Examining the concept of modernity in the thought of Dariush Shayegan and Seyed Hossein Nasr
الموضوعات :Ehsan Ayoobi 1 , Fereshteh Sadat Etefagh Far 2 , Amir Dabiri Mehr 3
1 - Department of Political Science, South Tehran Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran
2 - Department of History, Yadegar Emam Branch, Islamic Azad University, Shahre-Rey, Iran
3 - Department of Political Science, Central Tehran Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran
الکلمات المفتاحية: Modernity, Tradition, West, Dariush Shayegan, Seyed Hossein Nasr,
ملخص المقالة :
The contrast between tradition and modernity has always been criticized throughout the histo-ry of political thought, and many thinkers have presented their views in this field in the West-ern and Islamic worlds. Meanwhile, the concept of modernity in the thought of Dariush Shayegan as a free thinker and Seyed Hossein Nasr as a traditional thinker and theorist is ex-amined in this research. The theoretical framework of the research is a combination of Carl Gustav Jung's collective psychoanalysis and other hermeneutics theories. This research aims to answer the question, what is the approach of Dariush Shayegan and Seyed Hossein Nasr in facing modernity? The findings of the research also indicate that Dariush Shayegan as an Ira-nian thinker and intellectual underwent important changes during his intellectual life, and for this reason, his early views have very significant differences with his later opinions. On the other hand, Seyed Hossein Nasr, like Shayegan, is an ardent critic and opponent of modernity, and he believes that reforming religion leads to the deconstruction of religion and that there is no end except secularism and anti-religion. But his full-length defense of religious pluralism makes it difficult to make a final judgment about his thoughts. The method of descriptive an-alytical research and the method of collecting data is documentary.
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International Journal of Political Science
ISSN: 2228-6217
Vol 13, No 3, Sep 2023, (pp. 77 - 98)
Examining the concept of modernity in the thought of Dariush Shayegan and Seyed Hossein Nasr
Ehsan Ayoobi 1, Fereshteh Sadat Etefagh Far2*, Amir Dabiri Mehr3
1Department of Political Science, South Tehran Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran
2*Department of History, Yadegar Emam Branch, Islamic Azad University, Shahre-Rey, Iran
3Department of Political Science, Central Tehran Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran
Received: 17 July 2023 ; Accepted: 20 Sep 2023
Abstract
The contrast between tradition and modernity has always been criticized throughout the history of political thought, and many thinkers have presented their views in this field in the Western and Islamic worlds. Meanwhile, the concept of modernity in the thought of Dariush Shayegan as a free thinker and Seyed Hossein Nasr as a traditional thinker and theorist is examined in this research. The theoretical framework of the research is a combination of Carl Gustav Jung's collective psychoanalysis and other hermeneutics theories. This research aims to answer the question, what is the approach of Dariush Shayegan and Seyed Hossein Nasr in facing modernity? The findings of the research also indicate that Dariush Shayegan as an Iranian thinker and intellectual underwent important changes during his intellectual life, and for this reason, his early views have very significant differences with his later opinions. On the other hand, Seyed Hossein Nasr, like Shayegan, is an ardent critic and opponent of modernity, and he believes that reforming religion leads to the deconstruction of religion and that there is no end except secularism and anti-religion. But his full-length defense of religious pluralism makes it difficult to make a final judgment about his thoughts. The method of descriptive analytical research and the method of collecting data is documentary.
Keyword: Modernity, Tradition, West, Dariush Shayegan, Seyed Hossein Nasr
*Corresponding Author’s Email: Fereshtehetefagh@yahoo.com |
Introduction
The glorious Islamic revolution of Iran was a divine breath in the soulless body of humanity, which gave it a new life, awakened the sleepers of the earthly world, and frightened the dead. The Islamic revolution was not the end of the road, but the beginning of the journey of believers towards a good life on a social scale. The realization of a "community of faith" in the age of domination by Western material civilization will be possible only with the flow of the spirit and meaning of the Islamic Revolution in the deep layers of today's complex societies, which requires "religious rationality". A rationality that can regulate and design the sides and dimensions of different areas of social life on the axis of divine knowledge and values and promise the "new Islamic civilization". The necessity of achieving this rationality - which is based on the basis of the Islamic revolution and is heading towards a new civilization.
Traditionalism and the return to religious values have always been criticized by modernity in the field of religious and political ideas, and the opposite has also existed throughout the history of political ideas. And reaching a balance point and a middle limit can be one of the ideals of a religious and Islamic system. In Iran, in the post-constitutional revolution era, writers and thinkers such as Mirza Fateh Ali Akhundzadeh, Mirza Malkam Khan, Mirza Agha Khan Kermani, etc.; In contrast to traditionalists such as Ashtiyani, Mehdi Mohaghegh, Haeri Yazdi, etc., there has always been a place for debate and controversy regarding Iranian and Islamic political ideas. And after entering the 20th century, presenting the ideas of tradition and modernity took a more serious form.
Among a generation of Iranian intellectuals who entered Iran's intellectual and cultural arena in the late 60s and early 70s; Dariush Shayegan had unique characteristics that distinguish him from other intellectuals of his generation, such as Sayyed Hossein Nasr, Reza Davari Ardakani, Dariush Ashuri, Ehsan Naraghi, etc. Of course, some of these intellectuals share some of these characteristics with him. But what makes Shayegan unique is the combination of characteristics such as a balanced philosophical approach towards the West, attention to the whole of the East, his basic attention to modern and traditional literature and art, conceptualization and staying away from politics in one person. Shayegan can be considered an intellectual who was both a critic of modernity and a revivalist of eastern traditions, and during his intellectual life he was also a realistic thinker. He is one of the important theorists in the field of links and connections between Eastern ideas, especially Iranian identity and Western concepts, and his works in both Persian and French languages are considered important books in the field of Eastern and Western philosophy and mysticism. He is not an official philosopher or an intellectual, but he had a fundamental relationship with Iranian wisdom, and he can be called a thinker of cultures who studied the West and was fond of the East and Iran (Pour Hassan, 2019). Seyed Hossein Nasr, like other traditionalists, is among the serious and staunch opponents of modernity, in his opinion, tradition is always a sacred matter and no tradition is man-made. Sunnah takes the sacred order and transmits it, applies it and makes it visible and tangible through various ways and tools. Therefore, the tradition and the holy matter are inseparable, and just as the tradition is incompatible with modernism and modernity, the current era is the era of new ignorance, in which the idols of false schools must be destroyed. He considers the motivation of the traditionalists in serious opposition to modernity, their sense of commitment to the truth of tradition and compassion and benevolence for human beings, and he sees criticism of modernity based on metaphysical and religious principles as an action in line with the most basic Islamic virtues.
