Nader El-Bizri

Nader El-Bizri (Arabic: نادر البزري; born 1966, Sidon) is a Lebanese philosopher, historian of science, and architect living in Britain.[1][2]

Biography

His name is 'Nader M. Mouhib El-Bizri'.[3] He was born in 1966 in the city of Sidon (Saida) in south Lebanon. He completed his schooling at the Jesuit / Marist Collège Notre Dame de Fatima des Frères Maristes in Sidon. He qualified for his BArch in architecture from the Faculty of Engineering and Architecture at the American University of Beirut (1989), and received the MArch-II in architecture from the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University (1994). He read philosophy at the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University (1995), and got a PhD in Philosophy from the Graduate Faculty of the New School of Social Research in New York (1999). , ,

Intellectual profile

Nader El-Bizri's areas of expertise are in Phenomenology, in Arabic Sciences and philosophy, and Architectural Humanities (Architectural theory). He focuses mainly on theories of space/place and of perception, with a particular interest in classical optics and perspective Renaissance traditions. His interpretation of history of science and philosophy is guided by contemporary debates in epistemology and ontology (metaphysics). His philosophical analysis is principally oriented by phenomenological methods of investigation and interpretation, and his thinking is influenced by the traditions of Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger and Maurice Merleau-Ponty.

He also composed commentaries on these phenomenologists in addition to writing about notions central to the works of Jacques Derrida and Emmanuel Levinas. His research in history of science and philosophy, which also informs his investigations in architectural history, theory and criticism, is methodologically inspired by the legacies of scholars of history and philosophy of science like: Gaston Bachelard, Georges Canguilhem, and Alexandre Koyré (while being also tangentially aware of the differential methods of Leo Strauss and Quentin Skinner). He developed an expertise in history of philosophy and science in Islamic civilisation, with a special focus on the traditions of polymaths like the optician and geometer Alhazen (al-Hasan Ibn al-Haytham), the metaphysician and physician Avicenna (Abu 'Ali Ibn Sina), and the tenth-century encyclopaedist thinkers, the Brethren of Purity (Ikhwan al-Safa').[4]

El-Bizri studied under Stanley Cavell, Hilary Putnam, Robert Nozick, and A. I. Sabra at Harvard University, and he also was the student of Richard J. Bernstein and Ágnes Heller at the Graduate Faculty of The New School for Social Research in New York. He also conducted research with the Islamic philosophy scholar Parviz Morewedge at the State University of New York in Binghamton . In more recent years, he established solid academic collaborations with the influential phenomenologist Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka (Editor of Analecta Husserliana and President of The World Phenomenology Institute, New Hampshire, USA).

El-Bizri's interpretations of the history of the exact sciences in classical Islamic civilisation have been partly inspired by the legacy of the mathematician, historian and philosopher of science: Roshdi Rashed (Emeritus; CNRS, Paris). El-Bizri’s approach to the history of mathematics in Greco-Arabic legacies within pre-modern Islamic contexts is bent on rendering the ancient texts readable to modern mathematicians. He thus sees the vocation of the historian of mathematics as being also that of the epistemologist and not strictly that of the humanist as a scholar of historiography per se. This is for instance evident from his edition and annotated translation with commentaries of the epistles on geometry and arithmetic of the Brethren of Purity (Oxford University Press, 2012).[5] His method is also informed by ontology in considering the propositions and 'entities' of mathematics as being connected across historical epochs and transcending the differences in language and culture. This renders them translatable across epistemic and mathematical systems and not via a strict literalism due to their pure abstraction. He is not an advocate of 'presentism' per se, but he clearly sees shortcomings in 'antiquarianism'. He rather studies the epistemic history of mathematics and the exact sciences (in a take from within historical epistemology), and he interprets mathematical and scientific notions in context and also in light of later concepts. He is a philosopher in support of modernisation in approaching the epistemic history of knowledge, more than being only an archival historian who is solely focused on philological documentation.[6]

In recent studies that aim at 'renewing the impetus of philosophical thinking in Islam', El-Bizri offers critical analyses of the conventions of methodology and historiography that dominate the mainstream academic and epistemic approaches in studying 'Islamic philosophy' from 'archival' standpoints, within Oriental and Mediaevalist Studies; arguing that these do not usually recognise the fact that 'philosophy in Islam' can still be a living intellectual tradition, and that its renewal requires a radical reform in ontology, epistemology and cosmology within Islamic thought, which have primacy over the emphasis on theories of value, on politics and law.[7] El-Bizri's interpretations of Avicenna (Ibn Sina) from the standpoint of Heidegger's critique of the history of metaphysics aimed at finding new pathways in ontology that are not simply Avicennian nor Heideggerian, even though his approach in rethinking falsafa in terms of a renewal in Avicennism carries resonances with separate novel modern ways of reading Aristotelianism and Thomism as exemplified by the philosophy of Alasdair MacIntyre.

Besides his research in phenomenology, and the history and philosophy of the exact sciences, El-Bizri contributes to the philosophical debates within contemporary Architectural theory and Architectural humanities, through his studies on space and place, and the theories of vision, as these are informed by the phenomenological traditions, the history of Graeco-Arabic optics, and research on the perspective legacies in the Renaissance pictorial arts.

