خوانش نسبت ديناميسم فلسفی و سیاسی در آرای «داريوش شايگان»
محورهای موضوعی : پژوهش سیاست نظری
بهرام اخوان کاظمی
1
*
,
فرزانه السادات کمیلی
2
1 - استاد تمام، گروه علوم سیاسی، دانشکده حقوق و علوم سیاسی، دانشگاه شیراز، ایران
2 - دانشجوی دکتری اندیشه سیاسی، دانشکده حقوق و علوم سیاسی، دانشگاه شیراز، ایران
کلید واژه: داریوش شایگان, دینامیسم فلسفی و سیاسی, انسان بینابین, انسان ایدئولوگ و سوژه بازیگوش.,
چکیده مقاله :
همخوانی یا عدم همخوانی نگرههای فلسفی و سیاسی در منظومۀ معرفتی متفکران، موضوع عمیقی است که نویسندگان را نسبت به تحلیل این مهم در آرای «داریوش شایگان» راغب ساخت. حیات اندیشهای شایگان در سه دوره صورتبندی و مابهازاهای فلسفی و سیاسی هر یک، واکاوی شده است. در این دینامیسم سهمرحلهای، شایگان نخست با نوشتن کتابهای «آسیا در برابر غرب»، «بتهای ذهنی و خاطره ازلی» و «کوربن، آفاق تفکر معنوی» و معرفی انسان بینابین، دغدغه خویش درباره مواجهۀ غرب و شرق را با تأکید بر هبوط معنویت مطرح نموده، باور دارد که تشیع، بنیادیترین عامل هویتبخش است. از اینرو روحانیت، مناسبترین افراد برای هدایت زندگی سیاسی هستند. شایگان دوم در کتابهای «انقلاب مذهبی چیست؟»، «نگاه شکسته» و «زیر آسمانهای جهان»، نگرانی بابت امتزاج ایدئولوژی و مذهب را در قالب انسان ایدئولوگ، بیان نموده، راه فرار از اسکیزوفرنی فرهنگی را «انسان تفکیکگر» معرفی میکند. در این دوره، رویههای ضد مارکسیستی و ضد انقلابی شایگان، خود را آشکار میسازد. شایگان سوم در «افسونزدگی جدید»، «آمیزش افقها» و «پنج اقلیم حضور» با به رسمیت شناختن اقتضائات عصر جهانی شدن، سوژۀ بازیگوش را به عنوان سوژهای که امکان درگذشتن از مرزها را دارد و دموکراسی را به سبب تأمین امکان گفتوگو و مدارا، بهترین نسخه موجود در عرصه سیاسی معرفی مینماید.
A Reading of the Relationship between
Philosophical and Political Dynamism
in the Thought of Darius Shayegan
Bahram Akhavan Kazemi*
Farzaneh Sadat Komeili**
The correspondence or lack of correspondence between philosophical and political paradigms within the epistemic constellation of thinkers is a profound issue that motivated the authors to examine this question in the thought of Darius Shayegan. Shayegan’s intellectual life is structured into three distinct periods, each of which—and its corresponding philosophical and political implications—has been analytically explored.
Within this three-stage dynamism, Shayegan first, through works such as Asia versus the West, Mental Idols and Eternal Memory, and Corbin: The Horizons of Spiritual Thought, introduces the notion of the “in-between human” and articulates his concern regarding the encounter between East and West, emphasizing the decline of spirituality. He maintains that Shi‘ism constitutes the most fundamental identity-forming factor; therefore, the clergy are regarded as the most suitable agents for guiding political life.
In the second phase, as reflected in What Is a Religious Revolution?, The Broken Gaze, and Under the Skies of the World, Shayegan expresses his concern over the fusion of ideology and religion through the figure of the “ideological human,”and identifies the“differentiating human” as a means of escaping cultural schizophrenia. During this period, Shayegan’s anti-Marxist and anti-revolutionary orientations become clearly evident.
In the third phase, articulated in New Enchantment, The Merging of Horizons, and Five Climates of Presence, Shayegan, by acknowledging the exigencies of the age of globalization, introduces the “playful subject” as a subject capable of transcending boundaries. He also presents democracy as the best available political model, insofar as it provides the conditions necessary for dialogue and tolerance.
Keywords: Darius Shayegan; philosophical and political dynamism; the in-between human; the ideological human; the playful subject.
