The Meaning of the Concept in This Book
Religious reason is the domain of thinking that Arkoun does not separate from its historical and social conditions, nor reduce to a fixed or infallible essence. It is linked to the imagination, memory, and the imaginary, and is understood as a historical formation in need of critique and renewal.
Its Place in the Book’s Argument
The concept lies at the heart of the argument that calls for reopening ijtihad and critiquing reason, and for moving from ijtihad as an inherited practice to modern critique as a tool for understanding religious discourse. Religious reason here is therefore tied to the need to liberate tradition from closed sacralization, and to understand Islamic thought within its history rather than outside time.
The concept also falls within Arkoun’s understanding of the relationship between religion and modernity: modernity is not confronted by freezing older reading tools, but by renewing religious thought itself, and linking this renewal to the human sciences and to a double methodological critique.
How It Works Within the Atlas
Here, religious reason functions as a bridge between several axes in the atlas: history, critique of reason, the human sciences, the renewal of ijtihad, and a historical-symbolic reading of the Qur’an. Through it, it becomes clear that religious discourse is not understood as a completed given, but as a cognitive construction formed within language, memory, and interpretation.
The concept is also used to clarify the difference between a religious reason governed by sacralization and tension, and a modern project that seeks to liberate this reason from deification and closed reading, without separating religion from the possibility of its critical understanding.
Nearby Pages
- Reopening ijtihad and critiquing reason
- The connection of religious reason to the human sciences
- The coupling of reason with imagination and memory
- Religious reason is understood historically, not as an infallible essence
- Modern ijtihad needs a double methodological critique
- Liberating religious reason requires recognizing the historicity of tradition and overcoming closed sacralization