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Zaki al-Arsuzi (; June 18992 July 1968) was a Syrian philosopher, Philology, sociology, historian, and Arab nationalism. His ideas played a significant role in the development of Ba'athism and its political movement. He published several books during his lifetime, most notably The Genius of Arabic in its Tongue (1943).
Born into a middle-class Alawite family in Latakia, Syria, al-Arsuzi studied at the Sorbonne, where he became interested in nationalism. In 1930, he returned to Syria, where he became a member of the League of National Action (LNA) in 1933. In 1938, he moved to Damascus because of his disillusionment with party work, and in 1939, he left the LNA. In Damascus al-Arsuzi established and headed a group consisting of mostly secondary school pupils who would often discuss European history, nationalism and philosophy. Shortly after leaving the LNA, al-Arsuzi established the Arab National Party, an Arab nationalist party with a "defined creed". It was not a success and, on his return to Syria in November 1940 after a brief stay in Baghdad, al-Arsuzi established a new party, the Arab Ba'ath; by 1944, however, most of its members had left and joined Michel Aflaq's and Salah al-Din al-Bitar's Arab Ba'ath Movement, which subscribed to a nearly identical doctrine.
In 1947, the two movements merged, forming a single Arab Ba'ath Party. Despite the merger, Al-Arsuzi neither attended its founding conference nor was given membership.
During the rest of the 1940s and 1950s, al-Arsuzi stayed out of politics and worked as a teacher. He made a comeback during the 1960s power struggle in the Ba'ath Party between Aflaq and al-Bitar on one hand and Salah Jadid and Hafez al-Assad on the other. When Aflaq and al-Bitar lost the power struggle and were forced to escape from Syria in 1966, al-Arsuzi replaced Aflaq as the main ideologue of the Syrian-led faction of the Ba'ath Party (Neo-Ba'athist)
Al-Arsuzi's theories about society, language and nationalism, which are collectively part of Ba'athist thought, hold that the Arab Nation will be unified when the Arab people reestablish the Arab identity they have lost over the past 1000 years. The key to Arab unification, according to al-Arsuzi, is through language. In contrast to the Latin language, al-Arsuzi argued, Arabic was far less arbitrary and far more intuitive. Despite his contributions to Ba'athist thought, al-Arsuzi is barely mentioned in Western or Arab scholarship. This omission may be linked to the fact that Sati' al-Husri, a contemporary Arab nationalist, had many of the same ideas as al-Arsuzi but was better able to articulate them.
In the aftermath of World War I, Arsuzi began studying at Institut Laïc in Lebanon. It was here that Arsuzi was introduced to philosophy. Also, during his stay, Arsuzi was able to perfect his French. During Arsuzi's period of studying at Institut Laïc, his atheism became notorious, and he was often caught saying "Sons of Earth are more capable of directing their affairs than sons of heaven." After finishing his studies, Arsuzi got a job as a mathematics teacher in a local secondary school in Antioch. However, he later received the job of heading the school district of Arsuz – a job he held from 1924 to 1926. In 1927 Arsuzi received a scholarship from the French High Commission to study at the Sorbonne University in France. He studied there from 1927 to 1930, but never obtained a degree from the Sorbonne. During his stay at the Sorbonne, Arsuzi befriended former French colonial administrator Jean Gaulmier. At the Sorbonne, Arsuzi developed an interest in 19th-century European philosophy; he became attracted to the thoughts of Georges Dumas, Emile Brehier, Leon Brunschvig (his philosophy professor), Henri Bergson and Johann Gottlieb Fichte among others. The books which influenced Arsuzi most at the time were Bergson's L'Evolution créatrice and Fichte's Reden an die deutsche Nation; of these, Fichte is the philosopher Arsuzi identified most with. Both Fichte and Bergson wrote of the importance of education and in the core, there was the nation.
In August 1933, al-Arsuzi and fifty other Arab nationalists established the League of National Action (LNA) in the Lebanese city of Quarna'il. Most of the Arab parties at that time were dominated by the former Ottoman elite or had high levels of Ottoman membership. The LNA was one of the few exceptions; the majority of LNA members were young and had been educated in the West. While LNA initially proved popular with the people, its popularity shrank when its founder Abd al-Razzaq al-Dandashi died in 1935. Al-Arsuzi was the LNA's regional head in Hatay State, from the founding of the party in 1933 until 1939.
When Turkey first attempted to annex the province of Alexandretta in the early 1930s, al-Arsuzi became one of the most vocal critics of Turkey's policy towards Syria; he became a symbol of the Arab nationalist struggle. In 1939 France, which controlled Syria, ceded the province to Turkey in order to establish an alliance with that state. Al-Arsuzi left the LNA shortly thereafter.
Al-Arsuzi moved to Damascus in 1938 and began working on his ideas of Arabism and Arab nationalism. Disillusioned with party politics, he gathered several secondary school pupils to establish a learning group. At the group's meetings, al-Arsuzi would talk about, for instance, the French Revolution, the Meiji Restoration, German Unification and Italian Unification, or about the ideas of Fichte, Friedrich Nietzsche, Karl Marx, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Oswald Spengler and Henri Bergson. Shortly after leaving the LNA, al-Arsuzi established the Arab National Party, an Arab nationalist party with a "defined creed". The party did not last long; al-Arsuzi left for Baghdad at the end of the year. During his stay in Baghdad, al-Arsuzi tried, idealistically, to enlighten Iraqis with his thoughts on Arab nationalism, but returned to Syria disappointed in 1940. On 29 November 1940 al-Arsuzi founded the Arab Ba'ath.
