Das römische Denken hatte die griechischen Wörter übernommen – ohne die entsprechende gleichursprüngliche Erfahrung dessen, was sie sagen, ohne das griechische Wort. Die Bodenlosigkeit des abendländlichen Denkens beginnt mit diesem Übersetzen.
Roman thought had adopted Greek words without any lived experience of them, without an experience which corresponded to what they originally denoted. The groundlessness, the abyssmalness of western thought began with this transference, this translation.
Roman thought had adopted tens of thousands of Greek words without any lived experience of them, without an experience which corresponded to what they originally denoted. The groundlessness, the abyssmalness of western thought began with this transference, this translation. Then the abyss was deepened when European thought adopted christian-orientalist words for Arabic terms without having experienced what they actually meant, often avoiding a transliteration which might well have been an impulse to understanding.
(Lightly expanded with thanks to MH, from his Der Ursprung des Kunstwerkes, pp.13-14).
Although things are beginning to change.
Said he, ‘If he was so close to tawhid, then how was it that it could not make the leap, not open the door and enter?’
Said she, ‘Well, clearly Islam was not written for him; but if you require reasons and causes, then perhaps the following:
He inherited a language burdened with luggage from the past as the article above this one makes clear. He also got caught up in the subject-object/rationality-iman dichotomies, and had no access to Arabic: Thomas Aquinas got the goods from Ibn Rushd – who did pose these questions – but only to still the unease of certain low-brow ulama; he himself had no problem; it became Aquinas’ problem which in turn became Europe’s problem’.
He said, ‘Que?’
She said, ‘Put it like this: in the first instance: there is often no need for the sein-verb in Arabic, and so the subject-complement issue does not arise: Qul huwa Allah ahad – literally ‘Say: ‘Allah One’, there being no verb necessary; why? you might ask – perhaps because kaana, the verb for ‘to be/sein‘, also contains the meaning ‘to create’, and so any understanding is inconceivable without the mukawwin, the Bringer into being of the kawn, i.e. creation.
He said, ‘Ah ha, and what about rationality-iman?’
She said, ‘Let me read you something MH said – just to point out the weight of religious baggage encumbering [European] languages:
“The inclination to hold that the material-form-composition of things is the constitution of every existent being gains additional impetus on the basis of a prior belief, namely the biblical, that the whole of being is conceived of as something created, i.e. fabricated”.
The philosophy of this belief can, it is true, aver that all creative working of god is to be conceived of as different from the action of the artisan. If however at the same time, or even in advance, as a consequence of an understanding of the Thomist philosophy of pre-determination regarding the interpretation of the Bible, the ens creatum is conceived of as issuing from the oneness of material and form, then a belief arising out of a philosophy may be inferred whose truth rests in a revealing of Being which is of a different sort than that of a world that is conceived of in belief.
This concept of Creation, based on a belief, can now of course, lose its dominant strength with regard to knowledge of Being as a whole. Only the once employed theological interpretation of all beingness, the view of the world according to material and form, borrowed from a foreign philosophy, can nevertheless remain. Its metaphysic too rests on the medievally characterized form-material composition which only recalls in mere words the buried nature of εἶδος (form) and ύλη (matter). Thus the understanding of a thing according to form and matter, be it still medieval or transformed into Kantian-transcendental, has become something common, a matter of course. However for this reason it is no less than the other mentioned interpretations of the thingness of a thing an assault on the being inherent in the thingness of a thing.
She continued, ‘I think it shall now be clear to you that if we ditch the Thomist baggage of European thought and recommence from where the Greeks left off as MH has indicated – or more simply, reconnect to what Ibn Rushd actually said and did – then the jump becomes feasible for all who are bold.