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Liberating Ayatollahs and Tyrannical Priests: A Study of the Crisis of Power and Reason in Hobbes and Foucault

Thesis advisor: Christoper Kelly / This dissertation seeks to explain why the two Western political thinkers best known for their thoughts on power came to have an utterly opposite understanding of political religion. In his writings on the Islamic revolution of 1979, Michel Foucault welcomed the leadership of the Iranian ayatollahs in the popular struggle against Western powers. In contrast, Hobbes accused religious authorities of promulgating superstitious doctrines which ultimately benefitted them while engulfing the society in civil wars. This dissertation argues that the two thinkers' contrasting assessments of political religion reflects their deepest theoretical commitments, which prove to be illustrative of modern rationalism, and its subsequent deconstruction by post-modernism. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2022. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Political Science.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:BOSTON/oai:dlib.bc.edu:bc-ir_109563
Date January 2022
CreatorsAlipour, Mohammad Javad
PublisherBoston College
Source SetsBoston College
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeText, thesis
Formatelectronic, application/pdf
RightsCopyright is held by the author, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise noted.

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