Seyyed Hossein Nasr believes that the traditional world with all its dimensions was a defensible system and modernity was the greatest calamity that has befallen mankind in recent centuries. He considers the tradition as an example in which all the affairs of the world and man find meaning by belonging to the divine and the supreme being. He considers the new civilization a failed civilization that cannot have hope for the future of humanity with its continuation. Seyyed Hossein Nasr believes that modern civilization, as it has developed since the Renaissance in the Western world, is a failed experience. Failed in the full sense of the word. So much so that the soul doubts the possibility of a future for mankind in search of other ways (Nasr, 2003: p. 49). Accordingly, he believes that the first duty of all thinkers of spiritual and religious traditions such as Islam is to criticize modernism. He considers criticizing modernism as a divine command and the duty of all divine and Islamic thinkers. Nasr is not satisfied with only criticizing the results and negative consequences of modernism and considers its theoretical foundations to be shaky. In his opinion, the forgetting of divine reality, the desecration of human knowledge, the replacement of God-centeredness with humanism, and the lack of spirituality are among the basic criticisms of Western civilization. This contrast between tradition and modernity has always been the concern of the governments regarding the construction of political systems based on religious and political ideas, and in Iran, since the constitutional revolution, the contrast between tradition and modernity has continued until now. that these two theorists have criticized tradition and modernity. Seyyed Hossein Nasr has acknowledged somewhere that the first duty of spiritual traditionalists is to criticize modernism, and this criticism towards traditionalists has also been made reciprocally by Dariush Shayegan.
History
Dariush Shayegan, an Iranian thinker, thinker and Indologist, was born on the 4th of Bahman 1313 in Tehran (Qezelsofla, 2017: p. 405). His father (Mohammad Rahim) and his grandfather Shia were merchants of Azerbaijan (Salmas and Tabriz) (Ferasat khah, 2019). His mother's name was "Abashidze Bagration" and she was from an aristocratic and old Georgian family, originally from Batumi, belonging to the (Russian-Caucasian) culture, and her main language was Georgian, she also knew Russian and Ottoman Turkish, and she was a Sunni. Their home nurse (nanny) was Russian. He was an Armenian music and language teacher and a Zoroastrian family doctor. Their driver is an Assyrian. Shayegan also learned French as a child (Ferasat khah, 2019). Shayegan attended the French school (Saint Louis) in Tehran since he was a child; A school run by Lazari priests. It was in this school that Shayegan slowly got acquainted with the features and foundations of modern civilization (Arshad, 2019).
Shayegan's father sent him to England at the age of 15 and spent his high school years at Badingham College. In 1333, he went to the University of Geneva to study medicine, but soon changed his field and studied philosophy and political science (Boroujerdi, 1998: p. 221). At the same time, by learning Sanskrit, he continued his studies at the Sorbonne University about Hinduism and Sufism under the guidance of "Henry Corbin" and succeeded in obtaining a doctorate in Indian studies and comparative philosophy (Qezelsofla, 2017: p. 405).
Shayegan used to play the violin before traveling to the West. In the West, he got acquainted with new types of music. Dariush was very fond of reading and according to himself "he read everything he could get his hands on"; He learned English in class under the supervision of a private teacher. And he also had a private teacher to familiarize himself with Iranian literature and read Golestan Saadi. Shayegan's life and personal experiences, as well as his familiarity with several languages, as well as his companionship and dealings with diverse people, have made him a multifaceted and multicultural thinker. At the same time, the experience of intellectual developments and theoretical turns of this great philosopher shows his courage in criticizing his previous thoughts and beliefs, and this made him an up-to-date and dynamic thinker. Shayegan continued to think, research and write until the last years of his life and never stopped trying to understand the intellectual, philosophical and cultural relations of the world around him.
Investigating and studying the complexities and various dimensions of his thought can only be understood and interpreted with the help of examining the evolution of his intellectual and spiritual life, and for this reason, it seems necessary to study his life for a better understanding of Shayegan's thought. Because Shayegan cannot be known outside and separate from the political developments of Iranian society and individual and collective experiences in the confrontation between tradition and modernity in Iranian society (Shayegan, 1997: p. 78-79). Shayegan should be studied in two periods of thought; Whenever things are said from the East and the West, it means the first intellectual period of Shayegan, which is not discussed in this article. But by discussing modernity, we mean his second period of thought, which accepts modernity and thinks in its terms.
He was born in 1933 in front of Seyed Hossein Nasr. His father, Seyyed Waliullah Nasr, was one of the famous political and cultural figures. He is a descendant of Sheikh Fazlullah Nouri from his mother's side. Many of Nasr's ancestors were Sufis. At the age of twelve, Nasr went to America and studied at Peddy Boarding School in New Jersey, and after finishing Peddy School, he went to Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and continued his studies in physics. His intellectual transformation began when, during his studies, he got acquainted with the works of " René Guénon" and realized that he could not reveal the truths of the world with physics. He felt kinship with the words of René Guénon (1886-1951) and his criticisms of the new philosophy and the modern world, and found himself lost in these teachings. Then he studied the works of " Ananda Coomaraswamy" (1947-1877) and " Frithjof Schuon" (1907-1998) and completed his knowledge of "traditionalism" and became inclined towards it (Nasr, 2006). After receiving his bachelor's degree from MIT, Nasr He went to Harvard University and got a master's degree in geology and geophysics, and then he completed his doctorate in the history of science in the summer of 1337 at Harvard and returned to Iran in the fall of the same year. He wrote his first book called "Science and Civilization in Islam" at the age of 25 at Harvard University and also published his doctoral thesis called "An Introduction to Cosmological Doctrines in Islam". At the age of 25, Nasr was hired as an assistant professor of philosophy and history of science at Tehran University, and in the following years, at the age of 30, he became a full professor and at the age of 35, he became the head of the faculty of literature. In contrast to the prevailing positivist atmosphere in Tehran University, he introduced and revived the tradition of Islamic philosophy and designed and implemented the course "Islamic Philosophy and Education". In addition to teaching at the university, he studied and taught traditional subjects such as philosophy and mysticism and benefited from professors such as Allameh Tabatabai, Seyyed Jalaluddin Ashtiani and Abdul Hossein Qazvini. During these days, all of his actions were in line with his intellectual project called the revival of the philosophical tradition, in which he also benefited from cooperation and consensus with Corbin. He also founded the Royal Society of Philosophy in Iran and assumed its presidency. Izutsu, Karban and Nasr were the main professors who taught there. In November 1351, Nasr became the head of Ariyamehr University of Technology (now Sharif) from Tehran University's vice-chancellor, and then in November 1353, he became the head of Farah Pahlavi's special office.
