LAIS

LONDON ACADEMY OF IRANIAN STUDIES

Reflections on Sporadic Episodes of Modernity

Particular random issues within metatheory of secular hegemony

By: Seyed Javad Meynagh

Copyright: LONDON ACADEMY OF IRANIAN STUDIES

Prologue

The main concern of these short essays which lie before you is the project of modernity as it is represented within the parameters of disciplinary thought. As the project of modernity has come to take the shape of a distinct civilizational paradigm based on a secular metaphysics it would be beyond my reach in tackling all aspects of it briefly as it appears before you. Because a civilization is not only composed of thoughts but deeds too and the manifestations of these two are not only displayed in ideas but discernible in actualized forms such as architectures, films, sculptures, paintings, arts, and so on and so forth, not mentioning the commons customs and habits of people which may reflect in their cuisines, dressings, forms of social behaviours and interactions and so on. To engage in all these aspects within the frame of this work was almost impossible and not the primary concern of the author either. This work grew out of engagement with the discipline of social theory as it appears within various branches of secular social sciences and in particular in regard to sociological discipline as this term is understood within modern educational system. However at times I have tried to go beyond the formal understanding of sociology as a discipline among many others by resorting to a larger definition of sociology, i.e. the secular worldview of modern man about his place in what is called the social order. I have, in other words, attempted to approach sociology as the epitome of modern worldview which is disconnected from the Holy and not concerned with the question of Transcendence in relation to ontology, epistemology and existentialogy. This is the general approach in this work to the idea of social thought as it has manifested within modern disciplinary social sciences. It should be, however, mentioned that I have chosen thinkers, intellectuals, researchers, sociologists, and critics in order to engage with them and consequently put forward my view about different aspects of modernity. That is to emphasize that the questions raised in these essays are intellectual problems that needed to be raised but for epistemological-ontological-existential reasons - - which may hopefully become clear for the readers along the way - - have not been tackled or even addressed within the parameters of secular disciplinary thought.

I have chosen the name of this work by adding the term ‘episode’ in the title and employed the same word in opening each essay. The reason for this choice is my belief that modernity is like a journey which has a parenthetic character as the word Episode indicates in Greek, namely epeisodion, parenthetic narrative, from neuter of epeisodios, coming in besides : epi-, epi- + eisodios, entering (eis, into + hodos, way, journey). The human history is the story of the Holy but the modernists have attempted to erase this memory from all aspects of human existence. By comparing the long history of mankind in relation to this short while of modernity we can easily realize the nature of secularism, which is not but a parenthetic narrative. However to realize the true nature of modernity as a short parentheses within the long history of spiritual unfolding of humanity one needs, by providence (as we have been destined to be born in this time and in this place) to embark upon this journey, as hodos indicates within the fabric of the term episode. To learn about modernity is to learn about a way of life that has been based on replacing the Holy by Passion or changing the place of text with the footnote.

The term episode means a happening that is distinctive in a series of related events. I have considered the question of sociology or modern secular intellectual thought as such as it is distinctive in its anti-Transcendental tendencies and these tendencies are not disparate incidents but a series of related events which are only possible to be understood when are considered as part and parcel of modern metaphysics. The main argument of modern intellectuals is that secular episteme is free from tutelage, i.e. free from religion and metaphysical concerns. Once one agrees with this assumption then the whole question of modernity must be dealt with as an empirical question and in need of historicist researches but my point in the whole of these essays are none but one single point and that is modernity (not what we experience as a contemporary era which is a reflection of the Holy), which is, indeed, a metaphysical question without any solid foundations and those who internalize it do so based on a choice, or a leap of faith (which is only of psychological significance and far from rational and intellectual importance. This work is based on thirty episodes and each episode is treated as a separate theme and includes simultaneously unfolding written narrative.           

Episode One

Noble Philosophy

When you are alone in your chamber what do you really think? Those thoughts and those concerns are what you are in truth. If they are connected to the world-shaking spirit of the spiritual cosmos then you are one with the world soul and able to bring change within and without in eternal sense. The concept of change has always been part and parcel of world philosophy but few really has grasped the world-shaking consequences of change in eternal sense as those who thought of it in terms of material philosophy did not comprehend the question of eternity in regard to change and those who aspired to distance from the former philosophy in the name of religious philosophy could not see any need or urge in connecting change to eternal realm. In other words, we ended up with a distorted view of change that is truly pertinent to human category in contrast to other modes of being. Imagine your personality is like an onion with many layers and inner layers and yet again innermost layers. Once you start pealing them one by one in order to reach to the innermost part of the onion you will find out that there is nothing in the middle but void as onion is what all those layers made it to be. You are a void but not devoid of innerlighet and that is what makes you different than an onion, so to speak, or any other being in this cosmos. You have an inner life and that inner life is not an attribute of this corporeal reality but it is, on the contrary, the very core and mover of this corporeal reality. The sages of the past used to call it Spirit, Ravan, Ruh, Atman, and many other beautiful names, which all, in one word, indicated a profound fact about our existence, i.e. the eschatological journey of life that is not based on accidents (race, social classes, economy, lot, politics, sex, ethnicity, so on and so forth) but on eternal realities that are, in essence, ONE or in the sacred language of Koran Ahad.

Change is not only confined to external movement in relation to spatial orbit but in truth change is when the subject is in its own true center and the rest of objects adopt their respective positions vis-à-vis the central subject. This requires a different approach to the question of movement, subject, object, and space-time as we have to be accustomed to think of whatever that moves from its spatial position to the next in extensional sense as change but that is not in truth what change is. Now we are not thinking of physical objects and their movements but the sole concern here is human being and how the concept of change could apply to such a reality that carries eternity within him/herself. Professor al-Attas talks about ‘Adab’ and by that he does not allude to the moralistic or even ethical dimensions of religious philosophy but he has a deeper understanding of Adab, which is closer to the ancient idea of Tao within religious philosophy of Taoism that had cosmological trappings and was not only a matter of social or political harmony. Man has a soul and that soul has a centre and the centre is a reality, which could be realized if Adab (or the true relation between all aspects of reality, which is nothing but external expression of Haq is understood and followed actively) is dynamically is internalized. The internalization of the true relationship between monads of reality is not a matter of physical movement or sociopolitical change but a matter of deep inner realization that willy-nilly will usher to world-shaking occurrences, as did the Prophetic experiences of ancient and contemporary personalities but these occurrences are not the GOAL. On the contrary they are just beautiful by-products of truth within our world.

Once you found your centre in this world you stop moving in physical, emotional or even rational sense anymore as nothing cannot move you but everything will be moved by you, as you have found your centre and others are yet to find their own for time to come. Our reality is deeply conditioned by the very nature of change we carry within our cordial core. If  the deep thoughts that you harbor within when you are truly in solitude are all of emotional nature then for you world is all of movement in an insensible direction as by nature emotions rise up and recede very much like waves in seas and stormy oceans. But if they are all of rational nature then the world’s movements for you has a direction but once you arrive at the objective you are derided and devoid of direction and in need of making yet another new direction (like a child who makes a house at the shore by sands, which falls apart by sea-waves every other minute and he should start anew). The physical nature is conditioned by gravity, which draws any object downward but human reality is not devoid of gravity either. It has its own laws of gravity but in contrast to the objectified realities his is upward, i.e. intelligible. Corporeally man is a conical reality at the bottom but spiritually at the top of cone and he should strive to find the true balance, which is impossible if he does not find out his own centre that in religious terminology is called ‘Taqdir’ or ‘Call’ and ‘Vocation’.

Philosophy is not a science about concepts and syntaxes but primarily it is a method for purging the wrong ideas from within our soul by paving the way for realization of our call. It should be a science of navigation in the sea of life and when it is such then we can see the philosopher as an instrument of world-shaking change in the world. Because this kind of philosophy will enable us to see through ourselves by discovering the true nature of thoughts, which we harbor deep within our soul that are kept hidden even from the gazes of most acute psychoanalytical therapists. This is what I call the noble philosophy or philosophy of nobility that does not start from periphery but from what constitutes the very core and how that core could be realized in human soul. Every year from around the world the greatest minds of humanity are awarded a prize called Noble Prize for their amazing achievements but sadly there is no philosophy about what constitutes the very core of nobility yet. How ants are organized or what the patterns of intimacy among apes are in details have been catalogued but what makes a man a noble man is not enlisted in any educational centre around the globe! If this is not modern superstition, to borrow Martin Lings’ memorable phrase, then what is it?                 

Episode Two

You Are the Carrier of Discovery

The whole philosophy of Mahatma Gandhi is about existential search for truth in the midst of life (with all its complexities and richness of details or contrasting dimensions and aspects), which he called it experiment with Truth. We have been accustomed to think of ourselves as entities that are limited by time and conditioned by space and unable to grasp the inner nature of realities, as Immanuel Kant had already established the framework of secular metaphysics of phenomenology based on this grand negative formulation. I always think what would have happened if instead of Immanuel Kant’s ghost the spirit of Immanuel Swedenborg reigned over modernity? This is a question that we shall return later on but for now we would be better of to focus on one question and that is how should one think of one’s own self in the bosom of existence?

