On the Axiological Possibility of Taha Abdurrahman's Paradigm in the Context of the Crisis of Modernity

Soner GÜNDÜZÖZ*

Introduction: The Search for a Strategic Model with Islamic Reference in the Face of Modernity

Due to the rapid progress of science and technology in the modern West, the concept of value has shifted, and significant shifts have occurred in religious interpretations, art ontology, and philosophy in general. According to some, this transformation in the system of values reflects trauma in terms of the human world of meaning, while others see it as a necessary process toward transhumanism. While it is debatable whether the relationship between scientific and technological advances and the set of values is symmetrical or asymmetrical, and to what extent material progress is related to the spiritual and moral dimension, there is almost no doubt that modernization breeds new ethical problems.

In this context, the nature of information and news in today's world is approached differently than previously assumed, and in the grip of globalization and modernity, information and news appear to have been subjected to calamities that befell numerous human factors. Evaluations that the process that began with the invention of the telegraph turned news into a commodity to be bought and sold, and that the process that began with the printing press similarly individualized and profaned information, are actually a lament for the commodification of two things that humans value, rather than a pejorative reference to the phenomenon of development. By transcending this, modernity has already spawned a new conundrum. Individuals can now collaboratively participate in their privacy in a corner, by moving beyond the book and using a tablet, computer, or cell phone. Without a doubt, each of these bears the imprint of a distinct social order. Today, everything is much more global, much more profane, much more consumable, and takes place in consumption.

Man views this transformation as a general increase in earthly power. However, the fact that humanity, while claiming material progress, continues to struggle with problems such as global wars, income inequality, animal rights, environmental disasters, terrorist incidents, xenophobia, migration and mobilization problems, bioethics, marginalization, and epidemics suggests that human progress does not produce consistency at all levels.

This article was written with the intention of examining religion's contribution to the production of knowledge and value at the nexus of concepts such as modernity, secularism, globalization, and consumption, as well as the role that ancient religious traditions should play in resolving problems that arise as a result of new social dynamics. The study will center on Islam's current status within Taha Abdurrahman's divine trust paradigm. Additionally, it will focus on the horizon that humanity has been promised in the face of modernity. The article is framed within the framework of the knowledge and morality controversy.
 

