Islamic Philosophy from Its Origin to the Present: Philosophy in the ...

Notes to Chapter 1 283
4. In order for comparative philosophy to be fruitful and meaningful
when it involves a traditional form of philosophy on the one hand and
postmedieval Western philosophy on the other, there are important pitfalls
that must be avoided and principles that must be kept in mind. See S. H. Nasr,
Islam and the Plight of Modern Man (Chicago: ABC International Group, 2001),
part 2, “The Comparative Method and the Study of the Islamic Intellectual
Heritage in the West,” pp. 39–68. Concerning the confusion in comparative
philosophy as it is often carried out, Harry Oldmeadow writes, “One of the
principal sources of this confusion is a failure to understand the crucial distinction
between metaphysics as a scientia sacra on the one hand, wedded to
direct spiritual experience and complementing revealed religious doctrines,
and what is usually meant in the modern West by ‘philosophy’: an autonomous
and essentially rational and analytical inquiry into a range of issues and
problematics.” Journeys East: Twentieth Century Western Encounters with Eastern
Religious Traditions (Bloomington: World Wisdom Books, 2003), p. 338. Although
the “East” with which Oldmeadow is concerned in this book excludes the Islamic
world, his comments are very relevant and applicable mutatis mutandis to
comparative philosophy when it involves the Islamic intellectual tradition.
5. On their works and the philosophical scene in Persia in general in
the decades of the 50s and 60s, see S. H. Nasr, The Islamic Intellectual Tradition
in Persia (London: Curzon, 1996), part 4, “Islamic Thought in Modern Iran,”
pp. 323ff.
6. In this section of this chapter fewer names are provided, and when
they are mentioned they are meant as examples and not to deliberately exclude
or slight anyone. This is an especially sensitive issue because most of the scholars
active during this period are still alive, and we do not want to commit the
sin of omission in not mentioning every significant scholar in each group.
7. The origin of this encounter in a serious manner must be sought
most of all in the seminal writings of Mahd¥ ¡å˘ir¥ Yazd¥, some of which have
been rendered into English. See his Principles of Epistemology in Islamic Philosophy:
Knowledge by Presence (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992).
8. The philosophia perennis refers to a wisdom or sophia that its followers
believe has existed from time immemorial at the heart of different religions
and traditional philosophies, the wisdom being one but expressed in
different formal languages. On the usage of the history of this term in Western
thought see Charles Schmitt, “Perennial Philosophy: Steuco to Leibnitz,” Journal
of the History of Ideas, vol. 27, 1966, pp. 505–32 (printed also in his Studies
in Renaissance Philosophy and Science (London: Variorum Reprints, 1981); and
his introduction to “De perenni philosophia” by Augustinus Steuchus (New
York: Johnson Reprint Corp., 1972). Frithjof Schuon writes, “The inward and
timeless Revelation is present still, but it is hidden away beneath a sheet of ice
which necessitates the intervention of outward Revelations; but these cannot
have the perfection of what might be termed ‘innate religion’ or the immanent