Intellectual movements in Iran - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Intellectual movements in Iran involve the Iran

Iran

Iran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...

ian experience of modernity

Modernity

Modernity typically refers to a post-traditional, post-medieval historical period, one marked by the move from feudalism toward capitalism, industrialization, secularization, rationalization, the nation-state and its constituent institutions and forms of surveillance...

and its associated art, science, literature, poetry, and political structures that have been changing since the 19th century.

History of Iranian modernity

Long before the European Renaissance

Renaissance

The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not...

generated the radical ideas that eventually reshaped Europe and the United States, Persian statesmen, artists, and intellectuals had formulated ideas that strikingly anticipate those of modernity. Since more than thousand years ago there has been a conflict in Persia between the search for modernity and the forces of religious obscurantism.

Some twenty five hundred years ago, when Herodotus

Herodotus

Herodotus was an ancient Greek historian who was born in Halicarnassus, Caria and lived in the 5th century BC . He has been called the "Father of History", and was the first historian known to collect his materials systematically, test their accuracy to a certain extent and arrange them in a...

was writing his Histories, Persia was the West's ultimate other.

It has been a common belief of scholars that modernity began in the West and is by its philosophical nature, economic underpinning, and cultural exigencies a uniquely western phenomenon. All other cultures, those who have lived on the darker side of Renaissance must emulate the Western experience, if they want to be modern. From Max Weber

Max Weber

Karl Emil Maximilian "Max" Weber was a German sociologist and political economist who profoundly influenced social theory, social research, and the discipline of sociology itself...

to Milan Kundera

Milan Kundera

Milan Kundera , born 1 April 1929, is a writer of Czech origin who has lived in exile in France since 1975, where he became a naturalized citizen in 1981. He is best known as the author of The Unbearable Lightness of Being, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, and The Joke. Kundera has written in...

, many Western scholars and writers have argued that everything from representative democracy and rational thought to the art of the novel and the essay are not only western in origin but also uniquely suited to its culture, and native to its temperature climes.

Persia with its impressively rich and varied cultural legacy had a formative role in shaping Western consciousness. The Bible is replete with profuse praise for Persia and its kings. The Bible's praise for Cyrus the Great

Cyrus the Great

Cyrus II of Persia , commonly known as Cyrus the Great, also known as Cyrus the Elder, was the founder of the Achaemenid Empire. Under his rule, the empire embraced all the previous civilized states of the ancient Near East, expanded vastly and eventually conquered most of Southwest Asia and much...

was partially in recognition of his role in freeing the Jews

Jews

The Jews , also known as the Jewish people, are a nation and ethnoreligious group originating in the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East. The Jewish ethnicity, nationality, and religion are strongly interrelated, as Judaism is the traditional faith of the Jewish nation...

from their Babylonian captivity; of equal importance was the fact that the vast Persian empire of the time was a paragon of religious and cultural tolerance.

Hegel whose writings are considered by many as the apex of the Western philosophical tradition, uses superlatives in praising the role of Persia and Zarathustra in history.

Following Hegel in 19th century Germany, Nietzsche wrote his magnum opus, Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for All and None is a philosophical novel by German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, composed in four parts between 1883 and 1885...

that similarly touched upon this key figure of the Persian imagination. Nietzsche's book offers a radical critique, almost a total debunking, of the whole Western tradition of philosophy. It is no mere accident that Nietzsche chose to articulate his critical views in the name of Zarathustra. The end of 19th century was not the only or the last time Zarathustra played a prominent role in shaping Western consciousness and philosophic discourse. In 1990s Persian influences on the millennial fever, and on other New Age themes, were so strong that Harold Bloom

Harold Bloom

Harold Bloom is an American writer and literary critic, and is Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale University. He is known for his defense of 19th-century Romantic poets, his unique and controversial theories of poetic influence, and his prodigious literary output, particularly for a literary...

, the eminent American critic, suggested that the last decade of the twentieth century should in truth be called "a return to Zoroastrian origins."

Western art, no less than history and theology, bear testimony to the ubiquity of the Persian presence in antiquity. Of all the extant works of Greek tragedy, for example, the only one that is about a non-Greek subject is Aeschylus

Aeschylus

Aeschylus was the first of the three ancient Greek tragedians whose work has survived, the others being Sophocles and Euripides, and is often described as the father of tragedy. His name derives from the Greek word aiskhos , meaning "shame"...

' play The Persians
The Persians
The Persians is an Athenian tragedy by the ancient Greek playwright Aeschylus. First produced in 472 BCE, it is the oldest surviving play in the history of theatre...

.

Generations of Iranian intellectuals

First generation

The nineteenth century Persian reformers whom is consider as the first generation of Iranian intellectuals were perfectly conscious of the fact that it was not enough to rely upon the antiquity of Persian civilization to think about its continued ability to survive. They tried to establish a relationship with men of power that would have permitted them to dictate their blueprints for reforms. These blueprints naturally remained without immediate impact among the men of power to whom they were addressed. These intellectual reforms encountered a widespread opposition from the court and the Ulama. Abd al-Rahim Talebof, Fath-'Ali Akhoundzadeh, and Sani o Doleh belong to this generation.

Second generation

The second generation intended to introduce modern civilization to Persia, not only by imitating the West, but through a coherent and systematic approach to European culture. Mohammad-Taqi Bahar, Ali Dashti

Ali Dashti

Ali Dashti was an Iranian rationalist of the twentieth century. Dashti was also an Iranian senator.-Life:...

, Ali Akbar Davar

Ali Akbar Davar

Ali-Akbar Dāvar was the founder of the modern judicial system of Iran.Born in 1888, he began his career in the judiciary in Iran, after having completed his studies at the élite school of Dar ol-Fonoon in Tehran. He then went on to obtain his law degree in Switzerland...

, Mohammad-Ali Foroughi, Sadeq Hedayat, Bozorg Alavi

Bozorg Alavi

Bozorg Alavi was an influential Iranian writer, novelist, and political intellectual...

, Ahmad Kasravi

Ahmad Kasravi

Ahmad Kasravi , was a notable Iranian linguist, historian, and reformer.Born in Hokmabad , Tabriz, Iran, Kasravi was an Iranian Azeri Initially, Kasravi enrolled in a seminary. Later, he joined the Iranian Constitutional Revolution...

, Saeed Nafisi, Hasan Taqizadeh, Abdolhossein Teymourtash and `Abdu'l-Bahá

`Abdu'l-Bahá

‘Abdu’l-Bahá , born ‘Abbás Effendí, was the eldest son of Bahá'u'lláh, the founder of the Bahá'í Faith. In 1892, `Abdu'l-Bahá was appointed in his father's will to be his successor and head of the Bahá'í Faith. `Abdu'l-Bahá was born in Tehran to an aristocratic family of the realm...

belong to this generation.

Third generation

The third generation of Iranian intellectuals signify the absorption of Russian Marxism into Iranian political and social thought. With the popularity of Marxist ideology among the third generation of Iranian intellectuals, the new culture for translation and knowledge of modernity was drawn inevitably toward moral and political absolutes. Intellectuals claimed to be "givers of lessons" and acted as "moral legislators" who were critics of both the state and the society. Jalal Al-e-Ahmad

Jalal Al-e-Ahmad

Jalal Al-e-Ahmad was a prominent Iranian writer, thinker, and social and political critic.-Personal life:...

and Ali Shariati

Ali Shariati

Ali Shariati was an Iranian revolutionary and sociologist, who focused on the sociology of religion. He is held as one of the most influential Iranian intellectuals of the 20th century and has been called the 'ideologue of the Iranian Revolution'.-Biography:Ali....

belong to this generation.

