This is a lexical entry that gathers the technical meaning of this term in Shahrur across his various books, and links its multiple usages.
This entry belongs to Shahrur’s glossary. For reading by theme, one may refer to Shahrur’s major themes and shared concepts.
Meaning in Shahrur
Destruction is the historical fate that befalls villages or closed systems when one-dimensionality and injustice become entrenched in them, so that their moral or civilizational existence is cut off in a final, irreversible manner. It does not mean biological death, but rather the disappearance of historical efficacy and the collapse of a structure that opposes plurality and freedom.
Distinctions
- It differs from death, because it does not describe the end of bodily life but the end of the civilizational or social entity
- It differs from injustice, tyranny, and one-dimensionality, because these are causes or near forms of it, whereas destruction is their ultimate outcome.
Occurrences in his books
- The State and Society: Here destruction means the irreversible moral or civilizational severance, not biological death. Shahrur presents it as a historical law that befalls villages and one-dimensional systems when an unjust or closed structure becomes rampant within them
What it adjoins and what it differs from
- One-dimensionality
- Adam and the villages explain the transition from humanity to social fate
- One-dimensionality leads to tyranny and destruction
- One-dimensionality leads to destruction
- One-dimensionality produces injustice, tyranny, and destruction
- One-dimensionality and tyranny lead to destruction
- History and society judge one-dimensionality by injustice and destruction
- Freedom and moral awareness explain human action and responsibility for injustice
- The state and civil society are the horizon of history because plurality and freedom defeat one-dimensionality
- Injustice is a conscious act that leads to destruction
- One-dimensional villages are doomed to destruction
- Destruction differs from death