Concise Definition
Historicity, for Arkoun, is the view of texts, beliefs, and institutions as formed within time, rather than as fixed givens outside history. It does not reduce religion to a social circumstance; rather, it opens a path toward understanding how meaning is constituted and how its significations shift as it moves between different moments, communities, and languages.
Its Place in the Project
Historicity is a condition that accompanies the reading of the Qur’an, the heritage, jurisprudence, and the Islamic experience in general. It makes it possible to distinguish between the text and the interpretations that have accumulated around it, between revelation and its codification, and between lived experience and institutional formulation. It is therefore directly linked to tradition, the imaginary, and discourse analysis, and it also intersects with the critique of orthodoxy and the uncovering of the unthought.
Example or Evidence
The concept takes shape when Arkoun refuses to equate a later interpretation with the beginning, or the codified corpus with the founding moment. Through it, one can understand how orthodoxy was formed, how the field acceptable to thought and interpretation was defined, and how other paths in intellectual history were concealed.