Logos and Civilization

Book excerpt: As the Bahá'í community becomes an ever more familiar figure on the international landscape, attention has been increasingly attracted to the teachings of its founder, Bahá'u'lláh. In this groundbreaking study, Nader Saiedi addresses key controversies and problems in the current academic literature about Bahá'u'lláh's writings. Saiedi approaches the subject from sociological, historical, philosophical, spiritual, and theological perspectives and draws on the vast body of previously untranslated original Persian and Arabic texts. Analyzing selected works that represent the three stages of Bahá'u'lláh's revelation, he argues for the conceptual continuity of Bahá'u'lláh's teaching throughout His life, from the inception of His mission in Tehran's Siyah-Chal dungeon to the last books He wrote in exile in Ottoman Palestine. Logos and Civilization is an original and probing investigation of the writings of Bahá'u'lláh, whose visionary insights into the spiritual, social, economic, and political dimensions of humanity in the context of globalization have only begun to attract the attention they merit.