Constantin Zureiq

For Zurayk, Arab nationalism was a “civilizational project rather than a defensive obsession with identity boundaries in need of protection”. For the project to become successful, the responsibilities of the Arab people were great. Zurayk emphasized that Arab culture must be “earned and created by human effort”. In his book In the Battle for Culture (1964), Zurayk further stresses the importance of the decisive role of human agency:

Zurayk later took an offer to become the vice president of the American University of Beirut in 1952, and completed his education by receiving his doctorate in literature at the University of Michigan in 1967.

For Zurayk, the human powers that make culture are the civilizational powers of human reason in its critical and creative functions. Zurayk focused on the values of honesty, hard work, perseverance, seriousness, commitment, responsibility, and freedom as the values that allow humans to acquire scientific knowledge and to develop a sense of beauty and justice. In this regard, Zurayk was inspired by the prominent Egyptian intellectual, Taha Hussein, who sternly believed that the advancement of Arab society was dependent on the education of every individual. Hussein was the Minister of Education at Cairo University in 1950 and was eventually able to provide free education for all Egyptians. Both intellectuals sought to help Arab people uncover their hidden gems that would lead to a more advanced Arab society. Zurayk focused on encouraging the Arab people to access their hidden human powers which would enable them to work toward a just and moral society. He introduced what he called the “revolution of reason,” where he called for a national Arab unity based on a “secular democracy in which diverse individuals and communities can fulfill themselves in a framework of tolerance and mutual respect”.

He is credited with coining the term Nakba to refer to the expulsion of the Palestinians from their lands in 1948.

After receiving his PhD, Zurayk focused his aims in teaching and politics. Alongside his work as a tenured professor, Zurayk experimented as the 1st Counselor to the Syrian Legation of the United States in 1945, and acted as the delegate to the UN Security Council and to the UN General Assembly in 1946.

Zurayk's first notable publication, based on a lecture that he gave in 1938, was entitled The Arab Consciousness (al-Wa`i al-`Arabi). In the book, he introduced the concept of the "Arab mission" and stated that the aim of each nation was "the message it brings to human culture and general civilization" and that a nation without a mission was not worthy of the name. The consciousness of having a "national mission" would bring the Arab struggle for independence new strength and meaning and would regain for the Arabs their world role. As for the Arab mission itself, in the current age it would be “to absorb the knowledge of the West and to join it with the views that have arisen in reaction to it, and to combine them in a new unity that will be a sign of the coming life, and that the Arabs will spread to the world as they spread their brilliant civilization in the past ages”.

Constantine Zurayk was born in Damascus, Syria Vilayet on April 18, 1909, during the waning years of the ruling Ottoman Empire, to a Greek Orthodox Christian family. He received his primary and secondary education in the Orthodox school systems and had an obsession with acquiring knowledge. He continued his education at the American University of Beirut, and eventually received his PhD at Princeton University all by the age of twenty-one. He immediately turned to teaching and became a professor of history at the American University of Beirut.