Theoretical Framework
Shayegan is a thinker with diverse intellectual roots that understanding his intellectual literature requires knowing the foundations and intellectual and philosophical sources that influence him. On the one hand, he is fascinated by the mystical and spiritual heritage of the East, and on the other hand, he has complete mastery over Western culture and its foundations. Shayegan presents a synthesis of Heidegger's critical thought to modernity and redefines the spiritual heritage of the East with Heidegger's philosophical hermeneutics. Of course, Shayegan's intellectual tendency is a combination of Jung's collective psychoanalysis and Heidegger's ontology, which is the basis of the revival of Eastern spirituality against the domination of modernity over non-European cultures.
In the later periods of his intellectual life, Shayegan was forced to leave Iran and live in France due to the influence of Iran's political and cultural developments, and his mind underwent many changes during this period, and his approach to modernity and its world heritage changed. Inspired by Gilles Deleuze's ontological pluralism, Shayegan became inclined towards cultural pluralism and by using Deleuze's rhizomatic theory, he tried to provide a hybrid approach between the spiritual culture of the East and the cultural heritage of modernity on a global scale. Spirituality, which creates a kind of "feeling of peace" for a person, includes a range of meanings and is not the same according to experts. For spirituality, there are various terms that include the following meanings: interiority, truth, the world of meaning, position, divine grace, the concept of moral perfection, beauty, life, and remembrance of God (Abedi Jafari and Rastegar, 2007, p. 118).
Orientalists view the East as partial and fragmented, while the East is a cultural whole and has a single concept despite the ethnic diversity and political independence of the parts. According to archeological documents, the great society of the East has a common and unified culture, and its differences and contradictions are among the internal issues of a great and unified society.
The Orient has been the cradle of great civilizations and religions; This is a well-known belief that has been stated in numerous historical, archaeological and cultural sources. The geographical territory of the East includes from North Africa to Sind and from Central Asia to the Indian Ocean, but the concept of the East still does not have a single concept and the common points of the inhabitants of this land are not clear (Javadi, 2013: p.3). Shayegan was also a thinker who looked at the world through the window of the East and especially Iranian spirituality. In the sense of an identity for Shayegan, "being Iranian and at the same time not being Iranian" considered a special intellectual and spiritual world. Paying attention to spirituality remained an integral part of Shayegan's thought and belief in all periods of his intellectual life, and Shayegan was always a spiritual thinker and interested in spirituality, especially the spiritual heritage of the East, which arose from the deep and complex religious and mystical traditions of the East.
One of the most important intellectual pillars of Shayegan, which is effective in his understanding of the Eastern heritage, is the Jungian approach to the concept of myth and collective unconscious. Collective unconscious is Jung's most important achievement in the field of depth psychology. He considers the collective unconscious to be a deep ocean on which self-awareness remains like an insignificant boat. Jung believed that: the personal unconscious relies on a deeper layer that is not acquired and personal, but innate and innate. I call this deeper layer the collective unconscious. Therefore, I have chosen a collective name for it, because it is a part of the universal unconscious that is different from the personal soul (Jung, 1960: pp. 3-4).
Jung believes that the collective unconscious, which is located at the deepest level of the psyche, is unknown to the individual; Because it is not acquired by the individual, nor is it the result of his personal experience, but it is innate and universal, and unlike the individual psyche, it has contents and behaviors that are more or less the same everywhere and for everyone. Therefore, the collective unconscious forms a common ground that has a super-individual nature and exists in each of us (Jung, 1989: p. 149).
Shayegan's desired mythological insight leads him to understand tradition based on eternal memory (collective unconscious) in the East. For him, the eternal memory is the traditions and cultures that have been attacked and subdued by modernity, and what gives the recovery of these cultures the opportunity to continue living and flourishing in the modern era is cultural modernity. In this dual opposition of eternal memory/cultural modernity, Shayegan abandons cultural modernity and focuses his thoughts on the restoration of traditional cultural identity (Haqdar, 2006: p. 52).
Shayegan was one of the people who participated in Fardidiye's meetings, and he considers those meetings to be a living laboratory of distress and anxiety that ruled his mind at that time. In any case, he got familiar with Heidegger's thoughts from Fardid district and experienced returning to the West at some point in his life through Heidegger's channel. In the later periods of his intellectual and philosophical life, Shayegan distanced himself from Fardid's Heideggerian attitude and even later described him as such; "Innate rioter", with "sparks of genius and deep hatred"; "The insidious and poisonous slanderer of people" and his circle is "the darkness of hatred and enmity and the volcano of feelings" (Shayegan, 1995: p. 78-79).
Of course, Heidegger's interpretation of East and West in Shayegan's thought was not only a product of his discussions with Seyed Ahmed Fardid, but Shayegan's influence on the French philosopher Henri Corbin in his tendency towards Martin Heidegger is undeniable. Corbin was strongly influenced by Heidegger's intellectual and philosophical teachings, and on the other hand, his contribution in introducing Heidegger to the French is not hidden from anyone. Because Corbin is the first translator of Martin Heidegger's works into French. But what makes Corbin a more attractive thinker is that we Iranians' understanding of Heidegger also passed through Corbin's filter in the beginning and for many years. He lived part of his life in Iran and the Middle East.
Corbin's influence on Shayegan was such that, according to Seyed Javad Tabatabai, an Iranian researcher, Shayegan represents Corbin-Heideggerian ideas in Iranian culture. Shayegan's attachment to the circle around Corbin was such that two years before the revolution, he was called a man with a magic lamp; And after the revolution, he spoke of him as an old man who was the beginning of the spiritual movement to bridge the gap between traditional and modern Iran (Shayegan, 2013: p.39). In September of the year when the revolution was taking place in Iran, Shayegan appeared on the bed of the holder of the magic lamp; While he knew: " Corbin's imminent death will coincide with the end of a world" (Shayegan, 2013: p. 55-65).
The ups and downs life of Dariush Shayegan and the various intellectual and cognitive experiences he faced during his life made him a unique intellectual. Shayegan is one of the few Iranian thinkers who has a thought beyond the intellectual and cultural geography of Iran, and he can undoubtedly be considered a cosmopolitan philosopher with Iranian intellectual and cultural origins. His knowledge and studies include a wide range from Indian religions to Western classical and modern and postmodern philosophies to Islamic mysticism and modern Western literature and novels.
On the other hand, Seyyed Hossein Nasr, like Shayegan, was influenced by the anti-Western atmosphere of Iran in the 60s and 70s, and was pushed towards traditionalism and Islamic-Shiite mysticism. Nasr, who has not experienced life in Iran after the victory of the Islamic Revolution, continues to criticize the West in the heart of the West. In his opinion, the current era is the era of modern ignorance, in which the idols of false schools must be destroyed (Nasr, 2006: p. 284). Accordingly, he believes that the first duty of all thinkers of spiritual and religious traditions such as Islam is to criticize modernism (Nasr, 2006: p. 300).
