Reason and Dialogue: Review of An Invitationto Reason: Muslim Philosophers in Conversation with the Western Tradition

Abstract

This article aims to review the Senegalese thinker Souleymane Bachir Diagne 's book "An Invitation to Rationalism: Muslim Philosophers’ Dialogue with Western Heritage." In this book, the author relied on the value of dialogue. He chose it to form, along with the value of rationality, the basis for the disengagement of Islamic thought from its shackled minds, which are concentrated on the level of self-dilemmas in the monotheism of thought. The general thesis of the book is based on the fact that Muslims today need philosophy again. A philosophy based on rationality, dialogue, pluralism and openness is capable of lifting them out of their civilizational weakness. Pluralism is required to face internal dilemmas, and rational openness is necessary to deal with the dissenting other. This book was translated into Arabic by Talaat Farouk Mohammad based on the English edition and not on the French original (based on the author’s belief that the English text contains additions that were not included in the first French one). The book contains ten chapters in which the author attempts to re-read the legacy of lofty intellectual and philosophical figures from ancient and modern Islamic history.