Reintroducing Philosophy: Thinking as the Gathering of Civilization

That we are now entering a post-Western world is no longer merely a thesis in international studies. But what does the dissolution of "Western" hegemony signify for humanity's rich learning traditions and the civilizing quest for wisdom? How can this human inheritance assist us today?

Reintroducing Philosophy seeks a more realistic framework for discourse on these questions than offered by the Western-centric worldview, which continues to be taught in schools almost by rote. It analyzes themes from several world traditions in logic, knowledge and metaphysics connected with the quest for completeness of thinking and practice. Its examination of the relation of knowing and being is based on sources as varied as Leibniz and Frege, Qūnawī and Ṣadrā, ancient Greek and classical Indian and Chinese thought. Shaker brings into the discussion the paradigm (unmūzaj) that Ṣadrā presented as that of man's being in the world, encapsulating philosophy's longstanding view of thinking as the gathering of civilization.

Reintroducing Philosophy is based on a concentrated reading of all these sources, simply because human civilization had already been global and advanced before the present age.

Dr. Anthony F. Shaker is a philosopher, social theorist, and the author of Modernity, Civilization and the Return to History (Vernon Press, 2017). A specialist in Islamicate philosophy, he has lectured in Germany and Turkey. He has authored many books and papers, including three translated volumes from Ghazālī's Iḥyāʾ and the only complete English study of Qūnawī. And he is presently working on a translation of Qūnawī's magnum opus, Iʿjāz al-bayān (Equinox Press). His current research focuses on the idea that thinking is both the expression and the gathering of human civilization, and that productive dialogue in philosophy by tradition was not limited to armchair musings about concepts, beliefs or science.