Ali Zaidi discloses a largely unnoticed dialogue between Muslim and Western social thought on the search for meaning and transcendence in the human sciences. This disclosure is accomplished by a comparative reading of Muslim debates on secular knowledge on the one hand and of Western debates on the putative death of metaphysics in the human sciences on the other hand. The analysis is grounded in dialogical hermeneutics; that is, a hermeneutic approach to texts and cultural traditions that draws upon the work of Hans-Georg Gadamer and upon the insights of inter-religious dialogue.

Autorentext

Ali Zaidi is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Global Studies at Wilfrid Laurier University inWaterloo, Ontario, Canada.

Inhalt
Part I: Social Theory and Dialogical Understanding * Critique and Dialogical Understanding * Part II: Muslim Debates on Social Knowledge * Muslim Reconstructions of Knowledge: the Case of Nasr and al-Faruqi * The Putative Modernity of Ibn Khaldun * Part III: Western Debates on Social Knowledge * Dilthey and the Problem of Immanence * Weber: from Nihilism to an Organic Metaphysics