ZAKfNAGlB MAHMÜD (b.

1905)

by J. J. G. Jansen, Groningen (Niederlande)

It is possible to discern three phases in the philosophical development of Zaki

Na^b Mahmüd, who was Professor of Philosophy in the University of Cairo tiU
1968. The first, metaphysical, phase ends with ZakT's conversion to Neopositivism,
in 1946. In this period of speculative metaphysics he wrote e.g. "^Ayniyyat Ibn
Sinä", published in his QusMr wa-Lubäb, Cairo 1957, p. 259. In this essay ZakI
argues that the soul, although invisible to the human eye, is "brUliantly visible to
everyone who seeks for it with his intellect". The essay breathes out a youthful
metaphysical optimism, for one perhaps ought to envy Zaki, even if its purport is
sometimes difficult to grasp.
In Zaki's dissertation (London, King's College, 1946; published as Self-Determi-
nation. Government Press, Cairo 1949, 178 pp.; Arabic translation by Imäm '^Abd
al-Fattäh Imäm, Al-Gabr ad-Dhätt, Cairo 1973) no traces can be found of Zaki's
later neopositivist anti-metaphysical views. When, in 1946, ZakI was present at the
inaugural lecture of Alfred Ayer, he was suddenly, "as if by electricity" touched
by the conviction that the doctrine then known as logical positivism was essentially
correct. In the introduction to his thesis Zaki mentions this "enormous change of
mind", which he had undergone in the course of his work.
The first printed result of Zaki's faith in neopositivism was a book in two vol¬
umes, Al-Mantiq al-Wad^t (Positivist Logic). The preface of the first edition is
dated March 1951. The famous "-Abbäs Mahmüd al-'-Aqqäd wrote a review of this
book, in which he argued that the principle of verifiability is a rule like any other
mle, and that this mle can make no special claims to our respect and consideration.
Much to his credit, Al-'-Aqqäd points to a fundamental weakness of neopositivism
by stating that it is difficult to see how one could verify the principle of verifiabUi-
ty. (CAbbäs Mahmüd al-^ Aqqäd, Bayn al-Kutub wa-n-Näs, Beimt 1966, p. 411 -19).
Dr. Muhammad Al-Bahiyy, the well-known Azhar University bureaucrat, violent¬
ly attacked Zaki's second attempt to propagate neopositivism in Egypt. In 1953
Zaki published Khuräfat al-Mttäftztqä (Metaphysics: a Superstition) and about this
book Dr. Al-Bahiyy writtes that it "stimulates negative doubts.. It is a transcription
of 19th century Western materialism." Dr. Al-Bahiyy attempts to disqualify Zaki's
theories by explaining that they come from the same world that created colonial¬
ism, orientalism and atheism. (Muhammad a\-Bahiyy , Al-Fikr al-Islämt al-Hadtth wa-
Silat"hä bi-l-Istfmär al-Gharbi, Cairo *1975, p. 268-78).
In his third book about neopositivism, A/a/iw Falsafa ^Ilmiyya (To a Scientific
PhUosophy), Cairo 1958, ZakI stresses that neopositivism is not a 19th century
theory, and by amply discussing the genesis of neopositivism (Wiener Kreis, Witt¬
genstein etc.) he implicitly tries to answer the charges made by Dr. Al-Bahiyy. It is

XX. Deutscher Orientalistentag 1977 In Erlangen

 Zaki Nagib Mahmüd 563

somewhat ironic that for this book Zaki, at the age of 54, received the State En¬
couragement Price for 1959. xxxi, July 1959, p. 123-5; Al-Gadid,! A,
1975, p. 13-5).
From 1968 till 1973, Zaki was Professor of Philosophy in the University of Ku-
wayt, and in these years he wrote two books that at first sight have little to do with
Zaki's activities as a neopositivist philosopher: Tagdtd al-Fikr al-^Arabi(\971) and
Al-M(fqül wa-l-Lä-Ma^qäl ft Turäthnä al-Fikri (1975). These titles may be trans¬
lated as 'The Resurgence of Arabic Thought" and "Rational and Irrational in the
Arab Intellectual Heritage".
In the beginning of the first of these two books, Zaki writes that until recently
he had identified culture and civihsation with Western culture and civilisation. How¬

ever, he continues, the last years he had started to doubt: the Arabs have taken
much from the West, and perhaps much should be added to what they accepted
already, but the real problem might be more complicated: how can we amalgate
Western culture with Arab culture into one coherent system that is both Arab and
at the same time appropriate to the 20th century?
The key to the solution of this problem Zaki finds in a passage written by the
British poet and essayist Herbert Read: according to Read, "culture" is a name for
a coUection of techniques, opinions, actions, customs, tools and utensUs, and no¬
body can ever be bound to accept such a collection as a whole. Only what is useful
in such a collection should be preserved and fostered in daily life. (The quotation
Zaki gives without source in Tagdid^, p. 17, is a paraphrase of H. Read, The Politics
of the Unpolitical, London 1945, p. 67).
Put in this way, Zaki suggests, the problem becomes simpler and easier to man¬
age: which parts of the agglomeration that is called "Western culture" and which
parts of the agglomeration called "the Arab heritage" should we select to constmct
a new thing, called "Modern Arab Culture"? Zaki then proceeds to discuss this
question in detaU.
The second book, "Rational and Irrational", discusses many glorious and weU-
known episodes of the Islamic past, and is spiced with quotations and mottoes from
Al-Ghazäli that are no doubt calculated to impress a traditionalist reader of the
book. The aim of the book is, obviously, to belittle the sanctity of the past and to
analyse and clarify current Arab ideological and historical thinking. Perhaps we can
find here the link between Zakfs work as a neopositivist phUosopher and his pres¬
ent work as an examiner of ideologies and cirtic of their contents. According to
philosophers like Wittgenstein and Ayer, the aim of philosophy is not the constmc¬
tion of "phUosophical propositions", but rather the clarification of propositions.
Without philosophy, thoughts are aUowed to remain "cloudy and indistinct" — it is
the task of phUosophers to make them clear and give them sharp boundaries. (L.
Wittgenstein, Tractatus, 4.112; often quoted by Zakf, e.g. Khuräfat al-M., p. 17,23,
30 etc.)
In his early years Zaki felt sharp discontent with his own culture, in his neoposi¬
tivist years Zaki seems to have attempted to replace his own culture with a form of
Westem culture, and in his third period he "confines hmiself to works of clarifica¬
tion and analysis" (A. Ayer, Language, Truth & Logic, London 1967, p. 51, often
quoted by Zaki) — taking his own culture, its historical thinking and its ideologies,
as subject of his scrutiny.