Fourth generation

Fourth generation of Iranian intellectuals are mainly characterized by the journals such as Goftegu and Kiyan. In contrast with the ideological generation of Iranian intellectuals who in their encounter with the western modernity favoured a monistic attitude exemplified by Marxist and Heideggerian philosophies

Martin Heidegger

Martin Heidegger was a German philosopher known for his existential and phenomenological explorations of the "question of Being."...

, the Fourth Generation of Iranian intellectuals decided on a move away and a critical distanciation from master ideologies.
The methodological position of the new generation of Iranian intellectuals is characterized by two main philosophical attitudes: the extension of an anti-utopian thinking on an intersubjective basis on the one hand, and the urge for a non-imitative dialogical exchange with the modern values of the West on the other.

Javad Tabatabaei

Javad Tabatabaei

Dr. Javad Tabatabai is a political philosopher, historian and university professor.Tabatabai studied law at Tehran University. He then shifted to philosophy and did his doctorate works at Sorbonne University. Tabatabai was a professor of philosophy at University of Strasbourg as well as Tehran...

and Abdolkarim Soroush

Abdolkarim Soroush

Abdolkarim Soroush , born Hosein Haj Faraj Dabbagh , is an Iranian thinker, reformer, Rumi scholar and a former professor at the University of Tehran. He is arguably the most influential figure in religious intellectual movement in Iran. Professor Soroush is currently a visiting scholar at the...

among many others belong to the fourth generation.

Modern art movement

Iranian experience and development of modernity led to a unique style of cinema, painting and music. Iranian New wave, a movement in Iranian cinema

Cinema of Iran

The cinema of Iran is a flourishing film industry with a long history. Many popular commercial films are annually made in Iran, and Iranian art films win praise around the world....

, has found worldwide reputation due to its deeply Philosophical, poetic and artistic style. Abbas Kiarostami

Abbas Kiarostami

Abbas Kiarostami is an internationally acclaimed Iranian film director, screenwriter, photographer and film producer. An active filmmaker since 1970, Kiarostami has been involved in over forty films, including shorts and documentaries...

is the most notable figure in the New wave of Iranian cinema. In the artistic and aesthetic realm, features of New wave of Persian cinema, for example the works of Abbas Kiarostami, can be classified as postmodern.

In his book Close Up: Iranian Cinema, Past, Present, Future (2001) Hamid Dabashi describes modern Iranian cinema and the phenomenon of [Iranian] national cinema as a form of cultural modernity. According to Dabashi, "the visual possibility of seeing the historical person (as opposed to the eternal Qur'anic man) on screen is arguably the single most important event allowing Iranians access to modernity."

Mehdi Saeedi

Mehdi Saeedi

Mehdi Saeedi, , Iran. He studied graphic design in the Art Academy and afterwards majored in Art and Design at England’s Cambridge University....

, is an internationally renowned artist and designer. His aesthetics have become a mainstay of design in many regions, especially in those using the Arabic script as their alphabet. And on November (2009) he won Grand Price for the Five Star Designers at International Invitational Poster Triennial in Osaka, Japan . http://posterpage.ch/div/news09/n091111a.htm

On 13 December 2006, graphic designer, Reza Abedini

Reza Abedini

Reza Abedini, is a world renowned Iranian designer and a professor of graphic design and visual culture at Tehran University.Abedini is one of the most famous graphics designer in Iran because of his modern Persian typography...

, received the Principal Award in the Prince Claus Awards

Prince Claus Awards

The Prince Claus Fund was inaugurated in 1996, named in honor of Prince Claus of The Netherlands. It receives an annual subsidy from the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs....

for his way of applying the knowledge and accomplishments of Iran's artistic heritage, renewing them, and making them exciting again. Reza Abedini's Persian Sym style unites the rich calligraphic tradition of Persian culture with "modernity".

It is believed that Ebrahim Golestan

Ebrahim Golestan

Ebrahim Golestan is an Iranian filmmaker and literary figure with a career spanning half a century...

, Fereydoon Rahnama and Farrokh Ghaffari

Farrokh Ghaffari

Farrokh Ghaffari was an Iranian film director, actor, critic and author. Along with Ebrahim Golestan and Fereydoun Rahnema he was one of the founders of Iran's New Wave film movement...

founded Iran's "different" cinematic style and Iranian intellectual movement in 20th century.

Marcos Grigorian

Marcos Grigorian

Marcos Grigorian was a notable Iranian-Armenian artist and a pioneer of Iranian modern art.-Biography:...

and Hossein Zenderoudi

Hossein Zenderoudi

Charles Hossein Zenderoudi is a renowned Iranian painter and sculptor, known especially as a pioneer of Iranian modern art. His work Tchaar Bagh was sold at Christi's International auction in Dubai for $1.6 million.- Museums :...

were pioneers of Iranian modern painting

Painting

Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. However, painting is...

and Sculpture

Sculpture

Sculpture is three-dimensional artwork created by shaping or combining hard materials—typically stone such as marble—or metal, glass, or wood. Softer materials can also be used, such as clay, textiles, plastics, polymers and softer metals...

Music movement

Simultaneous with the constitutional revolution in Iran, the young musicians sought new forms of music to synchronize it with the tide of social changes. In 1937, Tehran's Symphonic orchestra started working and performing western as well as Iranian music.

The 1979 revolution launched a renaissance in Persian classical music. Emergence of three ensembles namely, "Aref ensemble

Aref Ensemble

The Aref Ensemble was a Persian classical music ensemble. It was founded by maestro Parviz Meshkatian, Hossein Alizadeh, and Mohammad Reza Lotfi in 1977. The group was named after Aref Ghazvini, the 18th century Iranian poet and composer. Aref was dedicated to the promotion and advancement of...

", "Sheyda ensemble" and "Masters of Persian Music" revolutionized Iranian music during late 20th century and at the turn of the millennium.
New figures emerged in Persian Symphonic Music

Persian Symphonic Music

Persian symphonic music generally refers to the pieces by the Persian composers which have been composed for Western ensembles and orchestras, mostly based on the Persian folk and classical melodies...

and several Symphony Orchestra

Orchestra

An orchestra is a sizable instrumental ensemble that contains sections of string, brass, woodwind, and percussion instruments. The term orchestra derives from the Greek ορχήστρα, the name for the area in front of an ancient Greek stage reserved for the Greek chorus...

started their works despite lack of supports from national governments and international bodies. The new wave can be characterized
by growing interests in using both Iranian and European instruments and musical genres. Perhaps the best examples are Melal Orchestra and National Iranian Symphony Orchestra.

Moreover, folk music also enjoyed the emergence of figures as Sima Bina

Sima Bina

Simā Binā is notable Persian classical musician and Iran's researcher, composer, singer and song-writer of Iranian folk music...

and Kamkar music band. These musicians introduced Iranian volks music (Music of Khorasan

Greater Khorasan

Greater Khorasan or Ancient Khorasan is a historical region of Greater Iran mentioned in sources from Sassanid and Islamic eras which "frequently" had a denotation wider than current three provinces of Khorasan in Iran...

, Kurdish music

Kurdish music

Kurdish music refers to music performed in Kurdish language.Traditionally, there are three types of Kurdish Classical performers - storytellers , minstrels and bards . There was no specific music related to the Kurdish princely courts, and instead, music performed in night gatherings is...

, Bandari music

Bandari music

Bandari music stems from Iran's south, around the Persian Gulf region and was used by sailors and harbour-workers for centuries. It is a rhythmic type of dance music played fast and slow using quarter tone that can be vocalized and played...

, Mazandarani music etc.) to the international community by organizing numerous concerts worldwide.