The school philosophy teaches us that everything moves and we are influenced and determined by the motions of external realities and if you think otherwise then you are labeled as idealist, which is equal to crazed thinker, who lacks rational competence. But the question is not to deny the motions of objects that one may see around at daily basis. It is true that one may see that the water in a river is moving and seasons come one after the other but this is to lose the very significant point about movement and moved by. As long as man is in compliance with other objects in the world he is surely in the realm of ‘moved by’ and lacks any movement whatsoever, which is only possible when he chooses. The moment he chooses to act based on inner light that is the moment that he is reborn as human being and not only an animal or even a rational animal. In this capacity he would, then, turn into a vessel, which carries an internal potency to interact with Truth. Because verily Truth is not a stone-like object but a volcanic, so to speak, mountain that is producing incessantly lavas of realities and ideas and lives, which they are beyond our normal states of comprehensions and awareness.

But this seemingly impossible state of consciousness to comprehend Truth is not of Kantian nature, i.e. our inherent inability to go beyond the phenomenological state of realities. On the contrary, I tend to agree with Gandhi, who proposed a more integral approach to the questions of life, as he, like Iqbal, understood the facts of world beyond intellectual facts by approaching life vitally, i.e. arguing that as one’s ability to grow a muscle is conditioned by practice and hard training in the same fashion one’s state of consciousness does not need to be confined to the normal state (or social or political state). On the contrary, by, for instance, being truthful, being honest, being caring, being responsible, and so on and so forth (in other words, to actualize all the ethical injunctions within the very day to day activities of life with others and ourselves) one could open a window to the true nature of reality, which is none but Truth. The reality is not like a stone that could be broken by hammer. On the contrary, it is more like of a sensitive, noble, and royal female, who, one cannot approach vulgarly but gently and poetically. One, at any time, may be able to rape this royal duchess but this would not lead to a romantic conversation of a lifetime. You can experiment with Truth when you court her like a chevalier and this is where Immanuel Swedenborg enters instead of Immanuel Kant, who lacked the acute perception of Swedenborg, who, on the contrary, could envisage man not as a phenomenon stuck in spatial-time but as a vessel that could lead one to profound discovery of ‘Xelghat’ (Creation). You may perceive this if you can intuit your own reality as a boat, so to speak, in the middle of ocean that, while the passengers are constant in the boat, but the boat is moving incessantly. You are that vessel and those passengers are your dormant faculties, which need to be awakened if you dream to take this boat to the shore of redemption rather then to the deep lost forever.                  

Episode Three

The Psychology of Modern Mind

If there could be one single word to describe the landscape of modern mindset that word, doubtlessly, would be ‘hysteria’. The genius of modern mind is not its originality to construct new images of truth, goodness and reality but its amazing ability to dissociate itself from the aforementioned trios, which collectively make up the very basis of ontology of religious path. Why is the inherent feature of modern mind best characterized as hysteric? It is hysteric due to the fact that modern mind lacks any centre and lives in a permanent state of transition, which leads not to a stoic detachment from sensory desires but, on the contrary, to a disintegrated position, that lacks any connection whatsoever to the surrounding cosmic realities. This lack compels within the existential core of man qua human being to make up new centers out of multitude of peripheries. This is the true logic behind the complexity of modern societies, which wrongly has been described as the progress. The engine behind this complexity is not a march toward somewhere, as the word progress denotes but it is an incessant hysterical construction of new centers after the old peripherals have already been exhausted due to existential utilization. Within sacred tradition of Islam, every day is structured along sacral rituals, which anchor the reality of human self within a cosmic (physical universe and spiritual universe) framework that dynamically calls for regeneration of individual self in each day, every month and all year around. This anchoring of human soul is always connected to a physical point in space such as Mecca that in its essence shall not be confined to corporeality but extend to spiritual configuration of sacred in its integral sense.

In other words, the spiritual self is not determined in its reality by peripheral constructed (cultural, political, psychological, social, …) centers but by essentially religious reality that aims at integrating various forces within self into an integral whole that could encompass the necessary means for embarking on eschatological path. On the other hand, we are faced with the modern mentality, which qua mentality lacks any substantial connection with the spiritual and hence we shall talk about it as a ‘mindset’ and not ‘spiritual type’ as it lacks any anchoring within the celestial soil of Revelation. This mindset suffers from hysteria but it is a controlled disease as it has been institutionalized within the larger sick collectivity that is called the ‘social’. One should not be misled by thinking any society is a community, as the latter is always possible without the former, whenever there is a notion of communion which is not possible in any secular circumstances. The communion is the unity of truth, goodness and real in the souls of individuals who partake in life based on principles of Revelation. Emptier a collectivity of religious principles closer to society one comes, which at the end shall resemble to a bestial jungle controlled by and not lived by the rule of internal conscience and external Revelation.

Mind is like a sea that creates waves at all times and each wave after hitting the shore would disappear in nothingness and yield nothing. When self is ruled by the requirements of Mind there would emerge a particular psychology, which knows of nothing beyond its inherent limits. But human mind is not located in a remote island inaccessible to anything or anyone. On the contrary, human mind is situated within the parameters of human self that is naturally (I would rather say by Divine Providence) equipped with other dimensions such as soul, spirit, body and a core organ that goes by the name of ‘conscience’. These faculties are all at work within the realm of human life and send various (if one lacks religious center) disturbing signals, which may cause perpetual ebbs and flows.

In religious philosophy of Islam (and certainly in all sacred traditions one may find similar notions with different wordings) one can find the notion of ‘Abd’, which has been fuzzily translated as ‘Slave’ (which is not accurate if one takes into consideration the connotations of this term in the life of religious person, who shall struggle in every turn to keep the covenant truthful)- that, in principle, refers to the integrative nature of relationship between God and Man. The epithet of human being within the world of sacred is not ‘rational animal’, ‘political animal’, ‘social animal’, ‘cultural animal’ or any kind of living thing or creature, when it enters into a pact. For all these aforementioned epithets are based on hypothetical assumptions such as political, social, cultural, or metaphysical nature. In other words, man qua conscious being is one of the above within modern metaphysics and whatever lies without these parameters are either false or outdated. But the notion of ‘Abd’ within religious philosophy refers to a different kind of relationship that not only encompasses the aforementioned but surpasses them qualitatively and additionally reconfigures them along spiritual lines that principally are not anthropomorphic but religious.

Let me explain this point with a reference to Imam Hussain’s memorable dictum in this context. He states that

Intellect shall not be perfect unless adheres to the Divine Principle.

No doubt all systems of thoughts and various philosophies put forward a roadmap to progress, advancement, perfection, realization or actualization but the problem is which one, in truth, shall lead the wrecked boat of human self to the shores of salvation and redemption. Man needs principles to abide by for his realization and if these principles are not of Divine Nature then he shall be controlled by the stronger ones in society through laws and regulations, which would never lead to salvation but surveillance and perpetual checkmate. When one mentions the word principle in modern context due to the overwhelming presence of external regulation with a minimum presence of conscience one instinctively thinks of some kind of force. But this is to mix two diametrically different kinds of anthropologies of secularism and religionism. In the latter the idea of principles are not of any external nature as the nature of man gets closet to its reality when it is in connection to God. The freedom of self is not based on a struggle cast in political terms but a matter of harmony between various forces of demonic and angelic within self that should come to a balanced point of religious nature.

The psychology of modern mind, as mentioned earlier, is best characterized by the word hysteria. But so far we did not develop the meaning of hysteria in relation to secular mindset, which needs to be elaborated before this essay come to its conclusion. Immanuel Kant argued that Enlightenment is freedom from tutelage and by the latter Enlightenment thinkers came to understand freedom from God, which consequently meant distortion of value orders (Spiritual, Rational and Sensual) that shall finally result in crazed sexual anarchy. The interesting point in this Kantian definition of metaphysical man is the notion of maturity and its relation to hysteria, as it is a neurotic disorder resulting from dissociation, typically beginning during adolescence or early adulthood and occurring more commonly in women than men.. The concept of dissociation, a process whereby specific internal mental contents (memories, ideas, feelings, perceptions) are lost to conscious awareness and become unavailable to voluntary recall, is central to an understanding of the genesis of hysterical symptoms. Though unconscious, these mental contents can be recovered under special circumstances (eg, in dreams or a hypnotic trance). Furthermore, they are able to affect the individual's awareness and behavior in a variety of ways. For example, the dissociation and loss from consciousness of memories of motor patterns lead to paralysis; the emergence of a fragment of a dissociated visual memory may produce an ego-alien visual hallucination; the emergence of a complex of mental associations forming a dissociated personality may effect a complete change in the individual's behavior. All phenomena of conversion and dissociative hysteria may be viewed as the effects of either the dissociation itself or the eruption into consciousness of portions of the dissociated mental contents of varying degrees of complexity. Proneness to dissociation may in part be genetic.    

Episode Four

Defending the secular canon?

At the heart of every intellectual activity, one would soon or later find some 'gifted' people who are regarded by their posterity as founding fathers or mothers in this or that regard.  Sociology or modern social thought is no exception in this regard.  During late nineties, there arose a hot debate between those who defended the traditional integrity (rather one would say, dignity) of sociological canon against those who were, and still are, perceived as day-dreamers or everything-goes-prophets (a la Feyerabend), better known as postmodernists.

