Application cases for examining reference structures, coordinates of meaning, and the direction of cognitive movement
مَنْهَج | MANHAJ is a method and a tool for systematically examining ideas and representations. It is built on a system of mathematical, logical, and algorithmic tools and structures that makes it possible to represent intellectual structures and analyze the relations that organize them.
By its methodological position, مَنْهَج | MANHAJ stands prior to the doctrinal and intellectual frameworks it examines. It therefore does not assume in advance the origin or reference of the project under study; it makes that origin and reference themselves objects of examination.
MANHAJ therefore neither enters the project in order to adopt its premises nor presents itself as a competing doctrinal project. It provides a methodological level from which its reference structure, conceptual field, coordinates of meaning, and direction of cognitive movement can be examined, helping to apprehend reality and to become free from mechanisms that shape mental control over it.
The examination does not begin with the particular propositions of a project, but with the conditions that organize its intellectual movement and its production of meaning. Three foundational laws, derived from the Theory of Doctrinal Centrality, make it possible to identify the point of departure, examine the rightness of the path, and distinguish a priori inquiry from a posteriori movement.
This law examines the origin around which the project’s coordinates are organized and what derives from it: the conceptual domain, relations, and meanings. The question therefore concerns not only the reference explicitly declared by the project, but the origin that actually operates in organizing its concepts and determining their positions and meaning values.
Rightness does not simply mean the isolated truth of a concept or result. It concerns the coherence of the path that produces them and the conditions that make that path operational within its coordinates and field. The law therefore examines the relation between origin, conceptual domain, coordinates of meaning, and derivation.
A priori inquiry : examination of the origin, references, and conditions that constitute the field before entering into its details.
A posteriori movement : working within an already constituted field after accepting its conditions and references, then producing knowledge or deriving from them.
The eight cases below are neither a ranking nor a hierarchy of projects. They show how, in each case, MANHAJ moves examination from the explicit project to an earlier level at which origin, field, coordinates of meaning, and direction of movement can be tested.
MANHAJ examines Wael Hallaq’s project by asking about the reference and coordinate origin that organize the modern state and the concept of sovereignty. The examination therefore moves beyond criticism of the structure’s effects and asks whether the origin that produced the structure was itself examined.
Go to the examination →MANHAJ examines Malek Bennabi’s project by modeling the relations among man, soil, time, the religious idea, the world of ideas, persons, and things. The purpose is to move these elements from intellectual exposition toward a structure of relations that can be represented, followed, and examined.
Go to the examination →MANHAJ examines Edward Said’s project by moving from the critique of Orientalism and the representation of the Other to the field within which that critique operates: Western centrality, the Western conceptual field, coordinates of meaning, and the direction of cognitive movement. It then asks what origin produced that field and how its categories became organized within it.
Go to the examination →MANHAJ examines Taha Abderrahmane’s project by distinguishing the re-grounding of philosophical action within an Islamic reference from the modeling of the conditions in which that action takes shape. Taha works through reference, language, concept, logic, and ethics to rebuild thought, while MANHAJ moves to an earlier question: what origin, conceptual field, and relations generate meaning and cognitive action?
Go to the examination →MANHAJ examines Ali Izetbegović’s project through his invocation of Islam as a fundamental reference for his understanding of humanity and civilization, and through his resistance to reducing the human being to the material dimension. The examination then moves to an earlier question: how is the reference structured within the model, what conceptual fields derive from it, and how is meaning determined within their coordinates?
Go to the examination →MANHAJ examines Mohammed Abed al-Jabri’s project through the dependent thinker, posterior movement, coordinate origin, conceptual field, and derivation of meaning. It therefore moves to a question prior to the results: where does the origin from which cognitive action proceeds come from, what field organizes the production of concepts and meanings, and were these determinants themselves examined?
Go to the examination →MANHAJ examines Abdallah Laroui’s project through historicity, historical lateness, and direction of inquiry. It begins by asking why Arab history becomes the problem and by what criterion it is described as late, then moves back to the origin that determines the object of inquiry, the analytical instrument, and the criterion of judgment.
Go to the examination →MANHAJ examines Michel Foucault’s project through the question of center, reference, and meaning production. If an explicit center is dismantled and knowledge and power are redistributed among multiple positions and relations, has the reference function disappeared or moved elsewhere? The examination then asks whether the system can still derive new meaning.
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