The Question of self and freedom between the Arab-Islamic and Western traditions
The problematic of enlightenment in its striving
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17879/mjiphs-2022-3889Keywords:
Self, Freedom, Enlightenment, Arab-Islamic tradition, Western traditionAbstract
The aim of this research is to examine one of the main aspects of the question of enlightenment in the Arab-Islamic context, which is the question of subjectivity, in a way that is related to the question of freedom. I try to provide a consistent understanding of the reasons for the absence of the individual self in Arab-Islamic contexts, based on two hypotheses: The first concerns the continuum link between the absence of enlightenment, the absence of freedom and the absence of individual subjectivity in Arab-Islamic contexts; in the second hypothesis, I emphasize that the absence of individual subjectivity in the Arab-Islamic heritage -at a normative level-, is not caused by the presence of the transcendent, but rather by the strong presence of the collectivism and the «Community Paradigm». Thus, my thesis in this research is that the individual self in the Arab-Islamic context has been forcibly absent due to the rule of «predominance and tyranny». For that, the question of enlightenment remains deferred.
