The Historical Capacity of Quranic Stories in the Face of Contemporary Hermeneutics and Historicity

In the Noble Quran, numerous Quranic stories are recounted. But do these Quranic narratives have a role to play in the new Islamic civilization? In order to understand this role and position, the present article addresses the following question: “What are
the civilizational and historical capacities of the imaginative dimension of Quranic narratives when confronted with human stories grounded in the hermeneutic (and contemporary Western) imagination?” To answer this question, we have employed a comparative method and focused first on Martin Heidegger’s hermeneutics and historicity and then on the thought of Paul Ricoeur. Heidegger, in his explication of hermeneutics and historicity, regards Kant’s formation of the categories of the understanding as the product of productive imagination and describes imagination in the power of judgement as reconstructive imagination. In Heidegger’s view, understanding is constituted through the hermeneutic circle between these two meanings of imagination, and hermeneutics together with historicity replace traditional metaphysics and the transcendental subject. Continuing from there and with emphasis on
the relationship between language, imagination, and narrative, we compare the positions of Heidegger and Paul Ricoeur in order to explain how, in contemporary Western hermeneutics, both reality and truth are shaped under the influence of linguistic imagination. In other words: how do human imaginative narrations inform the reality according to human imaginary forms? In the second part of the article, by referring
to the efforts of Henry Corbin, we have demonstrated that the imagination which
plays a central role in Heidegger’s hermeneutic understanding (and that of those
who follow him) is equivalent to the “connected imagination” (khiyāl muttaṣil) in
Islamic philosophy—particularly in the thought of Abū Naṣr al-Fārābī, Shahāb al-Dīn Suhrawardī (Shaykh al-Ishrāq), and Ṣadr al-Dīn Shīrāzī (Mullā Ṣadrā). Al-Fārābī, drawing a distinction between the prophet and the philosopher, considers revelation (waḥy) to be the result of the prophet’s connection with the Active Intellect (‘aql fa‘‘āl). In this conjunction, truths descend upon the prophet simultaneously both as intellectual truths and as imaginal truths. Whereas the philosopher’s reception of truths is purely intellectual, the prophet apprehends those same truths in an outward form consisting
of similitudes and imaginal figures while their inner essence remains rational and demonstrative. This specific mode of connection enables the prophet—unlike the philosopher—to communicate with ordinary people who are engaged with the sensible, using a language they can understand. Shaykh al-Ishrāq, by emphasizing the relationship between the connected imagination and the disconnected imagination (khayāl munfaṣil), draws a clear distinction between the true and divine imaginal forms on the one hand, and the demonic and false imaginal forms on the other. In the Transcendent Philosophy (al-ḥikmat al-mutaʿāliya) of Ṣadr al-Dīn al-Shīrāzī, by introducing the concept of imaginal immateriality—in contrast to intellectual immateriality (tajarrud ʿaqlī), which is restricted to the rare few—access to the imaginal forms belonging to the disconnected imagination is considered possible and within the reach of all human beings. Because
of the relationship, in the view of Muslim philosophers, between the connected imagination and the disconnected imagination, intellectual and demonstrative realities are present in the inner dimension of these very imaginal forms. All human beings are capable of apprehending truths in their imaginal form, but attaining their hidden intellectual essence requires intellectual immateriality and is the prerogative of the rare elite. In a comparative perspective, it has been stated that imagination in Heideggerian hermeneutics remains confined to the purely human domain and is entirely subject to the synthetic activity through which man himself constructs imaginal forms out of particular sensible data—whether in the form of poetry, narrative, novel, play, or even cinema. Such a conception of imagination is wholly governed by human desires and inclinations; it possesses no fixed, factual (nafs al-amrī), and independently subsisting imaginal forms. In the final analysis, the complete severance of the connected imagination from the disconnected imagination leads inevitably to the historicization and relativization
of all understanding. For this very reason, Martin Heidegger was unable to attain a metaphysical understanding that transcended poetic imagination. By contrast, in the tradition of Muslim philosophers, imagination is bound to metaphysics and to the intellect. This is why it is possible to distinguish between false imaginal forms and true imaginal forms. If we regard the Quranic stories as the fruit of the Prophet’s connection with the Active Intellect, then within the inner dimension of the imaginal form of these Quranic stories there lie concealed metaphysical and intellectual realities. The historical narratives of the Quran, presented in the language of parable, symbol, and imagination, are accessible to all human beings. However, their hidden intellectual essence has become the very substance of the proofs of theology, philosophy, and jurisprudence.
In this perspective, the connected imagination—although it is a human faculty and constructs particular imaginal forms by combining the sensible—nevertheless, because of the real relationship it maintains with the forms belonging to the disconnected imagination, is capable of distinguishing between true imaginal forms and untrue ones. A purely human storytelling about the origin of man may indeed be composed from the synthesis of particular sensible forms, and the truth or falsity of such a story will not be manifest. By contrast, the Quranic narrative of creation is true, and its truth or falsity is definitively known. Therefore, when confronted with contemporary hermeneutics and historicism—which treat all purely human narratives as equally valid—the Quranic narratives, despite being clothed in imaginal forms, serve as the very prologue to demonstrative and metaphysical understanding of revealed truths. For this reason, they possess a distinctive validity relative to merely human narratives. In the concluding section of the article, through an examination of the statements of the major Quranic exegetes concerning both (a) the essential nature of the Quranic narratives and (b) the concrete subject-matter of these narratives, we have demonstrated that the analysis presented above—which rests upon the doctrines of Muslim philosophers—is fully consonant with the position that the imaginal forms of the Quranic narratives are real and veridical. In the conclusion, it is pointed out that this very capacity can prove effective, within all domains that belong to the public sphere of Islamic civilization—whether the various arts, narrative literature, or any other domain addressed to the general audience—when confronting the wave of relativism generated by the hermeneutical circle on the one hand, and by the humanistic Western novels and stories on the other.