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Positivism and Tradition in an Islamic Perspective

Kemalism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 April 2024

Mohammed Arkoun
Mohammed Arkoun*
Affiliation:
University of Paris III
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— Y.K. Karaosmanoglu: "General, this party has no doctrine...".

— Mustafa Kemal: "Of course it hasn't, my son; if we had a doctrine, we would paralyze the movement”.

The many studies, articles, essays, conferences and seminars dedicated to the personality and the work of Mustafa Kemal are still far from having exhausted an area of knowledge with many facets, a historical reality with unending extensions. By studying the apologetic literature about the civilizing hero and a historiography which is limited to the relatively neutral description of the rich career of an individual, it can be noted that there are very few writings inspired by the desire not only to analyze, to explain and to understand but also to think through the Kemalist revolution.

Type
Research Article
Information
Diogenes , Volume 32 , Issue 127 , September 1984 , pp. 82 - 100
Copyright
Copyright © 1984 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)

References

1 Quoted by S.S. Aydemir, Tek Adam: Mustafa Kemal, Vol. 3, Istanbul, Remzi Kitabevi, 1966, 502.

2 In the sense that F. Furet, for example, thought through the French Revolution.

3 Cf. La philosophie des Lumières dans sa dimension européenne, writings introduced by A. Bildermann, Larousse, 1969.

4 For this concept, cf. M. Arkoun, "Le concept de Raison islamique", Pour une critique de la Raison islamique, ed. Maisonneuve-Larose, 1984.

5 Cf. Philosophie des Lumières, op. cit., pp. 13 ff.

6 Cf. M. Arkoun, Lectures du Coran, ed. Maisonneuve-Larose, 1982, passim.

7 In the meantime, both Kemalism and Khomeinism pose problems. Ataturk did indeed replace an exhausted regime with a viable State, open to a certain modernity, and Khomeini put an end to the dissoluteness of a megalomaniac cut off from the people. But in both cases, the upheavals reached the symbolic foundations of the society without respecting either the critical and conquering spirit of the Enlightenment in one case, nor the sense of the absolute and the tolerance which give a value to prophetic experience in the other. And in both cases also the deepest essence of Turkish and Iranian society was ignored rather than directed by a way of thinking which is equal to the historical event.

8 Definition given by the Reverend Father D. Chenu.

9 Cf. the chapter by Serif Mardin, "Religion and Secularism in Turkey", in Ataturk, Founder of a Modern State, Ali Kazancigil and E. Özbudun, eds. London, 1981.

10 Quoted by B. Lewis, in The Emergence of Modern Turkey, 2nd ed., Oxford, 1968, p. 268.

11 Ibid., p. 267-268.

12 Ibid., p. 236.

13 Ibid., p. 278.

14 Ibid., p. 268-269.

15 Cf. the explanation given by Tabarî in his commentary on verse II, 113 in reference to the institution of Friday as a day equivalent to Saturday for Jews and Sunday for Christians, Tafsîr, ed. Chakîr, t. IV, p. 283.

16 This is the real meaning of his struggle to enter Mecca and to perform the pilgrimage in an Islamized Ka'ba.

17 Quoted by B. Lewis, op. cit., p. 270.

18 Thus all Muslims recognize the transcendence of God, the absolute and insurmountable value of the revealed Word, the transhistorical sweep of prophetic action and the eschatological perspective of existence.

19 There is no intention here of mixing up Ataturk and Khomeini in the same critique, but of reflecting, in an anthropological objective, on what we call a "messianic project", which is an important category of historic action in general.

20 P. Bourdieu distinguishes "mental images… acts of perception and apprecia tion, of knowing and recognition, in which agents invest their interests and their presumptions; objectal images, in things (emblems, flags, insignia, etc.) or acts, strategies interested in symbolic manipulation which aim at a determination of the (mental) image which others can have of these properties and their bearers", in Ce que parler veut dire, Fayard, 1982, p. 135-136.

21 The concept of traditionalism has been analyzed well by A. Laroui for Morocco in La crise des intellectuels arabes, Maspero, 1974, p. 45 ff.

22 Cf. M. Arkoun, Lectures du Coran, op. cit., p. 145 ff, and E. Mortimer, Faith and Power: The Politics of Islam, London, 1982.

23 Cf. M. Arkoun, L'Islam, hier, demain, 2nd ed., Buchet-Chastel, 1982, p. 120 ff.

24 The ideological current meant here is so powerful that we will refrain from citing an institution, a proper name or a title.

25 Important work has been done in the West, but it remains too circumscribed to move beyond the narrow circle of specialists (particularly when these are Orienta lists) and thus to have an influence on research in general, university instruction and, a fortiori, general culture.