پژوهش نامه انتقادی متون و برنامه های علوم انسانی
پیاپی 71 (مهر 1398)

Hegel and Nietzsche are mainly represented as two opposing poles in the nineteenth-century intellectual and philosophical sphere. Nietzsche has been introduced as the fierce critique of the Hegelian dialectic and the radical opposite to the modern metaphysics that Hegel was represented. This image has gradually faded away since the second half of the twentieth century. Although Hegel is the peak of modern metaphysics and Nietzsche as the initiator of postmodernism, criticizing metaphysics, but the philosophical similarities and conceptualizations of these two figures show the falsification or at least the inadequacy of this modern/postmodern duality. In spite of some superficial perceptions, Hegel and Nietzsche are very close in their intellectual and philosophical foundations. We can read Hegel by Nietzsche and Nietzsche by Hegel. This is the goal Elliot Jurist has outlined in Beyond Hegel and Nietzsche: Philosophy, Culture, and Agency. But for doing so, he put the concept underlying his work, which is very important for both philosophers: the concept of culture. The present article will review the book from three perspectives: First, a formal critique of the work; second, a critique of the author's general approach and, finally, a critique of the Persian translation of the book and his approach.

End of the American Century book studies events of post 11 September and America status in the international system at the present. In order to address this issue, it is first of a kind to state and non-state rivals of the United States in the present era, which includes China, Russia, Brazil, and India, and then criticizes the performance and power levels of each of the above governments as a serious threat. For the future, Joseph Nye did not close the United States as a global hegemonic force but would suggest US strategy makers to work multilaterally in their engagement with the government’s powers to address the national security and global security challenges. A critique of the form and a method of content critique in the form of three indicators of structural critique, critique of power dynamics, and critique of the concept of power constitute a set of regular and categorized reviews, each of which has been discussed in this article.

The book entitled, Citizenship Concept, defines the concept of citizenship as a model of liberal citizenship as a suitable model of the modern age, and criticizes its rival, i.e., Communitarian Citizenship. The book’s approach is largely philosophical. In this book, citizenship has been studied more as a theoretical concept rather than a socio-historical phenomenon. The most important argument of the book is: liberal citizenship, by recognizing equality, freedom and individuality, modern human relations with its society based on voluntary membership, civil, social, political and cultural rights, responsibilities (legal duties and moral obligations), and participation. In political and social affairs, it is thus the most appropriate way of regulating the political and social relations of mankind in the modern age, while Communitarian Citizenship, with an emphasis on the social status of individuals, elevates their collective identity to their individual rights. And thus becomes a totalitarian and oppressive political system. The author seems to have taken an abstract and optimistic attitude toward liberal citizenship, while he has confused congregational citizenship with the pattern of ruling the totalitarian regimes. Contrary to the notion of liberalism, society is prior to the individual, and people in the community get their own good, and there is no universal model for citizenship. Instead, it should have defended a local or native citizen.

The Middle East has been the important region of the world in terms of security, with many texts written about it especially in recent years. One of the recent texts on this subject is the book "Regional Security in the Middle East" by Pinar Biligin, which studies the security trends based on the relationship between the region and practical practices in the quadrangle pattern including the Middle East, the Arab Regional System, the Islamic Middle East, and the Euro-Mediterranean, with a critical approach. In this article which reviews the book mentioned above, the main question is, what is the theoretical and practical innovation of a critical review of regional security in the Middle East from Biligin’s point of view? The main hypothesis of the paper is that the critical approach to regional security, while criticizing traditional theories, has tried to introduce a new pattern of regional security derived from the security community of Karl Deutsch and his colleagues. However, in practice, its formation is facing serious challenges. Indeed, Bilgin has tried to look at the traditional views of regional security in the Middle East, introducing a native model that looks at security from the bottom up and from the inside out, although, in practical terms, regional security in the Middle East is still state-centered and top-down.

