Abstract
The poetic legacy of Jalal-ud-din Rumi, as reflected in his magnum opus Mathnavi, is a literary monument to Sūfism‘s enduring power which allows it to transcend cultural and historical boundaries. Engaging with the past and anticipating future challenges, Rūmi enters into conversation with all possible strands of thought through poetic and metaphoric language. His coverage of the relationship between language and meaning predates, and in some instances, corresponds with all linguistic themes that would formthe core of European philosophy in twentieth century, subsequently labeled as the linguistic turn‖ in Social Sciences. Saussere‘s relational theory of language, Wittgenstein‘s ‗language games,‘ Gadamerian hermeneutics, French postmodernism, all these themes have been raised in one way or another within the overall scope of Mathnavi. Rūmi‘s ruminations on language are scattered throughout and interspersed with terse but deep poetic expressions within the manifold stories of Mathnavi. In the current paper, I intend to critically compare Rūmi and major representatives of European linguistic philosophy and highlight the commonalities and differences between them. This comparison is undertaken not to formulate Rūmi‘s notion of language per se in relation to European philosophy of language. References to language in Rūmi‘s poetry cannot be understood separately from his overall worldview defined by sūfism‘s main idea of the unity of being (vaḥ dat al-vujūd). Language is viewed through this idea as a powerful tool for tracing transcendental presence in a phenomenal world of ‗color and scent‘. The paper demonstrates Rumi‘s employment of the limitless capacity of language to ‗track‘ invisible traces of transcendental unity of being including the unity of religions.
Highlights
―The limits of my language means the limits of my world.‖1 This phrase of Wittgenstein is the most succinct yet all-embracing description of the essence of language
Ever since the publication of Saussure‘s ―General Course of Linguistics‖ in 1915, twentieth century European philosophy has been defined by extensive preoccupation with language and linguistics to the extent that the overarching reach of language currently permeates the whole fabric of social sciences
It is with this image of language in mind that Gamader resoundingly asserts that ―being that can be understood is language.‖2 poststructuralist readings of society and ideology that take their inspiration from Saussure‘s relational theory of language have resulted in steering social and political sciences into a blind alley of relativism, where social order is deprived of any ultimate foundation and remains caught in a permanent cycle of discursive constructions and reconstructions
Summary
―The limits of my language means the limits of my world.‖1 This phrase of Wittgenstein is the most succinct yet all-embracing description of the essence of language. Hermeneutics to pragmatism, language has come to embody a new role as a boundary-setting criterion of possible enquiry and understanding which extends as far as language can cast its shadow. It is with this image of language in mind that Gamader resoundingly asserts that ―being that can be understood is language.‖2 poststructuralist readings of society and ideology that take their inspiration from Saussure‘s relational theory of language have resulted in steering social and political sciences into a blind alley of relativism, where social order is deprived of any ultimate foundation and remains caught in a permanent cycle of discursive constructions and reconstructions. With a particular emphasis on Rūmi‘s references to the nature of language, the article demonstrates how he employs suggestive stories of Mathnavi to disclose Islamic sūfism‘s main idea of the unity-of-being
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