The Idea
This claim understands the closed official text not as a fixed given from the outset, but as something that took shape through an ideological process that accumulated limits and criteria for what is accepted and what is rejected. Over time, this text came to appear final and closed, even though its closure itself is the result of a history of selection and fixation. The idea here is that the sanctity of the final form does not erase the history of its making.
Concise Formulation
The closed official text: resulted: from the stage of dogmatic formation
Its Place in the Book’s Argument
This claim is placed within the book’s argument as an explanation of how the structure on which fundamentalist thought operates came into being. The book does not treat the closed text as a natural fact, but as the product of a historical and doctrinal development. This aligns with its aim of revealing what later became established as self-evident, while in origin it is the outcome of gradual construction and delimitation.
Why It Matters
The importance of this claim is that it opens the way to understanding fundamentalism as a historical construction rather than a fixed fate. For Arkoun, this shift in perspective changes the entire mode of critique, because what has been formulated through history can also be re-examined historically. Hence its effect in freeing reading from the illusion of final completeness.
Brief Evidence
This evidence passage understands that the closed official text did not appear as a fixed given from the outset, but took shape through an ideological process that accumulated limits and criteria for what is accepted and what is rejected. Over time it came to seem final and closed, even though its closure itself is the result of a history of selection and fixation. The sanctity of the final form does not erase the history of its making.
Reading Questions
- How does a text move from open material to a closed official text?
- What does a historical perspective reveal in what seems fixed and final?
Documentation Level
Medium: the claim is composed from more than one passage within the book’s material.