Abdolkarim Soroush

 

Abdolkarim Soroush was a follower of the line of thought largely generated by Karl Popper’s distinction between what he called “science” and “pseudoscience,” which revolutionized many rationalist European, American, and Islamic lines of thought, as well as the evolution of the philosophy of science, most notably during the time when the evolution of science itself was causing unforeseen challenges in the world in the technological world, with the rapid development of the atomic bomb occurring contemporaneously with Popper’s popularization. Soroush, like Popper, renounced Iranian Marxism as a result of this extremely calculated stance on ideology and science. Most interestingly, Soroush remained a devout Muslim for the remainder of his life, and wrote many of his books on Islam and religious belief within a philosophical mindset. The existence of “Soroushes” in the world, especially in extremely culturally devout countries like Iran, at least partially shows the ignorance with which the world “accepted to” modernity’s wager. As stated by Secor, Soroush, “as a man of faith, he had been educated to believe that man was immersed in an ocean of certainties, floating from one to the next. But as a student of philosophy, he came to see that instead a person drifted from conjecture to conjecture, doubt to doubt” (Secor 62). Soroush later emphasized the distinction between religion itself, which is perfect and eternal, and religious belief, which is, while well-founded, fallible and incomplete. All this is to say that while the West dove headfirst into a dichotomy between putting one’s belief in the sacred and putting one’s faith in one’s own authority (that infamous wager), Iran wrestled with the epistemological claims of infallibility; of religious belief as a thing to put faith in through the authority of the self, at least partially.

Study Notes for Modernity’s Wager, by Adam Seligman

 1.  Once you cut through the jargon, Seligman’s argument is premised on a simple claim:  Modernity’s wager rests on the notion that the individual, as an unfettered authority, will make the world better than one in which authority resides in the sacred.  Put plainly, moderns are hostile to authority other than their own.  Seligman’s assessment of how this bet has played out is grim.  Be prepared to explain why he is so skeptical of improvement, as well as what he sees as the consequences of this failed wager.
2.  Again, internal versus external sources of authority are the lynchpin of Seligman’s account of modernity.  Be ready to compare Seligman’s call for a return to the scared with Tocqueville’s prescription of “fixed beliefs.”  How might these be reconciled to individual freedom and autonomy, to modernity’s promise of emancipation and universal equality?
3.  Do you accept Seligman’s premise that modernity has called into being its own antitheses, in the form of fundamentalism, violence, etc.?  Are our lives fully transactional and measured by a calculus of exchange and choice?  Or do we still ethical lives, bound by an “irrational” (unreasoned) morality, unquestioned and taken on faith?
4.  The weakness of the individual in modernity, which we’ve discussed in the last two sessions, is highlighted rather clearly on pp. 49-50.  Please take a close look at this section.
5.  Consider the parable of Mr. Stern and the question of shame (pp. 72-77).  How does this imagined story relate to your own life, if at all?  Is this section coherent, or intelligible?