عنوان

More Than the Sum of Its Parts: Animal Categories and Accretive Logic in Volume One of al-Jahiz’s Kitab al-Hayawan

Number

230055

.Language of Text, Soundtrack etc

eng

Title Proper

More Than the Sum of Its Parts: Animal Categories and Accretive Logic in Volume One of al-Jahiz’s Kitab al-Hayawan

First Statement of Responsibility

/ by Jeanne Miller

Name of Publisher, Distributor, etc.

Department of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies, New York University, United States of America

Date of Publication, Distribution, etc.

, 2013

Specific Material Designation and Extent of Item

xii, 424p.

Text of Note

مدخل مرتبط: جاحظ، ابوعثمان عمرو بن بحر

Text of Note

مدخل مرتبط: كتاب الحيوان

Text of Note

Code E.Dissertation : 176

Text of Note

Bibliography.

Dissertation or thesis details and type of degree

Ph. D.

Text of Note

This dissertation is a study of animal categories and the concept of the intercategory in Volume One of the ninth-century polymath Al-Jahiz's Kitab al-Hayawan, or Book of Animal Life. This volume consists of an introductory debate between Al-Jāhiz and an unnamed Addressee, followed by a debate between unnamed Proponents of the Dog and the Rooster about the merits and defects of those two animals. Both of these debates focus on the question of whether the dog should be considered horrible because it is intercategory between predator (sabu ) and prey (bahima), the two fundamental animal categories.My dissertation argues that the disparate views of the intercategory represented in these debates reflect different understandings of material beings and their attributes. Al-Jāhiz advocates, and then demonstrates, a comparative approach to materiality that is inspired by physical theories espoused by speculative theology (kalam). This comparative approach denies esoteric essences, and draws on contemporary materialist turns in speculative theology (kalam) and law (fiqh).Chapter One describes how a mis-reading of Aristotle's History of Animals in Arabic translation resulted in Al-Jāhiz's unique understanding of animal species that I call "large kinds." Al-Jāhiz used this approach to animal species to naturalize cross-breeds, while preserving their status as intercategory animals. Chapter Two provides a close reading of Al-Jāhiz's classification of animals, concluding that the passage is crafted as a critique of the monovalent technical terminology and hierarchical classifications that were key to Aristotelian logic. Al-Jāhiz's taxonomy instead seeks grounds for categories already implicit in natural language, but the process reveals that these categories while intuitively clear cannot be unequivocally delineated. Chapter Three examines the introductory debate between Al-Jāhiz and the unnamed Addressee, concluding that Al-Jāhiz's approach to material beings is heavily informed by doctrines about how atoms combine to form a totality. Chapter Four shows that the Dog-Rooster Debate employs a material method, according to which attributes of the dog are treated as separable, and are assessed through comparison to other animals.Al-Jāhiz here presents a consistent epistemology that relies on a commitment to the usages of natural language, combined with rigorous comparative analysis.

Entry Element

جانورشناسی

Chronological Subdivision

-- ‏‫متون قدیمی تا قرن ۱۴.‬

Zoology -- Early works to 20th century

ج‍اح‍ظ، ع‍م‍رو‌ب‍ن‌ ب‍ح‍ر، ‏‫۱۵۰ - ‏۲۵۵ ق . الحیوان -- نقد و تفسیر

ارسطو ۳۸۴-۳۲۲ق.م. الحیوان -- نقد و تفسیر

Entry Element

Miller, Jeanne