What is meant
The text distinguishes between instincts and desires, making instincts unconscious and physiological, while desires are a conscious act that human beings acquire through history and knowledge. Therefore, desire is not merely a natural drive, but something formed in consciousness and human experience.
The atom’s structure in the atlas
- Type of argument: Distinguishing
- Movement of the argument: It separates innate instincts from desires acquired epistemically and historically.
- Key terms: instincts, desires, knowledge, history.
- Degree of centrality: Central.
It draws a clear line between an unconscious drive and another that takes shape in consciousness and experience. In this way, desire becomes, for him, a learned human phenomenon rather than a merely natural inclination.
Links that help with reading
- Muhammad Shahrur the Book and the Qur’an
- History, Evolution, and Sunnas
- History
- Lewdness and desires are interpreted within the distinction between the self and history
Basis
- Supporting text: “He distinguishes between instincts and desires: instincts are unconscious and physiological, whereas desires are conscious and acquired historically and epistemically.”
Degree of documentation
- Level: Directly documented
- Meaning of the level: The atom is based on an explicit witness close to the formulation of the claim.
- Limits of the reading: The wording above is an analytical summary and should not be treated as a verbatim quotation unless the witness is quoted verbatim.
Its function in the book
Its function here is definitional; it sets a meaning or conceptual distinction that Shahrur relies on in constructing the idea.
Related to
Editorial note
The atom is built on an internal conceptual distinction in the text.