Does philosophy have the ability or qualifications to address the crises of the current Arab reality? This is the question that I tried to answer during the distinguished intellectual symposium organized last week by the Arab Thought Foundation and the Tunis Institute of Philosophy in the Tunisian capital, in the presence of an important number of those working in the philosophical field from the countries of the Maghreb. It seemed to me that the ideological trends that have characterized Arab thought since the 1940s and were consolidated following the outbreak of nationalist military revolutions in Syria, Egypt and Iraq, essentially took place outside the field of philosophical thinking. Although many of the pivotal concepts that have spread in contemporary Arab political discourse have deep philosophical backgrounds (such as renaissance, nation, freedom, feeling, awareness, etc.), the philosophical presence in the formation of this discourse was limited and marginal. The central question related to rational enlightenment and historical modernity was absent from this discourse, as was the issue of the civil political construction of the state.
Hence, it can be said – without hesitation – that the disconnect has worsened since the 1940s and 1950s between philosophical thought and the ideological context in the Arab arena. In its early days, Arab philosophy was dominated by metaphysical problems related to existence, the self, and transcendent consciousness, within the framework of the scholastic trends known in the European arena at the time (existentialism, personalism, phenomenology, etc.), and interest in topics of scientific thought began to increase with the entry into force of critical epistemological standards and analytical positivist categories. With the failure of the National Socialist Revolution model since the end of the sixties, the problems of enlightenment and modernity returned to Arab thought and entered forcefully into the philosophical field again. These transformations emerged in three pivotal questions:
– How can the Arab national project be rebuilt on solid, rational foundations that remove it from fragile ideological assumptions and sloganeering rhetoric, which means rethinking the topics of unity, identity, and historical destiny… from new starting points? In order to pave this new path, reference was made to the Hegelian tradition in exploring the complex problematic relationship between collective subjectivity, historical temporality, and state building.
– How can the liberal democratic perspective be absorbed into the core of the national project that relied on the ability of charismatic leadership and revolutionary violence to achieve the dream of Arab integration? What are the effects of this desired assimilation on the nature of the national state’s perception and on the pattern of regional strategic construction? – How can we return to the foundational problems regarding the issues of reform, enlightenment, and modernity, which were obscured by ideological issues for decades of the national revolutionary experience? Through analyzing the crises of the Arab system in its internal and regional dimensions, I concluded to see four basic tasks for philosophy in the Arab context in the future, which are:
Philosophy, insofar as it is, as Hegel defined it, “the introspection of the era through the concept,” must take into account the determinants of the current stage in which Arab existence is being reshaped in its political, societal, and historical components. In such foundational moments, the role of philosophy is doubled in that it is a conceptual practice that explores reality and seeks to change it at the same time. – Contemporary Arab philosophy has been able to largely get rid of the temptation of systemic ideologies that monopolized meaning and determined the compass of political and societal commitment for many decades. There is no doubt that this monetary gain can be the beginning of a dynamic, deep and comprehensive review of the entire intellectual system, a role that philosophy can play on a broad and serious scale.
– The idea of Arabism, which in the second half of the twentieth century formed the reference for the regional system and determined the paths of political action in the Arab countries, is still, we believe, a horizon suitable for exploration and practice. This idea has previously played two important historical roles: advancing the national liberation movement from colonialism and building the regional strategic system harmonious with the Afro-Asian project. Today, it is necessary to infuse this idea with new theoretical blood, among which may be the broad philosophical horizon inaugurated by post-colonial theories that have now had a strong presence in the Asian and African worlds. – Philosophical thinking, even if it necessarily starts from the specificities of the Arab situation in its political and societal dimensions, can only be crystallized theoretically and methodologically within the global, universal framework. This is the lesson that was absorbed by the first Arab Renaissance in the Middle Ages (the Abbasid Enlightenment according to Marwan Rashid’s statement or the Classical Enlightenment according to Leo Strauss’s term), and it is an inevitable choice in the future as well.
*Mauritanian academic
#Philosophy #current #Arab #reality