The Meaning of the Concept in This Book
The book presents this triangle as an interpretive framework for understanding how wars and violence are legitimized through the intertwining of truth and the sacred. Violence here is not understood as a direct religious outcome alone, but as the result of complex relations between interpretation, institutions, and human wills.
Its Place in the Book’s Argument
The concept enters Arkoun’s attempt to connect reading the religious text with the history of its social and political use. From this position, the triangle becomes a tool for explaining how truth moves from the realm of inquiry and meaning to the realm of instrumentalization, and how the sacred acquires additional force when it is linked to power and violence.
How It Works Within the Atlas
This concept is tied to the path of historical reading of the religious text, because understanding it presupposes viewing the text in its context, rather than reading it apart from the conditions of its formation and circulation. It also meets the idea of the anthropological triangle as a general framework, since it helps place violence, the sacred, and truth within a single network of analysis instead of treating them as isolated elements.