Typology of "Decline Theories" In Viewpoints of Four Contemporary Iranian Philosophers

This paper studies the viewpoints of four contemporary Iranian philosophers on the origin and trend of the decline of political thought in the recent Iran. Each thinker is considered as a representative of a school: Reza Davari, as an “Identity-based” thinker, formulates the decline based on the “Worldwide Westernization Crisis”, while Seyed Javad Tabatabei as a modern thinker theorizes the decline theory based on “The Fall of Philosophy and Conditions of Thought Refuse” especially the refuse of political thought. Abdolkarim Soroush as a modern religious thinker studies the decline of Muslims in general and not Iran in particular, while by a radical Nietzschean criticism on the body of religion, Aramesh doust-dar, contrary to Soroush, believes the “historical dominance of religious thought” on the social life of Iranians is the cause of decline. Apparently, Tabatabaei amongst these theorists gives a more comprehensive version of decline theory and makes it the focus of his research project. However, what is common in these thinkers is their ignorance of the realm of praxis that is the social formulation of idea and cessation of theory in the mind and level of abstraction, in a way that some of the said opinions fail to explain at least the events and trends. This article seeks to explain and evaluate the logic and mechanism of these four theories by answering the following question: In what area lies the core density or the driving force for thought refuse. In other words, what are the conditions to establish and extend the nature of thought that is lost in the contemporary Iran? The research method in this paper is the interpretation of the text as well as evaluation of the interpretation validity through deep dialogue with political thinkers including some of the said four thinkers.