DIALOGUE AND UNIVERSALISM No. 1–2/2003
Algis Uždavinys
APPROACH TO PHILOSOPHY, THEOLOGY, AND METAPHYSICS: FRITHJOF SCHUON AND NEOPLATONIC TRADITION
ABSTRACT
The article is about the famous traditional spiritual master, metaphysician, poet, painter and authority in the field of comparative religion Frithjof Schuon (1907–1998) who at the same time was Shaykh ‘Isa Nur al-Din Ahmad al-Shadhili. He is the premier expositor of perennial philosophy and tradition in the second half of the 20th century. His writings brought to a culmination the earlier works of Rene Guenon and Ananda K. Coomaraswamy. This article tries to reveal some connections between F. Schuon and Neoplatonic philosophy. Key words: comparative religion; metaphysics; Neoplatonism; philosophia perennis.
The writings of Frithjof Schuon may be described as a radical response both to the agnostic modern thought and secular ways of life. In the context of contemporary skepticism that means no less than creation or rather restoration (in case this term seems more appropriate) of the universal metaphysics as a firm ground for the spiritual praxis and henosis. The restoration takes form of the “comparative religion” regarded from the standpoint of the integral esoterism, viewed as 1) a perennial message immanent to the Reality itself, 2) a sort of the Self-centered mysticism and 3) a thorough explanation of the origin, present condition and the final goal of humanity. To be more precise, it takes a form of “comparative revelation”, or “comparative orthodoxy”, based on the ultimate henology (since the One is beyond Being: epekeina tes ousias), henophany, multi-dimensional realistic ontology and divine noetics connected with traditional anthropology and aimed at the microcosmic and macrocosmic soteriology in the broadest alchemical sense. However, in Neoplatonic tradition the One cannot be neither named the Self, nor equated with the self-thinking and contemplating Intellect, therefore episteme or gnosis cannot produce the union
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higher than that with the self-thinking Intellect (nous) and Being (to on). Frithjof Schuon makes a sharp distinction between Being and Beyond-Being, but the synthetic rearrangement of Advaitic, Christian and Islamic terms and concepts in front of the tacitly remembered background of the comparatively recent German philosophy, which requires the well-known logical and methodological strictness, proves that his metaphysics cannot be simply traced back to any ancient Hellenic patterns, though some of these terms and concepts have their Platonic, Peripatetic and Neoplatonic prototypes. Be that as it may, the writings of Schuon deserve to occupy the central place in the esoteric landscape of the 20th century. The interpretation of ancient myths, historical events and theological dogmas is performed per analogiam and depends on a priori discerned and discovered interplay of certain archetypical connections and providential strategies. The attitude of Schuon is both therapeutic and constructive, since the fundamental critique of the modern world does not allow any doubt as regards a human ability to know, experience and love the Sacred. Our intention is not to discuss the main historical or transcendental premises and themes of the brilliant synthesis provided by Schuon, but to explore his use of such terms as “metaphysics”, “philosophy” and “theology” in the context of Neoplatonism, which is rarely mentioned by the contemporary Traditionalist writers and arises certain suspicion due to the couple of religious, psychological and historical reasons. However, both Guenonian and Schuonian terminology reveals, partly at least, some peculiarities that are directly or indirectly based on the Hellenic philosophical legacy. We do not intend to raise the questions such as to what extent Eckhart’s direct experience depends on Neoplatonic ideas, mediated through various Christian sources, or to investigate how much the Avicennian distinction between “substance” and “essence” (while starting from the Neoplatonic distinction of huparxis and ousia) conforms the real nature of things. Such themes as the universal applicability of esoteric hermeneutics based on certain philosophical concepts (that have a long and distinctly Neopythagorean, Middle Platonic or Neoplatonic history of development) is beyond the scope of the present article. Rather we like to glimpse into the axiological separation of metaphysics and philosophy, which follows approximately a Platonic distinction between nous and dianoia. Since mystagogy of Schuon is supported both by his personal intellectual intuition (noesis) and metaphysical knowledge mediated through the Sufi tradition, he agrees, “the transcendent character of metaphysics makes it independent of any purely human mode of 1 thought”. This assertion is directed against the modern presumption regarding the self-sufficient independence of human reason, which is proud to reject the traditional worldview. Even the term metaphysics is used by Kant and his followers in the distinctly non-Aristotelian sense of “the study of the conditions for ————————— 1
Frithjof Schuon, The Transcendent Unity of Religions, transl. P. Townsend, London: Faber and Faber, 1953, p. 9.
