Formulation of the Claim
Critiquing violence and hegemony, and the claim to possess ultimate truth, is a condition for opening thought onto difference that excludes no one and monopolizes no meaning.
Why are these elements grouped together?
These elements belong together because they revolve around a single relationship between truth and power: when truth is tied to violence, sanctification, or hegemony, it shifts from a domain of understanding to an instrument of exclusion. This is why Violence, sanctification, and absolute truth explain clashes explains how clashes arise when certain representations are granted finality, and Violence needs historical and democratic regulation adds that confronting violence cannot be limited to condemnation alone, but must involve regulating it within history and democratic standards.
The link also becomes clear in the fact that hegemony does not produce legitimate knowledge; rather, it suspends it. Thus, Critique of hegemonic reason is a condition for a new human subject connects the critique of domination with the formation of a broader human subject, while Political legitimacy does not make up for epistemic illegitimacy shows that political power cannot compensate for a weak epistemic foundation. Hegemonic minds tend toward domination, and Islamism is a reaction, not creativity completes this line of thought by showing that responding to hegemony may reproduce its logic if it remains captive to it.
The place of the collection in the book
This page comes from within the book Fundamentalist Thought and the Impossibility of Founding, where the analysis of violence is linked to the critique of sanctification, and the question of hegemony overlaps with the issue of epistemic and political legitimacy. It gathers elements that explain how conflict arises when truth is treated as a final possession, and how difference needs historical and democratic safeguards and institutions to organize it. It is also connected to the book’s argument, which strips both fundamentalism and modernity of any claim to ultimate truth, and understands the interaction between minds as a field that requires regulation rather than exclusion.
Elements of the collection
- Violence, sanctification, and absolute truth explain clashes
- Violence needs historical and democratic regulation
- Critique of hegemonic reason is a condition for a new human subject
- Political legitimacy does not make up for epistemic illegitimacy
- Hegemonic minds tend toward domination, and Islamism is a reaction, not creativity
- Arkoun strips fundamentalism and modernity of any claim to ultimate truth
- The interaction between the three minds is often exclusionary and needs institutions to regulate it
Brief evidence
This page links violence and hegemony on the one hand, and the claim to possess ultimate truth on the other. When truth is formulated as a closed possession, difference turns into hostility, and exclusion becomes justified in the name of certainty. That is why the elements of the collection work together to show that freeing meaning passes through stripping monopoly of its sacred aura and opening the field to multiple readings. This section also hints that epistemic democracy is inseparable from critiquing symbolic and political forms of domination.
Conclusion
These elements converge in showing that freeing truth from monopoly requires critiquing violence and hegemony, stripping any knowledge claim of finality, and grounding difference in historical and democratic safeguards.