Seyyed
''Sayyid'' (, ; ar, سيد ; ; meaning 'sir', 'Lord', 'Master'; Arabic plural: ; feminine: ; ) is a surname of people descending from the Islamic prophet Muhammad through his grandsons, Hasan ibn Ali and Husayn ibn Ali, sons of Muhammad' ...
Ahmad Fardid ( fa, سید احمد فردید) (Born in 1910,
Yazd
Yazd ( fa, یزد ), formerly also known as Yezd, is the capital of Yazd Province, Iran. The city is located southeast of Isfahan. At the 2016 census, the population was 1,138,533. Since 2017, the historical city of Yazd is recognized as a Wor ...
– 16 August 1994,
Tehran
Tehran (; fa, تهران ) is the largest city in Tehran Province and the capital of Iran. With a population of around 9 million in the city and around 16 million in the larger metropolitan area of Greater Tehran, Tehran is the most popul ...
), born Ahmad Mahini Yazdi, was a prominent
Iranian
Iranian may refer to:
* Iran, a sovereign state
* Iranian peoples, the speakers of the Iranian languages. The term Iranic peoples is also used for this term to distinguish the pan ethnic term from Iranian, used for the people of Iran
* Iranian lan ...
philosopher and a professor of
Tehran University. He is considered to be among the philosophical ideologues of the Islamic government of Iran which came to power in 1979. Fardid was under the influence of
Martin Heidegger
Martin Heidegger (; ; 26 September 188926 May 1976) was a German philosopher who is best known for contributions to phenomenology, hermeneutics, and existentialism. He is among the most important and influential philosophers of the 20th ce ...
, the influential
German
German(s) may refer to:
* Germany (of or related to)
** Germania (historical use)
* Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language
** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law
**Ge ...
philosopher, whom he considered "the only Western philosopher who understood the world and the only philosopher whose insights were congruent with the principles of the Islamic Republic. These two figures,
Khomeini
Ruhollah Khomeini, Ayatollah Khomeini, Imam Khomeini ( , ; ; 17 May 1900 – 3 June 1989) was an Iranian political and religious leader who served as the first supreme leader of Iran from 1979 until his death in 1989. He was the founder of ...
and Heidegger, helped Fardid argue his position." What he decried was the
anthropocentrism and
rationalism
In philosophy, rationalism is the epistemological view that "regards reason as the chief source and test of knowledge" or "any view appealing to reason as a source of knowledge or justification".Lacey, A.R. (1996), ''A Dictionary of Philosophy ...
brought by
classical Greece, replacing the authority of God and faith with human reason, and in that regard he also criticized Islamic philosophers like
al Farabi and
Mulla Sadra
Ṣadr ad-Dīn Muḥammad Shīrāzī, more commonly known as Mullā Ṣadrā ( fa, ملا صدرا; ar, صدر المتألهین) (c. 1571/2 – c. 1635/40 CE / 980 – 1050 AH), was a Persian Twelver Shi'i Islamic mystic, philosopher, the ...
for having absorbed
Greek philosophy
Ancient Greek philosophy arose in the 6th century BC, marking the end of the Greek Dark Ages. Greek philosophy continued throughout the Hellenistic period and the period in which Greece and most Greek-inhabited lands were part of the Roman Empi ...
.
Fardid studied philosophy at
Sorbonne university
Sorbonne University (french: Sorbonne Université; la Sorbonne: 'the Sorbonne') is a public research university located in Paris, France. The institution's legacy reaches back to 1257 when Sorbonne College was established by Robert de Sor ...
and
University of Heidelberg
}
Heidelberg University, officially the Ruprecht Karl University of Heidelberg, (german: Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg; la, Universitas Ruperto Carola Heidelbergensis) is a public research university in Heidelberg, Baden-Württemberg, ...
. The sparsity of Fardid’s written work has led to his recognition as an "oral philosopher". This was, to be sure, a puzzling attribute. Although Fardid tried to justify his expository reluctance to the poverty and contamination of the language, (in the
Heidegger
Martin Heidegger (; ; 26 September 188926 May 1976) was a German philosopher who is best known for contributions to phenomenology, hermeneutics, and existentialism. He is among the most important and influential philosophers of the 20th centur ...
ian sense) some suspect his reticence stemmed from his paralyzing perfectionism.
