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Seyyed Hossein Nasr

January 01, 1970

Seyyed Hossein Nasr (/ˈnɑːsər, ˈnæsər/; Persian: سید حسین نصر, born April 7, 1933) is an Iranian philosopher, theologian and Islamic scholar. He is University Professor of Islamic studies at George Washington University.

Seyyed Hossein Nasr
Nasr in 2007
Born
Seyyed Hossein Nasr

(1933-04-07) 7 April 1933 (age 91)
Tehran, Imperial State of Persia
Alma materMassachusetts Institute of Technology (BS)
Harvard University (MA, PhD)
EraContemporary philosophy
RegionIslamic philosophy
SchoolPerennial Philosophy, Sufism
Main interests
Metaphysics, Philosophy of Religion, Philosophy of Science, Sufism, Islamic philosophy
Notable ideas

Born in Tehran, Nasr completed his education in Iran and the United States, earning a bachelor's degree in physics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a master's in geology and geophysics, and a doctorate in the history of science from Harvard University. He returned to his homeland in 1958, turning down teaching positions at MIT and Harvard, and was appointed a professor of philosophy and Islamic sciences at Tehran University. He held various academic positions in Iran, including vice-chancellor at Tehran University and President of Aryamehr University, and established the Imperial Iranian Academy of Philosophy at the request of Empress Farah Pahlavi, which soon became one of the most prominent centers of philosophical activity in the Islamic world. During his time in Iran, he studied with several traditional masters of Islamic philosophy and sciences.

The 1979 revolution forced him to exile with his family to the United States, where he has lived and taught Islamic sciences and philosophy ever since. He has been an active representative of the Islamic philosophical tradition and the perennialist school of thought.

Nasr's works offer a critique of modern worldviews as well as a defense of Islamic and perennialist doctrines and principles. Central to his argument is the claim that knowledge has become desacralized in the modern period, meaning that it has become severed from its divine source – God or the Ultimate Reality – which calls for its resacralization through the utilization of sacred traditions and sacred science. Although Islam and Sufism are major influences on his writings, his perennialist approach inquires into the essence of all orthodox religions, regardless of their formal particularities. His environmental philosophy is expressed in terms of Islamic environmentalism and resacralization of nature. He is the author of over fifty books and more than five hundred articles.

Biography edit

Origins edit

Seyyed Hossein Nasr was born on 7 April 1933 in Tehran to Seyyed Valiollah Nasr, who was a physician to the royal family, philosopher and homme de lettres, and one of the founders of modern education in Iran.[note 1] Nasr's parents were originally from Kashan. His mother was well-versed in Persian literature and poetry. He is a descendant of Sheikh Fazlollah Nouri from his mother's side, is the cousin of Iranian philosopher Ramin Jahanbegloo as well as the father of American academic Vali Nasr.

The surname "Nasr", which means "victory", was given to his grandfather by the Shah.[29] The title "Seyyed" indicates a descendant of the Prophet Muhammad.[30]

Education edit

Nasr completed his primary education in Tehran.[31][28] His education was supplemented by religious and philosophical discussions with his father and an entourage of theologians, ministers, scholars, and mystics.[31] He immersed himself in the Koranic studies, Persian literature, Arabic and French languages at an early age.[31] While he was completing his first year of secondary school at Firooz Bahram High School,[32] his father was hurt in a serious accident, so his mother sent him to continue his education in the United States so that he would not be present at the time of his father's imminent death.[33] He would later say that there are three things that his father left him: "first of all, love of knowledge for our own Persian culture, our religious, literary, philosophical tradition; secondly, an avid interest in what was going on in the West in the realm of science and philosophy, literature and everything else; thirdly, a sense of serenity that he had within himself."[34]

In the United States, Nasr first attended Peddie School in Hightstown, New Jersey, graduating in 1950 as the valedictorian of his class.[35]

He then applied to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston to study physics and was accepted with a scholarship.[35] When he realized, after an encounter with the philosopher Bertrand Russell, that the study of physics would not bring answers to his questions, he enrolled in additional courses on metaphysics and philosophy with Giorgio de Santillana[35] who introduced him to the works of René Guénon. From there, Nasr discovered the works of other Perennialist metaphysicians, notably Frithjof Schuon, Ananda Coomaraswamy, Titus Burckhardt, Martin Lings, and Marco Pallis.[35] This school of thought has shaped Nasr's life and thinking ever since. The widow of Commaraswamy gave him access to the library of her late husband, and Nasr spent much of his time there and worked to catalogue the library. He visited Schuon and Burckhardt in Switzerland while still a student and was initiated into the Alawi branch of the Shadhili Sufi order.[35] He considered the works of Schuon, with central importance given to the practice of a spiritual discipline in addition to doctrinal knowledge, especially instrumental in determining his intellectual and spiritual life.[29]

After receiving an MIT B.S. degree in physics in 1954, Nasr enrolled in the graduate program in geology and geophysics at Harvard University, where he received a Master of Science in both fields in 1956, and went on to pursue his PhD degree in the history of science and learning at the same university.[36] He planned to write his dissertation under the supervision of George Sarton, but Sarton died before he could begin his dissertation work and so he wrote it under the direction of I. Bernard Cohen, Hamilton Gibb, and Harry Wolfson.[37]

At the age of twenty-five, Nasr graduated with a PhD from Harvard and completed his first book, Science and Civilization in Islam, the title being a direct tribute to Science and Civilization in China, the work by Joseph Needham which had for task to present to Westerners the complex developments of the history of science and technology in China, a mission Nasr was himself following for the Islamic civilization.[38] His doctoral dissertation entitled "Conceptions of Nature in Islamic Thought" was published in 1964 by Harvard University Press as An Introduction to Islamic Cosmological Doctrines.[39]

Apart from mastering Arabic and French he was initially taught in his childhood, during his student years, Nasr also learned Greek, Latin, Italian, Spanish and German.[40]

Back to Iran edit

After receiving his Ph.D. from Harvard in 1958, Nasr was offered the position of associate professor at MIT, as well as a three-year research position as a junior fellow followed by a formal teaching position at Harvard, but he decided to return to Iran. That same year, Tehran University hired him as associate professor of philosophy and the history of science.[41] He continued his study of Islamic sciences with traditional Iranian masters and philosophers (Muhammad Husayn Tabataba'i, Allameh Sayyed Abul Hasan Rafiee Qazvini and Sayyid Muhammad Kazim Assar), completing his dual education, academic and traditional.[31]

He had married and started a family at this point.[42] His son, Vali Nasr, would go on to become an academic and expert on the Islamic world.

At thirty, Seyyed Hossein Nasr was the youngest person to become a full professor at Tehran University.[43] He was quickly recognized as an authority in Islamic philosophy, Islamic science and Sufism.[44] For fifteen years he conducted a doctoral seminar in comparative philosophy and Islamic philosophy with Henry Corbin who was at that time the director of the French Institute for Iranian Studies in Tehran.[45] Five years later he would be made the dean of the faculty of letters and then vice-chancellor of the university.[46]

In 1972, the Shah chose him to become the President of Aryamehr University (now Sharif University of Technology).[47] There, Nasr created a faculty for the humanities in order to encourage the students not to focus exclusively on scientific matters. He also designed courses that focused on the assessment of modern technology and its impact on human society and the environment.[48] During this time, he was also involved in the creation of the Islamic and Iranian studies departments at Harvard, Princeton, the University of Utah, and the University of Southern California.[49]

I belonged to a new generation and was able to exercise much influence not only at Tehran University but also in the cultural and educational life of the country as a whole since I was a member of all the important national councils in those fields, […] So there was a really formidable jihād on my hands to try to turn things around and to make Iranian society more aware of its own heritage. I tried to create a bridge between the traditional and the modern elements of our society.[50] (interview)

Nasr refused to engage in the politics of his country despite a number of offers for ministerial positions and ambassadorship.[51] In 1974, Empress Farah Pahlavi commissioned him to establish and lead the Imperial Iranian Academy of Philosophy (now the Institute for Research in Philosophy), the first academic institution to be conducted in accordance with the intellectual principles of the Traditionalist School. During that time, Nasr, Tabataba'i, William Chittick, Peter Lamborn Wilson, Kenneth Morgan, Sachiko Murata, Toshihiko Izutsu, and Henry Corbin held various philosophical discourses. The book Shi'ite Islam and the traditionalist journal Sophia Perennis were products of this period.[52] In 1978, he was named director of the Empress's private bureau, while continuing to teach philosophy at Tehran University, and serve as chancellor of Aryamehr University, and President of the Imperial Iranian Academy of Philosophy.[53]

Return to the West edit

 
Nasr in 2002

In January 1979, the revolution put an end to the Pahlavi dynasty and Nasr, who was visiting London with his family at the time, was unable to return to Iran. He lost everything, including his manuscripts and library.[54] His family settled in Boston.[55] After a few months of teaching at the University of Utah, Nasr was appointed a professor of Islamic studies at Temple University in Philadelphia, which had the largest Ph.D. program in religious studies in the United States.

During the 1980–1981 academic year, Nasr delivered the Gifford lectures at the University of Edinburgh, which were later published under the title Knowledge and the Sacred.[56] According to William Chittick, "three out of the four of his first books in English (An Introduction to Islamic Cosmological Doctrines, Three Muslim Sages, and Science and Civilization in Islam) were published by Harvard University Press, and they immediately established him as one of the major and original voices in Islamic studies. His strong endorsement of the writings of Schuon and Burckhardt in these books were in turn instrumental in bringing the Traditionalist school to the notice of official academia".[57]

Nasr left Temple University in 1984 to become a professor of Islamic studies at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., a position he holds to this day.[58] That same year, he established the Foundation for Traditional Studies which published the journal Sophia and works on traditional thought.[59] He has authored over fifty books and over five hundred articles based on the principles of the philosophia perennis.[60] He is regularly invited to give courses and conferences at various institutions and universities of the five different continents on the major themes for which he has become well known:[61] Islam, philosophy, metaphysics, cosmology, anthropology, spirituality, religion, science, ecology, literature, art, etc.[60][note 2] His works have been translated into twenty-eight different languages.[62]

Notable aspects of his works edit

Nasr's expertise encompasses traditional culture (wisdom, religion, philosophy, science and art), Western thought from antiquity to the present day, and the history of science. He argues in favor of revelation, tradition, and what he considers "scientia sacra", in opposition to rationalism, relativism, and modern western materialism.[63][64][65][66]

Nasr has not developed a new system of thought, but instead hopes to revive traditional doctrines that he believes have been forgotten in the modern world.[67] He is content to recall what, according to him, corresponds to the many manifestations of a timeless wisdom.[68] Although Islam and Sufism are present throughout his writings, his universalist perspective, which is that of perennial philosophy, takes into account what he assumes to be the common essence of all orthodox religions beyond their formal particularities or their current state: "My philosophical world is a kind of synthesis between the perennial philosophy, which I espouse and represent, and the Islamic philosophical tradition, which I have tried to revive and to which I also belong. And so I would say that for the first category, there are Guénon and Schuon; if I had to name a third person, then Coomaraswamy; and for the second category, Ibn Sina, Suhrawardı, Ibn Arabi, and Mulla Sadra."[1] According to Sarah Robinson-Bertoni, Nasr is one of the principal figures in Islamic philosophy, working at the crossroads of Western and Islamic intellectual traditions.[69]

Harry Oldmeadow considers Nasr to be "of the living traditionalists the most widely known in academic circles". For him, Nasr's works are characterized by "rigorous scholarly methodology, an encyclopedic erudition about all matters Islamic, a robustness of critical thought, and a sustained clarity of expression"; and he is "the foremost traditionalist thinker" to base himself on "eternal wisdom (sophia perennis)" in order to provide a solution to the contemporary environmental crisis.[70]

The Perennialist or Traditionalist school edit

When he discovered the writings of the most influential members of what would become the Traditionalist or Perennialist school (René Guénon, Frithjof Schuon, Ananda Coomaraswamy, Titus Burckhardt, Martin Lings), the student Seyyed Hossein Nasr fully aligned himself to their perspective founded on the philosophia perennis.[71][note 3]

I had discovered a worldview about which I felt complete certitude (yaqın). I felt that this was the truth that satisfied me intellectually and accorded with my life existentially. It was in harmony with the faith that I had. It was universalist in its metaphysical perspective and also critical of Western philosophy and science in a manner that spoke directly to my concerns.[72] (interview)

Thus, in the middle of a "materialistic century", this School provides Nasr with the keys to his spiritual quest: an esoteric doctrine and method within the framework of a Sufi path.[73] For Patrick Laude:

...Seyyed Hossein Nasr's background is remarkable in at least three ways: first, he is a public figure who has been widely recognized in the media – in both the US and Europe – as a spokesman for perennialist ideas. [...] Second, he is the only perennialist writer who is closely identified with a given religious tradition, both as being born in it and as being a world expert on many of its dimensions. [...] Thirdly, Nasr is the only foremost perennialist writer to have received an intensive and advanced academic training in modern sciences. [...] His familiarity and identification with Islam, his validation as a recognized scholar and respected member of the scholarly community, and his conceptual proficiency in modern scientific languages have all contributed to make him a particularly apt interpreter of perennialist ideas in the contemporary public arena.[74]

For Nasr, the expression, "philosophia perennis", as understood by the Perennialist School refers to both the universal metaphysical truth and to its spiritual realization. The latter can only be considered, according to Nasr, in the framework of a tradition, thus with the aid of a method, rites, symbols and other means sanctified by revelation. The truth, though veiled, is innate to the human spirit and its realization leads to what he calls "knowledge", that is to say gnosis or wisdom (sophia), hence the expression "sophia perennis", common ground at the heart of all religions.[75][76] Nasr clarifies that the notion of the philosophia perennis does not derive from a compilation "of wisdom writings of various historical traditions", which would have resulted in the conviction of the existence of common truths, but it is these very truths which, by "the practice of intellection, the use of the intellect" understood in a spiritual manner, are revealed to the human spirit which then observes "their presence in other times and climes and in fact in all the sacred traditions the world over".[77] The language of the perennial philosophy is symbolism.[78]

God and the world edit

According to Seyyed Hossein Nasr, the "Divine Reality" includes, metaphysically speaking, an "Impersonal Essence" and a personal aspect that the believer "ordinarily identifies with God", in accordance with the perspective of "most religions". Only the "esoteric dimension" within these religions take into account the "Impersonal Essence", as can be seen most notably in "the Kabbalah, Sufism, and among many Christian mystics such as Meister Eckhart and Angelus Silesius".[79] "God as ultimate Reality" is thus at the same time "Essence" and "Person" or "Supra-Being and Being".[80] Understood in this way, God or the Principle,

is Reality in contrast to all that appears as real but which is not reality in the ultimate sense. The Principle is the Absolute compared to which all is relative. It is Infinite while all else is finite. The Principle is One and Unique while manifestation is multiplicity. It is the Supreme Substance compared to which all else is accident. It is the Essence to which all things are juxtaposed as form. It is at once Beyond Being and Being while the order of multiplicity is comprised of existents. It alone is while all else becomes, for It alone is eternal in the ultimate sense while all that is externalized partakes of change. It is the Origin but also the End, the alpha and the omega. It is Emptiness if the world is envisaged as fullness and Fullness if the relative is perceived in the light of its ontological poverty and essential nothingness. These are all manners of speaking of the Ultimate Reality which can be known but not by man as such. It can only be known through the sun of the Divine Self residing at the center of the human soul.[81]

God is not only "Absolute and Infinite", He is also "the Supreme Good or Perfection". Now, according to Nasr, the specificity of infinitude and of good in divinis requires that they exteriorize themselves, that is to say, that they manifest themselves in multiplicity, hence the world.[82][note 4] A world that is imperfect despite the perfection of its source because, as Nasr explains, this exteriorization implies a distance from the "Good", hence the presence of evil; the latter, contrary to the good, does not have its root in God.[83][84] This "imperfect world" – the visible and tangible world of man – constitutes only the periphery of a hierarchy of increasingly subtle "worlds" according to their degree of proximity to Being.[85]

For Nasr, God is the only reality, and the world, which participates in His reality is therefore "unreal", not as "nothingness pure and simple" but as "relative reality"; it is an illusion to consider the world, says Nasr, as "reality" in the same way as the Principle. Nasr holds that traditional wisdom or the sophia perennis "has always seen God as Reality and the world as a dream from which the sage awakens through [spiritual] realization [...] and the ordinary man through death". To consider the world as "the reality, [...] as is done by most modern philosophy [...] leads to nihilism and skepticism by reducing God to an abstraction, to the 'unreal', and philosophy itself to the discussion of more or less secondary questions or to providing clever answers to ill-posed problems".[86]

For Nasr, "Ultimate Reality" is at once "above everything" and "omnipresent"[87] in the universe, "transcendent and immanent".[88][89] On the human plane, still according to Nasr, "The Reality" – or "The Truth" –[note 5] lies in the heart of man "created in the image of God",[90] whence the possibility of a "unitive knowledge which sees the world not as separative creation but as manifestation that is united through symbols and the very ray of existence".[91]

The human being edit

See also: Pontifical and Promethean man

"The key to the understanding of the anthrōpos", according to Nasr, is situated in "sapential teachings"; it is neither situated in "exoteric religious formulations", which relate essentially to "salvation", nor in what he considers to be "profane" science, generally evolutionary.[92] Beyond his faith in "creationism ex nihilo"[93] Nasr believes that the doctrines "of all traditions" attest that "the genesis of man, occurred in many stages: first, in the Divinity Itself so that there is an uncreated 'aspect' to man", hence the possibility of "supreme union"; then "in the Logos which is in fact the prototype of man and another face of that same reality which the Muslims call the Universal Man and which each tradition identifies with its founder"; after this, "man is created on the cosmic level and what the Bible refers to as the celestial paradise where he is dressed with a luminous body"; "he then descends to the level of the terrestrial paradise and is given yet another body of an ethereal and incorruptible nature"; finally, "he is born into the physical world with a body which perishes"[94][95] but he principially remains a reflection of "the Absolute not only in his spiritual and mental faculties but even in his body".[96]

Thus, Nasr rejects biology's modern evolutionary synthesis, which he thinks is a "desperate attempt to substitute a set of horizontal, material causes in a unidimensional world to explain effects whose causes belong to other levels of reality".[94] For Nasr, in accordance with "the traditional view of the anthrōpos", the human being is a "bridge between Heaven and earth (pontifex)".[97] Responsible to God for his actions, he is the custodian and protector of the earth, "on the condition that he remain faithful to himself as the central terrestrial figure created in the 'form of God', [...] living in this world but created for eternity".[98] This aspect of humanity, for Nasr,[99] "is reflected in all of his being and his faculties".[100]

