Reason and Its Limitations in the Thought of Abdullah Laroui

Abstract

The project of Abdullah Laroui is considered one of the most important intellectual projects in the Arab world. Through it, he aimed to establish an Arab modernity, by means of a group of intellectual works, among the most important of which is the concept of reason. Laroui does not provide us with a clear concept of this reason nor does he give us a theory in this field; rather, he attempts to show us how this Arab-Islamic reason thinks through his reading of this reason from its beginnings up to the present day, that is, the method or approach by which this reason produces itself.
Laroui attempted to establish a distinction between two types of reason. The first is that the reason intended by the hypothesis of the correlation between religion and reason does not signify the meaning conveyed by the concept of reason in its classical philosophical contents, nor in its modern usage in human thought. The second is that reason and rationality are not purely theoretical matters determined by the degree to which a given thought enjoys logical and methodological coherence, or by its ability to construct a coherent system of ideas and knowledge. Rather, they are primarily practical matters, related to the extent to which the idea is embodied in reality and transformed from conviction into material behavior, manifested in actions, relations, and institutions. Through this distinction, it can be said that Abdullah Laroui distinguishes between theoretical reason—which dominated Arab philosophical thought throughout its history—and practical reason, which is a necessary reason in order to change Arab reality in the first place.
The aim of this study is to examine the concept of reason in contemporary Arab philosophical thought, to highlight the status of reason in the writings of Abdullah Laroui, to clarify the limitations that Laroui assigned to it, and to reveal the reasons that led him to reject absolute reason and replace it with practical reason.