Kant's Bismillah

When I said,

Upon some reflection I found that this barrier comes from my inability to relate to the paradigm. I suspect that even if I'm given the proper context I won't be able to relate. For one has to live through it to really make sense of it.

— Sazzad Bin Kamal (@sazzadbinkamal) June 28, 2023

I was specifically talking about the writings of Kant and Hegel. The difficulty compounds in the absence of a rigorous academic background in the subject matter. Layman reading can only take you so far.

But I might have belittled the importance of contextual information. Specially a historical one. It surely compensates for a lot of confusion:

Upon some reflection I found that this barrier comes from my inability to relate to the paradigm. I suspect that even if I'm given the proper context I won't be able to relate. For one has to live through it to really make sense of it.

— Sazzad Bin Kamal (@sazzadbinkamal) June 28, 2023

Besides there is no time machine to go back and relive a certain period for its proper reading. And even if there were not everyone's perception is identical to the same experience.

So it was a God send when I discovered:

I knew Dr. Paul was active in the Dawah sector. Unfortunately that sector has fashioned itself in a way that I don't feel attracted to. I'm very glad that the mentioned scholar has much more to offer than the usual Dawah Polemics.

I first noticed the depth of Dr. Paul's knowledge and his clarity of speech in the Thinking Muslim's podcast on his favorite books. I advise Dr. Paul to seriously consider about an online book club, especially one that is oriented towards Philosophy, as suggested by the host. This suits well since he is academically trained in Philosophy.

Not only that. The way Dr. Paul conducts his show is exemplary. He focuses on his guest and interrupts only for clarification or to add value to the conversation. That's how it should be done. Unfortunately I have seen many hosts talk all by themselves leaving little room for their guests to speak and even when they do it is only for the hosts to impose themselves onto their guests. If you don't let your guests speak why bother inviting them?

Regarding the topic at hand, I find the guest Emir Faruk an articulate speaker. An enjoyable and worthy listen indeed.

Of things that are noteworthy to me is finding the link between the Islamic Golden Age and the French Renaissance. This is important because I might have constructed a simplistic understanding of the French Renaissance where I saw it as a rebellious attempt to Christianity, and anything religious, endeavoring for Atheistic intellectualism based primarily on the Greek/Ionian tradition.

Kant's enthno/Euro centrist racist ideas despite the orientalist influence in his subconscious requires an oblique comment on the modern day Islamophobic intelligentsia. Dawkins et al. may not be as much free thinking as they love to portray, when Kant's racial biases are clearly visible in their speech. And also in Darwin's and Hitler's.

Ironic that Hitler's racial supremacist ideology is catching up among the Indian Hindus while they have no exterior semblance with the Aryans. A lot of pee drinking and not a deeper intellectual engagement lead them to this euphoric, but albeit imaginary, communion with their Aryan predecessors, I guess.

Kant's starting his PhD thesis 'In the name of Allah. The most beneficent, the most merciful.' proves a much deeper influence than our typical awareness of Islam's influence on the Western civilization assumes:

Secularist Muslims might want to take a look at it and ponder over its ramifications before they spew out regurgitated arguments against traditional Madrassa education, i.e., Madrassa education did not make Muslims backwards, its their loss of sovereignty that made them fall behind.

The persecution of Sabri Effendi by Atatürk's secular regime is noteworthy. Because some Muslim modernists have internalized the Renaissance dialectic of Religion and State vs Independent Inquiry. While this is true for Christian Europe, this has no bearing on historic Muslim empires. It was rather State that oppressed the upright and prominent Ulema. Sabri Effendi is one example in a long list.

And we know that it is a foreign import because most of the time Galileo's case is presented as a proof for State's or Society's or Establishment's persecution of a freemind. This is problematic because first, it is a simplistic and incorrect representation. Second, it does not take account of the radical paradigm changes through time. As shown by many, including Feyerabend. Galileo was as much unscientific as the Philosophers or Theologians today. Galileo unnecessarily provoked his antagonists out of personal grudges. But most importantly for a Muslim reader it is a European problem not an Islamic one.

