What could be more mendacious than Iran being appointed by UNESCO to organize the Congress for World Philosophy Day in November. A country that punishes all form of free thought, a land that recently certified, according to revolutionary leader Ali Khamenei, that philosophy is dangerous, thereby announcing that within the framework of a broader cultural revolution, in the future all the western philosophers would be erased from university curricula; a country in which only last year, Said Hajjarian, previously wounded and severely disabled when shot at by the regime, was obliged to apologize during a showcase trial, for having read western philosophy with his students; and a country that blames its own greatest philosophers for having planned the velvet revolution and misleading the young people. Misled to what? Thinking?
None of them will be speaking on the World Philosophy Day. Mohammad Shabestari, an expert on Gadamer and Wittgenstein, has been forced into retirement; Mohsen Kadivar, who lives in the USA, has been declared a heretic and is not permitted to ever return to Iran. Abdolkarim Soroush too must fear for his life in Iran, and, should he ever return, Ramin Jahanbegloo too would presumably experience once again what solitary confinement in the Evin prison means. In 2006, when first imprisoned, he was charged with exchanging ideas with western philosophers and having brought to Iran Jürgen Habermas, Richard Rorty and Antonio Negri .
Instead of the most learned Iranian philosophers, Gholam Hossein Haddad Adel will be the one to speak on World Philosophy Day, an event he has also organized. Haddad Adel is considered an expert on Kant, but it seems little trace of Kant’s political work remained imprinted on him, or perhaps his personal political attitude is more greatly influenced by the fact that that his daughter married Khamenei’s son. Haddad Adel was not only conferred the honorable task of organizing World Philosophy Day, he was also appointed to lead the aforementioned new cultural revolution. Who could still doubt that Iran is the not the right location for hosting World Philosophy Day?
The journalist Ahmad Zeidabadi, once again in prison following the protests of the summer of 2009, has published or allowed someone to publish on his Facebook page, an article by philosopher Ottfried Höffe that appeared in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, explaining why he will not be speaking in Tehran. The English summary of his motivations should be read with gratitude due to the solidarity expressed by Hoffe. Does UNESCO wish to show any solidarity? Solidarity for instance with the students who opposed philosophy professor and Member of Parliament Haddad Adel with choruses such as, “Shame on you, shame on you, you are a representative against the people”? These students were then threatened with detention in the notorious Kahrizak prison.
Many other philosophers and intellectuals have shown solidarity; among them, Jürgen Habermas and Seyla Benhabib. Ramin Jahanbegloo, who together with the organization Reset Dialogues on Civilizations, addressed a letter of protest to UNESCO. They will hold a press conference next week in New York, together with other Iranian intellectuals forced into exile by the regime, asking once again “could philosophy be more mendacious?”
And yet Khamenei is right on one point; philosophy is dangerous, and if not for Iran itself, then for Iran and its regime. Philosophy, western philosophy but above all also the philosophical mysticism of Islam, is popular today among young Iranians, because it is perceived as a form of resistance against Iran’s political ideologies and religious dogmatism. Even today Tehran is a place where people read Habermas and Hannah Arendt, it is just that there may well be more philosophers detained in the Evin prison that present on the regime’s podium in November.
Published on September 17th 2010 by Tageszeitung