The Arab Political Mind Its Determinants and Manifestations

Description

Politics is an act, with its own determinants and manifestations. It is a social act, distinct from a power relationship between two parties, one of whom exercises a particular kind of authority over the other—the authority of governance. The determinants of political action, as an authority exercised within a society, and its theoretical and practical manifestations, which are social in nature, collectively constitute what Dr. Mohammed Abed Al-Jabri calls “the political mind.” This is because the determinants and manifestations of political action are all subject to an internal logic that governs and regulates the relationships between them—a logic based on “principles” and mechanisms that can be described and analyzed. It is “political” because its function is not to produce knowledge, but rather to exercise power—the power of governance—or to explain how it is exercised. The subject of this book is the “mind” of Arab reality. By this, Dr. Al-Jabri means the determinants of political practice and its manifestations in Arab-Islamic civilization and its extensions to the present day. In this study, Al-Jabri employs two types of concepts: one borrowed from contemporary social and political thought, and the other derived from the Arab-Islamic heritage.