Who is Abdelkebir Khatibi?

Abdelkebir Khatibi

Abdelkebir Khatibi (11 February 1938 – 16 March 2009) was a Moroccan literary critic, novelist and playwright. He was born on February 11, 1939 in the Atlantic port city of El Jadida and died on March 16, 2009. He was greaty influenced by  the rebellious spirit of 1960s counterculture in his late twenties. In his writings, he challenged  the social and political norms upon which the countries of the Maghreb region were built.

His career

A native of the Atlantic port city of El Jadida, Abdelkebir Khatibi was born in the middle period of Morocco's 44-year (1912–56) status as a French protectorate. A French-speaking member of the educated class, he studied sociology at the Sorbonne, receiving a doctorate in 1967. His dissertation, Le Roman maghrébin (The Maghribian Novel), which examines the question of how a novelist could avoid propagandizing in the context of a postrevolutionary society, and its follow-up, Bilan de la sociologie au Maroc (Assessment of Sociology Concerning Morocco) were both published shortly after the Paris Spring unrest of May 1968. He won numerous awards including the Grand Prix de l'Académie française (1994), the Grand Prix of Morocco (1998), Award of l'Afrique méditerranéenne/Maghreb (2003), and the prize of la Société des Gens de Lettres (2008) awarded for the first time to an arab author.

Bibliography

Major books

• Études sociologiques sur le Maroc [Sociological Studies Regarding Morocco] (1971)
• La Mémoire tatouée [Tattooed Memory] (1971) ISBN 2-264-00220-4
• La Blessure du nom propre [The Wound Under Its Own Name] (1974)
• Le Livre du sang [The Book of Blood] (1979) Gallimard ISBN 2-07-028677-0
• De la mille et troisième nuit [From the Thousand and Third Night] (1980)
• Amour bilingue [Bilingual Love] (1983); Love in Two Languages (1990 English translation by Richard Howard, published by University of Minnesota Press)
• Un été à Stockholm' [A Summer in Stockholm] (1992), Flamarion ISBN 2-08-066473-5
• Triptyque de Rabat [Rabat Triptych] (1993)

Plays

• La Mort des artistes [The Death of the Artists] (1964)
• Le Prophète voilé [The Veiled Prophet] (1979)

Who is Aristotle?

Aristotle

Aristotle (384 BC – 322 BC), whose writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology, was a Greek philosopher, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great.

Together with Plato and Socrates (Plato's teacher), Aristotle is one of the most important founding figures in Western philosophy. Aristotle's writings were the first to create a comprehensive system of Western philosophy, encompassing morality and aesthetics, logic and science, politics and metaphysics.

Aristotle's life

• Aristotle was born in Stageira, Chalcidice, in 384 BC, about 55 km (34 miles) east of modern-day Thessaloniki. 
• His father Nicomachus was the personal physician to King Amyntas of Macedon. 
• Aristotle was trained and educated as a member of the aristocracy. 
• At about the age of eighteen, he went to Athens to continue his education at Plato's Academy. 
• Aristotle remained at the academy for nearly twenty years before quitting Athens in 348/47 BC.
• He then traveled with Xenocrates to the court of his friend Hermias of Atarneus in Asia Minor. 
• Aristotle married Hermias's adoptive daughter (or niece) Pythias. 
• She bore him a daughter, whom they named Pythias. Soon after Hermias' death, Aristotle was invited by Philip II of Macedon to become the tutor to his son Alexander the Great in 343 BC
• Aristotle was appointed as the head of the royal academy of Macedon. During that time he gave lessons not only to Alexander, but also to two other future kings: Ptolemy and Cassander. 
• By 335 BC he had returned to Athens, establishing his own school there known as the Lyceum. Aristotle conducted courses at the school for the next twelve years. *
• While in Athens, his wife Pythias died and Aristotle became involved with Herpyllis of Stageira, who bore him a son whom he named after his father, Nicomachus.
• It is during this period in Athens from 335 to 323 BC when Aristotle is believed to have composed many of his works.
• Aristotle not only studied almost every subject possible at the time, but made significant contributions to most of them.
• The works that have survived are in treatise which include Physics, Metaphysics, Nicomachean Ethics, Politics, De Anima (On the Soul) and Poetics. 
•  Near the end of Alexander's life, Alexander began to suspect plots against himself, and threatened Aristotle in letters. A widespread tradition in antiquity suspected Aristotle of playing a role in Alexander's death, but there is little evidence for this
•  Upon Alexander's death, anti-Macedonian sentiment in Athens once again flared. Aristotle fled the city to his mother's family estate in Chalcis, explaining, "I will not allow the Athenians to sin twice against philosophy, a reference to Athens's prior trial and execution of Socrates.
• However, he died in Euboea of natural causes within the year (in 322 BC). Aristotle named chief executor his student Antipater and left a will in which he asked to be buried next to his wife. 

Source: Wikipedia