Knowledge and its desacralization --What is tradition? -- The rediscovery of the sacred : the revival of tradition -- Scientia sacra -- Man, pontifical and Promethean -- The cosmos as theophany -- Eternity and the temporal order -- Traditional art as fountain of knowledge and grace -- Principal knowledge and the multiplicity of sacred forms -- Knowledge of the sacred as deliverance.

The meaning of a science rooted in the sacred, its contrast to modern science and its pertinence to us today.

The current ecological crisis is a matter of urgent global concern, with solutions being sought on many fronts. In this book, Seyyed Hossein Nasr argues that the devastation of our world has been exacerbated, if not actually caused, by the reductionist view of nature that has been advanced by modern secular science. What is needed, he believes, is the recovery of the truth to which the great, enduring religions all attest; namely that nature is sacred. Nasr traces the historical process (...) through which Western civilization moved away from the idea of nature as sacred and embraced a world view which sees humans as alienated from nature and nature itself as a machine to be dominated and manipulated by humans. His goal is to negate the totalitarian claims of modern science and to re-open the way to the religious view of the order of nature, developed over centuries in the cosmologies and sacred sciences of the great traditions. Each tradition, Nasr shows, has a wealth of knowledge and experience concerning the order of nature. The resuscitation of this knowledge, he argues, would allow religions all over the globe to enrich each other and cooperate to heal the wounds inflicted upon the Earth. (shrink)

Accession Number: ATLA0001712108; Hosting Book Page Citation: p 71-86.; Language(s): English; General Note: Bibliography: p 86.; Rev from an article in The Islamic quarterly.; Issued by ATLA: 20130825; Publication Type: Essay.

Islamic philosophy has often been treated as being largely of historical interest, belonging to the history of ideas rather than to philosophical study. This volume successfully overturns that view. Emphasizing the living nature and rich diversity of the subject, it examines the main thinkers and schools of thought, discusses the key concepts of Islamic philosophy and covers a vast geographical area. This indispensable reference tool includes a comprehensive bibliography and an extensive index.

In such civilizations the cosmological sciences integrate the diverse phenomena of Nature into conceptual schemes all of which reflect the revealed ...

Conceptins of nature and methods used for its study by the Ikwan al-Safa; al-Biruni, and Ibn Sina. Bibliography: p. 287.308. Includes index.

This volume gathers together the numerous essays by the Iranian metaphysician and ontologist, Seyyed Hossein Nasr, on Islamic philosophers and the intricate ...

This collection of essays by one of the best known contemporary Muslim scholars writing in English covers many facets of Islamic life and thought. The author has brought together studies dealing with the practical as well as intellectual aspects of Islam in both their historical and contemporary reality. The contemporary significance of themes such as religion and secularism, the meaning of freedom, and the tradition of Islamic science and philosophy is given particular attention.

The issue of Islam and modern science, along with its progeny, modern technology, continues today as one of the most crucial faced by the Islamic community. It has been, and continues to be, addressed by numerous scholars and thinkers, covering nearly the whole gamut of the spectrum of Islamic intellectual activity since the last century. This article analyses modern science and subjects it to an in-depth criticism from the Islamic point of view, drawing from the Islamic intellectual tradition. It holds (...) that any science that could legitimately be called Islamic science, and not be disruptive of the whole Islamic order, must be one that remains aware of the ‘vertical cause’ of all things, along with the horizontal, a science that issues from and returns to the Real, who is the cause of all things. (shrink)

This collection of essays by one of the best known contemporary Muslim scholars writing in English covers many facets of Islamic life and thought. The author has brought together studies dealing with the practical as well as intellectual aspects of Islam in both their historical and contemporary reality. The contemporary significance of themes such as religion and secularism, the meaning of freedom, and the tradition of Islamic science and philosophy is given particular attention.

Aesthetics, as that branch of philosophy which deals with the meaning of beauty and various theories of art, has not been treated as a separate subject by the Islamic philosophers and one does not find separate treatises corresponding to the works on aesthetics by such Western philosophers as Hegel, Collingwood, and Croce among those Islamic thinkers who are called the falāsifa or ḥukamā’. In order to fully understand Islamic aesthetics, one has first of all to cull passages here and there (...) from the Peripatetic (mashshā'ī) philosophers. But, in addition, one must turn to the works of the Illuminationist (ishrāqī) school and especially the Sufis for much greater elaboration of the subject. Furthermore, one must add to the written sources the oral tradition, the teachings transmitted from masters of various Islamic arts to their disciples from one generation to another, teachings with have underlined the actual production of Islamic works of art over the centuries and which have not died out to this day. (shrink)

In discussing the intricate and somewhat complex relationship between Shiʻism and Sufism, both in principle and essence or in their metahistorical reality as well as in time and history, we need hardly concern ourselves with the too often repeated criticism made by certain orientalists who would doubt the Islamic and Quranic character of both Shiʻism and Sufism. Basing themselves on an a priori assumption that Islam is not a revelation and, even if a religion, is only a simple ‘religion of (...) the sword’ for a simple desert people, such would-be critics brush aside as un-Islamic all that speaks of gnosis and esotericism, pointing to the lack of historical texts in the early period as proof of their thesis, as if the non-existent in itself could disprove the existence of something which may have existed without leaving a written trace for us to dissect and analyse today. The reality of Shiʻism and Sufism as integral aspects of the Islamic revelation is too blinding to be neglected or brushed aside by any would-be historical argument. The fruit is there to prove that the tree has its roots in a soil that nourishes it. And the spiritual fruit can only be borne by a tree whose roots are sunk in a revealed truth. To deny this most evident of truths would be as if we were to doubt the Christian sanctity of a St Francis of Assisi because the historical records of the first years of the Apostolic succession are not clear. What the presence of St Francis proves is in reality the opposite fact, namely, that the Apostolic succession must be real even if no historical records are at hand. The same holds true mutatis mutandis for Shiʻism and Sufism. In this paper in any case we will begin by taking for granted the Islamic character of Shiʻism and Sufism and upon this basis delve into their relationship. In fact Shiʻism and Sufism are both, in different ways and on different levels, intrinsic aspects of Islamic orthodoxy, this term being taken not only in its theological sense but in its universal sense as tradition and universal truth contained within a revealed form. (shrink)

This is the second volume in a projected five-volume work covering the full expanse of Persian philosophical thought from the Zoroastrianism of the pre-Christian era up to the present day. Volume II is devoted entirely to the work of the Isma'ili and Hermetic-Pythagorean philosophers.

Interviews of Seyyed Hossein Nasr, a prominent Islamic philosopher; includes collected addresses, essays and lectures.