Zaki Naguib Mahmoud

In particular, in The Myth of Metaphysics, he empathized on the well-known idea of the Logical Positivists that non-scientific phrases that cannot be verified scientifically are void of objective meaning. This was understood by the wider community as an indirect rejection of religion in general and Islam in particular. The book has invoked a storm of attack and criticism to its topic and to the author. In a late response, 1984, Zaki Naguib has reprinted the book with a slightly more moderate title A Stance from Metaphysics.

When he came back, he was appointed as a lecturer, then, assistant professor and finally professor of philosophy at the Faculty of Arts, Cairo University. Among the distinguished positions Zaki Naguib Mahmoud held are: professor of philosophy in the University of Kuwait (1968), member of the Supreme Council of Culture, and of the National Council of Education and Scientific Research. In addition, he worked in 1953 as a visiting professor of philosophy in The University of South Carolina in Columbia, USA for one semester and in Washington State University in Pullman, Washington, D.C. in the second, and then he worked as a cultural attaché in the Embassy of Egypt in Washington, D.C. (1954-1955).

The third and last period has clarified itself during the period he stayed in Kuwait University between 1968 and 1973. This period can be viewed as a synthesis of the two previous stages. For it is marked by his deep interest in the intellectual Islamic heritage as well as the Islamic view as possessing specific characteristics. This new synthesis has revealed itself in domination of the problematic known as "Authenticity and Modernity" on his thought. This period is best marked, among many other writings by his books: The Rational and the Irrational in our Intellectual Heritage (1975), Our Culture in Front of Contemporary Time, (1976), and An Islamic Vision (1987).

Zaki Naguib Mahmoud was given the State Incentive Award in 1960, Order of Merit Award in 1970, Arab Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization Award in 1984, The American University in Cairo Honorary Doctorate in 1985, and the necklace of Sultan Al-Owais of the U.A.E. in 1991, an award which is exclusive to the most distinguished figures in the Arab world.

Zaki Naguib Mahmoud finished his education at Ain Shams University, and then travelled to the United Kingdom to do his PhD at King's College London in Philosophy. He defended his dissertation titled "self-determination" successfully and obtained his PhD in 1947, later on the dissertation was translated by his student Dr. Abdul-Fattah Emam.

His second phase of thought began in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Dr. Mahmoud was exposed during his studies in England to analytic philosophy and was greatly influenced by the thought of Bertrand Russell and attended a lecture by Alfred Ayer on "Logical Positivism". This constituted a form of preparation for his second phase, in which he strictly adopted the principles of the new philosophical school of Logical positivism. Logical positivism rejected philosophy in its metaphysical sense and rendered it to the status of the analysis of scientific knowledge and analysis of meanings of the regular language. This period extended to somewhere between 1960 after writing The Artist East and 1968, when he left to teach in Kuwait. Landmarks of this period are his books: On Positivist Logic (1951), The Philosophy of Science (1952), The Myth of Metaphysics (1953) and The Theory of Knowledge (1956).

Zaki Naguib Mahmoud was born in Damietta governorate, north of Egypt, and attended traditionally Islamic learning system "Al-Kottab" and preserved part of Al-Qur'an in his early years. He entered elementary school in Cairo and then in Sudan as his father worked in the government of Sudan. He studied at the Gordon School in Sudan and attended two years of his secondary school there before returning to Egypt to continue his secondary education. Afterwards he entered the high school of teachers and graduated in 1930 and worked as a teacher till 1944.

Zaki Naguib Mahmoud (Arabic: زكي نجيب محمود‎) (February 2, 1905 – September 8, 1993) was an Egyptian intellectual and thinker, and is considered a pioneer in modern Arabic philosophical thought. He was described by Abbas Mahmoud al-Akkad as "the philosopher of authors and author of philosophers". Mahmoud adhered to logical positivism and adopted science interpretation with social motivations to reconcile the Arab tradition with modernism. Mahmoud defines the "Arab tradition" as the configuration of techniques by which our ancestors lived, and he viewed logical positivism as the spirit of "Modernism".