Dariush Ashoori

Dariush Ashoori (Persian: داریوش آشوری , born August 2, 1938 in Tehran) is a prominent Iranian thinker, author, translator, researcher, and public intellectual. He lives in Paris, France.

Work

He studied at the Faculty of Law, Political Sciences and Economics of the University of Tehran, and has been visiting professor of Persian language and literature at Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, taught in Oriental Institute of the Oxford University, and lectured on political philosophy and political sociology at the University of Tehran. He was a member of the second Academy of Persian Language from 1970 to 1978.

By his prolific publications in several disciplines he is considered an influential and referential figure in contemporary literary and linguistic life of Iran.He has worked extensively as author, essayist, translator, literary critique, encyclopedist, and lexicologist. His intellectual interests cover a wide interdisciplinary range, including political sciences, literature, philosophy and linguistics. His main domain of intellectual focus is the cultural and linguistic matters of his native country, Iran, as a Third World country encountering modernity.

He has made vast contributions to the development of the Persian vocabulary and terminology in the domains of human sciences and philosophy by coining new words and modifying existing ones. His works in this domain are compiled in his Farhang-e 'olum-e ensāni (A Dictionary of Human Sciences). Among his major works stands a hermeneutical, intertextual study of the Divan of Hafez (Erfān o rendi dar she'r-e Hafez) which introduces a new approach to the understanding of the great classical poet. As translator, he has translated numerous classical literary and philosophical works by Nietzsche, Machiavelli, Shakespeare and others into Persian. As a distinguished stylist writer he has elevated modern Persian prose to new standards.

Publications

• Articles :

More than 50 long articles in journals of literature and social sciences in the following domains:

• • Historical and socio-cultural problems of Iranian society’s encounter with the Western modern culture.
  • Literary criticism concerning with classical and modern Persian poetry, and hermeneutical insights into the language of the poetry and poetical way of thought.
  • Critical and analytical study of the contemporary Persian language dealing with its handicaps in encounter with lexical and terminological demands of modern sciences and thought, proposing methodological and technical ways for its development.

• Selected Books :
  • Ta’rifhā va mafhum-e farhang (Concept and Definitions of Culture)
  • Erfān o rendi dar she’r-e Hāfez
  • Mā va moderniyat (a collection of articles on the cultural crisis of Iranian society facing with modernity)
  • Farhang-e ‘olum-e ensāni (English-Persian Dictionary for Human Sciences)
  • She’r-o-andisheh (Poetry and Thought)
  • Bāz-andishi-ye zabān-e fārsi (Persian Language, Rethought)
  • Dānesh-nāme-ye siāsi (An Encyclopaedia of Politics)
  • Chenin goft Zartosht, a translation of the Also Sprach Zarathustra by F. Nietzsche

Sources

• Iran Heritage: The Legacy of the Constitutional Revolution in Iran: A Hundred Years of Struggle For Democracy, Lecture Series by Dariush Ashoori
• Aftab article on Dariush Ahouri

See also

• Intellectual movements in Iran
• Persian philosophy

External links

• (Persian) Official weblog

Persondata
Name	Ashouri, Daryoush
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Date of birth	August 2, 1938
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