According to Yalçın Koç: Mebâdî—The Philosophy of the Beginning or the Beginning of Philosophy

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to reveal the reasons behind philosopher Yalçın Koç’s critique of the Western philosophical tradition, as articulated particularly in his seminal works Anadolu Mayası (The Leaven of Anatolia) and The Foundations of Theologia, within his corpus of eighteen books. Koç argues that although Plato, regarded as the founder of the first and most significant philosophical system of the West, discerned the transcendental dimension of the human being, he nonetheless fell into a grave error with respect to the principles of beginning (mebâdî) by attempting to express this transcendence through speech and thought. All of Koç’s writings are directed toward a radical critique of Western philosophy, which, he maintains, has completely severed or been severed from the transcendent and thus violated the philosophy of the beginning. Another central aim of this paper is to introduce and evaluate Koç’s own thought— which he calls nazariyata dair fikriyat (“the logia concerning theoria”)—as an alternative to the philosophy of what he terms the “Greek-Latin-Christendom,” and to present it specifically as a philosophy of beginning.