This article offers a historical-intellectual reconstruction of the ethical epistemology developed by the contemporary Moroccan philosopher Taha Abd al-Rahman (b. 1944), situating his project within the specific intellectual trajectory from which it emerged: the classical Islamic debate over reason (aql) and revealed knowledge (naql), the reformist and nationalist thought of the late colonial and early post-inde¬pendence Maghreb, and, more immediately, Taha’s 1994 polemic against Muhammad ‘Abid al-Jabiri’s Critique of Arab reason, which first brought his epistemological pro¬ject to wide Moroccan attention. Rather than adjudicating whether Taha’s critique of Western rationalism is correct, the article reconstructs, in Taha’s own terms, three interlocking claims that structure his work: (1) his argument that Cartesian and Kant¬ian epistemology rests on a subject-object separation he regards as a historically con¬tingent civilizational choice rather than a necessary feature of rationality; (2) his pro¬posal to re-anchor knowledge in what he calls divine consciousness (al-‘ilm al-ilahi) and moral accountability (al-mas’uliyyah); and (3) his tripartite theory of reason dis¬tinguishing abstract reason (al-‘aql al-mujarrad), guided reason (al-‘aql al-musaddad), and supported reason (al-‘aql al-mu’ayyad). The article traces how this project has been received by subsequent scholarship, from its first Moroccan reception in the 1990s through its recent incorporation into Anglophone decolonial and comparative philosophy (Hallaq 2019; Guennouni Idrissi 2025). A concluding, explicitly demar¬cated section offers the authors’ own interpretive assessment of the contemporary sig¬nificance of Taha’s project, presented as a philosophical position rather than as a his¬torical finding.

Received 12 May 2026. Revised 26 July 2026. Accepted 19 October 2026. Published online 15 November 2026

History of Ideas, Islamic Epistemology, Taha Abd al-Rahman, Intellec¬tual History of the Maghreb, Decolonial Theory, Guided Reason, Muhammad ‘Abid al-Jabiri,