BY HARALD VIERSEN (NIJMEGEN)
This blog post is part of the thematic focus „Diversity in the teaching of philosophy”.
Eine deutschsprachige Fassung des Textes findet sich hier.
What comes to mind when someone mentions Arab philosophy to you? Perhaps the names of luminaries of ‘classical’ Islamic philosophy: Someone like al-Farabi (d. +/- 950), whose treatise on the Opinions of the People of the Virtuous City builds on Platonism to present the ideal of a community ruled by a divinely inspired “philosopher-king”. Or maybe you have heard of Abu Hamid al-Ghazali (d. 1111), whose intricate take-down of al-Farabi and other philosophers is interpreted by some as having dealt a deadly blow to philosophy, but who has equally been presented as a prime example of the high level of intellectual achievement in this tradition and as a philosopher who prepared the way for a renaissance in the pursuit of wisdom (hikma) in the Islamic world. Or, finally, if you took a more adventurous route, you might have read something about the nineteenth century modernizer Muhammad Abduh (1849–1905), whose efforts to merge modern ideas on politics, science, and society with the Islamic tradition shaped debates about modernization and religion for the rest of the 20th century.
Of course I am making assumptions here, but most likely you will not be thinking of anyone who is still with us. Let me just say upfront that you are excused for this oversight. Even many academics with decades of experience in researching philosophical debates in Arabic would struggle to mention a single post-WWII Arab intellectual. On the one hand, this lack of general knowledge about contemporary Arab thought is understandable. Given the great heights reached by classical Islamic philosophy (which was mostly written in Arabic) and the profound influence that it had on European philosophy since the Middle Ages, there are clear reasons for the deep Western engagement with these older debates. On the other hand, this lack of knowledge or even of interest in contemporary Arab thought among scholars in Western societies is strange. If philosophy is about more than an antiquarian interest in historical figures, if ‘doing’ philosophy is an activity that reacts to current problems and opportunities, and if understanding how philosophy is now ‘done’ is therefore a crucial part of understanding Arab society in the 21st century, then why do we know so little about contemporary Arab philosophy? And how might we change this?
First, we should keep in mind that our greater familiarity with pre-modern philosophical debates in the Arab world is only relative. Whole swathes of this intellectual history remain unresearched, entire libraries of manuscripts remain unread. This goes for the classical period mentioned earlier, but even more so for the less-than-imaginatively named ‘post-classical period’ stretching from the 12th to the 18th century. This gap provides a golden opportunity for any aspiring philosophy grad student, were it not for the fact that working in this field requires a high level of competence in Arabic, a language that demands a lot of investment for anyone who has not grown up speaking it. In addition, students of contemporary thought are faced with oral sources – videos, radio shows and, more and more, podcasts. Next to reading proficiency, students of contemporary discourse must therefore develop listening skills and, ideally, be able to enter into Arabic academic discussions themselves.
To understand contemporary Arab thought, one must also be familiar with a wide range of philosophical and other scientific discourses. This is because the works of Arab authors combine different traditions. Not only do they, in trying to understand and position the heritage of Arab-Islamic thought in the modern world, refer to a range of old sources in Islamic philosophy and other sciences. They also are rooted in modern discourses on Marxism, secularism, or feminism, and they regularly refer to Western intellectuals, ranging from Hegel to Foucault. This wide and multidisciplinary range makes studying contemporary Arab thought exciting, surely, but it also makes it very hard to take in and explain, specifically to a lay audience unfamiliar with this tradition or with the current Arab social and political contexts.
An institutional problem related to this field’s wide range is that it is not easy to place contemporary Arab thought. There is no department of this name. Academics who work on these matters are divided. Some work in philosophy departments, some are in Middle Eastern studies, others are in Arabic departments, and I myself, for instance, work as an assistant professor in Islamic studies. As a result, it is hard for our small group of geographically dispersed researchers to be heard. Our immediate colleagues tend to work on very different subjects, while our students have not had the occasion, let alone the time, to build up the interdisciplinary background needed to understand contemporary debates in the Arab world.
