Originally posted on sciy.org by Ron Anastasia on Sun 04 Nov 2007 05:46 PM PST
2007 - number 9
Philosophy and religion, between exchange and tension
by Mohammed Arkoun : 
© UNESCO/Mohammed Arkoun
Mohammed Arkoun (Algeria).
“Islamizing†modernity instead of modernizing Islam – preposterous! worries Professor Mohammed Arkoun. A refuge in poor countries, a rejection of “tele-techno-scientific reasoning†in rich countries, religiosity is spreading in the world at the expense of humanist values and philosophical thinking.
Philosophical thought and religious thought have a long history in common in the Mediterranean world. Since they emerged respectively in Greece and in the Middle East, they have affronted, confronted and enriched each other. The exchanges and tensions between them continue to this day, but there are nonetheless signs of exhaustion versus the triumphant free market and computer civilization.
Concerning exchange, the two great philosophical bodies of knowledge, the Platonic and the Aristotelian, were key for the construction of Jewish, Christian and Islamic theologies, beginning with the circulation of the Septuagint (the Greek version of the Old Testament) established between 250-130 B.C. in Alexandrian Judaism and the transmission in Greek of the Gospels deemed authentic by the Christian church.
And as far as tension between philosophical reasoning and theological reasoning, it also marked the three currents of thought – Jewish, Christian and Islamic – as illustrated in the works of Averroes (1126-1198), Maimonides (1135-1204) and Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274).
In Islam, the rise of the brotherhoods beginning in the 13th century brought about a regression of theological reasoning and the elimination of the Greek philosophical culture. The latter is still struggling to reassimilate, even at university level. In Latin and Christian Europe, it was philosophy that gained ground to the point of marginalizing theology when the revolution of the Enlightenment came about, and even more after the separation of church and secular state.
In Christianity, theological thought is increasingly forced to follow in the wake of human and social sciences. This is not the case with Islam, where the apologetic and fundamentalist currents reject colonial and Western sciences as destructive forces against Islamic tradition. To the point that they espouse the idea of Islamizing modernity rather than modernizing Islam.
Marginalization of thought
The multiple revolutions introduced by computers and population growth in poor countries have overturned what sociologists call the social frameworks of thought and knowledge. Considerable gaps continue to widen between rich countries and countries left at the mercy of the negative side-effects of the free market and consumerism.
In countries under the boot of authoritarian, not to say rogue, regimes, the return of traditional religion can be interpreted as the quest for refuge, social protection and moral and psychological reference points. Religion is a refuge, including for the opposition, a springboard to satisfying social and political ambition. The result is deterioration of spiritual values, which are deprived of critical cultural and intellectual support.
But we can see that populist and superstitious religion is on the rise even in the richest societies, such as the United States. The undisputed victory of “tele-techno-scientific†reasoning reinforces the expansion of religiosity in rich and super-developed countries, and the marginalization of thought and philosophical culture.
Recently-published statistics on the distribution of baccalaureate degrees in France show that 52% of the students who earned degrees in 2007 came from scientific curricula, and only 16% from literary education. France and Italy are the only two countries I know of where philosophy is taught in high school. There is as much disinterest for this discipline as there is for history, another key discipline in what used to be called the humanities, referring to culture and humanist comportment. According to other statistics from countries that are trying to develop, many of the young people involved in Islamist combat groups have scientific backgrounds. Everywhere the state encourages this orientation to promote economic development and fight against unemployment.
A widening gap
As a historian of Islamic thought, I can testify that between 1970 and 2000, I could measure from year to year at the Sorbonne the increasing impoverishment of historical knowledge and historical, sociological and anthropological reasoning. I also noted an almost total lack of everything that nourishes epistemological criticism in the whole of scientific production. When this criticism does manifest itself, it is too technical for readers to feel involved. These are all factors accelerating the primacy of “tele-techno-scientific†education and the victory of the knowledge of experts versus humanist concerns that are inseparable from philosophical disquiet.
It is true that most professionals in philosophy don’t offer writing that is easily accessible to the general public. Those who do are treated condescendingly by the guardians of philosophical gravitas. The conferences in which I’ve taken part at UNESCO and elsewhere have led me to feeling certain that the gap between the general public’s expectations and innovative philosophical production is more likely to get wider than narrower in the near future. This observation applies just as much to pragmatic cultures as it does to societies that are the victims of the rise of ritualistic religions with populist tendencies.
Dr Mohammed Arkoun (Algeria), historian of Islamic thought, teaches at the Sorbonne Nouvelle University in Paris.
© UNESCO/Sejung Kim
The victory of “tele-techno-scientific†reasoning.
© UNESCO/Sejung Kim
16 versus 52 !
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