1. Taha Abdurrahman's Challenge to Western Understanding of Knowledge:

According to Taha Abdurrahman, Islamic thought requires the development of a "methodological strategy" if Islam is to contribute to present world problems. Taha Abdurrahman refers to this method as the paradigm of divine trust and action (i'timâniyye) [Praxeology and Trusteeship Paradigm]. Praxeology refers to transformational action within the paradigm, and trusteeship to the "metaphysically grounded contract" as opposed to Jean Jacques Rousseau's Social Contract, to which the secular West refers. This contract refers to a collection of agreements requiring physical and metaphysical integrity in the form of şehâdet[witnessing] and işhâd[witnessing] that occurred between God and humanity, society and prophet, in the form of the testament agreement, trust agreement, and prophetic agreement (Abdurrahman, 2012a, 71, 208). This concept, which appears utopian at first glance, is reinforced by psychological, sociological, and epistemological linkages based on the relationship between spiritual memory and revelation. According to Taha Abdurrahman, neither physical or metaphysical division in the vertical dimension nor disintegration in the horizontal dimension are allowed within the framework of Islamic epistemology. The vertical dimension (teşhîd) phenomenon of transferring metaphysical concepts, facts, and values to this world is possible through the remembering of self-knowledge embedded in the soul (tezekkur) and the knowledge of revelation at various mental levels in the form of müsedded and sanctioned knowledge (Abdurrahman, 2014, 12). This is in opposition to the sanctification (tagyîb) of physical values. Abdurrahman demonstrates the same approach toward physical and metaphysical purity as he does toward examining religious and historical heritage holistically, not piecemeal. The reference point for the vertical dimension transfer of metaphysical notions is the knowledge encoded in the essence of the soul, which is based on Elest Bezmi's first martyrdom (Abdurrahman, 2012a, 83, 260). This knowledge is continually refreshed by reminders of purification (tezkiye) and revelation. The martyrdom in the Elestü bi-Rabbikum Pact, which occurred ahistorically in the vertical dimension, actually establishes a direct and peaceful flow of information with the metaphysical (suhudi) dimension. On the other hand, the flow of specialized knowledge, especially Greek-derived logical reasoning, was related to a different focus in the universe of Islamic thought. This is an epistemological essence central to Islamic thought that is founded on "aqidah," "language (declaration)," and "knowledge (ma'rifet)." This essence attests to (shahad) and establishes (tesdid) every newly articulated indirect information. Thus, direct (huzuri) knowledge based on tazkiye is controlled by the "metaphysical essence" stored in the soul, whereas all indirect philosophical, scientific, and technical knowledge in the Islamic tradition is controlled by the "epistemological essence" (Abdurrahman, 1994, 249, 251). As a result, the Islamic epistemological field is organized in a circular hierarchical fashion from center to periphery. The components of this circle differ in degree. According to the aforementioned epistemology, certain types of information are considered reference information (me'sûl), while others are considered transfer information (mankûl) (Abdurrahman, 2012b, 297). The reconciliation (takrîb) of knowledge brought from other cultures to Islamic thought with reference knowledge is contingent upon the tradition's control over the essence (Abdurrahman, 1994, 237-238). According to the reference information, it is a triple interpretation mechanism comprised of "aqidah," "language," and "knowledge" fields. "Ilim" and "amel," in other words, "knowledge" and "action," are inextricably linked in this system. Because if theoretical ideas are not implemented, they will not contribute a sufficient action to human existence, and such an approach will remain insufficient in evaluating the depth of knowledge contained in the Islamic heritage. This is because theoretical evaluations are based on abstraction as content. Islamic culture, on the other hand, is a dynamic praxis rather than a static state. While Taha Abdurrahman appears to be alluding to an old accumulation in this direction, he is open to any type of information that comes from outside the epistemological peripheral that is fully assimilated. He has already constructed his theory around it. Western science is deficient in this mechanism of absorption and epistemological essence. As a result, it requires Islamic epistemology on a methodological level. Abdurrahman makes use of the diverse transfer knowledge that he sees into his paradigm's epistemological essence, which he views as necessary for the evolution of knowledge. As such, he asserts, "what determines whether anything is true or wrong is logical propositions." On the other hand, it makes use of pragmatics (speech-act) theory, which states that "they are successful or unsuccessful" and has its origins in the linguistic area with Austin and Searl (Searle, 2000, 36, 45). Taha Abdurrahman bolsters this theory with Jürgen Habermas's Theory of Communicative Action (Habermas, 2018, 128, 129) in basis to advance a holistic theory of action based on negotiation and group consent. On the other hand, Ludwig von Mises' Human Action Theory (Mises, 2016, 41) and Action, which integrates action with human consciousness and ontology, is enriched by Hannah Arendt's Theory of Nature and Action, which views action as establishing political structures, protecting them, and ultimately establishing the condition of memory (Arendt, 2018, 35). Thus, he creates a multifaceted epistemological, ontological, and political theory. Taha Abdurrahman advocates for the moral, ethical, and spiritual dimensions of the oral and written text that generates knowledge and value by fusing the ideas he employs into his own holistic paradigm. In contrast to other dialogic thinkers, he pursues collective engagement and negotiation in the political arena with a strong human and conscious component rather than focusing exclusively on policy (Abdurrahman, 1994, 27). According to Taha Abdurrahman, the epistemological accumulation known as Islamic pragmatics, which serves as an action for action, necessitates the coexistence of theoretical and practical purity. Except for the aforementioned ideas, the West has been unable of evaluating human action in the construction of modernity, and has made the error of reading human activities via sadness, crisis, and perversion, as the Freudian approach does. Taha Abdurrahman believes that the West's theoretical foundations do not adequately balance pragmatics and praxis. Indeed, one of the most striking distinctions between the Islamic primary reference field, which is composed of layers of creed, language, and knowledge, and the Greek logic field, which influenced Islamic civilization in numerous ways, is that rational logic is based on abstraction (tecrid), whereas the Islamic primary reference field is action-oriented. (318) (Abdurrahman, 1994). This activism is the primary component that the West requires. In the Western civilization's crises, a dialectical and confrontational culture of replacement and rejection has taken precedence over the uniform transmission and continuation of knowledge to succeeding generations. Due to the West's atomization of knowledge and exclusion of the martyrdom phenomenon in initiation, the Western intelligentsia generated irreversible epistemological fragmentation in the fields of proof, statement, and wisdom, by activating instrumental reason and proof based on isolation. This is the primary crisis in which the West finds itself. While Islamic civilisation is subject to a variety of influences, it possesses the inherent capacity to resist fragmentation. As Taha Abdurrahman is opposed to a theoretical approach that places little emphasis on action, he is likewise opposed to the Islamic paradigm being separated epistemologically. Rather than solving the modernity problem, this results in the disintegration of the Islamic pragmatics field, the most effective tool for solving the problem, and the Islamic heritage in general. According to him, Muhammad Abid el-Cabiri is one of those who advanced this method of epistemological decomposition in the modern agenda. He classified the mind into three components: the strong mind (aql-i hasîf), the weak mind (aql-i zaif), and the baseless mind (aql-i sahîf), and presented a partial model relating to the fields of proof, statement, and wisdom, precisely as in the West (Câbiri, ts, 140). This epistemological concept fueled the dialectical conflict between the rational religious (ma'kûl- religious) and rational irrational (lâ-ma'kûl- aqlî). Jabiri's school of thought rejected the analogy of gnosis as illogical and undermined the moral realm (Abdurrahman, 1994, 45, 46, 56). However, Islamic epistemology is holistic in nature, encompassing both interdisciplinarity interaction and the application of knowledge transferred from other cultures under particular conditions throughout its history. However, in Islamic thought, the reconciliation (takrîb) desired between philosophy and religion in general has not always been achieved in a balanced manner; at times, reference knowledge has been pushed to the periphery of the epistemological circle, while transfer knowledge has been placed in the center. This has resulted in two distinct epistemological drifts, namely taqrîb-i ma'kûs and taqrîb-i menkûs, the subordination of essential knowledge to tangible knowledge, according to Taha Abdurrahman. Even such a profound essence is taboo in the secular West. Both Western and Islamic epistemologies require a balanced epistemological compromise, which the Islamic tradition has mostly achieved today. While Taha Abdurrahman refers reference to a fixed essence, he does not regard knowledge as static. He is continuously on the lookout for the current consensus (takrîb) channel between reference and transfer information and places a premium on epistemological renewal.
 

