glossary of terms used by frithjof schuon - Sophia Perennis

average that by definition is “fallen”; “God alone is good,” Christ said. From the
operative even more than from the speculative point of view, exoterism places pure
intelligence between brackets, as it were: it replaces it with belief and reasonings linked
to belief, which means that it puts the accent on will and sentiment. It must do so, given
its mission and its reason for being; but this limitation is nonetheless a double-edged
sword whose consequences are not as purely positive as religious prejudice would have
it. It is true that the ambiguity of exoterism is not unrelated to the designs of Providence.
[THC, Intelligence and Character]
Sophia Perennis / Humanism: The question may be asked whether the sophia perennis
is a “humanism”; the answer would in principle be “yes,” but in fact it must be “no” since
humanism in the conventional sense of the term de facto exalts fallen man and not man as
such. The humanism of the moderns is practically a utilitarianism aimed at fragmentary
man; it is the will to make oneself as useful as possible to a humanity as useless as
possible. [THC, Foreword]
Soul: Aristotle says ‘the soul is all that it knows’. [GDW, The Sense of the Absolute in
Religions]
Space (concrete / abstract): Concrete space is the amplitude, the delimitation and the
situation of spatial phenomena; abstract space is extension in itself, which phenomena
render measurable. [FDH, Structure and Universality of the Conditions of Existence]
Space / Time: Space has three dimensions: length, width and height; then six subjective
dimensions: above, below, right, left, before, behind. Analogously, time has four
objective dimensions – the four phases of a cycle: morning, day, evening, night; or
spring, summer, autumn, winter; or again, childhood, youth, maturity, old age – and two
subjective dimensions: the past and the future; the present being beyond our grasp, as is
the center in space. [THC, Universal Categories]
Space goes from the ungraspable point to limitless extension; and time, from the instant
to perpetuity. [FDH, Structure and Universality of the Conditions of Existence]
Space is “round,” therefore it is limited, but not spatially so; it would be impossible to
reach its confines otherwise than in an indirect way, given the fact that our faculties of
sensation cannot under any circumstances step outside the spatial condition. As for time,
it is “spiroidal” and irreversible, hence its cyclic rhythm. [TB, Cosmological and
Eschatological Viewpoints]
Spiritual Ascent: The basis of spiritual ascent is that God is pure Spirit and that man
resembles Him fundamentally through the intelligence; man goes towards God by means
of that which is, in him, most conformable to God – namely the intellect – which is at the
same time both penetration and contemplation and has as its “supernaturally natural”
content the Absolute which illumines and delivers. The character of a Path depends on a
particular preliminary definition of man: if man is defined as passion, as the general
perspective of Christianity would have it – though there is here no principial restriction –
then the Path is suffering; if as desire, then the Path is renunciation; if as will, then the
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