Situating Mohammed Arkoun: A Tribute to a Passionate Critic

Abstract

The image of Arkoun as a brilliant scholar is highly recognized among his contemporaries. His philosophy is still being treated as a true work of mind, a reflection on reality and a representation of it whatever aspect it takes. Although it seems in adherence to consensus principles of thought and knowledge in the present time, it is very autonomous in the sense it deals with its subject-matters in decidedly Islamic terms; i.e., it belongs to Arkoun’s own culture, tradition and history in many ways as far as it represents his own revolutionary state of mind, somehow, not a replicate of others'. In this context, it adds very significantly to the accumulation of modern thought in an Islamic intellectual atmosphere of despair and deception.