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His Life
Abdel-Rahman Badawi was born to a rural rich family at the village of
Sharabas, Damietta Governorate. After completing his secondary education,
he joined the Faculty of Arts of the Egyptian University. Badawi has led a
stormy life. He has been a subject of controversy, agreement and
disagreement among his own as well as later generations. However, there is
general agreement that he was a pioneer and a full-fledged master of his own
field. In recognition of his outstanding achievements, Dr. Badawi has been
awarded Mubarak's Prize for letters.
Career
Over the following six years (1967 - 73), he worked as a professor of logic
and modern philosophy at the Libyan University in Beni-Ghazi. During the
academic year 1973-74, he worked at the Faculty of Theology and Islamic
Sciences at Tehran University. He also taught sophism and Islamic
philosophy for post-graduate students besides giving public lectures on
Islamic sophism to the professors and students of the faculty once every
Sunday. The outcome of these lectures was his book "History of Islamic
Sophism from the beginning till the Second Century of the Hegira", (Kuwait,
1975). In 1974, he moved to Kuwait University as a professor of
contemporary philosophy, logic, ethics and sophism at the Faculty of Arts.
Political life
With Sartre's and Heidegger's works on the subject still then new and topical,
it was perhaps inevitable that Badawi should become known throughout the
Arab world as the torch-bearer of existentialism - though, in fairness, he was
never content to be merely a disciple, and showed originality in trying to root
his ideas in his own culture, notably in his book Humanism And
Existentialism In Arab Thought (1947).
Fluent in many European languages, Badawi published more than 120 books.
His belief was that the west and Islam were complementary, and compatible,
links in a common chain. His promotion of this thesis -which runs counter to
the creeds of modern Islamists - was found in his seminal books Greek
Heritage in Islamic Civilization (1940) and Aristotle among the Arabs, as well
as countless translations of Greek thought. He also wrote about Europe's
cultural debt to the Arabs.
In a book of his own, he has remained for more than sixty years a dedicated
scholar in the realm of thought and philosophy as a creative writer, thinker,
translator and a heritage researcher. Sometimes actively engaged in
intellectual battles or other times secluded in his own cell at home or living in
voluntary exile away from home, yet at all times, his preoccupation has
always been to promote modernization and rationalism and enlighten minds.
Badawi as a Poet
In addition to his philosophical works, Badawi produced a collection of
creative writings which reflected a unique and vigorous poetic talent, a highly
sentimental nature and deep literary and aesthetic culture. Among these
writings are: "Worries of Youth", "Death and Genius", " Song of a Stranger"
and "Nymphs and Light".
The latter was produced in the form of messages fraught with emotions,
intellectual meditations and personal confessions exchanged with his beloved;
Salwa, (a Nymph from Lebanon).
Badawi confesses that he had an unfulfilled love story that drove him to
wander around the world, looking for consolation in art and beauty. Many of
critics believe that "Salwa" was just an artistic "device" of Badawi's creation
through which he expressed his ideas and intellectual arguments. This may be
supported by the fact that all the messages exchanged on both sides, were
written in the same style and intellectual logical technique peculiar to Badawi
himself.
His Works
Throughout his career, Badawi has been a prolific writer on philosophy and
literature since he wrote his first book "Nietzsche" (Cairo, September 1939).
He wrote more than 120 books, including five volumes in French, besides
hundreds of articles and research papers delivered in international scientific
conferences in Arabic, French, English, German and Spanish.