Document Type : Research
Author
PhD graduate in Arabic Language and Literature from Allameh Tabataba’i University, Tehran.
Abstract
The relationship among the author, text, and reader is one of the most challenging debates in literary criticism theories and the modern philosophy of language. Despite literary critiques of Roland Barthes’ theory of the “Death of the Author,” its paradigmatic analysis based on the profound ontological foundations of Islamic philosophy has remained neglected. Therefore, the purpose of this research is to examine Roland Barthes’ theory of the death of the author through the ontological principles of the Sadraean school to achieve an alternative model for understanding the text, which preserves the authenticity of the speech while avoiding confinement to a rigid meaning. The methodology of the present study is based on a descriptive-analytical method and a comparative-philosophical approach to analyze library data. The findings indicate that while Barthes, by reducing the author to a mere “scriptor,” diminishes the text to a horizontal network of conventional codes, Transcendent Philosophy (Hikmat al-Muta’aliyah)—based on the two principles of the “unity of the effect and the agent” and “emanative subsistence” (Qiyam-i Suduri)—considers the text as an existential manifestation and a psychic act of the author. Consequently, through the continuous ontological presence of the author, the text does not lead to semantic dictatorship; rather, by applying the principle of the “spirits of meanings” (Arwah al-Ma’ani), it paves the way for a transition from the deconstructive hermeneutics of “absence” to a “hermeneutics of presence.” It elevates reading from a mere language game to an epistemological journey for discovering the truth of the speaker.
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