Moreover, Sabri Effendi was a product of a traditional Islamic education system not a secular one. Yet he mastered western thought to a point where he could scrutinize it through a Musalmānic lens. This dispels the arguments which blame the traditional Islamic education system for the downfall of the Muslims.

Conversely what did we get from secularizing our education system except for some intellectual lepers, a degenerated, morally corrupt and confused society? In most cases they have no recognition even in the western secular world. In cases they do its for their service not for their intellect.

Lastly, I'm glad that Dr. Paul specifically mentioned Scruton's book. Because when I said:

The experts all admitting that these thinkers are hard to understand adds more to this belief. But lately I have been thinking whether this curiosity is genuine or a veiled inferiority complex. Why should I try to own the problems that are not mine?

— Sazzad Bin Kamal (@sazzadbinkamal) June 28, 2023

I was actually referring to Scruton for Kant and Singer for Hegel. Both of them admitted how hard it is to read their respective subject matters. Even though they themselves are widely respected scholars in their fields. That worried me.

Because I read mostly out of curiosity. If my reading cannot satiate that why bother reading? And one cannot be a scholar in every field, nor do I plan to. So I would not bother toiling to understand a subject beyond what my spare time allows.

It is strange that some people find particular interest in abstruse conversations. I even saw someone praising Zizek for his idiosyncrasies. Really?

Think in this way. Let's say certain people, like Kant/Hegel, were so intelligent that their languages failed them. So they couldn't clarify their thought very well to us. But we do know that this is coming from people of intellect, because other well reputed intellectuals recognized them, and not from some pot addict talking poppycock in their high.

So at the beginning the smart people were a difficult read. But eventually the impostors got a hold of it and started making simple things difficult so that they appear more intelligent then they actually are. Then talking unintelligibly became synonymous to appearing as an intellectual. This is very relatable for me because I find Bangladeshi intellectuals as mere quacks.

Professor Ghulam Azam ﵀, a luminary Bangladeshi Islamist and a spiritual guide of the Jamaat-e-Islami Bangladesh, wrote in his autobiography that he made it his mission to write simply so that even laymen could understand it.

He complained to Mawlānā Muhammad Abdur Rahim ﵀, another prominent Bangladeshi Islamist preacher, for his dense writing style. The Mawlānā replied, unsurprisingly, that he did so only to prove himself to the leftist writers! Thanks to all the soviet propaganda machinery and the spread of its ill translated literature, that being a difficult read is the key to intellectual recognition.

Not at all. It is the novelty and not the obscurity of the content that makes it intellectual.

Moreover, the importance of language and the role it plays is made more conspicuous by the fact that the difficult in reading Kant reportedly comes from the fact that he was forced to borrow from Latin Philosophy. So French as a language was not yet prepared to convey the philosophical thought that Kant had. I was wondering if Latin was his first language would he have done a better job in representing his theory? Or perhaps even making more progress in his philosophical work?

In any case, I'm now at ease knowing that it is not my inferiority complex trying to learn the ways of our former colonizers but this rather is a curiosity shared across humanity. The search for a cogent theoretical framework to all our intellectual queries is a universal one. Not only that, in this attempt we are asking almost the same questions and struggling at the similar set of puzzles. Our questions are same, mysteries are same but our approach and answers are different.

I'm looking forward to watch part 2.

Part 2 Update:

What got me thinking here is the link between Al-Ghazali and Hume. Emir Faruk reported the similarity of Hume's skeptic arguments and almost a millennia ago Ghazali's. So why then Hume is widely considered an Atheist while the same line of arguments lead Ghazali to become the Hujjat-ul-Islam?

The other thing is Sabri Effendi's Arabic prose lacking native fluency. This is perhaps a good example of how difficult it is to master a language. All the polyglots that you see have mostly mastered the languages at a syntactic level. Because no matter the level of mastery a native and a non-native is not the same.

Looking forward for part 3.