Among these faculties, Nasr underlines the primacy of intelligence, sentiments, and will: "as a theomorphic being", his intelligence "can know the truth as such", his sentiments "are capable [...] of reaching out for the ultimate through love, suffering, sacrifice, and also fear", and his will "is free to choose [...], it reflects the Divine Freedom".[101] But, "because of man's separation from his original perfection", a consequence "of what Christianity calls the fall", itself followed by further declines, these faculties no longer operate invariably according to their "theomorphic nature".[101][102] Thus, "intelligence can become reduced to mental play", "sentiments can deteriorate to little more than gravitation around that illusory coagulation which [...] is the ego" and "the will can be debased to nothing other than the urge to do that which removes man from the source of his own being".[101]

"All traditional sciences of nature, [...] are also sciences of the self on the basis of the microcosmic-macrocosmic correspondence",[103] therefore by virtue of an "inward link that binds man as the microcosm to the cosmos".[104] This ideal man, underlines Nasr, is "primordial man [...] perfect, [...] plenary reflection of all those Divine Qualities",[105] who knew everything "in God and through God".[106]

Knowledge and the intellect edit

See also: Desacralization of knowledge and Resacralization of knowledge

According to Seyyed Hossein Nasr, "man contains within himself many levels of existence", that "the Western tradition" synthesises in the ternary "spirit, soul, and body (pneuma, psychē, and hylē or spiritus, anima, and corpus".[96][107] "The human spirit is an extension and reflection of the Divine Spirit",[108] it coincides with the "intellect"[109] and "resides at the center of the spiritual heart" of the human being.[110] Nasr always uses the word "intellect" in "its original sense of intellectus (nous)" and not "of reason (ratio)", which is only its "reflection"[111] and which "is identified with the analytical functions of the mind";[112] "the intellect is the light of the sacred shining upon our minds".[113]

The intellect, which "is the root and the center of consciousness"[114] is also "the source of inner illumination and intellection",[115] which Nasr, following Guénon, also calls "intellectual intuition",[116] and that implies an "illumination of the heart and the mind of man", making possible a "knowledge of an immediate and direct nature, [...] tasted and experienced", which extends to "certain aspects of reality"[note 6] up to "the Absolute Reality".[117] The human intellect is "the subjective pole of the Word or of the Logos – the universal Intellect – by which all things were made and which constitutes the source of objective revelation, that is to say, formal and established religion".[118] For Nasr, in the vast majority of cases, this "inner revelation", or intellection, cannot become operative except by virtue of an external revelation which provides an objective cadre for it and enables it to be spiritually efficacious",[119] hence the necessity of faith[120] and spiritual practices[121] associated with the realization of the virtues,[122] with the aid of the grace issuing from each revelation.[80]

Huston Smith summarises in an analysis of Nasr's works, that Nasr contends it is "God who knows Himself" through man.[123] For Nasr, indeed, "discrimination between the Real and the unreal terminates in the awareness of the nondual nature of the Real, the awareness which is the heart of gnosis and which represents not human knowledge but God's knowledge of Himself", consciousness which is at the same time "the goal of the path of knowledge and the essence of scientia sacra".[82] Nasr contends that this wisdom, which corresponds – beyond salvation -– to deliverance from the bonds of all limitation,[124] "is present in the heart of all traditions", whether it be the Hindu Vedanta, Buddhism, the Jewish Kabbalah, the Christian metaphysics of an Eckhart or an Erigena, or Sufism.[86] It alone "is able to solve certain apparent contradictions and riddles in sacred texts".[125]

Through such sacred knowledge, man ceases to be what he appears to be to become what he really is in the eternal now and what he has never ceased to be.[126]

The sacred edit

Terry Moore, in his introduction to a long interview that Seyyed Hossein Nasr gave to the Iranian philosopher Ramin Jahanbegloo, recalls that for Nasr,

the Sacred is the Eternal Absolute Truth as It manifests Itself in our world. It is the appearance of the Eternal in time, the Center in the periphery, of the Divine in the world of space and time. The Sacred is present in Itself and in Its manifestations.[127]

Still, according to Moore, it is this relationship with the sacred, through the channel of "Tradition" that anchors Seyyed Hossein Nasr's worldview.[127] Nasr considers the sense of the sacred as inseparable from any spiritual quest. This sense emanates from the awareness of the eternal and immutable reality of the Divine,[128] which is both transcendent and immanent to all universal manifestation, therefore also to the human being.[129] The sacred manifests itself in "revelation, the sacred rites of various religions, spiritual and initiatory practices, sacred art, virgin nature", in fact everything that transmits "the presence of the Divine".[130]

It is possible for us to rediscover the sacred character of both knowledge and the world, and one might say that that has been the basic motif throughout my writings.[131]

Metaphysics edit

Main article: Scientia sacra

For Nasr, true metaphysics – the scientia sacra –, which is the intellectual foundation of the Traditionalist School, "is the science of the Real; of the origin and the end of things; of the Absolute and in its light, the relative"[132] and, as a corollary, of the degrees of existence.[133] It is therefore:

the knowledge by means of which man is able to distinguish between the Real and the illusory and to know things in their essence or as they are, which means ultimately to know them in divinis. The knowledge of the Principle which is at once the absolute and infinite Reality is the heart of metaphysics while the distinction between levels of universal and cosmic existence, including both the macrocosm and the microcosm, are like its limbs. [...] metaphysics is the primary and fundamental science or wisdom which [...] contains the principles of all the sciences.[134]

True metaphysics, underlines Nasr, can only be assimilated by intellectual intuition,[132][note 7] that is to say that it is necessarily associated with a path of spiritual realization, an approach foreign to modern philosophy, which has been instrumental in reducing the significance of metaphysics to just another mental activity.[135] Metaphysical knowledge stems from the true understanding of symbolism.[136]

Religion and spirituality edit

According to Nasr, man is "a theomorphic being living in this world but created for eternity"[90] because his "soul is immortal".[137] The post-mortem salvation of the soul, reminds Nasr, is "the first duty of man", according to every religion,[138] – a soul tainted here below by its "centrifugal tendencies", its "passions".[139]

Nasr contends that all religions have an origin in God,[140] reveal the paths which "leads to either felicity in the hereafter or damnation, to the paradisal or infernal states",[141] and require "faith".[102]

Each new "descent" of a revelation brings a particular "spiritual genius", "fresh vitality, uniqueness and the grace which make its rites and practices operative, not to speak of the paradisal vision which constitutes the origin of its sacred art or of the sapience which lies at the heart of its message".[142] This wisdom, continues Nasr, accounts for the "Ultimate Reality", which is both "beyond everything and at the very heart and center of man's soul",[91] that is to say in his "spirit".[108] The quest for wisdom or knowledge, through "spiritual practice" and the "cultivation of virtues", can lead to "salvation in the highest sense of this term, which means total deliverance from the bonds of all limitations".[143]

Nasr argues that spirituality requires a constant practice and a rigorous discipline within the framework of a religion, and he considers the current commercialization of the "pseudo-spiritual" to be indicative of people wanting the spiritual result without the effort.[144]

Daoud Riffi emphasizes that Sufism is the spiritual path followed by Seyyed Hossein Nasr in a universalist framework which attests to the principial unity of all major religions. Nasr's Sufism relates to the intellect in its medieval sense, that is, the spiritual heart: "True knowledge is therefore a matter of the heart, not of the mind, and the fruit of an interior asceticism."[145]

Exoterism and esoterism edit

Nasr says that every integral religion "possesses at once an external or exoteric dimension" and "an inner or esoteric dimension". The first is "concerned with the external and formal aspect of human life" with a view to the posthumous salvation of those "who follow the precepts" of their religion and who "have faith in its truths". The second concerns "the formless and the essential" with a view to the realization of "the Supreme Essence, here and now".[142]

These two dimensions unfold in "a hierarchy of levels from the most outward to the most inward which is the Supreme Center".[142] Nasr thus distinguishes three modes of "approaching ultimate Reality": "the ways of work, love and knowledge", which correspond to as many predispositions of human nature. The most interiorizing paths integrate those which are less so, but the latter, not necessarily possessing the capacity "to understand what is beyond them", sometimes become the causes of "tensions" within the same religion. Nasr adds that "all human beings can be saved if only they follow religion according to their own nature and vocation".[146] And he warns "on the social level, on the level of human action, the barriers and conditions established by the exoteric dimension of the religion should not be transgressed", including by those who "follow the path of esoterism, the inward or mystical path".[147][141]

Since there are "questions that exoterism cannot answer," it is important "for religion to keep alive the reality and the significance of esoterism for people who have the capability and need to understand the inner or esoteric dimension of the tradition".[148] This is what Islam, for example, continues to accomplish today with its inner dimension, Sufism, which remains a living tradition.[149] On the other hand,

what happened in Christianity, which is a great tragedy, I believe, for both Christianity and Western civilization, and in fact for the rest of the world, is that after the Renaissance, gradually a wall was created, and Western Christianity's inner dimension became more or less inaccessible and to a large extent eclipsed. It is not accidental that during the last two or three hundred years, Christianity has not produced figures such as a Meister Eckhart, Tauler, or Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, and we could go down the list of hundreds of earlier great saints and mystics. [...] today so many people of Christian background look to Buddhism, Islam, and Hinduism for the inner dimension of religion.[147] (interview)

The essential unity of religions edit

In a commentary on a work by Nasr, Adnan Aslan reports that for Nasr, the various religions are "forms of the eternal truth which has been revealed by God to humankind through various agencies".[150] It is this common truth which constitutes "the transcendent unity of religions", he says, referring to the expression proposed by Frithjof Schuon.[151]

"It is only on the level of the Supreme Essence [...], standing above all the cosmic sectors from the angelic to the physical within which a particular religion is operative, that the ultimate unity of religions is to be sought".[146] This unity, for Nasr, is "not to be found at the level of external forms; [...] religions do not simply say the same thing despite the remarkable unanimity of principles and doctrines and the profound similarity of applications of these principles".[146] At the heart of every religion lies "what Schuon calls the religio perennis", that is to say, "a doctrine concerning the nature of reality and a method for being able to attain what is Real". Doctrine and method vary from one religion to another but their essence and goal are universal.[146]

As a result, no religion is in itself "better" than another, concludes Nasr, since "all authentic religions come from the same Origin", but in practical terms it is nevertheless necessary "to distinguish the possibilities" that remain valid in the current state of "degradation" of each of the religions.[152] For Nasr, given the celestial origin of all religions, it is appropriate to respect their slightest particularities and to treat them "with reverence, as every manifestation of the sacred should be".[146]

Interreligious dialogue edit

According to Jane I. Smith, Nasr is "one of the most visible partners" of Islamic-Christian dialogue thanks to "his training in Christian theology and philosophy, combined with his remarkable knowledge of all Islamic sciences".[153]

Nasr points out that ordinary believers consider their religion to be the religion.[138] Injunctions such as: "I am the way, the truth, the life" (Jesus) or "No one sees God unless he has seen me" (Mohammed),[154] necessarily lead, for these same believers, to the certainty of the pre-eminence of their own religion, a conviction that could lead to the refusal to consider other religions as valid.[138] This refusal, for Nasr, can be considered as legitimate since it stems from revelation, therefore from God;[155] God wants to "save souls", he does not ask the believer to deal with "comparative religion" nor to accept the validity of other revelations.[138] In a traditional world, such exclusivism presented no hindrance,[138] but in today's world, the mixing of populations calls many believers to question the value of the religions they encounter daily.[156]

Religion as it is seen in the world, says Nasr, "comes from the wedding between a Divine Norm and a human collectivity destined providentially to receive the imprint of that Norm." Thus, "racial, ethnic and cultural differences" constitute "one of the causes for multiplicity" of religions, "but religion itself cannot be reduced to its terrestrial embodiment".[157] For Nasr, there is only one truth and it necessarily manifests itself in "all the different authentic religious universes, otherwise God would not be merciful and just".[158] But it is not, according to Nasr, the exoteric level, that of divergences, which allows access to a true understanding and acceptance of other religions;[155][146] only esotericism, which transcends the formal dimensions of religions, allows, according to him, uncompromising adherence to the authenticity of all revelations,[155] by recognizing in them a supra-formal unity which resolves these very differences.[146]

Nasr actively participates in the dialogue between Christians and Muslims. In 2008, he was the main Muslim speaker, opposite Benedict XVI, at the first Catholic-Muslim Forum organized by the Vatican.[159] For Nasr, "one of the reasons why it is so difficult to have a deep religious dialogue today" with Christians, is due – besides their conviction "that there is no salvation outside the Church"[160][note 8] – to the absence of an "esoteric dimension, interior [...], mystical", which centuries of secularism have stifled. For Islam, which is not "theologically threatened by the presence of other religions in the same way that Christianity is",[158] the influence of secularism occurred much later than in the West, and Sufism, which is its interior dimension, continues to inspire "the most profound doctrines that have been formulated concerning the plurality of religions and the relationship between them".[161]

For Nasr, as Jahanbegloo emphasizes, dialogue is "not only a pursuit of truth, but also a challenge to spiritual responsibility" of each religion to try to "heal the wounds of the present-day secularized world" in which we live.[162]

Tradition edit

Main article: Tradition (perennialism)

In Knowledge and the Sacred, Nasr defines tradition as follows:

Tradition as used in its technical sense [...], means truths or principles of a divine origin revealed or unveiled to mankind and, in fact, a whole cosmic sector through various figures envisaged as messengers, prophets, avatāras, the Logos or other transmitting agencies, along with all the ramifications and applications of these principles in different realms including law and social structure, art, symbolism, the sciences, and embracing of course Supreme Knowledge along with the means for its attainment.[163]

For Nasr, the tradition therefore presents two aspects: "one is truths that are of a transcendent order in their origin, that came from the Divine, from God", revealed at the birth of each of the great religions and, on the other hand, the transmission of these truths by these same religions and by the civilizations they have generated; tradition is therefore not limited to religion – this is its heart – but it is deployed in all areas of a culture, hence the names "traditional art, traditional sciences, traditional architecture, traditional music, traditional clothing, etc."[164]

Following René Guénon – to whom he is "indebted for clarifying this fundamental concept"[165] –, Nasr refers to a "Primordial Tradition", which he defines as being the single truth from which emanate all truths, the immutable and timeless archetype from which all traditions originate.[166] According to Nasr, at a time when Heaven and Earth were still "united", the original or archetypal man was directly enlightened, spiritually and intellectually, by the Primordial Tradition.[142]

The value of tradition, for Nasr, is not manifested by a simple nostalgia for the past,[167] it stems from the wisdom that this tradition conveys, instructing the human being on his own nature and that of the world, and calling him to achieve his original perfection.[168][169] Only the truths conveyed by tradition, continues Nasr, allow us to grasp the full scope of the errors of modern thought and its misdeeds on man and nature.[170]

Ecology edit

See also: Resacralization of nature, Islamic environmentalism, Ecotheology, and Religion and environmentalism

That the harmony between man and nature has been destroyed is a fact which most people admit. But not everyone realizes that this disequilibrium is due to the destruction of the harmony between man and God.[171]

It was in 1966, during the Rockefeller Foundation Lectures at the University of Chicago, that Seyyed Hossein Nasr, for the first time, made public the importance that he placed on nature and his concern for its degradation.[172] He was one of the first philosophers to turn to this question[173] and he is considered to be the founder of environmentalism in the Muslim world.[174] In several works he deals with the causes of the mutilation of the planet and the restorative remedies.[175]

Causes

Tarik Quadir argues that "the ecological crisis, for Nasr, is only an externalization of an inner malaise [...] due in large part to the various applications of modern [western] science. [...] Following the loss of the vision of the universe proper to medieval Christian worldview, [...] this science ignores or denies the existence of any reality other than that of the material aspect of nature".[176] Indeed, as Nasr explains, "the Renaissance and its aftermath […] witnessed the rise of a secular humanism and the absolutization of earthly man with immeasurable consequences for both the world of nature and traditional civilizations conquered by this new type of man, who gives free rein to his Promethean ambition to dominate nature and its forces in order to gain wealth or to conquer others civilizations, or both. [...] Nature, more than a lifeless mass, has thus become a machine to be dominated and manipulated by a purely earthly man".[177] Thus, it is "to modernism and its false presumptions about the nature of man and the world", that Nasr attributes "the destruction of the natural environment", in addition to "the disintegration of the social fabric",[178] and he deplores that all States, "from monarchies to communist governments, to revolutionary regimes, […] all want to copy avidly Western science and technology, without thought of their cultural, social and environmental consequences".[179]

Nasr believes that another cause of ecological problems is found in scientism, that is, the conviction that "modern science provides if not the only, at least the most reliable means to true knowledge" and that it leads thereby "to human progress",[172] as imagined by those who evaluate a human society solely in terms of its economic growth.[180] Nasr corroborates the observation that the development of the current economic system rests largely on human passions, which it feeds in its turn, thus generating a continuous blossoming of new needs which, in reality, are only desires.[181] Finally, "if modern man destroys nature with such impunity, it is because he looks upon it as a mere economic resource".[182]

Remedies

Quadir maintains that for Nasr, it is not by technology that environmental problems can be solved in the long term, being themselves the consequence of this technology.[183] According to Nasr, the critique of the extraordinary technological development is certainly necessary, but the real critique must start with the root of the problem, i.e. with oneself,[184] because in a desacralized West,[185] few are aware of what Nasr considers the raison d'être of human life and of nature.[184] This consciousness, for Nasr, is present in the wisdom of the various religious traditions,[186] "as well as in their cosmologies and sacred sciences".[187] And it alone makes it possible to rediscover "the sense of the sacred",[188] in particular with regard to nature,[182]because deprived of this sense, the human being remains immersed in the ephemeral, abandoning himself to his own lower nature, with an illusory feeling of freedom.[90]

As a consequence, the philosopher Ramin Jahanbegloo argues that Nasr's goal "is to negate the totalitarian claims of modern science and to reopen the way to the religious view of the order of nature, developed over centuries in the cosmologies and sacred sciences of the great traditions".[162] "Once the awareness comes of what really nature is, warns Nasr, that nature is not just an 'it', that it is a living reality and has a sacred content, that it has an inner relation with our own inner being, [...] that we cannot destroy nature without destroying ourselves. [...], then we will begin to respect her" and, consequently, the dominant technology will initiate a reconversion.[170] Realizing then, by this interior transformation, that true happiness is not linked to consumption,[189] the human being will recognize his "real and not imagined needs",[184] the only solution to slow down the uncontrolled appetite which leads to the daily rape of the planet.[170]

