Ma`rifat Farhangi Ejtemaei

A survey of the published literature on humanities policymaking, particularly within the Western world, reveals that such scholarship emphasizes—alongside other factors—at least two pivotal components: the history of scientific transformation and power. Any given theory regarding the policymaking of the humanities is inherently constrained to articulate an analysis of the logic governing the historical evolution of these disciplines, which in turn depends fundamentally upon the meaning the policymaker attributes to the status of power. Employing a comparative methodological framework and anchoring the analysis in Michel Foucault’s treatment of these twin concepts, this paper demonstrates that policymaking in Islamic humanities must inexorably account for them. Following an exposition of these two concepts in Foucault’s corpus, and drawing upon the philosophical innovations of Ṣadr al-Muta'allihīn alongside contemporary Neo-Ṣadrrian thinkers—most notably ‘Allameh Tabataba’i —this study demonstrates that a coherent conception of power and the logic of historical scientific transformation can be reconstructed within the Islamic tradition to serve as the foundation for Islamic humanities policymaking. Furthermore, man’s ontological status as an intermediate species (nawʿ mutawassiṭ), the historical and societal realizability of ultimate archetypes (anwāʿ akhīrah), the validity of truth-grounded conventional constructs (iʿtibāriyāt), the substantial motion of the soul (al-ḥarakah al-jawhāriyyah), and the Islamic philosophers' conception of power collectively establish a rigorous foundation that renders the policymaking of Islamic humanities feasible—free from the pitfalls of historical relativism or the hegemonic antagonisms inherent to modern sciences.