At the same time, al-Arsuzi's interest in politics was waning, and he spent an increasing amount of his time engaging in philology. In 1943 this work culminated in the publication of a book, The Genius of Arabic in its Tongue, an analysis of the roots and distinctive features of the Arabic language (see the Culture and Language section). Despite this, al-Arsuzi appeared increasingly unbalanced mentally. Several people noted that he became less social, and was more inclined to shun social contacts and friends. He would later suffer from delusions. He was forced to move on again in 1949, this time living in Lattakia and later moving to live with his mother in Tarsus. It was there that his mother would die, poverty-stricken. According to one of his associates, al-Arsuzi himself spent a great deal of time living in "extreme poverty", reduced "to a life of penury and persecution" by the French authorities.
Al-Arsuzi's popularity within his own ranks lessened after Rashid Ali al-Gaylani's coup in Iraq. While Aflaq and al-Bitar founded the Syrian Committee to Help Iraq to support Iraq during the Anglo-Iraqi War, al-Arsuzi opposed any involvement on the grounds that al-Gaylani's policies would fail. While several Arab Ba'ath members agreed with al-Arsuzi's conclusion, the majority were attracted to Aflaq's romanticism. Another reason for the Arab Ba'ath's failure was al-Arsuzi's deep mistrust of others; when a party member had written a manifesto entitled Arab Ba'ath, al-Arsuzi "saw in it an imperialist plot to block his way to the people".
The Arab Ba'ath Movement, led by Aflaq and al-Bitar, was merged into the Arab Ba'ath Party in 1947. During negotiations, Wahib al-Ghanim and Jalal al-Sayyid, not al-Arsuzi, represented the Arab Ba'ath, while Aflaq and al-Bitar represented the Arab Ba'ath Movement. The only policy issue which was discussed in great detail was how socialist the party was going to be. The groups came to an agreement; the Ba'ath movement became radicalised, and moved further to the left. Al-Arsuzi did not attend the founding congress, nor was he given membership in the new party.
In 1963, in the wake of the Sixth National Congress of the Ba'ath Party and the party's gradual alienation from its founders Aflaq and Bitar, Hafez al-Assad arranged for Arsuzi to help with Ba'athist ideological formation in the army, and later ensured that he was granted a state pension. Al-Arsuzi was elected to a seat in the National Command of the Ba'ath Party in 1965. Salah Jadid, the Ba'ath Party strongman at the time, opposed Aflaq's and al-Bitar's leadership of the party and, because of it, wanted al-Arsuzi to replace them as the original founder of Ba'athist thought. Following the Ba'ath Party split of 1966 (the party split into two branches, one Iraqi-led Ba'ath Party and one Syrian-led Ba'ath Party) al-Arsuzi became the Syrian-led Ba'ath Party's main ideologue, while Aflaq was the de jure ideologue of the Iraqi-led Ba'ath Party. From 1966 to 1968 al-Arsuzi acted as al-Assad's and Jadid's personal ideological mentor. Al-Arsuzi died in Damascus on 2 July 1968.
Al-Arsuzi argued that unlike the Latin language, which is conventional and uses arbitrary signs to explain certain objects, the Arabic language formed words derived from the vocalism of its syllables and "in its expression of a direct representation of a natural object" – unlike Latin, Arabic is essentially in conformity with nature. Arabic is, according to al-Arsuzi, an intuitive language; there is "a natural sympathy" between the pronunciation of Arabic words and their meaning: an Arabic word is united with its meaning by definition of a referent, which is absorbed in such an operation. For al-Arsuzi, the identity of the Arab Nation is embodied in the Arab language; it is the language that forms the source of the nationalist spirit. According to al-Arsuzi's theory, European nationalism is based on the principle of causality, while Arab nationalism is based on the principle of spontaneity. Al-Arsuzi's definition of language is in contrast to that of Socrates and other thinkers.
Modern life existed because of two things—science and industry. Science eliminated superstition, and replaced it with facts; and Industry enabled civilization to create a more strong, organised society where liberty, equality and democracy could become permanent. The experiences of the English and French Revolutions proved this; the revolutions gave the individual certain rights, so that the individual "could conduct his own affairs according to his will". The demand for liberty would eventually evolve into the demand for independence, literally nationalism. Nationalism had, according to al-Arsuzi, manifested itself in all walks of life, from the rule of law to the arts; everything in a nation was the manifestation of that particular nation's identity. Al-Arsuzi's thesis marked a dividing line between the Medieval Ages and the Modern Age.
Several Ba'athists, mostly from the Syrian-led Ba'ath Party, have denounced Aflaq as a "thief"; these critics claim that Aflaq had stolen the Ba'athist ideology from al-Arsuzi and proclaimed it as his own. Whatever the case may be, al-Arsuzi was hailed by Hafez al-Assad, the Ba'athist leader of Syria, as the principal founder of Ba'athist thought, following the 1966 Ba'ath Party split. The Iraqi branch, however, still proclaims Aflaq as the founder of Ba'athism. Al-Assad has referred to al-Arsuzi as the "greatest Syrian of his day" and claimed him to be the "first to conceive of the Ba'ath as a political movement." The Syrian Ba'athists have erected a statue in al-Arsuzi's honour; it was erected following the 1966 coup. Even so, the majority of Ba'athists still agree that Aflaq, not al-Arsuzi, was the principal founder of the Ba'ath movement. Despite this, Keith David Watenpaugh believes Ba'athism was conceived by the "trio" consisting of al-Arsuzi, Aflaq and Salah al-Din al-Bitar, and not one principal founder.
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