Arash Zeini

Tag: Philosophy

  • Mansour Shaki (1919–2000)

    Mansour Shaki, a wide-ranging scholar of Middle Persian, died 26 years ago on this day. Born in 1919, he shifted from the sciences to linguistics in 1954 after a period of ill health. In 1963, he published his study The Zurvanits and the Dahrits: The first materialistic schools of philosophy in Iran, marking the start of his forays into the field of Zoroastrian/Iranian philosophy in late antiquity. But it was not until 1968, when he published Dārūk ī hónsandīh, that he devoted his full attention to Middle Persian and the exploration of the Dēnkard, which he continued until 1999.

    This preamble in his obituary by Jiří Bečka reads as a reminder of a lost and mythological time:

    With regards to the process of becoming more deeply acquainted with the Persian language, Iran and its culture, we can certainly express appreciation for the role played by Iranians coming to settle in our country to enhance the advancement of Czech-Iranian studies in the broadest sense of the word. They include Jalal Salehi, who arrived shortly after 1945; followed by Professor Mahmud Ebadian, a Doctor of the University of Prague; the lecturers Hosein Bahrami, Vahid Behmardi and Ali Ashraf Sadeqi; as well as Reza Mirchi who was an external lecturer. However, the man who entered the history of both Czech and world Iranian studies in the most distinctive way was Assistant-Professor Mansour Shaki, an Iranian scholar, teacher and writer, who after fifty-two years of life and work in Prague died on March 22nd, 2000, one day after his eighty-first birthday.

    From Mansour Shaki’s obituary (2001)¹

    1 Bečka, Jiří. 2001. Mansour Shaki (1919–2000). Archiv orientální 69(1). 85–92.

  • Endurance of thought

    Endurance of thought

    At the beginning of 2025, I was working on an article on the Middle Persian term frahang (‘education, culture’), examining it as a Sasanian concept. One of the objectives of the article was to investigate frahang in the light of Greek paideia.

    There are quite a number of Greek sources that are relevant, but I was particularly interested in Plato’s reading of paideia and how he related it to the Persians, otherwise known as the Achaemenids. The two dialogues in which Plato brings in the Persians are Alcibiades I.122a (perhaps pseudo Plato) and Nomoi. Incidentally, if you are interested in paideia, Jaeger (1973), which originally appeared in three volumes between 1934 and 1947, is a good resource.

    I came across a fascinating passage in Nomoi, which did not relate to my question but was highly illustrative of why philosophy and the philosophical question matter, irrespective of their age. Having seen the announcement of Angie Hobbs’s forthcoming book, Why Plato matters now, I now have reason to share that passage as an example of Plato’s continuing relevance:

    A man’s exceptional wealth is no more reason for a state to confer specially exalted office on him than his ability to run, his good looks, or his physical strength, in the absence of some virtue—or even if he has some virtue, if it excludes self-control.

    Plato, Nomoi III, 696b; Cooper’s (1997: 1385) translation

    This is why I am so looking forward to reading Hobbs’s book, which brings me to the question of philosophy in the public discourse.

    While strolling through a local bookshop yesterday, I came across Herald of a restless world, a biography of Henri Bergson by Emily Herring. I sat down and read a couple of pages in the shop, and had to get myself a copy. The description on the back cover calls the book ‘electrifying’, and that is spot on. I mention it here because Herring, as the subtitle suggests, introduces Bergson to the reader as the man who ‘brought philosophy to the people’.

    Two excellent books, biographies of sorts, that highlight the relevance of philosophy beyond academia and within public discourse: one concerns a philosopher from antiquity, the other a modern thinker.

    Bibliography

  • Epicurus on philosophy

    No one should postpone the study of philosophy when he is young, nor should he weary of it when he becomes mature, because the search for mental health is never untimely or out of season.

    Letter to Menoeceus

    Source

    Epicurus. 2020. Being happy (Great Ideas 102). Penguin Books.

  • Arabic translators & Greek philosophy

    Peter Adamson has a short article, entitled Arabic translators did far more than just preserve Greek philosophy, over at Aeon on the impact of the Arabic translations of Greek philosophy. You can even listen to the article being read by someone at curio.io!