Ancient thought treated the meaning in the context of its dual view (word-meaning), and thus the meaning was the signification of the utterance, whether it was a direct or indirect connotation.
And it was settled in the minds that the term has connotations;
There is a connotation of the word is its meaning, and there is a signification of the word is the meaning of its meaning.
And if in the first the meaning is a matter of the utterance’s indication of things in the world, then in the other it is the indication by it of the relationships and associations that a person resorts to forming between things in existence.
And the word sea actually indicates the great flat full of water, calm at one time, raging at another, breaking waves on the shore.
Because of this duality (word-meaning), the treatment of meaning focused on standardizing it with the equivalent of the word in other dualities, such as: form-content, body-spirit, material-moral, uttered-concept, sensible-abstract, accident-essence...etc. What is there.
Other ideas were based on these dualities on the grounds that every concrete material is ephemeral, and that all moral is mere perpetuity;
The clay is scattered, and the spiritual is eternal.
It may also be measured against them that the words are from the mundane section, and the meanings are from the eschatological section.
And they are ideas that only those dualities led to, and they have no reality outside the conceptual mental existence that the analogy assumed.
The existence of the word depends on the discovery of its meaning.
To denote it, or a noun that refers to it in an objective or mental existence.
In this way, it can be imagined that the language, while it did not include a list of words that were few in number, then began to multiply with the increasing need of speakers to indicate new meanings discovered by its members.
Between the logic of language and the logic of the mind
The reader almost does not stop at a real conception of the meaning outside of what these dualities assumed, and for this reason the consideration of it remained limited to those assumed limits, and for this same reason there was a deep disagreement between the perception of the people of language and the perception of the people of logic and philosophy of the meaning. The Serafi (the imam of the people of his time in Arabic) and Matta bin Yunus Al-Qana’i, the translator of Aristotle’s Book of Poetry, should note the depth of the disagreement between them in the conception of logic: the logic of grammarians and linguists, and the logic of logicians and philosophers.
As for the time of that debate (the year 320 AH), it is the fourth Hijri century, which represented an explosion of knowledge in the Arab-Islamic environment, and its place is (the Council of Minister Ibn al-Furat) in Baghdad, which tried its best to derive for itself a syncretistic approach even at the level of linguistic consideration between the hard-line visualists and the permissive Kufics. .
It was held in the presence of prominent figures of the era (Al-Kindi, Qudamah bin Jaafar,...) including philosophers, speakers, linguists, literature, criticism, jurisprudence and interpretation.
As for its complexity, it was represented in the seraphic question: "Tell me about logic, what do you mean by it? For if we understand what you mean about it, our words will be with you in accepting his correctness and refuting his error according to the Sunnahs of my disease, and in a well-known way."
And Matthew’s answer: “I mean by it that it is one of the machines by which the correct speech is known from the weak, and the meaning is corrupt from its good,” and the Seraph replied: “I made a mistake; because the correct speech from the defective is known by the familiar system and the well-known syntax if we speak Arabic; If we search by reason,” which indicates that the meaning was at the heart of the dialogue.
Perhaps all of this opens the door, legitimizing the difference between two conceptions that have yet leaked into the writings of the two groups, and for example, two directions of consideration and thinking began to diverge with time until both of them embody a path different from the other in the end: this is a path of imitation governed by language and logic, and that is a path of renewal governed by logic. rational.
A path based on texts in which the beholder considers, explains, interprets, comments, annotates, summarizes, or derives a judgment, and another based on the mind looks, contemplates, reflects, measures, evaluates, criticizes and produces texts.
The reader must note, here, the place of meaning between these two paths;
In the first place, the observer is a slave to the meaning contained in the texts, and in the other he is a producer of the meaning in new texts.
In the first he possesses the meaning by what is the abundance of the utterance, and in the other he possesses the meaning by what he searches for an utterance to include in it.
In the first track, the meaning is a ready-made meal, and is objectively independent, and in the other, the meaning is prepared as a discovery that seeks to achieve... Thus, the consideration of the first track is a track of slavery to meanings, and the consideration of the other track is a creative freedom that did not exist before.
The first path is consumptive, the other productive.
The first drowned in the achieved achievement, and the second sailed in the midst of the possible.
One can say with some metaphor: the consumer’s view is the view of the slaves, and the producer’s view is the view of the servants.
Slaves do not produce meaning
The existence of the word depends on the discovery of its meaning.
To denote it, or a noun that refers to it in an objective or mental existence.
With this, it can be imagined that the language, while it included a list of few words, then began to increase with the increasing need of the speakers to indicate new meanings discovered by its members, or new things that appeared in their livelihood and they needed to refer to them.
This is the natural course of language development in its simplest form.
The pronunciation is required by the meaning, and the noun is called by the named, not the other way around.
As for the contradictory path, it is the path of learning and education, when we use the same word to denote its meaning/named by diagnosis, drawing, anthropomorphism, direct evoking, and the like, as if someone points to a device in front of the child and says: “This is a computer/computer/computer.”
