Intended Meaning
The merciful mind is objective knowledge that turns toward truth, law, and necessity; that is, it perceives reality through its laws, not through illusion and it is contrasted with the satanic mind, which produces an unscientific interpretation
The Atom’s Structure in the Atlas
- Type of argument: definitional
- Movement of the argument: it makes the merciful mind an objective knowledge that perceives reality and its laws.
- Central terms: the merciful mind, truth, law, necessity.
- Degree of centrality: pivotal.
It establishes an epistemic criterion linking mind to objectivity and law, thus separating scientific understanding from delusion, and laying the groundwork for a conceptual opposition with the satanic mind.
Links that help with reading
- Muhammad Shahrur, The Book and the Qur’an
- the contemporary reading methodology
- Human knowledge is relative and progresses from sense perception to mathematics
Grounds
- Supporting text: “The merciful mind: objective knowledge that turns toward truth, law, and necessity.”
Place of the Grounding in the Book
- Book: The Book and the Qur’an.
- Location: in the middle section of the book within the discussion of the perceiving mind
- Type of grounding: near evidence.
- Marker that helps verification: the objective material aspect
- Reading note: the location links the merciful mind to the true objective material aspect, which is as close as possible to the atom mentioned.
Degree of Documentation
- Level: directly documented
- Meaning of the level: the atom rests on an explicit witness close to the wording 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 on which Shahrur relies in building the idea.
Related to
Editorial Note
The phrase carries a clear normative charge.