Knowledge and the Sacred

Introduction

Nasr gave the Gifford Lectures in Edinburgh in 1981 as the first Muslim scholar invited to do so; he had been invited shortly before the Iranian Revolution of 1979, after which he went into exile and lost his notes and library. The ten chapters argue that in all traditional civilisations knowledge was bound up with the sacred, and that modern thought “desacralised” it by reducing intellect to mere reason. Nasr draws on the “perennial philosophy” of René Guénon and Frithjof Schuon and on sources from Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity and Judaism to describe a “scientia sacra”, a sacred science. The book is a key text of the Traditionalist school.

Connections

Builds on

• The Philosophy of Illumination (Hikmat al-ishraq)1186 · Suhrawardi
• The Four Journeys (al-Asfar al-arbaʿa)c. 1628 · Mulla Sadra