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the possibility of” a given science. Kant repeatedly remarks that the Kritik der reiner Vernunft is itself an example of the new “metaphysics”. The terms “theory of knowledge” and “epistemology” (Erkenntnislehre) were invented in the early 19th century, along with the whole notion of philosophy as a professional academic discipline. Therefore Schuon rightly observes that in this and many other cases philosophy proceeds from reason, which is a purely individual faculty, whereas metaphysics (in its traditional and ostensibly perennial sense) 2 proceeds from the Intellect. “From the metaphysical standpoint”, he says, “there is no longer any question either of ‘proof’ or of ‘belief’ but solely of 3 direct evidence”. “Thus metaphysical certitude is absolute because of the iden4 tity between the knower and the known in the Intellect”. This is the basic Aristotelian notion further developed by Alexander of Aphrodisias and Plotinus who adapted it for the contemplative mysticism. In The Transcendent Unity of Religions, his early work, Schuon (for the reasons of spiritual pedagogy, perhaps) quite radically and without much of qualifications emphasizes the sharp difference between metaphysics and philosophy that means no less than ontological difference between divine wisdom and purely human knowledge. Philosophy in this context means something like the Cartesian or Bergsonian virus, which ought to be rejected altogether. Almost at the same time when this book was written, some modern philosophers (or rather logicians and epistemologists) waged war against philosophy as well: for L. Witgenstein philosophy is an illness of language, therefore the true philosophy consists in curing itself of philosophy. Evidently, this “curing of” tacitly includes any traditional mode of wisdom, be it mythological or philosophical, despite the fact that the ancient philosophy intended, in the first instance, to transform people and their souls. Post-Kantian Western philosophers would say that earlier philosophers wrestled with their own shadows, since they did philosophy naively, without sufficient self-reflection and therefore philosophized dogmatically, unable to locate the common a priori structure of reason that could serve as a “tribunal” and which R. Rorty now tries to do away. Nevertheless, as Ch. C. Evangeliou pointed out, “Aristotle’s philosophy, and the Platonic tradition to which he belongs, would appear to be closer to the Eastern ways of thinking (especially the Indian), than to the narrowly defined “Western rationality” if by this expression is meant the kind of calculative and manipulative ratio, in the service of utilitarian, technological and ideological goals, which characterizes much of modern and postmodern philosophy in the West under the various masks of “logical analysis”, 5 Baconian “scientific method”, or Marxist “scientific socialism”. The term “philosophy” becomes even more ambiguous when we realize that neither Peripatet————————— 2
Ibid., p. 9. Ibid., p. 12. 4 Ibid., p. 10. 5 Christos C. Evangeliou, The Hellenic Philosophy: Between Europe, Asia and Africa, Institute of Global Cultural Studies, Binghamton University, 1997, p. 51. 3
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ics, nor Neoplatonists would have approved of what the modern Western professors have made out of Hellenic philosophy, which itself at most instances is rooted in the Mediterranean wisdom tradition and frequently adopts mystery language or even seeks for religious experience that consists not only in the “beatific vision”, visual divine epiphanies, but also proximity (empelasis) to and union (henosis) with the One. In addition, the final late Platonic synthesis may be de6 scribed as monotheistic, according to A. H. Armstrong and J. Kenney. The living praxis of the ancient philosophy is linked with the oral transmission and spiritual exercises, therefore any dogmata have only a secondary importance, despite the huge metaphysical and hermeneutical projects in attempt to deduce the entire “scientific theology” from Plato’s Parmenides or reveal the koinonia ton dogmaton—the essential concord between Orpheus, Homer, Hesiod, Plato, Aristotle and so called Chaldean Oracles. While speaking about “spiritual exercises” in ancient philosophy, Pierre Hadot argues