1. Introduction—Critique and Change: Al-Jabri in Contemporary Arab Thought

The editors raise a number of points in their introduction of this first volume dedicated to the Moroccan philosopher Mohammed Abed al-Jabri. First, they start with underlining the ethical predicament that the Arab world and the regional and international powers face in dealing with Arab issues. They situate the so-called “Arab Spring,” or Arab revolts, in a context of what they refer to as global mobile injustice. They critique the invisibility of Arab intellectual productions in “Western” scholarship that deals with Arab political affairs; they argue that a modern Arab political philosophy exists and deserves attention. Second, they situate al-Jabri in the post-1967 Arab intellectual tradition, as a second wave of Arab Renaissance (naḥda), and refer to him as one of its most important figures, through his magnum opus Critique of Arab Reason, which seeks reform from within. Third, they stop at some of the major intellectual advances that al-Jabri has made to Arab-Islamic modern political theory, and how his concepts are so relevant to current politics and thought.