Product details
- ISBN 9781914983320
- Weight: 300g
- Dimensions: 129 x 198mm
- Publication Date: 30 May 2025
- Publisher: GINGKO
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Hardback
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In 1721, in his famous Lettres persane (The Persian Letters), the French philosopher Montesquieu posed the question ‘Comment peut-on être persan?’ The answer to that question is perhaps an even more wide-ranging, challenging and fascinating conundrum today.
In his exploration of where such an answer might be found, the renowned contemporary philosopher Ramin Jahanbegloo turns to the writings of the politician and diplomat Muhammad Ali Foroughi (1877-1942), and his vision of what ‘being’ a Persian might embrace. After centuries of invasion, murder, destruction and authoritarian rule, this philosophical investigation examines Montesquieu’s original question against a backdrop in which a common, plural subjectivity of Persian-ness has been frustrated for centuries, and at a time when the country is wrestling with the possibility of an extended period of political, social and cultural decline. Even so, the battle for social and political freedoms is still underway in Iran; and in The Idea of Persia, the concept of nationhood is presented as the means by which Iranians may liberate themselves from the heroes and saints of old, and remake their political mentality in a manner that stays true to an age-old idea of Persian-ness, and to the author’s own belief in freedom as a virtue that has to be taught.
Ramin Jahanbegloo is an Iranian-Canadian political philosopher. He is presently the Executive Director of the Mahatma Gandhi Centre for Nonviolence and Peace Studies and the Vice-Dean of the School of Law at Jindal Global University- Delhi-India.
He received his B.A. and M.A. in Philosophy, History and Political Science and later his Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Sorbonne. In 1993 he taught at the Academy of Philosophy in Tehran, and has also been a researcher at the French Institute for Iranian Studies and a fellow at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard University, as well as teaching in the Department of Political Science at the University of Toronto from 1997-2001.
He later served as the head of the Department of Contemporary Studies of the Cultural Research Centre in Tehran and, in 2006-07, was Rajni Kothari Professor of Democracy at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies in New Delhi, India. In April 2006 Dr Jahanbegloo was arrested in Tehran Airport and charged with preparing a velvet revolution in Iran. He was placed in solitary confinement for four months and released on bail.
Dr Jahanbegloo was an Associated Professor of Political Science and a Research Fellow in the Centre for Ethics at University of Toronto from 2008-2012 and an Associate Professor of Political Science at York University in Toronto from 2012 - 2015. He is also a member of the advisory board of PEN Canada. He is the winner of the Peace Prize from the United Nations Association in Spain (2009) for his extensive academic works in promoting dialogue between cultures and his advocacy for non-violence, and more recently the winner of the Josep Palau i Fabre International Essay Prize. Ramin Jahanbegloo is also the founder of the non-violent movement 'Non-violence Without Borders'.
