CONTESTING HORIZONS OF MEANING IN GLOBAL MODERNITY
RECONSTRUCTING ALI KHAMENEI'S VISION OF AN ALTERNATIVE CIVILIZATION THROUGH THE LENS OF TRANSCENDENT THEOSOPHY
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.67281/issue.v4i1.65Keywords:
Horizon of Meaning, Global Modernity, Transcendent Philosophy, Alternative Modernity, Multipolarity of CivilizationsAbstract
This study aims to analyze the thought of Ali Khamenei as an articulation of an alternative civilizational rationality amid the dominance of a material-instrumental form of global modernity. Departing from the assumption that contemporary global conflicts cannot be reduced merely to struggles over geopolitical and economic interests, this research situates modern conflicts as contests over horizons of meaning in defining humanity, freedom, progress, and the ultimate purpose of social life. The study employs a philosophical-anthropological approach grounded in Mulla Sadra’s Transcendent Philosophy (Hikmah Muta‘āliyah) as its primary analytical framework. A digital triangulation method is applied to the primary corpus consisting of Majmoo’eh-ye Rahnameh, Volumes 1, 17, 21, and 24. The findings reveal three major conclusions. First, the conflict underlying global modernity is fundamentally a clash of ontological and epistemological horizons of meaning. Western modernity is largely shaped by a materialist-instrumental rationality that reduces human beings to utilitarian and secular dimensions, whereas Ali Khamenei’s paradigm offers an alternative horizon grounded in spirituality, tawḥīd (divine unity), and human dignity as the foundation of civilization. Second, Ali Khamenei’s critique does not constitute a wholesale rejection of modernity; rather, it represents a rearticulation of an alternative modernity in which progress, scientific advancement, and political independence remain oriented toward divine purposes. Third, through the perspective of Transcendent Philosophy—particularly the concepts of aṣālat al-wujūd (the primacy of existence), tashkīk al-wujūd (the gradation of existence), al-ḥarakah al-jawhariyyah (substantial motion), and the human being as wujūd rābiṭ (relational existence)—this study demonstrates that Ali Khamenei develops the idea of a multipolar modernity that concerns not only the distribution of geopolitical power but also the plurality of civilizational horizons of meaning. Such a framework enables each nation to actualize its own form of modernity on the basis of its historical, religious, spiritual, and socio-cultural values.
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