Introducing Critical Rationalism to the Iranian Public: An Account of a Personal Intellectual Journey

Iran, uniquely among all Muslim countries, has a rich philosophical heritage. The majority of great Muslim philosophers have been Iranian. When philosophy died away in the Western flank of Islamdom at the end of 12th century, it continued to flourish uninterrupted in Iran (Persia). Later generations of Iranian philosophers introduced new philosophical schools over and above what had been developed by the earlier Muslim philosophers. Schools of Isfahan, Shiraz and Tehran, among others, each further enriched the intellectual heritage known as ‘Islamic philosophy’.
‘Modern Western philosophy’ was introduced to the Iranian educated public since the nineteenth century. However, serious engagement with the ideas of various Western philosophers only began from the mid-twentieth century onward.
In this paper, following a brief sketch of the development of philosophical thought in Iran and the introduction of the views of Western philosophers to Iran’s cultural milieu, I shall focus on a particular strand of Western philosophical thought, Critical Rationalism (CR), due to Karl Popper (1902-1994) and his students and discuss two inter-related topics. On the one hand, I shall explain the modalities of dissemination of CR in Iran and assess the reception of CR by the Iranian educated classes. On the other, I shall argue that among Iranian scholars those who have had a fair familiarity with the heritage of ‘Islamic philosophy’ as well as some Western schools of philosophy, whether in the Continental or Analytic traditions, and have consciously used philosophy for doctrinal purposes and not merely academic practices, have tended to subscribe to aspects of modern philosophy which are all contrary to the teachings of CR. The aspects in question are justificationism, linguistic turn and total reliance on discussions about meaning, and subjectivism. I shall highlight my arguments by drawing on the views of a number of contemporary Iranian philosophers including Reza Davari, Mostafa Malekian, Mohammad Shabestary, and Abdolkarim Soroush.