Ali Paya

The ways in which Popper’s ideas have been introduced to Iranian society will be discussed, and the reactions of several prominent Iranian intellectual groups, namely, the leftists, the Heideggerians, the religious conservatives, the religious intellectuals and the moderate seculars, to Popper’s views will be critically appraised. The upshot of the paper is that while Popper’s views have been used and misused in the power struggle between various groups in post-revolutionary Iran, they also have been instrumental in creating collective intentionalities and shared understandings concerning a range of important concepts in such diverse fields as epistemology, politics, culture, social action, and religious beliefs.

Introduction

In this paper, following a brief historical background concerning the introduction of Popper’s ideas to the Iranian public, I shall concentrate on the approaches taken by a number of distinct Iranian intellectual groups toward Popper’s views. The groups in question are the leftists, the Heideggerians, the religious conservatives, the religious intellectuals and the moderate seculars.

Drawing on textual evidence and my own personal first-hand experience, I shall argue that while some of the secular intellectuals have played a role in promulgating Popper’s views, the lion’s share in introducing Popper’s theories and disseminating them among not only ordinary readers, but also the intelligentsia and even the decision-makers in Iran, belongs to the liberal-minded religious intellectuals. Thanks to their efforts, Popper is now a household name in Iran, and his views have become an integral part of the intellectual discourse in modern Iranian society. However, despite this apparent success, opposition to his ideas has remained as fierce as before, if not even stronger, among a certain strata of several secular and religious groups that are culturally influential in Iran.

An effort will be made, within the limits of the space provided for the paper, to examine critically the forms, variety, and strength of the arguments against Popper’s views by his Iranian opponents. It will be shown that these arguments are, for the most part, ideologically motivated and, as a result, plagued with logical fallacies.

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