According to this approach, modernism is a special attitude to the world that started in the renaissance period. What is called humanism, rationalism, and the period of renaissance, denies the absolute and ultimate truth that transcends the level of humans, and the divine system descends into the human system. Modernism itself takes man as "absolute" and gives man an absolute aspect in a sense (Nasr, 2006: p. 260). From their point of view, modernism does not mean transformation at all, but a special worldview and philosophy that is based on the negation of the divine worldview and removing God from the center of reality and placing man in his place. It means replacing the narrative command of man instead of God's kingdom and therefore paying special attention to the individual and individualism and the various abilities of human beings, including intellect and senses. Therefore, the foundation of modernism's knowledge and epistemology methods is based either on rationalism or on empiricism, and this school makes the values of earthly man the highest set of values and a standard for everything (Nasr, 2006: p. 298).
In the Islamic view, man is the agent or caliph on earth and his slave. These two aspects together make the fundamental nature of man. As a servant of God, man must be obedient to His will and providence... and as God's agency or caliphate on earth, he must be active. Man is a bridge between property and property and a mediator and a tool through which God's providence is realized and crystallized in this world (Nasr, 2005: p. 56). From the point of view of Seyyed Hossein Nasr, the fact that many Eastern countries, especially Islamic countries, have not learned from the fate of the West and repeat its mistakes, is a tragedy that has afflicted the Eastern world, especially Islam (Nasr, 2006: p. 43). Now we will discuss the views of these two thinkers regarding modernity.
The concept of modernity in the thought of Dariush Shayegan and Seyed Hossein Nasr:
The modernism movement emerged in the 19th century, i.e., 1848 and the 1880s. Modernism spread throughout the continent of Europe and reached prosperity and activity in different times and countries. According to the vast majority of writers and thinkers, the peak and excellence of modernism is from 1910 to 1930. This movement appeared sporadically in Russia in the years before the Russian Revolution, in Germany in the 1890s and again in the pre-war years almost from 1908, in America after 1912, and in France, and after 1939 it went downhill. First, a definition of modernity should be provided: modernity means modernity, newness, and freshness, which was first used in the works of Jean-Jacques Rousseau in the 18th century, and after him, it became common in the works of many writers of that era. In general, modernity is the current or trend governing the new civilization of the West in intellectual, cultural, scientific, economic, political and social fields; which separates from religious teachings and focuses on placing man and relying on his all-round freedom, as well as trusting human reason and giving authenticity to the individual, aims to analyze all matters including nature, supernatural, values, etc. And with the idea of permanent and all-round change and transformation of human life, it negates everything that happens in front of it, such as religion, customs and other traditions.
In his second intellectual period, Shayegan, unlike the previous period, did not believe in the decline of the West, he abandoned the assumption of the cultural and political decline of the West and believed that modernity has become the inevitable destiny of mankind and is no longer the absolute property of the West. The opposition between East and West has no meaning anymore, but there are universal values that are the birth of Western culture and therefore modern, which cannot be ignored (Shayegan, 1995, pp. 89-90). He considers modernity as a global discourse that has the ability to refine and refine other discourses and shape them based on its own rules. Shayegan starts with the book of mental idols and eternal memory and continues with the book of Asia against the West regarding the introduction of modernity and the analysis and description of the problem. His basic question can be summarized in two questions (Who are we? and where are we?) (Kaji, 1999: p. 68). Regarding the questions raised, he considers the geographical area (us) to be the collection of Asian civilizations and cultures and excludes Latin American and African countries from this circle. Shayegan considers Asia as the axis and centrality, which is placed in front of civilization and the West and faces it. Shayegan is familiar with Western culture and art and knows the major languages of the world. In addition to Iranian civilization, he is considered a famous Indologist and knows Indian civilization as well. In addition, by learning the Arabic language, he got to know the Islamic components in Iranian-Islamic civilization and mastered it. These tools helped Shayegan in accomplishing a great work (Oriental and Western studies) and finding the connection between the two at the micro and macro levels (Kaji, 1999: p. 69).
Shayegan believes that modernity is lifeless in many ways, modernity lacks soul, lacks those strong emotions that make the heart tremble. Although it is necessary, inseparable and unavoidable, it has many gaps and holes; For example, where is the place of the mystical allegories of poets and mystics, the place of the hereafter that enables the negative method of mystical knowledge in opposition to analytical awareness, in this speech? Where can we find the insight of the soul that gives life to our inner life and enriches it with its magical essence (Shayegan, 2001: p. 31)?!
Shayegan's approach to modernity was formed in the 1350s in a situation where modern European civilization was in a special situation. Under the influence of the conditions of the world, modern man is in a state of depression after world wars, fascism, Nazism, Stalinism, and mechanization; He blames himself for how I passed all the foundations and values of the Sunnah and was content with my own reason and free will, but the result was not a good world. With the same free will, the modern man started his severe criticism after the European Enlightenment era and with the freed capacities of his new genius. This state was the result of the moral conscience of modern man (Ferasat khah, 2019: p. 182).
In this era, Shayegan is largely influenced by the anti-Western Heideggerian-Fardid atmosphere that dominated Iran's intellectuals in the 60s and 70s. Of course, we should not exaggerate this effectiveness. Because he himself was aware of many weaknesses of Fardid's approach in facing the West and modernity and modern European civilization. Shayegan can be considered a critic of Farid in this regard. Regarding Fardid and his method, he says clearly in one of his interviews: Fardid was a strange combination. Of course, I didn't know him very well, I never understood what he was saying. Sometimes a few sparks were revealed in his words. What surprised me in Fardid's words was his general ignorance of the historical breaks between civilizations, as if he wanted to tie the sky to a string with his magician's gaze from above the centuries. Of course, I am indebted to him: he taught me to avoid confusion. I should consider the historical gaps and distance myself from the philosophical alchemies in which shamanism, metaphysics, mysticism, and linguistics are mixed and glazed together until it is not clear what kind of confusion will emerge. In fact, in the context of Luqman, who learned politeness from the rude, I learned from him a negative and complete image of what not to do (Shayegan, 2016: p.8).
Modernity is considered as a single and indivisible whole whose parts cannot be separated from each other; And for example, one cannot select a part of it under the title of technique and technology as a positive aspect of modern civilization and leave other parts as an unfavorable aspect and incompatible with the cultural standards of our society. The threat that embraces modernity and its achievements is manifested in a double illusion; An illusion that is the result of two types of ignorance; First, ignorance of the historical fate of modernity and second, ignorance of the nature of the traditions of one's society, the result of this double illusion is westernization and alienation from oneself, which leads to the formation of a kind of transition period (Shayegan, 1977: p.8).
Like Fardid, Shayegan considers the essence of modern western civilization to be nothingness. And he believes that modern civilization has given an exceptional position in the history of mankind. By exceptional, I mean a special feature that cannot be returned to other civilizations and forms of civilization. By reviewing the entire history of this thought, we realize the existence of a continuous movement of metamorphoses, qualitative changes in this civilization, which is hidden in the movement of its development. A movement that can be considered as a linear development in time or as a decline and decline of spiritual and metaphysical values, or as a kind of endless progress or as a kind of increasing nihilism (Shayegan, 1990: pp. 221-220).
