{"id":4438,"date":"2026-06-06T20:20:34","date_gmt":"2026-06-06T20:20:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/diplomatique.ma\/en\/?p=4438"},"modified":"2026-06-06T20:20:34","modified_gmt":"2026-06-06T20:20:34","slug":"abdallah-laroui-the-thinker-who-argued-that-the-arab-worlds-crisis-is-neither-political-nor-religious-but-historical","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/diplomatique.ma\/en\/abdallah-laroui-the-thinker-who-argued-that-the-arab-worlds-crisis-is-neither-political-nor-religious-but-historical\/","title":{"rendered":"Abdallah Laroui: The Thinker Who Argued That the Arab World’s Crisis Is Neither Political nor Religious\u2026 but Historical"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Abdallah Laroui’s Historicist Project: When History Becomes the Path to Arab Modernity<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Few contemporary Arab thinkers have generated as much intellectual debate as Abdallah Laroui. His work goes far beyond the familiar question of why the Arab world fell behind while the West advanced. At its core lies a more profound inquiry: why do some societies make history while others merely endure it?<\/p>\n

For Laroui, the Arab crisis is not simply political, economic, or social. It is fundamentally a crisis of historical consciousness. The real challenge lies in how Arab societies understand time, change, and their own position within the unfolding movement of history. From this conviction emerged his major intellectual project: historicism.<\/p>\n

Historicism, in Laroui’s thought, is neither a mere historical method nor an academic school of interpretation. It is a comprehensive worldview based on the idea that all human realities are historically produced. Institutions, values, political concepts, and even modes of thinking are not eternal truths; they are products of historical development. Recognizing this fact is, for Laroui, the first condition for overcoming what he calls \u201chistorical backwardness.\u201d<\/p>\n

This perspective leads him to a sharp critique of contemporary Arab ideologies. Salafism seeks solutions in the past. Romantic nationalism blends collective memory, myths, and modern aspirations without understanding the actual mechanisms of historical change. Even some progressive currents adopt modern concepts while ignoring the historical conditions that produced them.<\/p>\n

The problem, therefore, is not a lack of modern ideas but the absence of a historical consciousness capable of understanding how such ideas emerge and function.<\/p>\n

One of the deepest influences on Laroui’s thought is the philosophy of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Laroui considers Hegel a decisive turning point in the history of modern philosophy. Yet this influence is neither superficial nor imitative. It is a critical appropriation. Hegel provides him with a conception of history as a rational process moving toward the progressive realization of freedom.<\/p>\n

Laroui, however, does not simply reproduce Hegel’s system. He reinterprets it through the lens of Arab reality. Where Hegel analyzed the emergence of modern Europe, Laroui investigates the place of Arab societies within universal history. In doing so, he transforms the philosophy of history into a tool of diagnosis and critique.<\/p>\n

According to Laroui, Arab societies occupy a paradoxical position. They view modernity as a future that has already been achieved elsewhere. They seek to reach a historical horizon they did not help create. This condition generates an ambivalent relationship with modernity\u2014one characterized by admiration, imitation, resistance, and uncertainty.<\/p>\n

For this reason, Laroui insists on the necessity of acquiring genuine historical consciousness. Without it, modernity remains either a slogan or an imported product. With it, modernity becomes a process of internal transformation.<\/p>\n

Within this framework, the state occupies a central position. For Laroui, modernity cannot be reduced to individual freedoms, civil society, or economic development. It requires, first and foremost, the existence of a modern state capable of embodying collective rationality.<\/p>\n

Here the influence of Hegel becomes particularly evident. The state is not merely an administrative or coercive apparatus. It is the historical embodiment of reason and ethical life. It allows society to transcend tribal, sectarian, and regional loyalties in order to create a common political space founded on law and citizenship.<\/p>\n

In Laroui’s view, the absence of a genuinely modern state largely explains the fragility of institutions, the persistence of traditional solidarities, and the repeated difficulties encountered by democratic projects across the Arab world.<\/p>\n

His reflection on reason extends this analysis. Laroui rejects the idea that reason is an eternal essence. Like every human reality, it is historically formed. He therefore distinguishes between a \u201creason of names,\u201d attached to abstract concepts and theoretical speculation, and a \u201creason of action,\u201d oriented toward practice, experimentation, and transformation.<\/p>\n

This distinction enables him to identify one of the major weaknesses of contemporary Arab thought: the gap between discourse and action. Arab societies generate ideas, slogans, and debates, yet often struggle to transform them into institutions and practices capable of producing lasting change.<\/p>\n

Freedom ultimately represents the culmination of this intellectual architecture. Laroui criticizes both the liberal conception of freedom as the mere absence of constraints and the existentialist conception that presents the individual as an absolutely free being detached from historical conditions.<\/p>\n

For him, freedom is a historical achievement. It does not exist independently of the state, education, economic development, or modern institutions. It is not a starting point but the result of a long collective process.<\/p>\n

True freedom is the freedom of a people capable of shaping its own historical destiny. It emerges when individuals participate in constructing a rational political order through which they can influence their collective future.<\/p>\n

This is why the concepts of history, state, reason, and freedom form an integrated system within Laroui’s thought. History provides the overarching framework. The state translates historical movement into institutions. Reason allows societies to understand and direct that movement. Freedom stands as its ultimate outcome.<\/p>\n

Laroui’s originality lies precisely in his ability to combine Hegel, Marx, and Weber without becoming entirely dependent on any of them. His project is simultaneously historical, critical, and deeply rooted in the realities of Arab societies.<\/p>\n

More than a dialogue with Western philosophy, his work represents an attempt to reintegrate Arab societies into the movement of world history. It rejects both nostalgic retreat into the past and mechanical imitation of foreign models.<\/p>\n

Today, as the Arab world continues to experience profound transformations and recurring crises, Laroui’s questions remain remarkably relevant. The central challenge may no longer be how to catch up with modernity, but how to become capable of producing it.<\/p>\n

This is the enduring power of his project: the reminder that history is not an inheritance to be admired from afar, but a responsibility to be assumed. Nations that abandon the task of making their own future eventually find themselves living inside a history written by others.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Abdallah Laroui’s Historicist Project: When History Becomes the Path to Arab Modernity Few contemporary Arab thinkers have generated as much intellectual debate as Abdallah Laroui. His work goes far beyond the familiar question of why the Arab world fell behind while the West advanced. At its core lies a more profound inquiry: why do some […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":4439,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39,43,121,42,41,76],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4438","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-africa","category-asia-americas","category-cultural-diplomatic-analysis-of-artistic-texts","category-europe-russia","category-middle-east","category-the-maghreb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/diplomatique.ma\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4438","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/diplomatique.ma\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/diplomatique.ma\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diplomatique.ma\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diplomatique.ma\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4438"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/diplomatique.ma\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4438\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4440,"href":"https:\/\/diplomatique.ma\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4438\/revisions\/4440"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diplomatique.ma\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4439"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/diplomatique.ma\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4438"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diplomatique.ma\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4438"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diplomatique.ma\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4438"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}