Abstract: “Only rarely does a publication such as this offer scholars the opportunity to explain what they hope to accomplish, and why they are motivated to do it. In this jubilee edition, our department of religious studies has invited each of us to ask the question: why? For my own part, the answer begins with […]
“At the end of July, I was amongst 60 people who retreated from our daily lives, in a valley called Pontbriand, high in the Appalachians of Quebec. There, for six days, we followed a rhythm of existence that centred around devotion, reflection, and seeking of wisdom and meaning. We gathered early morning to pray and […]
Abstract: “René Guénon, the seminal founder of the Traditionalist School, was also perhaps its preeminent metaphysician. More particularly, he was the plenary expositor of a metaphysics through which mathematical conceptualization runs like a golden thread. As Frithjof Schuon, another remarkable metaphysician, has observed, “Guénon was like the personification, not of spirituality as such, but uniquely […]
Abstract: “Human beings are the vicegerents of God on earth and thus also are the stewards of nature.1 This paraphrases one of the main themes of the re- lationship between humanity and the natural environment in the Islamic world, as well as in other religious traditions. Vicegerency implies a spe- cific relationship between God, humanity, […]
Abstract: “If we are to form a proper understanding of the meaning and scope of “Revelation,” we do well to forget at once the implications of the term in the Mediterranean religions, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Strictly speaking, “revelation” is a misnomer, since ultimately there is no revealer. The Sanskrit term for it is śruti, […]
Abstract: “The ‘Philokalia’ is a collection of writings of the Fathers from the earliest times after the Declaration of Constantine the Great. It shows the way to awaken attention and consciousness, and to develop them ; it provides the means of acquiring the quickest and most effective conditions for training in what the Fathers, who […]
Abstract:“The still-nascent academic discipline of African philosophy has spent most of its energy and ink wrestling with issues of authenticity (what makes it “African”) and validity (what makes it “philosophy”). In this article, I argue for a reconsideration of these categories—“African” and “philosophy”—by tracing the closely related history of their development. Then, on the basis […]
Abstract: “The fruit of several centuries of rationalistic thought in the West has been to reduce both the objective and the subjective poles of knowledge to a single level. In the same way that the Cogito of Descartes is based on reducing the knowing subject to a single mode of awareness, the external world which […]
Abstract: “One of the defining features of contemporary moral philosophy in nearly all its guises is the lack of serious concern for metaphysics—not as a discipline in itself, but as a necessary foundation for ethics. One should not mistake the fashionable project of “evolutionary ethics” for an attempt to tie morals to metaphysics, rather than […]
Abstract: “Despite the fact that it continues to have followers, and that it can be said to have enjoyed something of a micro-revival in recent years, dualism either in the philosophy of mindor in the theory of personal identity persists in being more the object of ridicule than of serious rational engagement. It is held […]