This path brings together humanism as a condition for understanding, education as a site where critical sensitivity is formed or suspended, and reform as a transformation in the tools of inquiry rather than a mere general call. Here Mohammed Arkoun’s questions about the human being, religion, and knowledge appear within a direct relationship to education, language, and history.
In Battles for Humanism in Islamic Contexts this presence becomes immediately clear, as humanism is linked to reason, freedom, and history, and to reforming education and criticizing ignorance and fanaticism, then to the relationship between language and logic, and to the philosopher’s ethics and his relation to philosophy and religion. As for Islamic Thought: Critique and Ijtihad, it gives the path its broader foundation, where ijtihad is linked to reopening texts, history, and consciousness, and reform is connected to a critique of Islamic reason, to critical secularization, and to the position of the intellectual and the Arab cultural crisis. In Toward a Comparative History of the Monotheistic Religions humanism expands into a horizon of comparison and dialogue, where recognition of the other and critique of metaphysics become part of a broader understanding of religious reason.
Related books
- Battles for Humanism in Islamic Contexts
- Islamic Thought: Critique and Ijtihad
- Toward a Comparative History of the Monotheistic Religions