Iran's troubled modernity: debating Ahmad Fardid's legacy

Ahmad Fardid (1910-94), the "anti-Western" philosopher known to many as the Iranian Heidegger, became the self-proclaimed philosophical spokesperson for the Islamic Republic, famously coining the term "Westoxification". Using new materials about Fardid's intellectual biography and interviews with thirteen individuals, Ali Mirsepassi pieces together the striking story of Fardid's life and intellectual legacy. Each interview in turn sheds light on Iran's twentieth-century intellectual and political self-construction and highlights Fardid's important role and influence in the creation of Iranian modernity. The Fardid phenomenon was unique to the Iranian story, and yet contributed to a broader twentieth-century Heideggerian tradition that marked the political destiny of other countries under a similar ideological sway. Through these accounts, Mirsepassi cuts to the nerve of how deadly political "authenticity movements" take hold of modern societies and spread their ideology. Combining a sociological framework with the realities of lived experience, he examines Iran's recent and astonishing upheavals, experiments, and mass mobilizations

This book continues my earlier study on the influence of the Heideggerian counter-Enlightenment in Iran. My last book, "Transnationalism in Iranian Political Thought," focused on Ahmad Fardid's thought, as part of the broader circulation of intellectual ideas to Iran (European counter-Enlightenment tradition), and the reception of Persian Islam to Europe (in Henry Corban's thought). The book explores the nature of these ideas and tradition as they travel back and forth. More specifically, I examined the ideological hazards of excessive anti-modernity, projected in the Gharbzadegi discourse (Westoxification) in Iran. I further discussed the social significance of politicized Erfan (Persian mysticism), or the desire for achieving "Eastern Spirituality", and the violently anti-democratic predicament of what Michel Foucault celebrated as the "politics of Spirituality." The current volume continues this important scholarly investigation, although in a rather different format. This new and complimentary book engages in a dialogue on Ahmad Fardid's intellectual legacy, by those who admire him, some who were once inspired by him but are now critical of his thinking, and others who may hold a more mixed and ambivalent view of Fardid and his ideas

Ahmad Fardid (1910-94), the 'anti-Western' philosopher known to many as the Iranian Heidegger, became the self-proclaimed philosophical spokesperson for the Islamic Republic, famously coining the term 'Westoxication'. Using new materials about Fardid's intellectual biography and interviews with thirteen individuals, Ali Mirsepassi pieces together the striking story of Fardid's life and intellectual legacy. Each interview in turn sheds light on Iran's twentieth-century intellectual and political self-construction and highlights Fardid's important role and influence in the creation of Iranian modernity. The Fardid phenomenon was unique to the Iranian story, and yet contributed to a broader twentieth-century Heideggerian tradition that marked the political destiny of other countries under a similar ideological sway. Through these accounts, Mirsepassi cuts to the nerve of how deadly political 'authenticity movements' take hold of modern societies and spread their ideology. Combining a sociological framework with the realities of lived experience, he examines Iran's recent and astonishing upheavals, experiments, and mass mobilizations