Dr. Saad Al Bazei’s new book emphasizes his conviction of the fundamental role played by concepts in the development of human thinking and the growth of cultures. Published by the Arab Cultural Center, “Concepts of Migration,” highlights the idea of French philosopher Gilles Deleuze about the philosophical significance of concepts, defining philosophy as the formation of concepts.
But the book does not explore the concepts themselves or their definitions, but focuses on their transfer between languages and cultures, in addition to the changes and updates driven by those transfers.
"Concepts can flow from an environment to another or from a text to another within the same culture," the author writes.
This fluidity is the deliberate migration linked to the transfer of ideas, emotions, knowledge, arts, or literatures. In other words, it is the migration that plays the role of transformation and makes the transformation at the same time. The book focuses on specific concepts and transformations, and explores examples on the change resulting from the concept transfers from European environments to Arab-Islamic ones.
For instance, the book discusses feminism and its transfer from the incubating western environment to another different environment in the Arab region, the concept of comparison in the literary studies, and the concept of enemy in the formation of cultural ties.
It also highlights the cultural transformations linked to concepts transfer by providing some analyses under different titles such as "Books and Civilization Transformations," in addition to an analysis of the position of Andalusia in the history of Arab-European ties, and a discussion of Martin Heidegger's book "What is Philosophy?", which the author translated a part of in the last chapter of his book.
