Philosophical Perspectives on Modern Qur'anic Exegesis: Key Paradigms and Concepts.

• Author: Kersten, Carool
• Position: Book review

Philosophical Perspectives on Modern Qur'anic Exegesis: Key Paradigms and Concepts. By MASSIMO CAMPANINI. Themes in Qur'anic Studies Series. Sheffield and Bristol: EQUINOX, 2016. Pp. x + 154. $29.95, [pounds sterling]19.99 (paper)

The book under review is a condensation of the two enduring research interests--Quranic Studies and philosophy in the Muslim world--of the Italian scholar of Islam Massimo Campanini, with the purpose of presenting the Quran as a book of philosophy. While a relatively slim volume, the book's coverage ranges wide, with occasional close readings of select samples from the Quran as actual exercises in philosophically informed exegesis and discourse analysis. To manage this ambitious venture, the book has been organized into two parts, geared toward explicating his understanding of philosophical engagement with scripture as a phenomenological hermeneutics.

Entitled "The Problems of Modern Hermeneutics of the Qur'an," part one (made up of eleven chapters) offers a diachronic and synchronic excursion into the tradition of Quran commentary. After positioning hermeneutics as interpretation in a Nietzschean sense, Campanini adds the caveat that the resulting "Perspectivism" is one of "pluralism, not relativism" (p. 6). The underlying ambition of the proposed combination of analytical and "continental" philosophies revolving around language is to open up "a whole world of chances and potentialities" (p. 8). Echoing the influence of Gianni Vattimo's "weak thought" and the latter's reinterpretation of incarnation in a way that radically deviates from conventional Christology, Campanini introduces the notion of the Quran as "event." With a nod to Kenneth Cragg and Wilfred Cantwell Smith, this notion is used as a propadeutics to his phenomenological hermeneutics, which has the purpose of contrasting the historical-philological investigations of Christoph Luxenberg, Andrew Rippin, and John Wansbrough with an appreciation for Islamic soteriology. To that end, Campanini also brings in the Greek notion of &Af|0[pounds sterling]ict, or "disclosure of truth." To provide a philosophical underpinning for intra-Quranic allusions to "event," such as kashfandfurqan, Campanini introduces a set of terms derived from Heidegger's philosophical system, such as Ereignis and Lichtung.

Campanini's interest in salvation is also reflected in his engagement with Islamic scriptural exegesis and symbolic interpretation (chaps, three and four), literary...