Blesseth him that gives and not him that takes: Butrus . Al-Bustānī and the mercy of debt

Abstract

This article discusses Nahda intellectual But . rus al-Bustān¯ı's public and pedagogic writings. It focuses on the nationalist pamphlets, the Naf¯ır Sūrriya, written in the wake of the first sectarian-civil war, and his translation of Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, both published in Beirut in 1860. I analyze Bustān¯ı's politico-theological and economic thought by looking at the nexus of debt, guilt, love, and mercy that he draws out in the Naf¯ır. The article argues that Bustān¯ı's nation is inaugurated into a “guilt-history” and eternally faced with the task of confronting the mercy of debt and the un-requitable debt of mercy. Nationality in this specific sociohistorical context became a form of artifice that in a postlapsarian age requires religion, labor, and exchange to survive as a social contract. The “civil war” exemplified a return to a state of nature that could only be amended by a return to the laws of nature and the seeking of refuge under the name of one God and one religion, diyāna. The social contract, articulated in these terms, could only be sealed through the recognition of natural laws as the foundation provided by God himself, while politics remained concealed under the folds of political theology. © Cambridge University Press 2017