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The Unity of Man in Islamic Thought

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 April 2024

Mohammed Arkoun
Mohammed Arkoun*
Affiliation:
Paris
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Extract

In a sense it is easier to talk about human unity in the biological sciences than from the perspective of the human and social sciences, especially as these have developed over the last thirty years. If paleontology, biology and neurology make it possible to emphasize physical constants evident for the entire human race, to the contrary it seems impossible to find similar unity in the social systems and the cultural values that define the radical identity of a group, a community or a nation. Apartheid, racism, intolerance and prejudices everywhere express differences that most frequently derive from social imagination but that function no less strongly as determining forces for human cultural production and historical conduct.

Type
Research Article
Information
Diogenes , Volume 35 , Issue 140 , December 1987 , pp. 50 - 69
Copyright
Copyright © 1987 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)

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References

1 For this concept see M. Arkoun, Lectures du Coran, Maisonneuve-Larose, 2nd ed., 1988.

2 Quoted and translated (into French) by M. Chodkiewicz, Le Sceau des Saints, Gallimard 1986, pp. 184-185.

3 M. ‘Abid Al-Jabiri has just given a traditional description of these opposites in Bunyat al- ‘aql al-'arabiyy, Casablanca 1986.

4 See M. Arkoun, L'Islam, morale et politique, Unesco-Desclée de Brouwer, 1986. See also my translation of the Traité d'éthique by Miskawayh, Damascus, 1969.

5 Traité d'éthique, op. cit. pp. 66-67. For a commentary on this passage see my Humanisme arabe au IVe-Xe siècle, 2nd ed., Vrin, 1982.

6 Traité d'éthique, op. cit. pp. 175-176.

7 Ibid., pp. 112-113.

8 See M. Arkoun, Essais sur la pensée islamique, 3rd ed., Paris 1984, pp. 319-351.

9 Traité, op. cit., pp. 219-220 and 225-226.

10 See Marcel Gauchet, Le Désenchantement du monde, Gallimard 1985.