Fardid coined the concept of "Westoxication" which was then popularized by
Jalal Al-e-Ahmad
Seyyed Jalāl Āl-e-Ahmad ( fa, جلال آلاحمد; December 2, 1923September 9, 1969) was a prominent Iranian novelist, short-story writer, translator, philosopher, socio-political critic, sociologist, as well as an anthropologist who wa ...
on his then widely known book
Gharbzadegi
''Gharbzadegi'' ( fa, غربزدگی) is a pejorative Persian term variously translated as ‘Westernized’, ‘West-struck-ness’, ‘Westoxification’, ‘Westitis’, ‘Euromania’, or ‘Occidentosis’. It is used to refer to the los ...
, and after the
Iranian Revolution
The Iranian Revolution ( fa, انقلاب ایران, Enqelâb-e Irân, ), also known as the Islamic Revolution ( fa, انقلاب اسلامی, Enqelâb-e Eslâmī), was a series of events that culminated in the overthrow of the Pahlavi dyna ...
of 1979, became among the core ideological teachings of the new Islamic government of Iran. Among those influenced by his thought are also included "the theoretician of Islamic cinema",
Morteza Avini
Sayyid Morteza Avini ( fa, سید مرتضی آوینی; also spelled Aviny; 23 September 1947 – 9 April 1993) was an Iranian documentary filmmaker, author, and theoretician of " Islamic Cinema." He studied Architecture at Tehran University i ...
, and the former conservative president,
Ahmadinejad
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad ( fa, محمود احمدینژاد, Mahmūd Ahmadīnežād ), born Mahmoud Sabbaghian ( fa, محمود صباغیان, Mahmoud Sabbāghyān, 28 October 1956), .
Fardid's turbulent intellect was absorbed in the enterprise of synthesizing (promisingly or otherwise) the results of his studies of Eastern civilizations with the Western philosophy, as interpreted by
Heidegger
Martin Heidegger (; ; 26 September 188926 May 1976) was a German philosopher who is best known for contributions to phenomenology, hermeneutics, and existentialism. He is among the most important and influential philosophers of the 20th centur ...
. Fardid's project remains unfinished and fraught with shortcomings and errors. Nevertheless, it remains an enormously intriguing and valuable endeavor. Heidegger himself on several occasions (including in his encounters with DT Suzuki concerning "transmetaphysical thinking" and in his valedictory interview with ''
Der Spiegel'') optimistically alluded to the possibility of a convergence of Eastern and Western thought but he never explored the subject matter himself, citing a lack of knowledge and insight about the non-Western
universe of discourse
In the formal sciences, the domain of discourse, also called the universe of discourse, universal set, or simply universe, is the set of entities over which certain variables of interest in some formal treatment may range.
Overview
The doma ...
. Ahmad Fardid, from his corner, hoped to produce a blueprint for the endeavor, but he only succeeded in vaguely adumbrating certain contours of it. His influence is evident in the work of many philosophers in modern Iran even if that is left concealed in their biographies and writings due to the criticism that is generally directed at his thinking by intellectuals with liberal and leftist politics.
Early life
Ahmad Fardid was born on September 4th, 1910, in the city of Yazd. His father, Seyyed Ali Marvi, was a small scale farmer. In 1922, at the age of 12, he began to attend Islamic and secular schools in Yazd, where he started to learn
Arabic
Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C. E.Watson; Walter ...
, as well as
philosophy and
mathematics. At the same time, his father employed a private tutor to teach him
French.
In 1926, Fardid moved to Tehran to start middle-school at Soltani High School, where he began to attend study meetings with scholars of Islamic studies.
Two years later, in 1928, he commenced classes at
Dar ul-Funun, notably the first modern
university
A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United States ...
and modern institution of higher learning in Iran.
Criticisms
Ahmad Fardid has been widely denounced by prominent Iranian intellectuals such as
Abdolkarim Soroush
Abdolkarim Soroush ( ; born Hossein Haj Faraj Dabbagh (born 1945; fa, حسين حاج فرج دباغ), is an Iranian Islamic thinker, reformer, Rumi scholar, public intellectual, and a former professor of phil ...
and
Dariush Ashuri
Daryoush Ashouri ( fa, داریوش آشوری, born August 2, 1938, in Tehran) is a prominent Iranian thinker, author, translator, researcher, and public intellectual. He lives in Paris, France.
Work
He studied at the Faculty of Law, Political ...
as a total fraud; and perhaps this is due to their own political commitments rather than being as such on purely philosophical grounds. Mahmoud Sadri, himself a student of Fardid in the seventies, has rejected such virulent ad hominem attacks on Fardid in an article for www.iranian.com.
