Michel Aflaq

Michel Aflaq was born into a middle-class Greek Orthodox merchant family in Damascus and studied history and philosophy at the Sorbonne in Paris, where he was influenced by Henri Bergson and French personalism. Returning to Damascus as a secondary school teacher, he joined with Salah al-Din al-Bitar and Zaki al-Arsuzi to found the Ba'ath movement in the 1940s.

Aflaq formulated the ideology of romantic Arab nationalism (qawmiyya), viewing the Arab nation as an organic spiritual entity whose revival required a moral and cultural renaissance (ba'ath). Though marginalized when military officers seized control of the party in the 1960s, he remained the theoretical patriarch of Ba'athism until his death.