Analysis and Typology of Political Thinking in Iranian Contemporary History

Document Type : Research Paper

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Abstract

In Iran, political thinking moved in several spheres in relation with political and social circumstances of each specific era and created distinct streams. In the Iranian academic researches, political thought is referred to the opinions of different thinkers who have expressed them about politics. Therefore it is necessary to answer this significant question: Which political concepts is political thinking referred to? Political philosophy, political thought, political theory, or ideology? In this article, we have tried to test this hypothesis that in Iran, political thinking has had an ideological aspect and acquired a pragmatic feature, so it has distanced from political thought in its academic definition. In this research, three main streams of political thinking in Iran have been examined including religious intellectualism, liberal tendencies and left tendencies in order to be recognized in terms of nature. The most important finding of this research is the lack of political knowledge production in the contemporary Iran and the ideological characteristics of political thinking.

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