Content uploaded by Mehrzad Boroujerdi
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by Mehrzad Boroujerdi on May 09, 2019
Content may be subject to copyright.
Continuities and Discontinuities in Iranian Intellectual Thought
Abstract
Iranian intellectual history
After Chap. 1 outlined the theoretical framework specifying the need to explore geopolitical structures as well as cultures in the attempt to understand foreign policy, this chapter will explore Iran’s geopolitical imaginations, or geopolitical cultures, as predicated upon the country’s various political cultures, or politico-ideological formations, and their respective worldviews. Therefore, Part A will sketch out the historical roots of modern Iranian political culture, which was mainly shaped through the internal and external (mainly the encounter with colonialism) situation, in order to identify the most important politico-ideological formations (namely nationalism, Islamism and socialism). Then, the fate of these political cultures shall be briefly monitored throughout the initial years after the 1979 Iranian Revolution, where a process of Islamization took hold. Part B will provide an outline of the geopolitical imaginations (engâreh-e géopolitiques) that each of the afore-mentioned politico-ideological formations exhibit: namely nationalism, Islamism and Third-Worldism (Tiers-Mondisme). In doing so, the section highlights the geopolitical significance of an identity marker.
Freedom is essential for the blossoming of a truly democratic society, but how is the relation of religion and freedom to be understood in present-day Iran, which is ruled by a religious government and where debates over the extent of freedom and its compatibility with an Islamic state have gone unresolved for more than a decade? Leading Iranian intellectuals, a number of them clerics, some critics of the present Islamic regime, others, its ideologues, have discussed the issue of the compatibility of religion and freedom. This article proposes a typology applied to some discussions by a number of Iranian intellectuals on the compatibility or incompatibility of religion and freedom within a religious government.
ResearchGate has not been able to resolve any references for this publication.