Introduction—Critique and Change: Al-Jabri in Contemporary Arab Thought

Abstract

The editors raise a number of points in their introduction of this first volume dedicated to the Moroccan philosopher Mohammed Abed al-Jabri . First, they start with underlining the ethical predicament that the Arab world and the regional and international powers face in dealing with Arab issues. They situate the so-called “Arab Spring,” or Arab revolts, in a context of what they refer to as global mobile injustice. They critique the invisibility of Arab intellectual productions in “Western” scholarship that deals with Arab political affairs; they argue that a modern Arab political philosophy exists and deserves attention. Second, they situate al-Jabri in the post-1967 Arab intellectual tradition, as a second wave of Arab Renaissance (naḥda), and refer to him as one of its most important figures, through his magnum opus Critique of Arab Reason , which seeks reform from within. Third, they stop at some of the major intellectual advances that al-Jabri has made to Arab-Islamic modern political theory, and how his concepts are so relevant to current politics and thought.