Iran's Troubled Modernity Debating Ahmad Fardid's Legacy The Global Middle East Series

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.

Part I. Ahmad Fardid and His Legacies: Introduction; Part II. Fardid's Life: 1. The Man and His Life; Part III. Conversations on Fardid's Life and Thought: 2. Hossein Nasr: for Fardid, Corbin was worthless, but, the Shah was great; 3. Daryush Ashuri: Fardid was not very religious; 4. Ramin Jahanbeglu: Fardid was at the center of Fardiddiyeh (Fardid and Fardiddiyeh); 5. Abbas Amanat: Fardid whom I came to know; 6. Ali Reza Meybodi: Fardid was 'Dante's Inferno'; 7. Behrouz Farnou: Fardid's thought was post-modern; 8. Ehsan Shari'ati: Fardid misunderstood Heidegger; 9. Seyyed Ali Mirfattah: 'I admired his anti-capitalism and his anti-Americanism'; 10. Mohammad Reza Jozi: Fardid's philosophy was not political; 11. Mansour Hashemi: Fardid pioneered post-Bergson philosophy in Iran; 12. Ataʼollah Mohajerani: philosophers need power; 13. Seyyed Javad Mousavi: Fardid was a great man, with many failings; 14. Abdolkarim Soroush: Fardid did not impress me at all.

Ali Mirsepassi is Albert Gallatin Research Excellence Professor of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies and director of the Iranian Studies Initiative at New York University. He is the co-editor, with Arshin Adib-Moghaddam, of The Global Middle East, a book series published by Cambridge University Press, and the author of Transnationalism in Iranian Political Thought (Cambridge, 2017), Political Islam, Iran and Enlightenment (Cambridge, 2011), Democracy in Modern Iran (2010) and Intellectual Discourses and Politics of Modernization (Cambridge, 2000). He also co-authored, with Tadd Fernee, Islam, Democracy, and Cosmopolitanism (Cambridge, 2014). He was a 2007–09 Carnegie Scholar and has received several awards, including a 2001 Best Researcher of the Year Award, a teaching award from Tehran University, and 2014 Award for Outstanding Service from the Institute for International Education Scholar Rescue Fund.