During the second half of the twentieth century, the Arab intellectual and political scene polarized between a search for totalizing doctrines--nationalist, Marxist, and religious--and radical critique. Arab thinkers were reacting to the disenchanting experience of postindependence Arab states, as well as to authoritarianism, intolerance, and failed development. They were also responding to successive defeats by Israel, humiliation, and injustice. The first book to take stock of these critical responses, this volume illuminates the relationship between cultural and political critique in the work of major Arab thinkers, and it connects Arab debates on cultural malaise, identity, and authenticity to the postcolonial issues of Latin America and Africa, revealing the shared struggles of different regions and various Arab concerns.

First comprehensive book on the history and development of Arab philosophy, tackling major issues and key thinkers

Leading scholars discuss ideology and hotly contested post-structuralist theory.

This book focuses on contemporary Arab thought during the past twenty years, especially since the 1967 Arab defeat in the Six Day War. Well-known Arab writers are studied, and their unprecedented and anguished exercise of self-examination and self-criticism is explored. A number of Arab thinkers are presented for the first time in English. Here is an account of some of the most recent intellectual trends in the Arab world. As the writers grapple with the Arab desire for social change, with ideas of freedom and equality and social justice, and with the problem of accommodating Arab culture to modern times, their will to preserve their national identity is displayed. The role played by Islam in the current Arab discourse is analyzed as Arab intellectuals creatively interpret their present predicament in order to make it meaningful in the present day. Arab thought is seen here to be in crisis as it reflects this reality and questions the legitimacy of Arab political regimes. Much of the present turmoil in the Arab world can be better understood in light of this insightful treatment of contemporary Arab thinkers because it shows how the Arabs themselves feel, what they think about their own contemporary life, and how they envision their future.

Explores the many facets of Arab political thought from the nineteenth century to the present day.

What is the relationship between thought and practice in the domains of language, literature and politics? Is thought the only standard by which to measure intellectual history? How did Arab intellectuals change and affect political, social, cultural and economic developments from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries? This volume offers a fundamental overhaul and revival of modern Arab intellectual history. Using Hourani's Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age, 1798–1939 (Cambridge, 1962) as a starting point, it reassesses Arabic cultural production and political thought in the light of current scholarship and extends the analysis beyond Napoleon's invasion of Egypt and the outbreak of World War II. The chapters offer a mixture of broad-stroke history on the construction of 'the Muslim world', and the emergence of the rule of law and constitutionalism in the Ottoman empire, as well as case studies on individual Arab intellectuals that illuminate the transformation of modern Arabic thought.