The central theme of this study is the question of turath (cultural heritage) as perceived by contemporary Arab thinkers since the Arab defeat by Israel in 1967. The diverse understandings of turath have raised various questions with respect to it, yielding a plethora of opinions that make it difficult to come up with a common definition. This unstable view of the phenomenon has led to what may be called "the problematic of turath." This study asks whether turath has the roots of the problematic or whether it is mainly the positions on it that have led to its problematization. An attempt to explore the term reveals that the contemporary meaning assigned to turath is ideological in nature, such that it is perceived as a tool for either progress or decline. To understand how this ideologization operates, the study looks at two antithetical positions on turath: that of the Islamic-modernist, H&dotbelow;asan H&dotbelow;anafi (b.1935) and that of the secular-modernist, Adonis (b. 1930). Their positions are described in the light of their intellectual and ideological backgrounds, and analyzed in view of their primary texts. The study concludes that their "imagined" visions of turath reflect biased thinking, an understanding of turath that is adapted to their own ideological stance. As an Islamic phenomenologist, H&dotbelow;anafi perceives Islamic revelation as a phenomenon present to consciousness, regarding it as authoritative due to its presumed "uncorrupted" character. This makes it suitable to any place and time and renders it the only legitimate source for renewal and progress. However, the fact that he feels a rereading of turath is necessary to achieve this goal reflects a paradox in his discourse, whereby the same turath becomes simultaneously the chief problem and the chief solution for Arab-Muslim society. By contrast, Adonis, as a secular deconstructionist, looks at the inherited turath as a "text" with a static/dynamic dualism, and tries to show that the static elements of turath, which always appear stable, logical and capable of achieving progress, make it otherwise. For him, divine revelation --- which is responsible for the predominance of the static and hence an obstacle to human freedom, creativity and progress --- must be deconstructed. This paves the way for his own agenda of replacing the static, i.e., religious elements, with dynamic or secular elements, which alone can enable the reconstruction of a new civilization. But in the process, Adonis may only be replacing the religious with the secular and merely setting in place a new static dimension.

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This dissertation engages a cultural discussion on time concepts that took place between Arab thinkers and creative writers in the aftermath of the June War of 1967 against Israel and the onset of a period of Arab cultural self-critique. It focuses on a set of intellectual projects and examines their propositions on Islamic notions of time and their place in the modernity of Arab thought. Intellectuals such as the Syrian poet Adonis (b. 1930), the Moroccan philosopher Mohammed ʿAbed al-Jabri (1935-2000), and the Lebanese psychologist Mustapha Hijazi (b. 1937) critiqued the alleged Arab “event-based” and “discontinuous” perception of time which lacks the notion of the temporal as a homogenous impersonal medium. Focusing on the example of Sufism, they argued that time in the Islamic worldview is a heterogenous mix of sacred and profane events in an ontology deprived of change. My dissertation debates these findings in two ways. I first draw on the French philosopher Henri Bergson’s concept of “duration” to problematize these thinkers’ discursive ideal of homogenous time which imposes on the heterogeneity of lived temporality the attributes of space and, as such, produces a mechanistic vision of the world. I then focus on the discourse of Ibn ʿArabi (d. 637/1240) and Mulla Sudra (d. 1049/1640) to demonstrate that Sufism advances a view of time as a flux of change internal to the life of the soul and leading to moral self-perfection. Finally, my dissertation focuses on alternative Arabic engagements with Sufi writings on time through the works of the Moroccan ethicist ʿAbdurrahman Taha (b.1944), the Iraqi Marxist Hadi al-ʿAlawi (1933-1998), and the Egyptian novelist Gamal al-Ghitani (1945-2015). I argue that these thinkers and writers draw on the heterogeneity of time in Sufism to critique the semantic neutrality and abstraction of modern time which depends on capitalism as a life form.