The difference between aam & mutlaq *For students/enthusiasts of usul (and wannabe usuliyeen) whove, like me, had sleepless nights on this issue! Both words describe a type of linguistic expression [lafdh] in terms of what it indicates upon. The difference between the two is from a number of perspectives. The *key one* is that aam is used to describe an expression that encompasses [yastagriqu] all the entities [afrad] that are indicated by the linguistic meaning of the word, whereas mutlaq is used to describe an expression that does not indicate upon any entity; rather it indicates upon the (conceptual) essence [mahiyya]. For example, in Allahs saying, Indeed the human being [al-insan] is in loss, except... (al-Asr) the word al-insan is aam because the definite article of genus enters it. The implication is that every single individual human being is included in the judgment being made. That is, being in loss is predicated to each and every human being. The ayah then goes on the except those humans with certain attributes from this - takhsis. In contrast, in your saying to someone, Capture a human being... the word insan is mutlaq. Here, the command to capture is not associated with any particular human being, let alone all of them. Rather the predication is to the essence of humanness, if you will, and hence your capturing any particular individual human being will suffice in fulfilling the command. Also, the word here is mutlaq relative to sub categories in the genus, e.g. male, female, Muslim, non-Muslim, etc. If you had said, Capture a male human being... the word would be muqayyad. This also shows that there is relatively with the mutlaq (human is mutlaq in relation to the human genus, but muqqayd in relation to the animal genus), in contrast to the aam where there is no such consideration of relativity.
Posted on: Mon, 26 May 2014 08:57:29 +0000
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