Lost Paradise: Utopia or Reality? From Fall to Resurrection A Question of Civilization in Sezai Karakoç

This study aims to evaluate the conception of civilization that Sezai Karakoç tries to reveal based on his work titled Yitik Cennet (LostParadise), with its possibilities and limitations. Karakoç seeks the rebuilding and maintains the civilization that in crisis by establishing a new connection between Islam/truth and life, which will be established under the responsibility of intellectuals. According to Karakoç, intellectuals who relive the concrete Islamic ideal with its spiritual, social, political, economic, cultural, and aesthetic aspects will not be alienated from life, reality, and historical consciousness. In this sense, he places the situation or attitude of Islamic civilization on three main axes: The first, the metaphysical perspective that determines the theoretical basis; the second, the view of the world and nature as realism based on this perspective; the third is to surrender to the divine. The habitat that Karakoç's thesis will embody is the state. The state is, first and foremost, an idea, a form of ideals and virtues. Karakoç considers the political formation of this ideal state as a city-state based on particular virtues, as in Aristotle and Farabī. Karakoç's proposal is labeled with a lifestyle based on moral common sense, including achieving human metaphysical goals. Thus, a balance will be established between reason, and sensitivity; with this harmony, the possibility of rebirth will be found by making room for belief and morality. While the roadmap of this civilization, which differs from contemporary civilization theories in terms of its source and function, is created with the parables of the Qur'an, its founders are the prophets. Resurrection, a new organizational model produced for humanity, is not the antithesis synthesis of any view but is a third way that brings the tendency to non-being back into existence. This path in question is based on an orientation with three perspectives: First, man's view of God; second, many self-view; third, man’s view of things. According to Karakoç, in this triple combination, the resurrectionist has the opportunity to establish the harmony and balance that he could not establish before within the framework of the spirit of resurrection. The reference value of the resurrection civilization is love. In Karakoç's thought, like in Yunus Emre and Mawlānā, love, the metaphysical power that defeats the devil, is the fundamental value. This path of existence, which can be read as a result of Karakoç's view of Being, refers to a state of “being,” which shows that the ideal is met with a notion instead of a concept by turningits direction first to its essence while traversing existence in its journey of becoming. Although Karakoç's seminal proposal, which will build civilization as a new attempt at subjectivity and provide ontological trust to the subject through beliefs, is significant, it remains ambiguous about the problems encountered in the field of experience.