Dariush Shayegan

Dariush Shayegan (‎ 24 January 1935 – 22 March 2018) was one of the most consequential thinkers of contemporary Iran and the Near East.
Life and career
He was born in Tabriz from an Shia Iranian Azeri father and a Georgian Sunni mother; his mother descended from an aristocratic family from Georgia. Shayegan studied at the Sorbonne University in Paris. He was a Professor of Sanskrit and Indian religions at the Tehran University. Besides Persian, Shayegan wrote in French and English, and spoke fluently Georgian, Russian, and Turkish (both Ottoman and Azeri).. Having spent his teens at boarding school in Great Britain, Shayegan subsequently lived, during his formative years, in Geneva, where he read at the Université de Genève French literature, philosophy, Sanskrit, and political science. Shayegan received his doctorate (doctorat de troisième cycle) at the Sorbonne under the tutelage of his Doktorvater Henry Corbin, with a thesis entitled: Les relations de l'hindouisme et du soufisme d'après le "Majma’ al-Baḥrayn" de Dārā Shokūh.
Shayegan has written many pioneering works on the epistemological specificities of eastern and western cultures and the possibility of dialogue between them. He was the founding director of the Iranian Center for the Studies of Civilizations, which launched its work in 1977 with an international symposium on the "dialogue between civilizations," a concept that has been selectively appropriated by the former Iranian President Mohammad Khatami. In 2009 Shayegan was awarded the inaugural Global Dialogue Prize, an international award for "outstanding achievements in the advancement and application of intercultural value research", in recognition of his dialogical conception of cultural subjectivity (for a statement of the award committee and a scholarly presentation (including a fairly complete bibliography) of Shayegan's contribution to intercultural dialogue, see the (copyrighted) webpages of this award.)
Death
Shayegan died on 22 March 2018, at the age of 83 in Tehran.
Works
Main works by Shayegan:
Hindouisme et Soufisme, une lecture du «Confluent des Deux Océans», Éditions de la Différence, Paris 1979, 2nd edition, Albin Michel, Paris
Qu'est-ce qu'une révolution religieuse? Presses d'aujourd'hui, Paris 1982, deuxième édition, Bibliothèque Albin Michel des idées, Paris,1991.
Le regard mutilé, Schizophrénie culturelle : pays traditionnels face à la modernité, Albin English Translation : Cultural Schizophrenia, Islamic Societies Confronting the West, Translated from the French by John Howe, Saqi books, London 1992. Also published by Syracuse University Press, 1997.
Henry Corbin, La topographie spirituelle de l'Islam iranien, Éditions de la Différence, Paris, 1990
Les illusions de l'identité, Éditions du Félin, Paris, 1992
Sous les ciels du monde, Entretiens avec Ramin Jahanbegloo, Éditions du Félin,1992
Au-delà du miroir, Diversité culturelle et unité des valeurs, Editions de l'Aube, 2004
La lumière vient de l'Occident, Le réenchantement du monde et la pensée nomade, L'aube, essai. Paris, 2001, troisième édition, 2005, quatriéme édition, essai poche, 2008
Terre de mirages, avec la collaboration de Maryam Askari, La collection Regards croisés, Éditions de l'Aube, Paris, 2004
Works on Shayegan:
Mehrzad Borujerdi : Iranian Intellectuals and the West, Syracuse University Press, 1996
Afsaneh Gächter, Daryush Shayegan, interkulturell gelesen, Interkulturelle Bibliothek, Traugott Bautz, Nordhausen 2005
Dariush Borbor, the well-known Iranian architect and urban planner has discussed his seventy years of intimate friendship with Shayegan and his family in an interview, 2018
See also
Intellectual Movements in Iran
Iranian Studies
Persian philosophy
Henri Corbin
Daryoush Ashouri
Aydin Aghdashloo
List of University of Tehran people
References
External links
Letters to future generations, original texts selected and compiled by Federico Mayor in collaboration with Roger-Pol Droit, Cultures of Peace/UNESCO Publishing, 1999 .
The next chapter
Simon F. O'Li (Oliai), The next chapter. Atypical conversations with Daryush * Shayegan on the impact of ideology in contemporary Iranian history, The Iranian, October 27, 2003.
1935 births
2018 deaths
Iranian Iranologists
Iranian people of Georgian descent
21st-century Iranian philosophers
20th-century Iranian philosophers
University of Paris alumni
Academic staff of the University of Tehran
People from Tabriz
Persian-language writers
French-language writers from Iran
Deaths from cerebrovascular disease