However, these challenges can be met. On the research front, this requires setting up institutions and international networks that bring together researchers who work on these issues – like the German network “Philosophie in der islamischen Welt der Moderne.” It requires us to organize conferences, publish research accessible to a wider public and, who knows, maybe even to set up a journal dedicated to the study of contemporary Arab thought. At the same time, this should be accompanied by efforts to introduce contemporary Arab thought to the curricula at universities, but also at high schools.
A first and necessary element in this effort is that we, representatives of the study of contemporary Arab and other non-Western traditions, not only research but also translate, introduce, and annotate primary texts. If we want to engage students and give them a feel for what it is like to immerse themselves in these debates that are both current and, to most students, foreign, they must be given a chance to get as close to the original sources as possible, even without any knowledge of Arabic. Adding balanced and thorough introductions and annotations to the original text is crucial here, as it helps to understand how these texts arise from a particular context and how they refer to other ideas and texts that are part of a shared discussion. Some texts and even monographs have indeed been translated into English, notably the works of the Moroccan intellectual Muhammad Abid al-Jabiri. The quality of the translations differs, however. In German, Sarhan Dhouib has put much effort into publishing contemporary voices of the Arab world and bringing them into conversation with European commentators in a series of books published by Velbrück Verlag. Perhaps even more useful for teaching purposes would be the kind of bilingual anthology that is already available for Arab intellectual history of the 19th and 20th century: El-Ariss, Tarek (ed.). The Arab Renaissance: A Bilingual Anthology of the Nahda. New York: The Modern Language Association of America, 2018.
In addition to translating these texts, researchers could themselves play a more prominent role in advocating this field. I am certain that many would be more than happy to join a class to discuss an idea, an author or a translation that they have worked on. In the post-pandemic age, we are all used to working in various hybrid forms. This is something that could prove its use in bringing different academic fields, but also universities and high schools closer together. This is my call, then, on teachers to approach us if you’d like us to help you set up classes or even join them for a discussion with your students – the German network mentioned above will certainly be able to assist you in this.
Another role that experts in this field could play is in pointing to topics and texts in contemporary Arab thought that are particularly well-suited for teaching in Western settings. Whether it is high school students taking classes in philosophy, or students of religion who would like to know more about current debates in Arabic about Islam, or students taking classes in politics and society who are interested in a comparative perspective. To speak to these students, it is necessary to pick out topics in Arab thought and present them in such a way that they make sense to them, preferably themes that are also discussed in Western debates with which students might be more familiar.
Of course, there is a drawback here. By focusing on themes that Western and Arab thought have in common, it may become easy to forget about the differences, to read it all as essentially the same set of ideas articulated in a different place. While I am sympathetic to this problem of preserving the specificity of non-Western debates, there are at least two good arguments in response to it.
The first is the practical point that it is simply unavoidable. We cannot expect students who have no background in the history of the Arab world and who do not have any familiarity with its intellectual traditions to latch onto highly specific debates and appreciate them on their own terms. This may come at a later stage, but at this early stage, Arab thought has to speak their language and address their interests and frames of thought.
Secondly, it also makes sense to see Arab thought from a global perspective. Notwithstanding its rootedness in the Arab context, this context itself – including its politics, society, media and religions – has been shaped in many ways by the global forces that we associate with modernity. Ideas about citizenship, about personal subjectivity, about the prevalence of market forces, about the role of religion in relation to the state and many other areas besides have been influenced by forces that are recognizable to almost any academic audience in the modern world. By relating to these changes and showing how they have contributed to form ideas about the self and the role of individuals in society in ways both similar and different, I believe we can tell a compelling story about the arc of modern and contemporary Arab thought and its possible futures in the 21st century.
