Bijan Abdolkarimi

Bijan Abdolkarimi (Persian: بیژن عبدالکریمی )
Born	1963 Tehran, Iran
Era	21st century Philosophy
Region	Western Philosophy
School	Continental
Main interests	Critique of the Western Culture and Thought Existential phenomenology
Notable ideas	Nietzscheian World, End of Theology
Influences Martin Heidegger, Ali Shariati, Ahmad Fardid, Reza Davari Ardakani

Bijan Abdolkarimi (born 1963 in Tehran) (Persian: بیژن عبدالکریمی ) is an Iranian philosopher, thinker, translator and editor.^[1][2][3] He is associate professor of philosophy at Islamic Azad University (North-Tehran branch).^[4] His main interests are ontology, political philosophy and the critique of religious and intellectual traditions.^[5] He claims to challenge the dominant ideological discourse in Iran.^[6][7] He has participated in debates at Iranian universities and also in IRIB TV4 in which he has opposed the notion of Islamic humanities.^{[8][9] [10][11]} He is also a scholar of Heidegger's thought and philosophy.^[12][13] Abdolkarimi received his PhD from Aligarh Muslim University in 2001 under the supervision of Syed Abdul Sayeed for his thesis on the critique of Kantian subjectivism.^[14][15]

Views

The main characteristics of Abdolkarimi's thought may be summarized as follows:

• Abdolkarimi seeks to present a spiritual, meditative interpretation of Heidegger's thought.^[16]
• The relation between the West and East is his main issue in his philosophical thinking. He strongly criticizes any ideological, theological understanding of the West and East. He emphasizes a historical, phenomenological understanding of these two traditions.^[17]
• He has worked on the theory of the end of theology and its critical connotations. Following Gianni Vattimo, he believes that the main philosophical characteristic of our time is the destroyed ontology. Abdolkarimi interprets Vattimo's idea in this way that "our time has become metaphysic-less". But in the context of Abdolkarimi's thought, the term metaphysics is not merely in the Greek sense but includes every historical theoretical tradition.^[18][19]
• Abdolkarimi believes that the human being's future thought is a kind of nonsecular-nontheological thinking, namely a way of thinking that is in disagreement to the secular, materialistic interpretation of the world, but at the same time does not settle in any historic, theological systems.^[20]

Bibliography

• Reflections on the Paradox of Directed Democracy, Eshraghieh Press, Tehran, 1989.
• Shariati and Being Politicized, Resa Institute of Cultural Service, Tehran, 1995.
• Thought and Politics, Tehran, Scientific & Cultural Press (Affiliated to The Ministry of Science and Technology), 1977.
• The Story of Me and Thou, Tehran, The Press of the Institute of the Critique of Culture, 2001.
• Heidegger and Transcendence (A Commentary of Heidegger's Interpretation of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason), Tehran, The Press of the Institute of the Critique of Culture, 2002.
• Emancipation or Dominance? (A Critique of the System of Religious Education in Iran), with Mohammad Ali Mohammadi’s cooperation, Tehran, The Press of the Institute of the Critique of Culture, 2002.
• Monism or Pluralism? (Mobile Thinking or Homeless Thought) (A Critique of Daryoush Shaygan’s Modern Enchantedness), Tehran, The Press of the Institute of the Critique of Culture, under printing.
• Nietzscheian World and Us, Elm Publication, Tehran, 2009.
• Hegel or Marx? (A Critique of Iranian Intellectuals), Tehran, The Press of the Institute of the Critique of Culture, 2002.
• Heidegger in Iran, Iranian Institute of Philosophy, Tehran, 2013.

See also

• Intellectual Movements in Iran
• Iranian philosophy
• Religious intellectualism in Iran

Sources

External links

• Abdolkarimi's Official Website
• Conceptual Approaches in Contemporary Iranian Religious Reformism