Formulation of the Claim
Symbolic imagination dominated the mentality of the Middle Ages.
Explanation
In Arkoun’s context, this claim means that consciousness in the Middle Ages was not governed only by direct or demonstrative meaning, but relied on symbolic representations that endowed the world with meanings exceeding outward appearance. The symbol here is not linguistic ornamentation, but a way of perceiving things and arranging them within a specific cultural and religious horizon.
Arkoun treats this dominance as a historical feature of its age, not as a judgment on reason in itself. Thus the reference to symbolic imagination appears as part of a description of a mental structure that prevailed in that period and of the forms of understanding and interpretation that followed from it.
Its Place in the Book’s Argument
This atom falls within the passage that moves from presenting the mythic vision to questioning its limits, where Arkoun shows how patterns of perception in the Middle Ages were formed within a broad symbolic system. It plays a role in building the comparison between older symbolic consciousness and the demands of later critical reading, in keeping with the book’s thesis of tracing the historical formation of religious and cultural conceptions.
Limits of the Claim
This atom should not be burdened with a comprehensive judgment on all manifestations of medieval thought, nor should medieval thought as a whole be reduced to symbol alone; it describes a general dominance that does not negate the existence of other forms of thinking or differentiation within that period.