One could definitely trace the roots of these recent debates back to the emerging days of formations of modernity and the very moment of institutionalization of the secular disciplines of which only social theory is our main concern presently.  However, the major concern here is about the re-emergence of this debate in current literature on Classics and Canonicity. In current debate on canonicity two names have become as sine qua non of the debate. One is Nicos Mouzelis and the other one is David Parker.  Of course, the range of debates is larger than what these two thinkers discuss about but these two would provide us with a neat point of departure.

The overall problematic is that Parker is not happy with the traditional frame of narration in sociology and would like to surpass the current impasse within the discipline. In other words, he cannot feel at home with an orthodox narrative, which is enshrined in teaching practices by a move from founders to classics, a mapping of persons to texts, short circuiting historicization and inventing a canonical tradition of quasi-sacred writings, most of which were written between 1840 and 1920. He rightly wants to enlarge the sociological imagination but as Mouzelis acutely notes, he drops some few essential sociological and intellectual tools.  The former rightly asks about the substantial accuracy of orthodox organization of sociology which wrongly is focused on a handful of European authors' oeuvre, which supposedly constitutes the sociological body of knowledge and would, if properly understood, stimulate the sociological imagination. In my view, his critique of the canon is right in 'intention' but he does not hit the point, and his multicultural sociology loses its consistency and logical rigor.  Actually, it is here and at this point which one can make sense of Mouzelis's arguments against Parker.  Nonetheless, there are some substantial problems with the lines of argument presented by Mouzelis against Parkerians. 

On broadening the sociological canon, he rightly poses some logical criteria which have nothing to do with the gender, ethnic origins, sexual preferences, or skin colour and so on and so forth.  This is a sound intellectual proposition and as far as logical consistency is concerned it is a powerful intellectual tool.  The problem is not as simple as he wants the audience to believe.  He offers a two-fold conceptual tool in order to address the classicality issues. He argues that Marx-Weber-Durkheim offer a) a set of highly sophisticated and powerful conceptual tools, and b) their conceptual frameworks as well as their more substantive theories are superior to other writings in terms of cognitive potency, analytical acuity, power of synthesis, imaginative reach and originality. Further he argues that the whole process of canonization is not a matter of imposition but sole intellectual choice.  Besides, if one just sees in the pantheon of sociology thinkers from the West and no one from the Rest it should not come as a surprise or shock, because their exclusion is solely based on (a) and (b).  If you don't see any Eastern Europeans or Russians, let alone Orientals, Muslims, Africans, Catholics, Latin Americans or alike, for example, be sure, Mouzelis assures us, that it has nothing to do with external issues except (a) and (b).  The various aspects of this naïveté are going to be tackled along the discussion but here I am going to address some issues which arose directly from this debate.

To be sure, there are some interesting points in Parker but as Mouzelis notes there are, at the same time, some un-addressed theoretical problems in his discussion, i.e. what makes a discipline so theoretically coherent before being fashionable or popular?  McLennan has embarked on this path and his recent intellectual endeavors should be viewed in this light.  Following the argument put forward by Mouzelis, it seems there is an incomplete logic of argument, which ignores the substantial points of Parker's proposals. Needless to mention that this aspect has been the focal point of some multi-culturalist intellectuals who are skeptical about the factual classicality of classics and further raise serious concerns about the very concept of canonicality within a secular point of departure without having the idea of sacred which endows essential meaning upon this process.  One could mention R. W. Connell who has criticized the so-called foundation stories within mainstream social theory and philosophy.  Nevertheless I agree with the Mouzelisian argument that some intrinsic criteria should be the norm for assessing and/or rejecting a theorist, but outright to denounce everyone else is not an easy and outright theoretical matter.  On the contrary this critique is an empirical task and the counter-critics should look beyond the classical canon in order to find the truth or falsity of multi-cultural sociologists.  Take for example, imperialism or neo-colonialism in sociology along with many other ides such as Transcendence, Religion, Self, Community, Path, Spirituality, Intelligence, Sacred, Possibility, History, Providence and so on and so forth.  Very few disciplinary and canonically-conscious sociologists, who have been otherwise so acute in other theoretical aspects, have rigorously addressed the question, for instance, of imperialism. On the contrary, the mainstream never formulated this as a problem in the first place but as a progressive march of Europeanization and then Modernization in the evolutionary scheme of human societal fabric- in length, except, first Communists and Third-World intellectuals.

Anyhow, I think Parker should be credited on the points he makes.  On the other hand, the discrediting by Mouzelis is dogmatic and hasty.  Because this burning issue (Imperialism or Neo-Colonialism and many other questions which we only mentioned without going into them in details from the point of other intellectual traditions and secular ones) has worldwide consequences which could be termed as World-Systemic drama which affects both the infrastructures of core and periphery, and shapes the social life of everyone of us globally (both in terms of individual person and communal collectivities).  By just applying the Mouzelisian logic (a and b) one will soon find out how poor and inadequate the secular-western sociological imagination has been so far, not vice versa.  On the contrary, the Third-World theorists have been on lead and theoretically, more rigor and acute.  In this sense one should mention Che Guevara and his ideas on the transformation of Latin America through revolution which has been discarded by some Latin American leftist theoreticians-calling themselves 'realists'- who in recent years relegated the Che's legacy in the name of 'Utopia Disarmed'.  This is the title of one of Jorge Castaneda's recent book.  Ironically, the same author, due to the crude realities of his own native country i.e. Mexico and the impracticality of neo-liberalism, has recently begun to ask whether it is really possible to use non-revolutionary methods to take wealth and power out of the hands of rich and powerful elite in transforming the long-standing social structures of Latin America.  He admits, in other words, that Che Guevara had a point after all. Because in a system, where the managerial rationale is based on enrichment of the Core due to the monetary setup of gigantic corporate sites of power-money-ideology it becomes evermore utopian to alleviate, for instance, poverty in a reformist manner, without resorting to some kind of innovatively revolutionary approaches. In other words, there is more to the canonicity than Mouzelis’ incomprehensive approach allows. 

At any rate, Parker should be taken at the points he makes and rightly, as Mouzelis remarks, rejected at the conclusions he wants to lead us at.  The second point which Mouzelis forgets about the classics, and it should be clear if one takes the aforementioned contrast between guevarismo and neo-liberals in Latin America or the question of the role of Transcendence within society in Muslim societies across the globe seriously, is what I call the Range of Problematics which have been of any substantial weight for the orthodox classics.  In other words, in contrast to Mouzelis, it is not just the importance of conceptual tools which their writings provide us with but the problems which have been tackled in their frame of theory.  If one takes this point to its logical end, then it would be evident that there have been some problematics which are or can be socio-logical but have been systematically, in contrast to what Mouzelis holds about the canonicality and its prevalence (1997: 246), ignored by the European/Secular Classics.

One of the main issues within canonical sociology is the question of modernity and its effect on the social fabric.  Most Classics have discussed how modernity has been transforming the social fabric of feudalism through capitalism finally towards socialism. Very few or none have mentioned how modernity or those who manage this juggernaut it can impose a non-modernity on other human societies and the range of social problems borne out of this.  Is it really modernity in terms of human intellectual maturity, which poses problems for non-modern societies, or the sum of human aggressions in terms of Colonialism (and its various modern/postmodern/post-neo-conservative allied with post-neo-labour of Blairism), which imposes unique problems?

The sociology of underdevelopment or poverty does not address these issues in depth and does not give their theoretical due.  Because, it could be argued, that the disciplinary sociologists do not work with the right materials from a rightly positioned angle.  The raw materials needed for an accurate estimation of the non-modern rest cannot be found in the works of Orientalists or Anthropologists.  Most probably, one should look at 'security studies', 'strategic research', ‘geo-political studies' or the political biographies and sensitive data in the format of corridor letters.  On the other side, one should note that, there have been others who have been engaged in these debates along with the sophisticated European thinkers, they, nonetheless, have been neglected or termed pejoratively by Western or Westernized scholars as fundamentalists, neo-fundamentalists or alike. Connell and Ghamari-Tabrizi, for instance, have done a great service in finding the genealogy of these misconceptions.  But these people actually have conceptualized the other half of modernity which, I rather call imposed non-modernity.  If the issues raised by, say, Seyyed Jamaldin and alike and the problems formulated by, say, Iqbal become central, provided the external straitjacket put on them by Orientalists removed from their body of thought, then those who talked about these modern issues first will join the club of Classics.  But why they have not joined the Classics' club we should ask Mouzelis not Parker. 

In other words, what Mouzelis calls defence it is actually a fence erected before the Holy Land of Classics in order to monopolize the very textures of contemporary reflection by confining the right perspective to modernity discourses, which, again, take a secular point of departure as their frame of intellectual engagement.  He does not make any favor to the socio-logical enterprise by fencing off others by denying the universality of human reason in confining it to few core theorists of one particular human past.  This is an issue, which would be addressed, in the next episode.

Episode Five

Marx, Weber and Durkheim: Why Bother-Dilemma!