Modern poetry

Modern Persian poetry came into existence after Nima Yushij. Some notable figures include:

Nima Yushij
Ahmad Shamlou
Mehdi Akhavan-Sales
Mehdi Akhavan-Sales
Mehdi Akhavān-Sāles , or Akhavān-Sāless , pen name M. Omid was a prominent Iranian poet. He is one of the pioneers of Free Verse in Persian language.-Life:Akhavan Sales was born in 1928 in Mashhad, Iran. He gave up an interest in music to appease his father...
Fereydoon Moshiri
Fereydoon Moshiri
Fereydoon Moshiri was one of the prominent contemporary Persian poets who versified in both modern and classic styles of the Persian poem. He is best known as conciliator of classical Persian poetry at one side with the New Poetry initiated by Nima Yushij at the other side...
Sohrab Sepehri
Sohrab Sepehri
Sohrab Sepehri was a notable modern Persian poet and a painter.He was born in Kashan in Isfahan province....
Manouchehr Atashi
Manouchehr Atashi
Manouchehr Atashi was a Persian poet, writer, and journalist.He was born in 1931 in Dashtestan, Bushehr province His poetry is the poetry of the revolting warrior of the humiliated southern tribesman. He takes his work seriously and although attached to his native birthplace his poems are...
Mohammad Reza Shafiei-Kadkani
Mohammad Reza Shafiei-Kadkani
Mohammad Reza Shafiei Kadkani is a Persian writer, poet, literary critic, editor, and translator.Born in Nishapur, Razavi Khorasan, Shafiei-Kadkani graduated from Tehran University with a doctorate degree in Persian literature...
Forough Farrokhzad
Forough Farrokhzad
Forugh Farrokhzād was an Iranian poet and film director. Forugh Farrokhzad is arguably one of Iran's most influential female poets of the twentieth century...
Simin Behbahani
Simin Behbahani
Simin Beh'bahāni is one of the most prominent figures of the modern Persian literature and one of the most outstanding amongst the contemporary Persian poets. She is Iran's national poet and an icon of the Iranian intelligentsia and literati who affectionately refer to her as the lioness of Iran...
Bijan Jalali
Bijan Jalali
Bijan Jalali is a renowned modern Persian poet.- References :* *...
Mohammad Zohari
Mohammad Zohari
Mohammad Zohari Iranian Poet & WriterHe was born in Tonekabon a city in north of Iran. As the first son of Abdollah Zohari Khalatbary an activist in Iranian Constitutional Revolution who had received the honorific title of “Motamed-ol-Soltan Zaygham-ol-Mamalek" from Ahmad Shah Qajar, in 1931 due...
Mina Assadi
Mina Assadi
-Biography:Mina Assadi is a famous poet, author, journalist and songwriter who lives in exile in Stockholm, Sweden. She is known for writing about controversial and provocative subjects, especially when she describes the fight against the Iranian regime. In 2007 she wrote the poem called "Pimps"...

Modern literary movement

Literary criticism and comparative literature in Iran entered a new phase in 19th century. Persian literature

Persian literature

Persian literature spans two-and-a-half millennia, though much of the pre-Islamic material has been lost. Its sources have been within historical Persia including present-day Iran as well as regions of Central Asia where the Persian language has historically been the national language...

enjoyed the emergence of influential figures as Sadeq Hedayat, Ahmad Kasravi

Ahmad Kasravi

, Abdolhossein Zarrinkoub, Shahrokh Meskoob

Shahrokh Meskoob

Shahrokh Meskoob , was an outstanding Iranian writer, translator, scholar and University professor. He had been living in Paris, France for twenty years.-Works:...

, Ebrahim Golestan

Ebrahim Golestan

Ebrahim Golestan is an Iranian filmmaker and literary figure with a career spanning half a century...

and Sadegh Choubak.

Modern scientific movement

See main article Iranian science and Iranian contemporary medicine

The history of modern science in Iran dates back to the year 1851 and the establishment of Darolfonoon – which was founded as a result of the efforts of Mirza Taghi Khan Amir Kabir

Amir Kabir

Amir Kabir , also known as Mirza Taghi Khan Amir-Nezam , also known by the titles of Atabak and Amir-e Nezam; chief minister to Naser al-Din Shah Qajar for the first three years of his reign and one of the most capable and innovative figures to appear in the whole Qajar period...

, aiming at training and teaching Iranian experts on many fields of sciences, and it was the future minded Abbas Mirza

Abbas Mirza

Prince, Field-Marshal Abbas Mirza born Amol city , was a Qajar crown prince of Persia. He developed a reputation as a military commander during wars with Russia and the Ottoman Empire, as an early modernizer of Persia's armed forces and institutions, and for his death before his father, Fath Ali...

who first dispatched students to Europe to obtain a western education.

By the establishment of Tehran University, science in Iran entered a new phase. Mahmoud Hessaby

Mahmoud Hessaby

Sayyed Mahmoud Hessaby was a prominent Iranian scientist, researcher and distinguished professor of University of Tehran...

, Ali Asghar Hekmat, Moslem Bahadori

Moslem Bahadori

Moslem Bahadori is a contemporary Iranian medical scientist, distinguished pathologist and a university lecturer. In 1973, Bahadori along with Averill Abraham Liebow, reported the first case of plasma cell granuloma, a benign tumor of the lung.-Education and career:He studied medicine at medical...

and many others played roles in initiating and forming these movements. The outcome of the movement has been the emergence of researchers who have been trained and received doctorate degrees in the country and have found international reputations.
Modernization of Iranian medicine did not occur through the straightforward replacement of traditional Persian medicine by modern European medicine. Rather, the integration of modern medicine went through a long process that included both the reinterpretation of traditional theories by traditional physicians and the assimilation of modern theories through the prism of traditional medicine.http://www.iias.nl/iiasn/31/IIASN31_20.pdf

One of the main Iranian scientific movements in late 20th century was in the field of chemistry

Chemistry

Chemistry is the science of matter, especially its chemical reactions, but also its composition, structure and properties. Chemistry is concerned with atoms and their interactions with other atoms, and particularly with the properties of chemical bonds....

and pharmaceutical chemistry. The main leaders of this movement were Abbas Shafiee

Abbas Shafiee

Abbas Shafiee is an Iranian pharmaceutical chemist. He is currently president of faculty of pharmacy at Tehran University. He has published more than 350 scientific articles in peer reviewed international journals....

, Bijan Farzami, Mohammad-Nabi Sarbolouki

Mohammad-Nabi Sarbolouki

thumb|right|Mohammad Nabi Sarbolouki, prominent scientist and educatorMohammad-Nabi Sarbolouki was a distinguished Iranian biophysicist and polymer chemist and one of the most influential individuals behind modern scientific movement in Iran. He was known as the inventor of a DNA vehicle called...

, Issa Yavari and Ahmad Reza Dehpour

Ahmad Reza Dehpour

Ahmad Reza Dehpour is an Iranian pharmacologist and biomedical scientist.Dehpour studied pharmacy at Tehran University and received a PhD degree in Pharmacology from Tehran Medical School...

. The movement resulted in hundreds of research papers in peer reviewed international journals.

Other notable figures who promoted world-class research in Iran during 20th century are: Reza Mansouri

Reza Mansouri

Reza Mansouri is an Iranian physicist who was an influential figure in Iranian science in the late 20th century.Reza Mansouri received his Ph.D. in 1972 from the University of Vienna under Roman Ulrich Sexl. He was also an Assistant Professor there for five years. He is one of the leading figures...

and Yousof Sobouti (Physics), Abolhassan Farhoudi (Immunology), Mohammad Reza Zarrindast

Mohammad Reza Zarrindast

Mohammad Reza Zarrindast is a notable Iranian pharmacologist and biomedical researcher.Prof Zarrindast published more than 200 original research papers in peer reviewed international journals. He is currently full professor of pharmacology at Tehran Medical School...

(Pharmacology), Fereydoun Davatchi

Fereydoun Davatchi

Fereydoun Davatchi is the director of Rheumatology Research Center in Tehran University of Medical sciences.Professor Davatchi studied medicine in France and received d'Etat Diploma in Rheumatology from Paris University. He is currently full professor of medicine in Tehran University of Medical...

