Badawi, Abdel Rahman

▪ 2003

ʿAbd al-Rahman Badawi 

      Egyptian philosopher and academic (b. Feb. 17, 1917, Sharabass, Egypt—d. July 25, 2002, Cairo, Egypt), was generally regarded as Egypt's first and foremost existential philosopher. Badawi received much of his education in French and earned a Ph.D. from King Fuad University (later Cairo University) in 1944. His thesis was later edited and published under the title Le Problème de la mort dans la philosophie existentielle (1964). In the early 1950s he helped draft a new Egyptian constitution, which was ultimately discarded. Badawi taught at Ibrahim Pasha University (1950–71) and at universities in Lebanon (1947–49), Libya (1967–73), Iran (1973–74), and Kuwait (1975–82). His works included Al-Zamān al-wūjudī (1945; “Existentialist Time”), studies on Aristotle, Friedrich Nietzsche, Arthur Schopenhauer, and Oswald Spengler, and a two-volume autobiography.

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