that these exercises were not conceived of as purely intellectual, as merely theoretical and formal exercises of discourse aimed at a purely abstract knowledge. They were aimed at realizing a transformation of 7 one’s vision of the world and a metamorphosis of one’s being and personality. Jean Trouillard also emphasizes that “la theologie neoplatonicienne nest pas simple théorie mais egalement conversion. Elle ne peut etre entierement detachée de la theurgie et du mythe ‘initiatique’ dont elle sort et vers lesquels elle nous tourne. Son efficacité deborde le langage rationnel pour employer celui de la poeèsie 8 inspirée.” It is evident that in his early writings, radically turned against the prevailing mental climate, Schuon mostly uses the term “philosophy” not in the normal Hellenic sense, but in the narrowed modern sense. Philosophy, he says, “concerns itself solely with mental ‘schemes’ which, with its claim to universality, it likes to regard as absolute, although from the point of view of spiritual realization these schemes are merely so many virtual or potential and unused objects, in so far at least as they refer to true ideas; when, however, this is not the case, as practically always occurs in modern philosophy, these schemes are reduced to the condition of mere devices that are unusable from a speculative point of view and are therefore without any real value. As for true ideas, those, that is to say, which more or less implicitly suggest aspects of the total Truth, and hence this Truth itself, they become by that very fact intellectual ‘keys’ and indeed have no other function; this is something that metaphysical thought alone is 9 capable of grasping”. Schuon distinguishes metaphysical and philosophical ————————— 6
See A. Hillary Armstrong, Itineraries in Late Antiquity. Eranos 1987, Jahrbuch, vol. 56, Frankfurt am Main: Insel Verlag, 1989, pp. 105–131 and John Peter Kenney Mystical Monotheism. A Study in Ancient Platonic Theology, Hanover & London: Brown University Press, 1991. 7 See Pierre Hadot Exercises spirituels et Philosophie antique, Paris: Etudes Augustiniennes, 1981. 8 Jean Trouillard, La mystagogie de Proclos, Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1982, pp. 99–100. 9 Frithjof Schuon, The Transcendent Unity of Religions, pp. 17–18.
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proposition arguing that the former is symbolical and descriptive since it makes use of rational modes as symbols, whereas philosophy is never anything more 10 than what it expresses. Though the aim of metaphysical formulations, based on intellectual certainty, is to awaken the latent knowledge, i.e. to produce anamnesis, the above mentioned dichotomy in its present form makes sense only when some general and particular contexts of modern Western (or even Christian) thought are involved, and cannot be strictly maintained within the frame of Neoplatonic dialectic, which, like geometry, also “projects” or “unfolds” innate a priori concepts, though demonstrating them by means of rigorous syllogistic arguments. Dialectic is a demonstrative science, explicating certain a priori metaphysical truths given in the soul: surely, it starts from the evident truths, but never seeks to dismiss “rationalism” on its own discursive level, despite the other contemplative forms of knowledge. Of course, “divine philosophy” (theia philosophia) is not ordinary philosophy—antropine episteme or “connaissance rationelle”. But this distinction cannot be translated as the distinction between “metaphysics” and “philosophy”, since here we face a slightly different set of classification and technical terminology. Proclus says that “tout le monde est concerve dans l’etre et conjoint aux causes primordiales par l’intermediare soit de la folie amoureuse (dia tes erotikes manias), soit de la divine philosophie (dia tes theias philosophias), soit de la puissane theurgique, laquelle est meilleure que toute sagesse et toute science humaine, puisqu’elle concentre en elle les avantages de la divination, les forces purificatrices de l’accomplissement des rites et tous les effets sans exception de l’inspiration qui rend possede du divin (In Plat.Theol.I.25.4-10 Saffrey-Westerink). In his later writings Schuon is more precise and never forgets to mention that philosophy may be understood in the still literal