Babak Ahmadi

Babak Ahmadi is an Iranian philosopher, social scientist, and a film critic living in Tehran.

He began his career as a translator by translating György Lukács's "History and Class Consciousness" and publishing it in Tehran in 1979. In 1983 he translated and published three film scripts by Carl Theodor Dreyer, "Day of Wrath", "Ordet", and "Gertrud". In 1984 he published his original work on Robert Bresson, "Baad har koja ke bekhaahad mivazad" ("The wind will blow wherever it wants"), the first book Persian-language book on Bresson. Three years later, in 1987, he published a book on Andrei Tarkovsky, "Tarkovsky". Again, Ahmadi's book was the first book written about Tarkovsky in Persian.

In the following years Ahmadi became more involved with philosophy and politics, giving lectures for university students and setting up classes in Anjoman-e Hekmat va Falsafe (The Society of Knowledge and Philosophy). In 1988 he published a selection of Walter Benjamin's essays, with an introduction on him and the Frankfurt school. Some of the free courses he offered became the basis for additional books including "Sakhtar va Ta'vil-e Matn" ("Structure and Interpretation of Text", about literary theory,) "Modernite va Andishe-ye Enteghadi" ("Modernity and Critical Mind", about different views on Modernity and its criticisms,) and "Ketaab-e Tardid" ("The Book of Doubts", about postmodern thought). His lectures and books introduced many Iranians to Western thinkers such as Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Walter Benjamin, Mikhail Bakhtin, Jürgen Habermas, Paul Ricoeur, Edward Saeed, and many others.