Formulation of the Claim
Arkoun rejects reducing human history to material facts or economic structures alone.
Explanation
Arkoun means that history cannot be understood as a chain of purely material causes, because human experience is broader than such a reduction. Meaning, symbols, representations, religion, and forms of consciousness all participate in shaping the historical process.
Within this horizon, materialist interpretation is no longer sufficient to grasp the complexity of the transformations societies have undergone. Arkoun therefore refuses to make economics or matter the sole key to reading history, without denying their effect within a broader network of factors.
Its Place in the Book’s Argument
This atom appears within Arkoun’s critique of readings that narrow history to a single dimension, whether materialist or reductionist. It is consistent with his broader project of restoring the human being to history, as a creature shaped by symbolic and cultural action as much as by material conditions.
Limits of the Claim
This atom does not mean denying the importance of economic or social factors, nor does it mean replacing one unilateral interpretation with another. What is intended is the rejection of reductionism, not the elimination of the material dimension from historical analysis.