Speech and Nature: al-Jāi, Kitāb al-Bayān wa-l-tabyīn, 2.175-207, Part 11

This is an attempt to study what is, in view of the later tradition of Mu‘tazilī epistemology, a curious feature of al-Jāiʹs anthropology, as expressed in a substantial chapter (consisting of 184 akhbār) in his Kitāb al-Bayān wa-l-tabyīn. Al-Jāiʹs speech-nature insight is ostensibly deterministic and apparently eliminates the role of choice in the human generation of speech. A possible explanation in terms of the radical elitism of Jahizian anthropology and morality is offered and the forensic implications of the insight are outlined. The study is in four parts. The first is a translation of the chapter, the second a (partial) commentary, and the third and fourth offer interpretations of the various ways in which the speech-nature insight may operate, within al-Jāiʹs own branch of Mu‘tazilism and the early Kalām tradition generally.