Shayegan used to say that our long-term study of the nature of Western thought is a unique and exceptional phenomenon on the planet in terms of dynamism, diversity, richness of content, and mesmerizing power. This made us aware of the fact that the course of Western thought has been towards the gradual invalidation of some of the beliefs that constitute the spiritual heritage of Asian civilizations (Shayegan, 1977: p. 109). In discussing the state of civilizations, he reads modernity with elements of absurdity and from Nietzsche-Heidegger's point of view; According to him, in the conditions where ancient civilizations are living in the period of timelessness and modern western civilization has also suffered nihilism (Haqdar, 2006: p. 64). According to Shayegan, during his early intellectual life, modernity is a kind of regressive course of man that has degraded man in the ranks of his humanity. He believed that: There has been a movement in the intellectual transformation of the West; from top to bottom; From reason to instinct; From eschatology and resurrection to historicism; From spirituality to wisdom; From the maddened absorption of a human being who is lost in the absolute, to the increasing self-discovery of an over-inflated ego that stands tall in front of God and nature (Shayegan, 1976: p. 20).
In this period of his intellectual life, in most of his positions, Shayegan bases his understanding of modernity on a negative reading of its achievements. He combines the confrontation of traditional worlds with modernity with the value of judgment and the nostalgic state of eastern innocence and expands his reading from the lines of thought of Nietzsche, romantics to Martin Heidegger, Frankfurtian to poststructuralists and French post moderns in his different intellectual-historical periods; And he presents the gaps of enlightenment and the crises of modernity in the traditionalist society suffering from intellectual chaos and, in his own words, caught in delusions (Haqdar, 2006: p. 53).
He believed that modernity has made us schizophrenic or psychotic because modernity imposes its value system on us and we live in two alien worlds. Westernization is not only ignorance towards the West and ignorance of our own historical destiny, but also alienation from ourselves. He felt a danger and warned that we do not have the right to remain silent in the face of Western culture, which threatens our existence in the most aggressive way (Shayegan, 1977: p. 296).
Shayegan believes that our awareness of the historical destiny of the West and the nature of tradition causes a double illusion and confuses the phenomenon of Westernization; Contrary to what many think, Westernization is not identification with the West, but ignorance of the true nature of Western thought, an ignorance that leads to alienation from oneself (Haqdar, 2006: p. 77). Shayegan's approach to the West and westernization as the tragic fate of Asian cultures in the modern era shows his pessimism towards modernity and its dominance, although Shayegan believes that freedom from the domination of modern Western civilization is possible only through a detailed understanding of its various dimensions.
Inspired by the critics of modernity and modern civilization in the West, such as Nietzsche and Heidegger, Shayegan analyzes the state of Western modernity and its relationship with Eastern and Asian civilizations. He reads modern western civilization with absurd components and from Nietzsche's and Heidegger's point of view. According to him, in the period when modern civilization is caught in nihilism; And traditional civilizations are also going through a period of transition, a limbo situation has emerged for Asian civilizations, he says clearly: If we use Heidegger's theory as a criterion and consider the period of nature as the period of exile and purgatory between the sunset of the gods who have fled and the God who will come; We are in the dying stage of the gods: our state of purgatory is not the stage of escaping and rediscovering divinity, because our gods are dying and not yet fully seen. In other words, we are still in the period of nature, meaning in the stage of not from both sides yet (Shayegan, 1977: p. 40).
Shayegan, influenced by Heidegger, recognized the crisis of nihilism in the West, which results in technicalization of thought, secularization of the world, naturalization of man, and demythologizing (Shayegan, 1977: pp. 48-47). He tries to overcome modernity as the main characteristic of Western civilization and is optimistic about the revival of Eastern traditions to overcome the modern world and its ruling nihilism. In this period of his intellectual life, Shayegan was strongly anti-Western and identarian, and therefore considers modern ideas to be on the verge of collapse and crisis, and does not recommend their use by Asian civilizations. Rather, he is looking for eastern alternatives for them.
Such a project of modernity crises by Shayegan ultimately provides food for ideologues and political anti-modernists and causes Shayegan's project to face serious problems; On this basis, Shayegan deals with the contemporary conflict between modernity and tradition, and by using his usual words in the decline of the West and the enlightenment of the East, he tries to describe the modern civilization and the state of the Eastern and ancient civilizations (Haqdar, 2006: p. 68).
In the years after the Islamic Revolution, compared to other Iranian thinkers and intellectuals, Shayegan underwent intellectual changes more than others. Unlike some Iranian intellectuals such as Fardid and Davari Ardakani, who were aligned with the Islamic Revolution and its ideology; He took a completely different approach in terms of intellectual positions and even philosophical methods of analyzing issues. By observing the revolution and the developments after it, Shayegan quickly realized the weaknesses of the anti-Western ideas and views that were promoted in Iran in the 60s and 70s, and considered them to be in need of fundamental revision.
Shayegan's approach to the Islamic Revolution as an important historical fact and historical awareness that provided the context for understanding the consequences of the revival of tradition in the ideological conflict with modernity; For Shayegan, this revolution was not just a political transformation, but he believed that it should be considered a transformation in the social ontology and historical consciousness of Iranian society, which has made us involved in our own fundamental historical issues. For the supporters, the Islamic Revolution represented a kind of awakening from a historical sleep regarding the place of tradition and religion in the face of Iranian society with modernity, and created a new possibility for rethinking the relationship between tradition and modernity, us and the West, and its previous intellectual approaches.
Shayegan knew very well that modernity is able to reproduce any pre-modern thought and culture in its frameworks and forms and give it a new form. In fact, in the modern era, the revival of any pre-modern phenomenon requires the use of modern models, and this means the impossibility of reviving the tradition and spiritual heritage of the East in contrast with Western modernity. The disenchantment of modernity from pre-modern traditions can be done in different ways and in various frameworks, and the eastern traditions are often the toy of modern rules and structures. Shayegan considers the ideologization of tradition as a form of modernization of tradition or conventionalization of tradition and believes that this process will inevitably make modernity prevail over tradition. According to him: Ideology, because by giving a simplistic explanation about the phenomena, that too under a wise and historical appearance, eases its mind; And since it is a multifaceted thought, it has become the only form of Western thought that can be digested in other cultural fields that have not participated in the second leap of the age of knowledge and technology. This point clarifies why leftist ideologies full of utopianism have found so much support in the Third World and why dogmatism, which is an inherent part of ideologies, easily adapts to the religious spirit and mind of Third World civilizations. In fact, the civilizations of the third world can become conventional only by becoming ideological, because they have not gone through the science and technology and the era of enlightenment and the adventurous course of the dialectic of the mind. Therefore, critical thinking, which sometimes in the West can prevent excesses in dogmatic thinking and is actually an antidote against becoming ideological, has no effect in them (Shayegan, 2010: p. 214).
