Modernity and the Ideals of Arab-Islamic and Western-Scientific Philosophy

“This book fills a significant lack. The world of learning’s paucity of detailed information about the relationships between Arab-Islamic and Western Scientific philosophy is both real and unfortunate. Professor Obiedat’s instructive discussion provides an informative step towards repairing this regrettable omission.” —Nicholas Rescher, Distinguished University Professor of Philosophy, University of Pittsburgh, USA “This is the first comparative study ever to engage the impressive oeuvres of Mario Bunge and Abdurrahman Taha. Obiedat, however, has his own perspective on things, finding both philosophers lacking in some respects. This is a provocative book that has as one of its virtues the opening of crucial space for bringing Western and Islamic philosophical voices into dialogue with one another.” —Wael Hallaq, Avalon Foundation Professor in the Humanities at Columbia University, USA “Professor Obeidat takes us in an exciting journey to the universal religious, secular, and scientific points of views. He aims at exploring their broad lines and surpassing their partial differences. Thereby, he uses a modern philosophical approach by which he attempts to eliminate the dialectical gap between the Arab-Islamic and the Western worlds. Finally, he tests the boundaries of the philosophical vision that has dominated our understanding of the world for a very long time!” —Salah Osman, Professor of Logic and Philosophy of Science at Menoufia University, Egypt This is the first study to compare the philosophical systems of secular scientific philosopher Mario Bunge (1919-2020), and Moroccan Islamic philosopher Taha Abd al-Rahman (b.1945). In their efforts to establish the philosophical underpinnings of an ideal modernity these two great thinkers speak to the same elements of the human condition, despite their opposing secular and religious worldviews. While the differences between Bunge’s critical-realist epistemology and materialist ontology on the one hand, and Taha’s spiritualist ontology and revelational-mystical epistemology on the other, are fundamental, there is remarkable common ground between their scientific and Islamic versions of humanism. Both call for an ethics of prosperity combined with social justice, and both criticize postmodernism and religious conservatism. The aspiration of this book is to serve as a model for future dialogue between holders of Western and Islamic worldviews, in mutual pursuit of modernity’s best-case scenario. A. Z. Obiedat is an Assistant Professor of Arabic Language and Culture at Wake Forest University, USA.