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Razi on Reason and Political Authority: A Study in Medieval Persian Political Thought

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Alireza Shomali
Alireza Shomali*
Affiliation:
Wheaton College, Massachusetts, USA.
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Abstract

The Philosopher of Rey, Mohammad-e Zakariya-ye Razi and his Ismaili adversaries, Abu Hatam-e Razi and Naser-e Khosrow, share a political understanding of religion according to which religion is a theologico-political system of domination. However, they are at odds over the political philosophy appraisal of religion qua a system of authority. The paper explicates the latter disagreement in part based on Razi's and his opponents' conflicting ideas about the nature of the faculty of Reason and its distribution among men. Consequently, the paper underlines a democratic implication of Razi's thesis on the makeup of the human intellect.

Keywords

ReligionHuman ReasonAuthorityEquality of Political RightsDisparity of Human Intellects
Type
Articles
Information
Iranian Studies , Volume 49 , Issue 1 , January 2016 , pp. 29 - 55
Copyright
Copyright © The International Society for Iranian Studies 2014

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