(Rheumatology), Taher Movassaghian (Chemistry), Ardeshir Ghavamzadeh (Hematology), Ali Radmehr (Radiology), Hossein Najmabadi

Hossein Najmabadi

Hossein Najmabadi is an Iranian medical scientist and the director of Genetics Research Center at University of Social Welfare and Rehabilitation Sciences. Najmabadi is known for his significant contribution to the genetics of mental retardation....

(Medical genetics), Hormoz Shams (Ophthalmology), Moslem Bahadori

Moslem Bahadori

(Pathology), Hormoz Dabirashrafi (Obstetrics and Gynecology), Hossein Esteky (Neuroscience), G.R. Baradaran Khosroshahi (Mathematics), Caro Lucas

Caro Lucas

Caro Lucas was a renowned Iranian- Armenian scientist. His many areas of contribution to Iranian scientific society include biological computing, computational intelligence, uncertain systems, intelligent control, fuzzy systems, neural networks, multiagent systems, swarm intelligence, data mining,...

(Electrical Engg., AI), Jawad Salehi

Jawad Salehi

Jawad A. Salehi born in Kazemain , Iraq, on December 22, 1956 is an Iranian electrical and computer engineer, pioneer of optical code division multiple access and a highly cited researcher .-Education:...

(Electrical Engg.) and Ali Kaveh (Civil Engg.).

Iran's university population has swelled from 100,000 in 1979 to 2 million in 2006. Indeed, in Iran some 70% of science and engineering students are women.http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v444/n7115/full/444022a.html

Iran is now a world leader in some areas like string theory

String theory

String theory is an active research framework in particle physics that attempts to reconcile quantum mechanics and general relativity. It is a contender for a theory of everything , a manner of describing the known fundamental forces and matter in a mathematically complete system...

. When a reporter for Nature
Nature (journal)
Nature, first published on 4 November 1869, is ranked the world's most cited interdisciplinary scientific journal by the Science Edition of the 2010 Journal Citation Reports...

asked Reza Mansouri

Reza Mansouri

: "Why do I see so many string theory papers coming out of Iran?" He explained how Iranian scientists worked together under revolution, sanctions and war to bring Iran to such a position: "I remember exactly the beginning of the revolution, some old colleagues just sat together and spoke about what we could do for Iran. Is it understood that we have to look for excellence, in some areas that we may be strong and that we may get strong at that so that will be the field of physics. So we began with that. It happens that the most active field physicists in our country were working on the string theory at that time. So they tried to be of a school, so to speak, and we did know that that was the only way which was somehow independent of all these political fluctuations regarding war, regarding cultural revolution, all that, and we really tried hard to build up schools. So we have it now, string schools, so to say somehow."

In 2007 United Nations

United Nations

The United Nations is an international organization whose stated aims are facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and achievement of world peace...

awarded Hossein Malek-Afzali

Hossein Malek-Afzali

Hossein Malek-Afzali is an Iranian scientist, physician and an associate of World Health Organization.He is currently full professor at the Department of Biostatistics and Epidemiology, School of Public Health, Tehran University...

with the prestigious UN Population Award. Malek Afzali has helped design strategies to improve health procedures, particularly adolescent health, reproductive health and family planning. In the field of reproductive health, he has engaged policymakers and religious leaders in the planning and implementation of reproductive health programmes in Iran.

Iranian women's movement

Currently women's rights groups are among the most active social rights groups in Iran and are mostly involved in an effort to gain equal rights for women in the Iranian legal system by opposing specific discriminatory laws. However, under the Presidential regime of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, elected President in 2005, women's rights advocates have been beaten, jailed and persecuted.

The presence of women in Iranian intellectual movements (science, modern literature, cinema, human-rights activism, etc.) has been remarkable throughout the history of modern Iran. According to the research ministry of Iran, women accounted for 56% of all university students in the natural sciences, including one in five Ph.D. students. Such education and social trends are increasingly viewed with alarm by the Iranian government.

In cinema and the visual arts, Tahmineh Milani

Tahmineh Milani

Tahmineh Milāni is an Iranian film director, screenwriter, and producer.-Early life:Milani was born 1960 in Tabriz, Iran. Of Azeri descent, she is the wife of the Iranian actor and producer Mohammad Nikbin.- Early career :...

, Rakhshan Bani Etemad

Rakhshan Bani Etemad

Rakhshān Bani-E'temād is an internationally and critically acclaimed Iranian film director and screenwriter. Widely considered as Iran's premier female director, her films have been praised at international festivals as well as being remarkably popular with Iranian critics and...

, and Samira Makhmalbaf

Samira Makhmalbaf

Samira Makhmalbaf is an internationally acclaimed Iranian filmmaker and script writer. She is the daughter of Mohsen Makhmalbaf, the film director and writer. Samira Makhmalbaf belongs to the New Wave movement within Iranian cinema...

created new cinematic styles which have attracted many from all over the world and in international festivals.
Persian poet and literary figure Simin Behbahani

Simin Behbahani

Simin Beh'bahāni is one of the most prominent figures of the modern Persian literature and one of the most outstanding amongst the contemporary Persian poets. She is Iran's national poet and an icon of the Iranian intelligentsia and literati who affectionately refer to her as the lioness of Iran...

was nominated for 1997 Nobel Prize for literature. The 2003 Nobel Peace Prize went to Shirin Ebadi

Shirin Ebadi

Shirin Ebadi is an Iranian lawyer, a former judge and human rights activist and founder of Defenders of Human Rights Center in Iran. On 10 October 2003, Ebadi was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her significant and pioneering efforts for democracy and human rights, especially women's,...

for her efforts for democracy and human rights, especially for the rights of women and children.
Simin Daneshvar

Simin Daneshvar

Simin Dāneshvar is an Iranian academic, novelist, fiction writer and translator of literary works from English, German, Italian and Russian into Persian. Daneshvar has a number of firsts to her credit. In 1948, her collection of Persian short stories was the first by an Iranian woman to be...

's Savushun is a novel about the Iranian experience of modernity during the 20th century.

Iranian writer and satirist, Bibi Khatoon Astarabadi

Bibi Khatoon Astarabadi

Bibi Khānoom Astarābādi was a notable Iranian writer, satirist, and one of the pioneering figures in the women's movement of Iran....

was perhaps the first professional female satirist, critic and one of the notable figures involved in Persian constitutional revolution.
In early 20th century, Persian music enjoyed the emergence of Qamar ol-Molouk Vaziri

Qamar ol-Molouk Vaziri

Qamar ol-Molouk Vaziri is Iran's "Queen of Persian Music" and a prominent vocalist and intellectual....

, the "Lady of Iranian music".

Persian constitutional revolution

Iran had undergone a phenomenal constitutional revolution at the turn of the twentieth century. The constitutional movement was concerned with modernity and human rights. It led to the establishment of a parliament

Parliament

A parliament is a legislature, especially in those countries whose system of government is based on the Westminster system modeled after that of the United Kingdom. The name is derived from the French , the action of parler : a parlement is a discussion. The term came to mean a meeting at which...

in Iran. Mirza Jahangir-Khan Shirazi and Farrokhi Yazdi

Mirza Mohammad Farrokhi Yazdi

Mirza Mohammad Farrokhi Yazdi was a Persian/Iranian poet and senior politician of the Reza Pahlavi era.Born in Yazd to a person by the name of Ebrahim Yazdi, he had to leave school for work due to poverty at an early age....

were among the most notable writers and critics of this era who sacrificed their lives for establishment of democracy and freedom in Iran.

