Background
Hanafi, Hasan was born on February 13, 1935 in Cairo, Egypt.
Hanafi, Hasan was born on February 13, 1935 in Cairo, Egypt.
BA in Philosophy, Cairo University (1956). Doctorate at the University of Paris, Sorbonne, with a thesis on Les Méthodes d’exégèse. Essai sur la science des fondements de la compréhension Ilm Usul alEqh, later published by the Conseil Supérieur des Arts, Lettres et Sciences Sociales du Caire (1965).
Infis: Modem Islamic thinkers and radicals such as Iqbal, al-Mawdudi and Sayyed Qutb, and by Hegel, Bergson, Husserl and Ricoeur.
1967, Professor of Philosophy, Cairo University. Subsequently. Visiting Professor in Universities in Europe, Africa and Asia. Published many essays on Western philosophers in the magazines Al-Katih and Al-Fikr al-Muasir.
Founded a magazine, Al-Yasar al-hlami [The Islamic Left].
The most significant feature of Hanafi’s thought is the attempt to apply phenomenological interpretation to Islam, as a religion and a system of life. Hanafi uses the necessity of intersubjectivity to overcome the conflict between the rich and the poor, colonialist and subdued peoples. East and West. A genuine renewal of human—and particularly Islamic—thought and society will occur, he maintained. only when everyone becomes a subject of history, not merely an object of study and/or exploitation. This affirmation of subjectivity invites Eastern and especially Muslim peoples to reappraise their dignity and their cultural and political authority. In Hanafi’s view Islam is a revolutionary religion because it leads individuals to live horizontally, in a community, without vertical oppression. Islam is a religion of justice, too, and God is the universal principle ensuring that all people are equal. The unicity of God is essentially telos. will and action. In his doctoral thesis Hanafi wrote that consciousness requires a reality aiming at truth. In later works the most important philosophical issue is not the knowledge of God’s attributes and essence, but the accomplishment of social justice: theology must be superseded by anthropology. Hanafi argues that freedom means making ourselves free; unicity is mainly the process of unification; religion—and Islam in particular, can be a redeeming force and the foundation of an Islamic ‘left’ looks unavoidable in order to fight against any kind of wrong and to bear witness to the upheaval implied in the Islamic profession of faith. ‘There is no god but God and Muhammad is the Messenger of God’ means for Hanafi the establishment of a universal code of ethics and the realization of prophecy by the declaration of the independence of reason and the autonomy of will. Sources: Personal communication.