Marx, Weber and Durkheim (or as it is held in current literature: MWD) are often held up as being the 'founding fathers' of modern/secular social thinking.  All three have had a profound influence on the development of mainstream state sociology, and will undoubtedly continue to do so for the foreseeable future, due to the fact that the state as an institution seems to be there for unforeseeable time. Most introductory sociology courses, for example, it has been noted, devote a substantial amount of time to their work. The relevant question is not their current influence on mainstream sociology but the relevance of this influence for a sociology which does not take the logic of state as its own, but a sociology which is influentially relevant.  There is a widespread myth among mainstream sociology (and as a sister-filed the historiography of mainstream sociology) which angrily attacks the deeds of sociologists during Interwar Period under Fascism and celebrates the heroism of those who did not yield to this intellectual prostitution.  The reason, some such as Stephen P. Turner argue, for this sense of pride among sociologists and consolidated by mainstream historiography is a well-entrenched belief that sociology is intrinsically an ' oppositional science'. Those who take this conception of sociology, as an oppositional science is not really aware about the very basis of their opposition and how radical are this opposition.  Many of the sociologists whose careers had not prospered under totalitarian regimes found the myth of opposition very attractive and appealing one. However, those who left these totalitarian regimes and came either to England or America did not take a critical look at the very basis of their own success. Most of them who left Germany or Italy, not mention Russia or else, imagined that they escaped the pact diabolique altogether and got melted into the mainstream ideology.  But the case is more complicated than the mainstream historiography reveals or could ever reveal under contemporary theoretical strictures.  Sociology and social research is a subsidized activity, state-subsidized for the most part, and is thus morally bound to its patron and historically conditioned by the relations and forms of patronage that support it.

In other words, those who escaped the Nazi patronage did not turn mature intellectual overnight but were patronized by a more complicated system of patronage.  In practice, sociologists cannot escape the pact diabolique in content, unlike what Turner asserts, but in form, and that is possible by change of patrons to some extent. This is not to belittle the relevance of modern imagination but it is a way of unthinking few of strong systems of thoughts that not only determine the very textures of global politics but the tissues of secular trends.

The relevance of this debate to our Classical Sociological Trio is going to be unfolded gradually.  From above discussion, one should get the idea that the classical influence of this trio has not to do with the intellectual relevance of these three thinkers solely. On the contrary there are more complicated mechanisms at hands, which cannot be accounted by the simplistic mainstream historiography like McIntosh and so on and so forth.  One of the major keys in this regard is the executive role of the state and those who chart overall plans for the nation and run the ultimate key issues, obscurely termed national security (think of Neo-cons and Neo-labors for whom everything is national security issue without one could be able to discern the free role of nation in these plans). The political obscurity becomes more evident when the ideas behind those overall plans and key issues are threatened by some within the territory of the state or from without.  These attitudes are remnants of a land-aristocracy ideology, which have been updated and incorporated via the bogus idea of nation-state into the fabric of modern life. Without it the very structure of war-industry would be untenable.

The 'Classic' sociological trio of Marx, Durkheim and Weber became a classic for reasons other than the mainstream mythology.  Marx due to his implicit endorsement of state and Durkheim/Weber due to their explicit endorsement of and theorizing about the State-Society, not Society per se, were incorporated within the state-sponsored institutions.  In order to explicate my points, one can take into consideration the mainstream social thinkers from Comte to Habermas.  These thinkers have taken the individual nation-state (e.g., France, Italy, or Britain) as the focus of social analysis. But there is some ideological bias which cannot be explained by the Iron Hand of historical logic.  It seems there are other issues at hand than what these theorists depict in sociological terms.  Wherever in Europe there was any state, or even desires which could be realized by stronger military power, there one could find discussions on, say, German Society, British Society, or French Society and their respective developments or share in inter-state-market.  On the other hand, one can barely find any discussion, at least in mainstream socio-political theory, about, say, Basque society, Northern Irish society, Scottish society, Azeri society, Georgian society.  Instead you may find abundant debates on British Society, Spanish Society, and Soviet society.  Were these latter units’ historical facts or just a desired reality presented by some and forcefully kept alive by an organ called state?  Why does the mainstream sociology follow the same track as the Realpolitik of historical ruling classes?  Because in these units you can find state-society and the world consensus is around state and its parameters, and the rest is a matter of state-monitoring policies. 

In other words, those who theorize against this established idea and the establishment based on this idea, firstly, would be considered as Utopians* or worse crazed individuals who do not understand the Realpolitik.  So, in a state-oriented-sponsored academy there could not be any place for the theorists who denied the quintessentiality of state and instead spoke of human society without any reliance on it.  On the contrary, their point of view, instead of being statist or for a de-centralized state or alike, was based on active abolishment of state as an idea and as a necessary establishment in its philosophical sense of the traditional notion of ‘necessary evil’ (within political philosophical discourse).

It is here and in this context, in my view, the Seidmanin points should be taken into consideration without incorporating the conclusions he wrongly wants to put forward.  In Contested Knowledge: Social Theory in the Postmodern Era, he presents an interesting problem regarding science and politics, which could be read in relation to the politics of the sociological trio.  He rightly argues that, the institutionalization of sociology in Europe and the United States between 1890 and World War I was accomplished through a series of exclusions.  Many traditions of social thought did not find a place in the discipline of sociology. As Seidman notes, range of social discourses was excluded from the sociological body of knowledge but that did not imply their intellectual demise as such.  However, it should be noted that even Seidman does not get into the depth or multi-layered meaning of this question.  Because he has just one point in mind and that is the establishment of secular sexuality and the latter's relevance as a social discourse.  That is why when he tries to make sense of American institutionalization of sociology and its subsequent exclusion of other discourses he does not even mention by name the Anarchist Tradition or Muslim Tradition of Nation of Islam or Black Movements.  Besides, he like most mainstream sociologists takes the politics of exclusion in simplistic terms and says:

… Silencing of social voices was not necessarily achieved through censorship or repression; rather it was more unconscious, a matter of the consolidation of distinctive conventions and codes that marked off the intellectual boundaries of sociology.

The whole problem evolves around this conceptual universe made on this unconscious affair which does not reflect the true mechanism of events, and Seidman does not help us in this regard either.  On the contrary he repeats the myth of unconsciousness and joins the mainstream historiography by portraying an image of a radical intellectual.  The whole tradition of Anarchism could, for instance, not be ignored just unconsciously, in particular, if one is reminded of the great upheaval caused by Spanish anarchism in the European continent.  The other point, which is not acknowledged in the literature, is the Russian orientation of anarchism in origin.  Besides, one can mention Chicago anarchists like: August Spies, Michel Schwab, Oscar Neebe, Adolph Fischer, Louis Lingg, George Engel, Samuel Fielden, Albert R. Parsons, and alike who were sentenced on October 7th, 8th and 9th, 1886, in Chicago, Illinois.  By looking at their trial documents, which have hardly been completely read by historians, let alone sociologists –who happen to arrive always late to the scenes of historical crimes due to their religiously obedient mentality towards historians, one would get another view regarding this innocent unconscious mythology provided by mainstream sociological historiography and re-elaborated here by Seidman. 

In other words, the very construction of the ' Classics' and its perpetual debate in its current trio-shape - which takes the mechanism of exclusion/inclusion- is part of a wider issue which touches the sensitive areas of modern politics and the New World Order.  Those who are not included are not less important and their works do not suffer from chronic lack of coherence, on the contrary, the reason(s) are of another character and nature.  They don’t, so to speak, fit the state-ideology and this point would take us far beyond the Marxist-Leninist critiques of state and would pull us closer to anarchists and the role of anarchic ideology and ‘Critique’ within intellectual world history.

Episode Six

Socialist or Anarchist Discourses: Ignored or Excluded?

If one judges a process by its outcome then there could be no difference between ignoring something and excluding the same thing. But if a critique is evaluated by the rigor of the logic employed then there is a tremendous difference between the former and the latter. Because to ignore is ultimately related to ignorance and has nothing to do with a studied reflection and there is no celebrated place for the spirit of ignorant inquiry. There might be many who enjoy the bliss of ignorant spirit of inquiry whether within community of knowledge or community of human beings at large nevertheless the numbers of endorsers do not change the very fact of ignorance to be considered as a vice. However, there are undeniable moments within human history and the history of intellectual activity, where a discourse is excluded and permission to enter is not granted to the excluded one. In the very nature of exclusion there is a sense of logic and the procedure does follow a universal pattern and is not, so to speak, at the mercy of one’s whims and desires. The approach is consolidated by a logical reflection and the contemplating self is not following man-made rules and regulations but adhering to universal patterns of understanding. If there is any exclusion then the underlying assumptions are not re-enforced by external ignorant policies based on individual desires or collective hysteria.  The debates on presentism versus historicism within the historiography of social sciences are part and parcel of current debate within various sub-disciplines of the social.  Here, I am not going to repeat what Elias Khalil or Robert Heilbroner had earlier stated about the distorted state of historiography.  But it should be noted, even briefly, that throughout the twentieth century, histories of social thought have ignored the positive dimensions of all socialist or anarchist discourses, not mentioning great many others, which are not even found in the footnotes of these discourses on the secular ‘social’.  One of the ideological (or political) weapons in establishing this politics has been the so-called scientific basis of social theory.  It is still worth asking the question Schumpter asked half a century ago, in relation to social theory in general, 'Is the History of Theory a History of Ideologies?'