Introduction
In intellectual–political studies, later thinkers, in comparison with earlier ones, often offer more accurate interpretations of contemporary developments, owing to their direct engagement with and lived experience of present-day exigencies. Among such late modern thinkers who possessed both a remarkable command of the treasury of human knowledge and a keen understanding of contemporaneity was the late Darius Shayegan.Darius Shayegan was a thinker with a free spirit who could not tolerate confinement within fixed and rigid frameworks, nor the abandonment of intellectual exploration. As he states in Under the Skies of the World: “I do not like to confine or bind myself within any domain whatsoever. I have always wished to pass from one boundary to another, for I constantly fear paths that are already trodden and worn. Any doctrine or teaching, insofar as it constitutes a closed system, suffocates me.”
In this article, the method of data collection is documentary research. The data-gathering instruments in the documentary method include all printed sources such as books, encyclopedias, journals, newspapers, weeklies, periodicals, dictionaries, printed interviews, academic journals, conference proceedings, indexed texts available in databases and on the internet, and any identifiable and citable source containing material related to Darius Shayegan.In order to explicate the trajectory of his thought, his views are structured into three distinct periods. The events of each period, the thinkers who inspired him, as well as the intellectual dimensions and political considerations characterizing each phase, will be examined and analyzed. Through this approach, the philosophical dynamism embedded in Shayegan’s thought will be elucidated.
The First Phase of Shayegan’s Thought (1960s–1970s)
In the first phase of his intellectual development, Shayegan’s principal intellectual references include Nietzsche, Heidegger, Jaspers, Tillich, Guénon, Ortega y Gasset, and Jung. His strong inclination toward mystical and spiritual discussions even led to his interest in Jung and the latter’s school of psychology. Shayegan studied with Allameh Tabataba’i, benefited from the teachings of Rafi‘i Qazvini and Mehdi Elahi Qomsha’i, and established close intellectual and personal relations with Seyyed Jalal Ashtiani and Seyyed Hossein Nasr. He also regularly attended the sessions of Allameh Tabataba’i and Henry Corbin.Shi‘i thought and Islamic mysticism constituted the most important foundations shaping Shayegan’s intellectual outlook during this period. Asia versus the West, centered on the dualism between East and West, became Shayegan’s most significant work in the first phase of his thought. This was perhaps due to the prevailing anti-Western atmosphere within society, which welcomed any work written even in critique of the West. Consequently, the West was evaluated as an aggressive civilization that endangered our heritage and therefore had to be avoided rather than embraced.Shayegan elaborates on the notion of the interregnum as the historical destiny of ancient civilizations in their encounter with modernity. He argues that a double illusion, itself born of two assumptions, manifests in the two negative forms of Westoxication and self-alienation, thereby giving rise to the period of interregnum. Shayegan initially conceptualizes his central concern in terms of the decline of spirituality. Since nihilism is a global process that has also penetrated the East, it has led to the decline of Eastern spirituality as well.Shayegan’s initial solution to the crisis of spirituality is resistance to modernity and its essence, namely nihilism. Our task in this condition is to safeguard identity, primordial memory, and inherited tradition against the onslaught of Western thought; to preserve the core of identity, the entrusted burden, and complete fidelity to it—in other words, to preserve Asia in the face of the West.
The Second Phase of Shayegan’s Thought (1980s)
Following the victory of the Islamic Revolution, Shayegan came to realize that ideology is the illegitimate offspring of the Enlightenment, and that the new form of despotism does not arise from religion, tradition, culture, or even the shari‘a, but rather from the ideologicalization of tradition—an essentially modern and profoundly contemporary phenomenon. While acknowledging the flexibility and adaptability of cultures and civilizations, he rejected the view that the West was in decline and should therefore be abandoned. Instead, he arrived at the conviction that “today, the problems of the West are no longer confined to the West; they have become planetary problems. They are our problems as well. The value of our age lies precisely in the fact that crises can only be resolved through the convergence of efforts from all sides.”Shayegan’s understanding of modernity takes the form of critical thought, which, while recognizing the achievements and advantages of this fundamental transformation, does not overlook its shortcomings. “Cultural schizophrenia” and “withdrawal into the shell of the self,” two terms coined by Shayegan, refer to the condition of inhabiting two ontological realms simultaneously and being unable to distinguish between them. Especially in an age of plurality and cultural hybridity, in which new ideas constantly overflow, the preservation of a coherent sense of existence becomes increasingly difficult. From Shayegan’s perspective, the problem of non-Western societies lies in conceptual confusion and cultural schizophrenia, whereas the problem of Western societies is the crisis of spirituality.Shayegan characterizes the human of this second phase as the “ideological human,” one who unconsciously merges two contradictory epistemic paradigms. He refers to this unconscious act of fusion as unconscious Westoxication. In Shayegan’s view, “these two terms (revolution and Islam) have no ontological kinship with one another. Each moves within a different galaxy. Their points of reference and the axes around which they revolve possess distinct colors and qualities. Revolution is a human, historical, Western, and negative idea and experience, whereas Islam and the Abrahamic tradition are grounded in submission to the One God, derived from revelation and prophecy, and regard the human being as shaped by an eternal will and a pre-creation plan, bearing the vicegerency and the entrusted burden.”
