Seyyed Hossein Nasr
There is a timeless sacred knowledge shared by the world’s religions, and modern science has lost it by stripping nature of the sacred.
Placement
Iranian-American scholar of Islamic philosophy: defends a “perennial” sacred knowledge against the desacralized science of modernity.
Key ideas
- Sacred science
- Perennial philosophy
- Critique of modernity
Teachers: Muhammad Husayn Tabatabai
Influence
Influenced by 6
al-Biruni
influenced by
Nasr presented al-Biruni’s conception of nature, with those of the Brethren of Purity and Ibn Sina, as one of the three main Islamic cosmologies, and co-edited his correspondence with Ibn Sina. S. H. Nasr, An Introduction to Islamic Cosmological Doctrines (1964); al-Asʾila wa-l-ajwiba, ed. Nasr and Mohaghegh (1972)
Evidence: AI draft
al-Biruni › 973–1048
Ibn Sina (Avicenna)
influenced by ✓
Nasr presented Avicenna as the master of the Peripatetic school in Three Muslim Sages and studied his cosmology in An Introduction to Islamic Cosmological Doctrines (both 1964). S. H. Nasr, Three Muslim Sages (1964); An Introduction to Islamic Cosmological Doctrines (1964)
Evidence: also in Wikidata · Wikidata
Ibn Sina (Avicenna) › 980–1037
Suhrawardi
influenced by ✓
Nasr devoted the second lecture of Three Muslim Sages (1964) to Suhrawardi and edited his Persian works (Oeuvres philosophiques et mystiques III, 1970). S. H. Nasr, Three Muslim Sages (1964); Suhrawardi, Oeuvres philosophiques et mystiques III, ed. S. H. Nasr (1970)
Evidence: also in Wikidata · Wikidata
Suhrawardi › 1154–1191
Ibn Arabi
influenced by ✓
Nasr devoted the third lecture of Three Muslim Sages (1964) to Ibn Arabi, presenting his unity of being as the heart of Sufi metaphysics. S. H. Nasr, Three Muslim Sages (1964)
Evidence: also in Wikidata · Wikidata
Ibn Arabi › 1165–1240
Mulla Sadra
influenced by ✓
Nasr presented Mulla Sadra’s transcendent theosophy as the synthesis of philosophy, illumination and gnosis in Sadr al-Din Shirazi and His Transcendent Theosophy (1978). S. H. Nasr, Sadr al-Din Shirazi and His Transcendent Theosophy (1978)
Evidence: also in Wikidata · Wikidata
Mulla Sadra › c. 1572–1640
Muhammad Husayn Tabatabai studied with
studied with
After his return to Iran in 1958 Nasr studied traditional Islamic philosophy with Tabatabai in Tehran and Qom for some two decades, in part in the sessions with Henry Corbin. S. H. Nasr, “Intellectual Autobiography”, in L. E. Hahn, R. E. Auxier & L. W. Stone (eds.), The Philosophy of Seyyed Hossein Nasr (2001)
Evidence: AI draft
Muhammad Husayn Tabatabai › 1904–1981
Works
The Gifford Lectures: knowledge was originally sacred, and modernity has forgotten it.
Position
Nasr defends a “perennial philosophy”: beneath the different religions lies a single sacred wisdom that sees the cosmos as a manifestation of the divine. Modern science, he argues, broke this unity by treating nature as mere matter to be measured and exploited; the ecological crisis is at root a spiritual crisis. Already in the 1960s he warned of it, long before environmental ethics became widespread. As a historian he presented Islamic philosophy and science, from Avicenna to Suhrawardi and Mulla Sadra, as living traditions rather than mere precursors of the West. In 1981 he became the first Muslim to give the Gifford Lectures.
Life & context
Nasr was born in Tehran in 1933 and sent to the United States as a boy. He studied physics at MIT and took his doctorate in the history of science at Harvard. Returning to Iran, he taught at the University of Tehran and founded the Imperial Iranian Academy of Philosophy. After the revolution of 1979 he settled in the United States, teaching since 1984 at George Washington University.
Further main works
- Three Muslim Sages (1964)
- Man and Nature (1968)
- The Heart of Islam (2002)
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