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

284 Notes to Chapter 1
philosophia perennis.” Islam and the Perennial Philosophy, trans. J. Peter Hobson
(London: World of Islam Festival Publishing Group, 1976), p. 195.
9. Among the writings of these authors on the subject of philosophy
see especially René Guénon, “Metaphysical Thought and Philosophical Thought
Compared,” in his Introduction to the Study of Hindu Doctrines, trans. Marco
Pallis (Ghent, NY: Sophia Perennis et Universalis, 2001), chapter 8, pp. 92ff.
(by “philosophy” here Guénon means modern Western philosophy); Ananda
K. Coomaraswamy, “The Pertinence of Philosophy” in his What is Civilization?
and Other Essays (Ipswich: Golgonooza, 1989), pp. 13–32; and Frithjof Schuon,
“Tracing the Notion of Philosophy,” in his Sufism: Veil and Quintessence, trans.
William Stoddart (Bloomington: World Wisdom Books, 1981), pp. 115–28. This
last essay is very nuanced in its explanation and critique of the very concept
of ‘philosophy.’
10. On these figures whose role in the spread of traditional doctrines is
central and who have also played an important role sometimes directly and
sometimes indirectly in bringing about better understanding of Islamic philosophy
and especially metaphysics in the West, see S. H. Nasr, Knowledge and
the Sacred (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989), pp. 100ff.
11. The al-Furqan Foundation established by Shaykh A±mad Zak¥
Yamån¥ in Wimbledon, Great Britain, is the leading institution in the West
dedicated to the task of preserving, cataloging, and making available Islamic
manuscripts. It has already achieved much since it began its activities in earnest
in the late 1980s, and although it is not particularly interested in Islamic
philosophy, its support for the cataloging of many different libraries has already
helped to make known a number of philosophical manuscripts.
12. This series made available a number of important philosophical texts
by Ibn S¥nå, Nå∑ir-i Khusraw, Suhraward¥, Mullå S • adrå, and others in critical
editions that were edited mostly by Corbin himself and often in collaboration
with Persian and Arab scholars such as Osman Yahya, Mohammad Mo‘in,
S. H. Nasr, and Sayyid Jalål al-D¥n ≈shtiyån¥.
13. For more thorough information about texts translated into European
languages see Daiber, op.cit., in passim.
14. For certain fields of Islamic philosophy French is even richer than
English, especially as far as translations are concerned. This includes figures
as important as Ibn S¥nå and Suhraward¥.
15. See Daiber, op. cit., under their names for bibliographical information
on their translations.
16. There is not in fact even one satisfactory philosophical dictionary of
Arabic and Persian terms with English equivalents. The only work of this kind
available is that of Suhail Afnan, A Philosophical Lexicon in Persian and Arabic
(Beirut: Dar el-Mashreq, 1969). This work is, however, far from being ad-