East and West

Seyed Javad Miri is a Swedish-Iranian associate professor of sociology and history of religions at the Institute of Humanities and Cultural Studies. He is also a professor in the Department of Philosophy of Science at the Sharif University of Technology in Tehran, Iran. His most recent publication, Alternative Sociology: Probing into the Sociological Thought of Allama M. T. Jafari, was published in 2012 by London Academy of Iranian Studies.

• Prologue by Dustin J. ByrdIntroductionChapter 1: Relocating the Parameters of Comparative PhilosophyChapter 2: Sir Bertrand Russell in a SnapshotMethodic DoubtIncommensurability RevisitedPhilosophy: What’s in a Name?Religion and Philosophical ProblematiquesRussell and ReligionOn Religion and Founders of ReligionChapter 3: The Global Future of ReligionIntellectuals versus SagesNon-discursive Historiography of Intellectual HistoryReligion and Eurocentrism in Russellian ParadigmReligion and the Question of NihilismRevelation and IntellectThe Roots of ReligionReligion and Philosophical InquiryThe Permanent PhenomenaThe Transitory PhenomenaCriterion of DistinctionThe Global Future of ReligionEpilogueReferences

Seyed Javad Miri points out that there remains a need for comparative philosophy within the modern world—an examination of the commitments, assumptions, worldviews, and lifeworlds [of both parties]. . . . [This will serve] to clear a path of demystification so that people of different societies and backgrounds may enter into a civil dialogue, discourse, and debate so as not to ‘win’ over the opponent, but to gain the understanding of a friend.