Fardid rejected
Human Rights
Human rights are moral principles or normsJames Nickel, with assistance from Thomas Pogge, M.B.E. Smith, and Leif Wenar, 13 December 2013, Stanford Encyclopedia of PhilosophyHuman Rights Retrieved 14 August 2014 for certain standards of hu ...
declaring it a Western notion, and an instance of
"Westoxication". Fardid often instructed his disciples, many of whom later became among the ruling clique of the Islamic government of Iran, to disregard such "westoxicated" concepts as democracy, civil rights, and tolerance, and instead to return to their "authentic Oriental self".
Quotes
* My wish is to be free from the modern cave, which is filled with self-founded nihilism, enchantment by earthly gods (taghutzadegi), and historicism. This is my ideal, and wherever I see a lack of angered fists and the prevalence of compromise, I will be disappointed... because to possess and insist on a position is the right move.
* Weststruckness has dominated us for a hundred years... The youth are looking for the God of the yesteryears and that of the future. They are looking for the God of the Qur᾽an, while the nihilistic and self-founded history of the contemporary world has put down deep roots among us.
* Democracy means the asceticism of taking refuge in Satan.
* There is no way to find democracy in the Qur’an. The Islamic Government is achieving the truth of the” day before yesterday” and the “day after tomorrow.”’ Democracy belongs to Greece, and they embody idolatry.
* Humanism has nothing to do with the human. In the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) is an international document adopted by the United Nations General Assembly that enshrines the rights and freedoms of all human beings. Drafted by a UN committee chaired by Eleanor Roosevelt, ...
, there is no trace of the human… It is all about liberty, equality, and fraternity of the ego (
nafsi ammarah) and the satanic self.
* In accordance with
Heidegger
Martin Heidegger (; ; 26 September 188926 May 1976) was a German philosopher who is best known for contributions to phenomenology, hermeneutics, and existentialism. He is among the most important and influential philosophers of the 20th centur ...
, I put forward a historical position
owghef Mankind is in a historical age when God is absent, the true God... Now, human is the Truth which is apparent, that, human is god, and the Greek
taghut
''Taghut'' ( ar. طاغوت, ṭāġūt. pl. ṭawāġīt. broadly: "to go beyond the measure") is Islamic terminology denoting a focus of worship other than God. In traditional theology, the term often connotes idols or demons drawn to blood ...
dolatryembodies the human. This is the humanism that I previously mentioned: humanism and human
taghut
''Taghut'' ( ar. طاغوت, ṭāġūt. pl. ṭawāġīt. broadly: "to go beyond the measure") is Islamic terminology denoting a focus of worship other than God. In traditional theology, the term often connotes idols or demons drawn to blood ...
dolatry
* Mysticism's one eye has been blinded by
wahdat al-vojud ("the Unity of Being'), and the other one has been blinded by
Bergson
Henri-Louis Bergson (; 18 October 1859 – 4 January 1941) was a French philosopherHenri Bergson. 2014. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Retrieved 13 August 2014, from https://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/61856/Henri-Bergson . According to Bergson, there is turbulence in the world. Where is presence ? Where is God ? I hope the human dies of the unrest. This intrinsic (natural) wisdom
snokherad which is like darkness, appears like lightness for Bergson. Bergson's gnosis one of the examples of
Westoxification. In fact, there is no
gnosis
Gnosis is the common Greek noun for knowledge ( γνῶσις, ''gnōsis'', f.). The term was used among various Hellenistic religions and philosophies in the Greco-Roman world. It is best known for its implication within Gnosticism, where it ...
in the West. During the last four hundred years, philosophy in the West has focused on the actually existing reality (mowjud). In fact, you can not find any question about "existence"
ojudin the nineteenth century, and all discussion were centered on mowjud.
[Ali Mirsepassi, ''Transnationalism in Iranian Political Thought: The Life and Times of Ahmad Fardid'', Cambridge University Press (2017), p. 249]
References
External links
Unofficial Persian websiteIranian Intellectuals and the West: The Tormented Triumph of Nativism(in English)
''Fardid in His Own Words, An Interview with Ahmad Fardid by Alireza Meibodi'' Introduction and Translation by
Mohammad Salemy (in English)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Fardid (formerly Mahini), Ahmad
20th-century Iranian philosophers
University of Paris alumni
Heidelberg University alumni
People from Yazd
1994 deaths
Heidegger scholars
20th-century Iranian historians
Philosophers of nihilism
1910 births
Iranian expatriates in France
Iranian expatriates in Germany