The problematic of authenticity and contemporaneity in modern and contemporary Arab thought

Abstract

With Mohammed ‘Abed al-J [amacr] bri’s death on 3 May 2010, the Arabic-speaking world lost one of its most influential contemporary political and social philosophers. Of al-J [amacr] bri’s writings, the first volume of the Critique of Arab Reason (2011) has just been released in English translation. Two other books by him have also been translated into English. These book-length translations offer detailed access to important parts of his oeuvre. However, by themselves they do not provide a clear explanation of what animates it. Nor does the secondary literature in English fill that gap. That literature includes good summaries of his writings as well as some useful criticisms, but the reader of English is left without the means of assessing these accounts and criticisms. What is missing is a clear sense of the practical purpose animating al-J [amacr] bri’s work in general and his four volume Critique of Arab Reason in particular. Al-J [amacr] bri provides an account of this practical purpose in a paper entitled ‘’Ishk [amacr] liyyat al- a [amacr] lah wa al-mu [amacr] arah f [imacr] al-fikr al-arab [imacr] al- ad [imacr] th wa al-mu [amacr] ir: ir [amacr] abaq [imacr] am mushkil thaq [amacr] f [imacr] ?’ (The problematic of authenticity and contemporaneity in modern and contemporary Arab thought: class struggle or cultural problem?). Below I offer an abridged translation of this paper with two goals in mind. The first is to make available in English al-J [amacr] bri’s own concise and clear explanation of the practical purpose animating his life’s project. The second goal is to provide English readers who might not have a particular interest in al-J [amacr] bri’s work with a vivid articulation of a theme that has occupied Arab intellectuals for the better part of two centuries. Al-J [amacr] bri captures in a very raw and deeply moving way the crisis into which Arab intellectuals were catapulted after their encounter with Western modernity. For the non specialized reader this can serve as a powerful and sobering account from the inside of this sense of crisis.