By Ali Mirsepassi

During this thought-provoking learn, Ali Mirsepassi explores the concept that of modernity, exposing the Eurocentric prejudices and hostility to non-Western tradition that experience characterised its improvement. targeting the Iranian event of modernity, he charts its political and highbrow background and develops a brand new interpretation of Islamic Fundamentalism in the course of the distinctive research of the tips of key Islamic intellectuals. the writer argues that the Iranian Revolution used to be no longer an easy conflict among modernity and culture yet an try to accommodate modernity inside of a feeling of real Islamic identification, tradition and old adventure. He concludes through assessing the way forward for secularism and democracy within the heart East mostly, and in Iran particularly. an important contribution to the literature on modernity, social swap and Islamic experiences, this ebook should be crucial studying for students and scholars of social thought and alter, center jap reports, Cultural stories and plenty of comparable parts.

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Extra info for Intellectual Discourse and the Politics of Modernization: Negotiating Modernity in Iran

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Most scholars who emphasize modernity’s universalism point to modernity’s democratic qualities. I do not deny these qualities; however, a glimpse into the systematic imperial practices of modern Western states shows the very opposite of these qualities inflicted upon vast sections of the world. The ascent of modernity, in its imperial dimension, has depended on a deep entanglement with those authoritarian values which are allegedly the very opposite of its most cherished democratic ideals. Diverse responses to this mythical tower of reason have emerged in the context of anti-colonial struggle and post-colonial social reconstruction.

His immersion in the headlong “modernizing” process dissolves his blind obedience to custom and carries him across the world to an ultimate realization of Western superiority over the East. His embrace of reason leaves him no choice but to concede this “reality,” and we are meant to believe that any thinking person would have no choice but to do the same. Yet even this realization cannot prevent him from being sucked back into the vertiginous and licentious demise of the harem, when from afar his inexorable “Oriental sensibilities” inflict bloody havoc on the world he has attempted to leave behind.

In the deconstructive efforts of thinkers like Nietzsche and Foucault, the post-Hegelian metanarrative of Marx, and the pre-Zionist Hegelianization of Jewish history in Nachman Krochmal’s work, we find that intellectual divisions are split along the cracks imparted by Hegel’s prodigious impact. ”20 And as with all debates involving Hegel, it often seems as if neither his friends nor opponents can resist falling within the boundaries and implicit categorical limitations of his system of thought.

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