Understanding the nature of government and society has been one of the most important areas of study of political sociologists, especially analysts of the Constitutional Revolution and the Islamic Revolution in Iran. The book of the displacement of the two revolutions seeks to answer the question of why in the traditional and backward Iranian society of the Qajar period, modern revolution and in the newly-established Iran, the Pahlavi period has occurred a religious revolution. The author puts forward the idea of a Migdal network, arguing that in a 300-year-old process of Shiite religion, there has been a turning point in esoteric and mysterious thinking of the social sphere that has reached the last stage of socialization with the Islamic Revolution. In this paper, we will attempt to review the book of the movement of two revolutions from three perspectives of form, content, and method. The results show that in spite of some criticisms, it has a desirable form, and efforts to present a native model focusing on culture and society, and in particular the Shiite religion and clergy as the subject of analysis, are the most important strengths of this work. In contrast, the author’s intellectual attachment to empathy with liberal democracy and modernization, along with the lack of a coherent method, has diminished the quality of content and method.

This paper has focused on reviewing the "Modernization, Sanctions and Interpretation (from scientific knowledge to the fear of Takfir)", written by Nasr Hamed Abu Zayd, and translated by Mohsen Armin and published by Ney publisher in Iran. In this paper, we have tried to introduce the author and his intellectual concerns, the basic problems, main concepts, methodology, and data analysis. This book has four essays: 1) the necessity of religious modernization as a prerequisite of political modernization; 2)the description of the reasons of exclusive vision towards art; 3) the problem of interpretation in the old and new era, and 4) the necessity of considering the Qur'an as discourse rather than as text that is the most important part of the book. This research is the latest Abu Zayd's publication during his lifetime, trying to offer the prescription for solving the crisis in Islamic societies and reinforcing the scientific knowledge. It should be noted that in spite of the fact that the book seems invaluable, there are some methodological deficiencies. Therefore, we intend to explain the main ideas of the book and evaluate it in terms of its form and content.

How can we encounter ethnic diversities in our society? How can we behave towards others? What is a fairer way? These questions are inevitably vital when we ask about social justice and when we are faced with the reality of diversity in contemporary societies. Since one of the most important parts of this reality is rooted in different identities that we recognize in everyday life, this article focuses on the problem of “identity justice” in a multicultural society and tries to find the relatively best possible answers through the perspective of Kymlicka in Multicultural Citizenship. Kymlicka, as a liberal thinker, describes the condition in which different ethnic and racial groups can live together fairly. His arguments show us a theoretical framework for protection of diversity from a liberal perspective and express serious concern over the political and sociological issues such as the connection between the individual and culture, group’s rights, freedom, and justice. This framework seems to be a political and theoretical guideline for public policy regarding the problematic connection between justice and identity which is called “identity justice” in this article.

Lloyd has attempted to construct a framework for social class analysis with regard to the context of the Third World cities. To do this, he, in A Third World Proletariat (1982), seeks to combine two major traditions, Weberism and Marxism. This paper argued that the combination of the two traditions acts as a source of the following theoretical and methodological inconsistencies. First, while Lloyd along with Marx considers working class as a fixed identity in the First World cities, Weberian tradition considers it as a contingent identity. Second, while he, was influenced by Marx, argues that class stratification shapes racial and ethical stratification and relationship, Weberian tradition adheres mutual relations among different fields of society. Third, while he explains relations between economic classes and political regulation of State from Marxist point of view, he neglects to explain relations between social status and political regulation of State, which is important within Weberian tradition. Forth, Class stratification, for him, is an ‘urban’ phenomenon and racial and ethical stratification belong to ‘the rural’, while, from Weberian point of view, racial and ethical stratification are key elements of ‘the urban’. Fifth, Lloyd’s framework seems unacceptably simplistic to combine Weber’s methodological individualism with Marx's ontological holism.

