A Critical Deliberation on Theory of Iranian Decline and How to Roll Back It

This article confirms that historical Iranian decline theory (HIDT), on the basis of deliberation on the intellectual origins and history of thought in Iran, is of much importance. But we want to examine the internal competency of decline theory, its approach and conclusions. Our method in this article is hermeneutic based on the interpretation of the critical concept of the theory. We have tried to discover and understand the meaning and applications of the text written by Javad Tabatabee which forms the basic tenets of this theory. This article concludes that Tabatabaee`s approach in the theory of Iranian decline, from the viewpoint of an in-depth study of intellectual history of Iran, is of great importance but it lacks internal cohesion and contrary to the main concern of its founder, this theory resorts to sociological explanations. Also, the theory of Iranian decline is a holistic narration of the history of Iran and Tabatabaee has attributed the contemporary dilemmas of Iran to Mongols’ attacks on Iran 800 years ago. The theory of Iranian decline doesn’t pay serious and enough attention to the basic role of religion in Iranian civilization, especially after the enterance of Islam to Iran. In addition, Tabatabaee believes that political philosophy is the most important approach to understanding Iranian social affairs and other approaches seem to be very superficial. Advancing decline theory as a way for rolling back historical decline should be based on explaining philosophical modernity through the critique of tradition.Tabtabaee has not described the role and situation of thoughts in ancient Iran, as well as the status of Islamic thinking and Greek philosophy in Iranian modernity. After all, we conclude that Tabatabaee is an excellent researcher for carrying out in-depth deliberation on classic texts but the political application of his theory has proved to be very ambiguous.