some reflection on post-enlightenment qur'anic hermeneutics

1418 Michigan State Law Review [Vol. 2006:1403these hermeneutic traditions similarly emerged in the nineteenth and twentiethcenturies and sought to universalize the methodologies employed in theinterpretation of important religious and classical texts, while drawing benefitsand insights from Enlightenment and Post-Enlightenment ideas and approachesto human understanding and the human sciences. 57The Post-Enlightenment Islamic tafsir can thus be situated in a largerhermeneutical history that transcends all of the Abrahamic religions andtakes within its sweep consideration of Western literary, scientific, ethical,imply that the church ought to impose an external interpretation to make them intelligible; itmerely reflected the insufficient knowledge and faulty preparation of the interpreters.” Id.(quoting Kurt Mueller-Vollmer, Introduction to THE HERMENEUTICS READER: TEXTS OF THEGERMAN TRADITION FROM THE ENLIGHTENMENT TO THE PRESENT 2 (Kurt Mueller-Vollmered., 1985) [hereinafter THE HERMENEUTICS READER].The Enlightenment led scholars and hermeneuts to view scriptural texts in thesame way that secular texts were viewed. “The process of the secularization of the Bible,begun by the Reformation and continued by eighteenth century rationalism, becomes moreradical with the Enlightenment.” FERRARIS, supra note 8, at 52. “The rationalist impulse,which fosters the secularization of the sacred text (the study, through the most advancedhistorical and philological tools, of the biblical tradition as a literary one), originates from theprejudice, influential in the Enlightenment, that the moderns are superior to the ancients andthat the more reason is autonomous, the more it is effective.” Id. “As far as the developmentof general hermeneutics is concerned, Chladenius (1710-1759) is the most important figureamong the philosophers of Enlightenment.” Afaki, supra note 55. See also FERRARIS, supranote 8, at 64-65. In Chladenius’ view, hermeneutics is the art of attaining the perfect orcomplete understanding of utterances, whether they be speeches or writings. Id.56. Friedrich Ast is a pivotal figure in examining early modern Protestant hermeneutics,the precursor to the more general theory of hermeneutics that emerged from the Enlightenment.See Ramberg & Gjesdal, supra note 8. “Among the Romantic thinkers, FriedrichAst . . . was the most important one who he had a deep impact on [the later] Schleiermacherianapproach toward general hermeneutics.” Afaki, supra note 55. According to Ast,“[i]ndividual utterances are neither to be understood with reference to their author, nor withreference to their place within the semiotic system, but according to their location withinworld-history.” Ramberg & Gjesdal, supra note 8. “Ast thereby extends the scope of thehermeneutic circle. Originally conceived in terms of the relationship between the parts andthe whole of the text, the hermeneutic circle now includes the text’s relationship to historicaltradition and culture at large.” Id. Afaki notes that:[H]ermeneutics for Ast . . . [becomes] a three-dimensional activity, that is, it maybe the historical, the grammatical or the spiritual (geistige). In the historical hermeneutics,a text is to be understood ‘in relation to the content of the work.’ In thegrammatical hermeneutics . . . a text is to be understood ‘in relation to the language.’And in the geistige hermeneutics, a text is to be understood ‘in relation tothe total view of the author and the total view of the age.[’]Afaki, supra note 55. “[T]he third one was an original contribution of Ast to the rise ofgeneral hermeneutics and it is the type . . . which was further developed by Schleiermacher.”Afaki, supra note 55.57. See Werner G. Jeanrond, Hermeneutics, in A DICTIONARY OF BIBLICALINTERPRETATION 282-84 (R.J. Coggins & J.L. Houlden eds., 1990).