The impact of encyclopedic conceptualizations on publicization of political knowledge: A comparison of Encyclopédie and al-Rasa'il al-Ikhwan al-Safa

This study explores two major encyclopedic works that appeared in different culturaland historical contexts, guided by Immanuel Kant's definition of enlightenment as theindividual's use of reason when confronting problems. It focuses on al-Rasa'il al-Ikhwan alSafa (the Epistles of the Brethren of Purity) from the Islamic Golden Age and the Encyclopédie,primarily initiated by Denis Diderot during the Western Enlightenment. The comparisonfocuses on six key concepts divided into three groups: the individual (freedom and rights),society (morality and equality), and politics (sovereignty and justice). Each concept is analyzedthrough its philosophical development leading up to these texts and how it is discussed withinthem. This study uses an interdisciplinary approach that combines the historiographical methodof the Annales School, Derrida's deconstruction technique, and interpretive method, whileutilizing the logic of the fuzzy set theory and mathematical functions. It aims to show how bothtexts addressed similar questions despite originating from different intellectual traditions. Thestudy identifies conceptual similarities and differences and shows that rational thinking canproduce similar responses across different enlightenment periods, highlighting a sharedintellectual heritage that transcends geography and time. The findings indicate that using reasonas a transformative force—at the level of the individual, social structures, and politicalauthority—has been a common concern among thinkers separated by centuries andcivilizations. Eventually, this study argues that enlightenment is not a solely Westernphenomenon but a broader human pursuit of understanding and collective progress.