ABSTRACT
At the junction of tradition and modernity in the modern history of the Middle East stand generations of intellectuals, diverse in their backgrounds and views, who seek to mediate the transition from traditionalism to modern modes of thinking. In virtually every case these intellectuals are characterized by a consciousness that oscillates furiously between recognizing the perils of being overcome by modernity and the impossible imperative of overcoming it. To many of these intellectuals this experience of modernity comes as a “shock” followed by a pattern of “individualization” rather than by the linear pattern of a monolithic progress. This “individualization” is characterized by a sense of maturity, a process which in turn causes critical thinking and the disintegration of the aura of enchantment. Hence, each experience of modernity for each intellectual contains its own distinctive dilemmas. This is crucial to bear in mind when discussing the experience of modernity pursued within the framework of each intellectual life. Iranian intellectuals began to face these dilemmas for the first time in the late nineteenth century. Throughout a period of about 150 years utopian thinking played a central role in the life and works of Iranian intellectuals and in the dilemmas they faced in the process of modernization. This utopian thinking emerged as a more or less coherent expression of different traditions of thought rooted in particular visions of the past and the future. During this period of time, questions regarding historical inevitability, teleological vision and logical harmony of values in a monistic system of social relations were at the centre of intellectual debates. If we distinguish four generations of Iranian intellectuals starting with the pre-Constitutional period and ending with the postrevolutionary period of the 1990s, we can say that in all of these generations (except maybe the last one) the predominant intellectual type has been the utopian variant whose ascendancy came with different levels of modernization and rationalization of Iranian social life. Yet at least one Iranian intellectual stands out as an outcast among these generations of intellectuals, because of his
critical awareness of reality and his sceptical attitude towards ideological frameworks. That is Sadeq Hedayat.1
