Daryush Shayegan’s First Intellectual Phase: The Orientalist Approach and the Transition to Impasse
Subject Areas : Research in Theoritical Politics
1 - Ph.D. in Political Thought, Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Iran. atakarimzadeh@yahoo.com
Keywords: Daryush Shayegan, The East, Orientalism, Primordial Memory, Impasse (Emtena).,
Abstract :
Daryush Shayegan’s First Intellectual Phase: The Orientalist Approach and the Transition to Impasse
Ataollah Karimzadeh*
This article demonstrates, through an interpretive and explanatory lens, that the first phase of Daryush Shayegan’s intellectual work is a reproduction of Orientalist discourse. Influenced by Western thought and operating within the dominant knowledge system both intellectually and structurally Shayegan perceives “the East” as a totality in a downward trajectory compared to the West. Consequently, while Shayegan is preoccupied with the “reason for the decline” of Eastern civilizations, he occupies the very same position as Orientalists or Western intellectual systems that view the East from a position of Orientalization. Shayegan moves within the continuum of Orientalism; he is simultaneously attached to the East a “both/and” state which lands him in a “position/non-position” that leads to an “impasse” (emtena) This “self-Orientalization” leads Shayegan to accept Western judgments regarding the East positively, without critical reservation.
Keywords: Daryush Shayegan, The East, Orientalism, Primordial Memory, Impasse (Emtena).
Introduction
Daryush Shayegan accepts Western technique and technology, along with its culture, as an inseparable whole; it is based on this perspective that he differentiates the West from the East. Shayegan’s writings must be viewed “diachronically,” such that one can generally distinguish between an “early” and a “late” Shayegan in two distinct intellectual phases. In his first phase, encompassing the 1960s and 1970s up to the 1979 Revolution, Shayegan influenced by ancient Eastern thought and religions, as well as thinkers like Nietzsche and Heidegger juxtaposes the East (Asia), with its mythological foundations, customs, and primordial memory, against a West that has followed a downward trajectory in its technical thinking to arrive at nihilism. He posits that for the East to preserve its identity and avoid the “historical destiny” it has fallen into, it must return to its roots and perform a “housecleaning.” Furthermore, he argues that we must understand and recognize Western thought and the West within our own context, review our ethnic memories, and avoid a “new obscurantism” or a sense of entitlement, which he views as a form of “Orientalized Westoxification.”
This article argues that Shayegan’s “neither this, nor that” conceptualization essentially envisions a neutral position/non-position, where the Easterner (Asian) is caught at a crossroads between tradition and Western modernity and is forced to choose between the two. This results in a suspension of the present moment from which there is no escape. This article also addresses how the East (Asia) is viewed as an indeterminate whole: is the East a real entity, or is it a construct of the Westerner?
Research Background
Significant research has been conducted on Shayegan’s views, which can be broadly categorized into two groups. The first category addresses the works of Shayegan’s first phase, focusing on his Orientalism and critical approach to the West. Scholars such as Vahdat, Mirsepassi, Farastkhah, and Shojaei-Jashouqani fall into this category. The second category relates to research on his first intellectual phase based on his discourse on identity in relation to Iran and Islam. The works of scholars such as Boroujerdi and Hashemi are included in this group.
Research Methodology
Methodologically, the present article employs an explanatory and interpretive method, utilizing Paul Ricoeur’s hermeneutics in a text-oriented approach. For Ricoeur, the “text” as a work reveals its structure in a specific new emergence which is a form of interpretation. What is important in a text is not the author, the hypothetical intent, or its immanent structure, but rather the “intended world” beyond the text as the text’s referent. This inherently entails the act of reading, wherein the reader appropriates the world of the text to enable a better understanding of themselves; that is, through the act of reading, the possibility of an expanded hermeneutic can be realized. Accordingly, this article interprets and explains the works of Shayegan’s first phase textually to clarify the intellectual and epistemological foundations of his thought regarding the relationship between East and West, and the reproduction of Orientalist discourse.
Research Findings
Asia (Primordial Memory) vs. the West (Nihilism): The Stasis of Absolute Dualism
By intrinsically differentiating the West from the East setting up two different modes, one based on reason (Western/European) and the other on revelation, faith, and intuition (Eastern) Shayegan proposes a form of absolute dualism. In this view, the East has the answers to its questions a priori, while the West deconstructs and desecrates to answer its own. Nevertheless, although Shayegan is concerned with the East (Asia), he utilizes the problems and problematic of Western ideas to find the desired response for the East from the perspective of Western nihilism. Consequently, wherever Shayegan speaks of the East, he considers the West as a metric to facilitate the framing of his desired issues.
