This topic in the atlas refers to the area in which the boundaries of thought take shape when religious, political, and educational institutions intersect with normative language and inherited imaginaries. The unthought is not an isolated idea, but an effect of a historical structure that renders certain questions unasked from the outset, or else places them within a narrow horizon that does not allow them to expand.
In Arkoun’s books, this meaning appears from different angles. In Fundamentalist Thought and the Impossibility of Grounding, the unthought is linked to the closure of ijtihad, and to the authority of origin when it turns into a reference that prevents historical criticism. In Islamic Thought: Critique and Ijtihad, it is connected to the dogmatism of contemporary thought and the breakdown of the tools of reading. In Readings in the Qur’an, it appears through the layers of meaning concealed by orthodox reception, and through the need for discourse analysis rather than mere normative reading. It also emerges in Toward a Comparative History of Monotheistic Religions when it is linked to essentialism and sectarian memory, and to what closed boundaries prevent from historical comparison. It returns in Battles for Humanism in Islamic Contexts through the need to recover the human being, responsibility, and meaning outside closed forms.
Related concepts:
Related reading paths:
This title is used here to gather together what is connected to the unsaid and to the area in which the prevailing language of knowledge fails to accommodate a new question. It is an entry point into the material, not a conclusion.