2. The Problem of Moral Value in the Context of the Secular Ethics of the West and Taha Abdurrahman's Suggestion:

Taha Abdurrahman established two fundamental elements in order to formulate an Islamic moral approach. These are the modesty dynamics and the divine name theory-based understandings of manifestation and emergence. Dianoetic virtues, he maintains, are theoretical virtues related with reason and Sophia. The essential problem here, whether in terms of classical philosophy, Islamic thought, or contemporary ethics, is the problem of moral foundations and ethical formation. Taha Abdurrahman appears to have positioned the Theory of the Divine Name, its physical manifestations, and finally the concept of shahadah (metaphysical-based witnessing), which combines physics and metaphysics in its own semantic spiral, at the triangulation point of the moral transition from logos to praxis, depending on the Aristotelian-referenced interpretation of Islamic thought. (Abdurrahman, 2017, Abdurrahman, 2017, I, 59, 60, 61). In summary, Taha Abdurrahman's metaphysically based moral teaching reflects a transformation from logos to praxis and action.

According to Taha Abdurrahman, even approaches like Habermas's, which are promising in terms of human acts and praxis in the West, are defective in a variety of ways. Habermas and comparable theorists view praxis and human action from a simply human and rational secular perspective, at the nexus of various Aristotelian manifestations, the intellectual axis of enlightenment, Marxist discourse, and lastly agonistic discourse (Abdurrahman, 2012a, 153, 154). Thus, the oscillation between the animist or hilozoic inclination, which expresses the archaic vitality of natural categories of matter, and the pure concept has corroded the animist or hilozoic root in contemporary secular discourse. However, God is absent from this discourse. In this context, the religious are simply active in discourse and collective involvement. At this point, we run into the problem of defining moral praxis.

Globalization, on the other hand, which reduces human action to a web of secular and materialist interactions, appears as a concept expressing the global spread of commodification. It is evident that this spreading trend possesses a distinct ethical attitude characterized by certain traits. Taha Abdurrahman says that the first of these characteristics is the market's dearth of inherent values. In this context, and in the modern world, assets are valued according to their market values. However, what is referred to as price is the polar opposite of the moralists' concept of value. Capitalist systems have reduced man's dignity to material measurements due to their proclivity to evaluate him in terms of commodity and productivity. Abdurrahman says that as commodification spreads, man's dignity will erode. He contrasts commodification (teslî') with human dignity (tekrîm) (Abdurrahman, 2012b, 214, 216).

