the encounter between Arabic-Islamic “heritage” ( turāth ) and Eurocentric “modernity.” It argues that both thinkers’ projects should be read as responding directly to a foundational moment in the enterprise known as “critique”: Kant’s initial formulation of the a priori intuitions of time and space. A genealogy of twentieth-century Arabic language scholarship on Kant lays the groundwork for a close reading of al-Jābirī and Ṭaha’s responses to the idea of time as an a priori intuition, responses that in turn inform these thinkers’ divergent ways of conceptualizing the temporality of the Arabic language and the nature, goals, and limitations of Arabic critique writ large

Arabic · Archaeology · Art · Context (archaeology · Epistemology · Linguistics · Literature · History · Islamic Studies and History · Islamic Thought and Society Studies · Medieval and Classical Philosophy · Philosophy