Zaki al-Arsuzi
| Zakī al-Arsūzī | |
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al-Arsuzi before 1939
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| Born | June 1899 Latakia, Ottoman Syria |
| Died | 2 July 1968 (aged 69) Damascus, Syria |
| Era | 20th-century philosophy |
| Region | Eastern philosophy |
| School | Ba'athism, Arab nationalism |
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Main interests
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Politics, philosophy, sociology, nationalism, philology, history |
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Notable ideas
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Co-founder of Ba'athism (with Aflaq and al-Bitar), The Genius of Arabic in its Tongue |
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Influenced
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Zakī al-Arsūzī (in Arabic: زكي الأرسوزي; June 1899, in Latakia – 2 July 1968, in Damascus) was a Syrian philosopher, philologist, sociologist, historian, and Arab nationalist. His ideas played a significant role in the development of Ba'athism and its political movement. He published several books during his lifetime, most notably The Genius of Arabic in its Tongue (1943).
Born into a middle-class family in Latakia, Syria, al-Arsuzi studied at the Sorbonne, where he became interested in nationalism. In 1930, he returned to Syria, where he became a member of the League of National Action (LNA) in 1933. In 1938, he moved to Damascus because of his disillusionment with party work, and in 1939, he left the LNA. In Damascus al-Arsuzi established and headed a group consisting of mostly secondary school pupils who would often discuss European history, nationalism and philosophy. Shortly after leaving the LNA, al-Arsuzi established the Arab National Party, an Arab nationalist party with a "defined creed". It was not a success and, on his return to Syria in November 1940 after a brief stay in Baghdad, al-Arsuzi established a new party, the Arab Ba'ath; by 1944, however, most of its members had left and joined Michel Aflaq's and Salah al-Din al-Bitar's Arab Ba'ath Movement, which subscribed to a nearly identical doctrine.
In 1947, the two movements merged, forming a single Arab Ba'ath Party. Despite the merger, Al-Arsuzi neither attended its founding conference nor was given membership.
During the rest of the 1940s and 1950s, al-Arsuzi stayed out of politics and worked as a teacher. He made a comeback during the 1960s power struggle in the Ba'ath Party between Aflaq and al-Bitar on one hand and Salah Jadid and Hafiz al-Assad on the other. When Aflaq and al-Bitar lost the power struggle and were forced to escape from Syria in 1966, al-Arsuzi replaced Aflaq as the main ideologue of the Syrian-led faction of the Ba'ath Party.
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