Introduction
The concepts of Mohammed Arkoun appear more in their relations than in their isolated definitions. For Arkoun, a concept is a position within a reading that asks about the text, history, the institution, and reception. A map of relations therefore helps us understand the path along which meaning moves: how one concept opens a question, how another limits its field, and where tension arises between two usages or two horizons.
Arkoun’s concepts operate through reciprocal links. Historicity asks about the formation of meaning in time, discourse analysis follows the forms of this formation in language and the institution, power and knowledge explains how some readings become fixed while others are excluded, and orthodoxy shows the moment when a dominant reading turns into a binding norm. As for the unthought, it names what remains outside the field of inquiry, while humanism, modernity, and secularization open a horizon for reconsidering the relation between human beings, knowledge, and power. From the interplay of these concepts, Arkoun’s project takes shape.
Map of Relations
A. Foundational Relations
These are the relations in which one concept prepares the conditions for the emergence of another, or supplies it with its basic tool.
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Historicity → discourse analysis
Arkoun’s reading of text and discourse begins with recognizing their formation within time. Historicity turns discourse into a construction that moves between language, context, and reception, rather than a truth existing outside its conditions. -
Critique of reason → applied Islamology
Arkoun’s applied Islamology begins with questioning the conditions under which religious knowledge is produced, and with moving beyond the schoolbook description that merely repeats inherited tradition as it has settled into place. Critique of reason therefore provides its methodological foundation: examining the tools with which we read before fixing the results. -
Power and knowledge → orthodoxy
Orthodoxy is read by Arkoun through the link between the production of knowledge and the mechanisms of power. At this point, one reading becomes a norm and acquires the ability to arrange legitimacy and determine what is accepted and what is excluded.
B. Relations of Tension
These are relations in which the two concepts pull against each other rather than fully harmonize; one reveals the limits of the other or demands that it be redefined.
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Tradition ↔ modernity
Tradition appears in Arkoun as a trajectory of texts, commentaries, institutions, and disputes, while modernity appears as a critical question about the conditions of knowledge, freedom, and the human being. There is tension between them because tradition cannot be reduced to the past, and modernity for him does not function as a ready-made model to be transferred as it is. -
Orthodoxy ↔ humanism
Orthodoxy tends to fix meaning and regulate its boundaries, whereas humanism shifts the center of reflection to the human being as a historical creature who understands and interprets. The relation between them therefore reveals a tension between a norm that seeks to close meaning and a reading that expands the human place within history and knowledge. -
Secularization ↔ orthodoxy
Secularization opens the question of how the religious, the political, and the cognitive relate to one another, whereas orthodoxy represents a form of monopolizing meaning and authority. Hence the tension between them emerges in the field of legitimacy: who has the right to interpret, and who determines the limits of acceptable speech?
C. Complementary Relations
These are relations in which the two concepts work together within a single project, each completing the function of the other.
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Power and knowledge + the unthought
The concept of power and knowledge explains how exclusion is produced within the institution, language, and legitimacy, while the unthought identifies what has left the field of discourse or remained at the margins of inquiry. The first clarifies the mechanism; the second makes its effect visible. -
The imaginary + discourse analysis
The imaginary shows how images, symbols, and collective memory are formed, while discourse analysis tracks the formation of meaning in language and context. Together, they allow religion to be read as a living experience with its own symbols, language, and institutions. -
Historicity + tradition
Historicity returns tradition to the process of its formation, recording, and interpretation. In this way, it helps read tradition as a complex historical field containing texts, commentaries, choices, and conflicts, rather than as a rigid stock of settled meanings.
D. Transitional Relations
These are relations in which one concept leads to another, or opens the way for moving from one question to a broader one.
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Critique of reason → secularization
When critique of reason examines closed forms of thought, it opens the question of the relation between the religious, the political, and the cognitive. From here it moves closer to the horizon of secularization as a reorganization of the public sphere and of the boundaries of authority and legitimacy. -
Orthodoxy → the unthought
Fixing meaning within a dominant reading leads to the blocking of certain questions. At this point, the unthought appears as what has not entered the field of discourse, or what has been excluded from it by the institution, language, and power. -
Humanism → critique of reason
Humanism places the human being, interpretation, and history at the center of reading. From this position, it pushes toward questioning the reason that turned text or institution into a closed authority, or made obedience and repetition a substitute for understanding.
E. Expansive Relations
These are relations in which the first concept expands and becomes better able to encompass the phenomenon.
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Humanism expands applied Islamology
Humanism shifts applied Islamology from a tool for reading texts to a broader horizon that asks about the human being as a historical and cognitive agent within tradition. -
Historicity expands discourse analysis
Historicity makes discourse analysis broader than direct linguistic description; it links language to the time of its formation, to the institutions that gave it authority, and to the trajectories of reception that fixed or altered its meaning. -
Secularization expands the question of critique of reason
Secularization extends the question of critique from the level of modes of thinking to the level of organizing the relation between power, knowledge, religion, and the civic sphere. In this way, critique of reason becomes connected to the institution, not only to the idea.
The Central Concept
The concept most connected to the others in this network is historicity, with critique of reason and the unthought close to it in degree of centrality.
Historicity appears pivotal because it functions in more than one place: it helps us understand tradition, opens an entry into discourse analysis, and aids in distinguishing text from interpretation, revelation from recording, and living experience from its later forms. It also prevents concepts from being fixed in a final form and returns them to the process of formation and change. In this sense, historicity stands at the center of the whole network; it explains the past and makes the reading of concepts themselves possible within time.
Critique of reason comes close to this position because it opens the questions that allow historicity to operate; it examines the conditions that make thought trust its own self-evidences, and asks how certain readings became normative. As for the unthought, it reveals the concealment and exclusion produced by the absence of historical awareness. Historicity remains the concept that connects these levels: it gives critique its practical dimension and gives the uncovering of what is hidden its historical meaning.
How to Use This Map
This map of relations helps the reader move within Arkoun’s atlas from one concept to another without remaining with an isolated definition. Instead of reading concepts as a simple list placed side by side, the reader can trace paths of understanding: a concept opens another, confronts it, complements it, or expands its field.
For example, if the reader begins with humanism, they find it as a shift in the center of attention toward the historical human being who understands and interprets, rather than as a general ethical slogan. From there, one moves to critique of reason, because this shift requires questioning the forms that trap the human being within obedience and repetition. Then critique of reason leads to historicity, because such questioning requires understanding how intellectual and institutional forms were shaped through time, and how they became fixed self-evidences. In this way, the path humanism → critique of reason → historicity becomes a way of reading the working of Arkoun’s project as a whole.
This map presents relations that help the reader understand definitions within their context. It therefore reads Arkoun’s atlas as a dynamic conceptual network, not as a closed glossary.