Imperial Iranian Academy of Philosophy

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Imperial Iranian Academy of Philosophy (in Persian: انجمن شاهنشاهی فلسفه ایران) was founded in Iran during the Pahlavi era by Seyyed Hossein Nasr, a Professor of History of Science and Philosophy at Tehran University who also served for several years as President of Aryamehr University of Technology in Iran. He was also the first president of the Imperial Iranian Academy of Philosophy.

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The American writer Peter Lamborn Wilson worked at the Academy for several years prior to 1980. "Kings of Love:The Poetry and History of the Nimatullahi Sufi Order of Iran" (1978) which he wrote in collaboration with Nasrollah Pourjavady figures among the references for Henry Corbin's "Histoire de la philosophie islamique" (ed. Gallimard Paris 1986). Lamborn Wilson's studies in later years are problematic as to consistency with the tenets of Iranian Philosophy as figured in the curriculum of the Academy. One would be hard pressed to look there (in text at least) for the translation of the spiritual integrity of the Nimatullahi in social solidarity for instance, an element that prominently confronts the serious students of the aftermath and influence of the Shaykhi school of Shaykh Ahmad and Siyyid Kázim for which the persistent and high standard work of the members of the Academy provided the study material. Compare for example :"Isfahan Is Half the World -Memories of a Persian Boyhood" by Sayyed Mohammad Ali Jamalzadeh , translated by W.L.Heston in Princeton Library of Asian Translations -Princeton University Press 1983. See also: "The Development of Metaphysics in Persia" (1908) by Muhammad Iqbal.

William C.Chittick who is renowned scholar of Sufi thought, literature and Islamic philosophy, completed his PhD in Persian literature at Tehran University in 1974. He then taught comparative religion at the Humanities Department at Tehran's Aryamehr Technical University and left Iran just before the revolution in 1979. He was also for a short period before the revolution, an assistant professor at the Imperial Iranian Academy of Philosophy.He has also served as assistant editor of Encyclopaedia Iranica, and is currently professor of Religious Studies at the State University of New York at Stony Brook.

Dr.Chittick has had collaborations with Seyyed Hossein Nasr, and Allameh Tabatabaei on several important projects.