This is a lexicon entry that brings together the technical meaning of this term in Shahrur across his various books, and connects its multiple uses.
This entry belongs to Shahrur’s lexicon. For thematic reading, one may refer to Shahrur’s major themes and shared concepts.
The meaning in Shahrur
Existence is the aspect of stability in being; that is, the thing in its state of subsistence and its material boundaries, not in its transformation or its end. Here it is used fundamentally to understand religion and legislation as one of the poles of a triad that is accompanied by process and becoming, and thus cannot be understood apart from them.
Distinctions
- It differs from process; process denotes movement and transformation, whereas existence denotes stability and subsistence
- It differs from becoming; becoming is the final outcome, whereas existence is the present state of subsisting being.
- It does not mean a historically conditioned understanding, because that pertains to the historicity of understanding, not to the stability of existence.
- It is not reduced to the stability of the text alone, but is understood within the relation between existence, process, and becoming.
Places in his books
- Toward New Foundations for Islamic Jurisprudence: In this source, existence is the aspect of stability in the understanding of being; that is, the thing as it is in its material domain. Muhammad Shahrur makes it a methodological principle for understanding religion and legislation, as the counterpart that cannot be understood in isolation from process and becoming
What is adjacent to it and what differs from it
- process
- the foundations of new jurisprudence are based on distinguishing between the stability of the text and the historicity of understanding
- historical Islam is a historically conditioned understanding
- becoming is the final outcome
- the world needs becoming
- existence is subsisting being
- being can be understood only through the inseparability of existence, process, and becoming
- the triad of existence, process, and becoming
- understanding religion and legislation is based on the triad of existence, process, and becoming