Ardeshir Sepahsalar
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Ardeshir Sepahsalar is a Persian American Philosopher and the editor-in-chief of Critical Tolerance. He is the great great grandson of Mirza Hossein Khan Moshir od-Dowleh Sepahsalar, founder of The Old Sepahsalar Mosque, prominent Qajar era mosque, now The New Sepahsalar Mosque (Madreseh e Motahari) in Tehran, Iran.
Contents |
[edit] Biography
He was born April 1, 1971, in St. Cloud Minnesota. He attended the University of Minnesota, where he studied Speech pathology and ancient Pahlavi under William Malandra. He further studied under Claudia Crawford, a Nietzsche scholar, focusing his main research on Nietzsche's theory of language, and its relation to the will to power. In 1999, he founded CriticalTolerance.org a collective writer's community, where his philosophical work, and translations appear. In 2000, he began translating the works of the exiled dissident philosopher Manuchehr Jamali. After three years of research, publication, and exposition of Jamali's work, he began work on a critical analysis of human expression. In 2001, he joined the Minneapolis Public Library's Special Collection Department, where he helped develop A History of Minneapolis project.
[edit] Key concepts
Ardeshir Sepahsalar's philosophical works revolve around a singular theme: The Relational Exposure of Self-Unself, Self-Others, and Self-World intangibles. His theoretical work exposes these three Relations as the most fundamental phenomena to human existence, knowledge and history. As stated in Critical Tolerance's mission, this theory is used to explore human expression.
The goal of Critical Tolerance is two fold:[1]
The first part is a Critical understanding of the nature of an expression from the relational point of view. This perspective allows for an in-depth view of the text, sources, individual, social, political, economic, and emergent ideological aspects of an expression. This approach will be structured by the Synoptic Method and X-Analysis Model which is here simplified into the following three categories:
A) Analysis of the individual or individuals and the source or means of the expression. B) Analysis of the relation between the expression and its textual as well as its social community. C) The analysis of the creation or recreation of this expression and its institutional acceptance or adherence, or its rejection or destruction.
The second part is a Tolerant synthesis of any conflicting forces derived from the three categories mentioned above into a new form of expression. This synthesis is possible only if the texts, party, or linguistic sources of expression involved can be approached through honest communication and learning. This learning process is only possible if the derived analysis can be communicated via free speech, open publication, honest dialogue, protest, civil disobedience, or peaceful opposition at all levels: literary, philosophical, social, political, religious, cultural, personal, and economic.
A concise definition of an "expression" is necessary for the first phase of any project. An expression of an imbalance of power will define a conflict. While an imbalance of power can be detected in different fields and involve different expressions, the purpose of the first level of Critical Tolerance is, in a sense, to define the expression's power. The analysis will unearth any underlying ideological and pragmatic powers inherent in the expression's source whether textual, linguistic, philosophical, political, or economic. The structure of the investigation based on the latter three phenomenal categories will allow for a wide and yet limited view of the boundaries of any expression. As the boundaries of the opposing forces become more clearly defined, and an understanding is gained of their true differences and similarities, the remaining and concluding elements will lead to a creation of a new expression, which will be the source and means of a critical and tolerant evolution. The purpose of the second phase of the Critical Tolerance approach, after the "expression" and its sources have been defined, is to inject a new perspective by synthesizing a rebalance of the expression's power, and to allow for an evolutionary or revolutionary understanding of the new as well as the old expression.
The amoral foundation of the approach to Critical Tolerance is explicitly defined, because the sheer nature of the approach is to investigate the expression's defined or undefined power, ethics, ideology, philosophy, religious stand, political bent, social or cultural views, and of course, their binding economic relations. Though the goals and personal opinions of the directors, writers, and researchers' at Critical Tolerance Inc. will without a doubt shape the process of our investigation, the starting point for all project evaluations, the first level of analysis, will be purely re-creative and not prescriptive. While the second level, the synthesis, will incorporate a new explicit prescriptive moral or ethical foundation. Though our goal is to reduce any undeclared assumptions or dogma during the first phase, being that otherwise it will slow the process of understanding new expressions or conflicts which will then obscure the second phase of our approach, we realize that in the end, such forces are part of that which we seek to express and understand.
[edit] Notes
- ^ Mission Statement
- Critial, Tolerance. Mission Statement. Retrieved on May 27, 2004.
