The link between Iran and European cultures has a much older history than recent geopolitical events and, in the decades immediately preceding the Constitutional Revolution of 1906, the contact ...between Persia and Europe planted the seed in a ground ready for the growth of modern ideas, ambition, aspirations, new values and, consequently, for the birth of a modern class made up of intellectuals inspired by the Enlightenment and Freemasonry. The following essay will address the history of freemasonry in Persia: from the first contacts that occurred with the first trips of Iranian diplomats to Europe, up to the successful attempt to create a recognized lodge in 1908 in Tehran, passing through the history of the controversial "House of oblivion" in the second half of the nineteenth century.
Legitimacy is a major issue for the stability of any form of government and there are many studies and various scientific/philosophical models that try address the question of the forms of legitimacy ...and how they lead different peoples to give their consent to as many different methods of government. In the research hereby presented, the case study of Iran, the three types of legitimacy theorized by the German sociologist Max Weber will be emphasized and, therefore, this essay will try to demonstrate how they are the most practical method for analyzing the sociopolitical evolution of the Iranian leaderships over the past hundred years.
The present epoch is characterized by a trait over others: the renewed perception of uncertainty. It is the main engine of the current climate where one relentlessly looks for scapegoats to take the ...blame of the inability to understand. The possibility of analyzing configurations that the current paradigm cannot explain or understand, and which therefore condemns, is a 'thinking differently' (Rella, 1987) that leaves anyone displaced. Perhaps it is time to recognize that many of our frameworks of understanding are too rigid, preventing comprehension. Accepting the fact that culture is perpetually in fieri and that it resolves itself in coexisting and conflicting versions that focus on different themes has interesting consequences: it involves the denial of the absolutist claims of the dominant paradigm and, consequently, implies the synchronic coexistence of different structures of meaning. Without this awareness we tend to generalize: for example, we tend to group all Middle East peoples into categories defined a priori as 'Arabs', 'Muslims' or, worse, 'Terrorists', ignoring their diversity and variety. This is a legacy of Orientalism that leads to the analysis of different structures and phenomena using consolidated paradigms of Western culture (Said, 1978). A new inclusive paradigm is needed which should stimulate the knowledge and understanding of a world seems so distant and has so many facets within it. It is a paradigm, moreover, that can take into account the simultaneous presence of contradictory elements and make a new sense out of them. Iranian society is actually trying to do this: its population is able to make different points of view empirically cohabit, even though they are victims of the stereotypes of Western common point of view, being a majority Muslim nation - albeit of a less known branch - and on the borders of the so-called Arab world. It has based its essence on cohabitation, which becomes the founder of the spirit with which over time the Persians have faced the cultural clashes (Huntington, 1996) and that, despite
The "Land of Fire". Multiculturalism and intercultural identities in "A taxi driver in Baku". National identities are of crucial importance for understanding the development of any society and, in ...addition to the classic structures used to study them, the importance of using the imaginary perspective must be taken into account, since the coexistence of different structures of meaning and archetypes presents new and different interpretations hitherto underestimated. The existence of common patterns between various geographically distant cultures opens up a fascinating question as to how effectively the identity of a population is defined within precise boundaries and how much it can share or not common traits with the identity of another nation. The example analyzed in this review is the complex identity of the inhabitants of Azerbaijan, since this country has always been considered a center of confrontation between ideologies and cultures and, therefore, it is necessary to recognize the author Barbara Cassani the merit of having succeeded in presenting in the best way the social and identitary landscape of this nation, with her book "Un tassista a Baku", highlighting the multiculturality and interculturality that characterizes it.
The shadow of Ahriman. The contradictorial essence of evil, from Persian mythology to Western culture. At all time human beings have been questioning the possible origin controlling evil impulses and ...actions resulting from it. The ancient Persian religion called Zoroastrianism suggests a reading key in whichwe can find a complex “dualistic monotheism” which deals with the existence of two contradictorially opposed priciples inside its divinity. The struggle created by the good/evil dichotomy perfectly fits in the definition of “contradictorial” proposed by Gilbert Durand, describing an opposition that cannot be overcome by a subsequent synthesis but remains creating a never-ending energy inside us. This dualism is innate, as pointed out in ancient times religious practices in Persia and yet it reaches us to knock on our doors. The entity which harbours in the god called Ahura Mazda (in the old Avestic language) or Ohrmazd (in modern Persian) is called Angra Mainyu - or Ahriman, in Farsi language. The figure of this entity which harbours in us, creating the natural dualism between good and evil, has influenced many thinkers which have given their contribute to form our Western culture. To mention some of them: Voltaire mentions it in his “Philosophical Dictionary”, Leopardi dedicates his poem “Ad Arimane” to it, it helps Freud to formulate the dualism between Eros and Thanatos and affects Jung while he formulates his archetypes. Therefore, the following essay aims to bring to light the fil rouge connecting apparently distant cultures which are based on the good/evil dichotomy; distinctive characteristic of the present-day society’s atmosphere of overwhelming uncertainty .