Critique of modernism edit

Nasr says that it was in the Renaissance in the West (14th-16th centuries) that the "modernist" or reductive vision of the human condition and the universe began to take shape,[190] and spread to other continents during the past two centuries.[191] This ideology is characterized by "the rejection of the theocentric view of reality",[192] hence an absolutization of the human to the detriment of the Divine,[190] but of a human denying his "pontifical nature"[note 9], therefore reduced "to his rational and animal aspects, [wandering] in a desacralized wasteland, oblivious to his origin" and living only at the periphery of his being and of the universe.[193]

Nasr considers that after the Renaissance, faith no longer had the monolithic cohesion of the Middle Ages. The "new man" is no longer defined by "his celestial archetype and his Edenic perfection", nor by his "symbolic and contemplative spirit", but by his "individuality, reason, the senses, corporeality [and his] subjectivism".[194] Nasr contends that this marked the beginning of the ever increasing secularization of man and of knowledge,[195] which, step by step, lead the West to skepticism, relativism, individualism, materialism, progressivism, evolutionism, historicism, scientism, agnosticism, atheism and, ultimately, what he considers the present chaos.[196]

According to Nasr, given that the wisdom conveyed by the various traditional civilizations finds its origin in a divine revelation,[197] these civilizations have always transmitted a fair representation of man and his purpose.[198] Thus, as Joseph E. B. Lumbard notes, for Nasr, "only tradition can provide the weapon necessary to carry out the vital battle for the preservation of the things of the spirit in a world which would completely devour man as a spiritual being if it could".[193] According to Nasr:

To defend the traditional point of view is not to negate the reality of all kinds of evil in the premodern world ranging from wars to philosophical skepticism among the Greeks in the dying moments of that civilization. The major difference is that in traditional civilizations while there was evil, the sacred was ubiquitous and people lived in the world of faith. Today evil continues in many more insidious ways while the very meaning of life which is the quest and discovery of the sacred is taken away.[199]

The theory of evolution edit

For Nasr, the results of modern scientific investigation of nature are defined by the "oblivion of intellect" and, thus, are "severed from Divinity and highly compartmentalized". He maintains that the scientific explanations for the origins of the natural world are "purely physical" and "aimed at reducing man to matter while excluding divinity and teleology from nature".[200] On this basis, Nasr rejects the theory of evolution,[201][202] claiming that it is "an ideology, it is not ordinary science,"[203] that it is "more a pseudo-religion than a scientific theory,"[204] that it "requires more faith than is claimed by any religion for its founder or even for God,"[200] and that evolution is both metaphysically and logically impossible.[205] [note 10] The sociologist Farzin Vahdat sees this as part of Nasr's rejection of secular reason and secular science, and more broadly of the modern world,[206] and Salman Hameed in an editorial for Science identified Nasr as one of a few Islamic creationists active in Western academic institutions.[207]

Marietta Stepaniants observes that, for Nasr, "the absurdity of that theory" is that it offers "horizontal and material causes in a unidimensional world, to explain effects whose causes belong to other levels of reality".[208] As an alternative, Nasr defends his vision of an Islamic philosophy of science that accepts "limited biological changes" occurring throughout time, but rejects the idea that solely natural mechanisms account for what he calls "creativity". He contends that evolutionary biology is a "materialist philosophy" rather than a "real science with a true empirical foundation" and contrasts a Darwinian vision of life with his God-centered perspective of nature based in the traditional Islamic understanding of life and creation.[209] Nasr contends that evolutionism is one of the cornerstones of the contemporary worldview and has contributed directly to the modern world's degradation of the spiritual significance and sacredness of God's creation, as stated in "sacred scriptures" such as the Quran.[205]

Philosophy edit

Commenting on an article that Muhammad Suheyl Umar dedicated to him, Nasr speaks of his own "philosophical position":

I am a follower of that philosophia perennis and also universalis, that eternal sophia, which has always been and will always be and in whose perspective there is but one Reality which can say "I" [...] I have tried to become transparent before the ray of Truth that shines whenever and wherever the veil before it is lifted or rent asunder. Once that process is achieved, the understanding, "observation" and explication of the manner in which that light shines upon problems of contemporary man constitute for me philosophical creativity in the deepest sense of the term. Otherwise, philosophy becomes sheer mental acrobatics and reason cut off from both the intellect and revelation, nothing but a luciferian instrument leading to dispersion and ultimately dissolution.[210]

For Nasr, the true "love of wisdom" (philosophia) was shared by all civilizations until the emergence, in the West, of a thought which dissociated itself more and more from the spiritual dimension[211] as a result of the occultation of the sapiential core of religion and the divorce of philosophical intelligence from faith. Apart from the case of certain Greek currents such as sophistry and skepticism,[212] as well as the episode of nominalism towards the end of the Middle Ages,[213] it was really during the Renaissance, continues Nasr, that "the separation of philosophy and of revelation" began,[214] despite the maintenance in certain isolated circles of a true spirituality.[213] With the development of individualism and the emergence of rationalism and skepticism,[215] only the purely human faculties – reason and the senses – "determined knowledge, although faith in God still persisted to a certain extent", but that was not enough to hold back "the progressive desacralization of knowledge which characterizes European intellectual history" from this period on[216] and which "led to the completely profane philosophy of today".[211] However, "the very separation of knowledge from being, which lies at the heart of the crisis of modern man is avoided in the Oriental traditions, which consider legitimate only that form of knowledge that can transform the being of the knower".[211]

Adnan Aslan notes a passage from Nasr in which he endorses Plato's commentary in the Phaedo, which equates philosophy with "the practice of death"; this death, for Nasr, corresponds to the extinction of the "I", a necessary stage for the realization of the "Self"[note 11] or of the "Truth".[217]

Several works by Nasr support critical analyzes of those he considers to be engines of modern deviation: Descartes, Montaigne, F. Bacon, Voltaire, Hume, Rousseau, Kant, Comte, Darwin, Marx, Freud, Aurobindo, Teilhard de Chardin and others. In addition, his writings abundantly cite those who, for him, convey authentic wisdom: Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato, Plotinus, Augustine, Shankara, Erigena, Avicenna, al-Bīrūnī, Suhrawardī, Ibn Arabī, Rūmī, Thomas Aquinas, Eckhart, Dante, Mullā Sadrā, Guénon, Schuon, Coomaraswamy, Burckhardt, Lings, etc.[218][219][220]

Scientism edit

Patrick Laude submits that Nasr is "the only foremost perennialist writer to have received an intensive and advanced academic training in modern sciences"[221][note 12] while Joseph E. B. Lumbard contends that "as a trained scientist", Nasr is well suited to argue about the relationship between religion and science.[167]

Summarizing Nasr's thought, Lucian W. Stone, Jr. writes in The Dictionary of Modern American Philosophers: "According to Nasr, while the traditional sciences – which include biology, cosmology, medicine, philosophy, metaphysics, and so on –, understood the natural phenomena and humanity as vestigia Dei (signs of God), modern science has severed the universe, including humans, from God. The natural world or cosmos has a meaning beyond itself, one of which modern secular science is intentionally ignorant".[222]

Nasr argues that historically Western science is "inextricably linked to Islamic science and before it to the Greco-Alexandrian, Indian, ancient Iranian as well as Mesopotamian and Egyptian sciences". Denying this heritage, the Renaissance already – despite some resistance –, but especially the 17th century (Descartes, Galileo, Kepler, Newton), imposed new paradigms in accordance with the ambient anthropocentrism and rationalism, and with the secularization of the cosmos, which have resulted in a "unilateral and monolithic science, [...] bound to a single level of reality [...], a profoundly terrestrial and externalized science".[223]

While not denying the prowess "of a science limited to the physical dimension of reality", Nasr nonetheless argues that "alternative worldviews drawn from traditional doctrines remain constantly aware of the inner nexus which binds physical nature to the realm of Spirit, and the outward face of things to an inner reality which they at once veil and reveal".[224] For the traditional sciences of all civilizations, the universe is formed by a hierarchy of degrees, the most "external" or "lowest" degree being the physical world, the only one that modern science recognizes; this lower degree reflects the higher degrees of the universe "by means of symbols which have remained an ever open gate towards the Invisible".[225]

Nasr speaks of "certain intuitions and discoveries" of contemporary scientists, "which reveal the Divine Origin of the natural world",[225] a deduction that scientism does not want to admit, "the scientific philosophers are much more dogmatic than many scientists in denying any metaphysical significance to the discoveries of science".[226] Scientism presents "modern science not as a particular way of knowing nature, but as a complete and totalitarian philosophy which reduces all reality to the physical domain and does not wish under any condition to accept the possibility of the existence of non-scientistic worldviews".[224] However, Nasr notes, a large number of eminent physicists "have often been the first to deny scientism and even the so-called scientific method [...], seeking to go beyond the scientific reductionism which has played such a great role in the desacralization of nature and of knowledge itself".[227]

According to Lumbard, Nasr considers that:

Science in and of itself is neutral, and the information that scientific discovery provides is true on its own plane, but science falls into error when it crosses from the realm of scientific investigation into that of scientistic ideology, generalizing and absolutizing a particular vision of the physical domain of the universe that science is able to study and then judging the other disciplines in accord with that narrow vision. [...] Nasr calls for a reintegration of modern science into metaphysics and the traditional cosmological sciences in which knowledge of the level of reality that each discipline is equipped to analyze is perceived through the light of higher forms of knowledge, at the apex of which stands the knowledge of the One before which all is reduced to nothingness.[228]

Art edit

In his reflections on art, Seyyed Hossein Nasr bases himself on "the traditional perspective which is by nature meta-historic and perennial".[191] For him, all art "must convey the truth and beauty" and "a meaning that is ultimately universal" because it is independent of "the ego of the individual artist".[229] He cites as examples the traditional art, "whether it be Persian and Arabic in the Islamic world, Japanese and Chinese in the Far East, Hindu and Buddhist in the Indian world, medieval Christian in the West", as well as the arts of the "primal people of the Americas, Australia and Africa, who in a sense, belong to one family".[230] "That art is the reflection of a Platonic paradigm, idea, or archetype, in the Platonic sense, in the world of physical forms."[229]

Thus, in traditional art, specifies Nasr, the artist "is an instrument for the expression of certain symbols, of certain ideas, [...] which are beyond the individual and are executed artistically through traditional techniques" because they belong to the "spiritual world"; "this is where the great difference between traditional and modern art comes from".[231] An art is considered traditional "not because of its subject matter but because of its conformity to cosmic laws of forms, to the laws of symbolism, to the formal genius of the particular spiritual universe in which it has been created, its hieratic style, its conformity to the nature of the material used, and, finally, its conformity to the truth" as expressed by the religious milieu from which it comes.[232]

As for sacred art, "which lies at the heart of traditional art [, it] has a sacramental function and is, like religion itself, at once truth and presence";[233] it "involves the ritual and cultic practices and practical and operative aspects of the paths of spiritual realization".[234] In a traditional society, says Nasr, one does not distinguish between sacred art and religious art but "in the post-medieval West and also outside of the Western world since the 19th century, in fact wherever you already have had the decadence of the traditional arts",[235] religious art is characterized only by its subject, at the expense of "its means of execution and its [supra-individual] symbolism" which "belong to the suprahuman realm".[236] Today "much of what is called religious art is no longer traditional but individualistic and psychological."[235]

For Nasr, the degeneration of Western art since the Renaissance is the consequence of a "view of man as a purely secular and earthly being".[237][238] From symbolic as it was, art became more and more naturalistic, as can be seen, for example, by comparing the sculptures of Chartres Cathedral to those of Michelangelo,[239] or paintings of the Virgin by Raphael to those of the Middle Ages.[240] But, tired of indefinitely reproducing beings and objects deprived of life, naturalism faded in the second half of the 19th century in front of "this new very ingenious wave of impressionist art which tries to capture some of the qualities of nature […] using light and colors [...], without simply emulating the external forms of nature".[241] This movement, however, was only a "transient phase, and soon the whole world of form broke down from below, [...] starting with Picasso and continuing to our own day".[241] The "cracks in the confines of the solidified mindset created by centuries of humanism, rationalism and empiricism" have opened access to the most "inferior" influences.[242]

According to Nasr, most modern artists "become completely enmeshed in their own egos [...], leading lives which are in many cases not morally disciplined, whereas the traditional perspective", on the contrary, "seeks to free us through spiritual discipline [...] destroying the stranglehold that the lower ego has upon our immortal soul".[243] The traditional artist "does not try to express his own feelings and ideas", as the modern artist does;[244] "Art for art's sake" is not his credo, nor is "innovation, originality and creativity" because, unlike the modern artist, he knows that art has as its goal "the attainment of inner perfection and [...] human need[s] in the deepest sense [...], which are spiritual", intimately linked to "beauty and the truth."[230][245] "All beauty", writes Nasr, "is a reflection of Divine Beauty and can lead to the Source of that reflection";[246] but the contemporary rubs shoulders with "ugliness, unaware that the need for beauty is as profound in the human being as the [...] air that we breathe".[247]

For Nasr, there are artists in the present day, rooted in a true spirituality and who express it or attempt to express it in their art,[248] with the humility demanded by "light of the truth and the millennial heritage of traditional art, most of which was produced […] by anonymous artists who humbled themselves before the reality of the Spirit and through their transparency were able to reflect the light of the spiritual world in their works".[245]

Awards and honors edit

Works edit

Nasr is the author of over fifty books[253] and five hundred articles (a number of which can be found in the journal, Studies in Comparative Religion) Seyyed Hossein Nasr Author Page on topics such as Traditionalist metaphysics, Islamic science, religion and the environment, Sufism, and Islamic philosophy. He has written works in Persian, English, French, Arabic and Indonesian.[254] Listed below are most of Nasr's works in English (in chronological order), including translations, edited volumes, and Festschriften in his honor:

As author
Poetry
  • Poems of the Way; put to music by Sami Yusuf in Songs of the Way (vol. 1) (1999)
  • The Pilgrimage of Life and the Wisdom of Rumi: Poems and Translations (2007)
As editor
  • An Annotated Bibliography of Islamic Science, edited with William Chittick and Peter Zirnis (3 vols., 1975)
  • Isma'ili Contributions to Islamic Culture (1977)
  • The Essential Frithjof Schuon (1986)
  • Shi'ism: Doctrines, Thought, and Spirituality, edited with Seyyed Vali Reza Nasr and Hamid Dabashi (1988)
  • Expectation of the Millennium: Shi'ism in History, edited with Seyyed Vali Reza Nasr and Hamid Dabashi (1989)
  • Islamic Spirituality (Vol. 1: Foundations, 1987; Vol. 2: Manifestations, 1990)
  • Religion of the Heart: Essays Presented to Frithjof Schuon on his Eightieth Birthday, edited with William Stoddart (1991)
  • In Quest of the Sacred: The Modern World in the Light of Tradition, edited with Katherine O'Brien (1994)
  • History of Islamic Philosophy, edited with Oliver Leaman (1995)
  • Mecca the Blessed, Medina the Radiant: The Holiest Cities of Islam, photographs by Kazuyoshi Nomachi; essay by Seyyed Hossein Nasr (1997)
  • An Anthology of Philosophy in Persia, edited with Mehdi Aminrazavi (5 vols., 1st in 1999)
  • The Essential Sophia, edited with Katherine O'Brien (2006)
  • The Study Quran (Editor-in-Chief); Caner Dagli, Maria Dakake, and Joseph Lumbard (General editors); Mohammed Rustom (Assistant editor) (2015)
As translator
  • Shi'ite Islam by Sayyid Muhammad Husayn Tabataba'i
  • The Book of Metaphysical Penetrations by Mulla Sadra (edited, introduced, and annotated by Ibrahim Kalin)
Works about Nasr
  • The Works of Seyyed Hossein Nasr Through His Fortieth Birthday, edited by William Chittick
  • Knowledge is Light: Essays in Honor of Seyyed Hossein Nasr, edited by Zailan Moris
  • Beacon of Knowledge - Essays in Honor of Seyyed Hossein Nasr, edited by Mohammad Faghfoory
  • Islam, Modernity, and the Human Sciences (second part of the book), by Ali Zaidi
  • Religious Pluralism in Christian and Islamic Philosophy: The Thought of John Hick and Seyyed Hossein Nasr, by Adnan Aslan
  • From the Pen of Seyyed Hossein Nasr: A Bibliography of His Works Through His Eightieth Year, edited by Nicholas Boylston, Oludamini Ogunnaike, and Syed A.H. Zaidi
  • Islam and Modernity: Dissecting the Thought of Seyyed Hossein Nasr: A Discourse on the Compatibility or Incompatibility of Islam with Modernity (Lap Lambert Academic Publishing, 2011) by Musa Yusuf Owoyemi
  • Thinking Between Islam and the West: The Thoughts of Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Bassam Tibi and Tariq Ramadan by Chi-chung (Andy) Yu
  • Traditional Islamic Environmentalism: The Vision of Seyyed Hossein Nasr (University Press of America, 2013) by Tarik M. Quadir
Interviews

Books

Articles

  • Bob Abernethy (Religion & Ethics Newsweekly) (7 February 2003). "Seyyed Hossein Nasr on Islam". PBS. Retrieved 25 September 2021.
  • Bob Abernethy (Religion & Ethics Newsweekly) (7 February 2003). "Seyyed Hossein Nasr Extended Interview". PBS. Retrieved 25 September 2021.
  • Michael Barnes Norton (Journal of Philosophy & Scripture, Islamic Cultural Center of Northern California) (Autumn 2004). "Scripture, Society, and Traditional Wisdom: An Interview with Seyyed Hossein Nasr". Retrieved 25 September 2021.
  • "On the Question of Biological Origins" (PDF). Islam & Science. 4 (2): 181–197. Winter 2006.
  • Kaleem Hussain (Muslim Heritage) (26 May 2009). "Interview with Prof. Seyyed Hossein Nasr". Retrieved 25 September 2021..
  • Mustafa Tabanli (The Fountain Magazine) (May 2009). "On Nature, Beauty, and Transcendence: An Interview with Seyyed Hossein Nasr". Retrieved 25 September 2021.
  • Kahteran, Nevad (July 2009). "Interviews with the Precursors of Knowledge: The Interview with Professor Seyyed Hossein Nasr". Katha. Journal of the Centre for Civilisational Dialogue, University of Malaya. 5: 69–77. Retrieved 24 September 2021.
  • Islam & Science Journal (Summer 2010). "Islamic Pedagogy: An Interview". Retrieved 25 September 2021.
  • Speranskaya, Natella (2013). "Interview with Seyyed Hossein Nasr". Retrieved 25 September 2021.
  • "Interview with Seyyed Hossein Nasr on Religion & the Environment". Newsletter Georgetown University, Qatar. 15: 1 + 8–11. Autumn 2013. Retrieved 24 September 2021.
  • Ali Lakhani (The Sacred Web Conference, Vancouver) (27 April 2014). "Dr. Seyyed Hossein Nasr: Interview". Retrieved 25 September 2021.
  • Colin Christopher (Islamic Cultural Center of Northern California) (November 2016). "Interview with Sufi Scholar, Dr. Seyyed Hossein Nasr". Retrieved 25 September 2021.
  • Sahil Badruddin (Boniuk Institute for Religious Tolerance) (Autumn 2019). "Role of Thinking in Islam: Past, Present, and Future". Retrieved 25 September 2021.

