Formulation of the Claim
Listening corresponds to immediate human knowledge.
Explanation
Arkoun places listening on a plane parallel to the knowledge that is attained directly in human experience, not as a mere sensory function, but as one term in a semantic correspondence within the construction of meaning.
This correspondence helps highlight a tension between what is obtained through reception and what is obtained through human presence and knowledge close to experience, without reducing the concepts to rigid binaries.
Its Place in the Book’s Argument
This atom appears within a network of correspondences that Arkoun uses to dismantle certain binary conceptions in religious and intellectual discourse, where terms such as reason, heart, and listening coexist within a single system of relations. Accordingly, it is not read in isolation, but as part of Arkoun’s method for analyzing the conceptual structure of knowledge and of the human being in texts.
Limits of the Claim
This atom should not be loaded with a final philosophical judgment about listening or about knowledge, nor should it be taken as a comprehensive definition of their place in all of Arkoun’s work; it is a local reference to a specific conceptual correspondence.