There is a huge difference between the strenuous path in which that device was invented, then its inventors thought of naming it, and said: (Computer), and the “entertainment” path in which a number of people are busy finding an alternative word for (computer) in Arabic, so they rise and fall between: computer, A computer, a computer.
Standing with the meaning at the limits of what the word implies and indicates, restricts the meanings to the language;
Which makes language an alternative world to the existence that it originated / was originally established to be a function of it, i.e.: the meanings contained in the language’s words will always be insufficient to be a substitute for the things signified in existence, and we cannot establish an equal relationship between language and existence. More than the words of all languages, as well as the relationships that can be established between them.
With such an understanding, any language remains incapable of fulfilling the names of existing and possible beings. Likewise, language remains subject to growth and renewal, as long as it includes its own mechanisms for creating words that indicate the new discovered, invented and innovated. Otherwise, it will gradually recede if it is preceded by reality and it is unable to keep up with it.
The meaning is not confined to the utterances of the language, nor to the relations that exist between those words, as they are embodied by the structures, and it is not identical according to what we hear or read;
It is in what we observe and see, and in what we discover, invent and innovate, and in dreams as it is in acting scenes, dance and music. And the colors, in the way of walking, running, and riding the bus, as well as in the systems of social relations and functional structures, as well as in laws, legislation and constitutions.
And the establishment of language as an alternative to existence is a constriction of the mind, a freezing of reality, and a halt to the path of life that expands and extends every moment. It is to include it with the other assets in (the wardrobe of his images - according to the expression of Al-Sakaki in Miftah Al-Ulum).
If the reader wants to stop at this issue, he may reflect on the saying: He who has the ability to name things is the one who owns them, or he can possess them at one time.
And he reflects on the analogous saying: The one who owns the meaning is the same who has the right to name, and others remain dependent on it, draw from it, and lean on it, with the need to note that the transfer of names with their names and ideas with their concepts, between civilizations, may allow them to create new environments in which to divide them. And creating developments on the sidelines of great importance, in a way that gives human civilization a complete concept that all nations have contributed to building.
Here, the reader may also contemplate the necessity of the Arabic language councils, from its inception until today, to (Arabization);
The Arabization of terms in all sciences, the names of discoverers and inventions, and the problems surrounding this movement that will remain present as long as our situation continues: Producing something that we were glad to find an Arab alternative to (Remote Control): regardless of its efficacy and ease of use.
Meditation, contemplation, contemplation and consideration all absorb the language and overflow from it, use it and do not stop at its limits and the limits of its assumptions, employ it and not be employed by it.
Language is a tool for contemplation, contemplation and contemplation, but it is not the only tool for that, and in the end, it is a condition for expressing the results of all of that.
If she is able to include it, otherwise this will result in additions to it from its core, or from others by borrowing.
In the slave system, the slave loses the meaning of his existence so that the master becomes a substitute for him in all his affairs, and the slave becomes a tool that the master uses as he wants, whenever and wherever he wants.
This substitution is based on the master’s appropriation of the mind of the slave, and the deprivation of the latter from using it in any matter of his existence, and for this reason he owns it by authenticity, not by proxy.
In this case, the slave becomes in the status of a bull, a waterwheel, and a bucket... Indeed, he may be of lesser status than them, as he is devoted to preserving them, maintaining them, and not neglecting their use, even if this requires him to sacrifice himself.
The slave is allowed to consume what his master sees without exceeding the permissible limit.
The servant imposes on him things with their names, and relationships with their names, i.e., their meanings are imposed upon him, and he has nothing to do with that except to accept what is dictated to him from them.
Building on the foregoing, slaves cannot produce meaning;
The production of meaning requires possession of the basic tool for that, which is the mind, and the freedom to use this tool, and the rise of all controls and limits around it to practice contemplation, contemplation and contemplation of the self and the existence of things and the relationships between them.
The reader here has to establish a substitutive relationship between the master and the language, and between the slave and the speaker of the language, and deduce for himself the consequences of that substitution.
Perhaps the simplest example of such slavery is the initiation of someone who writes a book on history, so you find him putting the sources in front of him to quote what its authors said, and collect this in one level, without working his mind in comparing their sayings, looking behind them, investigating what they were silent about, and reflecting on their consistency from Its contradiction, its truthfulness from its lies, the authors’ affiliations and their intentions, the extrapolation of what the other wrote on the multiplicity of the subject, and the coming out with conclusions that no one has preceded...Between being a mind, and being a transmission, between being a critic and being a transmitter... Here lies the disease, and the medicine also lies. .
Arabs have 3 moments of enlightenment over the course of their existence;
The first of them was the Holy Qur’an, with its belief, value and moral systems, and what it established in their lives of a sense of power and broke it in them of belief in annihilation after death, and expelled them from the Arabian Peninsula to mingle with other nations.
Then was the second moment that began with the era of codification and the establishment of the House of Wisdom in Baghdad, and the start of the wide translation movement from other nations.. and the last was in the Renaissance era with the scientific missions sent by Muhammad Ali to Europe.
