glossary of terms used by frithjof schuon - Sophia Perennis

an immutable essence in which creatures may either participate or not participate, and
that a given experience of liberty is only an “accident.” Defined in positive terms liberty
is the possibility of manifesting oneself fully, or being perfectly oneself, and this
possibility (or this experience) runs through the universe as a real, and hence concrete,
beatitude in which animate beings participate according to their natures and their
destinies; the animate Universe is a being that breathes, and that lives both in itself and in
its innumerable individualized constituents; and behind all this there subsists the ineffable
liberty of the Infinite . . . When a bird escapes from its cage we say that it is free; we
might just as truly say that liberty has erupted at a particular point on the cosmic shell, or
that it has taken possession of the bird, or that it has manifested itself through this
creature or that form; liberation is something that occurs, but liberty is that which is,
which always has been and always will be. The prototype of all liberty, and the reality
expressed in every particular or “accidental” phenomenon of liberty, is the limitlessness
of principial or Divine activity, or the consciousness God has of his All-Possibility. [LT,
Abuse of the Ideas of the Concrete and the Abstract]
Logic: It is not for nothing that “logic” (logikos) comes from “Logos,” which derivation
indicates, in a symbolical fashion at least, that logic – the mental reflection of ontology –
cannot, in its substance, be bound up with human arbitrariness; that, on the contrary, it is
a quasi-pneumatological phenomenon in the sense that it results from the Divine Nature
itself, in a manner analogous – if not to the same degree – to that of intellectual intuition .
. . Let us admit that human logic is at times inoperative; however, it is not inoperative
because it is logical, but because it is human; because, being human, it is subject to
psychological and material contingencies which prevent it from being what it is by itself,
and what it is by its origin and in its source, wherein it coincides with the being of things.
As is proved by the practice of meditation, intuition can arise through the workings of a
rational operation – provisional and not decisive – which then acts as a key or as an
occasional cause; on condition, of course, that the intelligence has at its disposal correct
and sufficient data, and that it benefits from the concurrence of a moral health founded
upon the sense of the sacred, and consequently capable of a sense of proportions as well
as of aesthetic intuition. For all things are linked together: if the intelligence directly has
need of rigor, it also indirectly has need of beauty. [FDH, Transcendence Is Not Contrary
to Sense]
It is not possible to emphasize too strongly that philosophy, in its humanistic and
rationalizing and therefore current sense, consists primarily of logic; this definition of
Guénon’s correctly situates philosophical thought in making clear its distinction from
“intellectual intuition,” which is direct perception of truth. But another distinction must
also be established on the rational plane itself: logic can either operate in accordance with
an intellection or on the contrary put itself at the disposal of an error, so that philosophy
can become the vehicle of just about anything; it may be an Aristotelianism conveying
ontological knowledge, just as it may degenerate into an existentialism in which logic is
no more than a blind, unreal activity, and which can rightly be described as an “esoterism
of stupidity.” When unintelligence – and what we mean by this is in no way incompatible
with “worldly” intelligence – joins with passion to prostitute logic, it is impossible to
escape a mental Satanism which destroys the very basis of intelligence and truth.
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