However, as Rob Knowles remarks, a generic approach to histories of social thought cannot exclude anarchist thought on any ground than ideological bias.  There is no way to dismiss Anarchism as an inadequate discourse regarding the 'social'.  Because it shares with all other modern Western discourses the ideals and ideas of Enlightenment: Science, Scientific Method and Materialism.  The only thing, which they repudiated, was the uncritical attitude of mainstream social theorists regarding the State institution and the undue role and authority attributed to it.  This was actually a surprisingly total negation, by Statists, of the Kantian critique of tutelage, which informs the very philosophical spirit of the Enlightenment.  They did not reject the idea of Leviathan on sentimental or emotional grounds but by resorting to anthropological findings they attempted to establish their points in accordance to the current scientific logic which brought about the natural sciences.  Peter Kropotkin is an interesting figure in this regard.  His thoughts on Modern Science and Anarchism should be taken as the great Manifesto of anarchism in the tradition of Godwin, Fourier, Robert Owen, and et al. but as he noted himself this tradition was not appreciated by the community of intellectuals.

Kropotkin and the host of anarchists cannot be excluded from the classics of modern social science discourses on the charges of unscientificity. The only thing, in my view, which made him unclassical in the myopic eyes of constructors of classicality was his vision of human society which did not make any theoretical case of state-ideology, an ideology which suited the imperial and colonial endeavors of so many powerful states then.  Another interesting point in terms of historiography is Kropotkin's conscious extension of the range of native modernity by including Russians into this drama, not as an imitator but as an actor.  In so doing he disturbed the mainstream historiographical sensibility and defied the convention.  The best and unscholarly position would be what the mainstream opted for, i.e. neglegere.

There cannot be any logic in neglecting Anarchism as a tradition and anarchists as contributors to the study of the social.  Anarchism has been most often understood to involve revolutionary overthrowing of the existing state (its economic system) with nothing more than anarchy, i.e. unstructured social chaos, or a 'utopian' dream of harmonious communal life, as a post-revolutionary outcome for society.  Whereas these perceptions and imperatives can be found in numerous published definitions of anarchism (Henry Higgs and R. Williams), they are far from being representative of anarchist theorizing about the characteristics of society and its future.

The undeniableb violence of some elements of anarchist activism, especially late in the nineteenth century, must be read into the bloody context of state colonialist activities outside of Britain and Western Europe including Russian Colonial Power in conjunction to police action against socialist and anarchist protest activities which opposed contemporary economic and political systems. The insights provided by Kropotkin of dearly interesting even today to be read by anyone interested in the process of how modernity becomes considered ‘modern’ by public conscious. It is far from the free market ideas, where ideas clash with each other in a democratic manner based on the internal logic of any specific thought. In other words, the hands of the victors are not always free of bloods but stained with bleeding throats of men and women of freedom-seekers around the globe. The history of India and how she became a colony of England is one of the most epical histories of recent times, which could enlighten us about the very spirit of Enlightenment tradition.     

Here, in regard to Anarchism as a tradition, one can find the hidden mechanism of mainstream politics of exclusion and the shallow basis of establishing the institute of Classics.  One of the great episodes of modern European history is the case of Spanish Social Theorists and their anarchist movement.  This group has been systematically ignored by the mainstream historiography and their ideas never appeared in any coherent frame of presentation.  What could be the possible interpretation? Is it the inherent feature of their thought and the subsequent logical incompatibility between social science and anarchism?  The exclusion of this Spanish tradition would accomplish so many tasks, which are dear to mainstream historiography.  One of the constitutive components of conventional historiography is the emergence of modern thought and its alleged relation to a) a shift from Catholicism to Protestantism, b) a shift from Protestantism to modern Spirit, c) the emergence of Positive knowledge from this Spirit.  That is another version of secular historiography, which should be always the frame of historiographical reference.  Whatever one does with the findings, one should bear in mind that this semi-cosmological hypothesis should not be touched or rejected.  Because this is the cornerstone of modern intellectual enterprise and if touched or scratched one would fall where Protestants and Catholics fell during the religious wars in 15th and 16th centuries.  So it goes the mainstream historiography, and sociology did not any better in this regard but the Classics, on the contrary, built on this wisdom its own grand cosmogonical theories.  The Spanish case would refute, or at least shake, this ideological historiography on many bases.  Firstly, it should be noted that they were mostly anti-statist socialists.  This could be the best reason to exclude them from the state-oriented academia.  Secondly, it has been held by mainstream that Catholicism is an impediment to the emergence of positive social thought. Now if a country which is one of the largest centers of this creed is to be credited of producing a body of theory and praxis which defied the dear categories (like modernity-Protestantism, capitalism-state) of mainstream then one would be forced to change so many institutionalized orientations.  Were the mainstream sociologists ready for that?  The last but not the least point is the connection between state and capitalism.  The conventional stance on this issue is that capitalism is not dependent on state as such but state-capitalism is just one of the features of Capitalism.  Regardless of the current debate on the role of state and globalization, one should credit the anarchists in repudiating the naive faith in capitalism.  The anarchists, in my view, were right about capitalism and the role of state in nourishing it, if one does not confine the unit of analysis to the Territorial State Nation of, say, England, but to the Imaginary England, which meant the Imperial hand of Queen outside England. The Spanish anarchists did not respect the sanctity of Leviathan and exposed the ideological basis of modern state, which equates order with ruling.

Episode Seven

What is the logic of ' Classicality' and ' Canonicity'?

The current obsession with Classics or the Canon of sociology won't be understood if taken as an epiphenomenon.  Actually, this obsession is the cardinal problem within the discipline and directly targets the secular conception of the history of sociology and universal spirit of intellectual inquiry on a global scale.  If the problems of Classics and Canons are treated or I rather say mistreated as mainstream historiography of social sciences would us to believe then the end result won't be very different than the self-congratulatory current histories written by grand Muftis of academic sociology. I am not trying to sound ironical but irony is the only manner that could depict the very state we find ourselves at the present. It seems most historians of sociology or those who I rather call ' Big Sociologists' a la Habermas, Giddens or Parsons work with an intellectual device-framework which has the following components:

1. The turning-point is the Enlightenment

2. Farther away from the Enlightenment towards institutionalization we come we would discover a turn from Ideology towards Science

3. Farther away from Enlightenment towards the opposite side of institutionalization we get, we would come farther away from, first, science, then, ideology, closer to theology and finally its regressive allies.

If presentism has any historical meaning or applicability, then one can find its most evident appearance in this intellectual device at Grand Sociologists' disposal.  The reason, one excludes a Bakunin from the canon and drops a Montesquie (despite the huge amount of historical excavations and in spite of the lip-services paid by most sociologists such as his sociologistic credibility, still Montesquie is an in-between phenomena) from the Classical Pantheon is, at least this is what mainstream historiography asserts, the lack of scienticity in their respective work.  If the scientific basis of modern social theory is thought to be a defense against the criticisms of the historiography of critical historiography, then it should be borne in mind that history can counter-attack.  Early French socialists, as Corcoran notes, believed their work to be scientific:

The socialist perspective was universally understood by its advocates to be the product of scientific inquiry, la science sociale. This ... was virtually a fanatical viewpoint. Socialism ... was a movement of ideas, a triumph of the human mind ... . The scientific ideas themselves were seen as the product of man's naturally inventive mind coming to grips with the ... ... experiences of real life, such as, for example, a thwarted ... ... . Revolution and the depredations of competitive capitalism ... .

Marx and the self-styled anarchist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1809-1865) were each thoroughly convinced of the scientific basis of their socialist and anarchist thought respectively.  Proudhon can be heard in 140 asserting that

By means of self-instruction and the acquisition of ideas, man finally acquires the idea of science, - that is, of a system of knowledge in harmony with the reality of things, and inferred from observation ... and just as the right of force and the right of artifice retreat before the steady advance of justice... so the ... sovereignty of the will yields to the sovereignty of the reason, and must at last be lost in scientific socialism.

Note that these were the words of Proudhon, the anarchist (a tradition which has not a proper place in mainstream historiography and mainstream sociology does not take its theorists as equal in sociological debates), calling for 'scientific socialism', not those of Marx, who was still at University working on his Doctoral thesis at that time. Science has been accessible to all ideologies and one just wonders how ideological the institutionalized science of sociology is?

As mentioned above the Big Sociologists work with a specific intellectual framework which functions as a sieve in order to assess the credibility of all social discourses.   The main question, in my view, here is not how this device works but how in the first place did mainstream sociology get hold on this device?  Is this a scientific device, which evaluates scientifically our statement about past and present? Or? A categorical 'No' is the answer.  The alleged scientific position granted to mainstream sociology was not won as a result of intellectual discussions based on argument and argumentation.  The device at the Big Sociologists' disposal is an ideological framework established (not via reasoning alone because the anarchism and utopianism are the best example from within Western paradigm which evidently ridicule the assumed logic of both Classicality and Canonicity) in order to sustain something at the expense of other more important humane things. 