The Third Phase of Shayegan’s Thought (1990s–2000s)
In the third phase, Shayegan, earlier than most Iranian thinkers, turns his attention to the “Other,” which he regards as the foundation and cornerstone of the future world. For Shayegan, dialogue constitutes the sole path toward realizing such a world. In New Enchantment, he comes to terms with the condition of cultural schizophrenia and, in embracing pluralism, expresses hope that spirituality can be preserved within modernity—a spirituality that no longer necessarily belongs to Iran, Islam, or the East. “Cultural mosaic” is the term Darius Shayegan employs to describe the cultural condition of societies in the contemporary world. The concept of the cultural mosaic refers to the expansion of communications, interactions, and cultural exchanges in light of the growth and spread of technological and communicative tools. According to Shayegan, modernity addresses only the legal, political, and economic frameworks of human life, while the inner dimensions of existence remain beyond its reach. He thus considers Eastern mysticism as a potential solution to the problems of the modern world. Modernity has neglected vast areas of our existential domain, and the spirituality entrusted within religions is capable of filling this void. Shayegan states that there is nothing surprising about his belief in democracy; he supports democracy because he knows of no alternative to it. Moreover, as someone who embraces multiplicity of thought, he values diverse opinions and their plurality. “A single party,” he remarks, “resembles a single political soul, which, no matter how elevated or noble, fills me with fear and trembling. I harbor a natural aversion to any reductive or simplifying tendency.”
Conclusion
In conclusion, and by way of synthesis, it should be stated that by presenting a threefold formulation of the intellectual dynamism of Darius Shayegan, this article situates him, in the first phase, as a thinker inspired by figures such as Nietzsche, Heidegger, Jung, Henry Corbin, Allameh Tabataba’i, and Seyyed Hossein Nasr—an influence that strengthened his inclination toward mysticism and his critical stance toward modernity. One of Shayegan’s most fundamental intellectual concerns during this period is the decline of spirituality in the West and its critical examination. The “in-between human” is Shayegan’s own term for a subject situated in a condition that is neither purely Eastern nor purely Western, yet simultaneously both Eastern and Western. Politically, Shayegan in this phase maintains that the ever-flowing spring of Shi‘ism has historically served as the principal source of Iranian identity and that today as well, the guardians of this spring—namely the clergy—are entrusted with the administration of the political sphere. The views of this intellectual phase are most clearly articulated in the works Asia versus the West, Mental Idols and Eternal Memory, and Corbin: The Horizons of Spiritual Thought.
In the second phase of Shayegan’s intellectual life, his central concern shifts from the East–West dichotomy to the tradition–modernity dichotomy. In this reorientation, he distances himself from figures such as Jalal Al-e Ahmad and Ali Shariati, while maintaining a clear separation from Marxist and revolutionary thought. The most significant event shaping this second phase is the Islamic Revolution. Shayegan subjects this event to profound questioning in the book What Is a Religious Revolution?, arguing that revolution and religion are incommensurable concepts whose coexistence is practically impossible, and identifying ideologization as the principal pathology of their forced conjunction. The duality of the ideological human and the differentiating human is emphasized by Shayegan to underscore the dangers of ideology and its diffusion within the social realm. Subsequently, The Broken Gaze and Under the Skies of the World further complete the contours of this second intellectual phase by introducing concepts such as cultural schizophrenia and conceptual confusion to explain the prevailing condition.
The third and final phase of Shayegan’s intellectual trajectory is shaped by postmodern influences. Through works such as New Enchantment, The Merging of Horizons, and Five Climates of Presence, Shayegan seeks to highlight the exigencies of the age of globalization and the dissolution of boundaries in thought, art, and technology. In such a world, the playful subject emerges—a subject constantly engaged in boundary-crossing experiences and more exposed than ever to encounters with the 'Other'. In this period, Shayegan explicitly affirms the effectiveness of democracy and, despite its shortcomings, regards it as the best available model, insofar as it offers greater possibilities for dialogue and tolerance on a global scale than any alternative.
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*Corresponding Author: Full Pprofessor, Department of Political Science, Faculty of Law and Political Sciences, Shiraz University, Iran.
**Ph.D. Student of political thought, Department of Political Science, Faculty of Law and Political Sciences, Shiraz University, Iran.
0000-0002-6555-5651
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