Kritikan Syed Muhammad Naquib Al-Attas terhadap falsafah bahasa barat moden dan pascamoden

Abstract

The modernists and postmodernists in the West doubt the ability of language to describe reality and truth. This is due to the secularization and the separation of significant concepts such as God, man, universe, knowledge, reality, and truth. These problems are methodologically described using descriptive analysis towards that data which collected through literature study. The view of the West arranged to describe the process and conclusions towards the ability of language, and al-Attas’ view described with the focus on his ontological, epistemological, and axiological system. Then, semantic analysis used to understand the underlying problems of the modernist and postmodernist, while also used to understand and open all possible meanings from al-Attas’ statements regarding language in all of his works. The conclusions are that language as manifestations of human’s attribute of speech, it points to other than itself and bounds knowledge and reality; both knowledge and reality binds human will and choice in order to avoid arbitrariness in the understanding of language. Language as an endeavour to acquire and to deliver meaning is understood as a spiritual conversation between human souls regarding the meaning of an object of knowledge that is conditioned by the preparedness of man to reach for meaning as well as the arrival of meaning from God to the human soul.