Focused Definition
Critique of reason in Arkoun’s thought is an examination of the mechanisms of thinking that produce certainty, and of the sources from which thought derives its legitimacy, as well as of the limits drawn by culture and knowledge within tradition. It does not target reason as a value; rather, it targets the modes of its use when they turn into closed assumptions or into dogmatism that prevents questioning.
Its Place in the Project
This concept appears as one of the foundational axes in Arkoun’s project, especially in the book Islamic Thought: Critique and Ijtihad, where ijtihad is linked to renewing the very tools of understanding. Critique of reason also stands alongside concepts such as historicity, discourse analysis, critique of orthodoxy, and applied Islamology, because it works to deconstruct the conditions that make religious knowledge closed or confined to a single reading. In the context of Fundamentalist Thought and the Impossibility of Rootedness, critique of reason is connected to interrogating fundamentalism and the transformation of religion into an epistemic and historical authority.
Example or Evidence
Critique of reason is embodied when Arkoun links the suspension of ijtihad to the closure of patterns of thinking that make the original source the final reference. It also appears in his call to question the tools themselves: how does tradition produce its certainty, who grants schoolbook reading the power of exclusion, and how can space be opened for questioning instead of submission?
See also: Critique of Reason (concept page)