Sayyed Hossein Nasr Quotes on Knowledge
Seyyed Hossein Nasr’s Knowledge and the Sacred (1981), the Gifford Lectures of 1981, and the long sequence of works on Islamic philosophy and Traditionalist metaphysics give contemporary Islamic intellectual life one of its most influential bridges to the European Traditionalist school of Guénon, Schuon, and Coomaraswamy. The central thesis is that the modern Western disenchantment of nature and the corresponding fragmentation of knowledge into the specialized empirical disciplines is the consequence of the loss of a sapiential metaphysics — the perennial wisdom transmitted through the various traditional civilizations — for which the Islamic philosophical tradition through Avicenna, Suhrawardi, and Mulla Sadra supplies one of the principal late surviving exemplars. The framework, drawing on the Iranian Shi‘i philosophical tradition Nasr inherited from his teacher Allameh Tabatabai and the European Traditionalist school, shaped contemporary Islamic philosophical-theological engagement with modernity through Nasr’s many students and the broader Traditionalist movement.
Quotes
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Attributed to Sayyed Hossein Nasr:
“Modern man has forgotten that knowledge and the sacred were once one.”
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Attributed to Sayyed Hossein Nasr:
“Islamic philosophy did not end with Averroes; in the Persian world it continued and continues still.”
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“Knowledge and the Sacred , (1989) pp. 5-6”
Through the downward flow of the river of time and the multiple refractions and reflections of Reality upon the myriad mirrors of both macrocosmic and microcosmic manifestation, knowledge has become separated from being and the bliss or ecstasy which characterizes the union of knowledge and being. Knowledge has become nearly completely externalized and desacralized, especially among those segments -
“Knowledge and the Sacred , (1989) p. 8”
Consciousness is itself proof of the primacy of the Spirit or Divine Consciousness of which human consciousness is a reflection and echo. -
“The reduction of the Intellect to reason and the limitation of intelligence to cunning and cleverness in the modern world not only caused sacred knowledge to become inaccessible and to some even meaningless, but it also destroyed that natural theology which in the Christian context represented at least a reflection of knowledge of a sacred order, of the wisdom or sapientia which was the central means of spiritual perfection and deliverance.”
Knowledge and the Sacred , (1989) pp. 8-9 -
“Knowledge and the Sacred , (1989) pp. 8-9”
The reduction of the Intellect to reason and the limitation of intelligence to cunning and cleverness in the modern world not only caused sacred knowledge to become inaccessible and to some even meaningless, but it also destroyed that natural theology which in the Christian context represented at least a reflection of knowledge of a sacred order, of the wisdom or sapientia which was the central me -
“The testimony of the faith L¯a il¯aha illa’Ll¯ah (There is no divinity but the Divine) is a statement concerning knowledge, not sentiments or the will. It contains the quintessence of metaphysical knowledge concerning the Principle and its manifestation. The Prophet of Islam has said, “Say L¯a il¯aha illa’Ll¯ah and be delivered” referring directly to the sacramental quality of principial knowledge.”
Knowledge and the Sacred , (1989) p. 13 -
“Knowledge and the Sacred , (1989) p. 13”
The testimony of the faith L¯a il¯aha illa’Ll¯ah (There is no divinity but the Divine) is a statement concerning knowledge, not sentiments or the will. It contains the quintessence of metaphysical knowledge concerning the Principle and its manifestation. The Prophet of Islam has said, “Say L¯a il¯aha illa’Ll¯ah and be delivered” referring directly to the sacramental quality of principial knowledge -
“Man, in the traditional sense of the term corresponding to insan in Arabic or homo in Greek and not solely the male, is seen in Islam not as a sinful being to whom the message of Heaven is sent to heal the wound of the original sin, but as a being who still carries his primordial nature ( al-fitrah ) within himself, although he has forgotten that nature now buried deep under layers of negligence. ”
The Essential Seyyed Hossein Nasr , (2007), p.45 -
“Ideals and Realities of Islam , (1966) p. 4-5.”
There is something "God-like" in man as attested to by the Quranic statement, (Pickthall translation): "I have made him and have breathed into him my spirit" (Quran 15:29), and by the tradition, "God created Adam upon His own form." God created Adam, the prototype of man, upon "His own form," i.e., as a mirror reflecting in a central and conscious manner His Names and Qualities. There is, therefor