One of the major arguments against, say, Utopian discourses is its alleged utopianism (in the sense that theirs is an argument based on nowhere, i.e. outopia) against the more scientific oriented discourse of Classics.  Again here, one can note that this classical argument at the disposal of canonicity faults even against its own standards.  Because it should be remembered that utopianism is not alien to the whole genre of classical modes of critique as many thinkers such as D. Held in 1980 and Mike Michael in 1994 have rightly held. In other words, to eschew a range of ideas and people behind these ideas by accusing them to be utopians, is neither scientific nor intellectual but a crude mode of presentism.  A kind which is not sufficiently equipped to deal with the substantial components of a branch of human thought.  Instead of engaging with thought firstly, the mainstream thinkers generally choose to catogorize first in order to exclude unlawful children from the community of scientists.

Episode Eight

The problem with the theorists of Enlightenment and its impact on Classicality

Whether mainstream sociologists admit or decline, there is more to sociology and its alleged empirical theories than conventional historiography reveals presently.  At the heart of each theory and at the core of Sociological Theory, there is a notion, a very dear one indeed, about the very structure of civilization and its mechanism.  In other words, it seems most of the Grand Sociologists from Comte to Habermas, Giddens and so on are working with an exclusive civilizational paradigm: a Western paradigm which generates and re-generates itself, and in addition has substantial impact on others without relying on other civilizational formations; most of the time such formations are not even recognized theoretically. In exceptional and sporadic cases one takes them in historical consideration but their immediate impact is next to nil or without any substantial influence on our views on reality.

However, this mono-civilizational paradigm, in my view, suffers from a grave misunderstanding in relation to the nature of human knowledge transmission and lacks sufficiently accurate historical endorsement.  What in actual terms is needed is a multi-civilizational framework which could accommodate an interactive understanding of human (not just in geographical or political terms but in homosapinal terms i.e. as a universal phenomenon) civilizational process. The result of this shift would bring vast empirical results.  The change in this level which envelopes the whole notion of Western modernity and its alleged enlightening project (and its sociological corollary that is understood by the theorists of Enlightenment as a unique modern European project) would refashion our understanding of modernity.  The more practical result would be an enlargement of our vision of modernity's periodicity within human civilizational process.  In my view, this would take us to the very heart of Classicality and Canonicity in current sociological literature- that is fashioned in accordance to this myopic conceptualization of civilizational process. The very idea of city needs to be reconsidered along new lines which have broader perspectives that surely would affect our view on fundamental issues within social theory.

Episode Nine

How to deal with the history of sociology or History as a Classical issue?

Most available studies on the history of social sciences in general and the history of the discipline in particular either do not mention the state of history in non-Western states- forget the state of theory- or if some write- either in footnotes or in short articles- about it at all, take a specific point of vantage called modernity.  These literature by Grand Sociologists or social theorists who take a misconstrued version of modernity as their intellectual frame of reference and then take, in case of bothering with this non-Western states and the state of sociology in these states, a trans-plantationist point of view and then talk about the history of sociology, say, in Iran, in Turkey or Egypt.  Of course, one does not need to delve into the oeuvre of the Big Sociologists in order to find this pattern (because normally they won't bother with these Minor Issues due to the linguistic barriers and it seems in sociology this lack of engagement is a sign of bliss among the community), but one can easily discern its application and hegemony among others who apply their theoretical findings on peripheral issues. In this regard the only book on sociology in Iran by two Iranian sociologists: ' Sociology in Iran' by Ali Akbar Mahdi and Abdolali Lahsaeizadeh, in 1992 is a great example of such approach.

This, both intellectual and conceptual, trend would be comprehensible if one take a good look at the theoretical and historical bases of current sociological and historiographical framework within Classicality and Canonicity literature.  The hegemonic mode of research on history of sociology is based on the paradigm of either MWD (Marx, Weber, and Durkheim) or DWM (Dead White Men).  Nonetheless, both of these approaches, in my view, suffer from deep misunderstanding regarding human issues and won't take us very far in understanding the history of social-logy (or the logic of social theoretical inquiry) beyond this imposed academic paradigm.

The fact that the modern history of sociology took shape under the influence of that kind of sociology which both implicitly and explicitly equated society with state- populated by something called nation (at the time of coining it linguistically one cannot find the reality of nation but one can discern the emerging mechanisms which were deployed in order to construct it for some other purposes than societal –because the social always means peaceful- ones) which was supposed to be educated and monitored gradually (and disciplined either in factories as a labor force or in military barracks as a conscript)- and condemned all those who questioned or refuted the very raison d'etre of modern machinery, i.e. Statism.  In order to see the history of sociology in terms of social knowledge one needs to open up the intellectual lock and create a new 'space' within the genre of histories of social thought through a deconstruction of the notion of 'social thought' and therefore its homosapinal's histories.

Episode Ten

Is Modernity a European project or a Classical headache?

There are aspects of human life which are 'inborn' and constitutive of his/her nature (at least his/her physical framework, like to have two legs than six fingers), but at the same time there are cultural issues or patterns of thought which have taken the role of natural disposition or what one calls 'second nature'.  One of this cultural-turned-natural-disposition is the modernity (and its intellectual paraphernalia) and its reproduction mechanism by various sites of power.

Modernity has been introduced as a European project, started in Europe (however, it should be noted that this Europe is not 'just' a geographical formation and sometimes it includes geographical locations beyond her own 'geo' and in other time excludes geographical indicators and works in accordance to other mechanisms: take Spain during Muslim era, Ukraine or Bosnia; on the other hand the inclusion of North America and Canada.), developed in Europe, sustained in and by Europe, and exported to non-Europe by her.  That's why one can easily discern the intellectual reflection of this political strategy during sixties and seventies within then current mode of academic theorizing which were full of Modernization proposals for countries beyond the European castle.

However, this approach to modernity and the intellectual conceptualization of this process both in Europe and its modernization industry without Europe is, in my view, highly misconceived.  Actually this misconception is the main reason for so many socio-political suicides (i.e. political attempts to introduce via economical policies an assumed reality which there is not there. It is outopia and contrary to eutopia.) in most non-Western countries (here, I have in mind, particularly the Muslim countries). Why? Because this intellectual misunderstanding by Western theorists and its synchronous uncritical acceptance by those so-called pro-Westerners made a mystical creature out of modernity and presented it as a Western commodity to Muslim societies.  There were so many 'Buts' and 'Ifs' in this narrative which is more of a political device than an intellectual account of human events.  The Western intellectuals, in my view, were mistaken in their very initial formulation of this civilizational framework which was construed in monological terms.  The Classics were wrong because they disregard the 'What Against' of modernity and took ' What For' of modernity as their point of theoretical departure.  Europe modernizes itself ' Against' a premodernity which was not assessed wholly in internal terms but measured against over extra-European conditions.  Within sociology of science, one can find the blossoming of new trends which attempt to overcome the myopic internalism of mainstream historiography and avoid the mechanical externalism of critical historiography in hope for a better intellectual position.  Nonetheless it should be noted that these attempts although progressive in terms of intention but cannot redeem us intellectually. Because, so to speak, the central concept which all these attempts are directed at work with a paradigmatic concept that is conceptualized in internal terms and lack coherence theoretically.  In other words, what is termed as an external approach is external to that myopic internalism but still is internal in terms of modernity-concept.

On the other hand, the so-called pro-Westerners were mistaken and the past half a century (since the establishment of various Muslim state-nations in Iran, Egypt, Pakistan, Turkey, ... ) attests that they were mistaken both in political and intellectual terms in regard to modernity.  Theirs were a misconceived idea of modernity and a misapplied modernization.  Why? Because they did not take issue with the modernity of their own native fellow intellectuals who formulated the modernity (as an intercivilizational process which cannot be stopped due to geographical hindrances and overcomes all situational barriers thanks to shared homosapinal background among this terrestrial being) in their own native terms which in political terms meant a rejection of both Russification and Westernization.

What wrongly, in my opinion, has been termed Islamic Revivalism or Fundamentalism is actually the other part of modernity which I called imposed-non-modernity.  I do not mean counter-modernity or reactionary (it may turn into reactionary movements when it reaches to a point where it cannot externalize itself within society due to many despotic strictures imposed on).  Because the proponents of counter modernity like protagonists of modernity are trapped within the same monological pattern of civilizational process.  These concepts won't reflect what I have in mind, so for the lack of better concept I prefer to work with imposed-non-modernity than concepts like counter-modernity.  Those who wrongly conceived of modernity as a sole European product did not take into consideration the inter-civilizational aspect of human history and neglected the very simple lesson of historical archaeology and anthropological archaeology in terms of how 'findings', regardless their complexities, move from one location to the other due to the shared homosapinal inventive faculty: fire, cooking, burial, lavatory, and writing -and just told a story full of exceptions and geniuses who were ahead of their times:  Arabs who 'handed' the Greek culture to Europe (and eschewing the civilizational role of Persians both in terms of Metaphysics- the impact of Zoroastrianism on religious thought not just historically but substantially and Manichaeism and its impact via Augustinus on the Western political thought- and formation of Political Units and Organizations prior to Greek Polis by Achamenids who ruled over the whole known world centuries prior to both Romans and other empire-builders.); Abu Reyhan Biruni (973-1048) who was ahead than his time because his anthropological studies (Research on India or Tahqiq Mal al-Hind) does not fit the European timetable, or Ibn Khaldun (1332-1395) who could be better off if he came after A. Comte coined the term socio and logy (which in his opinion had to do with the intellectual background of Europe: Greek and Roman; and nobody never asked how accurate this genealogy was) four centuries later and so on.

