Abstract

Constantine Zurayk, one of the most important Arab thinkers of the twentieth century, has examined and reflected on the principal political events and cultural crises of the period. His main philosophical theses are seen in relation to the "Kulturphilosophie" of turn-of-the-century German thinkers, in particular to the philosophies of life of Dilthey, Nietzsche, and Simmel and to the Neo-Kantian thought of Ernst Cassirer. Both the virtues and shortcomings of Zurayk's philosophy of culture, especially in the Arab context, are seen in his distinction between, and elaboration on, the descriptive and normative approaches to culture