and innocent meaning of the 11 word. “The Greeks”, he says, “aside from the Sophists, were not rationalists properly speaking; it is true that Socrates rationalized intellect by insisting on reason; there lies the ambiguity of Greek philosophy, the first aspect being rep12 resented by Aristotle, and the second by Plato”. This sort of division echoes the Neoplatonic school curriculum where master-guided studies of Aristotle are treated as the necessary preliminary introduction to the Platonic studies. Therefore Marinus says about Proclus’ master Syrianus: “as through a kind of preliminary initiation and lesser mysteries, he began to lead him into the initiation of Plato” (hosper dia tinon proteleion kai mikron musterion eis ten Platonos ege mustagogian: Vita Procli 3). Since Iamblichus even the Platonic corpus was arranged to fit the scale of anagogical ascent and corresponding virtues. “The whole of philosophy”, according to Proclus, “is divided into the theory about ————————— 10
Ibid., pp. 11–12. Frithjof Schuon, Survey of Metaphysics and Esoterism, transl. Gustavo Polit, Bloomington: World Wisdom Books, 1986, p. 3. 12 Frithjof Schuon, Roots of the Human Condition, Bloomington: World Wisdom Books, 1991, p. VII. 11
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the intelligible (peri ton noeton) and that about worldly (peri ton egkosmion) entities”. Therefore Timaeus wrote about the nature of the universe (peri tes tou pantos egegrapto phuseos), and Parmenides about true Being (peri ton ontos onton: In Tim.I.13 ff). It follows that the Timaeus introduces the theory of encosmic things through images (eikones) before the inquiry into theology takes place (pro tes theologias). Theology here is tantamount to metaphysics and can be both dialectical (dialektikos) and symbolical (sumbolikos). Despite the superiority of theurgy and contemplation (for surely no metaphysician or theologian is ever going to admit that we can have a full understanding of the transcendent except by some transcendent experience) the role of reasoning is crucial and if it does not lead to complete enlightenment, can still provide us with an approach if used correctly. Iamblichus’ method, for instance, is to cite familiar philosophical ideas not as principles from which religious positions can be deduced but us parallels or illustrations that lend intelligibility and consistency to the religious positions. What Iamblichus is concerned to uphold in general terms is the necessary position of ritual of the lower physical kind whilst maintaining the primacy of a transcendent theurgy (if not of the theia episteme which is the same as the “scientific theology”, epistemonike theologia) and a transcendent cause in theurgical operations. “Car alors qu’est-ce qui empecherait ceux qui philosophent theoretiquement d’ariver a l’union theurgique avec les dieux (ten theourgiken henosin pros tous theous)?”—asks Iamblichus (De mysteriis 96.15– 16), suggesting perhaps that philosophers might have some kind of philosophical union but that theurgic union is different, though sometimes the distinction between theology and philosophy appears to be ignored and more weight is placed on the traditional Platonic demarcation within philosophy between the 13 level of discursive reason and that of noesis. Nevertheless, the appeal to reason cannot in the end avoid an appeal to revelation. Now we ought to inquire what does prote philosophia, later called metaphysics, mean for the most of Hellenic philosophers, including Aristotle. According to Giovanni Reale, metaphysics displays four different aspects: 1) It is archeology or aetiology, an inquiry endeavoring to disclose the first causes and highest principles of all things. 2) It is also an ontology dealing with being qua being, not a particular area of being but the totality of whatever exists. 3) Furthermore it is an ousiology, because substance (ousia) is the most important meaning of being. 4) Finally, first philosophy is theology: it deals with the divine and belongs to the divine, therefore God, more than anyone else, possesses this science or is —————————
13 Andrew Smith, “Iamblichus’ Views on the Relationship of Philosophy to Religion”, in De Mysteriis. The Divine Iamblichus. Philosopher and Man of Gods, ed. H. J. Blumenthal & E. G. Clark, Bristol Classical Press, 1993, p. 77.
