Formulation of the claim
Arkoun presents al-Tawḥīdī as a figure who combines a Sufi inclination with an attachment to pleasure, without being reduced to either one.
Explanation
In this perspective, al-Tawḥīdī does not appear as the author of a purely spiritual experience, nor as someone cut off from the sense of everyday life. Rather, in him the desire for meaning coexists with the inclination toward enjoyment, forming a complex human profile that does not conform to simplified images that confine him either to asceticism or to luxury.
This reading makes it possible to see the inner tension in his personality from within the tradition itself, not from outside it. Here, Sufism does not cancel the body and desire, just as pleasure does not negate contemplation and the pull toward the spiritual dimension.
Its place in the book’s argument
This atom belongs to Arkoun’s effort to dismantle ready-made images that assign traditional figures to a single mold. Al-Tawḥīdī thus becomes an example of how Arab-Islamic culture cannot be understood through a strict separation between Sufism, thought, and literature, but rather through the intertwining of these levels in a single personality.
Accordingly, the atom serves the broader argument advanced by the book against reductive readings of tradition. It reminds us that major texts and figures contain an internal complexity that resists simplification, and that this very complexity is part of the value and richness of tradition.
Limits of the claim
This statement should not be understood as a definitive judgment on al-Tawḥīdī’s entire life, or as reducing his experience to a fixed binary. Nor should the atom be burdened with more historical or psychological detail than the file provides.