Daniel Garber, the Lawrence Kimpton Distinguished Service Professor in Philosophy and the College, is one of the nation’s leading experts on the history of philosophy and the history and philosophy of science. We contacted the Professor Garber to discuss revolutions, uprisings, and nations’ capabilities, and he replied to our questions in an exclusive interview to Gulan Magazine as the following:

* Revolution and uprising are two terms that any nation in the world have been though it and it ends a history and starts a new one, to what extend revolution shows the ability of a nation in a certain period of time across the history?
- I think that it is very difficult to answer in a sort of general way, because there are certainly many different examples of revolution and uprising that happened for very different reasons. An obvious example of the English civil war, the American revolution, the French revolution, the Russian revolution, and those are just some of the revolutions that have happened, and each of them is very different, who it is that was revolting? Why they were revolting? What the outcome was? And I would hesitate to make any sort of simple generalization about what it is revolutions meant.

* Revolution and uprising is the reflection of the ability of a nation which unites in a specific time and no any power can stand against it, what are the factors affecting the unification of abilities of a nation?
- First of all; I don’t think that it is true that nothing can stand against it. For example the revolution of 1905 in Russia was suppressed; there have been other revolutions that have been suppressed. It is possible that the revolution and uprising in Syria now will be suppressed. Sometimes they do succeed and why they succeed is obviously going to depend upon the particular local reasons.

* As the oppressed nations get their independency they feel to get benefit from changes and just after the independency they start to suffer from managing the freedoms, how to benefit from the history of revolutions and uprisings for creating social independency and also building social justice?
- I think that every revolution has got to realize that it is not going to be easy afterwards, and that it won’t necessarily succeed. I thing the experience for example the Napoleon era of the French revolution is very interesting. I think what's going on in Egypt now is very interesting, and what’s going on in Libya is very interesting. It is not going to be easy, it is in a certain way perhaps easer to overthrow an oppressive government that is to setup a better and a new one.

* Last Question: If the revolution is for freedom then it should be followed by democracy and development processes, to what extend revolutions and uprisings are the factors to success of democracy and development processes also?
- The American revolution resulted in this democracy although I think that one can say that it took considerable matter of time for the democracy to develop, but the Chinese revolution did not resulted in democracy, the Russian revolution did not resulted in democracy, whether or not revolution followed by democracy again depend on a lot of local factors as an advocate for democracy. One hopes that revolution will result in democracy but you know experience has been that, that doesn’t always happen.


Transcription: Mahmud Samih