Iranian Revolution

Some researchers believe that the Iranian Revolution

Iranian Revolution

The Iranian Revolution refers to events involving the overthrow of Iran's monarchy under Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and its replacement with an Islamic republic under Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the leader of the...

was not a simple clash between modernity and tradition but an attempt to accommodate modernity within a sense of authentic Islamic identity, culture and historical experience. http://www.cambridge.org/catalogue/catalogue.asp?isbn=0521650003

Perceived by many as a revolt against the secular modernity of the West, Iranian revolution was welcomed by some Western thinkers as a triumph of spiritual values over the profane world of capitalist materialism. For others the Iranian revolution was a protest against the very political rationality of the modern era. http://iranproject.info/

2nd of Khordad movement

The election of the former President Mohammad Khatami

Mohammad Khatami

Sayyid Mohammad Khātamī is an Iranian scholar, philosopher, Shiite theologian and Reformist politician. He served as the fifth President of Iran from August 2, 1997 to August 3, 2005. He also served as Iran's Minister of Culture in both the 1980s and 1990s...

in May 1997 was through the emergence of a new political force, the youth. Inspired by simultaneously individualist and democratic ideals that are incompatible in every respect with the authoritarian values and symbols traditionally associated in the Iranian intellectual arena with Marxist and Heideggerian World views. It is in this new social atmosphere that the emergence of a global community or a cyberpolis was able to reveal to the Iranian youth the true nature of instrumental rationality as modern universal standards. Saeed Hajjarian

Saeed Hajjarian

Saeed Hajjarian is an Iranian intellectual, prominent journalist, pro-democracy activist and university lecturer. He has been an intelligence official, a member of Tehran's city council, and advisor to president Mohammad Khatami...

was widely believed to be the main strategist behind the 1997 reform movement of Iran. He allegedly showed the supremacy of politics as such over any religious norm when he said that the survival of the Islamic Republic was paramount and that no religious ritual should stand in its way. This kind of decision, he states, means that politics are more important than religion and that this acknowledges the secularization

Secularization

Secularization is the transformation of a society from close identification with religious values and institutions toward non-religious values and secular institutions...

of religion. In this context, he argues, it is possible to reassess velayat faqih and to reject its supremacy within the political field in Iran. While calling to build a new reform movement, Hajjarian believes that the reform movement started in 1997, died during Khatami's second term. He believes that the reform project started by Persian constitutional revolution, has not been completed yet.(ref: Farhad Khosrokhavar, The New Intellectuals in Iran, Social Compass, Vol. 51, No. 2, 191-202 (2004))

The scope of 2nd of Khordad movement was much broader than President Khatami's reform plan. The latter has been criticised for wanting slow progress and not producing a real democratic alternative for the current Islamic republic. When asked about this during Khatami's visit to United Kingdom, he said "You know for centuries we have been under dictatorship so we cannot get to a democracy all of a sudden, we have to go step by step"

Campaigns against intellectuals

After the Iranian Revolution

Iranian Revolution

, the Cultural Revolution and the Chain murders of Iran

Chain murders of Iran

The Chain Murders of Iran , or Serial Murders, were a series of murders and disappearances from 1988-1998 by Iranian government operatives of Iranian dissident intellectuals who had been critical of the Islamic Republic system in some way.The victims included more than 80 writers, translators,...

were two major campaign that involved the imprisonment, torture, emigration, and massacre of Iranian scholars.

Intellectual circles in late 20th century

Intellectual circles in postrevolutionary Iran can be classified into the following categories:

Revolutionary intellectual circles

The main figures in this category are Ali Shariati

Ali Shariati

, Jalal Al Ahmad and Morteza Motahhari

Morteza Motahhari

Ayatollah Murtaza Motahhari was an Iranian scholar, cleric, lecturer, and politician.Motahhari is considered among the important influences on the ideologies of the Islamic Republic, and was a co-founder of Hosseiniye Ershad and the Combatant Clergy Association...

. Ali Shariati was the main theorist and thinker behind Iranian revolution. He is considered to be one of the most influential philosophical leaders of pre-revolutionary Iran and the impact and popularity of his thought continues to be felt throughout Iranian society many years later. He died unexpectedly one year before the revolution.

Reformist intellectual circles

Main figures in this category are Mehdi Bazargan

Mehdi Bazargan

Mehdi Bazargan was a prominent Iranian scholar, academic, long-time pro-democracy activist and head of Iran's interim government, making him Iran's first prime minister after the Iranian Revolution of 1979. He was the head of the first engineering department of Tehran University...

, Abdolkarim Soroush

Abdolkarim Soroush

, Mohammad Mojtahed Shabestari

Mohammad Mojtahed Shabestari

Mohammad Mojtahed Shabestari is a highly influential Iranian philosopher, Shia Islamic theologian, writer and professor at Tehran University. He is noted for his idea that ad-din, is perfect, but not all-encompassing, i.e...

, Mostafa Malekian

Mostafa Malekian

Mostafa Malekian , is a prominent Iranian philosopher, thinker, translator and editor. He is working on a project called Rationality and Spirituality...

, Mohsen Kadivar

Mohsen Kadivar

Mohsen Kadivar is an Iranian philosopher, University lecturer, cleric and activist. A political dissident, Kadivar has been a vocal critic of the doctrine of clerical rule, also known as Velayat-e Faqih , and a strong advocate of democratic and liberal reforms in Iran...

, Alireza Alavitabar

Alireza Alavitabar

Alireza Alavitabar is an Iranian political scientist and a leading reformist intellectual and writer.Alireza Alavitabar is a member of Islamic Iran Participation Front and was the editor of the now closed Sobh-e-Emrooz newspaper....

and Hossein Bashiriyeh

Hossein Bashiriyeh

Hossein Bashiriyeh, is an Iranian scholar in political theory and political sociology, who was born in 1953 in Hamdan, Iran.He has a B.A. from Tehran University, an M.A. from Essex University and a Ph.D...

.

The unifying traits of these intellectuals include their recognition of reform in the Islamic thought, democracy, civil society and religious pluralism and their opposition to the absolute supremacy of the Faqih

Faqih

A Faqīh is an expert in fiqh, or, Islamic jurisprudence.A faqih is an expert in Islamic Law, and, as such, the word Faqih can literally be generally translated as Jurist.- The definition of Fiqh and its relation to the Faqih:...

. The rise of religious intellectuals can be followed through the writings of Abdolkarim Soroosh. Soroosh's main idea is that there are perennial unchanging religious truths, but our understanding of them remains contingent on our knowledge in the fields of science and philosophy. Unlike Ali Shariati, who turned to Marxism to bring a historicist perspective to the Shiite thought, Soroosh debates the relation between democracy and religion and discusses the possibility of what he calls religious democracy.

Influenced by Persian mysticism, Soroush advocated a type of reformist Islam that went beyond most liberal Muslim thinkers of the 20th century and argued that the search for reconciliation of Islam and democracy was not a matter of simply finding appropriate phrases in the Qur'an that were in agreement with modern science, democracy, or human rights. Drawing on the works of Molana Jalaleddin Balkhi, Immanuel Kant

Immanuel Kant

Immanuel Kant was a German philosopher from Königsberg , researching, lecturing and writing on philosophy and anthropology at the end of the 18th Century Enlightenment....

, G.W.F. Hegel, Karl Popper

Karl Popper

Sir Karl Raimund Popper, CH FRS FBA was an Austro-British philosopher and a professor at the London School of Economics...

, and Erich Fromm

Erich Fromm

Erich Seligmann Fromm was a Jewish German-American social psychologist, psychoanalyst, sociologist, humanistic philosopher, and democratic socialist. He was associated with what became known as the Frankfurt School of critical theory.-Life:Erich Fromm was born on March 23, 1900, at Frankfurt am...

, Soroush called for a reexamination of all tenets of Islam, insisting on the need to maintain the religion's original spirit of social justice and its emphasis on caring for other people.http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-230083

Other influential figures in these circles are Saeed Hajjarian

Saeed Hajjarian

, Ahmad Sadri

Ahmad Sadri

Ahmad Sadri is a Professor of Sociology and Anthropology at Lake Forest College. He has been the James P. Gorter Professor of Islamic World Studies since 2007. Sadri received a Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts in Sociology from Tehran University, an MA and PhD from the New School for Social...

