Roman Seidel article “Decentring the Grand Narrative of the Enlightenment: The Transregional Micronarrative of Mīrzā Āqā Khān Kermānī’s Writings in Global Intellectual History,” has just been published in the Volume Thinking the Re-Thinking of the World. Decolonial Challenges to the Humanities and Social Sciences from Africa, Asia and the Middle East, edited by Kai Kresse and Abdoulaye Sounaye. Seidel’s article discusses some methodological reflections such as epistemic asymmetries and the idea of philosophical micro narratives.

The network members Mansooreh Khalilizand and Kata Moser published each a paper in the anthology “Women’s Contemporary Readings of Medieval (and Modern) Arabic Philosophy” edited by Saloua Chatti. The paper by Mansooreh Khalilizand focuses on the debate on primacy of existence (aṣālat al-wujūd) versus the primacy of essence (aṣālat al-māhiyya). Khalilizand aims at problematizing and questioning what has been taken as a matter of course in the research, i.e. the implication of the debate on the primacy of existence versus the primacy of essence, formulated as a strict dichotomy in a particular stage of Islamic philosophy.
Kata Moser examines in her study the contemporary Arabic discourse on the legitimacy and nature of metaphysics. In particular the study presents and discusses the notions of Zaki Naguib Mahmoud, Youssef Karam, and Yumna Tarief El-Kholy on Metaphysics.