Blunt

As an avid reader of Immanuel Kant during my teenage years, I disciplined myself morally in ways that external chaos could never achieve. Kant’s categorical imperative became my inner compass: act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law. This pure reason-based ethics grounded me, turning personal turmoil into a commitment to principles that transcend circumstances. The loss of Ali Larijani, a true Kantian thinker who authored multiple works on Kant’s philosophy, including explorations of mathematical method, metaphysics, and synthetic a priori judgments in his thought, feels profoundly personal to me. Here was a man who confronted what he saw as a materialist, genocidal empire on high moral ground, much like Kant’s insistence on treating humanity always as an end in itself, never merely as a means. His death is not just a political event; it is a blow to that rare fusion of philosophical rigor and principled action. The United States, through its Rewards for Justice program, placed a bounty of up to $10 million on Larijani’s head (along with other senior Iranian officials, including Mojtaba Khamenei) just days before his reported killing in an Israeli strike. This act reduces a human being, regardless of political role, to a price tag, a means to an end in geopolitical maneuvering. If this practice were to become a universal principle, no head of state would ever be safe again. Imagine Donald Trump, or any leader, subject to the same logic: bounties issued by adversaries, turning political opposition into licensed assassination markets. The world would descend into a state where dignity evaporates, reason is subordinated to power, and perpetual insecurity reigns, precisely the antithesis of Kant’s vision of a kingdom of ends, where rational beings coexist under laws they give themselves. Larijani, this committed Kantian (Syed Kantian, as some might say), left a piercing question for the Muslim world in his final public message before his martyrdom: Which side are you on? He framed the confrontation as one between America/Israel on one side and Muslim Iran/forces of resistance on the other, urging Islamic nations to unite rather than remain silent or complicit. He emphasized that true security, progress, and independence come not from narrow nationalism but from solidarity across the Ummah, echoing a bloc-like unity similar to the European Union. Today’s EU stands, in many ways, on Kant’s anti-nationalist philosophy. Kant viewed nationalism as outdated, a relic of particularism that must yield to cosmopolitan right and perpetual peace through federations of free states. Larijani, in his last message, similarly rejected narrow nationalism for Iran or the Muslim world, advocating instead for a collective strength akin to a supranational bloc that could guarantee dignity and autonomy for all, much like Kant’s ideal of a federation transcending sovereign rivalries. I am in no position to write a full obituary for him yet; the shock is still too raw, the grief too immediate. But I will write one, in time. For now, this is simply an acknowledgment: a Kantian light has dimmed, yet the imperative he lived by, and that he helped instill in me, remains undimmed. We must will a world where such principles prevail, not bounties and eliminations.

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Ali Larijani wrote a book on Descartes. The title is Critique and Examination of Descartes’ Rules for the Direction of the Mind. Descartes wrote the Rules long ago. It was unfinished. Twenty-one rules. They show how to guide the mind. Divide problems. Order thoughts. Count everything. Seek clear ideas. Larijani reads it closely. He sees the method. Doubt everything uncertain. Strip away the false. Reach the sure thing. I think, therefore I am. He takes the method further. Not just for one man. For the state. The state must doubt too. Doubt foreign models. Doubt Western values. Doubt international laws that bind. Doubt the stories others tell. Doubt like a knife. Cut away imitation. Cut away dependence. Then the state finds its own certainty. I critique, therefore I am. I think alone, therefore I stand alone. This is absolute self-possession. The state owns its mind. Owns its path. No outside master. Larijani links it to Iran after the revolution. Neither East nor West. Build your own reason. Build your own strength. Be patient. Be independent. He mixes Descartes with Islamic thought. Not rejection. Transformation. The old method serves the new state. The book is sharp. It criticizes Descartes too. Points out gaps. But the core stays. Doubt leads to freedom. For the man. For the nation. That is the book. Simple lines. Deep water beneath.