Al-Azm, a professor at the University of Damascus, also discussed his decades of research in philosophy and international politics,
"I am neither an Orientalist in the straight sense of the term nor an Orientalist in reverse," al-Azm said.
Al-Azm warned Arab scholars to be careful not to repeat the mistakes of Orientalism, defined as the West's misunderstanding of the East due to its stereotypes and assumptions.
One response to Orientalism, he said, is to transform Orientalist assumptions about the East into positive stereotypes, such as the Arab poet Adonis' idea that the Western mind is technical and the Eastern is creative.
"With Adonis we can say that the West is technique, reason, system, order, method, symmetry and such; and the East is prophetic, visionary, magical, miraculous, intimate, fanciful, ecstatic and so on," al-Azm said.
Al-Azm acknowledged that reverse Orientalism can hold back the Arab world if it does not accept Western progress, a stubbornness present in Taliban ideology.
"They say that what you, the West, and your local stooges call our backwardness is our authenticity; what you term our primitiveness is our identity; what you denounce as our brutality is our sacred tradition; what you describe as our superstition is our holy religion; and what you despise as our illiberalism is our ancient custom," al-Azm said.
The audience seemed particularly interested and amused by his wry comparison of Arabic with European languages and his discussion of how linguistic differences suggest cultural differences.
Al-Azm also suggested that Arabic's ambiguity and circularity helps distinguish it as the perfect language for the post-modern world. He noted the importance of the fact that Arabic revolves around verbs while nouns dominate European languages.
"If in the beginning was the Word, was the Word a verb or a noun?" al-Azm asked, adding that a verb seemed more appropriate.
Al-Azm's talk was the plenary session of a three-day conference featuring talks and panels on Orientalism and fundamentalism in Jewish and Islamic criticism.
The conference, which was sponsored by the Ford Foundation, along with support from the Dickey Center, the Dartmouth Centers Forum and other Dartmouth centers, was organized by Jewish studies professor Susannah Heschel.
Heschel said she was happy with the exciting intellectual atmosphere that marked the entire weekend, adding that al-Azm's speech was a big success.
"I think that it wasn't just a speech; it was an event," Heschel said. "To fill Dartmouth 105 beyond capacity shows that people know who he is, respect him and are interested in the Arab world."