The Idea of Persia

 

The Idea of Persia

By Ramin Jahanbegloo

 

Jahanbegloo is an advocate of nonviolence.  As such his book takes the reader through a few influential leaders of Iran’s past and present to make a case that it’s time for all the years of dictator oppression to finally give way to a democracy with a voice of the people, led by intellectual thinkers.  At its core is language, employing a grammar that is coined as a ‘Diagonal exchange in dialogue’.  It focuses on fostering constructive dialogue between divergent cultures.  In other words, the odyssey of the Iranian intellectuals that began in the early twentieth century by searching for ways to best incorporate rationality and modernity into Iranian culture. It was disrupted by the Islamic Regime. Jahanbegloo, sees the way to the future with the replacement the Shi’ite Islamic Regime through non-violent dialogue.

Patriotism -v Nationalism brings about the concern of fanatical identity of a nation.  Iran though is strapped with a rich history of Persianess where it’s one of neither race nor religion, but of language and culture.  Therefore politics, as the art of organizing society and realizing civic freedom, was gradually abandoned throughout Persian history in favor of a wandering practice of mystical introspection and poetical experience as a means of interpreting the world. 

This leaves us with the idea of Persia that has never been distilled into single a moment or geography.  Rather, it is an imaginary landscape beyond all forms of historical consciousness. Yet this imaginary landscape has a concrete reality in Persian language.  This is the essence of Jahanbegloo’s book, to put the way of the future in Iran in the hands of public with diagonal dialogue in a democracy that adheres to non-violent way forward.

The following are bibliography notes, Jahanbegloo’s words from the book. 

 

1.     "I have always believed that the true meaning of life consists in those moments when civic friendship not only occurs but proves efficacious with one’s fellow human beings in the form of a higher"

2.     "Nations, like individuals, are endangered by the threat of infantilism, which drives them to the abyss of self-surrender, to fanaticism, and to extreme violence. Fanaticism threatens a nation’s moral self-affirmation. Thus, it is the task of intellectuals to describe and fight the nature of this moral emptiness."

3.     "Their unquestioning devotion to a particular country and way of living, which they believe to be the best in the world, is the expression of an idea that is the internal life of a nation."

4.     "Their unquestioning devotion to a particular country and way of living, which they believe to be the best in the world, is the expression of an idea that is the internal life of a nation."

5.     "This might be heartbreaking, but we need to understand, once and for all, that there is something more important than the idea of a ‘nation’ in the perpetual making of the idea of Persia, and that something is the modern idea of freedom."

6.     "The word Iran and the idea it represents originally came from the mythical homeland of the Aryans … In the Avestan language, the place is known as Aryana Vaejah, which, by the Sasanian period, came to be called Iran-Vej in the Middle Persian.5 In other words, the civilizational process of forming, shaping and polishing what we can call ‘Persianness’ was devised, organized, and maintained through the configuration of an ideal, which has been historically unique."

7.     "politics, as the art of organizing society and realizing civic freedom, was gradually abandoned throughout Persian history in favour of a wandering practice of mystical introspection and poetical experience as a means of interpreting the world.

8.     "the idea of Persia has never been distilled into single a moment or geography; rather, it is an imaginary landscape beyond all forms of historical consciousness. Yet, this imaginary landscape has a concrete reality in Persian language."

9.     "The beginning of an epic tradition in Iran probably coincided with the appearance of the prophet Zoroaster, which event surely influenced the later development of the epic. If there had been no Zoroaster the epic might have developed as in India or among the Germanic peoples, or it might have died under the rule in Iran of the Greeks or later the Arabs. If Zoroaster had appeared around the time of Christ and had been so willed he might have destroyed the old mythology and the epic with it

10.  "Here, we are dealing with the Persian civilization, not as a conscious historical experience, which includes knowledge, arts, laws and other capabilities acquired and exemplified by individuals and institutions as crystallization of the Iranian society and culture, but rather as an unconscious dynamic of the Persian soul. Moreover, Persian civilisation should not, and cannot, be considered as a cultural process of cultivating elites in Iranian society, but rather as a central imaginary signification through which each period of Iranian history has been capable of creating its own way of living together and its own way of representing its collective life in opposition to the Other."

