Javad Tabatabai | |
|---|---|
.jpg) Javad Tabatabai, 2017 | |
| Born | (1945-12-14)December 14, 1945 |
| Died | February 28, 2023(2023-02-28) (aged 77) |
| Academic background | |
| Alma mater | Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University (PhD) |
| Thesis | Essai sur le discours politique hegelien: genèse, 1793-1806 (1985) |
| Doctoral advisor | Jean-Pierre Cot |
| Academic work | |
| Institutions | University of Tehran |
Seyed Javad Tabatabai Nejad (Persian:سید جواد طباطبایی; 14 December 1945 – 28 February 2023) was an Iranian philosopher and political scientist. He was Professor and Vice Dean of theFaculty of Law and Political Science at theUniversity of Tehran.
Javad Tabatabai, anIranian Azeri,[1] was born on 14 December 1945 inTabriz, Iran. His father was a merchant in thebazaar of Tabriz.[2] He studied theology, law, and philosophy in Tabriz and Tehran, then earned his PhD inpolitical philosophy from theUniversity of Paris 1 Pantheon-Sorbonne, with a dissertation onHegel's political philosophy.[3] His daughter isAriane Tabatabai.
After returning to Iran, Tabatabai was Professor and Deputy Dean of the Faculty of Law and Political Science at the University of Tehran. In the mid-1990s, he was dismissed from his posts as both professor and deputy dean for criticizing the ideology of the Iranian government.[4]
He continued his research in other countries such as France, England, Germany and the United States: he was a guest fellow at theWissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, as well as at theMoynihan Institute of Global Affairs atSyracuse University. Tabatabai published about 20 books on the history of political ideas in Europe and Iran.
Tabatabai died on 28 February 2023 inIrvine, California, at the age of 77.[5][6]
Tabatabai presented a controversial theory regarding the causes of the decline of political thought and society in Iran over the last few centuries. His ideas on Iranian decline have affected the intellectual debates on modernity and democracy currently underway in Iran.
Tabatabai's career-long research revolved around this question: “What conditions made modernity possible in Europe and led to its abnegation in Iran?” He answered this question by adopting a “Hegelian approach” that privileged a philosophical reading of history on the assumption that philosophical thought is the foundation and essence of any political community and the basis for any critical analysis of it as well.[7] In 2001, in an interview withLibération, he said that political and ideological Islam are already dead, because they have no plans for modernity.[8]
Tabatabai rejectedanti-Iranianirredentism and warned about the perils facing Iran from the provocations ofpan-Turkism.[1] Tabatabai defendedPersian as Iran's national language and argued that the histories ofTurkey and the Republic ofAzerbaijan contained many forgeries and fabrications.[1] During one of his lectures in Tabriz, he emphasized that the history of the "Baku Republic" (i.e. the Republic of Azerbaijan) is central to thehistory of Iran.[1]
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