English (United Kingdom)

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/featured_content/oa?rat=en

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/highlighted_journal/

Global: Zendy Plus annual

Presents the access of premium content as premium feature

Premium Content

Presents the keyphrase highlighting as premium feature

Keyphrase Highlighting

Presents the summarisation as premium feature

Summarisation

Insights

Presents the pdf analysis as premium feature

PDF Analysis

Presents the zaia usage as premium feature

ZAIA

Global: Zendy Tools annual

Global: Zendy Free Plan

Global: Zendy Tools monthly

Global: Zendy Plus monthly

On 5 February 1887, around nine o'clock at night, Beşir Fuad, a former officer in the Ottoman army and an important Turkish intellectual who had contributed significantly to the debates about science and literature in the late Ottoman period, committed suicide in the private study of his house in Istanbul. Before committing suicide, he wrote letters to his friends, explaining the reasons for his action, as well as a brief note to the police, informing them that his death was a well-planned suicide and that they should not further bother his wife with a criminal investigation. Moreover, he decided to turn his suicide into a scientific experiment, and after injecting cocaine into his left arm and carefully cutting his veins in four different places with a razor, he calmly wrote on a sheet of paper about the effects of bleeding on the body and the feeling and sensation of death that it induced. Diverging significantly from the first generation of Tanzimat-era Ottoman intellectuals who also advocated the study of western science but justified their positions by explicitly or implicitly referring to the Islamic tradition, Beşir Fuad never used any religious arguments whatsoever to justify his position on science. In Beşir Fuad, we also see, for the first time, an Ottoman intellectual who consciously referred to the writings of German vulgar materialists, especially Ludwig Büchner (1824-1899), in order to elevate science to an almost metaphysical level, believing that science was the ultimate arbiter of “truth” in human life. For this reason alone, his works are worth studying. In fact, I argue that Beşir Fuad was the true founder of Ottoman materialism, which would subsequently become the preferred philosophy of a significant number of influential Ottoman intellectuals and statesmen in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, not to mention the founders of the future Turkish Republic. Therefore, his works and ideas are crucial to understand not only the intellectual currents of the late Ottoman and early Republican periods but also the early Republicans' rather uncompromising political attitude against religion. This paper discusses Fuad’s life and major works. Relying on primary sources, I explain Beşir Fuad's philosophical materialism and put them in the context of nineteenth-century Ottoman intellectual life. Finally, I expand on Beşir Fuad's literary ideas and his hard-headed defense of literary realism. 1 Visiting Assistant Professor, Department of History, Missouri State University, Springfield, MO. 2 Review of History and Political Science, Vol. 2(3 & 4), December 2014 On 5 February 1887, around nine o'clock at night, Beşir Fuad, a former officer in the Ottoman army and an important intellectual who had contributed significantly to the debates about science and literature in the late Ottoman period, committed suicide in the private study of his house near the Sublime Porte in Istanbul. Before committing suicide, he wrote letters to his friends, including Ahmed Midhat Efendi (1844-1912), explaining the reasons for his action, as well as a brief note to the police, informing them that his death was a well-planned suicide and that they should not further bother his wife or the other members of his family with a criminal investigation. Moreover, he decided to turn his suicide into a scientific experiment, and after injecting cocaine into his left arm and carefully cutting his veins in four different places with a razor, he calmly wrote on a sheet of paper about the “effects of bleeding on the body and the feeling and sensation of death that it induced.” Thus we read: “I conducted my operation and did not feel any pain. It aches a little as it bleeds. As I was bleeding, my sister-in-law came downstairs; I warded her off, telling her that the door was closed since I was studying and writing. Fortunately, she did not enter. I cannot imagine any death sweeter than this. I raised my arm abruptly to help the blood flow out. I began to lose consciousness....” The rather gruesome details of this bizarre suicide, as well as the serenity and the surprising objectivity with which Beşir Fuad explains the reasons for it in his letters to Ahmed Midhat Efendi, probably led Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar to argue some time ago that Beşir Fuad was a “mystic of science” (ilim mistiği) who did not hesitate “to record his feelings as he was dying and to offer his dead body as a present to the Imperial School of Medicine.” 2Beşir Fuad's suicide letters to the police and his friends, including Ahmed Midhat Efendi and his publisher Mihran Efendi, were reproduced in Ahmed Midhat's work on Beşir Fuad originally written in 1887. This work was recently republished as Ahmet Mithat Efendi, Beşir Fuad (Istanbul: Oğlak Yayınları, 1996). For the police report on Fuad's suicide as well as the letters, see pp. 27-45 of the recent publication. The following page numbers refer to the recent publication. 3Ahmet Mithat Efendi, Beşir..., 32. All translations from the Ottoman and Modern Turkish are mine. 4Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar, Ondokuzuncu Asır Türk Edebiyatı Tarihi (Istanbul: Yapı Kredi Yayınları, 2006), 275. In another place, Tanpınar simply notes that “realism” in Ottoman literature begins with Beşir Fuad: “Beşir Fuad'la başlayan realizm davası...”: Tanpınar, Ondokuzuncu, 534.

Besir Fuad (1852-1887) and the Introduction of Philosophical Materialism into the Ottoman Intellectual Life