11.  "From this we can say that the question of Persianess is one of neither race nor religion, but of language and culture. Thus, an Indian or French man or woman who speaks the Persian language and thinks in and with Persian culture is as much a ‘Persian’ as is an Iranian born in Tehran, Yazd, or Isfahan."

12.  "There is no doubt that in the collective conscience of Iranians, farhang is inextricably bound to the idea of Persia. Here, the reference is not to the values, goals, and behaviours of Iranians at a given time or within a specific society. The idea of Persia is impersonal and meta-historical. Therefore, the creation of Persian culture as a form of consciousness in a specific historical period of Persia is the outcome of the internalised process of the idea of Persia. This unconscious process can also be considered in parallel with the course that the Persian language has taken throughout history."

13.  "Dihkhuda’s satire was not only fully Persian in style and spirit, but it was also very innovative and avant-garde in finding a symbiosis between popular proverbs and literary modes of expression. One can find in his work the influence of Western literary models, but what is also present in his spirit is a new idea of Persia represented through the lens of social criticism."

14.  "Jamalzadeh’s manifesto for a democratisation of Persian literature and a new departure for the idea of Persia became the undisputable medium of literary expression during the 1930s and 1940s. Jamalzadeh’s call for the regeneration of Persian prose went hand in hand with his belief in a nationalist regeneration of Persia."

15.  "Hedayat’s literary experience of Persianness, and that of Jamalzadeh and Dihkhuda, should be understood as a tightrope between an idea of Persia, inherited from the past, and a poetics of criticism, which belongs to the future."

16.  "Persianness, as a sense of belonging, but also an attitude towards a heritage, is a legacy that could be built on. In that sense, the answer to Montesquieu’s question: ‘Comment peut-on etre Persan?’ (How can anybody be Persian?) would be: by enlightening the idea of Persia."

17.  "Since Socrates, intellectuals have portrayed themselves as the conscience of society and as the guardians of truth and justice for all. Such figures occur in the Enlightenment’s image of ‘the ill-natured men,’ who redeem our race as lawgivers and scholars, and can be traced to the twentieth century and Antonio Gramsci’s variation on the theme of the ‘organic intellectual,’ and beyond."

18.  "At this point it becomes clear that the task of producing an account of the history of Iranian intellectuals is problematic, not just by differences, but by a great many continuities between traditionalism and modernism, Marxism and post-Marxism, revolution and post-revolution, to name but a few. Rather, perhaps we might start by placing a question mark against the idea that the Iranian Revolution of 1979 was the point at which the idea of the intellectual came to an end in Iran; and that post-Islamist, along with post-leftist intellectualism, can be confined to a particular period, place, or position that came afterwards."

19.  "such, the very unity of the West was not considered as a given. What is most surprising is that while admitting the need for Iranian traditions as the non-West, and as a mirror by which the West becomes visible, Iranian intellectuals did not ask if that mirror might be distorting its reflection."

20.  "Seyyed Hassan Taqizadeh’s ‘surrender to the West’ or Al-e-Ahmad’s ‘Westoxication’ (intoxication by the idea of the West to the detriment of traditional, historical and cultural ties)"

21.  "Accordingly, in both achieving a discourse on the West and creating a distance from it, they contributed to the creation of a dual sense of magnanimity towards this Other, coupled with a wounded sense of national pride and a resentment of the cultural and political intrusion of the West in Iran. The initial romantic ‘fascination with the West,’ which took shape among the Iranian intellectuals in the late nineteenth century,"

22.  "As a matter of fact, because of the double structure of romanticising while at the same time rejecting the West, a constant oscillation was generated between universalism and particularism among Iranian intellectuals."

