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The Senility of Group Solidarity and Contemporary Multiculturalism: A Word of Warning from a Medieval Arabic Thinker
Author(s) -
Verza Annalisa
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
ratio juris
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.344
H-Index - 10
eISSN - 1467-9337
pISSN - 0952-1917
DOI - 10.1111/raju.12199
Subject(s) - sociology , solidarity , epistemology , multiculturalism , argument (complex analysis) , politics , political philosophy , field (mathematics) , law , philosophy , political science , pedagogy , biochemistry , chemistry , mathematics , pure mathematics
This paper discusses the thought of the medieval Maghrebin thinker Ibn Khaldun through the prism of the philosophy and sociology of law and politics. I will first try to illustrate how, even if Ibn Khaldun wrote in the fourteenth century, he anticipated many core concepts that are characteristic of modern Western sociological and philosophical thought. The argument is thus made that his thought can, and indeed must, be rescued from the wide neglect that, outside the specialized field of Khaldunian studies, it has so far suffered in our treatment and teaching of the history of politico‐legal sociological thought. I will then claim that the scheme he devised to explain the rise and fall of civilizations can also, with due care, be used to frame and understand the political and cultural landscape in which the West and the Islamic world are presently engaged in a difficult dialogue. The discussion is in this sense offered in the hope of making a contribution to the current politico‐legal philosophical and sociological debate on multiculturalism, and on the limits of its scope.