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In The Problematics of Enlightenment: Human Reason, North African Philosophy, and the Global South , Mourad Wahba explores the relevance of the philosophy of the Enlightenment to contemporary issues in Egypt and the Global South more generally. Wahba provides a historical account of the reception of Enlightenment philosophical discourse in the Arabic-speaking world through the study of the work of Rifa?a al-Tahtawi, Muhammed Abdu, Farah Antun, Abbas Mahmoud al-?Aqqad, and Louis Awad. Wahba argues that the claim that human reason is the ultimate source of justification-trumping the authority of inherited social institutions and the claims of historical revelation-is a universalizable principle whose actualization would make progress possible in Egypt and elsewhere. This book, translated by Zeyad el Nabolsy, provides Anglophone readers access to a philosophy from the Global South that does not take the alleged Eurocentrism of Enlightenment philosophies as its central problematic. Moreover, Wahba is concerned with situating the problems that emerge in the context of contemporary Arabophone North African philosophy in the larger context of African philosophy, including engagement with the work of Senghor and Nkrumah.
List of contents
Acknowledgments
Initial Publication of Chapters
Translator's Introduction
Author's Introduction
Chapter 1: The Enlightenment
Chapter 2: Enlightenment and the Man on the Street
Chapter 3: Authenticity and Modernity in the Third World
Chapter 4: The Mystery of Tolstoy's Letter to Mohammed Abdu
Chapter 5: The Paradox of Ibn Rushd
Chapter 6: Ibn Rushd between Farah Antun and Mohammed Abdu
Chapter 7: Rifa?a and Enlightenment
Chapter 8: Al- ?Aqqad's Reception of Goethe in Light of the Enlightenment
Chapter 9: Louis Awad and the Enlightenment
Conclusion: The Problematic of Enlightenment and Culture
Bibliography
About the Author
About the author
Mourad Wahba is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy, Ain Shams University, Egypt. He is the author of 22 books and Head and Founder of the Afro-Asian Philosophical Association as well as the Averroes International Association and Enlightenment.Zeyad el Nabolsy is assistant professor in the Department of Philosophy at York University.