The main issue of the Christian Rights Movement and American Foreign Policy by Mohammad Jamshidi is the impact of the Christian Right Movement on US foreign policy.The process of critique of the work has been done in four sections: form and content, positive features and shortcomings. The book's positive features formally include explicit goals, coherent introduction, logical conclusions of the end of the chapter, and the simplicity and validity of the text. Positive content features include research innovation, use of new and valid sources, and coordination of content with its fundamentals. The shortcomings include lack of coherence in the table of contents, lack of use of the table, the graph and the image in the presentation of concepts, lack of semantic communication between the final conclusions and the structure of the research completely. Content shortcomings include lack of an appropriate theoretical framework, lack of an analysis of the relationship between religion and politics in the United States, lack of an specific look at the relationship between the environment, politics and religion in the United States, an analysis of the environmental and related international organizations and the necessity of analyzing the logical connection between the content of the present work and its final conclusion.

Over the past few decades, along with the increasing the complexity of social relationships in today’s societies, wider understanding of security has evolved and outweighed the military dimension, encompassing economic, social, environmental, and political aspects. In this regard, new definitions of security have been formulated, one of the most important of which is the concept of societal security. Despite the fundamental need for societal security in Iran’s society, research activities in the field of security are mainly focused on defense, international, national security and foreign policy. Thus, this paper reviews and analyzes three outstanding and main works that have attempted to theoretically formulate societal security in Iranian society. The book entitled "A Theoretical Introduction to Societal Security" by Ghadir Nasri (2011) is an effort to identify the principles of societal security in various theories which explain the main components of societal security in Iran based on such principles. “Societal Security: An Islamic Approach” (2013) by Asghar Eftekari aims at identifying societal security patterns in Islamic discourse and proposing operational principles for strengthening societal security in Islamic society. In “Historical Sociology of Security in Iran” (2012), adopting a historical sociological approach, Mirsondosi tries to provide a deep understanding of societal security based on historical developments in Iran and within the relationships in social, political, economic, and cultural areas. In the present research, introducing these works, their efforts to establish the societal security in Iranian society are examined in terms of their form and content.

Theda Skocpol’s theory about Iranian Islamic Revolution has been recognized as one of the suggested views about this case which was investigated in a book entitled "Review and Critique of Theories of the Islamic Revolution; Theda Skocpol’s Theory ". The author of this book prepared beneficial discussions for this theory helpful for the demonstration of Skocpol’s significance in these fields, mainly the methodology she offered in her theory about social revolutions. The leading problem with this book seems to exist in a critique of the theory of Skocpol. The author tried to categorize critiques around this theory. This classification which includes the critiques within the paradigm, outside the paradigm and internal textual criticisms, faces with two major objections. The first objection refers to the foundation of this categorization. The second objection maintains that these criticisms – particularly in the first and second group of critiques – have indirect and distant relationship with the analysis of Theda Skocpol of the causes of the revolution in Iran. In addition, the author in the critique of the theory of Theda Skocpol ignored two important points. The first point was the SKocpol's reliance to the Rentier State’s theory concerning with the nature of the government in Iran in the era of the Islamic Revolution. The other was the Skocpol’s shift in her theory about the causes of the rise of social revolutions as a result of the occurrence of Islamic Revolution in Iran. If the respected author understood these cases seriously and genuinely, he could be more successful in the criticism of the Skocpol theory as his accuracy in writing up this theory.

As a prominent philosopher in hermeneutical tradition, Paul Ricoeur is known for his multi-layer thoughtfulness. Published in the 70s, From Text to Action, is among the books identifying Ricoeur’s evolution from textual criticism to ethical activism in politics and philosophy, the 3rd part of which has been translated into Persian in 2016 as Ideology, Ethics & Politics. While Ricoeur in the chapters entitled in this part has critically reviewed philosophers’ thoughts such as Georg Friedrich Hegel, Edmund Husserl, and Max Weber, his points of departure in his philosophical endeavors are traced. Exploring Ricoeur’s thought in general and the book’s main points in particular, the present study attempts to critically review both the text and the translation. In such a critique, Ricoeur’s different philosophical periods besides the core ideas of the book chapters are explored.

The book Economy Politics and the Philosophy of Government written by Simonde De Sismondi is published in a book entitled "New Principles of Political Economy: of Wealth in Its Relation to Population". He is considered one of the first critics of the classical school of political economy. Many experts hold that he failed to express complete views on generalizing and creating economic and social security due to the weakness of economic information, his studies and knowledge of economic issues are little, and his theories mostly arise from emotional aspects. Thus, publishing such a book can be of historical value only for familiarity with how economic scientific literature has entered Iran and knowing our economic knowledge level at that time.