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either the only or the most perfect metaphysician (cf. Arist. Metaph.A.2.983a514 11). However, since all things are for the Neoplatonists in some measure divine, the boundary between theologike and phusike or phusiologia is not a rigid one, 15 as E. R. Dodds observes: the latter may be called “a kind of theology”. Plato is actually the first attested user of the abstract noun theologia (Rep. II.379b6), while the agent noun theologos and the verb theologeo do not occur until Aristotle. But theologia for Plato has not necessarily privileged status: it means simply “talk about the gods” or theorizing about the nature of divinity. The application of the term theologia as the first philosophy first clearly occurs in Aristotle (Metaph. 1026a18f) and it runs in hand with the older application to the treatment of the gods of myth and ritual. For Neoplatonists, the ancient quarrel between philosophy and inspired poetry seems rather unreal, therefore Homer and Orpheus are theologians no less than Pythagoras and Plato. There is no tension or contradiction between myth and dialectic, since they are regarded as complementary. Theology itself (mythical or “scientific”, as in the case of Proclus’ “Platonic theology”) can be revealed in four different modes and may be: 1) divinely inspired (entheastikos), 2) symbolical (sumbolikos), 3) expressed in images (eikonikos), 4) dialectical (dialektikos) The gods are the sources of all knowledge, and this knowledge is vouchsafed to those who have turned toward them, and are filled with inspired intuition (which can be rendered into a dialectical episteme), and who are “offspring” of the gods in a special sense. They are members of a Golden Race (hiera genea), a phrase which is somewhat reminiscent of the language of mysteries, or more precisely, they belong, according to Porpfyry, Hierocles and Proclus, to the Golden Chain of Platonism which transcends the boundaries of cities and schools, if can be applied to historical proc16 ess at all. It seems fairly clear that whatever Plato, Plotinus or Proclus mean by “philosophy” or “theology”, it is not quite the same as what contemporary textbooks mean by the terms. Moreover, few philosophy professors would dare advocate Socrates’ bizarre claims that one thing he understands is erotic matter, that he possesses an erotike techne and that philosophy is divine erotic madness. J. Dillon argues that “a salient feature of Christian, as of Jewish and Islamic, thought has always been the tension between philosophy and theology, a struggle in which necessarily philosophy has the worst of it on the overt level, while in fact covertly insinuating itself into the very core of each of the systems con————————— 14
As cited in Gerard Verbeke, Aristotle’s Metaphysics Viewed by the Ancient Greek Commentators. Studies in Aristotle, ed. Dominic J. O’Meara, Washington: The Catholic University of America Press, D.C., 1981, p. 107. 15 Proclus, The Elements of Theology. A revised text with translation, introduction and commentary by E.R. Dodds, 2nd ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992, p. 187. 16 John Glucker, Antiochus and the Late Academy, Hypomnemata, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht in Göttingen, 1978, p. 314.
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cerned”. Some scholars try to discern the origins of this confrontation in the Alexandrian Jewish intellectual milieu from which Philo sprang. To those Alexandrian Jewish writers, while philosophy in its teachings about God and about the duties of man was reminiscent of the teachings of Scriptures, it never really reached the full truth of Scripture. Nevertheless, J. Mansfeld rightly observes that reading through Philo one cannot help feeling that for all his Jewish piety and loyalty to Moses and for all his indebtedness to specifically Jewish exegetical themes, Hellenic philosophy really dominates the field, and that Moses and 18 the Jewish prophets are virtually converted into Greek philosophers. As certain Neoplatonic philosophers, who sought to harmonize, say, Plato and Chaldean Oracles, Schuon, while facing the problem of hermeneutical reconciliation of different trends, levels and perspectives of “wisdom”, makes the following assertion. “When Christian polemicists oppose the ‘wisdom of Christ’ to the ‘vain wisdom’ of the Hellenists”, he says, “they misapply the word ‘wisdom’, since this word cannot bear the same meaning in both cases. The wisdom of the Greeks, in principle or in fact, is an objective description of the nature of things, and if its highest concepts do not lead men toward God, this proves not the falsity of these concepts, but the insufficiency of men; on the other hand, the ‘wisdom’ Christians profess to oppose to Plato is the sum of moral and mystical attitudes which, on the basis of the dogmas and conjointly with certain means of grace, leads man away from the