The Meaning of the Concept in This Book
Humanism appears here as the idea that links Arab-Islamic enlightenment to an open rational sensibility that brings together human dignity and knowledge. It is not a general moral description, but an intellectual orientation that emerges sometimes within the religious sphere and at other times within a secular horizon, without severing its connection to the demand for understanding and emancipation.
Its Place in the Book’s Argument
The book uses this concept to show that openness to the human being and to knowledge was part of an Arab-Islamic Enlightenment moment, and that this moment took on a clearly humanistic and rational character. From here, the concept is linked to a critique of closure, and to the idea that renewal does not rest on discourse alone, but on rebuilding the tools of reading and knowledge.
How It Works within the Atlas
The concept is tied to a cluster of issues that recur in Arkoun’s books: the comparative history of texts, the priority of historical knowledge and scientific method, the need for the tools of the modern sciences, and confronting education that reproduces ignorance. It also illuminates one aspect of the relationship between globalization and fundamentalisms, since humanism here stands on the side of broadening the horizon, not of closure.
Nearby Pages
- Critical comparative history of the monotheistic religions frees the mind from closure and opens a human horizon
- Arab-Islamic Enlightenment was associated with humanism
- Arab-Islamic Enlightenment was humanistic and rational and preceded the European one
- Arab humanism is an open rational culture
- Humanism has two forms
- The human sciences are a tool against extremism
- Intellectual modernity requires modern scientific tools