Abstract In his trilogy of works that includes the Faṣl al-maqāl (Decisive Treatise), al-Kashf ʿan manāhij al-adilla fī ʿaqāʾid al-milla (The Uncovering of the Methods of Proof in the Beliefs of the Religion), and the Ḍamīma (Appendix, though it is likely an epistle dedicatory), Ibn Rushd employed two discrete that are both often rendered as ‘divine law’ in English: al-sharʿ (الشرع) and al-sharīʿa (الشريعة). While the general approach of translators and commentators on the trilogy has been to understand both sharʿ and sharīʿa as effectively synonymous (even as translation choices may vary according to context), this article advances the argument that Ibn Rushd may have intended two consistently distinct meanings by the two distinct terms: sharʿ usually referring to a textually-based (very often Qurʾānic) understanding of divine law, and sharīʿa referring to something broader and more contingent than the sharʿ, something that is developed with human intervention. If this is correct, Ibn Rushd’s statements on the relationship between divine law and philosophy should be understood as portraying two distinct understandings of divine law and consequently two distinct relationships to philosophy, one of which—that between sharīʿa and philosophy—is more contingent than the other. The result of this reading of the trilogy is a substantially more nuanced statement on the relationship between divine law, human reason and revelation itself than is often supposed to emerge from Ibn Rushd’s writings.
Karen Taliaferro (Thu,) studied this question.