Bijan Abdolkarimi: What Is Philosophy?

On Friday, November 19, Dr. Bijan Abdolkarimi, in an online session held at the Paper City of Shiraz, addressed the question “What is Philosophy?” from a continental perspective and enumerated some of the most important criticisms of analytic philosophy.

“Perhaps the most important criticism of analytic philosophies can be considered the ‘lack of a historical perspective.’ All analytic philosophies, due to their failure to grasp the ‘historical dimension’ of humanity, think within the framework of classical epistemology and the Aristotelian-Cartesian-Kantian tradition of thought—that is, within a pre-Hegelian framework.

By ‘lack of a historical perspective,’ it is by no means meant that analytic philosophers do not read history or pay no attention to the history of certain concepts and ideas; rather, it means that they fail to understand that the mode of human existence is inherently historical, and therefore all human understandings, interpretations, and actions, such as knowledge, science, art, religion, and politics, are historical matters.”

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Audio of Bijan Abdolkarimi’s lecture titled “What is Philosophy?”

Paper City of Shiraz – Friday, November 19

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