In other words, modernity is a common human property and its founding theorists should not just be sought in France or Germany alone, but in a wider human context, i.e. India, Iran, Ottoman Empire, Russia, Georgia, and so on and so forth. In order to highlight my point, I can take one single example from the Iranian case in regard to Modernization.  The collapse of modernization as misunderstood by European intellectuals and hastily implemented by Iranian modernizer government of Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi (1919-80) was due to this category misunderstanding which brought about grave socio-political damages to the country and the whole region (this is the legacy and fate of most Muslim countries and their unpopular governments). 

Beyond and beneath this misunderstood modernity or as Jalal Al-e Ahmad (1923-1969) called it gharbzadegi (Westoxication), there was and still is a vital tradition which is aware of its own intellectual heritage but at the same time is honest about the limitations of its own intellectual paradigm, yet confident about its ability to incorporate the other within its own domain and does not uncritically glorify the Western achievements.  In Western Existentialism, for instance, sees the importance of modern dilemma and appreciates the Sarterian philosophy but does not yield to its conclusions. On the contrary takes the issue a step further.  What the Heidiggerians call for the conclusion, they take it as another angle for debating human existence.  Marxism and Other Western Fallacies (An Islamic Critique) by Ali Shariati (1933-1977) is one among many of this approach which has found its recent resonance among some Western intellectuals who yearn for authenticity beyond European modernity and Traditionalism (and its varieties, regardless of its Islamicity or Catholicity).  Here, one can mention Robert D. Lee's Overcoming Tradition and Modernity: The Search for Islamic Authenticity , which bears witness to this line of argument.

Returning to the category misunderstanding in Iran and most Third World countries, one can find, as mentioned above, a vital tradition which went beyond the surface modernity of, say, Pahlavi dynasty.  The collapse of communication between the central power and various intellectual sources, at least in Iran, had some significant reasons which are still burdening the politics in Muslim countries.  Why? Because, in my view, the elite power (and their intellectual crew) took the legacy of Jamaluddin, Abdu, Iqbal, Shariati, Taleghani, Allama Ja’fari, Imam Khomeini, Kasravi, and et al either as Islamic Revivalism (as conceptualized again by Western historians or orientalists) or some sort of reactionary movements which went against the modernity project (as again conceptualized and propagated by Western intellectuals and backed up by so-called international aid-organizations like IMF or alike).  What these people told was not a simple re-turn ( i.e. a physical turn towards the ancient golden age, because such a time did not exist but could not be brought about by building another New World a la America in Asia or Africa) or a revival of orthodox ( regardless its Shia or Sunni variants) Islam.  Because if this was the case they would not be either assassinated or exiled, on the contrary they could get high position within the ruling class (or at least be tolerated more or less).  But theirs, in my view, was a call to modernization (in Iqbalian sense 'Ihya' or Muttaharian sense 'Islah') but from within the tradition and in interaction with, not just modern Europe, but various human civilizations a la Daryush Shayegan (b. 1935)- who has balanced his interest in Western philosophy with an equal attention to Asian philosophy. This call to modernity (i.e. from within the tradition and in interaction with the world without the tradition) was actually the case when Europe first started to modernize itself.  The first reform (as it is called historically) came about in religious sphere (i.e. in the realm of sensing the whole and feeling the emotional world of being) and was from within the tradition and in interaction with Muslim civilization then.

The importance of this discussion is not about the old debate on the bias of orientalists or the insistence of Muslim traditionalists regarding the contribution of Islam to European modern formation.  On the contrary, in my view, is related to the issue of Classics and the formation of modernity which is mostly considered as a paradigm of sociology. From here, it is not very far-fetched to get at the idea of Classics and its formation and re-formation which cannot solve the problem of Dead Man Working (or as it is known currently: Dead White Man) dilemma. Why? Because they, in my view, in first place got the modernity problem from a wrong angle (and based on a mistaken civilizational logic).  Besides, people who today try to amend (or enlarge the scope of the Classics' theoretical point of reference) that mistake take off beam point of departure; by either accusing them on gender issues or sexual blindness.  I have in mind the feminism (as an epistemological option to the so-called masculine theory of knowledge) or Gay-movement.  The proponents of these variants conceive of their theoretical approaches as a radical stance and present their own as a delegitimizing attempt in regard to the logic of Social Theory or accuse the mainstream social sciences of not being sensitive enough to Gay issues or alike.  Whatever the popularity of these emotions (these are just emotions and cannot be treated as movements, because they do not address the Homosapinal Reason which cannot be affected by the accident of gender or sub-rational passions) one should be clear that the problem of knowledge or epistemology is obviously somewhere else than the assumed terrain of genus or other cultural and biological specificities.

To put the problem of Classics in a wider context than the one produced by the mainstream sociology one need to go beyond the current practices.  The issue is not to bring a Spencer or to remove a Ferguson but wider and deeper than this.  First, in my view, it is the issue of Anarchists and those main European theorists who oppose the very logic of state and hence were excluded from European Academic Sociology then it is the issue of inter-civilizational logic.  The modernity, if my above-mentioned points taken into consideration, was not (and is not) a European product but definitely Westernization or Russification is a European property and it should be defied and was rightly defied.  On the other hand, it was wrongly equated with modernity which resulted in reactionary political regimes all over Muslim societies.  These regimes took for granted the logic of nation-state as god-given parameters and never surpass these Western imposed patterns and neglected the range of constructive ideas presented by Muslim thinkers who relied on modernity from within the tradition a la Iqbal, Afgahni, Muttahari, Kawakebi, Imam Musa sadr, Qutb, Shariati and so on.  Their theoretical attempts and their political praxis were erroneously classified as Pan-Islamism which was more of a European Realpolitical strategy and did not reflect the nub of their thoughts.  It should be added, even briefly, that the ruling intelligentsia and their intellectual allies took that European strategy as their point of political actions which excluded the native attempt and legacy.

Episode Eleven

The expediency of studying history of sociology: A Classical dilemma?

If one assumes that a sharp distinction between the history of sociology and its current task – i.e. the Mertonian History and Systematics of Sociological Theory- exists, then one ends up with a situation where the Systematic Neglect of the history of human social theory becomes the order of the day.  Why?

Because what's the use to go so far away back into the dark corner of human un/pre-scientific thought and dig up a Bakunin or an Iqbal and try to make a classic of him or attempt to canonize the former or the latter? Why should one bother?  In particular, if one works with the Mertonian conceptual device which takes the current society as The Human Society, and theories provided in accordance to the logic of state-societal formation as The Social Theory there should be no doubt that the end result would not be anything similar to dialogical understanding of complex history of humanity on this God-given planet.

There are some issues and some hidden agenda which needs to be 'opened up'.  Because, as I understand the problematic, the conventional White-European-Mainstream view runs as follows:

The religious thought would be replaced by ideological pattern of thinking which meant a desacralization of values and ideology would soon be re-placed by 'science' and then a scientific sociology could bring an accumulated knowledge of the social world (in historiographical debates, one can see an ongoing concern about the continuity vs discontinuity thesis and the obvious relevance of these debates on mainstream sociological historiography).  Sociology in its scientistic cloak should be post-Classical, i.e. post-ideological (which is taken to mean: not to be engaged with morality and 'direction', but science. Because science is a ' directionless' activity and the aim of science is not a scientific aim.  It is a province of policy, regulated by the interest of Big Mega-companies and those financial sites which feed the scientists.); like the natural sciences that left the ' Classics' and their ideological inclinations behind.

In my view, this is the working-hypothesis of mainstream sociology and the state of historical debate within the field.  Of course, I don't mean that we have forgotten the history of modernity, far from it.  However, one needs to take the ironical stance when revisits the conventional histories of modern time, based on monological civilizational logic.  Ironically speaking, we all know that Industrialism came along at a time when Philosophes produced Enlightenment - - here again when one sees a Robespierre or a Napoleon, a Hitler or a political pattern like Fascism, but these are treated as exceptional cases which don't reflect the standard pattern, i.e. anomalies which need to be explained- - and the former, mainstream historiography of sociology claims, gave birth to anomical situation which made Whiteman nation-states so dislocated that they conquered the whole globe in less than sixty years (and imposed so many treaties on other political formations).  There are so many theoretical disparities and historical incompatibilities.  So many revolutions and so many revolutionaries, but the grand result a reactionary World Order based on regressive pattern of thought: Racism, Systematic Slavery, Colonialism, Imperialism, Wars, Exploitation, Imposed International Labour Policies, etc.  It seems, at least in my view, there are issues unexplored and mechanisms uncovered. 

Taking the problem to the sociological ground, one can easily discern the antagonism evident in mainstream historiographical accounts.  According to this antagonistic Story, Vico becomes a forgotten genius and Montesquie establishes sociology before sociologists produce the Rule- and Avekaldun (Ibn Khaldun) runs before his time (the question is whose timetable?) and the whole socio-anthropological studies of Biruni counts as ' Miracle' or 'Ahead' of his time.  The hosts of other thinkers from other parts of human civilizations are relegated to a mystic category called: pre-modernity.  The whole homo-sapinal civilizational attempts were supposed to end in this modernity (that reads very loudly as Westernization-cum-Secularization) which would able us to dispense with this prefix: pre!