23.  "For the Iranian intellectualism the ‘return to roots’ and the affirmation of the Perso–Islamic heritage, as much as the acquisition of Western knowledge, was considered as the protection of one’s civilisation against the outside. In"

24.  "the ability of Turkish intellectuals in the twentieth century to readily embrace universally applicable attributes of so-called Western civilisational values – Iranian intellectual consciousness combined Iran’s Perso-centric and pre-Islamic sense of belonging with Islam as joint foundations of Iranian identity and culture."

25.  "Therefore, in the first decade of the Iranian Revolution, Iranian intellectuals appeared to be among the weakest elements in the Iranian public sphere. As a result, the less radical and more liberal-minded intellectuals were"

26.  "Practically all of these non-revolutionary intellectuals had to face a public sphere dominated by anti-intellectual"

27.  "Eighteen years after the creation of the Islamic Republic, the religious intellectuals became the architects of the reform movement in the Iranian presidential elections of 1997. Once again, the idea of Persia was dominated by a Shi’ite messianic faction that pretended to be in dialogue with the world, but not necessarily in touch with the aspirations of Iranian women and youth in post-revolutionary Iran."

28.  "However, the revolutionary quest of these leftist intellectuals was characterised by a series of political, strategic, and philosophical shortcomings. In other words, their ideological preoccupations with the cultural and political dimensions of Iranian reality were accompanied by a lack of coherent and systematic analysis of Iranian history and of Western philosophical"

29.  "Thousands of leftist scholars and students were expelled from universities during Iran’s Cultural Revolution in the early 1980s. As a result, the same revolutionary intellectuals who supported the Iranian Revolution of 1979 in the name of anti-Westernisation, anti-imperialism and the struggle against Iranian capitalists were considered as enemies of Islam and dangerous elements for the future of the Islamic regime in Iran. Many of these leftist intellectuals had to flee for their lives, abandoning the revolution and all hope of one day seeing a socialist Iran."

30.  "According to a religious intellectual like Soroush, the role of the philosopher is to try to reconcile religion and freedom, to give an understandable new definition of religion, and to link democracy and religion. What Soroush has been trying to do during the past decades is convince his fellow citizens that it is possible to be Muslim and to believe in democracy. However,"

31.  "According to a religious intellectual like Soroush, the role of the philosopher is to try to reconcile religion and freedom, to give an understandable new definition of religion, and to link democracy and religion. What Soroush has been trying to do during the past decades is convince his fellow citizens that it is possible to be Muslim and to believe in democracy. However, for Soroush, a democratic Islamic society would not need any Islamic norms from above."

32.  The second is the result of the conviction that the government should apply Islamic law (sharia) as such. These two ideas have emerged, according to Shabestari, in relation to the Islamic revolution and the events that followed it. But the fact is, according to Shabestari, that Islam does not always have all the answers to social, economic, and political life. Moreover, there is no single hermeneutics of Islam as such. Therefore, the relationship between religion and ideology is simply unacceptable and leads to the desacralisation of religion."different intellectual attitudes are asked to co-exist side by side to find an intersubjective basis for their search for modernity and democracy. This move away from master ideologies among this new generation of Iranian intellectuals is echoed by distrust in any metaphysically valorised form of monistic thinking. Unlike previous generations of Iranian intellectuals, what the critical thinking of modernity has taught the dialogical generation is to adopt a general attitude that consists of being at odds both with fundamentalist politics and with utopian rationalities."

33.  "In this case, different intellectual attitudes are asked to co-exist side by side to find an intersubjective basis for their search for modernity and democracy. This move away from master ideologies among this new generation of Iranian intellectuals is echoed by distrust in any metaphysically valorised form of monistic thinking. Unlike previous generations of Iranian intellectuals, what the critical thinking of modernity has taught the dialogical generation is to adopt a general attitude that consists of being at odds both with fundamentalist politics and with utopian rationalities."