Carl Schmitt’s concept of political was first published in 1932 in Germany. This book was translated in Farsi and published in 1392 by Sohail Saffari. It is almost clear that Schmitt’s article plainly shows the boarders of the political in the ontological antagonism which is made to determine a group of people as friends against the enemy out of which we are identified as political subjects. Subjects which are called to fight to save the unity which is made by the name of the political to gather friends against enemies. In this paper, I would like to discuss Schmitt’s theories by providing the readers with the basic concepts to challenge Schmitt’s postulations.

Equality and Partiality is authored by American (with a Serbian descent) philosopher Thomas Nagle in political philosophy. In this book, the author tries to create a logical correlation between personal and non-personal goods, and by so doing he hopes to have unknotted the moral implications of partiality between these two concepts both in theory and in practice. In the practical sphere, Nagle puts more emphasis on economic aspects of equality among citizens than on the cultural, political, and social aspects. This paper   examines Equality and Partiality in three sections. It first concerns itself with the structure and appearance of the book, then it discusses the position of Nagle and his book in modern political philosophy, and it finally analyzes the content of the book and evaluates the achievement of the Nagle’s book in defending the school of impartiality especially on economic grounds. Nagle’s efforts focus on identifying the problems from his own personal and impersonal views about the social and economic inequality, with the equal presuppositions. Of course, these efforts have not led to clear-cut solutions.

The book “Will the Middle East Implode”, written by Mohammed Ayoob, has tried to address the Arab Middle East in terms of the Arab Spring’s impact on the collapse and stability of the state, and believes that what is known as the Arab Spring rather than a single and coherent phenomenon, was unrests taking place discretionary and in accordance with the national circumstances of each Arab state that later turned out to be a misleading mirage and with the return of authoritarian regimes and the marginalization of democratic movements in some, or in the swamp of instability and fragmentation of others. This has eventually led to the frustrations of moderate Islamists, and they will join the radical groups and eventually lead to the collapse of the statehood in the region, and later, it will culminate in order and stability in the international stage. This paper is an attempt to critically review the book to discover its strengths and weaknesses in terms of shaping, writing, as well as explaining, translating, comparing, and referring resources and references.

The book entitled “Theoretical Foundations of Politics in Multicultural Societies” has been written about the issue of multiculturalism and its theorizing. The question is, how should a political decision-making process be organized in a political community with different cultural, religious, and philosophical identities in a way that all members of the community have a peaceful co-existence. The book seeks to test the answers given to the question by examining the debates of contemporary liberalism and communitarianism. In other words, the general approach of the book is to defend communitarianism with a critical look at liberalism. The writer of the book analyzes and interprets the ideas put forward by communitarians and liberals from three perspectives of self, principles of political ethics, and policy of cultural differences. This paper will attempt to critically evaluate the book. The authors of this paper aim to answer the following questions. What is the focal point of the work? What is the purpose of this work and its place in the resources available in this area?

The present paper analyzes and criticizes the collection of articles on the “Approaches and Methodologies in the Social Sciences: A pluralist Perspective” edited by Donatella Dellaporta and Michael Keating and translated by Mohammad Jafar Javidi and Majid Farham.  The author’s goal of writing this collection of articles is to facilitate interaction and communication between researchers and overcome existing stereotypes by recognizing the plurality of current approaches in the field of social sciences, and the purpose of this article is to facilitate the achievement of the same goals. There are 15 articles in the critique resulting from the teaching experience of a group of researchers at the European university institutes. These articles provide more familiarity to the audience than the theoretical conceptual and applied qualitative and compilation research. The authors of the hundreds of old and new sources have described documented and updated a number of ways. The topic of this paper can be used by professors and students in social sciences politics, international relations, and regional studies in methodological courses and research methods. These articles identify common points and complement the approaches discussed and combined them together. Assisting aristocrats on ontology and various methodologies, and conducting research projects are some of the outcomes of this critique.