The Islamic Revolution not only dispelled Shayegan's fantasy of Eastern traditions and religious and mystical beliefs and made him aware of the danger of reproducing tradition in modern ideological frameworks; Rather, it showed a kind of historical self-awareness in the capabilities of modernity in redefining ethnic and religious traditions to create political and social transformations, and Shayegan understood this capability well, and from this perspective he looked at the Islamic Revolution as a process of modernization of tradition. He considers traditional modernization as a completely inevitable process. And he believes that all the civilizations of the world should submit to modernity, adapt to it and be inspired by it. Otherwise, they will stay out of the way of the world. Because there is no other value in modern ancestry that can replace modernity (Shayegan, 2001: p. 31-30). Modernity has no alternative and whatever you want to introduce in the modern world as an alternative to modernity is nothing but modernized tradition or rather tradition reproduced in a modern form. And this is the fate that awaits all human traditions that want to continue their existence in this age and be effective in today's world.
Shayegan considers the Islamic revolution to be a kind of dominance of modernity over traditional values. According to him, in the conditions where modern values and patterns have become dominant values and patterns in the current world and have been able to subjugate all the manifestations of pre-modern civilization and traditional values to their logic and reproduce them as their objects; Any revival of religion and tradition in modern forms such as ideology and revolution is a kind of domination and imposition of modern logic on traditional and religious beliefs and values. He asks plainly: In the term Islamic revolution, which of the two words is more active and decisive? Revolution or Islam? Is it religion that changes the revolution or honors it? Or is it the revolution that gives religion a historical aspect and turns it into an ideology? The truth is bitter, but in any case, the final winner has always been the planetary thinking that pulls the other out of its orbit and pulls it into its gravitational field and imposes its laws on it. It is not a revolution that takes the Islamic attribute in the direction of being and becoming, in the direction of resurrection, or even in the direction of a metamorphosis. Rather, it is Islam that becomes an ideology and enters history in order to defeat certain infidels who support competing ideologies. By doing this, religion falls into the trap of reason, it wants to stand up to the west, it becomes westernized, it wants to give the world a spiritual and spiritual aspect, but it finds a common and worldly aspect. Religion wants to negate history, but it sinks deeply into history (Shayegan, 1994: p. 17).
The Islamic revolution showed the supporters and all the intellectuals who were attached to the revival and reproduction of tradition in order to confront the rule of modernity; that any revival and reproduction of eastern traditions and spiritual and religious values is not possible except through the lens of modern concepts, models and symbols, and modernity with its unquestionable dominance over human life will cover any possibility of tradition reproduction. And as a result, the revival of tradition to negate modernity is nothing but the reproduction of a kind of modern and ideological anti-modernity.
In this era, Shayegan not only abandons Heidegger's approach to modernity; Rather, he even considers it inappropriate for the Iranian society and believes that Kant's view should be replaced by Heidegger's view of modernity. This intellectual turn of his is undoubtedly caused by the experience of turning tradition into ideology, or rather, the politicization and ideologization of traditional values and religious beliefs, which in his opinion can have unfortunate consequences. In one of the interviews, he gave in the last years of his life, he clearly explains why he made such a recommendation to replace Kant's philosophy with Heidegger's ideas. Regarding why you consider Kant's philosophy to be a necessary philosophy, Shayegan explains as follows: I had read Kant's philosophy as essential against Heidegger's thinking, because according to Adorno, Heidegger's thinking makes man a myth. Heidegger's thinking tends to mythologize. For us Iranians who think mythically, this type of thinking is a pest. But Kant is a philosopher who tells us what cannot be understood, that is, he draws a line and says that on the other side of this line you are no longer dealing with appearances but with essences. In this sense, for those of us who do not have a critical mind, it can be said that Kant is the crystallization of the Enlightenment from a philosophical point of view. For those of us who do not have a questioning mind, Kant is more helpful than Heidegger and prompts us to think. Heidegger's theory becomes attractive because it becomes mystical, and mysticism has always been attractive to us. Of course, I don't want to deny the beauty of mysticism, which is actually a very beautiful kind of poetry. The structure of mysticism is completely spatial and spatial, history and time have nothing to do with it, we only have one eternity and one eternity. A circle descends from eternity and different worlds until it reaches man and returns from man to eternity. Everything in this world is similar: the first and the last, beauty and glory, appearance and interior, etc. Such a beautiful thought naturally has tension, because it encompasses the whole existence (Shayegan, 2016: p.9).
Defending the Kantian approach and criticizing the Nietzschean-Heideggerian approach in the analysis of Iran's situation by Shayegan is facing an obvious contradiction. Contrasting Kant with Heidegger in this way, he defends an idea that is profoundly Heideggerian. When I look at the content of history, I see that it has emerged in my absence. As I have not participated in the formation of this history, I am not responsible for its consequences. I know this much that this new world has an iron logic and imposes its structure on me (Mesbahian, 2018: p.1).
In the last years of his life, Shayegan has a completely different attitude towards modernity and its consequences and achievements. Undoubtedly, Shayegan knows very well that modern European civilization cannot be equated with pre-modern civilizations in the East and West of the world because an inherent superiority resulting from the possibility of ontological self-awareness as a unique feature has made it different from other human civilizations.
Shayegan accepts the modern identity as the superior identity in the age of globalization. And according to him, with the exception of the global speech of modernity, whose achievements are inevitable and have become the property and heritage of all humanity, no identity has absolute superiority over other identities (Shayegan, 2001: p. 42). This is a special and unique advantage that Shayegan considers for modernity and modern identity compared to other identities and cultures in the era of cultural globalization.
Modernity is very important for the late Shayegan. Shayegan's interpretation or understanding of modernity is in the form of critical thinking which, while accepting the achievements and benefits of this fundamental transformation, ignores its shortcomings. For him, modernity should be described as the beginning of an unfinished and still ongoing process, whose characteristic feature is transformation (Qezelsofla and Maashthani, 2010: p. 153).
Shayegan believes that modernity and its institutions, even those institutions that are unstable and weak, are now our only refuge. Therefore, it is better for us to be rational and accept modernity, because whether we like it or not, modernity and its achievements have become universal speech, because due to its reflective nature, it requires alterity, that is, the presence of another (Shayegan, 2001: p. 19). And this will give civilizations like ours the possibility of living in the context of modernity. Modernity can adapt itself to other human civilizations and redefine them within itself.
