Formulation of the Claim
Reason does not operate independently of imagination, memory, and the social imaginary.
Explanation
In Arkoun’s thought, reason is not understood as a faculty separate from the other dimensions of human experience, but rather as an activity that intersects with imagination, memory, and the images and representations produced by the social imaginary. The formulation of the claim therefore points to a constant coupling between thinking and the acts of recalling, representing, and imagining that accompany it.
This coupling means that meaning is not formed within reason alone, but within a network of presence and absence and symbolic accumulation. Memory preserves, imagination reshapes, and the social imaginary supplies thought with its shared images, while reason remains part of this interaction rather than standing outside it.
Its Place in the Book’s Argument
This claim atom falls within Arkoun’s broader effort to dismantle the reductive image of reason and to reconnect thought to its human, social, and cultural context. It supports his related theses that reject confining knowledge to a single dimension and link the formation of ideas to what collective memory stores and to the possibilities opened by imagination.
Limits of the Claim
This claim should not be understood as diminishing the value of reason or equating it with illusion; rather, it describes its relation to structures of representation, memory, and imagination. Nor does it go so far as to say that the imaginary fully determines thought; it points instead to their interweaving.