, Mahmoud Sadri

Mahmoud Sadri

Mahmoud Sadri is an Iranian sociologist.Mahmoud Sadri is a full professor of sociology at the Federation of North Texas Area Universities that includes Texas Woman's University, University of North Texas, and A&M University, Commerce. His major interests include Sociology of Religion, Sociology of...

, Ezzatollah Sahabi

Ezzatollah Sahabi

Ezzatollah Sahabi was an Iranian scholar, humanitarian, democracy activist, politician and former parliament member. He was famous for his political-economical social analysis, and also for the many years of imprisonment in both the pre-revolution and post-revolution eras...

, Ahmad Ghabel

Ahmad Ghabel

Ahmad Ghabel is a Hojjatoleslam Shia Muslim cleric, an Iranian theologian seminary lecturer, researcher, author and "prominent" member of Iran's largest reformist political party, the now outlawed Islamic Iran Participation Front...

and Hassan Yousefi Eshkevari. Akbar Ganji

Akbar Ganji

Akbar Ganji is an Iranian journalist and writer. He has been described as "Iran’s preeminent political dissident", and a "wildly popular pro-democracy journalist" who has crossed press censorship "red lines" regularly...

had also been associated with this circle before he published his Manifest of Republicanism. Moreover Akbar Ganji took a tour around the world in order to invite non Iranian intellectuals to join Iran's intellectual movement. Many Persian scholars believe that such interactions with world scholars would promote Iranian intellectualism and democratic reform. Richard Rorty

Richard Rorty

Richard McKay Rorty was an American philosopher. He had a long and diverse academic career, including positions as Stuart Professor of Philosophy at Princeton, Kenan Professor of Humanities at the University of Virginia, and Professor of Comparative Literature at Stanford University...

, Noam Chomsky

Noam Chomsky

Avram Noam Chomsky is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, and activist. He is an Institute Professor and Professor in the Department of Linguistics & Philosophy at MIT, where he has worked for over 50 years. Chomsky has been described as the "father of modern linguistics" and...

, Anthony Giddens

Anthony Giddens

Anthony Giddens, Baron Giddens is a British sociologist who is known for his theory of structuration and his holistic view of modern societies. He is considered to be one of the most prominent modern contributors in the field of sociology, the author of at least 34 books, published in at least 29...

, David Hild, Shmuel Noah Eisenstadt among a few others accepted the honorary membership of Iranian intellectual society.

Perhaps the most important achievement of this circle was training a new generation of Iranian intellectuals who are far ahead of their mentors and do not belong to any of well-established intellectual circles in Iran. Ahmad Zeidabadi

Ahmad Zeidabadi

Ahmad Zeidabadi is an Iranian journalist, academic, writer and political analyst and the secretary general of Office for Strengthening Unity. He is one of the notable figures of the Iranian reform movement....

and Mehdi Jami

Mehdi Jami

Mehdi Jami, February 1961, is a notable Persian journalist, photographer, filmmaker and writer.Jami holds a master's degree in Persian language and literature from Ferdowsi University...

belong to this new generation of Persian scholars.

Democratic religious circles (In-system reformers)

These groups are characterized by the followings:

Support for Islamic republic as the best form of government
Form of government
A form of government, or form of state governance, refers to the set of political institutions by which a government of a state is organized. Synonyms include "regime type" and "system of government".-Empirical and conceptual problems:...
Calling for Religious tolerance
Calling for democratic values
Rejecting liberalism
Liberalism
Liberalism is the belief in the importance of liberty and equal rights. Liberals espouse a wide array of views depending on their understanding of these principles, but generally, liberals support ideas such as constitutionalism, liberal democracy, free and fair elections, human rights,...
Rejecting secularism
Secularism
Secularism is the principle of separation between government institutions and the persons mandated to represent the State from religious institutions and religious dignitaries...
Calling for the rule of law and civil society
Civil society
Civil society is composed of the totality of many voluntary social relationships, civic and social organizations, and institutions that form the basis of a functioning society, as distinct from the force-backed structures of a state , the commercial institutions of the market, and private criminal...
They believe that ethics
Ethics
Ethics, also known as moral philosophy, is a branch of philosophy that addresses questions about morality—that is, concepts such as good and evil, right and wrong, virtue and vice, justice and crime, etc.Major branches of ethics include:...

has priority over politics
Politics
Politics is a process by which groups of people make collective decisions. The term is generally applied to the art or science of running governmental or state affairs, including behavior within civil governments, but also applies to institutions, fields, and special interest groups such as the...

.

The main thinker and theorist of this circle is Mohammad Khatami

Mohammad Khatami

, former president of Iran. Other notable figures include Yousef Sanei, Abdollah Noori

Abdollah Noori

Abdollah Noori is an Iranian reformist politician and cleric. Despite his "long history of service to the Islamic Republic," he became the most senior Islamic politician to be sentenced to prison since the Iranian Revolution when he was sentenced to five years in prison for political and religious...

, Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mostafa Moin. They are mainly under the influence of ideas of Ayatollah Mirza Hossein Na'eeni and Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

Neo-conservative intellectual circles

Unlike the reformist intellectuals, the neo- conservative intellectuals in Iran are in favor of the supremacy of the Leader and against concepts such as democracy, civil society and pluralism. This movement includes figures such as Reza Davari Ardakani

Reza Davari Ardakani

Reza Davari Ardakani is an Iranian philosopher and university professor lecturer. He is also President of the Academy of Sciences of Iran....

, Javad Larijani and Mehdi Golshani

Mehdi Golshani

Mehdi Golshani is a contemporary Iranian theoretical physicist and philosopher and Professor of physics at Sharif University of Technology. He received his B.Sc. in Physics from Tehran University in 1959 and his Ph.D. in Physics with a specialization in particle physics in 1969 from the University...

. The famous personality among these is Reza Davari Ardakani, who as an anti- Western philosopher is very familiar with the works of Martin Heidegger

Martin Heidegger

Martin Heidegger was a German philosopher known for his existential and phenomenological explorations of the "question of Being."...

. Davari, unlike Soroosh, takes some of the features of Heidegger's thought, mainly the critic of modernity and puts it into an Islamic wording. He rejects the Western model of democracy, which is based on the separation of politics and religion.

Non-religious intellectual circles

Main figures in this category are Javad Tabatabaei

Javad Tabatabaei

, Dariush Shayegan

Dariush Shayegan

Dariush Shayegan is one of Iran's prominent thinkers, cultural theorists and comparative philosophers.Shayegan studied at Sorbonne University in Paris...

, Amir Hossein Aryanpour

Amir Hossein Aryanpour

Amir-Hossein Aryanpour was an Iranian dictionarist, writer, translator, philosopher, sociologist, and literary figure....

, Ramin Jahanbegloo

Ramin Jahanbegloo

Ramin Jahanbegloo is an Iranian philosopher and academic who is currently based in Canada. He teaches at the University of Toronto as a professor of political science.-Biography:...

, Ehsan Naraghi

Ehsan Naraghi

Ehsān Narāghi, PhD is an Iranian sociologist and writer.-Biography:During his high school he went to Dar ol-Fonoon in Tehran. Then he studied sociology in the University of Geneva and received his Ph.D at Sorbonne University in Paris....

, Abbas Milani

Abbas Milani

Abbas Malekzadeh Milani is an Iranian-American historian and author. Milani is a visiting professor of Political Science and the director of the Iranian Studies program at Stanford University. He is also a research fellow and co-director of the Iran Democracy Project at Stanford University's...

