HOME
*





Schuon
Frithjof Schuon (, , ; 18 June 1907 – 5 May 1998) was a Swiss metaphysician of German descent, belonging to the Perennialist or Traditionalist School of thought. He was the author of more than twenty works in French on metaphysics, spirituality, the religious phenomenon, anthropology and art, which have been translated into English and many other languages. He was also a painter and a poet. With René Guénon and Ananda Coomaraswamy, Schuon is recognized as one of the major 20th-century representatives of the ''philosophia perennis''. Like them, he affirmed the reality of an absolute Principle – God – from which the universe emanates, and maintained that all divine revelations, despite their differences, possess a common essence: one and the same Truth. He also shared with them the certitude that man is potentially capable of supra-rational knowledge, and undertook a sustained critique of the modern mentality severed from its traditional roots. Following Plato, P ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Hossein Nasr
Seyyed Hossein Nasr (; fa, سید حسین نصر, born April 7, 1933) is an Iranian philosopher and University Professor of Islamic studies at George Washington University. 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 ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Titus Burckhardt
Titus Burckhardt (24 October 1908 – 15 January 1984) was a Swiss writer and a leading member of the Perennialist or Traditionalist School. He was the author of numerous works on metaphysics, cosmology, anthropology, esoterism, alchemy, Sufism, symbolism and sacred art. Life Scion of a patrician family of Basel, Switzerland, Titus Burckhardt was the son of the sculptor Carl Burckhardt (1878–1923) and the grand-nephew of Jacob Burckhardt (1818–1897), an art historian and Renaissance specialist. His genealogical tree also includes John Lewis Burckhardt (1784–1817), the explorer who discovered the Nabatean city of Petra and the Egyptian temples of Abu Simbel. He was born in Florence, Italy, on October 24, 1908. The following year his family settled in Basel. He attended the same primary school as Frithjof Schuon, who became a lifelong friend. In 1920, his family left Basel for Ligornetto in the Swiss canton of Ticino, where his father died three years later. Around 1927, ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Traditionalist School
The Traditionalist or Perennialist School is a group of 20th- and 21st-century thinkers who believe in the existence of a perennial wisdom or perennial philosophy, primordial and universal truths which form the source for, and are shared by, all the major world religions. The early proponents of this school of thought are René Guénon, Ananda Coomaraswamy, and Frithjof Schuon. Other notable members include Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Titus Burckhardt, Martin Lings, William Stoddart, Jean-Louis Michon, Marco Pallis, and Huston Smith. Concept According to the members of the Traditionalist School, also known as the Perennialist School, all major world religions are founded upon common primordial and universal metaphysical truths. The perspective of its authors is often referred to as ''philosophia perennis'' (perennial philosophy), which is both "absolute Truth and infinite Presence". Absolute Truth is "the perennial wisdom (''sophia perennis'') that stands as the transcendent source of ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


James Cutsinger
James Sherman Cutsinger (May 4, 1953 – February 19, 2020) was an author, editor, and professor of religious studies (emeritus) at the University of South Carolina, whose works focused primarily on comparative religion, the modern Traditionalist School of perennial philosophy, Eastern Christian spirituality, and the mystical tradition of the Eastern Orthodox Church. Early life Cutsinger earned his bachelor's degree in Political Theory, Russian Language and Literature at Cornell College in 1975 and his doctorate in Theology and Religious Thought at Harvard University in 1980.http://www.cutsinger.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/curriculum_vitae.pdf Traditionalism Cutsinger served as secretary to the Foundation for Traditional Studies and was a widely recognized authority on the Sophia Perennis, the traditionalist school, and comparative religion – subjects on which he wrote extensively. His works also focused on the theology and spirituality of the Christian East. He is ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Whitall Perry
Whitall Nicholson Perry (January 19, 1920 - November 18, 2005) was an American author born in Belmont, Massachusetts, member of the Perennialist School, which is based primarily on the work of René Guénon, Ananda Coomaraswamy and Frithjof Schuon. Perry’s major opus, ''A Treasury of Traditional Wisdom'', is a compilation of thousands of quotations from all the great religious and esoteric traditions, supported by commentaries. Biography According to Harry Oldmeadow, Whitall Perry is one of the leading perennialist writers of American origin. Initially interested in Plato and Hindu Vedanta, he traveled to the East before settling in Cairo in 1946 with his wife. There he developed close ties with the French metaphysician René Guénon, which led him to join the tariqa of Frithjof Schuon. He left Cairo in 1952, a year after Guénon's death, and settled in Lausanne, Switzerland, near Schuon, of whom he became a close associate. When Schuon emigrated to the United States in 1980 ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Martin Lings
Martin Lings (24 January 1909 – 12 May 2005), also known as Abū Bakr Sirāj ad-Dīn, was an English writer, Islamic scholar, and philosopher. A student of the Swiss metaphysician Frithjof Schuon and an authority on the work of William Shakespeare, he is best known as the author of '' Muhammad: His Life Based on the Earliest Sources'', first published in 1983 and still in print. Early life and education Lings was born in Burnage, Manchester, in 1909 to a Protestant family. The young Lings gained an introduction to travelling at a young age, spending significant time in the United States because of his father's employment. Lings attended Clifton College and went on to Magdalen College, Oxford, where he gained a BA in English Language and Literature. At Magdalen, he was a student and then a close friend of C. S. Lewis. After graduating from Oxford Lings went to Vytautas Magnus University, in Lithuania, where he taught Anglo-Saxon and Middle English. For Lings himself, howeve ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  




