This book builds on my earlier study of Ahmad Fardid’s thought.1 I have analyzed the gharbzadegi philosophy as the complex site of a transnational circulation of ideas, producing a significant discursive formation in the Iranian political imagination. The young Fardid was influenced by the fin de siècle French critique of modern Western rationality pioneered by Henri Bergson. Spiritual Islam, particularly in Corbin’s vision, inspired Fardid with a platform offering a new interpretation of Islamic and Iranian traditions. At this point Fardid’s ideas were close to European counter-Enlightenment ideology.