However...

However, as Syed Farid Alatas has demonstrated cogently the alternative sociology is desirably possible when the students of social sciences get in touch with their respective traditions which enable them to build new concepts for explaining ‘other’ historical experiences and social realities .

(2006) One creative mode of relating to alternative traditions is to build upon the works of thinkers who belong to an intellectual tradition in an intellectual fashion and not long for a tradition in a fetishistic manner. In other words, Allama Jafari is rooted in the soil of perennial tradition of religio perennis but that has not stopped him to establish constructive dialog with other traditions such as European, Russian, Chinese, Indian, and many other schools of thought.

In this work, I have attempted to demonstrate the contours of an alternative approach to sociological problematiques within the work of Allama Jafari which is aimed at reviving the ‘’universal’’ within the parameters of human sciences.

In other words, the revival of alternative discourses is only possible when one’s classics are different than the disciplinary canonical paradigm but this does not mean to exclude other streams of thought such as disciplinary discourses embodied in the pantheon of sociological temple. Last but not least, I would like to emphasize that any attempt to identify the thread that runs through Allama Jafari’s writings will soon uncover an unequivocally humaneistic [^2] worldview.

From the 194os on to the end of his life in 1998, this was Allama Jafari’s guiding principle. [^1]: This work is composed of 180 pages in Persian. At the Center for Allama Jafari Studies in Iran the lectures have been edited by one of my students at Sharif University of Technology namely Vahide Sadeghi who has gone through all the papers and edited them in a presentable fashion. The book has not been published yet but the director of the Center for Allama Jafari Studies, i.e.

Ali Jafari is intending to carry out the task by this year. In other words, the reason I have not given page numbers whenever I have quoted from this work is that it has not been paginated yet. Therefore I have referred to chapters rather than pages in these lectures. Additionally, the lectures were conducted in Persian and the translations are mine and I have not rendered literally. On the contrary, I have translated freely and used aspects of these lectures.