34.  an antidote to the monolithic and oneview formulae of previous generations, the political and intellectual urgency of Iran’s encounter with globalised modernity acquires a dialogical and cross-cultural exchange. This dialogue is an exposure of the Iranian consciousness to the otherness of the modern West. It requires from the Iranian intellectual a willingness to risk its political and intellectual attitudes and to plunge headlong into a transformative process"

35.  "In this case, different intellectual attitudes are asked to co-exist side by side to find an intersubjective basis for their search for modernity and democracy. This move away from master ideologies among this new generation of Iranian intellectuals is echoed by distrust in any metaphysically valorised form of monistic thinking. Unlike previous generations of Iranian intellectuals, what the critical thinking of modernity has taught the dialogical generation is to adopt a general attitude that consists of being at odds both with fundamentalist politics and with utopian rationalities."

36.  "In helping to maintain this dialogical exchange with modernity, the dialogical generation of Iranian intellectuals frees itself from the intellectual blackmail of ‘being for or against the West.’"

37.  "What is important in the work of dialogical intellectuals in Iran is that they think neither of imitating the West nor of turning the clock back to Iranian traditions. For them, unlike many religious intellectuals, the philosophical goal is neither to inject modernity into religion nor to inject religion into modernity. What is in perspective here is to rescue the concept of the intellectual from that of ideology by returning history from the political to the cultural. As such, as long as the concept of the ‘intellectual’ remains in dispute in Iran, one can also keep a more critical view on the nature of Iranian intellectual history."

38.  "Beyond the choice between tradition and modernity, there is a world of conflict and vision that can stimulate the contributions made by intellectuals to the public debate in Iran. This contribution is accompanied by the re-interpenetration of Iranian traditions in the context of a dialogical exchange with the global world.

39.  "the theological, but also in opposition to the ideological dogmas of the Left and Right. In other words, the dialogical intellectual in Iran needs to put morality ahead of politics."

40.  The emergence of a new class of ‘men of pen’ or intellectuals, who could be seen as custodians of the creed of modernity in Iran, is one of the most important aspects of the process of bridging the gap between Iranian society and the rest of the world."

41.  "In other words, the odyssey of the Iranian intellectuals in the twentieth century began by searching for ways to best incorporate rationality and modernity into Iranian culture."

42.  "The idea underlying these revolutionary ideals was that of complete dedication to the principle of modernity through a breakdown of the holistic power of religion and a rapid adoption of instrumental rationality. Yet Foroughi’s acceptance of modern Iran"

43.  "For Foroughi, the goal was to accommodate Iranian heritage within modern European values in the fields of history, philosophy and politics."

44.  "For Foroughi, the precondition for acquiring Westerntype bureaucratic organisation was not only the promotion of modern rationalism, but also a sense of civic education in Iran."

45.  "For Foroughi, the precondition for acquiring Westerntype bureaucratic organisation was not only the promotion of modern rationalism, but also a sense of civic education in Iran."

46.  "Foroughi continued this task by secularising the Iranian courts along the lines of those in European countries as the first head of the High Court of Appeals in 1912. This was the way in which the holistic structure of the Iranian judicial system, which was controlled by the ulema (Muslim scholars trained in Islamic law) and regulated by sharia,"

47.  "Foroughi continued this task by secularising the Iranian courts along the lines of those in European countries as the first head of the High Court of Appeals in 1912. This was the way in which the holistic structure of the Iranian judicial system, which was controlled by the ulema (Muslim scholars trained in Islamic law) and regulated by sharia, could be replaced with the modern codes of procedure based on modern principles."

48.  "Foroughi’s view of politics was influenced primarily, but not exclusively, by his reading of the French philosophers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and especially Descartes, from whom he borrowed a firm belief in rationality."

49.  According to Forougi, the ultimate result of this evolution would be that ‘the distances and barriers that today exist between people and their goals would no longer exist … Their souls would be united; the childish desires of today would be abandoned; mans knowledge of the world of creation would become more perfect and his benefits from it would increase.  In short we would be a step closer to God.