See also edit

References edit

Notes edit

  1. ^ He wrote many essays which still remain in manuscript form, some of which have been assembled by Nasr into a book called Danish wa Akhlaq (Knowledge and Ethics).[28]
  2. ^ Namely : visiting scholar (Harvard University) in 1962 and 1965, Aga Khan chair of Islamic studies (American University at Beirut) in 1964-65, Rockefeller Lectures (University of Chicago) in 1966, Kevorkian Lectures (New York University) in 1977, Gifford Lectures (University of Edinburgh) in 1980-81, Wiegand Lecture (University of Toronto) in 1983, Parliament of World Religions (Chicago) in 1993, Cadbury Lectures (University of Birmingham) in 1994, Islam and the West (UNO) in 2003.
  3. ^ "The term philosophia perennis, which appeared as early as the Renaissance and which neoscolasticism made extensive use of, designates the science of the fundamental and universal ontological principles; this science is immutable like these principles themselves are and it is primordial by the very fact of its universality and infallibility. We would willingly use the term sophia perennis to indicate that this is not "philosophy" in the standard and approximative meaning of the word – which suggests mere mental constructions springing from ignorance, doubt, and conjectures, if not from an urge for novelty and originality – or the term religio perennis could also be used when referring to the operative dimension of this wisdom, namely to its mystical or initiatic aspect." Frithjof Schuon, Survey of Metaphysics (quoted by Nasr).
  4. ^ According to Saint Augustine, Nasr reminds us, "it is in the nature of the good to give of itself". The Philosophy of Seyyed Hossein Nasr, 2001, p. 584
  5. ^ "Islam is a religion which is based completely on the doctrine of the oneness of God, and is a religion in which God is seen as both Reality and Truth, the Arabic term al-haqīqah meaning both. In fact the word al-Haqq (The Truth), which is related to haqīqah, is a Name of God." Nasr, The Need for a Sacred Science, 1993, p. 7.
  6. ^ "The physical world is related to God by levels of reality which transcend the physical world itself and which constitute the various stages of the cosmic hierarchy." Nasr, The Essential Seyyed Hossein Nasr, 2007, p. 34.
  7. ^ "Scientia sacra is none other than that sacred knowledge which lies at the heart of every revelation and is the center of that circle which encompasses and defines tradition. [...] the twin source of this knowledge is revelation and intellection or intellectual intuition which involves the illumination of the heart and the mind of man and the presence in him of knowledge of an immediate and direct nature which is tasted and experienced [...]. Man is able to know and this knowledge corresponds to some aspect of reality. Ultimately in fact, knowledge is knowledge of Absolute Reality and intelligence possesses this miraculous gift of being able to know that which is and all that partakes of being. [...] Man can know through intuition and revelation not because he is a thinking being who imposes the categories of his thought upon what he perceives but because knowledge is being." Nasr, Knowledge and the Sacred, 1989, p.119-120.
  8. ^ Exclusivism alien to Islam, "for the Quran asserts clearly that people who do good works and have faith will be rewarded for their actions and will be saved, but does not say that this is true for only Muslims. There are some exclusivist and short-sighted Muslims today who believe that anyone who is not a Muslim is an infidel and will go therefore to hell, but that is not the traditional Islamic doctrine and goes against the text of the Quran". Interview in In Search of the Sacred, 2010, p. 292. Nasr refers here, among others, to Quran 2:62: "Indeed the faithful, the Jews, the Christians, and the Sabaeans, those of them who have faith in God and the Last Day and act righteously, they shall have their reward near their Lord, and they will have no fear, nor will they grieve".
  9. ^ Joseph E. B. Lumbard: "The sharp and uncompromising distinction that Nasr makes between tradition and modernity also entails a sharp contrast between modern man and traditional man, or what he refers to as pontifical man, who functions as a bridge between heaven and earth, and promethean man, who has rebelled against heaven. Regarding the former he writes: ‘‘Pontifical man, who, in the sense used here, is none other than traditional man, lives in a world which has both an Origin and a Center. He lives in full awareness of the Origin which contains his own perfection and whose primordial purity and wholeness he seeks to emulate, recapture, and transmit." Seyyed Hossein Nasr on Tradition and Modernity, 2013, p.179.
  10. ^ Nasr rejects this theory for the following reasons. In Knowledge and the Sacred, 1989: the sudden appearance, noted by scientists, of new species in various geological periods and over very extended areas, such as some unrelated vertebrate groups, which contradicts an evolution in the direction of progressive complexity (p. 206); the almost total absence, in the stratigraphic records, of fossils that should exist as intermediates between the major groups (p.206); the testimony of biologists and paleontologists who, while accepting the theory of evolution in the absence of a plausible scientific alternative, remain "fully aware of the fantastic and even surrealistic character" of this theory (p.207 + Hahn, 2001, p. 755); the variations which are presented by advocates of evolution as "buds" of a new species are only variants within the framework of a single species, each species possessing a potential for development which can only manifest itself within the species in question; this micro-evolution is the only possible evolution (pp. 206-207 + On the Question of Biological Origins, 2006, p.4). In On the Question of Biological Origins, 2006: the impossibility of the appearance of sight in a blind animal or a pair of wings in an insect or a fish which, moreover, would have to practice flying (pp. 6, 10); the impossibility, starting from an animal intelligence, of developing a capacity of reasoning as sophisticated as that which characterizes the human being, whose consciousness is able to reflect on itself, to be conscious of being conscious (p. 12 + Saltzman, 2001, p. 595); finally, the impossibility, on a qualitative level, that the "less" can generate the "more" (p. 5).
  11. ^ The following extract makes it possible to identify the meaning of the terms "I" – the ego – and "Self" as Nasr understands them: "Man's responsibility to society, the cosmos, and God issues ultimately from himself, not his self as ego but the inner man who is the mirror and reflection of the Supreme Self, the Ultimate Reality which can be envisaged as either pure Subject or pure Object since It transcends in Itself all dualities, being neither subject nor object." Nasr, Knowledge and the Sacred, 2007, p. 149-150.
  12. ^ "Although Guénon was a mathematician of background, he was not directly involved in the study of modern sciences nor did he manifest much interest in going beyond a general critique of modern scientific reductionism. Titus Burckhardt, and to a lesser extent Frithjof Schuon, has left us with remarkably perceptive arguments and analyses against such scientific axioms as macro-evolutionism and the superstition of materialism." Laude, "Seyyed Hossein Nasr in the Context of the Perennialist School" in Beacon of Knowledge: Essays in Honor of Seyyed Hossein Nasr, 2003, p. 6-7.

