American Falsafa

In his 1989 classic, The American Evasion of Philosophy: A Genealogy of Pragmatism, Cornel West argued that "the evasion of epistemology-centered philosophy--from Emerson to Rorty--results in a conception of philosophy as a form of cultural criticism in which the meaning of America is put forward by intellectuals in response to distinct social and cultural crises. In this sense, American pragmatism is less a philosophical tradition putting forward solutions to perennial problems in the Western philosophical conversation initiated by Plato and more a continuous cultural commentary or set of interpretations that attempt to explain America to itself at a particular historical moment" (West, AEP, 5).

American Falsafa shares Emersonian roots with pragmatism as well as an aversion to epistemology-centered philosophy; moreover, it is being "put forward by intellectuals"--well, in all candor, by this particular intellectual--"in response to distinct social and cultural crises" related to the hysteria-driven ignorance of the vast majority of Americans when it comes to matters Islamic.

American Falsafa is at once a recovery of an older tradition of "philosophizing" (Hellenistic philosophy in conversation with Perso-Arabic traditions of thought and practice) and an attempt to introduce American intellectual culture to a cosmopolitan humanism that permeated Muslim majority societies from, roughly, the ninth to the nineteenth centuries.

American Falsafa, then, is an invitation to America to outgrow her obstinate dogma of exceptionalism and join what Raymond Williams might have termed a much broader and older "structure of feeling." Put another way, American Falsafa is an invitation to America to see her rapid globalization as an opportunity to come of age in the community of nations: to learn to play her part as a fellow world citizen as opposed to a world hegemon.

American Falsafa is a risk and a wager; a hopeful wager that today's militaristic tyrant can transform herself, over time, into tomorrow's model republic.

American Faylasuf
Happy are you poor in spirit, for you shall be heir to God's kingdom.
Matthew 5:3.


Manet, "A Philosopher (Beggar in a Cloak)."