, and Aramesh Doustdar

Aramesh Doustdar

Aramesh Dustdar is an Iranian philosopher, writer, scholar and a former philosophy lecturer at Tehran University.Dustdar received a PhD degree in philosophy from University of Bonn. He is known in Iran as a secular Heideggerian philosopher .- External links : **...

.

Javad Tabtabaei deplores the deep roots of religion in the Iranian culture. For Tabatabai, the decline of the Iranian political thought goes back to the 9th and 10th centuries and, since then, it has been impossible for them to adequately understand the modernity. The social sciences, according to him, have been introduced in Iran without the secularization of thought and its rationalization and therefore, they reproduce in an unconscious way the ancient prejudices and the inability to think adequately.

Dariush Shayegan criticizes a view of religion that does not take into account the major trends of the modern world where cultural homogeneity and religious absolutism are questioned. The quest for a holistic identity based on a monolithic view of Islam is alien to the evolution of modern world and means the isolation and regression of the (Iranian) society.

Dariush Shayegan, who writes mainly in French (but has been extensively translated into Persian), shares some of the views of these particular intellectuals, but his major contribution is to invite Iranians to accept the ‘‘fragmented identity’’ of the modern world and to renounce a unitary view of the Self which leads to a fascination with utopian and mythological ideologies. He insists that, since Iran has undergone the change directly from tradition to postmodernity without the mediation of modernity, it is experiencing a strong malaise. His solution is to open up Iran to the new multicultural world in which one has to accept the diversity of the perspectives and, therefore, to be tolerant towards others who do not think and behave in the same way as the Self. This invitation to become open-minded and to give up the idea of a homogeneous culture exerts an undeniable influence on many young people in Iran.

Traditional scholars

The most notable circle was associated with Hossein Nasr

Seyyed Hossein Nasr

Seyyed Hossein Nasr is an Iranian University Professor of Islamic studies at George Washington University, and a prominent Islamic philosopher...

, founder of Imperial Iranian Academy of Philosophy

Imperial Iranian Academy of Philosophy

Imperial Iranian Academy of Philosophy was founded in Iran during the Pahlavi era by Seyyed Hossein Nasr, a Professor of History of Science and Philosophy at the University of Tehran who also served for several years as President of Aryamehr University of Technology in Iran...

. For Nasr, the traditional world was pervaded by a tremendous sense of the Sacred and the Absolute, whereas the inception of modernity involved precisely the severing off of that awareness, resulting in what Max Weber would later dub the disenchantment of the world.
Nasr has been an unrelenting opponent of Islamic fundamentalism in all its forms throughout his career because he sees it as a somewhat vigilante reactionary movement operating within the paradigm of the modern nation state, but even more so, because it lacks a well thought out metaphysical basis rooted in a traditional Muslim understanding of the world which respects both nature and human dignity.

Other notable figures

There are several intellectual figures who continue to be very influential in Iranian society, while they do not belong to any of the above mentioned philosophical circles:

Scholars:

Yadollah Sahabi
Yadollah Sahabi
Yadollah Sahabi was a prominent Iranian scholar, writer, reformist and politician. A close associate of Mohammad Mosaddegh and Mehdi Bazargan, Sahabi was an active campaigner for the nationalisation of the Iranian oil industry in the 1950s. He was the father of Ezzatollah Sahabi.Sahabi studied at...

, prominent academic, writer and scientist
Mohammad Gharib
Mohammad Gharib
Mohammad Gharib was an Iranian physician, clinician, distinguished university professor and a pioneer of pediatrics in Iran....

, pioneering physician and academic
Fereydoun Hoveyda
Fereydoun Hoveyda
Fereydoon Hoveyda was an influential Iranian diplomat, writer and thinker. He was the Iranian ambassador to the United Nations from 1971 until 1979...

(prominent scholar, writer and filmmaker)
Daryoush Ashouri
Daryoush Ashouri
Dariush Ashoori is a prominent Iranian thinker, author, translator, researcher, and public intellectual. He lives in Paris, France.-Work:He studied at the Faculty of Law, Political Sciences and Economics of the University of Tehran, and has been visiting professor of Persian language and...

(prominent scholar, linguist and cultural theorist)
Masoud Behnoud (prominent journalist and writer)
Khosrow Naghed (prominent expert on Iranian culture and philosophy)
Hossein Elahi Ghomshei
Hossein Elahi Ghomshei
Hossein Mohyeddin Elahi Ghomshei better known as Elahi Ghomshei, is an Iranian scholar, author and lecturer on literature, art and mysticism.-Life and Education:...

(prominent expert on Iranian mysthical thoughts)
Ahmad Jalali
Ahmad Jalali
Ahmad Jalali is an Iranian scholar and philosopher.He authored a dozen articles in social, cultural, historical, philosophical, political and international fields...

(prominent scholar and a high ranking figure of UNESCO)
Parviz Varjavand
Parviz Varjavand
Parviz Varjavand was a notable Iranian archaeologist, researcher, university professor and politician who was a prominent member of Iran National Front . -Early and political carrer:...

(scholar, archeologist and expert of cultural heritage)
Vali Nasr
Vali Nasr
Vali Nasr is a leading expert on Middle East and Islamic world, a best-selling author, influential commentator and Professor of International Politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy of Tufts University, Senior Fellow in Foreign Policy at Brookings Institution, and a columnist for...

(scholar and expert on middle east studies)
Ahmad Bourghani
Ahmad Bourghani
Ahmad Bourghani Farahani was an influential Iranian reformist politician, notable journalist, writer and political analyst....

(prominent journalist and analyst)
Farrokhroo Parsa
Farrokhroo Parsa
Farokhroo Pārsā, was an Iranian physician, educator and parliamentarian. She served as Minister of Education of Iran in the last pre-Islamic revolution government and was the first female cabinet minister of an Iranian government....

(scholar, politician and physician; first female minister of Iran)
Daryush Shokof
Daryush Shokof
Daryush Shokof is an Iranian artist, film director, philosopher, writer, art director, and film producer, and singer...

(artist,writer,filmmaker,philosopher)
Modjtaba Sadria
Modjtaba Sadria
Modjtaba Sadria is an Iranian-born philosopher and socio-cultural theorist. Professor Sadria is a specialist in cross-cultural relations and East Asian studies...

Philosopher, a member of Global Reconciliation Network, also a member of UN Dialogue Among Civilisations, Honorary Professor of Monash University, Melbourne, Australia

Economists:

Mousa Ghaninejad
Mousa Ghaninejad
Dr. Mousa Ghaninejad is a senior Iranian economist and a faculty member at the Oil Industry University. He is editor of daily economic newspaper, Donya-e-Eqtesad....

(senior Iranian economist)
Farhad Nomani (senior economist, former lecturer at Tehran University and writer of the book: Class and Labor in Iran)
Sohrab Behdad (senior economist, former lecturer at Tehran University and writer of the book: Class and Labor in Iran)
Fariborz Rais-Dana (senior economist)

Experts on law and political sciences:

Davoud Hermidas-Bavand
Davoud Hermidas-Bavand
Davoud Hermidas-Bavand is a renowned Iranian political scientist.Bavand obtained with honors a bachelor’s degree in law and political sciences from Tehran University in 1957. He left Iran in 1958 and he was conferred a doctorate in international relations by American University, Washington, D.C.,...

(prominent scholar and political scientist)
Pirouz Mojtahedzadeh
Pirouz Mojtahedzadeh
Prof. Pirouz Mojtahedzadeh is a renowned Iranian political scientist and historian.Mojtahedzadeh is currently a professor of geopolitics at Tarbiat Modarres University. He is also the chairman of the London-based Urosevic Research Foundation. He is a member of Campaign Against Sanctions and...

(prominent scholar and political scientist)
Amir Nasser Katouzian (Tehran University professor of law and political sciences)
Jamshid Momtaz
Jamshid Momtaz
Jamshid Momtaz was born June 18, 1942 in Izmir. He earned his degree in public law at the Faculty of Law and Economy from University of Paris ....