Thus, paradoxically, Shayegan derives the primary basis of his arguments not merely from his dualistic holism, but from Western philosophy and the history of Western philosophy. It is a fundamental issue whether Western nihilism and the existing understanding of it can be projected onto the East Shayegan envisions and put to work, because Shayegan views the West in a “reified” manner. Overall, one can argue that Shayegan differentiates between East and West from an Orientalist and presupposed position. Although he is a critic of modernity in a comprehensive approach, he subordinates the East (Asia) to the West (Europe); in fact, the East has an existence dependent on the West, and Eastern identity is intelligible only in line with the understanding that the West has presented of Easterners.
Shayegan and Metamorphic Orientalism
An Orientalist may view the East from the position of the Western knowledge system without necessarily having an intentional Orientalist stance, even if they are Eastern themselves. For Shayegan, the Asian civilizations in question have reached a decline and are condemned in the face of the West, its technology, and its culture. Although he was concerned with the stasis of his envisioned East and held a romantic feeling toward Eastern religions and schools of thought, the East of Shayegan’s imagination lacks not only society but even the individual, existing in silence as a mere spatial location.
Shayegan enters into a type of “phantasmagoria” which possesses the quality of “thought without place,” basing his writing on the history of Western thought to compose the history of Eastern thought. The metamorphosis of Shayegan’s thought and the evolution of his conceptual system indicate a “metamorphosis of inverted Orientalist discourse.” He doubts the validity of the biting and contemptuous attitude of Iranian intellectuals and is aware of the epistemological poverty, hidden distortions, and terrifying dead-ends of nativism. Shayegan’s writings in this intellectual phase obstruct fluidity, becoming, diversity, and plurality; essentially, they preclude the possibility of the disclosure and self-manifestation of the present moment, as well as the possibility of subjectivity and agency. He frames issues from an Orientalist perspective, treating the static state of the present as a transitional state moving toward a non-existent and incomprehensible future. Shayegan attempts to define where we stand and what relationship we have with existing worldviews and Lebenswelten (life-worlds). However, he merely stands in a text-like, positional, and local situation in the cultural dimension a culture that maintains an elitist approach.
Shayegan: Impasse and the Dead-end of Emancipation in the Suspension of Time
Although it was stated that Shayegan moved in the trajectory of Orientalism, this does not mean there is only one Orientalism, or that Shayegan’s Orientalism is a perfect copy of European Orientalism. Just as the objectification of Orientalism and “suspension” are not essentially monolithic, there are, in fact, countless mechanisms of suspension and different types of Orientalism. In this perspective, Shayegan not only empties the mythological state of time, but also envisions a repetitive cycle that establishes no connection between the three temporalities of past, present, and future. Each stands in a separate, distinct, and static situation; for this reason, Shayegan’s approach neutralizes its own critical idea and, by accepting the status quo, renders the possibility of emancipation void.
The question that must be asked is this: Does Shayegan have an answer to how the East (Asia) can exit this “position/non-position” in a way that allows for the possibility of emancipation? Our path lies in a type of inner and spiritual purification, which can be an individual matter rather than a comprehensive political, social, or cultural situation. In fact, for Shayegan, liberation is not found in questioning, challenging, establishing the new, or rebellion; rather, it moves along with the mythological tradition. It is from this perspective that Shayegan views all Asian civilizations as uniform, where their problem is culture, while politics, economics, and society have no relevance for him forming a type of essentialism that not only denies plurality and diversity but simultaneously drags the possibility of any change into an impasse (emtena)
Conclusion
This article addresses a period of Shayegan’s thought that is not only not a rupture from the dominant knowledge system, but, by borrowing from the West and attributing these borrowings to the East, Shayegan has imagined an “untimely” situation that is merely a continuation of Western ideas and cannot possess a reliable foundation in his envisioned East. Furthermore, there is no single East, just as there is no single West. Perhaps one can say that Shayegan’s idea functions as “placeless thought” that cannot be concretely situated. His views are not “immanent”; rather, he views East and West in a general and universal way, from which his approach remains external and Orientalist. Although Shayegan attempts to link tradition and modernity, he thinks only in abstract, phantasmagoric terms and forms of “identity and recurrence,” not in concrete understanding and connection; this is because the East is the negative determination of the West, and the East is understood based on the idea of absence. For this reason, this transition leads pre-emptively to a dead-end and an impasse (emtena)
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* Ph.D. in Political Thought, Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Iran.
atakarimzadeh@yahoo.com
https://orcid.org/0009-0004-9777-4244
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