Karl Popper and 

the Iranian Intellectuals 

Ali Paya 

Abstract 

The ways in which Popper's ideas have been introduced to 

Iranian society will be discussed, and the reactions of several 

prominent Jranian intellectual groups, namely, the leftists, the 

Heideggerians, the religious conservatives, the religious intel­

lectuals and the moderate seculars, to Popper's views wilJ be 

critically appraised. 

The upshot of the paper is that while Popper's views have been 

used and misused in the power struggle between various groups 

in post-revolutionary ]ran, they also have been instrumental in 

creating colJective intentionalities and shared understandings con­

cerning a range of important concepts in such diverse fields as 

epistemology, politics, culture, social action, and religious beliefs. 

Introduction 

In this paper, following a brief historical background concerning the intro­

duction of Popper's ideas to the Iranian public, I shall concentrate on the 

approaches taken by a number of distinct Iranian intellectual groups toward 

Popper's views. The groups in question are the leftists, the Heideggerians, the 
religious conservatives, the religious intellectuals and the moderate seculars. 

Ali Paya is associated with the National Research Institute for Science Policy, the Ministry 
of Science, Research and Technology (Iran), and the Centre for the Study of Democracy, 
University of Westminster (UK). The author would like to thank Abdulkarim Soroush, 

Ezzatollah Fouladvand, Ali Parvin, and Philip Bowman, among other coUeagues, who read 
an earlier version of this paper and made useful suggestions, as well as Khashayar Dayh imi, 

Amir Faryar, Hossein Paya, and Homan Panahandeh, who were kind enough to provide bib­
liographical data and historical information.