Shayegan considers modernity as a global discourse that has the ability to purify and dissolve other discourses, and their peaceful coexistence. Shayegan, who considers modernity to be a movement to free mankind from the guardianship of political power and the sacred matter, and states that whatever the assumptions of modernity are, it is functional from a practical point of view and should only be in the field of laws and institutions. Shayegan considers modernity to have achievements that cannot be ignored. He considers it one of the successful leaps in the history of Western thought, which has become the inevitable fate of mankind today, and he believes that if there is light, it will come from the West. He believes that modernity has solved all the material problems of Western man and has now become a common good (Sadati nejad and Qomriyan, 2017: pp. 403-402).
Undoubtedly, the acceptance of the success of modern civilization in solving the material problems of human life compared to other existing civilizations and subcultures by the proponents of modernity has turned it into a superior meta-narrative compared to other civilizations. In fact, proponents of globalization can only imagine in the context of modern civilization, modern values and the modern model of material life; Because no subculture in today's world has the necessary capacities to respond to material needs and set a pattern for improving the quality of human life in this era. In this era, we are witnessing the process of globalization and globalization of modernization. We have seen that the traditional values of Iran and the western values have been placed in front of each other. And this is a natural thing. Because behind the technique lies the thinking of the technique maker. These elements affect the human structure from the inside (Hodashtian 2001: p. 79).
He believes that since the advent of modernity, this civilization is no longer limited to the West, Western civilization has become the heritage of all humanity thanks to its social and political institutions. All of us are westerners despite our origins and cultural identity, because we are the embodiment of fundamental human rights, which is one of the achievements of the Enlightenment. We and all the people of this era must add another identity to our identity, which is numerous, an identity that connects us to other people regardless of our race, religion and cultural affiliations (Shayegan, 2001: p. 73).
Shayegan's prescription has some gaps in the connection between tradition and modernity in the age of globalization. On the one hand, he cannot deny some positive effects of Western civilization, and on the other hand, he ignores the negative aspects of Asian civilizations and their worldview. Also, it does not know a way to combine the positive effects of these two civilizations, that is, it cannot lay a way for Asian civilizations to accept the positive aspects of Western thought by removing some of the negative elements of their worldviews (Nasr, 2007: p. 329).
Shayegan believes that any possibility of cultural self-awareness is possible only in the context of modernity. According to him, we have an Islamic identity, we also have a modern identity anyway. It is the modern identity that allows us to evaluate and measure other identities. To do this, you have to see ourselves from the outside. We must have a distant look at ourselves. This is the modern look. In order to have a modern look, we must be able to see ourselves from the outside. According to him, people who are immersed in tradition, people who are immersed in their own culture, cannot have this view (Shayegan, 2018: p.9).
On the other hand, Seyyed Hossein Nasr reflects the views of traditionalism in a systematic way. The historical record of traditionalism, as a conscious approach against the ideas of modern man, found an independent existence with the efforts of Guénon, and Coomaraswamy, Schuon, Lings and Burckhardt. This intellectual trend was expanded from the 1920s and 1910s with the efforts of these traditionalists, and now the current of traditionalism includes more than fifty traditionalist thinkers at different levels.
Seyyed Hossein Nasr is also among those who are interested in the opinions of these people and are trying to expand the traditional worldview. For this purpose, Sunnah in Nasr's intellectual system is not only a term, but also heart effort and intellectual faith. Nasr considers himself "a traditional philosopher who has taken up spiritual life" (Pol Firouzeh: vol. 5, p. 98). He believes that tradition is a "gift from the divine court". Nasr's meaning of Sunnah is completely different from what is conventional. Some intellectual circles interpret tradition as habits, inherited patterns, and obsolete and abandoned things. What seems to be the way these people think about tradition is a combination of religious, cultural, historical beliefs and special attitudes that form the current way of life and follow the same narrative rules.
Nasr applies modernity and modernism to the time period of Europe after the Renaissance until now. which began as a special way of looking at the world from the time of Descartes, and in which the individual existence of man has become the criterion and standard of reality (Nasr, 2007: p. 174). Nasr is not opposed to modernism, but he is opposed to modernism, humanism, and materialism, and this caused concern to traditionalists like him. These types of traditionalists feel responsible for the fact that the new world has found a nature that doubts any metaphysical principle and has overshadowed human faith; And they want to think of a solution to save humanity from this self-made problem (Mahdavi, 2011: p. 229).
Nasr believes that the original and valuable situation, which was characterized by the harmony of God and nature, has disappeared due to the invasion of modernity (Boroujerdi, 2005: p. 187). Even religion is reduced in modern perception and loses many of its transcendental aspects, everything becomes changeable, relative and transitory (Nasr, 2011: p.9). Based on this, Nasr does not consider the thought of modernity as a homogeneous reality, unlike Islam, because there is a huge division in the western world; The division is over issues such as denying or proving the existence of God, the origin of humanity, the nature and origin of morality, and even the sanctity and origin of life itself (Nasr, 2004: p. 337). Although he rejects western science and civilization due to freedom from religion and revelation, profiteering and looking at knowledge as a tool to dominate nature and colonization and exploitation (Mohammadi, 2012: p. 154). He considers the solution to the crisis of modernity to return to the original traditions and eternal wisdom.
Like other traditionalists, Dr. Nasr is among the serious and staunch opponents of modernity. In his opinion, the current era is the era of new ignorance, in which the idols of false schools must be destroyed. He considers the motivation of the traditionalists to be serious opposition to innovation, their sense of commitment to traditional truth and compassion and benevolence for human beings, and he sees criticism of modernity based on metaphysical and religious principles as an action in line with the most basic Islamic virtues. Accordingly, he believes that the first duty of all thinkers of spiritual and religious traditions such as Islam is to criticize modernism. The fact that many eastern countries, especially Islamic countries, have not learned from the fate of the West and are repeating its mistakes, has worried Nasr a lot. In his opinion, the tragedy of the Eastern world, especially Islam, is that it repeats the same mistakes as the Western world. Therefore, he is deeply disappointed by the lack of fundamental criticism of the West by Muslims and the attempt to show Islam and the West compatible by some religious intellectuals (Hashemzadeh: 2006).
The important question is that if we are going to change with the times, what should the times be changed with? Social changes are not independent of us that we want to change, but man is free and changes his destiny. We should adapt the times to our traditions, not the other way around. Changes are a natural thing in the society, but we should not follow these changes like an unwilling horse.
The modern world is plagued by this obvious contradiction that its thinkers, on the one hand, always breathe freedom and democracy, and on the other hand, they say that we have to change everything based on the times.
Nasr's criticisms on renewal and modernity can also be divided into two categories: infrastructure (on the foundations of modernity) and superstructure (on the achievements of modernity). The most important basic criticisms of modernity are:
1- Forgetting the divine reality; When Dr. Nasr was asked to list his most important criticisms of modernity, he said: Forgetting the knowledge of divine and human reality, the result of which is turning one's back to the world of meaning and declaring man's independence from God. Criticisms of traditionalists such as rejection of humanism, individualism, rationalism in the sense of rationalism and desecration all originate from what I said.
