glossary of terms used by frithjof schuon - Sophia Perennis

Nothingness: Nothingness is, on the one hand, an intellectual notion and, on the other
hand, a cosmic tendency; this notion of nothingness is identical with that of impossibility;
that is to say, nothingness is total impossibility, whereas there do exist relative
impossibilities, namely those which represent situations modifiable in principle. [FDH,
The Problem of Possibility]
Objectivity: By “objectivity” must be understood not a knowledge that is limited to a
purely empirical recording of data received from outside, but a perfect adequation of the
knowing subject to the known object, which indeed is in keeping with the current
meaning of the term. An intelligence or a knowledge is “objective” when it is capable of
grasping the object as it is and not as it may be deformed by the subject. [EPW,
Understanding Esoterism]
Objectivity is a kind of death of the subject in the face of the reality of the object; the
subjective compensation of this extinction is the nobleness of character. One must not
lose sight of the fact, moreover, that the transcendent Object is at the same time the
immanent Subject, which is affirmed in the knowing subject, to the extent that the latter
is capable of objectivity.
Objectivity is none other than the truth, in which the subject and the object coincide, and
in which the essential takes precedence over the accidental – or in which the Principle
takes precedence over its manifestation – either by extinguishing it, or by reintegrating it,
according to the diverse ontological aspects of relativity itself. [EchPW, 58-59]
Objectivity / Inwardness: Objectivity is the perfect adaptation of the intelligence to
objective reality; and inwardness is the persevering concentration of the will on that
“Inward” which, according to Christ, coincides with the heart, whose door it is fitting to
lock after having entered, and which opens onto the “Kingdom of God”, which in fact is
“within you”.
And this needs a foundation of faith and virtue, of intensity and radiance, without which
man, in the eyes of God, would not be man. [EPW, The Triple Nature of Man]
Objectivity / Serenity: “Objectivity” is often discussed in our times, but it is readily
reduced to a purely volitional or moral attitude, a kind of softness in the face of error or
injustice, as if indignation could not be a criterion of “consciousness of the object,” and
so of objectivity. Serenity can, it is true, result from a higher point of view where
disequilibriums are reabsorbed into the universal Equilibrium, and there is then nothing
to refute, since phenomena appear in their ontological interdependence, and therefore in
their necessity; but there is a false serenity which becomes the accomplice of evil, and
proves only one thing, namely that the person concerned does not see that a
disequilibrium is a disequilibrium: the man who mistakes a scorpion for a dragonfly
remains calm, but it does not follow that his vision is objective. Christ’s wrath proved,
not a lack of objectivity of course, but the ignominy of its object. [SW, Orthodoxy and
Intellectuality]
Objectivity / Subjectivity: The word “objectivity” signifies, in short, “conformity to the
nature of things,” independently of all interference of individual tendencies or tastes; the
word “subjectivity,” for its part, ought to designate the contemplative withdrawal into the
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