Perennial Philosophy
The perennial philosophy ( la, philosophia perennis), also referred to as perennialism and perennial wisdom, is a perspective in philosophy and spirituality that views all of the world's religious traditions as sharing a single, metaphysical truth or origin from which all esoteric and exoteric knowledge and doctrine has grown. Perennialism has its roots in the Renaissance interest in neo-Platonism and its Theory of Forms, idea of Neo-Platonism#The One, the One, from which all existence emerges. Marsilio Ficino (1433–1499) sought to integrate ''Corpus Hermeticum, Hermeticism'' with Greek and Jewish-Christian thought, discerning a ''prisca theologia'' which could be found in all ages. Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463–94) suggested that truth could be found in many, rather than just two, traditions. He proposed a harmony between the thought of Plato and Aristotle, and saw aspects of the ''prisca theologia'' in Averroes (Ibn Rushd), the Quran, the Kabbalah and other sources. Ag ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

William Stoddart
William Stoddart (born 25 June 1925, in Carstairs) is a Scottish physician, author and "spiritual traveller", who has written several books on the Perennial Philosophy and on comparative religion. He has been called a "master of synthesis"''Sophia'', Volume 4, Number 2, Winter 1998 and is one of the important Perennialist writers in the present day. For many years he was assistant editor of the British journal Studies in Comparative Religion. He has translated into English, from the original French or German, several of the books of the perennialist masters Frithjof Schuon (1907–1998) and Titus Burckhardt (1908–1984). Bibliography Books As author * ''Outline of Sufism: The Essentials of Islamic Spirituality'' (World Wisdom, 2013) * ''What does Islam mean in today's world?'' (World Wisdom, 2012) * ''Remembering in a World of Forgetting'' (World Wisdom, 2008) * ''Invincible Wisdom'' (Sophia Perennis, 2007) * ''Hinduism and Its Spiritual Masters'' (Fons Vitae, 2006) * ''Outli ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Harry Oldmeadow
Kenneth "Harry" Oldmeadow (born 1947) is an Australian academic, author, editor and educator whose works focus on religion, tradition, traditionalist writers and philosophy. Life and career Oldmeadow was born in Melbourne in 1947. His parents were Christian missionaries in India and he spent the first nine years of his childhood there and developed an early interest in the civilisations of the East. Oldmeadow studied history, politics and literature at the Australian National University, graduating in 1968 with First Class Honours in History, and the University of Sydney, as well as working as a history tutor at La Trobe University in Melbourne. In 1971 a Commonwealth Overseas Research Scholarship allowed him to study at the University of Oxford, followed by extensive travel in Europe and North Africa. In 1980 he achieved a master's degree in religious studies at the University of Sydney where he completed a dissertation on the work of Frithjof Schuon and the other principal ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

René Guénon
René Jean-Marie-Joseph Guénon (15 November 1886 – 7 January 1951), also known as ''Abdalwâhid Yahiâ'' (; ''ʿAbd al-Wāḥid Yaḥiā'') was a French intellectual who remains an influential figure in the domain of metaphysics, having written on topics ranging from esotericism, "sacred science" and "traditional studies" to symbolism and initiation. In his writings, he proposes "to expound directly some aspects of Eastern metaphysical doctrines" of "universal character", or "to adapt these same doctrines for Western readers while keeping strictly faithful to their spirit", following the Hindu pedagogy of "handing down" the doctrines while reiterating their "non-human character". Initiated into Islamic esotericism from as early as 1910 when he was 24, he mainly wrote and published in French, and his works have been translated into more than twenty languages; he also wrote in Arabic an article for the journal ''Al Marifah''. Biography René Guénon was born in 1886 in Blo ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Jean Borella
Jean Borella (born in Nancy, France, May 21, 1930) is a Christianity, Christian philosopher and theologian. Borella's works are inspired by Ancient and Christian Neoplatonism, but also by the Traditionalist School of René Guénon and Frithjof Schuon. Biography Borella's father, who was Italian, made a career in military aviation before his death in 1937 in an air crash, when Jean was seven years old. Borella's mother was French from Lorraine (region), Lorraine. Borella had a Catholic education and traditional public school secondary studies which reinforced in him the idea that he would be a defender of the faith. By age 14, Borella understood René Descartes, Cartesian proof of the existence of God. In 1950, he stayed for a short while in a Benedictine monastery, but left, disappointed. Borella attended university in Nancy, France. Two of Borella's philosophy professors had significant influence on him, Georges Vallin and Guy Bugault. Vallin, France, French oriental studies, Or ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Huston Smith
Huston Cummings Smith (May 31, 1919 – December 30, 2016) was an influential scholar of religious studies in the United States, He authored at least thirteen books on world's religions and philosophy, and his book about comparative religion, '' The World's Religions'' (originally titled ''The Religions of Man'') sold over three million copies as of 2017. Born and raised in Suzhou, China in a Methodist missionary family, Smith moved back to the United States at the age of 17 and graduated from the University of Chicago in 1945 with a PhD in philosophy. He spent the majority of his academic career as a professor at Washington University in St. Louis (1947-1958), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1958–1973) and Syracuse University (1973–1983). In 1983, he retired from Syracuse and moved to Berkeley, California, where he was a visiting professor of religious studies at the University of California, Berkeley until his death. Early life On May 31, 1919, Huston Cummings S ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]