glossary of terms used by frithjof schuon - Sophia Perennis

principles, together with the sciences that are derived from them. In addition, philosophy
implies for all of the Ancients moral conformity to wisdom: only he is wise, sophos, who
lives wisely. In this particular and precise sense, the wisdom of Solomon is philosophy; it
is to live according to the nature of things, on the basis of piety – of the “fear of God’ –
with a view to that which is essential and liberating.
All this shows that, to say the least, the word “philosopher” in itself has nothing
restrictive about it, and that one cannot legitimately impute to this word any of the vexing
associations of ideas that it may elicit; usage applies this word to all thinkers, including
eminent metaphysicians – some Sufis consider Plato and other Greeks to be prophets – so
that one would like to reserve it for sages and simply use the term “rationalists” for
profane thinkers. It is nevertheless legitimate to take account of a misuse of language that
has become conventional, for unquestionably the terms “philosophy” and “philosopher”
have been seriously compromised by ancient and modern reasoners; in fact, the serious
inconvenience of these terms is that they conventionally imply that the norm for the mind
is reasoning pure and simple,* in the absence, not only of intellection, but also of
indispensable objective data. Admittedly one is neither ignorant nor rationalistic just
because one is a logician, but one is both if one is a logician and nothing more^ . . .
. . . In short, the term “philosopher” in current speech signifies nothing other than the fact
of expounding a doctrine while respecting the laws of logic, which are those of language
and those of common sense, without which we would not be human; to practice
philosophy is first and foremost to think, whatever may be the reasons which rightly or
wrongly incite us to do so. But it is also, more especially and according to the best of the
Greeks to express by means of the reason certainties “seen” or “lived” by the immanent
Intellect, as we have remarked above; now the explanation necessarily takes on the
character imposed on it by the laws of thought and language.
(* Naturally the most “advanced” of the modernists seek to demolish the very principles
of reasoning, but this is simply fantasy pro domo, for man is condemned to reason as
soon as he uses language, unless he wishes to demonstrate nothing at all. In any case, one
cannot demonstrate the impossibility of demonstrating anything, if words are still to have
any meaning.
^ A German author (H. Turck) has proposed the term “misosopher” – “enemy of
wisdom” – for those thinkers who undermine the very foundations of truth and
intelligence. We will add that misosophy – without mentioning some ancient precedents
– begins grosso modo with “criticism” and ends with subjectivisms, relativisms,
existentialisms, dynamisms, psychologisms and biologisms of every kind. As for the
ancient expression “misology,” it designates above all the hatred of the fideist for the use
of reason.) [SVQ, Tracing the Notion of Philosophy]
Philosophy (avant-garde): Avant-garde philosophy is properly an acephalous logic: it
labels what is intellectually evident as “prejudice”; seeking to free itself from the
servitudes of the mind, it falls into infra-logic; closing itself, above, to the light of the
intellect, it opens itself, below, to the darkness of the subconscious. Philosophical
skepticism takes itself for an absence of prejudices and a healthy attitude, whereas it is
something quite artificial: it is a result not of knowledge but of ignorance, and that is why
it is as contrary to intelligence as it is to reality. [LS, Orthodoxy and Intellectuality]
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