world and up to Heaven; this is not a ‘wisdom’, however, if one takes this word to refer to metaphysical knowledge, as one is 19 obliged to do when speaking of Pythagoras, Plato, Plotinus, or Aristotle”. Now as a Christian Eriugena has pointed out, “the only true philosophy is religion, and the only true religion is philosophy” (De praedestinatione I.1). Proclus could subscribe wholeheartedly to this statement, if, at least, for religio we may understand theologia and, by extension, hieratike techne. Though theology for Proclus is in no way the rival of philosophy, nor a final authority before which philosophy must bend the knee, the scientific mode of exposition, according to Proclus, is peculiar to Plato’s philosophy. For he alone, as Proclus believes, went beyond the intelligible for his highest principle—the One and henads, and undertook to distinguish appropriately the ordered progression of the divine kinds, the differences between them, the common characteristics of all levels and those proper to each. Our intention is not to contest as to what extent the ————————— 17
John Dillon, “Philosophy and Theology in Proclus. Some Remarks on the ‘Philosophical’ and ‘Theological’ Modes of Exegesis”, in Proclus’ Platonic Commentaries. From Augustine to Eriugena. Essays on Neoplatonism and Christianity in Honor of John O’Meara, ed. F.X. Martin, O.S.A. and J.A. Richmond, Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1981, p. 66. 18 Jaap Mansfeld, Philosophy in the Service of Scripture. Philo’s Exegetical Strategies. The Question of “Eclecticism”. Studies in Later Greek Philosophy, ed. John M. Dillon and A.A. Long, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988, p. 84. 19 Frithjof Schuon, Logic and Transcendence, transl. P. Townsend, London: Perennial Books, 1984, pp. 50–51.
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conceptions developed by Syrianus and Proclus could be traced back to Plato himself, but to remind that these Neoplatonic philosophers deal almost exclusively with the nature of the divine and the hierarchy of gods. By means of metaphysical exegesis they created “theology as a science” which is inseparable from the spiritual life as a constant sort of prayer and liturgy. In this context their philosophical activity is transformed into a cult of worship of the gods (say, henads or divine principles) and a means of the ultimate union with the One, which is unspeakably transcendent God-of-all (Theos panton). Proclus more than once quotes the saying of Theodorus of Asine that ‘all things pray except the First’ (In Tim.I.213.2-3). “L’ascese des philosophes neoplatoniciens 20 etait celle des contemplatifs qui meditent et qui prient”, says H.D. Saffrey. And Proclus, who is most systematic and scientifically rigorous in demonstrating fundamental metaphysical insights and entirely rational axioms, advises us as follows: “Voici ce que doit faire celui qui veut se mettre vaillamment a prier: se rendre les dieux propices et tout ensemble reveiller en lui-meme ses notions sur les dieux, et s’attacher sans interruption au service de la divinite; mantenir inebranlable la belle ordonnance des oeuvres cheres aux dieux, se proposer les vertus qui purifient du cree et font remonter vers dieu, non seulement la foi, la verite et l’amour, cette admirable triade, mais aussi l’esperance des vrais biens, une immuable receptivite a l’egard de la lumiere divine, l’extase enfin qui nous separe de toutes les autres occupations, pour que l’on s’unisse seul a dieu seul” (In Tim. I.212.12-24). In antiquity the philosopher regards himself as a philosopher, not because he develops a philosophical discourse, but because he lives philosophically, therefore such hieratic philosophers as Iamblichus and Proclus, for instance, stand on the same sacred ground as their Islamic heirs in the “Golden Chain” of perennial wisdom. In the modern times the notion of philosophy suffers most radical changes, and now philosophy scarcely resembles an exercise of wisdom but is reduced to philosophical discourse, or rather a sort of “epistemological grammar” destined for suicide. While pursuing to explain the different venues of religious thought, to reveal their hidden strategies and reconcile them on the higher spiritual level, Schuon faces the ambiguity of such terms as “philosophy” and “theology”, and takes into account the diversity of their meaning. Therefore he gives preference to the initially Peripatetic term “metaphysics”, in order to establish a firm ground for his comparative esoteric hermeneutics which, due to its fundamental spiritual and historical purpose, cannot too strictly follow any previous given patterns, be they Christian, Islamic, or Neoplatonic.
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20 H. D. Saffrey, “Quelques aspects de la spiritualite des philosophes neoplatoniciens de Jamblique a Proclus et Damascius”. Revue des Sciences philosophiques et theologiques 68, 1984, p. 174.
