Allameh Tabataba’i and the Philosophy of Human Sciences: A Narrative Of a “Confrontation-Challenge”

Modern human sciences, as depicted by the philosophy of sciences and also human sciences, or as Vico, the Renaissance thinker puts it, Novum Scienza, aimed to explore the modern human, the modern world, and the modern culture, history, and society. It was clear that traditions and traditionalism – pre-modern matters – were no longer of use, and this included all extensions of traditional thought, from traditional human knowledge to Christian and ecclesiastical philosophy and theology. The case of Allameh Tabataba’i is also visible in this sociological problem and this religious-traditional context as the head of the last Islamic traditional philosophers in the pseudo-Modern age of the Islamic worlds and the “Shi’a micro-world”, that is, a religious, cultural minority filled with epistemic, philosophical, religious knowledge, which is subordinate of the macro Islamic world. The present paper presents the case of confrontation and challenge of the traditionalistic representative of Islamic philosophy and Islamic knowledge and Shi’a knowledge with the scientific philosophy and the modern human sciences. It is also a narration of the possibility and potential capacities of traditional philosophy to shape a pseudo-philosophy of human sciences in a preliminary form by Allameh Tabataba’i.