The Unity of the Arab-Islamic Mind A Critique of the Critique of the Arab Mind

“Muhammad Abed al-Jabri’s entire project in the Critique of the Arab Mind is based on creating an ‘epistemological break’ between Eastern and Western thought, distinguishing between an ‘Eastern, Illuminative School’ and a Moroccan, Demonstrative School, and emphasizing that the pioneers of the ‘Andalusian-Moroccan Cultural Project’—Ibn Hazm, Ibn Tufayl, Ibn Rushd, Ibn Mada’ al-Qurtubi, and al-Shatibi—all moved in the same direction: ‘Returning the goods of the East to the East,’ ‘End imitating Easterners,’ and ‘Establishing an authentic culture independent of the culture of the people of the East.'”
This third part of Tarabishi’s project for a ‘Critique of the Critique of the Arab Mind’ addresses the deconstruction of this ‘geographical epistemology’ based on affirming the unity of the structure of the Arab-Islamic mind, the unity of the cognitive system to which it belongs, with its Eastern and Western wings, and the unity of the center from which its surrounding circles branched out. Neither the shift from the circle of rhetoric to the circle of mysticism or the circle of demonstration signifies liberation from the pull of the central point, nor does the shift Between the boxes could be a departure from the chessboard of the Arab-Islamic mind, which continues to emanate from a single epistemic system, regardless of the distinctions between the geniuses of individuals and places.

This book, while rejecting the regional ideological use of the concept of epistemic rupture, uses modern epistemological excavations to reconstruct the unity of the intellectual space of the Arab-Islamic heritage and proposes a continuous—not discontinuous—reading of the distinctive contributions of the Andalusian school, whether represented by al-Shatibi’s Maqasidism, Ibn Tufayl’s Gnosticism, or the grammatical leap of Ibn Mada’ al-Qurtubi. This, in addition to reopening the file of Ibn Sina’s “Oriental Philosophy” and proposing a new solution to its mystery.