“Man, Soil and Time”: the Civilizational Concept of Malek Bennabi

Abstract

The article reviews civilizational concept by Malek Bennabi (1905–1973) – a prominent Algerian philosopher and a public person. The author analyzes two treatises by the thinker (“The Nativity of Society” (1960) and “The Conditions of Renaissance” (1949)) in comparison to the theories by famous European culture experts of the beginning of the 20th century. The present work shows that using as a basis systems by A. Toynbee and L. Lévy -Bruhl Bennabi develops his own apology of Arabic and Muslim civilization: in ‘L’Afro-asiatisme’ ideologist opinion, the latter neither genetically nor structurally differs from European and Chinese culture. In contrast with ‘motionless’ primitive societies, the civilization meets a challenge of religious or religious and philosophical doctrine, and in its development creates the relations between their personalities, the environment (‘soil’) and social experience (‘time’). These relations, according to Bennabi, consistently go through three historical periods – the era of ‘spirit’, ‘mind’ and ‘instincs’. At the end of the treatise there is a conclusion about the author’s philosophy of permanence of essential features of alive civilizations. It is also mentioned common religious and philosophical, not the sociological character of the thinker’s study.