Identity and Academic Philosophy in the Islamic Republic of Iran: The Case of Reza Davari Ardakani
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This thesis explores a philosophical interpretation of velayat-e faqih, by Reza Davari Ardakani, a professor at the University of Tehran’s Department of Philosophy since 1968, and a public intellectual of consequence. The Islamic Republic of Iran’s theory of state, velayat-e faqih, has generally been constructed and defended using Shia jurisprudential reasoning, projecting an Irano-Islamic national identity. While this methodology has proven sufficient among traditional religious Iranians, continuing modernizing forces within and liberal Western forces outside of Iran pressure its theocratic underpinnings and hence its appeal to other Iranians. A lesser-known interpretation of velayat-e faqih, using both Western and Islamic philosophical methodologies, has existed within select post-revolutionary Iranian academic and intellectual circles. This thesis examines the training, philosophy and ideology of its most influential advocate, Reza Davari Ardakani, within the context of Iranian modernization, the construction of a cultural identity and the influence of modern higher education. In this thesis, I argue that Iran’s state institutions, in particular the University of Tehran, serve as propagating sites of Iranian identity. More significantly, these sites and the Iranian intellectuals who create and train within them respond to the complex forces of tradition and modernity, employing Iranian, Islamic, and Western methods and practices in the creation of hybrid identities. Thus, Davari’s philosophical interpretation of velayat-e faqih is best understood as the latest reiteration in the conciliatory practices of hybrid identity production of a modernizing Iran.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.008 | 0.004 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.029 | 0.023 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.007 | 0.004 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.005 |
| Research integrity | 0.003 | 0.005 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".