Meaning and civilization
History explicitly tells us that the civilizational construction - in any nation - was dependent on its openness to meaning, and to scrutiny: its openness to the plurality of meaning in what it produces itself, and what it touches with other civilizations, i.e.: its mental ability to multiply visions, perceptions and views, as well as providing an umbrella From the safety and legitimacy of all those visions, perceptions, and attention to existence, contiguousness and coexistence in society, in addition to lifting restrictions, controls, and limits that prevent the initiation of contemplation, contemplation and contemplation, and nothing prevents the realization of this except by tyranny.
All of this can be condensed into a simple, basic saying: “The freedom of meaning; generation, consideration, criticism, production and circulation, is guaranteed and legitimate.”
Otherwise, any nation will freeze, its veins will become stiff, its sources of existence will dry up, its extension will be reduced in time and space, it will become threatened in everything, and subordinate in every aspect, along with its thought, culture, language, history, value system and beliefs. The meaning of its existence is completely, in it there are many museums related to heritage, traditional costumes, tools for living, and authorship in national education, and some things acquire a supreme symbolism in it that preserves the hollow and crumbling form;
The form becomes more sacred than the content.
Opening up to meaning is contingent upon grasping an enlightening moment that represents the axis of revival in a nation that has reached a stage of stagnation and stagnation, and its movement has become a revolving in the void.
It eats itself, its structures and its value system erode with it, it fades and dissolves in its own narcissism, as if it were swallowed by a wormhole.
Since the core usually hardens as a result of the pressure of the aggregate on it over time, the opening is only on the surface where the seam can generate pockets, some of which are pronounced immediately, and some of them are suspected to be trapped until their effect gradually recedes, and may lead to distortions in the structure of its culture, and some of them are closely related in the true sense. Because of its existence, thanks to contemplation and contemplation, it acquires originality to restore the movement of the nation back to its nature, and gives it a breath by which it renews its energies, and opens its visions and perceptions to broader horizons.
I will cite here, for representation only, what may describe some of those enlightening moments in the life of some nations, Arabs and others:
The Persians’ Moment of Enlightenment:
The book “Kalila and Dimna” described that moment, in which Khosrau Anusharwan alerted the need for renewal in the Kingdom of Persia. He asked his minister, Bozorgmehr, to strive to obtain it, so the mission of Barzuhi, the wise writer, knowledgeable in Persian and the tongue of the people of India, keen on wisdom, was to obtain that book, and with him what he could obtain from the books of the people of India and their sciences.
When Barzavi returned with loads of these books, they became a great stature in his country. These books were essential sources that Persian civilization opened to, and became part of its sciences and based on its movement in science, wisdom and urbanism.
The moment of enlightenment in Jonah: The legend of searching for "Europe", the missing daughter, and her brothers' journey in search of her, told us that the nation of Jonah was an illiterate nation that did not know how to read and write, and that its language was an oral language, and she could not know writing until Cadmus taught her ( Coming/old) the alphabet that he carried from Phoenicia (the country of the Phoenicians), and with the alphabet was engineering, wisdom and all other sciences, and Greece was able to accumulate what it had by writing down and developing it until the Greek civilization reached its zenith.
The moment of enlightenment in Europe:
The Arab Moment of Enlightenment: The
Arabs have had 3 moments of enlightenment throughout their existence;
The first of them was the Holy Qur’an, with its belief, value and moral systems, and what it established in their lives of a sense of power and broke it in them of belief in annihilation after death, and expelled them from the Arabian Peninsula to mingle with other nations.
Then was the second moment that began with the era of codification and the establishment of the House of Wisdom in Baghdad, and the start of the wide translation movement from other nations.. and the last was in the Renaissance era with the scientific missions sent by Muhammad Ali to Europe.
The first moment in thought, culture and conscience extended to today, but the movement that provoked it at one time took a weakness that turned into something like stagnation, and the effects of the second moment atrophied in the body of the state with its timid extension in some sciences such as astronomy and medicine, and the third moment was destroyed with the middle of Almost the twentieth century with the emergence of political Islam.
A follower of the scientific movement in modern China can look at the size of the educational missions it sent to Europe and the United States, and it can be seen in a similar movement that Japan had a period of backwardness when the five major families united in it with the end of the samurai rule and the start of the Meiji administration (1868-1912 AD, It is the era of enlightened rule), in agreement with the emperor, to send similar educational missions, to the extent that one of them came to Egypt to study the reasons for its advance over Japan one day. And with loads of books, they enabled him from the courtyard of the Great Mosque of Cordoba to dictate his lessons.
Each enlightening moment of those moments represented a departure from the duality of the ego-other, and the duality of form-content, and material-moral. part of the self.
Accordingly, new meanings were formed, added to the self-liked one, and interviewed it and clashed with the tar deeply, until each nation revealed a new meaning of existence, a new vision of the self and the other, and a new conception of the universe and life.
Cultures, ideas, concepts and perceptions overlapped, and the static environment was enriched with what brings the movement back to it.
New generations emerged in the light of that dialogue and overlap, and began to practice a rational and conscious criticism of the self and its concepts and perceptions, and the results of all of this were a new civilized structure, which does not sprout from its origin, but does not stop at its limits, assumptions and controls.