Time and again, one sees some extra-sociological attempts to overcome this myopic historiography, but few attempts have been taken to overcome the logic which produces such myopic histories or historiography. The vast literature on Vico or Montesquie, Ibn Khaldun or Chinese sociologically relevant thinkers are evident examples in this regard; nonetheless one cannot see sufficient theoretical engagements with the logic of myopic historiography, which would result in a head-on paradigm shift.

That's why those who refuse the Westernization and get engaged with the Prefix and what lays beneath and beyond it, are wrongly classified as (at least in Muslim case): Islamic Revivalism, Fundamentalism, and etc.  As though, people in this part of the world stopped practicing Islam for quite some time and then suddenly due to external reasons got back to their old pattern of thought which is pre-modern.  One of the great findings of modern social science is the study of indicators of substantial change in relation to pattern of thought.  If one wants to assess the substantial scope of human intellectual change, the best indicator is the way he/she relates him/herself to Death.  In other words, how he/she or the culture in general reflects this relation to human body and the way one buries the human body.  This is one of the fundamental indicators which should be taken into consideration when one talks about intellectual change in particular cultural formation.  The assumed revivalism in relation to Islam and Muslim intellectuals (by Western Scholars in tradition of westernization equal modernization) is a bogus concept and is totally deprived of substantial consideration.  Because the people in these areas never stopped being Muslims in this substantial dimension and the assumed revivalism could be at best understood as a Realpolitik strategical frame of address than otherwise.  Because these categories, at worse, neglected, and, at best, were treated by textualists or security scholars who worked (and still work) in accordance to a specific logic of approach (that logic is best termed by McGeorge Bundy who said:

It is a curious fact of academic history that the first great center of area studies... was in the Office of Strategic services... It is still true today, ... that there is a high measure of interpenetration between universities with area programs and the ... agencies of the government.

Going beyond these ironies, one can find other aspects of these mainstream mythological accounts in various ways sociologists present themselves, i.e. archetypal images.  In time, sociologists try to be historically accurate by describing the discipline as engaged with (and born within) modernity as a project; and in other times one hears that sociology is a revolutionary body of knowledge but produced, ironically, by Evolutionarists or Conservatists.  On other time, one hears that sociology in its critical cast is engaged with 'Big Ideas' like Human Emancipation and Freedom, but others who have arrived late on the scene, deny the whole business of 'Big Ideas' and with that issues related to human emancipation and all other questions in these debates.

There is an irony in the whole sociological enterprise which makes you feel how anti-historical those big sociologists of today were (have become or are).  Then when you get critical i.e. believing in the possibility of understanding and reaching the nub of other intellectuals' message cross-culturally and cross-temporally, regardless the modern dogmas of relativism and modernist myth of exceptionality; in one word knowing and feeling the sanctity of pen.  It is an ironic coincidence that the word pen comes from the Latin penna which means feather.  Because the ancient used the feather as the instrument of writing, but it is of importance to know that the feather is the part which enables birds to fly.  The same does penna with the human intellect.  It enables us to fly via our thoughts and overcome our temporality.  By critical, I have this aspect in mind which is a rare mode in critical approaches today. You come to see that it could not be otherwise due to modern organization of knowledge.  Sociologists have worked within the departments of sociology which belong to faculties of social sciences.  The latter are an integrated part of university-system which in turn is a part of Educational System- and charted by ministry of Education.  Again, this latter organ is run by government in state-nation-system.  Then the critical reader would ask: how could it be different? How could sociology be a revolutionary subject and include in its pantheon a Bakunin who repudiated the very existence of state (let alone his rejection of the idea of Nationalism)?

He should have been dismissed by more so-called sophisticated theoretical social thinkers who understood the very logic of science and established the Rules of scientific sociology at the Republic sponsored universities.  Regardless of the substantial relevance of these Rules (which have occupied the best minds of the century in how to improve the reliability and scientificity of these rules), there was one significant point which Bakuninains understood better than those Republican Sociologists and was unfortunately missed at a very crucial point in the history of modern European system formation.  That idea is a very simple but humane cornerstone of Anarchism, i.e. the idea that society should not be divided into order-givers and order-takers. It, instead, should be organized in a non-hierarchical way. It is another story, and beyond my current concern, how significant could be the ideas of Mazdak who proposed such a non-hierarchical society which resulted in his annihilation during the Sassanid Dynasty in fifth century in Iran.

Again back to our main concern; some would condemn sociologists under the banner of political correctness without mentioning the ethical soundness, who stayed and worked for Fascism or Nazism and their respective (though not respected) governments but forgetting that how much - not just in degree but in substance- different is the Patron Relation in contemporary sociology?  As Stephen P. Turner rightly argues - but does not develop it in great details as Chalmers Johnson does - sociology and social research is a subsidized activity which cannot get away from Patronship as such but just can hope for a new Patron which means a new partisan ideology.  So, it is obvious that a Bakunin should be counted as sociologically muddled but a Weber methodologically correct.  Why?  What is the hidden logic in this sociological verdict? 

Because the former condemns the very way things are run in modern state-society, but the latter just mourns and becomes an officer in a state-nationalistic war. In this dramatic situation to accuse those big sociologists who are supposedly the theoretical deans of sociological field that never, even once, talked about sociology and sociological enterprise out of their own White-European Domain- thanks to Nazism and Stalinism which forced some of these Europeans run to U.S.A. and there debated partially about something non-European; but again their Whiteness conflated the situation by preferring the political and hence confusing the geographical issues by introducing the most enigmatic historiographical concept, i.e. West in the language of social theory: a remnant of racial propensity- to be anti-historical or even intellectually myopic, it requires Andersonian's bravery.  How many contemporary or the so-called big sociologists have talked about the substantial social relevance of Tagore and his theory of human society? Of course, most of us know about Tagore, Iqbal or Mulla Sadra Father Taleghani or Imam Khomeini and Imam Musa Sadr, but these names do not ring any sociological or even sociopolitical bell.  There are some reasons which are mostly related to the theoretical bias inherent within western sociological theoretical enterprise.  The aforementioned authors and their works do belong to the domain of either anthropology or orientalism and sometimes some of them sadly to journalism.  The ideological justification for this approach is the assumed role of belief in their thought-system against over science in the Western paradigm of thought.  It is of importance to note that the recent research in various fields of sociology of science and anthropology of Western society has brought about new insights in regard to the scope of science in belief and the role of belief in science.  However, it should be noted that the recent scholarship in these fields has not all been a good omen for intellectual activity as such; because the end-result, at least by some ultra-relativists, has been argued would be the death of universal cognitive dimension as such.  To go back to Tagore and the problem of non-Western social theory, it is of importance to note that these thinkers are treated as the subject of anthropology or orientalism which rests on the Western ontological frame of reference.  In other words, they (Iqbal, Mulla Sadra, ... ) are not debated but collected as raw material and studied textually in order to be understood in terms of their openness to Western mode of universalism (not Homosapinal frame of universalism which does not get stuck with reified form of intellect or reason as Western Man or alike).  Why is that so?

They cannot contribute, mainstream secular intellectuals (those who depict the landscapes of public imagination and draw the lines of future images) held, to the White Mainstream Social Theory.  What is the logic of these Grand Intellectuals' reluctance to take issue with non-White social thought, apart from the mentality of the oppressors, other than the pure and plain linguistic ignorance?  Most of them are either monolingual or in case of bi/multi-linguality master European languages like German, French, English, and so on.  It seems the current language policy goes the same route as political ideology, i.e. the Third World languages do not shed any light on our modern issues as their political ideology does not offer anything substantial on current global issues (except global disturbances like Terrorism and Energy Crisis by OPEC).  The current attitude is in simple terms as follows: Unless-you-speak-English-or-write-German-we-won't-read-your-work-or-heed-your-thoughts-ideology. This ideology is based on a misunderstanding and unjustified self-congratulation.  Briefly could be formulated as distorted modernity.  This term denotes a mythical belief which the Big Sociologists have repeated it as a faith article for so many years and decades.  It denotes both a mode of seeing and a social organization: a mode of seeing insofar as the modern consciousness turns on a scientific outlook as against the mythical: and a social organization insofar as modern society rests on a market economy that progressively devolves into international corporation. This, in my view, is the central core of this mythical belief.  What the Western epistemology calls mythical outlook against scientific one is more like a caricature than an accurate historical rendering.  Besides this account is based on a mistaken notion of Western against Restern ideology that lacks true human substance, which is what all cultures are really are or should be and brought about.  This Restern is a mythical creature born out of mainstream historians and anthropologists.  Here, I am not concern with the notion of Knowledge among various Restern Contexts, but I take the Islamic notion of knowledge (ilm) as primary example.  Without exploring the infrastructure of this concept most mainstream historians attempted to put this mythical/scientific straitjacket on other Restern Frame of Knowledge (and in this case ilm).  The second part of the pillar