50.  Engaging in practical politics was for Foroughi, a way of applying German philosopher Immanuel Kant’s definition of Af]ufklarung (Enlightenment) at the exir of human beings from their self-incurred immaturity

51.  Foroughi was certainly an Iranian patriot. And he did not believe that Iranian shouldgo deleting sections of their history in the name of Shi’ite Islam or Iranian monarchy.

52.  As such, his legacy, as an Iranian Enlightener, is based on the important fact the he believed in Iranian patriotism ( or let us call it Irainian civic patriotism) as a civilizing process with the ability to unite all ethnics and religious communities across a territory called Iran.

53.  Let us not forget that although Fourghi is still considered by some Iranian leftist intellectuals and groups as a pawn of the first Pahlavi regime, he is undoubtedly the most significant intellectual figure of the enlightening idea of Persia.

54.  The point that Jaspers is making is that three is a constant back and forth between philosophical interrogation and political project of democracy in Western modernity.  We might also say the in some societies, like Iran, there exists a direct tie between absence of a public space for democratic deliberation and the absence of philosophical interrogation.

55.  In truth, philosophical interrogation must be understood as the act of interrogation that concerns the cultural roots of the institution of a society as well as the fundamental signification of the actions of its members regarding the different events in its social life, as is, for example the absence of democracy in Iran.  What has happened historically, and also politically, in a society like Iran, is that the religious sphere has become a political problem; or let us say it is politics that finds itself imprisoned by the religious sphere.

56.  Assuredly, the Iranian Revolution, despite its novelty as a twelfth-century mass movement with religious leadership, was the result of the absence of such ethic, not only among the revolutionaries and intellectuals, but also among the entirety of Iranian society.

57.  This was precisely because philosophical interrogation has no weight in Iranian society and, therefore, it was unable to fulfill its task of receiving the antidemocratic nature of the leadership of the revolution in the face of the mythical mind and religious tarditions of Iran.

58.  With the failure of individual or group autonomy at the level of reflection, one could not have expected a democratic project to come to fruition within Iranian society in the year of 1979.  This was all the more the case since no one Iranian intellectual posed the question as to why the traditional and anti-democratic values of religion should have been allowed to play a part in the protests against secular and Westernized image of Pahlavi administration.  In fact, the entire process of institutional change took place in a natural outburst of sympathy and passivity towards traditional values of Shi’te religion in Iran,  Moreover, at no moment in the revolutionary process in Iran were there any profound critical in interrogations concerning the appropriateness of religious values or even concerning the charismatic role of the person or persons incarnating those values, just as there was never any genuine appreciation of the Shah’s project of modernization and of its obvious failure which the outburst of the Iranian Revolution.  We therefore may speak of a voluntary or involuntary absence of questioning on the topic of intellectual and cultural origins and the nature or political power in Iran.

59.  In other words, a democratic society can exist only in and through the explicit institution of its temporality qua the primordial foundation of its democratic thinking and making, and it is thanks to this democratic mode of thinking and making that anti-democratic values can explicitly be put into question.

60.  Despite what is said and written by ideologues and nostalgic supporters of the Iranian Revolution, the decisions about future form of government and the use of terror in the public space were taken behind closed doors and far from a mesmerize Iranian public opinion

61.  Today, nearly half a century after Iranian Revolution, it is still difficult to speak of a genuine movement of philosophical questioning and democratic reflection in Iran.

62.  Until Iranian society is guided by moral leaders who would make use of their moral conscience, and not their political tongue, to fight for ethical values such as compassion, transparency, accountability, Iran will not have a democratic future.

63.  To apply Havel’s argument to Iranian historical and political realities, one can say that political power in Iran has always been captive to its own lies.  All thrugh their history, Iranians have been compelled to live with lies, which were created by them or by their leaders.

64.  If it is to be more than just a new variation of the old degeneration, it must above all be an expression of life in the process of transforming itself.  A better system will not automatically ensure a better life.  In fact the opposite is true only by creating a better life can a better system be developed.

