The point I wish to make here is that ideas, however first theorized somewhere, cannot be replicated the same way elsewhere that elsewhere has its own history and dynamics and influences towards newly arrived ideas. Whatever we read and however we read it has some background, and when this is done decades and especially centuries afterwards, mostly the political motive emerges, mostly but not entirely, fortunately! When we invoke and invite the past we invoke and invite it for a purpose. If we fail to read the works of important intellectual figures now, we are just postponing the discussion to the distant future where the political dimension will be even more influential in dictating and influencing how such studies are carried out. If this situation persists, we will find ourselves some 200 or 500 years from now – at least those of us who study Arab and European intellectual histories – saying the same thing we say about classical Greek and Arabic intellectual exchanges: Was it genuine? Was it politically oriented? Was it profoundly intellectual? Was there originality in it? etc. The most we can do to be balanced in our views is to control both the personal and the political, and only in this sense can we say we are “relatively neutral.” The fact that some Arab scholars, thinkers, and philosophers remain unknown in Western academia has to do with various factors, including the lack of financial means, human capital, and linguistic capacities, but externalization of critical thought from the “South” remains an important factor as well. Even in our scholarly studies, which are supposed to be “neutral” and “objective”, there is always the personal, and/or the political, whether we admit it or not. Time, space, family, society, egoism, and the political world order we are born into are all major factors that impact our limited view of the things around us.
politics at large – behind what we know, how we know, and what we do not know.
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