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Preceded by Chancellor of Sharif University of Technology
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January 01, 1970
seyyed, hossein, nasr, ɑː, persian, سید, حسین, نصر, born, april, 1933, iranian, philosopher, theologian, islamic, scholar, university, professor, islamic, studies, george, washington, university, nasr, 2007born, 1933, april, 1933, tehran, imperial, state, pers. Seyyed Hossein Nasr ˈ n ɑː s er ˈ n ae s er Persian سید حسین نصر born April 7 1933 is an Iranian philosopher theologian and Islamic scholar He is University Professor of Islamic studies at George Washington University Seyyed Hossein NasrNasr in 2007BornSeyyed Hossein Nasr 1933 04 07 7 April 1933 age 91 Tehran Imperial State of PersiaAlma materMassachusetts Institute of Technology BS Harvard University MA PhD EraContemporary philosophyRegionIslamic philosophySchoolPerennial Philosophy SufismMain interestsMetaphysics Philosophy of Religion Philosophy of Science Sufism Islamic philosophyNotable ideasScientia sacra Ecotheology Islamic environmentalism Tradition Pontifical and Promethean man Resacralization of nature Desacralization of knowledge Resacralization of knowledge Born in Tehran Nasr completed his education in Iran and the United States earning a bachelor s degree in physics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology a master s in geology and geophysics and a doctorate in the history of science from Harvard University He returned to his homeland in 1958 turning down teaching positions at MIT and Harvard and was appointed a professor of philosophy and Islamic sciences at Tehran University He held various academic positions in Iran including vice chancellor at Tehran University and President of Aryamehr University and established the Imperial Iranian Academy of Philosophy at the request of Empress Farah Pahlavi which soon became one of the most prominent centers of philosophical activity in the Islamic world During his time in Iran he studied with several traditional masters of Islamic philosophy and sciences The 1979 revolution forced him to exile with his family to the United States where he has lived and taught Islamic sciences and philosophy ever since He has been an active representative of the Islamic philosophical tradition and the perennialist school of thought Nasr s works offer a critique of modern worldviews as well as a defense of Islamic and perennialist doctrines and principles Central to his argument is the claim that knowledge has become desacralized in the modern period meaning that it has become severed from its divine source God or the Ultimate Reality which calls for its resacralization through the utilization of sacred traditions and sacred science Although Islam and Sufism are major influences on his writings his perennialist approach inquires into the essence of all orthodox religions regardless of their formal particularities His environmental philosophy is expressed in terms of Islamic environmentalism and resacralization of nature He is the author of over fifty books and more than five hundred articles Contents 1 Biography 1 1 Origins 1 2 Education 1 3 Back to Iran 1 4 Return to the West 2 Notable aspects of his works 2 1 The Perennialist or Traditionalist school 2 2 God and the world 2 3 The human being 2 3 1 Knowledge and the intellect 2 4 The sacred 2 5 Metaphysics 2 6 Religion and spirituality 2 6 1 Exoterism and esoterism 2 6 2 The essential unity of religions 2 6 3 Interreligious dialogue 2 7 Tradition 2 8 Ecology 2 9 Critique of modernism 2 9 1 The theory of evolution 2 9 2 Philosophy 2 9 3 Scientism 2 9 4 Art 3 Awards and honors 4 Works 5 See also 6 References 6 1 Notes 6 2 Citations 6 3 Sources 7 External linksBiography editOrigins edit Seyyed Hossein Nasr was born on 7 April 1933 in Tehran to Seyyed Valiollah Nasr who was a physician to the royal family philosopher and homme de lettres and one of the founders of modern education in Iran note 1 Nasr s parents were originally from Kashan His mother was well versed in Persian literature and poetry He is a descendant of Sheikh Fazlollah Nouri from his mother s side is the cousin of Iranian philosopher Ramin Jahanbegloo as well as the father of American academic Vali Nasr The surname Nasr which means victory was given to his grandfather by the Shah 29 The title Seyyed indicates a descendant of the Prophet Muhammad 30 Education edit Nasr completed his primary education in Tehran 31 28 His education was supplemented by religious and philosophical discussions with his father and an entourage of theologians ministers scholars and mystics 31 He immersed himself in the Koranic studies Persian literature Arabic and French languages at an early age 31 While he was completing his first year of secondary school at Firooz Bahram High School 32 his father was hurt in a serious accident so his mother sent him to continue his education in the United States so that he would not be present at the time of his father s imminent death 33 He would later say that there are three things that his father left him first of all love of knowledge for our own Persian culture our religious literary philosophical tradition secondly an avid interest in what was going on in the West in the realm of science and philosophy literature and everything else thirdly a sense of serenity that he had within himself 34 In the United States Nasr first attended Peddie School in Hightstown New Jersey graduating in 1950 as the valedictorian of his class 35 He then applied to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston to study physics and was accepted with a scholarship 35 When he realized after an encounter with the philosopher Bertrand Russell that the study of physics would not bring answers to his questions he enrolled in additional courses on metaphysics and philosophy with Giorgio de Santillana 35 who introduced him to the works of Rene Guenon From there Nasr discovered the works of other Perennialist metaphysicians notably Frithjof Schuon Ananda Coomaraswamy Titus Burckhardt Martin Lings and Marco Pallis 35 This school of thought has shaped Nasr s life and thinking ever since The widow of Commaraswamy gave him access to the library of her late husband and Nasr spent much of his time there and worked to catalogue the library He visited Schuon and Burckhardt in Switzerland while still a student and was initiated into the Alawi branch of the Shadhili Sufi order 35 He considered the works of Schuon with central importance given to the practice of a spiritual discipline in addition to doctrinal knowledge especially instrumental in determining his intellectual and spiritual life 29 After receiving an MIT B S degree in physics in 1954 Nasr enrolled in the graduate program in geology and geophysics at Harvard University where he received a Master of Science in both fields in 1956 and went on to pursue his PhD degree in the history of science and learning at the same university 36 He planned to write his dissertation under the supervision of George Sarton but Sarton died before he could begin his dissertation work and so he wrote it under the direction of I Bernard Cohen Hamilton Gibb and Harry Wolfson 37 At the age of twenty five Nasr graduated with a PhD from Harvard and completed his first book Science and Civilization in Islam the title being a direct tribute to Science and Civilization in China the work by Joseph Needham which had for task to present to Westerners the complex developments of the history of science and technology in China a mission Nasr was himself following for the Islamic civilization 38 His doctoral dissertation entitled Conceptions of Nature in Islamic Thought was published in 1964 by Harvard University Press as An Introduction to Islamic Cosmological Doctrines 39 Apart from mastering Arabic and French he was initially taught in his childhood during his student years Nasr also learned Greek Latin Italian Spanish and German 40 Back to Iran edit After receiving his Ph D from Harvard in 1958 Nasr was offered the position of associate professor at MIT as well as a three year research position as a junior fellow followed by a formal teaching position at Harvard but he decided to return to Iran That same year Tehran University hired him as associate professor of philosophy and the history of science 41 He continued his study of Islamic sciences with traditional Iranian masters and philosophers Muhammad Husayn Tabataba i Allameh Sayyed Abul Hasan Rafiee Qazvini and Sayyid Muhammad Kazim Assar completing his dual education academic and traditional 31 He had married and started a family at this point 42 His son Vali Nasr would go on to become an academic and expert on the Islamic world At thirty Seyyed Hossein Nasr was the youngest person to become a full professor at Tehran University 43 He was quickly recognized as an authority in Islamic philosophy Islamic science and Sufism 44 For fifteen years he conducted a doctoral seminar in comparative philosophy and Islamic philosophy with Henry Corbin who was at that time the director of the French Institute for Iranian Studies in Tehran 45 Five years later he would be made the dean of the faculty of letters and then vice chancellor of the university 46 In 1972 the Shah chose him to become the President of Aryamehr University now Sharif University of Technology 47 There Nasr created a faculty for the humanities in order to encourage the students not to focus exclusively on scientific matters He also designed courses that focused on the assessment of modern technology and its impact on human society and the environment 48 During this time he was also involved in the creation of the Islamic and Iranian studies departments at Harvard Princeton the University of Utah and the University of Southern California 49 I belonged to a new generation and was able to exercise much influence not only at Tehran University but also in the cultural and educational life of the country as a whole since I was a member of all the important national councils in those fields So there was a really formidable jihad on my hands to try to turn things around and to make Iranian society more aware of its own heritage I tried to create a bridge between the traditional and the modern elements of our society 50 interview Nasr refused to engage in the politics of his country despite a number of offers for ministerial positions and ambassadorship 51 In 1974 Empress Farah Pahlavi commissioned him to establish and lead the Imperial Iranian Academy of Philosophy now the Institute for Research in Philosophy the first academic institution to be conducted in accordance with the intellectual principles of the Traditionalist School During that time Nasr Tabataba i William Chittick Peter Lamborn Wilson Kenneth Morgan Sachiko Murata Toshihiko Izutsu and Henry Corbin held various philosophical discourses The book Shi ite Islam and the traditionalist journal Sophia Perennis were products of this period 52 In 1978 he was named director of the Empress s private bureau while continuing to teach philosophy at Tehran University and serve as chancellor of Aryamehr University and President of the Imperial Iranian Academy of Philosophy 53 Return to the West edit nbsp Nasr in 2002 In January 1979 the revolution put an end to the Pahlavi dynasty and Nasr who was visiting London with his family at the time was unable to return to Iran He lost everything including his manuscripts and library 54 His family settled in Boston 55 After a few months of teaching at the University of Utah Nasr was appointed a professor of Islamic studies at Temple University in Philadelphia which had the largest Ph D program in religious studies in the United States During the 1980 1981 academic year Nasr delivered the Gifford lectures at the University of Edinburgh which were later published under the title Knowledge and the Sacred 56 According to William Chittick three out of the four of his first books in English An Introduction to Islamic Cosmological Doctrines Three Muslim Sages and Science and Civilization in Islam were published by Harvard University Press and they immediately established him as one of the major and original voices in Islamic studies His strong endorsement of the writings of Schuon and Burckhardt in these books were in turn instrumental in bringing the Traditionalist school to the notice of official academia 57 Nasr left Temple University in 1984 to become a professor of Islamic studies at George Washington University in Washington D C a position he holds to this day 58 That same year he established the Foundation for Traditional Studies which published the journal Sophia and works on traditional thought 59 He has authored over fifty books and over five hundred articles based on the principles of the philosophia perennis 60 He is regularly invited to give courses and conferences at various institutions and universities of the five different continents on the major themes for which he has become well known 61 Islam philosophy metaphysics cosmology anthropology spirituality religion science ecology literature art etc 60 note 2 His works have been translated into twenty eight different languages 62 Notable aspects of his works editThis section relies excessively on references to primary sources Please improve this section by adding secondary or tertiary sources October 2022 Learn how and when to remove this template message Nasr s expertise encompasses traditional culture wisdom religion philosophy science and art Western thought from antiquity to the present day and the history of science He argues in favor of revelation tradition and what he considers scientia sacra in opposition to rationalism relativism and modern western materialism 63 64 65 66 Nasr has not developed a new system of thought but instead hopes to revive traditional doctrines that he believes have been forgotten in the modern world 67 He is content to recall what according to him corresponds to the many manifestations of a timeless wisdom 68 Although Islam and Sufism are present throughout his writings his universalist perspective which is that of perennial philosophy takes into account what he assumes to be the common essence of all orthodox religions beyond their formal particularities or their current state My philosophical world is a kind of synthesis between the perennial philosophy which I espouse and represent and the Islamic philosophical tradition which I have tried to revive and to which I also belong And so I would say that for the first category there are Guenon and Schuon if I had to name a third person then Coomaraswamy and for the second category Ibn Sina Suhrawardi Ibn Arabi and Mulla Sadra 1 According to Sarah Robinson Bertoni Nasr is one of the principal figures in Islamic philosophy working at the crossroads of Western and Islamic intellectual traditions 69 Harry Oldmeadow considers Nasr to be of the living traditionalists the most widely known in academic circles For him Nasr s works are characterized by rigorous scholarly methodology an encyclopedic erudition about all matters Islamic a robustness of critical thought and a sustained clarity of expression and he is the foremost traditionalist thinker to base himself on eternal wisdom sophia perennis in order to provide a solution to the contemporary environmental crisis 70 The Perennialist or Traditionalist school edit When he discovered the writings of the most influential members of what would become the Traditionalist or Perennialist school Rene Guenon Frithjof Schuon Ananda Coomaraswamy Titus Burckhardt Martin Lings the student Seyyed Hossein Nasr fully aligned himself to their perspective founded on the philosophia perennis 71 note 3 I had discovered a worldview about which I felt complete certitude yaqin I felt that this was the truth that satisfied me intellectually and accorded with my life existentially It was in harmony with the faith that I had It was universalist in its metaphysical perspective and also critical of Western philosophy and science in a manner that spoke directly to my concerns 72 interview Thus in the middle of a materialistic century this School provides Nasr with the keys to his spiritual quest an esoteric doctrine and method within the framework of a Sufi path 73 For Patrick Laude Seyyed Hossein Nasr s background is remarkable in at least three ways first he is a public figure who has been widely recognized in the media in both the US and Europe as a spokesman for perennialist ideas Second he is the only perennialist writer who is closely identified with a given religious tradition both as being born in it and as being a world expert on many of its dimensions Thirdly Nasr is the only foremost perennialist writer to have received an intensive and advanced academic training in modern sciences His familiarity and identification with Islam his validation as a recognized scholar and respected member of the scholarly community and his conceptual proficiency in modern scientific languages have all contributed to make him a particularly apt interpreter of perennialist ideas in the contemporary public arena 74 For Nasr the expression philosophia perennis as understood by the Perennialist School refers to both the universal metaphysical truth and to its spiritual realization The latter can only be considered according to Nasr in the framework of a tradition thus with the aid of a method rites symbols and other means sanctified by revelation The truth though veiled is innate to the human spirit and its realization leads to what he calls knowledge that is to say gnosis or wisdom sophia hence the expression sophia perennis common ground at the heart of all religions 75 76 Nasr clarifies that the notion of the philosophia perennis does not derive from a compilation of wisdom writings of various historical traditions which would have resulted in the conviction of the existence of common truths but it is these very truths which by the practice of intellection the use of the intellect understood in a spiritual manner are revealed to the human spirit which then observes their presence in other times and climes and in fact in all the sacred traditions the world over 77 The language of the perennial philosophy is symbolism 78 God and the world edit According to Seyyed Hossein Nasr the Divine Reality includes metaphysically speaking an Impersonal Essence and a personal aspect that the believer ordinarily identifies with God in accordance with the perspective of most religions Only the esoteric dimension within these religions take into account the Impersonal Essence as can be seen most notably in the Kabbalah Sufism and among many Christian mystics such as Meister Eckhart and Angelus Silesius 79 God as ultimate Reality is thus at the same time Essence and Person or Supra Being and Being 80 Understood in this way God or the Principle is Reality in contrast to all that appears as real but which is not reality in the ultimate sense The Principle is the Absolute compared to which all is relative It is Infinite while all else is finite The Principle is One and Unique while manifestation is multiplicity It is the Supreme Substance compared to which all else is accident It is the Essence to which all things are juxtaposed as form It is at once Beyond Being and Being while the order of multiplicity is comprised of existents It alone is while all else becomes for It alone is eternal in the ultimate sense while all that is externalized partakes of change It is the Origin but also the End the alpha and the omega It is Emptiness if the world is envisaged as fullness and Fullness if the relative is perceived in the light of its ontological poverty and essential nothingness These are all manners of speaking of the Ultimate Reality which can be known but not by man as such It can only be known through the sun of the Divine Self residing at the center of the human soul 81 God is not only Absolute and Infinite He is also the Supreme Good or Perfection Now according to Nasr the specificity of infinitude and of good in divinis requires that they exteriorize themselves that is to say that they manifest themselves in multiplicity hence the world 82 note 4 A world that is imperfect despite the perfection of its source because as Nasr explains this exteriorization implies a distance from the Good hence the presence of evil the latter contrary to the good does not have its root in God 83 84 This imperfect world the visible and tangible world of man constitutes only the periphery of a hierarchy of increasingly subtle worlds according to their degree of proximity to Being 85 For Nasr God is the only reality and the world which participates in His reality is therefore unreal not as nothingness pure and simple but as relative reality it is an illusion to consider the world says Nasr as reality in the same way as the Principle Nasr holds that traditional wisdom or the sophia perennis has always seen God as Reality and the world as a dream from which the sage awakens through spiritual realization and the ordinary man through death To consider the world as the reality as is done by most modern philosophy leads to nihilism and skepticism by reducing God to an abstraction to the unreal and philosophy itself to the discussion of more or less secondary questions or to providing clever answers to ill posed problems 86 For Nasr Ultimate Reality is at once above everything and omnipresent 87 in the universe transcendent and immanent 88 89 On the human plane still according to Nasr The Reality or The Truth note 5 lies in the heart of man created in the image of God 90 whence the possibility of a unitive knowledge which sees the world not as separative creation but as manifestation that is united through symbols and the very ray of existence 91 The human being edit See also Pontifical and Promethean man The key to the understanding of the anthrōpos according to Nasr is situated in sapential teachings it is neither situated in exoteric religious formulations which relate essentially to salvation nor in what he considers to be profane science generally evolutionary 92 Beyond his faith in creationism ex nihilo 93 Nasr believes that the doctrines of all traditions attest that the genesis of man occurred in many stages first in the Divinity Itself so that there is an uncreated aspect to man hence the possibility of supreme union then in the Logos which is in fact the prototype of man and another face of that same reality which the Muslims call the Universal Man and which each tradition identifies with its founder after this man is created on the cosmic level and what the Bible refers to as the celestial paradise where he is dressed with a luminous body he then descends to the level of the terrestrial paradise and is given yet another body of an ethereal and incorruptible nature finally he is born into the physical world with a body which perishes 94 95 but he principially remains a reflection of the Absolute not only in his spiritual and mental faculties but even in his body 96 Thus Nasr rejects biology s modern evolutionary synthesis which he thinks is a desperate attempt to substitute a set of horizontal material causes in a unidimensional world to explain effects whose causes belong to other levels of reality 94 For Nasr in accordance with the traditional view of the anthrōpos the human being is a bridge between Heaven and earth pontifex 97 Responsible to God for his actions he is the custodian and protector of the earth on the condition that he remain faithful to himself as the central terrestrial figure created in the form of God living in this world but created for eternity 98 This aspect of humanity for Nasr 99 is reflected in all of his being and his faculties 100 Among these faculties Nasr underlines the primacy of intelligence sentiments and will as a theomorphic being his intelligence can know the truth as such his sentiments are capable of reaching out for the ultimate through love suffering sacrifice and also fear and his will is free to choose it reflects the Divine Freedom 101 But because of man s separation from his original perfection a consequence of what Christianity calls the fall itself followed by