65.  Capital punishment by any Iranian government and in any historical period is obscene, illegitimate, and unjustifiable.  Therefore, we need to break this vicious cycle of violence in tomorrow’s Iran

66.  To be able to replace a ‘syndrome of tyranny’ accompanied by the specter of terror and death, Iranians would need to arrive at a new grammar of politics in which the culture of violence is replaced by a culture of tolerance and dialogue.

67.  Accordingly, we should not confuse regiem change and democracy.  Any regime change is about a power shift, and that is why it is always threatened with the danger of becoming a new dictatorship.

68.  Onc again, we can go back to Havel and the signifance of his experience in our quest for a new grammar of politics in Iran  Havel asserts;

a.     We mus not be ashamed that we are capable of love, friendship, solidarity, sympathy and tolerance, but just the opposite: we must set free these findamental dimensions of our humanity free from their ‘private exile’ and accept them as the only genuine starting point of meaningful human community.  We must be guided by our own reason and serve the truth underall circumstance.

69.  Maturity is achieved when political leadership can replace violence and fear with dialogue and understanding.

70.  We need to advocate for non violence not only as a matter of moral principle, but as a weapon of political struggle.  This is a struggle of all Iranians, a struggle against the fear of democracy.  However, the real question is who is afraid of democracy today in Iran?  The answer is simply and has always been the same; only those who fear pluralism, diversity and difference are afraid of democracy.  If pluralism is a valid view for Iranian political life, then respect between Iranian political groups and parties, which are not necessarily hostile to each other, is possible.

71.  That is to say, democracy is a form of political society in which one has an experience of idea of humanity and this idea cannot exist outside the heritage of critical Thought.  This idea challenges every ultimate referent for the institution of human liberty

72.  The rise of Iranian nationalism with fascist tonalities among the younger generation of Iranian monarchists does not leave any space for the dream of democracy.  We need to add to the a nostalgia of the Iran Left, which is still prisoner of the enchantment of a heroic past represented by urban guerrilla groups of the 1970s.

73.  This, then, is the crucial reason for the absence of democracy in Iranian history.  Contrary to what has been thought and said about Iran, Iranians do not dream of democracy.  Actually, they would support any person or group who could put an end to the present regime and make it possible for normal life to go on in Iran.  

74.  As such, the aim of the Iranian Revolution was vengeance, not freedom

75.  A belief the inevitability of evil in Iranian politics, and the strong hand of a dictator who can stop it, is a recurrent theme that has made the history of Persia.  Persia has produced tyrants and assassin kings since ancient times.

76.  There is spiritual need.  This implies a kind of moral courage far different from every day violence.  This is when and where nonviolence can play an important role against the vicious circle of the ‘syndrome of tyranny’ in Iranian political culture.  If thought and exercised acutely and seriously, non-violence should be able to prevent the ‘syndrome of tyranny’ from entering the dialect of Iranian society.

77.  The new beginning is only possible by returning to the idea of Persia, which is not founded on an act of murder or an empty nationalistic slogan, but which represents itself as an engagement with global intellectual history.  As such, Iranians must win for themselves the twin battle for democracy and nonviolence.  This is not merely a matter of choosing to dream of democracy.  It is about creating the conditions that would allow for the possibility of democratic choice.

78.  The motto Iran is beautiful might come to many as aa surprise, but it is a way to reflect on the realities and limits of a morally, politically, aesthetically ‘ugly’ Iran.  Why and how Iran has become an ugly country is a question that is closely related to the nature of the present government of the country (Islamic Regime).  In modern history, Iranians have not lived through extreme level of violence that Iran has been experiencing in the past four decades.

79.  There are hundreds of examples that show clearly that the idea of Persia is intertwined with the beauty of the sou of nobility of spirit.  A great example from ancient Iran would be Zoroaster and Gathas (hymns of Zoroaster)

80.  A prophet of reform and action, not renunciation, Zoroaster is, none the less, a prophet of peace and beauty of the soul

81.  Reading these few stanzas of Yasna 29, one struggles not to be mesmerized by the nonviolent tone of Zoroaster’s teachings.  Such a passage prompts the question of how a nation, which at a point in its history produced such noble spirit with a beautiful soul, turned out to be subject to centuries of tyrants and murders?