Academic and professional profile

Nader El-Bizri is a visiting professor of visual studies at the University of Lincoln and a principal lecturer (reader) in architecture, and he teaches at the American University of Beirut as a professor of philosophy and chairperson of the Civilization Studies Program, and as the director of the Anis Makdisi Program in Literature and the Humanistic Disciplines . He is also an affiliated senior research fellow in philosophy at The Institute of Ismaili Studies, London; also acting as general editor (and managing editor ex officio) of a book series published by Oxford University Press in association with The Institute of Ismaili Studies, London; titled: Epistles of the Brethren of Purity Series رسائل إخوان الصفاء , He is also the co-manager of a joint institutional project between The Institute of Ismaili Studies in London and the Institut Français du Proche Orient (IFPO) in Damascus (Syria), and acts as the coordinator and member of the editorial board of The Institute of Ismaili Studies Texts and Translations Series (London, I. B. Tauris).,.

El-Bizri has been an affiliated research scholar and lecturer at the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge since 1999 (primarily lecturing on Arabic sciences and philosophy), and he has also been a visiting lecturer at the Faculty of Architecture at the University of Cambridge (Islamic architecture). He furthermore holds a chercheur associé post at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) in Paris, and he was previously a lecturer in architecture at the University of Nottingham, and taught at Harvard University and the American University of Beirut. Moreover, he is an elected member of the Steering Committee of the Société Internationale d'Histoire des Sciences et des Philosophies Arabes et Islamiques (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris), and he is an active member of several societies, including The American Philosophical Association (APA), The British Society for Phenomenology, the International Husserl and Phenomenological Research Society, and the Architectural Humanities Research Association (British Universities Consortium).

In addition, he is the co-editor of a book series in phenomenology (Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, Netherlands),, and as section editor (Islam) of the Encyclopedia of Sciences and Religions (SPRINGER, Dordrecht & Berlin), as well as being a member of the editorial board of a book series on philosophy and architecture (Toposophia; Lexington Books, Maryland, US). He is also a member of the editorial board of the distinguished academic journal: Arabic Sciences and Philosophy, which is published by Cambridge University Press. Among his other offices, he is also a board member on Fundamentals of Scientific Research at The Arab Organization for Translation in Beirut (linked to the Centre for Arab Unity Studies), and a member of the board of consulting editors of the Encyclopaedia Islamica (published by E. J. Brill, Leiden), as well as being the European representative of the Equipe d’Etude et de Recherche sur le Patrimoine Scientifique Arabe, which is part of the Lebanese CNRS (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique). He has also been a contributor to the Cultural and Classics Supplements of the daily Arabic international newspaper Al-Hayat (London; Beirut) الحياة .,[8][9][10]

Nader El-Bizri also acted as consultant, expert advisor and referee to a variety of institutions, including the Solomon Guggenheim in New York, the Science Museum in London, the Aga Khan Trust for Culture and Architectural Awards in Geneva, and the AHRC (Arts & Humanities Research Council) in Britain. He also made several contributions to BBC Radio and Television cultural programs , ,

Besides his academic undertakings Nader El-Bizri has over twelve years of professional architectural design and consulting experience in offices and institutions in Geneva, London, Cambridge, New York, Boston and Beirut (He registered as chartered architect in 1990 as part of the Ordre des Ingénieurs et Architectes, Beirut, Lebanon).,

Selected publications

(Representative of over 135 published works)

See also

References

  1. ↑ The Institute of Ismaili Studies
  2. ↑ Muslim Communities in Europe: Britain
  3. ↑ نادر محمد مهيب محمد توفيق البزري
  4. ↑ Nader El-Bizri, «Ikhwān al-Ṣafāʾ: An Islamic Philosophical Fraternity », in Houari Touati (ed.), Encyclopedia of Mediterranean Humanism, Spring 2014, URL = http://www.encyclopedie-humanisme.com/?Ikhw%C4%81n-al-%E1%B9%A2af%C4%81%CA%BE&var_
  5. ↑ Epistles of the Brethren of Purity: On Arithmetic and Geometry. Oxford University Press, 2012
  6. ↑ Nader El-Bizri is not too far in outlook from what figures in: A. G. Barabashev, 'In Support of Significant Modernization of Original Mathematical Texts', Philosophia Mathematica 5 (1997): 21–41 (Oxford University Press journal) http://philmat.oxfordjournals.org/content/5/1/21.full.pdf+html
  7. ↑ Nader El-Bizri, 'The Labyrinth of Philosophy in Islam', Comparative Philosophy 1.2 (2010): 3–23. Refer also to: Nader El-Bizri, ‘Renouvellement de la falsafa’, Les Cahiers de l’Islam 1 (2014): 17-38, and see: Nader El-Bizri, Modernity, Tradition, and Renewal in Arab Thought, SCTIW Review (2015): http://sctiw.org/sctiwreviewarchives/archives/380
  8. ↑ Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge
  9. ↑ Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique Paris
  10. ↑ Profile on Academia.Edu

External links