further declines these faculties no longer operate invariably according to their theomorphic nature 101 102 Thus intelligence can become reduced to mental play sentiments can deteriorate to little more than gravitation around that illusory coagulation which is the ego and the will can be debased to nothing other than the urge to do that which removes man from the source of his own being 101 All traditional sciences of nature are also sciences of the self on the basis of the microcosmic macrocosmic correspondence 103 therefore by virtue of an inward link that binds man as the microcosm to the cosmos 104 This ideal man underlines Nasr is primordial man perfect plenary reflection of all those Divine Qualities 105 who knew everything in God and through God 106 Knowledge and the intellect edit See also Desacralization of knowledge and Resacralization of knowledge According to Seyyed Hossein Nasr man contains within himself many levels of existence that the Western tradition synthesises in the ternary spirit soul and body pneuma psyche and hyle or spiritus anima and corpus 96 107 The human spirit is an extension and reflection of the Divine Spirit 108 it coincides with the intellect 109 and resides at the center of the spiritual heart of the human being 110 Nasr always uses the word intellect in its original sense of intellectus nous and not of reason ratio which is only its reflection 111 and which is identified with the analytical functions of the mind 112 the intellect is the light of the sacred shining upon our minds 113 The intellect which is the root and the center of consciousness 114 is also the source of inner illumination and intellection 115 which Nasr following Guenon also calls intellectual intuition 116 and that implies an illumination of the heart and the mind of man making possible a knowledge of an immediate and direct nature tasted and experienced which extends to certain aspects of reality note 6 up to the Absolute Reality 117 The human intellect is the subjective pole of the Word or of the Logos the universal Intellect by which all things were made and which constitutes the source of objective revelation that is to say formal and established religion 118 For Nasr in the vast majority of cases this inner revelation or intellection cannot become operative except by virtue of an external revelation which provides an objective cadre for it and enables it to be spiritually efficacious 119 hence the necessity of faith 120 and spiritual practices 121 associated with the realization of the virtues 122 with the aid of the grace issuing from each revelation 80 Huston Smith summarises in an analysis of Nasr s works that Nasr contends it is God who knows Himself through man 123 For Nasr indeed discrimination between the Real and the unreal terminates in the awareness of the nondual nature of the Real the awareness which is the heart of gnosis and which represents not human knowledge but God s knowledge of Himself consciousness which is at the same time the goal of the path of knowledge and the essence of scientia sacra 82 Nasr contends that this wisdom which corresponds beyond salvation to deliverance from the bonds of all limitation 124 is present in the heart of all traditions whether it be the Hindu Vedanta Buddhism the Jewish Kabbalah the Christian metaphysics of an Eckhart or an Erigena or Sufism 86 It alone is able to solve certain apparent contradictions and riddles in sacred texts 125 Through such sacred knowledge man ceases to be what he appears to be to become what he really is in the eternal now and what he has never ceased to be 126 The sacred edit Terry Moore in his introduction to a long interview that Seyyed Hossein Nasr gave to the Iranian philosopher Ramin Jahanbegloo recalls that for Nasr the Sacred is the Eternal Absolute Truth as It manifests Itself in our world It is the appearance of the Eternal in time the Center in the periphery of the Divine in the world of space and time The Sacred is present in Itself and in Its manifestations 127 Still according to Moore it is this relationship with the sacred through the channel of Tradition that anchors Seyyed Hossein Nasr s worldview 127 Nasr considers the sense of the sacred as inseparable from any spiritual quest This sense emanates from the awareness of the eternal and immutable reality of the Divine 128 which is both transcendent and immanent to all universal manifestation therefore also to the human being 129 The sacred manifests itself in revelation the sacred rites of various religions spiritual and initiatory practices sacred art virgin nature in fact everything that transmits the presence of the Divine 130 It is possible for us to rediscover the sacred character of both knowledge and the world and one might say that that has been the basic motif throughout my writings 131 Metaphysics edit Main article Scientia sacra For Nasr true metaphysics the scientia sacra which is the intellectual foundation of the Traditionalist School is the science of the Real of the origin and the end of things of the Absolute and in its light the relative 132 and as a corollary of the degrees of existence 133 It is therefore the knowledge by means of which man is able to distinguish between the Real and the illusory and to know things in their essence or as they are which means ultimately to know them in divinis The knowledge of the Principle which is at once the absolute and infinite Reality is the heart of metaphysics while the distinction between levels of universal and cosmic existence including both the macrocosm and the microcosm are like its limbs metaphysics is the primary and fundamental science or wisdom which contains the principles of all the sciences 134 True metaphysics underlines Nasr can only be assimilated by intellectual intuition 132 note 7 that is to say that it is necessarily associated with a path of spiritual realization an approach foreign to modern philosophy which has been instrumental in reducing the significance of metaphysics to just another mental activity 135 Metaphysical knowledge stems from the true understanding of symbolism 136 Religion and spirituality edit According to Nasr man is a theomorphic being living in this world but created for eternity 90 because his soul is immortal 137 The post mortem salvation of the soul reminds Nasr is the first duty of man according to every religion 138 a soul tainted here below by its centrifugal tendencies its passions 139 Nasr contends that all religions have an origin in God 140 reveal the paths which leads to either felicity in the hereafter or damnation to the paradisal or infernal states 141 and require faith 102 Each new descent of a revelation brings a particular spiritual genius fresh vitality uniqueness and the grace which make its rites and practices operative not to speak of the paradisal vision which constitutes the origin of its sacred art or of the sapience which lies at the heart of its message 142 This wisdom continues Nasr accounts for the Ultimate Reality which is both beyond everything and at the very heart and center of man s soul 91 that is to say in his spirit 108 The quest for wisdom or knowledge through spiritual practice and the cultivation of virtues can lead to salvation in the highest sense of this term which means total deliverance from the bonds of all limitations 143 Nasr argues that spirituality requires a constant practice and a rigorous discipline within the framework of a religion and he considers the current commercialization of the pseudo spiritual to be indicative of people wanting the spiritual result without the effort 144 Daoud Riffi emphasizes that Sufism is the spiritual path followed by Seyyed Hossein Nasr in a universalist framework which attests to the principial unity of all major religions Nasr s Sufism relates to the intellect in its medieval sense that is the spiritual heart True knowledge is therefore a matter of the heart not of the mind and the fruit of an interior asceticism 145 Exoterism and esoterism edit Nasr says that every integral religion possesses at once an external or exoteric dimension and an inner or esoteric dimension The first is concerned with the external and formal aspect of human life with a view to the posthumous salvation of those who follow the precepts of their religion and who have faith in its truths The second concerns the formless and the essential with a view to the realization of the Supreme Essence here and now 142 These two dimensions unfold in a hierarchy of levels from the most outward to the most inward which is the Supreme Center 142 Nasr thus distinguishes three modes of approaching ultimate Reality the ways of work love and knowledge which correspond to as many predispositions of human nature The most interiorizing paths integrate those which are less so but the latter not necessarily possessing the capacity to understand what is beyond them sometimes become the causes of tensions within the same religion Nasr adds that all human beings can be saved if only they follow religion according to their own nature and vocation 146 And he warns on the social level on the level of human action the barriers and conditions established by the exoteric dimension of the religion should not be transgressed including by those who follow the path of esoterism the inward or mystical path 147 141 Since there are questions that exoterism cannot answer it is important for religion to keep alive the reality and the significance of esoterism for people who have the capability and need to understand the inner or esoteric dimension of the tradition 148 This is what Islam for example continues to accomplish today with its inner dimension Sufism which remains a living tradition 149 On the other hand what happened in Christianity which is a great tragedy I believe for both Christianity and Western civilization and in fact for the rest of the world is that after the Renaissance gradually a wall was created and Western Christianity s inner dimension became more or less inaccessible and to a large extent eclipsed It is not accidental that during the last two or three hundred years Christianity has not produced figures such as a Meister Eckhart Tauler or Saint Bernard of Clairvaux and we could go down the list of hundreds of earlier great saints and mystics today so many people of Christian background look to Buddhism Islam and Hinduism for the inner dimension of religion 147 interview The essential unity of religions edit In a commentary on a work by Nasr Adnan Aslan reports that for Nasr the various religions are forms of the eternal truth which has been revealed by God to humankind through various agencies 150 It is this common truth which constitutes the transcendent unity of religions he says referring to the expression proposed by Frithjof Schuon 151 It is only on the level of the Supreme Essence standing above all the cosmic sectors from the angelic to the physical within which a particular religion is operative that the ultimate unity of religions is to be sought 146 This unity for Nasr is not to be found at the level of external forms religions do not simply say the same thing despite the remarkable unanimity of principles and doctrines and the profound similarity of applications of these principles 146 At the heart of every religion lies what Schuon calls the religio perennis that is to say a doctrine concerning the nature of reality and a method for being able to attain what is Real Doctrine and method vary from one religion to another but their essence and goal are universal 146 As a result no religion is in itself better than another concludes Nasr since all authentic religions come from the same Origin but in practical terms it is nevertheless necessary to distinguish the possibilities that remain valid in the current state of degradation of each of the religions 152 For Nasr given the celestial origin of all religions it is appropriate to respect their slightest particularities and to treat them with reverence as every manifestation of the sacred should be 146 Interreligious dialogue edit According to Jane I Smith Nasr is one of the most visible partners of Islamic Christian dialogue thanks to his training in Christian theology and philosophy combined with his remarkable knowledge of all Islamic sciences 153 Nasr points out that ordinary believers consider their religion to be the religion 138 Injunctions such as I am the way the truth the life Jesus or No one sees God unless he has seen me Mohammed 154 necessarily lead for these same believers to the certainty of the pre eminence of their own religion a conviction that could lead to the refusal to consider other religions as valid 138 This refusal for Nasr can be considered as legitimate since it stems from revelation therefore from God 155 God wants to save souls he does not ask the believer to deal with comparative religion nor to accept the validity of other revelations 138 In a traditional world such exclusivism presented no hindrance 138 but in today s world the mixing of populations calls many believers to question the value of the religions they encounter daily 156 Religion as it is seen in the world says Nasr comes from the wedding between a Divine Norm and a human collectivity destined providentially to receive the imprint of that Norm Thus racial ethnic and cultural differences constitute one of the causes for multiplicity of religions but religion itself cannot be reduced to its terrestrial embodiment 157 For Nasr there is only one truth and it necessarily manifests itself in all the different authentic religious universes otherwise God would not be merciful and just 158 But it is not according to Nasr the exoteric level that of divergences which allows access to a true understanding and acceptance of other religions 155 146 only esotericism which transcends the formal dimensions of religions allows according to him uncompromising adherence to the authenticity of all revelations 155 by recognizing in them a supra formal unity which resolves these very differences 146 Nasr actively participates in the dialogue between Christians and Muslims In 2008 he was the main Muslim speaker opposite Benedict XVI at the first Catholic Muslim Forum organized by the Vatican 159 For Nasr one of the reasons why it is so difficult to have a deep religious dialogue today with Christians is due besides their conviction that there is no salvation outside the Church 160 note 8 to the absence of an esoteric dimension interior mystical which centuries of secularism have stifled For Islam which is not theologically threatened by the presence of other religions in the same way that Christianity is 158 the influence of secularism occurred much later than in the West and Sufism which is its interior dimension continues to inspire the most profound doctrines that have been formulated concerning the plurality of religions and the relationship between them 161 For Nasr as Jahanbegloo emphasizes dialogue is not only a pursuit of truth but also a challenge to spiritual responsibility of each religion to try to heal the wounds of the present day secularized world in which we live 162 Tradition edit Main article Tradition perennialism In Knowledge and the Sacred Nasr defines tradition as follows Tradition as used in its technical sense means truths or principles of a divine origin revealed or unveiled to mankind and in fact a whole cosmic sector through various figures envisaged as messengers prophets avataras the Logos or other transmitting agencies along with all the ramifications and applications of these principles in different realms including law and social structure art symbolism the sciences and embracing of course Supreme Knowledge along with the means for its attainment 163 For Nasr the tradition therefore presents two aspects one is truths that are of a transcendent order in their origin that came from the Divine from God revealed at the birth of each of the great religions and on the other hand the transmission of these truths by these same religions and by the civilizations they have generated tradition is therefore not limited to religion this is its heart but it is deployed in all areas of a culture hence the names traditional art traditional sciences traditional architecture traditional music traditional clothing etc 164 Following Rene Guenon to whom he is indebted for clarifying this fundamental concept 165 Nasr refers to a Primordial Tradition which he defines as being the single truth from which emanate all truths the immutable and timeless archetype from which all traditions originate 166 According to Nasr at a time when Heaven and Earth were still united the original or archetypal man was directly enlightened spiritually and intellectually by the Primordial Tradition 142 The value of tradition for Nasr is not manifested by a simple nostalgia for the past 167 it stems from the wisdom that this tradition conveys instructing the human being on his own nature and that of the world and calling him to achieve his original perfection 168 169 Only the truths conveyed by tradition continues Nasr allow us to grasp the full scope of the errors of modern thought and its misdeeds on man and nature 170 Ecology edit See also Resacralization of nature Islamic environmentalism Ecotheology and Religion and environmentalism That the harmony between man and nature has been destroyed is a fact which most people admit But not everyone realizes that this disequilibrium is due to the destruction of the harmony between man and God 171 It was in 1966 during the Rockefeller Foundation Lectures at the University of Chicago that Seyyed Hossein Nasr for the first time made public the importance that he placed on nature and his concern for its degradation 172 He was one of the first philosophers to turn to this question 173 and he is considered to be the founder of environmentalism in the Muslim world 174 In several works he deals with the causes of the mutilation of the planet and the restorative remedies 175 CausesTarik Quadir argues that the ecological crisis for Nasr is only an externalization of an inner malaise due in large part to the various applications of modern western science Following the loss of the vision of the universe proper to medieval Christian worldview this science ignores or denies the existence of any reality other than that of the material aspect of nature 176 Indeed as Nasr explains the Renaissance and its aftermath witnessed the rise of a secular humanism and the absolutization of earthly man with immeasurable consequences for both the world of nature and traditional civilizations conquered by this new type of man who gives free rein to his Promethean ambition to dominate nature and its forces in order to gain wealth or to conquer others civilizations or both Nature more than a lifeless mass has thus become a machine to be dominated and manipulated by a purely earthly man 177 Thus it is to modernism and its false presumptions about the nature of man and the world that Nasr attributes the destruction of the natural environment in addition to the disintegration of the social fabric 178 and he deplores that all States from monarchies to communist governments to revolutionary regimes all want to copy avidly Western science and technology without thought of their cultural social and environmental consequences 179 Nasr believes that another cause of ecological problems is found in scientism that is the conviction that modern science provides if not the only at least the most reliable means to true knowledge and that it leads thereby to human progress 172 as imagined by those who evaluate a human society solely in terms of its economic growth 180 Nasr corroborates the observation that the development of the current economic system rests largely on human passions which it feeds in its turn thus generating a continuous blossoming of new needs which in reality are only desires 181 Finally if modern man destroys nature with such impunity it is because he looks upon it as a mere economic resource 182 RemediesQuadir maintains that for Nasr it is not by technology that environmental problems can be solved in the long term being themselves the consequence of this technology 183 According to Nasr the critique of the extraordinary technological development is certainly necessary but the real critique must start with the root of the problem i e with oneself 184 because in a desacralized West 185 few are aware of what Nasr considers the raison d etre of human life and of nature 184 This consciousness for Nasr is present in the wisdom of the various religious traditions 186 as well as in their cosmologies and sacred sciences 187 And it alone makes it possible to rediscover the sense of the sacred 188 in particular with regard to nature 182 because deprived of this sense the human being remains immersed in the ephemeral abandoning himself to his own lower nature with an illusory feeling of freedom 90 As a consequence the philosopher Ramin Jahanbegloo argues that Nasr s goal is to negate the totalitarian claims of modern science and to reopen the way to the religious view of the order of nature developed over centuries in the cosmologies and sacred sciences of the great traditions 162 Once the awareness comes of what really nature is warns Nasr that nature is not just an it that it is a living reality and has a sacred content that it has an inner relation with our own inner being that we cannot destroy nature without destroying ourselves then we will begin to respect her and consequently the dominant technology will initiate a reconversion 170 Realizing then by this interior transformation that true happiness is not linked to consumption 189 the human being will recognize his real and not imagined needs 184 the only solution to slow down the uncontrolled appetite which leads to the daily rape of the planet 170 Critique of modernism edit Nasr says that it was in the Renaissance in the West 14th 16th centuries that the modernist or reductive vision of the human condition and the universe began to take shape 190 and spread to other continents during the past two centuries 191 This ideology is characterized by the rejection of the theocentric view of reality 192 hence an absolutization of the human to the detriment of the Divine 190 but of a human denying his pontifical nature note 9 therefore reduced to his rational and animal aspects wandering in a desacralized wasteland oblivious to his origin and living only at the periphery of his being and of the universe 193 Nasr considers that after the Renaissance faith no longer had the monolithic cohesion of the Middle Ages The new man is no longer defined by his celestial archetype and his Edenic perfection nor by his symbolic and contemplative spirit but by his individuality reason the senses corporeality and his subjectivism 194 Nasr contends that this marked the beginning of the ever increasing secularization of man and of knowledge 195 which step by step lead the West to skepticism relativism individualism materialism progressivism evolutionism historicism scientism agnosticism atheism and ultimately what he considers the present chaos 196 According to Nasr given that the wisdom conveyed by the various traditional civilizations finds its origin in a divine revelation 197 these civilizations have always transmitted a fair representation of man and his purpose 198 Thus as Joseph E B Lumbard notes for Nasr only tradition can provide the weapon necessary to carry out the vital battle for the preservation of the things of the spirit in a world which would completely devour man as a spiritual being if it could 193 According to Nasr To defend the traditional point of view is not to negate the reality of all kinds of evil in the premodern world ranging from wars to philosophical skepticism among the Greeks in the dying moments of that civilization The major difference is that in traditional civilizations while there was evil the sacred was ubiquitous and people lived in the world of faith Today evil continues in many more insidious ways while the very meaning of life which is the quest and discovery of the sacred is taken away 199 The theory of evolution edit For