82.  Zoroaster is … proof that nonviolence as both a modus vivendi and a modus operendi can exist in Iran.   We could even go so far as to say that nonviolence can bring the Iranian people to the realization of their true spirit and their place in the life of the world.  But this cannot be done without the unmasking of social falsehood and a new political education in the Iranian society.  Iranians cannot be free if they do not admit that they are subject to a wrong idea of life.  Life is not all about hatred and untruth, otherwise we should continue living with the irreversibility of evil.  On the contrary, the idea of Persia, which is exemplified by glorious moments of excellence and nobility in Persian art, mystic thought, poetic dwelling, and scientific experimentation, presents us with model of spiritual companionship, interfaith, and interethnic dialogue.

83.  March 1979 by a small minority of Iranian women who protested against the compulsory wearing of the hijab.  This act of dissidence by Iranian women in the direction of dignified life was built on the moral perception rather than an ideology.  It was an appeal to a plurality of values, which was put onto question at the time by self blindedness of many Iranian women accentuated the fact that all political issues, at their core existential.  This transformation of political consciousness into an existential agency was able to preserve the Iranian feminist momentum over the next four decades, accompanied by its nonviolent features.  The deep life-rootedness of nonviolent movement of Itanian women had clear humanistic undertones that openly contradicted the ideological nature of the Iranian regime and its intrinsic male chauvinistic essence.

84.  On the contrary, by choosing the civic principles of nonviolence against the repressive machinery of the Islamic government in Irean, Iranian women opened a new chapter in the process of civic dissent and the movemen of truth seeking as its highest moral capital. 

85.  Unlike the previous dissenting movements in the Islamic Republic of Iran, the younger generation of woman decided to defy the repressive laws and regulations imposed by the regime by cultivating the ability to redefine the idea of ‘dignified life’.  This was practiced as a sense of shared experience of moral agency, characterized by a preoccupation with a life of responsibility and truth seeking.  Here resides the basic contract with the central feature of present-day Iran, which we can name ‘the act of lying in the public space’.

86.  As such, the philosophy of nonviolence and the spirit of democracy have become central to the actions of Iranian women, whether in the private sphere or on the public battlefield,  The Iranian women’s rights movement could be considered as a pivitol moment in modern and contemporary Iranianhistory.

87.  On the contrary, it implies living withing the truth against all forms of intolerance and tyranny.  Consequently, Gandhi’s vision of nonviolence for the future of India and the world of Swaraj of self-rule.  Thought a spiritual person, Gandahi never defined Swaraj as the rule of religious ‘self.’  For him, implicit in nonviolence was the upholding of secular ethics.  His holiness the Dalai Lama defines this secular ethics as an ethical syetem, tied to no one religion, and which can be followed by everyone.  Secular ethics is based on the cultivation of compassion, which moderated by a critical attitude to our present.

88.  Therefore, violence embedded in the making of Persian civilization can be ontologivally tamed by an empathetic vision of civilization.

89.  And yet, as history abundantly proves, we should not tolerate inhumality.  Tolerating inhumanity only leads to more violence.  He who passively accepts the inhumane is as much involved in it as he who helps perpetrate it.  Nonviolent dialogue is the best way to protest against inhumane without being indifferent to it.

90.  A pluralist Persionness is the result of a renewed spiritual consiciousness of Persia.  As such, an Iranian mode ofg living with nonviolence is the fruit of an ineer freedom achieved by the idea of Persia.

91.  Iranian society would be an active turn towards a nonviolent vision of politics and everyday social life.  However, for a long time to come, Iranians will continue living with an intense fear of despotism and arbitrariness.  This is the crystal proof that the past 150 years did not resolve the main contradiction at the heart of Iranian social and political life: on the one hand, a fundamental awareness of universal rules and right, on the other, a daily obsession with having a single ruling authority with the power to organize Iranian society.

