Mohammed Arkoun was born in Kabylia, Algeria, and spent much of his career at the Sorbonne in Paris. His early work in philosophy was in the history of Islamic philosophy, and in particular the thought of the Persian philosopher Miskawayh. Like so many modern Arab philosophers, Arkoun is part both of the Islamic world and of the secular European world, and how to reconcile those two worlds has been a continuing issue for those philosophers. It has been a continuing issue of interest to them how to reconcile these two worlds. Arkoun, on the one hand, has in general been supportive of laïcité, the determined secularism of France that he argues preserves the freedom of all to follow their religions. On the other hand, he has roundly criticized the ways in which the Islamic and the non-Islamic worlds have cast each other in...