Nasr the results of modern scientific investigation of nature are defined by the oblivion of intellect and thus are severed from Divinity and highly compartmentalized He maintains that the scientific explanations for the origins of the natural world are purely physical and aimed at reducing man to matter while excluding divinity and teleology from nature 200 On this basis Nasr rejects the theory of evolution 201 202 claiming that it is an ideology it is not ordinary science 203 that it is more a pseudo religion than a scientific theory 204 that it requires more faith than is claimed by any religion for its founder or even for God 200 and that evolution is both metaphysically and logically impossible 205 note 10 The sociologist Farzin Vahdat sees this as part of Nasr s rejection of secular reason and secular science and more broadly of the modern world 206 and Salman Hameed in an editorial for Science identified Nasr as one of a few Islamic creationists active in Western academic institutions 207 Marietta Stepaniants observes that for Nasr the absurdity of that theory is that it offers horizontal and material causes in a unidimensional world to explain effects whose causes belong to other levels of reality 208 As an alternative Nasr defends his vision of an Islamic philosophy of science that accepts limited biological changes occurring throughout time but rejects the idea that solely natural mechanisms account for what he calls creativity He contends that evolutionary biology is a materialist philosophy rather than a real science with a true empirical foundation and contrasts a Darwinian vision of life with his God centered perspective of nature based in the traditional Islamic understanding of life and creation 209 Nasr contends that evolutionism is one of the cornerstones of the contemporary worldview and has contributed directly to the modern world s degradation of the spiritual significance and sacredness of God s creation as stated in sacred scriptures such as the Quran 205 Philosophy edit Commenting on an article that Muhammad Suheyl Umar dedicated to him Nasr speaks of his own philosophical position I am a follower of that philosophia perennis and also universalis that eternal sophia which has always been and will always be and in whose perspective there is but one Reality which can say I I have tried to become transparent before the ray of Truth that shines whenever and wherever the veil before it is lifted or rent asunder Once that process is achieved the understanding observation and explication of the manner in which that light shines upon problems of contemporary man constitute for me philosophical creativity in the deepest sense of the term Otherwise philosophy becomes sheer mental acrobatics and reason cut off from both the intellect and revelation nothing but a luciferian instrument leading to dispersion and ultimately dissolution 210 For Nasr the true love of wisdom philosophia was shared by all civilizations until the emergence in the West of a thought which dissociated itself more and more from the spiritual dimension 211 as a result of the occultation of the sapiential core of religion and the divorce of philosophical intelligence from faith Apart from the case of certain Greek currents such as sophistry and skepticism 212 as well as the episode of nominalism towards the end of the Middle Ages 213 it was really during the Renaissance continues Nasr that the separation of philosophy and of revelation began 214 despite the maintenance in certain isolated circles of a true spirituality 213 With the development of individualism and the emergence of rationalism and skepticism 215 only the purely human faculties reason and the senses determined knowledge although faith in God still persisted to a certain extent but that was not enough to hold back the progressive desacralization of knowledge which characterizes European intellectual history from this period on 216 and which led to the completely profane philosophy of today 211 However the very separation of knowledge from being which lies at the heart of the crisis of modern man is avoided in the Oriental traditions which consider legitimate only that form of knowledge that can transform the being of the knower 211 Adnan Aslan notes a passage from Nasr in which he endorses Plato s commentary in the Phaedo which equates philosophy with the practice of death this death for Nasr corresponds to the extinction of the I a necessary stage for the realization of the Self note 11 or of the Truth 217 Several works by Nasr support critical analyzes of those he considers to be engines of modern deviation Descartes Montaigne F Bacon Voltaire Hume Rousseau Kant Comte Darwin Marx Freud Aurobindo Teilhard de Chardin and others In addition his writings abundantly cite those who for him convey authentic wisdom Pythagoras Socrates Plato Plotinus Augustine Shankara Erigena Avicenna al Biruni Suhrawardi Ibn Arabi Rumi Thomas Aquinas Eckhart Dante Mulla Sadra Guenon Schuon Coomaraswamy Burckhardt Lings etc 218 219 220 Scientism edit Patrick Laude submits that Nasr is the only foremost perennialist writer to have received an intensive and advanced academic training in modern sciences 221 note 12 while Joseph E B Lumbard contends that as a trained scientist Nasr is well suited to argue about the relationship between religion and science 167 Summarizing Nasr s thought Lucian W Stone Jr writes in The Dictionary of Modern American Philosophers According to Nasr while the traditional sciences which include biology cosmology medicine philosophy metaphysics and so on understood the natural phenomena and humanity as vestigia Dei signs of God modern science has severed the universe including humans from God The natural world or cosmos has a meaning beyond itself one of which modern secular science is intentionally ignorant 222 Nasr argues that historically Western science is inextricably linked to Islamic science and before it to the Greco Alexandrian Indian ancient Iranian as well as Mesopotamian and Egyptian sciences Denying this heritage the Renaissance already despite some resistance but especially the 17th century Descartes Galileo Kepler Newton imposed new paradigms in accordance with the ambient anthropocentrism and rationalism and with the secularization of the cosmos which have resulted in a unilateral and monolithic science bound to a single level of reality a profoundly terrestrial and externalized science 223 While not denying the prowess of a science limited to the physical dimension of reality Nasr nonetheless argues that alternative worldviews drawn from traditional doctrines remain constantly aware of the inner nexus which binds physical nature to the realm of Spirit and the outward face of things to an inner reality which they at once veil and reveal 224 For the traditional sciences of all civilizations the universe is formed by a hierarchy of degrees the most external or lowest degree being the physical world the only one that modern science recognizes this lower degree reflects the higher degrees of the universe by means of symbols which have remained an ever open gate towards the Invisible 225 Nasr speaks of certain intuitions and discoveries of contemporary scientists which reveal the Divine Origin of the natural world 225 a deduction that scientism does not want to admit the scientific philosophers are much more dogmatic than many scientists in denying any metaphysical significance to the discoveries of science 226 Scientism presents modern science not as a particular way of knowing nature but as a complete and totalitarian philosophy which reduces all reality to the physical domain and does not wish under any condition to accept the possibility of the existence of non scientistic worldviews 224 However Nasr notes a large number of eminent physicists have often been the first to deny scientism and even the so called scientific method seeking to go beyond the scientific reductionism which has played such a great role in the desacralization of nature and of knowledge itself 227 According to Lumbard Nasr considers that Science in and of itself is neutral and the information that scientific discovery provides is true on its own plane but science falls into error when it crosses from the realm of scientific investigation into that of scientistic ideology generalizing and absolutizing a particular vision of the physical domain of the universe that science is able to study and then judging the other disciplines in accord with that narrow vision Nasr calls for a reintegration of modern science into metaphysics and the traditional cosmological sciences in which knowledge of the level of reality that each discipline is equipped to analyze is perceived through the light of higher forms of knowledge at the apex of which stands the knowledge of the One before which all is reduced to nothingness 228 Art edit In his reflections on art Seyyed Hossein Nasr bases himself on the traditional perspective which is by nature meta historic and perennial 191 For him all art must convey the truth and beauty and a meaning that is ultimately universal because it is independent of the ego of the individual artist 229 He cites as examples the traditional art whether it be Persian and Arabic in the Islamic world Japanese and Chinese in the Far East Hindu and Buddhist in the Indian world medieval Christian in the West as well as the arts of the primal people of the Americas Australia and Africa who in a sense belong to one family 230 That art is the reflection of a Platonic paradigm idea or archetype in the Platonic sense in the world of physical forms 229 Thus in traditional art specifies Nasr the artist is an instrument for the expression of certain symbols of certain ideas which are beyond the individual and are executed artistically through traditional techniques because they belong to the spiritual world this is where the great difference between traditional and modern art comes from 231 An art is considered traditional not because of its subject matter but because of its conformity to cosmic laws of forms to the laws of symbolism to the formal genius of the particular spiritual universe in which it has been created its hieratic style its conformity to the nature of the material used and finally its conformity to the truth as expressed by the religious milieu from which it comes 232 As for sacred art which lies at the heart of traditional art it has a sacramental function and is like religion itself at once truth and presence 233 it involves the ritual and cultic practices and practical and operative aspects of the paths of spiritual realization 234 In a traditional society says Nasr one does not distinguish between sacred art and religious art but in the post medieval West and also outside of the Western world since the 19th century in fact wherever you already have had the decadence of the traditional arts 235 religious art is characterized only by its subject at the expense of its means of execution and its supra individual symbolism which belong to the suprahuman realm 236 Today much of what is called religious art is no longer traditional but individualistic and psychological 235 For Nasr the degeneration of Western art since the Renaissance is the consequence of a view of man as a purely secular and earthly being 237 238 From symbolic as it was art became more and more naturalistic as can be seen for example by comparing the sculptures of Chartres Cathedral to those of Michelangelo 239 or paintings of the Virgin by Raphael to those of the Middle Ages 240 But tired of indefinitely reproducing beings and objects deprived of life naturalism faded in the second half of the 19th century in front of this new very ingenious wave of impressionist art which tries to capture some of the qualities of nature using light and colors without simply emulating the external forms of nature 241 This movement however was only a transient phase and soon the whole world of form broke down from below starting with Picasso and continuing to our own day 241 The cracks in the confines of the solidified mindset created by centuries of humanism rationalism and empiricism have opened access to the most inferior influences 242 According to Nasr most modern artists become completely enmeshed in their own egos leading lives which are in many cases not morally disciplined whereas the traditional perspective on the contrary seeks to free us through spiritual discipline destroying the stranglehold that the lower ego has upon our immortal soul 243 The traditional artist does not try to express his own feelings and ideas as the modern artist does 244 Art for art s sake is not his credo nor is innovation originality and creativity because unlike the modern artist he knows that art has as its goal the attainment of inner perfection and human need s in the deepest sense which are spiritual intimately linked to beauty and the truth 230 245 All beauty writes Nasr is a reflection of Divine Beauty and can lead to the Source of that reflection 246 but the contemporary rubs shoulders with ugliness unaware that the need for beauty is as profound in the human being as the air that we breathe 247 For Nasr there are artists in the present day rooted in a true spirituality and who express it or attempt to express it in their art 248 with the humility demanded by light of the truth and the millennial heritage of traditional art most of which was produced by anonymous artists who humbled themselves before the reality of the Spirit and through their transparency were able to reflect the light of the spiritual world in their works 245 Awards and honors editIn 2000 a volume was devoted to him in the Library of Living Philosophers 249 Templeton Religion and Science Award 1999 250 First Muslim and first non Western scholar to deliver the prestigious Gifford Lectures 36 Honorary Doctor from the Faculty of Theology of Uppsala University Sweden 1977 251 In 1977 La Perse pont de Turquoise Persia the turquoise bridge which he co authored with Roloff Beny won the Prix Charles Blanc of the Academie Francaise 252 Works editNasr is the author of over fifty books 253 and five hundred articles a number of which can be found in the journal Studies in Comparative Religion Seyyed Hossein Nasr Author Page on topics such as Traditionalist metaphysics Islamic science religion and the environment Sufism and Islamic philosophy He has written works in Persian English French Arabic and Indonesian 254 Listed below are most of Nasr s works in English in chronological order including translations edited volumes and Festschriften in his honor As author An Introduction to Islamic Cosmological Doctrines Conceptions of Nature and Methods Used for Its Study by the Ikhwan al Safa al Biruni and Ibn Sina 1964 Three Muslim Sages Avicenna Suhrawardi Ibn Arabi 1964 Ideals and Realities of Islam 1966 Science and Civilization in Islam with a preface by Giorgio de Santillana 1968 Islamic Studies Essays on Law and Society the Sciences and Philosophy and Sufism 1967 The Encounter of Man and Nature The Spiritual Crisis of Modern Man 1968 Sufi Essays 1972 Islam and the Plight of Modern Man 1975 Islamic Science An Illustrated Study with photographs by Roland Michaud 1976 Sadr al Din Shirazi and His Transcendent Theosophy Background Life and Works 2nd edition 1977 Knowledge and the Sacred The Gifford Lectures State University of New York Press 1989 ISBN 978 0 7914 0177 4 Download KNOWLEDGE AND THE SACRED Islamic Life and Thought 1981 Islamic Art and Spirituality 1986 253 Traditional Islam in the Modern World 1987 Man and Nature The Spiritual Crisis in Modern Man Kazi 1991 ISBN 978 1871031652 A Young Muslim s Guide to the Modern World 1993 The Need for a Sacred Science State University of New York Press 1993 ISBN 978 0 7914 1518 4 The Islamic Intellectual Tradition in Persia edited by Mehdi Aminrazavi 1994 Muhammad Man of God 1995 Religion and the Order of Nature The 1994 Cadbury Lectures at the University of Birmingham Oxford University Press USA 1996 ISBN 978 0195108231 Islam Religion History and Civilization 2001 The Heart of Islam Enduring Values for Humanity 2002 Free Download Islamic Philosophy from its Origin to the Present Philosophy in the Land of Prophecy 2006 The Garden of Truth The Vision and Promise of Sufism Islam s Mystical Tradition HarperOne 2008 ISBN 978 0061625992 Chittick William ed 2007 The Essential Seyyed Hossein Nasr World Wisdom ISBN 978 1933316383 Islam in the Modern World 2012 Poetry Poems of the Way put to music by Sami Yusuf in Songs of the Way vol 1 1999 The Pilgrimage of Life and the Wisdom of Rumi Poems and Translations 2007 As editor An Annotated Bibliography of Islamic Science edited with William Chittick and Peter Zirnis 3 vols 1975 Isma ili Contributions to Islamic Culture 1977 The Essential Frithjof Schuon 1986 Shi ism Doctrines Thought and Spirituality edited with Seyyed Vali Reza Nasr and Hamid Dabashi 1988 Expectation of the Millennium Shi ism in History edited with Seyyed Vali Reza Nasr and Hamid Dabashi 1989 Islamic Spirituality Vol 1 Foundations 1987 Vol 2 Manifestations 1990 Religion of the Heart Essays Presented to Frithjof Schuon on his Eightieth Birthday edited with William Stoddart 1991 In Quest of the Sacred The Modern World in the Light of Tradition edited with Katherine O Brien 1994 History of Islamic Philosophy edited with Oliver Leaman 1995 Mecca the Blessed Medina the Radiant The Holiest Cities of Islam photographs by Kazuyoshi Nomachi essay by Seyyed Hossein Nasr 1997 An Anthology of Philosophy in Persia edited with Mehdi Aminrazavi 5 vols 1st in 1999 The Essential Sophia edited with Katherine O Brien 2006 The Study Quran Editor in Chief Caner Dagli Maria Dakake and Joseph Lumbard General editors Mohammed Rustom Assistant editor 2015 As translator Shi ite Islam by Sayyid Muhammad Husayn Tabataba i The Book of Metaphysical Penetrations by Mulla Sadra edited introduced and annotated by Ibrahim Kalin Works about Nasr The Works of Seyyed Hossein Nasr Through His Fortieth Birthday edited by William Chittick Knowledge is Light Essays in Honor of Seyyed Hossein Nasr edited by Zailan Moris Beacon of Knowledge Essays in Honor of Seyyed Hossein Nasr edited by Mohammad Faghfoory Islam Modernity and the Human Sciences second part of the book by Ali Zaidi Religious Pluralism in Christian and Islamic Philosophy The Thought of John Hick and Seyyed Hossein Nasr by Adnan Aslan From the Pen of Seyyed Hossein Nasr A Bibliography of His Works Through His Eightieth Year edited by Nicholas Boylston Oludamini Ogunnaike and Syed A H Zaidi Islam and Modernity Dissecting the Thought of Seyyed Hossein Nasr A Discourse on the Compatibility or Incompatibility of Islam with Modernity Lap Lambert Academic Publishing 2011 by Musa Yusuf Owoyemi Thinking Between Islam and the West The Thoughts of Seyyed Hossein Nasr Bassam Tibi and Tariq Ramadan by Chi chung Andy Yu Traditional Islamic Environmentalism The Vision of Seyyed Hossein Nasr University Press of America 2013 by Tarik M Quadir Interviews Books Iqbal Muzaffar 2009 Islam Science Muslims and Technology Islamabad Dost ISBN 978 0 9738744 2 6 Jahanbegloo Ramin 2010 In Search of the Sacred A Conversation with Seyyed Hossein Nasr on His Life and Thought Santa Barbara CA Praeger ISBN 978 0 31338 324 3 Articles Bob Abernethy Religion amp Ethics Newsweekly 7 February 2003 Seyyed Hossein Nasr on Islam PBS Retrieved 25 September 2021 Bob Abernethy Religion amp Ethics Newsweekly 7 February 2003 Seyyed Hossein Nasr Extended Interview PBS Retrieved 25 September 2021 Michael Barnes Norton Journal of Philosophy amp Scripture Islamic Cultural Center of Northern California Autumn 2004 Scripture Society and Traditional Wisdom An Interview with Seyyed Hossein Nasr Retrieved 25 September 2021 On the Question of Biological Origins PDF Islam amp Science 4 2 181 197 Winter 2006 Kaleem Hussain Muslim Heritage 26 May 2009 Interview with Prof Seyyed Hossein Nasr Retrieved 25 September 2021 Mustafa Tabanli The Fountain Magazine May 2009 On Nature Beauty and Transcendence An Interview with Seyyed Hossein Nasr Retrieved 25 September 2021 Kahteran Nevad July 2009 Interviews with the Precursors of Knowledge The Interview with Professor Seyyed Hossein Nasr Katha Journal of the Centre for Civilisational Dialogue University of Malaya 5 69 77 Retrieved 24 September 2021 Islam amp Science Journal Summer 2010 Islamic Pedagogy An Interview Retrieved 25 September 2021 Speranskaya Natella 2013 Interview with Seyyed Hossein Nasr Retrieved 25 September 2021 Interview with Seyyed Hossein Nasr on Religion amp the Environment Newsletter Georgetown University Qatar 15 1 8 11 Autumn 2013 Retrieved 24 September 2021 Ali Lakhani The Sacred Web Conference Vancouver 27 April 2014 Dr Seyyed Hossein Nasr Interview Retrieved 25 September 2021 Colin Christopher Islamic Cultural Center of Northern California November 2016 Interview with Sufi Scholar Dr Seyyed Hossein Nasr Retrieved 25 September 2021 Sahil Badruddin Boniuk Institute for Religious Tolerance Autumn 2019 Role of Thinking in Islam Past Present and Future Retrieved 25 September 2021 See also editBrethren of Purity Ecotheology Religion and environmentalism Sufi studies Elemire Zolla Ibn Arabi James Cutsinger Jean Louis Michon Hadi Sabzavari Reza Shah Kazemi Philip Sherrard Wolfgang Smith William StoddartReferences editNotes edit He wrote many essays which still remain in manuscript form some of which have been assembled by Nasr into a book called Danish wa Akhlaq Knowledge and Ethics 28 Namely visiting scholar Harvard University in 1962 and 1965 Aga Khan chair of Islamic studies American University at Beirut in 1964 65 Rockefeller Lectures University of Chicago in 1966 Kevorkian Lectures New York University in 1977 Gifford Lectures University of Edinburgh in 1980 81 Wiegand Lecture University of Toronto in 1983 Parliament of World Religions Chicago in 1993 Cadbury Lectures University of Birmingham in 1994 Islam and the West UNO in 2003 The term philosophia perennis which appeared as early as the Renaissance and which neoscolasticism made extensive use of designates the science of the fundamental and universal ontological principles this science is immutable like these principles themselves are and it is primordial by the very fact of its universality and infallibility We would willingly use the term sophia perennis to indicate that this is not philosophy in the standard and approximative meaning of the word which suggests mere mental constructions springing from ignorance doubt and conjectures if not from an urge for novelty and originality or the term religio perennis could also be used when referring to the operative dimension of this wisdom namely to its mystical or initiatic aspect Frithjof Schuon Survey of Metaphysics quoted by Nasr According to Saint Augustine Nasr reminds us it is in the nature of the good to give of itself The Philosophy of Seyyed Hossein Nasr 2001 p 584 Islam is a religion which is based completely on the doctrine of the oneness of God and is a religion in which God is seen as both Reality and Truth the Arabic term al haqiqah meaning both In fact the word al Haqq The Truth which is related to haqiqah is a Name of God Nasr The Need for a Sacred Science 1993 p 7 The physical world is related to God by levels of reality which transcend the physical world itself and which constitute the various stages of the cosmic hierarchy Nasr The Essential Seyyed Hossein Nasr 2007 p 34 Scientia sacra is none other than that sacred knowledge which lies at the heart of every revelation and is the center of that circle which encompasses and defines tradition the twin source of this knowledge is revelation and intellection or intellectual intuition which involves the illumination of the heart and the mind of man and the presence in him of knowledge of an immediate and direct nature which is tasted and experienced Man is able to know and this knowledge corresponds to some aspect of reality Ultimately in fact knowledge is knowledge of Absolute Reality and intelligence possesses this miraculous gift of being able to know that which is and all that partakes of being Man can know through intuition and revelation