Individual freedom as limitless is one of modernity's problems. By obliterating the sacred, this concept elevates the individual to the status of the fundamental reference unit in society and establishes egoism. This results in despotism based on power and systematic materialism. Today, widespread acceptance of "epistemological and systematic materialism" based on the rationalization of human behavior has occurred. Finally, the spread of the commodification phenomenon in the world caused individuals to believe in the concept of immortality (ihlâd) in the physical world, citing as examples such as rule-free freedom, aggressive competitiveness, monstrous gain, hyper-egoism, dictatorial authority, and systematic materialism.

Once free of the debt that the church had placed on its mind for a long period of time, the Western world thought that it possessed the means to supply it with corporeal immortality through the field of "life technology" and viewed positive science as a gateway to such immortality. This is a prevalent perspective in the field of embryonic stem cells. At the age of five to fourteen days, the zygote's stem cell is harvested. Those working in the stem cell field in the West maintain that cells at this stage offer therapeutic potential for a variety of ailments. However, the treatment's stated benefits remain a mystery. However, the zygote pays a fixed fee for the anticipated benefits. When cells are removed from the zygote, it dies. Taha Abdurrahman then challenges whether it is moral to kill the zygote in order to achieve adult immortality.

The zygote has no value in the current world when compared to the mature human's longing for immortality. According to some, the zygote cannot be personalized. According to others, the zygote is simply "a clump of cells." On the other hand, some of those who believe the embryo is alive cite the principle that "the summons of interest is preceded by the repose of mazarrat (if there is any advantage, the potential harm produced by that object can be neglected)" to justify killing the zygote. Similarly, they conceal themselves behind the principle of "human solidarity" or certain moral precepts such as "the least detrimental of two evils (ahven-i şer'in) may be committed as a crime" (Abdurrahman, 2012b, 263, 264, 265).

According to Taha Abdurrahman, it is self-evident that killing the zygote in pursuit of corporeal immortality cannot be justified morally. Even if the zygote is little in volume and shape, this cannot be used to negate its right to life. Thus, even in terms of Kant's concept of modernity, which forms a critical part of the West's theoretical foundations, the value and dignity of human beings have been diminished. Western civilization has arrived at this point as a result of its submission to the secularist paradigm. To begin, politics was divorced from the concept of religion (almâniyye), followed by science as a field distinct from religion (ilmâniyye), and ultimately, a secular morality was intended to be constructed by removing morality from religion (dehraniyya) (Abdurrahman, 2014, 12).
 

Conclusion:

According to Taha Abdurrahman, the Islamic paradigm relates the value and dignity of human beings to a paradigm that does not equate man's existence with an external phenomenon associated with life, but rather puts it as a verse pointing to nature. Thus, the zygote, as one of the best illustrations of the value modernity places on human beings, is for Taha Abdurrahman not just a biological formation (teşekkülât- halkiyye), but also a moral potential structure (teheyyu'at- hulukiyye). The embryo is subjected to phenomenonization in this manner by being divorced from its cryptic paradigmatic potential and confining its existence to the purely observable organic structure. Thus, the Western view of science, which views the embryo as a phenomenon or an external phenomenon, originates from treating the embryo as a natural component of a secular science. Anyone who attempts to destroy the zygote not only eliminates a simple biological organism, but also a potentially valuable moral construct. In the West, ethics encourages an understanding that will expedite the transition to transhumanism and ultimately lead to the extinction of the human race if it does not abandon the view of human beings as mechanical structures composed of matter. To overcome this understanding, we must employ the divine trust paradigm as a model for collective negotiation and take into account the integrity of science and action in all fields. The Divine Name Theory explains how virtues spread throughout society in a consistent manner. Using this theory, which owes its foundations to works such as Ibn Kasi's Kitabu Hal'i'n-Na'leyn, Ibn al-al-Futûhâtu'l-Makkiyyaand Arabi's Ankau'l-Mugrib, Ibn al-Arabi and Konevi established an ontological paradigm that emerged from the meaningful harmony of reference knowledge and transfer knowledge. They have positioned a new ontological paradigm at the center of Islamic epistemological essence through Plato's Ides, Aristotle's Mental Names(Tumells), Mutezile's Ma'dûm(Subût) theories, the views in Ikhwan-i Safa Treatises, and lastly Neoplatonism and Pseudo-Empodical views. Today, humanity requires a comparable holistic epistemological, ontological, and ethical paradigm that preserves the innate essence. This is the paradigm of divine faith.
 

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*Professor, Ankara University