Dariush Shayegan (‎ 24 January 1935 – 22 March 2018) was one of the most consequential thinkers of contemporary Iran and the Near East.

Life and career

He was born in Tabriz from a Shia Iranian Azeri father and a Georgian Sunni mother; his mother descended from an aristocratic family from Georgia. Shayegan studied at the Sorbonne University in Paris. He was a Professor of Sanskrit and Indian religions at the Tehran University. Besides Persian, Shayegan wrote in French and English, and spoke fluently Georgian, Russian, and Turkish (both Ottoman and Azeri).. Having spent his teens at boarding school in Great Britain, Shayegan subsequently lived, during his formative years, in Geneva, where he read at the Université de Genève French literature, philosophy, Sanskrit, and political science. Shayegan received his doctorate (doctorat de troisième cycle) at the Sorbonne under the tutelage of his Doktorvater Henry Corbin, with a thesis entitled: Les relations de l'hindouisme et du soufisme d'après le "Majma’ al-Baḥrayn" de Dārā Shokūh. Shayegan has written many pioneering works on the epistemological specificities of eastern and western cultures and the possibility of dialogue between them. He was the founding director of the Iranian Center for the Studies of Civilizations, which launched its work in 1977 with an international symposium on the "dialogue between civilizations," a concept that has been selectively appropriated by the former Iranian President Mohammad Khatami. In 2009 Shayegan was awarded the inaugural Global Dialogue Prize, an international award for "outstanding achievements in the advancement and application of intercultural value research", in recognition of his dialogical conception of cultural subjectivity (for a statement of the award committee and a scholarly presentation (including a fairly complete bibliography) of Shayegan's contribution to intercultural dialogue, see the (copyrighted) webpages of this award.)

Personal life

His son, M. Rahim Shayegan, is an American historian and expert in history of ancient Iran.

Death

Shayegan died on 22 March 2018, at the age of 83 in Tehran.

Works

Main works by Shayegan: Works on Shayegan: