The Toughts of Hasan Hanafi and Abid Aljabiri | Philosophy 12

The Tought of Hasan Hanafi 

   Hasan Hanafi is a leading Islamic legal thinker and professor of philosophy in Egypt. He was born on February 13, 1935 in Cairo, near Salahuddin Fort, the Al-Azhar neighborhood.

   Hanafi's childhood faced with the realities of life under colonialism and the dominance of foreign influence. That fact aroused his patriotic attitude and nationalism, so it was not surprising that even though he was 13 years old he had registered to volunteer for war against Israel in 1948. He was rejected by Muslim Youth because he was considered to be too young. In addition, he is also considered not from the Muslim Youth group. He was disappointed and immediately realized that in Egypt at that time there had been a problem of unity and division.

   Hanafi had the opportunity to study at Sorborne University; France, in 1956 to 1966. It was in France that he was trained to think methodologically through lectures or readings or Orientalist works. He had studied with a Catholic reformer, Jean Gitton about the methodology of thinking, renewal, and the history of philosophy. He studied phenomenology from Paul Ricouer, analysis of consciousness from Husserl, and writing guidance on the renewal of Jurisprudence from Professor Masnion.

   Hanafi works can be classified into three periods, namely: The first period took place in the 60s; the second period in the 70s, and the third period from the 80s to the 90s. In the early 1960s Hanafi thought was influenced by dominant ideologies that developed in Egypt, namely populistic nationalistic-socialistic which was also formulated as the Pan Arabism ideology, and by an unfavorable national situation after Egypt's defeat in the war against Israel in 1967.

   His attempt to reconstruct Islamic thought was when he was in France he conducted research on, methods of interpretation as an effort to reform the fields of usul, and about phenomenology as a method for understanding religion in the context of contemporary reality. The research was at the same time an attempt to obtain a doctorate at the Sorbonne University, and he succeeded in writing a dissertation on the Interpretation Method which was awarded as the best scientific work in Egypt in 1961.

The Thought of Abid Aljabiri

   Muhammad Abid Al-Jabiri was born in Figuig, south of Morocco, on December 27, 1935. Young Jabiri was a political activist with a socialist ideology. He joined the Union Nationale des Forces Populaires (UNFP) party, which later became the Union Socialist des Forces Populaires (USFP). In 1975 he became a member of the USFP political bureau. Aside from being active in politics, Al-Jabiri also has a lot to do in the field of education. From 1964 he taught philosophy in high schools, and was actively involved in national education programs. And until now he is still a Professor of Islamic Philosophy and Thought at the Faculty of Literature at Muhammad V University, Rabab, since 1967.

   Al-Jabiri has produced dozens of papers, whether in the form of newspaper articles, magazines or in the form of books with various majors in science, politics, philosophy or social. His first book was Nahwu wal Turast then al-Khitab al-'Arabi al Mua'sir Dirasah Naqdiyyah Tahliyyah, both of these books were deliberately prepared by Al-Jabiri as an introduction to his book 'Naqd al-al' Aql al-'Arabi '(criticism of reason Arab).

   One of Abid al-Jabiri's thoughts is about modernity, he has a big ambition to build a new epistemology that is in line with the development of today's society. He was dissatisfied with the renewal efforts undertaken by Muslim intellectuals such as the Salaf movement, which according to them they glorified past achievements and tended to neglect the social relations of the people.

   Al-Jabiri also criticized the renewal model of liberal groups who blindly wanted to adopt western civilization to build the civilization of Muslims, and adopted western methodologies in assessing their turats, as if they forgot that when they adopted the methodology, they naturally also adopted worldview Orientalists. And instead al-Jabiri called for building Arabic epistemology with three epistemologies namely Epistemology; Burhani, Bayani, and 'Irfani.