Aydın meselesi ve daimon: Şerif Mardin ve H. Ünal Nalbantoğlu üzerine yorumlar

Abstract

The article weighs the explanatory potential of arguments of two Turkish social scientists, Şerif Mardin and H. Ünal Nalbantoğlu, with regard to the meaning they accorded to the daemonic in understanding the arid one-sidedness of Turkish intellectuals. While the daemonic stood as the wholesome human character which includes exuberance and even impetuosity for Mardin, Nalbantoğlu understood it as the internal instigator of a sober yet passionate persistence after one's cause with-out losing touch with reality, workmanship as well as thinking about being in the world. Hannah Arendt's distinction between "the what" and "the who" illuminated the path of interpretation followed in the article, where Mardin's interest was likened to an effort to understand what an intellectual would look like whereas Nalbantoğlu's represented a concern to make sense of who the intellectual is in the world we live in. As their expositions are interpreted and expanded respectively, it became clear that neither Mardin nor Nalbantoğlu paid due attention to an understudied contention of Mardin himself in that Islamic mysticism (or tasavvuf) has room for the prospering of the daemonic. An inquiry into Islamic mysticism revealed that there are indeed cultural openings for the rise of the daemonic, and this is an important line of inquiry. However, those openings are neither common nor opportune enough to become a staple of the Turkish intellectual, who is yet to become a thinking being without sacrificing any part of a multi-sided character and workmanship. Consequently, the arguments of both Mardin and Nalbantoğlu are very significant, however, their explanations do not always seem adequate and beg further exposition.