Background
Yazdi, Mehdl Halri was born in 1923 in Qum.
Yazdi, Mehdl Halri was born in 1923 in Qum.
Studied at Qum. Mashhad and Tehran Universities, and later at University of Michigan and University of Toronto.
Taught at Harvard, Georgetown, McGill and Oxford Universities and later at Tehran University.
Although Mehdi Hairi had a traditional religious education in Iran and became interested in a wide range of philosophical traditions, especially those stemming from Persian thinkers of the ishraqi school of mystics. He is far from parochial in his scope, combining a wide range of medieval and modem Islamic philosophy with current philosophy as practised in the West. His work on religion is characterized by a concern with an analytic approach, and even when considering difficult aspects of mysticism he uses an approach more normal among the medieval Islamic philosophers and contemporary Western philosophers than among the Shi'ite Persian religious authorities. Through his students and his writings Hairi has come to have a considerable influence on Islamic philosophers. He has demonstrated how it is possible to employ a variety of philosophical techniques when dealing with important theoretical and practical topics, and in particular how useful Western philosophy can be in combination with Islamic philosophy. This has not always endeared him to the religious authorities, and many of those influenced by him arc prudent to be reticent about that influence, but many modern figures in Islamic philosophy find his work very helpful in dealing with a range of philosophical problems.