Ethos

Ahmad Kasravi is among the most influential Iranian intellectuals in the 20th century. He received traditional Islamic education as a seminarian, but was later drawn to modern science and scholarship. A philologist, anthropologist, linguist, jurist, journalist and historian, Kasravi was assassinated in 1946, but his works continued to influence both secular and Islamist modernists in Iran and beyond. Hamid Rezaei Yazdi is Professor at Humber College, Canada. He is the editor of Persian Literature and Modernity: Production and Reception (2019).

Translator’s Note / Introduction by Mohamad Tavakoli-Targhi
Part I.
Thesis one: The earth and earthlings
Thesis two: Is the world progressing?
Thesis three: The consequence of Europe’s inventions
Thesis four: The instruments have changed, the war remains
Thesis five: Europe disrupts the world’s tranquillity
Thesis six: Can law replace religion?
Thesis seven: Europe’s woes
Thesis eight: What will be the consequence of machinism?
Thesis nine: What have the prophets said and what does Europe say?
Thesis ten: The Eurocentric movement in Iran
Thesis eleven: The East loses its treasures
Thesis twelve: What is civilization?
Thesis thirteen: European sciences
Thesis fourteen: Women should not be headstrong
Thesis fifteen: A leader does not lie to his own people
Thesis sixteen: We must not look to Europe
Thesis seventeen: What is religion?
Thesis eighteen: Religion is humanism
Part II
Thesis one: In the Creator’s virtuous name
Thesis two: How has Europe become entangled?
Thesis three: Ancient grudges
Thesis four: Irreligiosity and unethical education
Thesis five: The harms of machinism
Thesis six: Madness
Thesis seven: Bolshevism
Thesis eight: Three principles of life
Thesis nine: Deviant leaders
Thesis ten: The rites of life
Thesis eleven: Brotherly behaviour
Thesis twelve: Agriculture
Thesis thirteen: European laws [1]
Thesis fourteen: European laws [2]
Thesis fifteen: European laws [3]
Thesis sixteen: Righteous and evil dispositions
Thesis seventeen: The value of European inventions
Thesis eighteen: The Orient and the Occident
Thesis nineteen: The great Geneva Convention
Thesis twenty: What is our claim?