The Problem of Dependency and Epistemic Authority in Contemporary Arab Philosophy

 

Reducing the crisis of philosophy in the Arab and Islamic world to the relationship between “master and disciple” alone is, in reality, an oversimplification of a complex civilizational and historical issue. This relationship is neither an exclusively Islamic invention nor inherently opposed to free thought; rather, it is one of the natural mechanisms through which knowledge is transmitted in all civilizations. Human thought has never emerged in a vacuum. It has always been shaped through chains of influence, reception, and intellectual schools. Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle themselves represented a model of “master and disciple,” and modern Western universities are likewise built upon schools of thought, academic traditions, and theoretical authorities. Therefore, the real problem is not the existence of intellectual masters, but the transformation of scholarly relationships into psychological and ideological dependency that suppresses criticism and transcendence.

The deeper crisis experienced by Arab and Islamic thought is not merely a crisis of individuals or academic institutions, but rather a crisis of civilizational position and self-awareness. Since the colonial shock of modern times, a large segment of Arab intellectual elites has lived in a state of intellectual tension between admiration for the West and fear of it. Consequently, the West ceased to be merely a historical experience from which one could learn and gradually became, for some, the sole universal standard by which societies, cultures, and systems of knowledge are judged. From this emerged the phenomenon of cultural alienation: viewing the self as inherently backward and the West as the ultimate embodiment of progress and rationality.

This alienation is what leads certain discourses to speak as though genuine philosophical creativity can only emerge by reproducing the European path itself: breaking with tradition, dismantling inherited structures, and fully embracing Western modernity with all its specific concepts. Yet this perspective ignores a fundamental historical truth: the West itself did not advance through imitation, but through constructing its own modernity based on its history, culture, and internal struggles. Europe did not become modern by copying another civilization; it became modern by reorganizing itself according to its own historical conditions.

Therefore, the real question is not whether to imitate the West or reject it, but rather how to build an independent civilizational project without isolation, and how to benefit from humanity’s shared achievements without dissolving into another identity. Rationality, science, organization, and technology are not the exclusive property of the West; they are universal human achievements. The problem begins when modernity ceases to be understood as a set of tools and accomplishments and instead becomes a cultural doctrine that demands societies abandon their historical memory and worldview in order to be considered “advanced.”

This is why the Asian example, especially China and the East Asian “Tiger” economies, is so significant. These societies did not progress because they dissolved into the West, but because they dealt with it pragmatically. They adopted science, technology, industrial methods, and administrative systems from the West, while preserving their deep cultural foundations. China, for instance, did not become a copy of Europe or America; it continued to rely on a strong state tradition, collective discipline, Confucian heritage, and a powerful sense of national identity. The same applies to Japan, South Korea, and Singapore. All of them benefited from Western technological modernity without completely severing themselves from their civilizational roots.

Indeed, the Asian experience demonstrates that progress does not necessarily require adopting Western liberal philosophy or fully embracing the Western cultural model. China today is a major economic and technological power despite not adopting the Western conception of politics, society, or the individual. This indicates that modernity is not a single fixed model, but rather that multiple modernities can emerge from the unique characteristics of different civilizations.

In the Arab and Islamic world, however, a major problem lies in the fact that some intellectual elites have approached heritage in one of two extreme ways: either as something sacred and untouchable, or as a burden that must be entirely discarded. In both cases, creative thought disappears. Living civilizations survive neither through absolute rupture nor through rigid stagnation, but through critical engagement with both themselves and the world around them. Genuine renaissance cannot be achieved simply by importing Western concepts, nor by merely glorifying the past, but by building an independent civilizational intellect capable of producing its own questions.

Thinkers such as Averroes, Al-Ghazali, and Ibn Khaldun became great not because they blindly transmitted inherited ideas, but because they engaged critically with their own traditions while simultaneously renewing them. A mode of thought that loses confidence in its own civilizational foundations ultimately becomes either a repetition of the past or merely an echo of others.

Thus, the crisis of philosophy today is not simply a crisis of “master and disciple,” but a crisis of an entire civilizational vision: the absence of an independent cultural project, the erosion of confidence in the self, and the transformation of universities into spaces that reproduce intellectual dependency rather than generate fundamental questions. Overcoming this crisis will not come through copying the West, nor through rejecting it entirely, but through building a careful balance between authenticity and openness, identity and modernity, and civilizational belonging and participation in the shared human experience.