TY - JOUR
T1 - Turning to the East, Rescuing the West
T2 - Sufism and Humanism in Ivan Aguéli’s Thought
AU - Hatina, Meir
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 University of Birmingham.
PY - 2022
Y1 - 2022
N2 - Ivan Aguéli became a celebrated painter in Sweden, his native country. However, his pioneering role in the rapprochement between West and East in the early twentieth century has remained largely unexplored. Aguéli’s universal humanism, with Sufism as its main lever, is analysed and located within a transnational intellectual landscape through networks of people, ideas and print media. By attracting Western pilgrims, Sufism served as a nexus of cultural transfer from the Middle East to Europe, thus casting doubts on the prevailing paradigm of Western enlightenment as the backbone of global intellectual history. Sufism was presented by Aguéli as a spiritual philosophy that dealt with the liberation of man from materialism and selfishness. The article deals with a number of issues: How did Aguéli transform Islam and Sufism into a cosmopolitan vision? To what extent was his humanism nurtured by anarchist philosophy, which promoted a just society? Did Aguéli reconcile the anarchist perception of human beings as free creatures with the Sufi perception of total submission to a Sufi master? Consideration of these questions will shed light on a moralist intellectual, whose own personal experience captured a defiant European mood, intertwining rationalism and esotericism, material progress and universal brotherhood.
AB - Ivan Aguéli became a celebrated painter in Sweden, his native country. However, his pioneering role in the rapprochement between West and East in the early twentieth century has remained largely unexplored. Aguéli’s universal humanism, with Sufism as its main lever, is analysed and located within a transnational intellectual landscape through networks of people, ideas and print media. By attracting Western pilgrims, Sufism served as a nexus of cultural transfer from the Middle East to Europe, thus casting doubts on the prevailing paradigm of Western enlightenment as the backbone of global intellectual history. Sufism was presented by Aguéli as a spiritual philosophy that dealt with the liberation of man from materialism and selfishness. The article deals with a number of issues: How did Aguéli transform Islam and Sufism into a cosmopolitan vision? To what extent was his humanism nurtured by anarchist philosophy, which promoted a just society? Did Aguéli reconcile the anarchist perception of human beings as free creatures with the Sufi perception of total submission to a Sufi master? Consideration of these questions will shed light on a moralist intellectual, whose own personal experience captured a defiant European mood, intertwining rationalism and esotericism, material progress and universal brotherhood.
KW - Ibn ʿArabī
KW - Islam
KW - Orientalism
KW - Sufism
KW - anarchism
KW - colonialism
KW - esotericism
KW - universalism
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85118444523&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/09596410.2021.1989815
DO - 10.1080/09596410.2021.1989815
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AN - SCOPUS:85118444523
SN - 0959-6410
VL - 33
SP - 67
EP - 89
JO - Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations
JF - Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations
IS - 1
ER -