92.  In Western Europe, civil society took centuries to emerge from the bottom up, while Iranians would need a strong civil society immediately.  Without civil society, democracy is alme.  But without democracy, civil society is blind.

93.  What Eastern European intellectuals and civic actors understood by ‘moral revival’ was not just a departure from the logic of a totalitarian state capable of bringing everything under its control, but a new social language that could bring with it a better political system.

94.  Therefore it’s not true that you should first think up an ide for a better world and only then put it in to practice; but rather, thought the fact of your existence in the world, you create it, from the ‘material of the world’ articulate it in the language of the world.

95.   Thus acting in the public sphere is constructing the language of the public space, which not a search for utopian thought.

96.  It is an activity that goes hand in hand with leaving the oppressive past behind and beginning anew.

97.  Yet politics worthy of the name finds its deepest roots in a mature and decent society, where people know when, why, and how to choose nonviolence against violence.  Until the time the syndrome of tyranny has been replaced by a democratic reflex in Iranian society, Iran will remain politically immature and prone to all forms of despotic danger and liberalism.

98.  The task that remains, out of the turmoil of our troubled histry, ist to listen to our inner voice, the unique home where the idea of Persia dwells, and to ask if we will continue to be governed by our dark instincts and the hideous figure of voluntary servitude, or will we join the clever reasoners of history and hold in check the destructive drives and violent dreams of fanatic sovereigns who should belong to another page in history.

99.  As a cosmopolitan thinker who has traveled the globe, Tagore knew well that the only way to live with the idea of India was to educate a future generation of non-fictional Indians.  Fanaticism is one of the worst cultural and political diseases of humanity, which, like cancer, can destroy the soul of a nation.  The victory of fanaticism over compassion in today’s Irean will ultimately cause the civilisatian downfall of te idea of Persia.  Iranians should learn not to hate and hurt each other intheir grand project of renewing Iran.

100.                  Any emphasis on individuality, natural rights, moral subjectivity, and secular republicanism was rejected by admirers of theocratic power followers of revolutional clergymen who self-consciously opposed the traditional culture against the grammer of modern politics.

101.                  The Iran Revolution was surprising, not because of the way in which people followed the religious leaders and representatives of traditional and anti-modern values in mass demonstrations, the likes of which have never been seen in the twentieth century.

102.                  The Iranian Revolution was tinged with Shi’ite Marxist-Leninist determinism.  Iranians chose to follow the voice of the masses and ideological hallunications and promises, rather than adhering to practical wisdom, which was suggested to them by the Iranian intellectuals of the Reza Shah period.

103.                  The Persian tragedy was that people put the idea of living with a revolution above the idea of Persia.  So long as the idea of Persia is understood and practiced in the mirror of Iranian civic patriotism there is no danger of exclusion or violence in the Iranian public space.

104.                  Consequently, the idea of Persia has been out of joint, and the only way to set it right is to replace the political mirages of Iranian history with truthful dialogue among Iranians and their history.

105.                  The loyalty of Iranian citizens is to the idea of Persia and its political expression in a free and pluralistic public space, not to Iranian nationalism or any other mutilating ideology.

106.                  That is to say, it is by appreciating the full signifance and institution of aesthetic education in Iran that we can approach the project of constitution of a new political subject: a nonviolent democratic citizen.  The only hope is that by searching for beauty in the idea of Persia, we may also have the opportunity of finding the morally good, politically decent and the free.

107.                  Maybe the day that Iranians stop looking for saints and heros there will be a common understanding and solid conviction among them that freedom is a virtue that needs to be taught and learned.

108.                  But it goes without saying that Iranians will have to remake their political mentality under the shadow of the age-old idea of Persia.  The musy begin to acquire a taste for the idea of Persia, otherwise the Iran of today would be nothing more than a vast desert in inhumane solitude