Arash Abazari

Arash Abazari, an Iranian philosopher and researcher of nineteenth-century German philosophy, is one of the well-known figures in Hegel studies among contemporary Iranian scholars. His main areas of work are Hegel's philosophy, social and political philosophy, and the relation of Hegelian logic to structures of domination in capitalist society.

Abazari initially studied medicine in Iran and received his M.D. from Tehran University of Medical Sciences. He then changed his academic path to philosophy; he earned an M.A. in Philosophy from the University of Essex and a Ph.D. in Philosophy from Johns Hopkins University. His doctoral dissertation, titled Hegel's Logic of Essence and the Ontology of Power in Capitalism, became the foundation for his later important book.

He previously worked as a senior researcher at the Institute for Research in Fundamental Sciences (IPM) and also taught in the philosophy of science department at Sharif University of Technology. The news of the end of his collaboration with Sharif University in later years drew public and academic attention. Abazari subsequently continued his research and teaching in the international academic sphere and is now introduced as an assistant professor in the Department of Philosophy at Bilkent University. His areas of specialization, according to his Bilkent University page, are nineteenth-century German philosophy, especially Hegel, and social and political philosophy.

Abazari's most important work is the book Hegel's Ontology of Power: The Structure of Social Domination in Capitalism, published in 2020 by Cambridge University Press. In this book, he attempts to offer a reading of Hegel's political and social philosophy whose center of gravity is not merely the Philosophy of Right, but rather Hegel's Science of Logic. The book's main idea is that Hegel's logic can be employed to understand the abstract and impersonal forms of domination in capitalism.

His book has been reviewed and critiqued in specialized Hegel studies journals and circles, with authors such as Tony Smith, Jake McNulty, Allegra de Laurentiis, Nahum Brown, and others writing about it. The Persian translation of this book, translated by Hossein Nikbakht, has been published by Agah Publishing.

Overall, Abazari's intellectual work can be seen as an attempt to link a close reading of Hegel's logic with contemporary social critique. He reads Hegel not merely as a philosopher of reconciliation or the rational state, but as a thinker from whose conceptual apparatus one can analyze the structures of domination, power, abstraction, and contradiction in capitalism.