Abstract

This paper highlights the contributions of three major Islamicists, Louis Massignon, Henry Corbin, and Frithjof Schuon, to the understanding of the Qur’ân. Their works point to the epistemologic primacy of the contemplative and esoteric dimensions of the Book. Its linguistic texture and modalities are here understood as expressing the very limits of language, the proportional reciprocity between the actualization of inner meaning and spiritual fruition, and its ultimate metaphysical substance. These principles and their spiritual consequences may constitute the best antidote to contemporary fundamentalist and modernist reductionism in scriptural hermeneutics.