(Tehran University professor of international law)
Ata'ollah Mohajerani
Ata'ollah Mohajerani
Ata'ollah Mohajerani , , is an Iranian historian, politician, journalist, and author. Ata`ollah Mohajerani served as Minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance of Iran under reformist President Mohammad Khatami until 2000 when he was resigned from office for alleged permissiveness."-Overview:Dr...

(prominent scholar, political analyst and historian)
Alireza Nourizadeh
Alireza Nourizadeh
Alireza Nourizadeh is an Iranian scholar, literary figure, journalist and an expert on Iranian contemporary history.Nourizadeh is a political refugee from Iran. After fleeing to Great Britain, he obtained his PhD from the University of London in International Relations. Nourizadeh has been active...

(prominent scholar, political analyst and historian)
Javad Zarif (prominent scholar, political analyst and expert on international relations)
Sadeq Zibakalam (leading political scientist and professor of Tehran University)
Amir Attaran
Amir Attaran
Amir Attaran is a Canadian lawyer, immunologist, and law professor.Currently, Attaran is Associate Professor of Law and Population Health and the holder of the Canada Research Chair in Law, Population Health and Global Development Policy at the University of Ottawa.-Early life and education:Attaran...

lawyer and immunologist; expert on public health and global development issues.
Elaheh Koulaei
Elaheh Koulaei
Elaheh Koulaei is an Iranian political scientist, reformist intellectual.Dr Koulaei is professor of political science at Tehran University and a member of the Islamic Iran Participation Front...

(political scientist and expert on USSR at Tehran University)

Philosophy education in Iran

Philosophy has become a popular subject of study during last few decades in Iran. Comparing the number of philosophy books currently published in Iran with that in other countries, Iran possibly ranks first in this field but it is definitely on top in terms of publishing philosophy books. Currently different approaches are working in a diverging fields of philosophy:

1. Traditional Persian Islamic philosophy. traditional classic philosophy revived after a period of silence, in Tehran School, and notably works of Agha Ali Modarres Zonoozi in early 20th century, after him both schools of Tehran and Ghom (with the works of Allameh Tabatabai and Imam Ruhollah Khomayni) activated philosophical debates. Nowaday, Islamic philosophy is the most fresh period all over the world in Iran all the way after Sfavid school of Isfahan. The most notable figures of our time include Allameh Hossein tabatabaii, Allameh Rafiai Gazvini, Mehdi Hayeri Yazdi, Falatouri, Hasan zadeh Amoli, Morteza Motahhari, Abolhasan Jelveh, Mohammad tagi Amoli, allameh hossein Gharavi Isfahani (kompani), Ibrahim Ashtiyani, Jalaloddin Ashtiyani, Kazem assar.

2. Western philosophy. The Western philosophy is mostly welcome to Iran in 19th century, but its full development began in 1970s, with the reactive movement against the left political thought of Soviet sect of Toodeh party, most notably by refutation of their Marxist-Leninist works (typically in Tagi Arani's works). The leading figures include Allameh Tabatabai, and his pupil Morteza Motahhari
Morteza Motahhari
Ayatollah Murtaza Motahhari was an Iranian scholar, cleric, lecturer, and politician.Motahhari is considered among the important influences on the ideologies of the Islamic Republic, and was a co-founder of Hosseiniye Ershad and the Combatant Clergy Association...

. Also Ahmad Fardid
Ahmad Fardid
Ahmad Fardid was a prominent Iranian philosopher and an inspiring and dedicated professor of Tehran University. He is considered to be among the ideologues of the Islamic government of Iran which came to power in 1979...

and his Circle who introduced phenomenology and very specifically Martin Heidegger
Martin Heidegger
Martin Heidegger was a German philosopher known for his existential and phenomenological explorations of the "question of Being."...

to Iranian Academia. His pupils like Reza Davari, Dariush Shayegan
Dariush Shayegan
Dariush Shayegan is one of Iran's prominent thinkers, cultural theorists and comparative philosophers.Shayegan studied at Sorbonne University in Paris...

who are now among famous Iranian philosophers developed his way to interpret modern conditions in Iran. Today the most dominant branch of Western philosophy in Iranian academia is Continental philosophy; The domination of the department of philosophy of the University of Tehran
University of Tehran
The University of Tehran , also known as Tehran University and UT, is Iran's oldest university. Located in Tehran, the university is among the most prestigious in the country, and is consistently selected as the first choice of many applicants in the annual nationwide entrance exam for top Iranian...

over the teaching of philosophy with laying on Islamic philosophy and Continental philosophy put it ahead of philosophy education in Iran. Department of philosophy of the University of Tehran traditionally is the top place of the greatest philosophers in secular education system in Iran; among the philosophers of the University of Tehran to be named are Reza Davari, Ebrahimi Dinani, and Mahmoud Khatami
Mahmoud Khatami
Mahmoud Khatami is an Iranian philosopher. He is best known for developing "Ontetic Philosophy."-Early life:Mahmoud Khatami grew up in Tehran...

whose influences are clear all over students of philosophy. Reza Davari who is a philosopher with geart debates on Modern condition, intellectalism and enlightenment ranked as the leading Persian philosopher with anti-Western approach. His ideas challenge the defender of Western culture and notably the defender of analytical philosophy and scienticism. Dinani is a defender of Islamic philosophy who also talks about the west; Mahmoud khtami, who is commonly considered as a phenomenologist, is ranked as a totally scholar with no political sign who teaches analytical and continental philosophies in the university, but he has developed a different philosophy of his own that is called [Ontetics]http://fieldofphilosophy.webs.com/. However, analytical philosophy is also introduced in Iran in 1970s by the translations from British Empiricism, and then, in 1980 to the present an increasing interest is in students of philosophy to learn more from this 20th century branch of philosophy. Very specifically, analytic philosophy of science and social science, and moral philosophy introduced by Abdolkarim Soroush in early 1980s, and followed by others. Philosophy of mind
Philosophy of mind
Philosophy of mind is a branch of philosophy that studies the nature of the mind, mental events, mental functions, mental properties, consciousness and their relationship to the physical body, particularly the brain. The mind-body problem, i.e...

introduced to Iranian academia by Mahmoud Khatami, and philosophy of logic
Philosophy of logic
Following the developments in Formal logic with symbolic logic in the late nineteenth century and mathematical logic in the twentieth, topics traditionally treated by logic not being part of formal logic have tended to be termed either philosophy of logic or philosophical logic if no longer simply...

and philosophy of language
Philosophy of language
Philosophy of language is the reasoned inquiry into the nature, origins, and usage of language. As a topic, the philosophy of language for analytic philosophers is concerned with four central problems: the nature of meaning, language use, language cognition, and the relationship between language...

introduced by Hamid Vahid Dastgerdi. Philosophy of religion
Philosophy of religion
Philosophy of religion is a branch of philosophy concerned with questions regarding religion, including the nature and existence of God, the examination of religious experience, analysis of religious language and texts, and the relationship of religion and science...

is also most welcome branch with the Iranian scholars.

3. Comperative philosophy is a tendency in Iranian scholarship.
4.Traditionalist (sonnatgera)is also an approach introduced by Hossein Nasr.

External links

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History of Iranian modernity

Generations of Iranian intellectuals

First generation

Second generation

Third generation

Fourth generation

Modern art movement

Music movement

Modern poetry

Modern literary movement

Modern scientific movement

Iranian women's movement

Persian constitutional revolution

Iranian Revolution

2nd of Khordad movement

Campaigns against intellectuals

Intellectual circles in late 20th century

Revolutionary intellectual circles

Reformist intellectual circles

Democratic religious circles (In-system reformers)

Neo-conservative intellectual circles

Non-religious intellectual circles

Traditional scholars

Other notable figures

Philosophy education in Iran

See also

External links