not because he is a thinking being who imposes the categories of his thought upon what he perceives but because knowledge is being Nasr Knowledge and the Sacred 1989 p 119 120 Exclusivism alien to Islam for the Quran asserts clearly that people who do good works and have faith will be rewarded for their actions and will be saved but does not say that this is true for only Muslims There are some exclusivist and short sighted Muslims today who believe that anyone who is not a Muslim is an infidel and will go therefore to hell but that is not the traditional Islamic doctrine and goes against the text of the Quran Interview in In Search of the Sacred 2010 p 292 Nasr refers here among others to Quran 2 62 Indeed the faithful the Jews the Christians and the Sabaeans those of them who have faith in God and the Last Day and act righteously they shall have their reward near their Lord and they will have no fear nor will they grieve Joseph E B Lumbard The sharp and uncompromising distinction that Nasr makes between tradition and modernity also entails a sharp contrast between modern man and traditional man or what he refers to as pontifical man who functions as a bridge between heaven and earth and promethean man who has rebelled against heaven Regarding the former he writes Pontifical man who in the sense used here is none other than traditional man lives in a world which has both an Origin and a Center He lives in full awareness of the Origin which contains his own perfection and whose primordial purity and wholeness he seeks to emulate recapture and transmit Seyyed Hossein Nasr on Tradition and Modernity 2013 p 179 Nasr rejects this theory for the following reasons In Knowledge and the Sacred 1989 the sudden appearance noted by scientists of new species in various geological periods and over very extended areas such as some unrelated vertebrate groups which contradicts an evolution in the direction of progressive complexity p 206 the almost total absence in the stratigraphic records of fossils that should exist as intermediates between the major groups p 206 the testimony of biologists and paleontologists who while accepting the theory of evolution in the absence of a plausible scientific alternative remain fully aware of the fantastic and even surrealistic character of this theory p 207 Hahn 2001 p 755 the variations which are presented by advocates of evolution as buds of a new species are only variants within the framework of a single species each species possessing a potential for development which can only manifest itself within the species in question this micro evolution is the only possible evolution pp 206 207 On the Question of Biological Origins 2006 p 4 In On the Question of Biological Origins 2006 the impossibility of the appearance of sight in a blind animal or a pair of wings in an insect or a fish which moreover would have to practice flying pp 6 10 the impossibility starting from an animal intelligence of developing a capacity of reasoning as sophisticated as that which characterizes the human being whose consciousness is able to reflect on itself to be conscious of being conscious p 12 Saltzman 2001 p 595 finally the impossibility on a qualitative level that the less can generate the more p 5 The following extract makes it possible to identify the meaning of the terms I the ego and Self as Nasr understands them Man s responsibility to society the cosmos and God issues ultimately from himself not his self as ego but the inner man who is the mirror and reflection of the Supreme Self the Ultimate Reality which can be envisaged as either pure Subject or pure Object since It transcends in Itself all dualities being neither subject nor object Nasr Knowledge and the Sacred 2007 p 149 150 Although Guenon was a mathematician of background he was not directly involved in the study of modern sciences nor did he manifest much interest in going beyond a general critique of modern scientific reductionism Titus Burckhardt and to a lesser extent Frithjof Schuon has left us with remarkably perceptive arguments and analyses against such scientific axioms as macro evolutionism and the superstition of materialism Laude Seyyed Hossein Nasr in the Context of the Perennialist School in Beacon of Knowledge Essays in Honor of Seyyed Hossein Nasr 2003 p 6 7 Citations edit a b c d e f g h i Jahanbegloo 2010 p 59 a b c Jahanbegloo 2010 p 160 a b Markwith 2009 p 84 Jahanbegloo 2010 p 39 Jahanbegloo 2010 p 80 Jahanbegloo 2010 p 82 a b Jahanbegloo 2010 p 89 a b Jahanbegloo 2010 p 91 Moore 2010 p xxxiii Moore 2010 p xxi a b c d e Markwith 2009 p 90 a b c d e f g h i Markwith 2010 p 115 Jozi 2018 pp 246 Raudvere 2012 p 269 272 Morrow 2012 p 8 Jackson 2020 p 112 Mathiesen 2013 p 198 Widiyanto 2016 p 225 Widiyanto 2016 p 211 Widiyanto 2016 p 218 a b Widiyanto 2016 p 197 Foltz 2013 p 675 a b c Quadir 2013 p 27 28 Shahriari 2018 p 112 a b c Karimi 2008 p 50 Faruque Muhammad U 2023 Seyyed Hossein Nasr Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Religion Oxford University Press doi 10 1093 acrefore 9780199340378 013 868 ISBN 978 0 19 934037 8 Seibutis Kazimieras 2008 In memoriam Algis Uzdavinys Acta Orientalia Vilnensia 9 2 185 188 doi 10 15388 AOV 2008 2 3699 a b Jahanbegloo 2010 p 4 a b Riffi 2020 p 46 Chittick 2007 p ix a b c d Riffi 2020 p 47 Jahanbegloo 1965 p 229 sfn error no target CITEREFJahanbegloo1965 help Riffi 2020 p 47 Jahanbegloo 2010 p 7 Jahanbegloo 2010 p 7 a b c d e Chittick 2007 p x a b The Gifford Lectures on Natural Theology 1980 p 1 Dastagir 2018 p 619 Jahanbegloo 2010 p 53 Dastagir 2018 p 620 Jahanbegloo 2010 p 47 Jahanbegloo 2010 p 61 62 Chittick 2007 p xi Chittick 2007 p ix The Gifford Lectures on Natural Theology 1980 p 1 Oldmeadow 2004 Jahanbegloo 2010 p 67 91 93 Karic 2001 p 782 Chittick 2007 p xi The Gifford Lectures on Natural Theology 1980 p 1 Jahanbegloo 2010 p 117 Moore 2010 p xxv Jahanbegloo 2010 p 68 Jahanbegloo 2010 p 126 128 Jahanbegloo 2010 p 114 Chittick 2007 p xii Chittick 2007 p 12 Jahanbegloo 2010 p 137 Chittick 2007 p xii The Gifford Lectures on Natural Theology 1980 p 1 Chittick 2007 p xiii Kalin 1996 The Seyyed Hossein Nasr Foundation 1999 a b Chittick 2007 p xiv Oldmeadow 2010 p 40 Boylston 2014 Moore 2010 p xix xx Giles Leigh 1998 p 124 Irving 1979 p 145 Lawrence 2020 p 97 Allen 2003 p 199 Moore 2010 p xxiv Robinson Bertoni 2017 p 303 Oldmeadow 2004 p 213 Jahanbegloo 2010 p 231 Jahanbegloo 2010 p 43 Riffi 2020 p 48 Laude 2003 p 4 7 Knowledge and the Sacred 1989 p 80 The Need for a Sacred Science 1993 p 28 Hahn 2001 p 159 Hahn 2001 p 194 Hahn 2001 p 229 a b The Need for a Sacred Science 1993 p 5 Knowledge and the Sacred 1989 p 121 122 a b Knowledge and the Sacred 1989 p 122 The Need for a Sacred Science 1993 p 6 Hahn 2001 p 586 The Garden of Truth 2008 p 41 a b The Need for a Sacred Science 1993 p 7 The Need for a Sacred Science 1993 p 15 Hahn 2001 p 585 Knowledge and the Sacred 1989 p 209 a b c Knowledge and the Sacred 1989 p 145 a b Knowledge and the Sacred 1989 p 124 Knowledge and the Sacred 1989 p 145 146 150 Knowledge and the Sacred 1989 p 201 a b Knowledge and the Sacred 1989 p 151 Knowledge and the Sacred 1989 p 146 a b Knowledge and the Sacred 1989 p 152 Knowledge and the Sacred 1989 p 144 Knowledge and the Sacred 1989 p 144 145 Knowledge and the Sacred 1989 p 149 Knowledge and the Sacred 1989 p 150 a b c Knowledge and the Sacred 1989 p 155 a b The Essential Seyyed Hossein Nasr 2007 p 91 Hahn 2001 p 732 Knowledge and the Sacred 1989 p 157 Knowledge and the Sacred 1989 p 147 148 Knowledge and the Sacred 1989 p 20 Religion and the Order of Nature 1996 p 260 a b The Need for a Sacred Science 1993 p 26 The Essential Seyyed Hossein Nasr 2007 p 74 The Essential Seyyed Hossein Nasr 2007 p 81 Knowledge and the Sacred 1989 p 45 The Need for a Sacred Science 1993 p 21 Jahanbegloo 2010 p 206 Knowledge and the Sacred 1989 p 131 Knowledge and the Sacred 1989 p 133 Hahn 2001 p 311 Knowledge and the Sacred 1989 p 119 Nasr 2002 Quelques aspects de l œuvre in Dossiers H Frithjof Schuon Lausanne L Age d Homme p 175 The Need for a Sacred Science 1993 p 8 Hahn 2001 p 660 The Need for a Sacred Science 1993 p 18 The Essential Seyyed Hossein Nasr 2007 p 82 83 Hahn 2001 p 145 Hahn 2001 p 662 663 Knowledge and the Sacred 1989 p 132 Knowledge and the Sacred 1989 p 280 a b Moore 2010 p xvii Jahanbegloo 2010 p 204 The Garden of Truth 2008 p 13 Jahanbegloo 2010 p 204 205 Hahn 2001 p 304 a b Man and Nature 1991 p 81 Knowledge and the Sacred 1989 p 125 Knowledge and the Sacred 1989 p 120 121 Knowledge and the Sacred 1989 p 120 279 Hahn 2001 p 196 197 Knowledge and the Sacred 1989 p 268 a b c d e The Essential Seyyed Hossein Nasr 2007 p 10 The Need for a Sacred Science 1993 p 66 The Need for a Sacred Science 1993 p 29 a b Knowledge and the Sacred 1989 p 274 a b c d The Need for a Sacred Science 1993 p 30 Hahn 2001 p 663 Jahanbegloo 2010 p 165 166 Riffi 2020 p 49 a b c d e f g The Need for a Sacred Science 1993 p 31 a b Jahanbegloo 2010 p 173 Jahanbegloo 2010 p 174 The Garden of Truth 2008 p 189 190 Aslan 2004 p 22 The Essential Seyyed Hossein Nasr 2007 p 94 The Need for a Sacred Science 1993 p 32 Smith 2003 p 15 The Essential Seyyed Hossein Nasr 2007 p 8 a b c Jahanbegloo 2010 p 290 The Essential Seyyed Hossein Nasr 2007 p 4 The Need for a Sacred Science 1993 p 29 30 a b Jahanbegloo 2010 p 291 Lumbard 2013 p 178 Jahanbegloo 2010 p 297 Jahanbegloo 2010 p 290 291 a b Jahanbegloo 2010 p xiii xiv Liu 2000 p 255 Jahanbegloo 2010 p 181 Religious Art Traditional Art Sacred Art 2006 p 177 Knowledge and the Sacred 1989 p 68 a b Lumbard 2013 p 180 Moore 2010 p xviii xix Lumbard 2013 p 179 a b c Jahanbegloo 2010 p 197 Stone 2005 p 1802 a b Quadir 2013 p 13 Lumbard 2013 p 177 Boujaoude 2018 p 299 Moore 2010 p xxiii Quadir 2013 p 5 13 Religion and the Order of Nature 1996 p 4 Hahn 2001 p 274 Jahanbegloo 2010 p 118 Hahn 2001 p 29 Quadir 2013 p 12 13 a b Jahanbegloo 2010 p 205 Quadir 2013 p 15 16 a b c Jahanbegloo 2010 p 198 Knowledge and the Sacred 1989 p 279 Aslan 2004 p 23 Jahanbegloo 2010 p xiv Knowledge and the Sacred 1989 p 36 Quadir 2013 p 16 a b Jahanbegloo 2010 p 182 a b Hahn 2001 p 381 Jahanbegloo 2010 p 209 a b Lumbard 2013 p 182 The Essential Seyyed Hossein Nasr 2007 p 139 140 Knowledge and the Sacred 1989 p 22 The Essential Seyyed Hossein Nasr 2007 p 30 31 78 140 143 158 165 224 Hahn 2001 p 166 Hahn 2001 p 165 Hahn 2001 p 273 a b Bigliardi 2014 p 14 Deniz Hasan Borgerding Lisa A 2018 06 21 Evolution Education Around the Globe Springer ISBN 978 3 319 90939 4 Hameed Salman 2008 Bracing for Islamic Creationism Science 322 5908 1637 1638 doi 10 1126 science 1163672 ISSN 0036 8075 JSTOR 20176996 PMID 19074331 S2CID 206515329 Nasr Seyyed Hossein Winter 2006 On the Question of Biological Origins PDF Islam amp Science 4 2 182 Nasr Seyyed Hossein 2001 The Philosophy of Seyyed Hossein Nasr Chicago and La Salle Illinois Open Court p 21 a b Ghaly 2014 p 220 Vahdat Farzin 2015 Islamic Ethos and the Specter of Modernity Anthem Press pp 215 216 ISBN 978 1 78308 436 4 JSTOR j ctt1gsmz2q Hameed Salman 2008 12 12 Bracing for Islamic Creationism Science 322 5908 1637 1638 doi 10 1126 science 1163672 PMID 19074331 S2CID 206515329 Stepaniants 2001 p 801 Edis amp BouJaoude 2013 pp 1679 Umar 2001 p 90 a b c Umar 2001 p 110 Religion and the Order of Nature 1996 p 171 172 a b Knowledge and the Sacred 1989 p 33 Religion and the Order of Nature 1996 p 170 Religion and the Order of Nature 1996 p 171 Religion and the Order of Nature 1996 p 177 Aslan 2004 p 25 The Need for a Sacred Science 1993 Knowledge and the Sacred 1989 The Essential Seyyed Hossein Nasr 2007 Laude 2003 p 6 7 Stone 2005 p 1801 The Need for a Sacred Science 1993 p 37 a b Man and Nature 1991 p 4 a b The Need for a Sacred Science 1993 p 50 Knowledge and the Sacred 1989 p 101 Knowledge and the Sacred 1989 p 101 102 Lumbard 2013 p 181 182 a b Jahanbegloo 2010 p 239 a b Jahanbegloo 2010 p 242 Jahanbegloo 2010 p 238 Knowledge and the Sacred 1989 p 222 Knowledge and the Sacred 1989 p 221 Knowledge and the Sacred 1989 p 237 a b Jahanbegloo 2010 p 248 Jahanbegloo 2010 p 247 Hahn 2001 p 391 Jahanbegloo 2010 p 236 Jahanbegloo 2010 p 238 240 Jahanbegloo 2010 p 240 241 a b Jahanbegloo 2010 p 241 Hahn 2001 p 386 Hahn 2001 p 388 Jahanbegloo 2010 p 238 239 a b Hahn 2001 p 392 Jahanbegloo 2010 p 246 Jahanbegloo 2010 p 242 244 245 Hahn 2001 p 387 392 Hahn 2001 Press Release Archive University Professor Seyyed Hossein Nasr Wins Award For Best Course In America In Science And Religion Gwu edu Retrieved 2013 09 26 Honorary doctorates Uppsala University Sweden www uu se 9 June 2023 Charles Blanc Prize Winners www academie francaise fr a b Sacred Web Conference contemplates the role of religion in a secular age The Vancouver Observer Archived from the original on 2016 04 15 Retrieved 2016 04 01 Jawad 2005 p 50 Sources edit Abu Sayem Mohamed 2019 Seyyed Hossein Nasr s Works on Environmental Issues A Survey Islamic Studies 58 3 439 451 Retrieved 21 September 2021 Abu Sayem Mohamed 2019 The Eco Philosophy of Seyyed Hossein Nasr Spiritual Crisis and Environmental Degradation Islamic Studies 58 2 271 295 Retrieved 21 September 2021 Allen Micheal 2003 Seyyed Hossein Nasr In Dematteis Philip B McHenry Leemon B eds Dictionary of Literary Biography Farmington Hills MI Gale ISBN 978 0787660239 Aslan Adnan 2004 Religious Pluralism in Christian and Islamic Philosophy The Thought of John Hick and Seyyed Hossein Nasr London Routledge ISBN 978 1 138 99725 7 Bigliardi Stefano 2014 01 02 Stenmark s Multidimensional Model and the Contemporary Debate on Islam and Science Theology and Science 12 1 Informa UK Limited 8 29 doi 10 1080 14746700 2013 868117 ISSN 1474 6700 S2CID 144323011 Boujaoude Saouma 2018 Evolution Education in the Arab States Context History Stakeholders Positions and Future Prospects In Hasan Deniz amp Lisa A Borgerding ed Evolution Education Around the Globe New York Springer ISBN 978 3 319 90939 4 Boylston Nicholas Ogunnaike Oludamini Zaidi Syed A H eds 2014 From the Pen of Seyyed Hossein Nasr A Bibliography of His Works Through His Eightieth Year Chicago Kazi ISBN 978 1 567 44273 1 This work is a bibliography of Seyyed Hossein Nasr from 1961 to 2014 including translation of his works in 28 languages From the publisher Chittick William C 2007 Introduction In Chittick William C ed The Essential Seyyed Hossein Nasr Bloomington IN World Wisdom ISBN 978 1 933 31638 3 Dastagir Golam 2018 Seyyed Hossein Nasr Islam Judaism and Zoroastrianism Encyclopedia of Indian Religions Dordrecht Springer Netherlands pp 619 622 doi 10 1007 978 94 024 1267 3 2007 ISBN 978 94 024 1266 6 ISSN 2542 7628 Eaves Elisabeth 2015 A Religious Nature Philosopher Seyyed Hossein Nasr on Islam and the environment Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 71 5 13 18 Bibcode 2015BuAtS 71e 13 doi 10 1177 0096340215599785 S2CID 218771240 Retrieved 21 September 2021 Edis Taner BouJaoude Saouma 2013 Rejecting Materialism Responses to Modern Science in the Muslim Middle East International Handbook of Research in History Philosophy and Science Teaching Dordrecht Springer Netherlands pp 1663 1690 doi 10 1007 978 94 007 7654 8 52 ISBN 978 94 007 7653 1 Ghaly Mohammed 2014 Evolution and Muslim Responses to It In Kalin I Ayduz S eds The Oxford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Science and Technology in Islam Oxford Encyclopedias of Islamic Studies Oxford University Press ISBN 978 0 19 981257 8 Karic Enes 2001 Nasr Thinker of the Sacred In L E Hahn R E Auxier amp L W Stone Jr ed The Library of Living Philosophers n 28 The Philosophy of Seyyed Hossein Nasr Chicago Open Court ISBN 978 0 812 69413 0 Faghfoory Mohammad H ed 2003 Beacon of Knowledge Essays in Honor of Seyyed Hossein Nasr Louisville KY Fons Vitae ISBN 978 1 887 75256 5 Faruque Muhammad U ed 2019 The Pen amp the Tablet Works by and about Seyyed Hossein Nasr thru his 85th Birthday Louisville KY Fons Vitae ISBN 978 189178598 6 Foltz Richard 2013 Ecology in Islam In Runehov Anne L C Oviedo Lluis eds Encyclopedia of Sciences and Religions Springer ISBN 978 1402082641 The Gifford Lectures on Natural Theology 1980 Seyyed Hossein Nasr a Biography Edinburgh Glasgow St Andrews amp Aberdeen Universities Retrieved 21 September 2021 Giles Leigh Egbert Jr 1998 Reviewed Work Religion and the Order of Nature by Seyyed Hossein Nasr International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 44 2 Springer 124 126 doi 10 1023 A 1017193012060 JSTOR 40018858 S2CID 169095227 Guessoum Nidhal 2014 Islam and Science In S Fuller M Stenmark Zackariasson U eds The Customization of Science The Impact of Religious and Political Worldviews on Contemporary Science Palgrave Macmillan UK ISBN 978 1 137 37961 0 Hart J 2017 The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Religion and Ecology Wiley Blackwell Companions to Religion Wiley ISBN 978 1 118 46556 1 Hahn L E Auxier R E Stone L W Jr eds 2001 The Library of Living Philosophers n 28 The Philosophy of Seyyed Hossein Nasr Chicago Open Court ISBN 978 0 812 69413 0 Haught J F 2000 Science and Religion in Search of Cosmic Purpose Georgetown University Press ISBN 978 0 87840 769 9 Hope Marjorie Young James 1994 Islam and Ecology CrossCurrents 44 2 180 193 Irving C 1979 Crossroads of Civilization 3000 Years of Persian History Weidenfeld and Nicolson ISBN 978 0 297 77481 5 Jackson Roy 2020 Muslim and Supermuslim The Quest for the Perfect Being and Beyond Springer Nature ISBN 978 3 030 37093 0 Jawad Haifaa 2005 04 01 Seyyed Hossein Nasr and the Study of Religion in Contemporary Society American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 22 2 International Institute of Islamic Thought 49 68 doi 10 35632 ajiss v22i2 457 ISSN 2642 701X S2CID 150961572 Jozi Mohammad Reza 2018 Fardid s Philosophy Was Not Political Iran s Troubled Modernity Cambridge University Press pp 242 264 doi 10 1017 9781108566124 011 ISBN 9781108566124 S2CID 149549683 Kalin Ibrahim 1996 The Sacred versus the Secular Nasr on Science Tehran Iranian Research Center for Philosophy and Wisdom Retrieved 21 September 2021 Karimi P 2008 Imagining Warfare Imagining Welfare Tehran s Post Iran Iraq War Murals and their Legacy Persica 22 Peeters Publishers 47 63 doi 10 2143 pers 22 0 2034400 ISSN 0079 0893 Laude Patrick 2003 Seyyed Hossein Nasr in the Context of the Perennialist School In Faghfoory Mohammad H ed Beacon of Knowledge Essays in Honor of Seyyed Hossein Nasr Louisville KY Fons Vitae ISBN 978 1 887 75256 5 Lawrence B B 2020 The Koran in English A Biography Lives of Great Religious Books Princeton University Press ISBN 978 0 691 20921 0 Liu Shu hsien 2000 Reflections on Tradition and Modernity A Response to Seyyed Hossein Nasr from a Neo Confucian Perspective In Hahn Lewis Edwin Auxier Randall E Stone Lucian W Jr eds The Philosophy of Seyyed Hossein Nasr Open Court ISBN 978 0812694147 Lumbard Joseph E B 2013 Seyyed Hossein Nasr on Tradition and Modernity In Marshall David ed Tradition and Modernity Christian and Muslim Perspectives Washington D C Georgetown University Press ISBN 978 1 933 31638 3 Markwith Zachary 2009 Muslim Intellectuals and the Perennial Philosophy in the Twentieth Century Sophia Perennis 1 1 Iranian Institute of Philosophy 39 98 Markwith Zachary 2010 Review Seyyed Hossein Nasr Islam in the Modern World Challenged by the West Threatened by Fundamentalism Keeping Faith with Tradition Sacred Web 28 1 103 116 Mathiesen Kasper 2013 Anglo American Traditional Islam and Its Discourse of Orthodoxy Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies 13 191 219 doi 10 5617 jais 4633 ISSN 0806 198X Moore Terry 2010 Introduction In Jahanbegloo Ramin ed In Search of the Sacred a Conversation with Seyyed Hossein Nasr on his Life and Thought Santa Barbara CA Praeger ISBN 978 0 31338 324 3 Moris Zailan ed 1999 Knowledge is Light Essays in Honor of Seyyed Hossein Nasr Chicago Kazi ISBN 978 156744859 7 Morrow J A 2012 Religion and Revolution Spiritual and Political Islam in Ernesto Cardenal Cambridge Scholars Pub ISBN 978 1 4438 3833 7 Nasr 2006 Religious Art Traditional Art Sacred Art In Seyyed Hossein Nasr amp Katherine O Brien ed The Essential Sophia Bloomington IN Word Wisdom ISBN 978 1933316109 Oldmeadow Harry 2004 Journeys East 20th Century Western Encounters with Eastern Religious Traditions Bloomington IN World Wisdom ISBN 978 094153257 0 Oldmeadow Harry 2010 Frithjof Schuon and the Perennial Philosophy Bloomington IN World Wisdom ISBN 978 1 935493 09 9 Owoyemi Musa Y 2011 Islam and Modernity Dissecting the Thought of Seyyed Hossein Nasr A Discourse on the Compatibility or Incompatibility of Islam with Modernity Chisinau Moldova Lap Lambert Academic Publishing ISBN 978 3847333661 Quadir Tarik M 2013 Traditional Islamic Environmentalism The Vision of Seyyed Hossein Nasr Lanham MD University Press of America ISBN 978 0 7618 6143 0 Raudvere C 2012 Exploring the Particular in the Global World Three Contemporary Bosnian Theological Writers on Islam Sufism Authenticity and Belonging In Stala K Willert T S Raudvere C eds Rethinking the Space for Religion New Actors in Central and Southeast Europe on Religion Authenticity and Belonging Nordic Academic Press ISBN 978 91 87121 85 2 Robinson Bertoni Sarah 2017 Seyyed Hossein Nasr In Palmer J A Cooper D E Cooper D eds Key Thinkers on the Environment Routledge Key Guides Taylor amp Francis ISBN 978 1 134 75624 7 Riffi Daoud 2020 Seyyed Hossein Nasr un intellectuel dans le siecle Conscience Soufie in French 3 March 45 49 Shahriari Soroosh 2018 Neo Orientalism and the Study of Islamic Philosophy An Interview with Professor Mohammed Rustom Journal of Islamic and Muslim Studies 3 1 Indiana University Press 112 doi 10 2979 jims 3 1 11 ISSN 2470 7066 S2CID 172029613 Saltzman Judy D 2001 The Concept of Spiritual Knowledge in the Philosophy of Seyyed Hossein Nasr In L E Hahn R E Auxier amp L W Stone Jr ed The Library of Living Philosophers n 28 The Philosophy of Seyyed Hossein Nasr Chicago Open Court ISBN 978 0 812 69413 0 The Seyyed Hossein Nasr Foundation 1999 Biography Retrieved 21 September 2021 Smith Jane I 2003 Seyyed Hossein Nasr and the Muslim Christian Encounter In Faghfoory Mohammad H ed Beacon of Knowledge Essays in Honor of Seyyed Hossein Nasr Louisville KY Fons Vitae ISBN 978 1 887 75256 5 Stepaniants Marietta 2001 Seyyed Hossein Nasr Apologist or Reformer of Islam In L E Hahn R E Auxier amp L W Stone Jr ed The Library of Living Philosophers n 28 The Philosophy of Seyyed Hossein Nasr Chicago Open Court ISBN 978 0 812 69413 0 Stone Lucian W 2005 Nasr Seyyed Hossein 1933 In Shook John R ed Dictionary Of Modern American Philosophers vol 3 London Thoemmes Continuum ISBN 978 1 847 14470 6 Umar Muhammad Suheyl 2001 From the Niche of Prophecy Nasr s Position on Islamic Philosophy within the Islamic Tradition in Excerpts and Commentary In L E Hahn R E Auxier amp L W Stone Jr ed The Library of Living Philosophers n 28 The Philosophy of Seyyed Hossein Nasr Chicago Open Court ISBN 978 0 812 69413 0 Widiyanto Asfa 2016 The Reception of Seyyed Hossein Nasr s Ideas within the Indonesian Intellectual Landscape Studia Islamika 23 2 Center for the Study of Islam and Society Syarif Hidayatullah State Islamic University of Jakarta doi 10 15408 sdi v23i2 3002 ISSN 2355 6145 Yim Steve 2020 Reforming the Islamic Intellectuality Re sacralization of Knowledge in Seyyed Hossein Nasr s Thought Muslim Christian Encounter 13 1 Torch Trinity Center for Islamic Studies 53 85 doi 10 30532 mce 2020 13 1 53 ISSN 1976 8117 S2CID 219108983 Zaidi Ali 2011 Islam Modernity and the Human Sciences Basingstoke England Palgrave Macmillan ISBN 978 023011035 9 External links edit nbsp Wikiquote has quotations related to Seyyed Hossein Nasr nbsp Wikimedia Commons has media related to Seyyed Hossein Nasr Faculty page Archived 2019 07 19 at the Wayback Machine at Columbian College of Arts amp Sciences Google Scholar Page Academic offices Preceded byMohammad Reza Amin Chancellor of Sharif University of Technology1972 1975 Succeeded byMehdi Zarghamee Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Seyyed Hossein Nasr amp oldid 1220144389, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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