The Problematics of Enlightenment

Reviews / Votes

"Zeyad el Nabolsy masterfully captures Wahba's profound philosophical insights, bridging the cultural and intellectual divide between East and West. Wahba's work, originally penned in Arabic, offers a fresh and essential perspective on the Enlightenment from North Africa, challenging conventional narratives and enriching the global discourse. El Nabolsy's translation not only preserves the depth and nuance of Wahba's ideas but also makes them accessible to a wider audience, making this book a significant contribution to contemporary philosophical thought." -- Robert K. Beshara, <i>author of Transmodern Cinema and Decolonial Film Theory<i/> "The Problematics of Enlightenment collects together a number of essays by the Egyptian thinker Mourad Wahba, whose common denominator is an unadulterated admiration for Enlightenment ideals, which he regards as universal rather than exclusively European. Wahba's advocacy of liberalism and secularism represents a significant strand in twentieth-century Arab-Islamic and North African philosophy, which no student of these philosophical traditions can afford to ignore. The philosophical ideas that he advocates are very accessible and the translation is lucid, so these texts would work well in a range of introductory university courses. Moreover, the concise introduction by Zeyad el Nabolsy does an admirable job of situating Wahba's ideas in their intellectual context and provides a sympathetic but critical look at his philosophical outlook, contrasting it with decolonial and Marxist thought." -- Muhammad Ali Khalidi, University of New York