This is a glossary entry in the Shahrur glossary, whose main source is The Mother of the Book and Its Elaboration. It distinguishes what the source defines about the scope of interpretation from adjacent critical claims concerning the causes of disagreement.
The scope of interpretation
The atom “Interpretation is specific to the ambiguous” says that, in this usage, interpretation is not a general name for every exegesis, but an operation concerning the ambiguous that returns the text to the objective truth or the rational law it expresses. The concept page presents a connection between this operation and the transition of a report into epistemic information.
This defines a methodological scope for the term, but it does not by itself explain every practical step of interpretation or provide a comprehensive definition of every use of the word. Nor may interpretation be assumed to equal exegesis or ijtihad; these are adjacent terms that require evidence distinguishing them.
Interpretation and disagreement
The atom “Interpretation is the cause of disagreement” is not a new definition of interpretation. It is a critical claim that says disagreement over interpretation is among the causes of differing understandings of the univocal and the ambiguous; it does not say that interpretation is the sole cause of every disagreement, nor does it distinguish its types. The atlas therefore presents it as an adjacent argumentative relation, not as a lexical limit of the term.
What can be inferred and what remains open
The reader can understand from the material that the type of text—univocal or ambiguous—is part of the methodological question before judging how it is understood. But identifying the “objective truth” or the “rational law” in each example, and explaining how a report becomes information, requires reading the detailed passages in the book and is not established by titles alone.
Places for further reading and verification
- The concept page for interpretation in The Mother of the Book and Its Elaboration
- The scope of interpretation and its relation to the ambiguous
- The critical claim about disagreement and its limits
- An adjacent formulation of the scope of interpretation
- The distinction between the univocal and the ambiguous
These are links for further reading and verification. Atom titles summarize their subject and are not treated as quotations, and the critical claim about disagreement is not turned into a comprehensive definition.