Formulation of the claim
Arkoun argues that the effects of philosophy and jurisprudence contributed to freezing the Qur’an’s mythic-symbolic structure.
Explanation
Arkoun understands this freezing as a shift of the Qur’an from the sphere of open symbolic signification to a stricter and more fixed reading. Within this framework, the text is no longer present as a living field for interpretation, but is instead enclosed within interpretive formulas that diminish its symbolic dynamism.
Arkoun places this transformation within a broader process of regulating religious meaning and constraining its possibilities. The problem, in his view, is not the existence of interpretation of the Qur’an, but rather that certain modes of interpretation made what is symbolic in it less visible and narrower in scope.
Its place in the book’s argument
This atom enters into Arkoun’s critique of the way Qur’anic reading came to be stabilized within specific interpretive and conceptual frameworks. It is connected to his broader argument that the Qur’anic text was subjected, through the history of reading, to processes of restriction and codification that weakened its symbolic power in comparison with the wider possibilities of meaning it makes available.
Limits of the claim
This atom should not be taken as a detailed judgment on philosophy or jurisprudence in every context, nor as an explanation by itself for all the reasons behind the decline of symbolism in traditional reading.