What kind of topics do I have in mind here? I could mention several – secularism, social justice, orientalism are among them –, but here I briefly want to touch on a topic that I have also treated in my research, namely the topic of “authenticity.” The Arabic term for authenticity, asala, remains ubiquitous in contemporary discourse, both in intellectual circles and in discussions in the media and in politics. Often this term is paired with that of “contemporaneity” (Arabic: mu’asara) or modernity (Arabic: hadatha). What is meant by this slogan of “authenticity and modernity”? In introductions to contemporary Arab thought you will often find that these terms are interpreted as each other’s temporal opposite. Contemporaneity is used to refer to a group of modernizing, often secular thinkers who try to inject Arab societies with new ideas and fashions, many of which are associated with the West. Authenticity is then used to indicate those who fear the undermining of traditional (often religious) values by these modernizing trends.
This debate, which has centered on discussions about the way to read and value the Arab-Islamic cultural heritage (turath), is ongoing. While it is interesting to study how it has developed within Arab academic and political discourse, I find it even more fascinating to explore how it relates to global trends. After all, the importance of the concept of authenticity is not limited to the Arab world. We live in a world that is obsessed with being authentic and that has given many different and contradictory interpretations of what it means, from being true to the past and expressing a feeling of nostalgia for better times, to being entirely innovative and breaking with what has come before.
Some Arab intellectuals, like Fu’ad Zakariyya or Aziz al-Azmeh, have latched onto these contrary articulations of authenticity as a global expression of modernity. They have shown how complicated the different meanings of authenticity and its relationship to the idea of modernity are, both in Western contexts and in the Arab world. By combining a general introduction into Arab debates with their critical appraisal, one may prepare students for a general reflection on how they view and experience authenticity. This can lead to discussions on where they see it in everyday experience, whether it is in the pressure to develop an individual style, or questions about identity, or recent trends towards forms of (neo-)traditionalism. Or perhaps you could turn things around and devote a series of classes to the ideal of authenticity and how it has manifested itself as a crucial aspect of the modern context. In that case, contemporary Arab debates could function as a way of broadening the scope beyond Western discussions of what authenticity means and how it affects all of us in our day-to-day lives.
This is of course just one example. As I mentioned, there are many more debates in the Arab world that resonate with topics discussed elsewhere, including in Germany. Engaging with these global philosophical discourses is, as Peter Adamson has pointed out in a recent post on this blog, a necessity. In a globalized world, we need to take stock of how our own traditions are connected to others, both because it is good philosophical practice and because students rightfully demand to be taught about what has happened and what is happening outside the Western canon. In helping students explore these global debates, teachers will need to manage their expectations and remind them of how each philosophical debate is related to a specific context and how knowledge of this context is necessary for appreciating a debate at a deeper level. Teachers’ relative unfamiliarity with these debates, however, should not lead them to steer clear of Arab or any other non-Western philosophy. Rather, they should acknowledge their unfamiliarity, find links to what they and their students are familiar with, get them excited, and ask for help from me or any of my colleagues in exploring this new philosophical terrain.
About
Harald Viersen is an assistant professor in the department of Islamstudies at Radboud Universiteit, Nijmegen. He wrote his doctoral dissertation at the Philipps-Universität Marburg, which has just been published (open access) bearing the title „The Time of Turāth: Authenticity and Temporality in Contemporary Arab Thought.“ In addition, he has published articles on the work of the Moroccan philosophers Abd al-Rahman Taha and Muhammad Abid al-Jabiri, on existentialism in the Muslim world and on contemporary Arab thought generally. Besides researching contemporary Arab intellectuals, Harald has developed an interest in Arabic conceptual history, in particular ethical concepts reaching back into the 19th century, and in philosophy education in the Middle East. He is also busy exploring and teaching about problems of positionality in approaching different traditions of thought and he is interested in the question of how to apply philosophical perspectives in the study of religion
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