Hamzah Fansuri's Concept of Mahabbah in Overcoming Modern Aesthetic Relativism
Abstract
The crisis of meaning and fragmentation of values in the realm of art and digital media signifies the emergence of a fundamental problem of aesthetic relativism in Western tradition. In Western aesthetic thought, particularly that of Kant and Hume, beauty is viewed as relative because it relies on universal reason and subjective emotions, thus giving rise to uncertainty about meaningful aesthetic standards. The gap in this research is the lack of studies on Hamzah Fansuri's concept of mahabbah—transcendent love in Nusantara Sufism—as an alternative that holistically unifies the aesthetic, moral, and spiritual dimensions. This study uses a philosophical qualitative approach to explore Fansuri's Sufi thought and comparative analysis of Kant-Hume's aesthetic theory and texts such as Syarab al-'Asyiqin and Syair Perahu. The findings show that mahabbah offers a vertical assessment of beauty, harmonizing the aspects of art form, the creator's morality, and the meaning of divinity. The concepts of ittihād al-jamāl wa al-akhlāq (the unity of beauty and morality) and the practice of murāqabah (awareness of the divine presence) form the ethical foundation that gives birth to aesthetic works that are also morally and spiritually meaningful. His theoretical contribution enriches the global aesthetic discourse with an Islamic perspective that integrates spiritual and ethical values, and offers a reference basis for the development of meaningful and responsible media and communication culture.
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