Mohammad Nakhshab’s concept of dialectical Tawhid: Vitalism and the question of monotheism

Abstract

This article examines the philosophical thoughts of Mohammad Nakhshab (1923-1970), the co-founder of the Movement of God-Worshipping Socialists ( Nazhat Khoda Parastan-e Sosialist) in Iran. It argues that Nakhshab articulates an innovative reconceptualization of Islam through the critical appropriation of socialism and its political and technoscientific implications for world progress. Divided into two sections, the paper first contextualizes Nakhshab’s writings and offers a close analysis of the philosophical aspects of his essays. I argue that Nakhshab’s preoccupation with the tawhidi (monotheistic) worldview, though in part a critical response to the growing popularity of materialist philosophy, is based on an inventive reconstruction of the Marxist-Leninist conception of nature and society as a conflict-ridden historical process oriented toward moral salvation. Against the ontology of dialectical materialism, Nakhshab advances a vitalistic idealism based on the notion of “vitality of will” ( nirou-ye eradi), realized through a collective force of movement as praxis in the world. In his conception of dialectical tawhid, Nakhshab envisages an Iranian society as a thoroughgoing socialist project grounded in the monotheistic worldview and ultimately aimed at an alternative modernity of spiritual force.