A Comparative Study of the Ontology of Meaning in the Views of Fayḍ Kāshānī and ‘Allāma Ṭabāṭabā’ī

The ontology of meaning seeks to find the truth and nature of the meanings of words; that is, it search the nature of meaning. Western intellectuals have dealt with the problem, providing a variety of theories in this regard, such as the token theory, the conceptual theory, the pictorial theory, and so on. Given the particular position of the issue in Quranic exegesis, the principles of jurisprudence, and certain theological problems, Muslim scholars need to provide an account for it. Thus, in this paper we deploy the descriptive-analytic method to reread and account for the views of two prominent Shiite scholars and exegetes, Fayḍ Kāshānī and ‘Allāma Ṭabāṭabā’ī. Having considered their theory of the “spirit of meaning”—which is an important theory in Quranic exegesis and on which both insist, with remarkable agreements between the two views—we argue that this cannot be endorsed as a “theory of meaning” although some people have tried to derive a theory of meaning from it, since it offers no answer to the question of what meaning is. On this account, although there are statements in their work which might imply their inclination toward a token or pictorial theory of meaning, they both endorse only the ideational (conceptual) theory of meaning.