Overview

This book argues that while the concept of the human being was a Greek invention, its reinvention was Arab before it was European. Born in Greece in the fourth century BCE, this concept of the human being disappeared at the end of Late Antiquity, before reappearing in the Abbasid Near East. It was Muslim rationalist theologians who revived it in their theodicy of a just God who can only be just by recognizing the agency of human beings in their voluntary acts. Later, Arabic-speaking philosophers gave it a space of its own under the name of ‘human sciences,’ in the 9th century. But a traditional theology got the better of it. Its reappearance had to wait for the European Renaissance, while retaining its Arab origins.

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Houari Touati is a professor at EHESS, Paris. He is editor of Studia Islamica and a member of the Academy of Europe. He is the author of numerous books, some of which have been translated into English, Italian, Turkish and Albanian. Gwendolin Goldbloom read Islamic Studies and English at Hamburg University. She has translated several books and numerous articles in the fields of Islamic Studies and the intellectual and political history of both Europe and the Middle East.

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