Philosophy as a ‘Resisting Identity’?: Taha Abdurrahman, Fethi al-Meskini, and Aziz al-Azmeh in Dialogue on Modernist Arab Philosophy

Abstract

Abstract:This study examines the thesis of the contemporary Moroccan philosopher Taha Abdurrahman (b. 1944) concerning the formation of a modernist Arab philosophy that explicitly contrasts with contemporary Western philosophy. Abdurrahman argues that such a philosophy can be the basis for a new Arab philosophical identity that preserves the intellectual autonomy of Arab peoples and resists what he characterizes as undesirable external influences. This article is composed of three sections. It begins by offering a systematic and descriptive presentation of this thesis from Taha Abdurrahman through a close reading of his 2002 book, The Arab Right to Philosophical Difference (al-Ḥaqq al-‘Arabī fī al-Ikhtilāf al-Falsafī). It then offers a critical and dialogical deconstruction of this thesis by placing it in interlocution with similar approaches to identity and the self that appear in Fethi al-Meskini’s (b. 1961) book, Identity and Freedom: Towards New Enlightenments (al-Huwīyya w’al-Ḥurīyya: Naḥwa Anwār Jadīda, 2011), and Aziz al-Azmeh’s (b. 1947) study of Islamic thought as a historical phenomenon, specifically in his book, The Emergence of Islam in Late Antiquity (2014). Following the discussion of these authors’ approaches to Arab intellectual culture and identity, this article concludes by assessing the validity and plausibility of Abdurrahman’s thesis in light of the works of the other two scholars.