Uneven Reception of Analytic Philosophy in Iran

Remarkably little scholarship in Iranian Studies has been devoted to the reception of analytic philosophy among Iranian philosophers or historians of ideas. Given that analytic philosophy is widely regarded as one of the most important and influential traditions of philosophical inquiry over the past century – with significant contributions to topics in ethics, legal and political philosophy, aesthetics, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of language – this is a rather glaring oversight. To be sure, developments in Western philosophy have always found critical and engaging interlocutors inside Iran (comparative philosophy is among the most dynamic and storied intellectual traditions in Iran). What is especially curious about analytic philosophy’s reception in Iran, however, is the tepid (when compared to continental philosophy) and uneven (as regards disciplinary designations) manner in which Iranian scholars have attempted to engage with (e.g. translate, debate, teach) central claims in works by such figures as Bertrand Russell, Alfred North Whitehead, G.E. Moore, W.V. Quine, Ludwig Wittgenstein, or more contemporary thinkers like Peter Strawson, John Austin, Ronald Dworkin, and John Rawls. This paper aims to account for this peculiar phenomenon by examining two intersecting, yet distinct, contexts affecting the reception of Western analytic philosophy in Iran. The first context concerns the intellectual relevance and utility of analytic philosophy to Iranian society and, by extension, philosophers. It is clear from the works of many Iranian philosophers that the analytic tradition has lacked the emancipatory zeal and promise of its continental counterparts for a society struggling against the dual legacies of imperialism and arbitrary rule. The second context has to do with the almost unapologetically insular nature of analytic philosophy itself. The latter has indeed been a uniquely Anglo-American enterprise, with a rather narrow and self-referential focus on approximations of “ideal-types” that often assume an imperfect-but-evolving democratic and (post)industrial background conditions. This paper examines the salience of these arguments with reference to the works of several prominent Iranian philosophers (Mehdi Haeri Yazdi, Ramin Jahanbegloo, Abdolkarim Soroush, Hamid Vahid Dastgerdi, Mahmoud Khatami, among others) and in relation to major intellectual debates inside Iran in ethics, legal and political philosophy, and philosophy of language.