14 Jun

The Theory of the Presumption of Continuity (Istiṣḥāb) in Classical Islamic Legal Theories

Opening hours / Beginning:

Tue:
6:15 pm

14 June 2022

Venue:

LMU's main building (room M014) Geschwister-Scholl-Platz 1 80539 München

In this lecture, Asad Ahmed (UC Berkeley / LMU München) surveys some elements of the architectonics of the theory of the presumption of continuity (Istiṣḥāb) in Islamic legal theory. It posits that, during its first period of sustained analysis, the conceptual framing of Istiṣḥāb reflected intuitions about proof theory.

In particular, legal theorists were concerned with establishing justifiable grounds for taking positions on the status of legal judgments that transcended the scope of established legal argumentation methods, and that, in the same vein, they wished to determine whether the probative force of certain principles of legal argumentation was temporally continuous. As such, theories of Istiṣḥāb were of a second order: they validated legal judgments in cases of argumentative vacuums, serving as principles of derivation out of the very absence of proof.

This event will bei held in English. For further information please visit the institute's website.

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