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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.
"Signposts on the Road": A Reincarnation of the "Republic"? Printable Version PRINTABLE VERSION
by Saladin, Egypt Dec 23, 2006
Peace & Conflict   Opinions
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In an attempt to prevent a foreseen inevitable moral and political downfall of Athens, Plato decided to write his famous “The Republic”. In this book, the word “Kallipolis” is the term given by Plato to refer to his utopia, or in other words, his own ideal model of a just and virtuous city. Throughout the book, Plato constantly states the dialogues of his tutor Socrates with his disciples, describing the proper means to reach the Kallipolis on a real ground. In fact, the backbone of Plato’s utopia as observed from the discussions, is the concept of justice. Plato agrees with Socrates that, unlike what the sophists thinks, justice upon which the Kallipolis would be founded should not by any means be the advantage of the stronger members of the city.

The process of developing utopian models begins by identifying the areas of social corruption, illnesses, and defections, as seen by every idealistic thinker. Next, each thinker develops his own responsive alternative model. This process can be well illustrated in the development of the “Republic”: In the first stage, Socrates has been well known in ancient Athens to be critical of his contemporary mainstream ideas, but he did not suggest alternative models to replace the already corrupted Athens. Hence, at the beginning, Socrates did not exceed the point of questioning and rebutting, through logical and rhetorical argument, the sophist ideas that prevailed in Athens back then. However, after a while he decided to take a further step to the next stage--after he had recognized the main social illnesses of Athens--and built his own theoretical model: the Kallipolis.

By the same token, relative to contemporary idealistic models, it is easy to notice that the most influential modern idealist philosophers and thinkers were stimulated by whatever inappropriate existed before their sight in the process of developing their own alternative models. In analogy with Socrates’ first stage, Oswald Spengler, motivated by his will to identify what he had considered as clear signs of an upcoming downfall of the modern western civilization in the twentieth century, wrote his famous book “The Decline of the West”. Furthermore, Karl Marx perfectly illustrates Socrates’ second stage: Not only did his “Communist Manifesto” stop at pointing out to the defects of his contemporary socio-economic and political systems; but also it went deeply into full descriptions of the suggested Marxist alternative model.

Henceforth, utopian theories that were developed since the death of Plato until the modern era were, to a great extent, inspired by “The Republic”. Contemporary idealistic ideologues representing a versatile spectrum of utopian schools have focused their main interest on identifying and responding to the threats facing the populations to which they belong. In addition, it has been observed in the vast majority of historical events, that utopian models are developed unconsciously as a reactive approach, and not an active one. Accordingly, the ideas of a very influential Middle-Eastern ideologue belonging to a contemporary school of utopian idealism shall be analyzed and contextualized in Plato’s utopian framework.

The ideologue in our consideration for this paper is Sayyid Qutb (1906-1966), who was a prominent ideologue of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, and whose book “Signposts on the Road” is considered by many to be the initiator of modern Islamized militant groups worldwide. To start this analysis, a general picture of the Middle East should be put into consideration, so as to be able to simulate the socio-political and economic situation of that particular region at the time when Qutb was formulating his thoughts.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, the Muslim world was torn by artificially-created boundaries into small fragments falling under western colonialism for long decades. Qutb was still young when the Islamic Ottoman Caliphate was announced defeated in WW I, before being officially ended in 1924, and replaced by a rigid secular pro-western Turkish-nationalist government. To many devoted Muslims worldwide, the downfall of the Islamic Caliphate for the first time over fourteen centuries represented an unforgettable painful memory. Moreover, the way the new totally-opposite regime led by Mustafakemal Atatürk was founded on the ruins of the Islamic Caliphate, was perceived by Qutb to be the worst fate for an institution that had always represented a sense of unity and pride to all Muslims worldwide.

From this standpoint, Qutb, as a devoted Muslim, began to identify the problems facing the Muslim world. He criticized the way many Egyptians and Muslims worldwide were influenced by some of the western socio-political and economical systems, as well as western lifestyle in general, at the expense of Islamic values and traditions. Qutb considered that the source of these social illnesses stemmed from two origins: First, the Muslim society had abandoned the fundamentals of Islam and ran in the pursuit of exported western laws, culture, ideas, and lifestyle. Second, Qutb found that the west was actually exercising a sort of cultural hampering over the Muslim world, whose the most important result was the establishment of a secular-nationalist regime in the place of the historical Caliphate.





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Writer Profile
Saladin


My name is Ayman el-Hakea, I am a Construction Engineering graduate from the American University in Cairo. My origins date to an interesting mixture of Yemeni, Moroccan, Albanian, and Egyptian ancestors. I always try to be a moderate Muslim, I like animation, geopolitics, comparative religion, and football. I like to be with "people"...and I hope my writing isn't boring for anyone.
Comments


Keep on the good work
Naglaa Muhammad | Jan 14th, 2007
MASHALLAH,i did really enjoy reading it ,it's quite very informative too



Inspiration by plato
Nathan Vogel | Feb 6th, 2007
I don't really think that all the theorists since Plato were inspired by the Republic because they were all responding to contemporary crises. That is just what theorists do. And probably Plato was not the first. If I eat because I'm hungry, I'm not being inspired by the first person who used eating to alleviate hunger. I could totally be wrong though, so I'd love to hear what you think.



Reply from the author
Ayman El Hakea | Feb 26th, 2007
I totally agree about your well-said points, however, we should not neglect the cumulative influence of ancient thinkers on present-day politics. I invite you to have a look on Plato's influence on modern Neo-Conservative thinkers in the US, such as Leo Strauss, as an example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_Strauss#Philosophy



Politics
Patricia Sudi | Mar 8th, 2007
What is your view of Plato,s theory on current day political and democratic institutions especially in developing countries?



Neo-Platonism
Ayman El Hakea | Mar 20th, 2007
Well Patricia, I think that idealistic models , whether hyper-radical Islam or Neo-Conservatism, are extremely inspired by Paltonism.

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