2- Humanism as a substitute for divine anthropology; Traditional metaphysics means self-knowledge. Knowing the divine truth of man is one of the most important goals of traditionalists. Of course, this knowledge is not just a mental knowledge, but also needs a kind of spiritual transformation that ultimately brings man to God. Based on this, one of the problems of victory over modernity is that it has made people forget themselves. "The renewed man, when he indulged in self-forgetfulness, actually burned his hand in the fire he had lit." Nasr believes that secularism, humanism, empiricism and rationalism have caused modern man to draw a picture of himself that is the mother of all his problems.
3- Desecration of human knowledge; One of the important problems of Dr. Nasr to the new world is its approach to knowledge. He believes that: new sciences are constantly changing and unholy knowledge. New science only deals with appearances, while traditional science is unchangeable due to its relationship with the metaphysical and considers the system of existence as a sign and manifestation of God. Therefore, it focuses more on the inner dimensions. According to him, in the modern world, we are dealing with a science whose objective pole is the psychological-physical combination of the natural world, the environment on man; And its mental pole does not go beyond human reasoning, which is considered to be purely human and is completely separated from the light of reason.
4- Lack of spirituality: focusing on the worldly dimension and neglecting the kingdom aspect of man and the world is another problem of victory over the modern era. He calls this turning away from spiritual truths as a rebellion against the higher world, as a result of which modern man "considers the earth as his home." He sees life as a big trading house where he is free to roam and choose things as he wants.
Superstructure criticisms:
Apart from the basic criticisms, Nasr also refers to some superstructural criticisms which are considered the achievements of modernity:
a. weakening of religion; Nasr believes: "Renovation caused the weakening of religion and even de-religion, and this is evident in various fields such as ethics and social behavior, economy and politics on the one hand, and philosophy, science and even new religious thinking on the other hand.
b. promoting fundamentalism; According to Dr. Nasr, modernism is secular fundamentalism. Modernism is one of the most prejudiced, dogmatic and extreme ideologies that history has seen so far. Modernism wants any point of view other than its own and does not reflect any opposing worldview. Its fundamentalism is on the coin of modernism and it cannot exist without modernism. Modernism, although it boasts of flourishing the power of criticism, is the most uncritical civilization that mankind has ever seen. Because it does not have a standard for criticism about itself.
c. Destruction of the environment: Dr. Nasr is one of those who stubbornly opposes modernity's disregard for the environment. He considers the environmental crisis to be the result of the lack of spirituality in the West and the modern man's mistaken perception of nature, which is based on authority and domination over nature and devours it greedily without any respect for nature. He believes that the way out of this crisis is to return to the Islamic approach to nature, according to which man is both Abdullah (passive in relation to God) and Khalifa Allah (in relation to this world as a guardian); Therefore, the subjugation of nature in human hands is limited to divine laws.
d. The transformation of the concepts of freedom, human rights: Nasr tries to show that the modern culture has stripped concepts such as freedom of its divine and spiritual nature and covered it with a purely natural dress and somehow turned it into anti-freedom. We traditionalists interpret freedom differently from the reformists. Sunnah is not in any way against freedom in its traditional, mystical and philosophical sense, but it opposes false freedom; Because this type of freedom gradually makes a person a prisoner of desires over which he has no control. Therefore, the modern man imagines that he is free, while he is mostly imprisoned and condemned (Hashemzadeh: 2006).
Conclusion:
This article was an attempt to draw the concept of modernity and criticize it in the thought of Dariush Shayegan and Seyed Hossein Nasr. Shayegan, with his deep knowledge and understanding of modern civilization, adds in this regard; Our long-term study of the nature of Western thought, which is a unique and exceptional phenomenon in the world in terms of its dynamism, diversity, richness of content, and mesmerizing power. He made us aware of the fact that the course of Western thought has been towards the gradual invalidation of the beliefs that constitute the spiritual heritage of Asian civilizations, and he criticizes and condemns the alienation of Asian civilizations against modern civilization. Shayegan believes that since the ancient Asian societies were placed in the historical orbit of the West, on the one hand, they became alienated from their ethnic heritage and memory, and on the other hand, they forgot their fruitful and productive connections with other Asian civilizations and cultures. Shayegan believed that Iran and other Asian civilizations still have a lot to say despite their weakness. Due to the fact that he is attached to tradition and original identities, he emphasizes the necessity of reviving and resuming relations between Asian civilizations. In fact, his goal is to create a constructive dialogue and debate between Iran and other ancient civilizations with the modern West, so that he may take a step towards reducing tension and improving relations between these civilizations.
Dr. Seyed Hossein Nasr, like others such as Fardid and Jalal Al-Ahmed, is trying to express his concern about "Westernization". Against modernity, he builds his ideal world based on "tradition", which is derived from the sacred realm of religions. From this point of view, the opposition of "Tradition and Modernity" can be considered as his main intellectual topic.
Regardless of the ambiguity of the concept of "tradition" and its wide scope in the definitions, this component does not have the strength to deal with the modern world in any way; Modernity has been able to penetrate into various aspects of human individual and social life and conquer all areas of human life, and in this way, it has benefited from various knowledge, techniques and technologies. However, "Tradition" has no strength in the face of such a huge civilization and it has no fruit other than recalling memories of the "past" and regretting it.
In his opinion, the current era is the era of modern ignorance, in which the idols of false schools must be destroyed. Accordingly, he believes that the first duty of all thinkers of spiritual and religious traditions such as Islam is to criticize modernism. According to this approach, modernism is a special attitude to the world that started in the renaissance period. What is called humanism, rationalism, and the period of renaissance, denies the absolute and ultimate truth that transcends the level of humans, and the divine system descends into the human system.
Seyyed Hossein Nasr also believes that many Eastern countries, especially Islamic ones, have not learned from the fate of the West and are repeating its mistakes, and this is a tragedy that has afflicted the Eastern world, especially Islam. Another topic that Nasr emphasizes is the issue of technology and industry, which is considered one of the pillars of the material civilization of the West, which he considers to be a tool for colonial goals arising from a particular humanistic worldview and philosophy. From Nasr's point of view, it is surprising that today the awareness of the limits and dangers of new technology is far greater in the West itself than in the rest of the world. Many Muslims, like other Asians and Africans, look at Western technology as a magic wand that can be used to overcome all the problems and ups and downs of the society and bring happiness and prosperity to the people of these societies. This idea or illusion is somewhat natural, because it is with the help of this technology that the West has dominated other societies for such a long time and still dominates these societies economically, if not directly militarily and politically. The most important action of Muslims at this moment in human history is that although they are often fascinated by the power of science and new technology; But they should study the roots of both of them in a serious way, understand their foundations, evaluate them in the framework of the Islamic worldview, and use them exclusively based on Islamic teachings.
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