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 […]
Abstract: “I recently had the pleasure of spending my honeymoon on the small island of Culebra off the coast of Puerto Rico. There my wife, herself an avid snorkeler and scuba diver, introduced me to the wonders of life under the sea, taking me on several dives and snorkeling trips along the island’s teeming reefs. We had many discussions on the spiritual significance and symbolism of this contemplation of the world under the water, and I have tried to organize my thoughts on this topic in this short essay. I take a ‘kaleidoscopic’ approach in this piece, meaning that I consider the same phenomena from several distinct, and often contrasting, symbolic perspectives.“
Abstract: “The sacred is the projection of the celestial Center into the cosmic periphery.”‘ These words by Frithjof Schuon beautifully suggest what the sacred has represented for mankind throughout the ages, and across traditional civilizations.They remind us, first of all, that the world of the sacred is a centered world. The concept of “center,” which […]
Abstract: “These observations on the centrality of philosophy in the human experience, by the author of ʿIlm-i kullī, are redolent with the wisdom of the living Islamic philosophical tradition, a tradition which survives in all its fullness into our own times only among the Shīʿah. Āyatullāh Mahdī Ḥāʾirī Yazdī was not only an authority on […]
Abstract: “The arguments of this book have been in the making for more than a decade, particularly since 2009, when they became an almost permanent staple in my course offerings at Columbia University. Throughout these intellectual exercises, I have come to learn that there is no single important aspect of modernity that is not touched, […]
Abstract: “The year 1951 is being celebrated throughout the Muslim world, and especially in Persia, as the millennary according to lunar reckoning of the birth of Avicenna, one of the greatest and most original thinkers produced by Islam, Dom in 370 (980) at the little village of Afshana in the province of Bukhara-a region now […]
Abstract: “The present study seeks to learn something about the metaphysics of substance in light of four rich but for the most part neglected centuries of philosophy, running from the late medieval period to the early modern era. At no period in the history of philosophy, other than perhaps our own, have metaphysical problems received […]
Abstract: “More than any other Muslim thinker, Ibn ¡Arabi dedicated his teachings to clarifying the presence of the divine wisdom in all things and the human necessity of conforming to that wisdom. The arguments he offers are at once metaphysical and scrip- tural, cosmological and psychological, scientific and ethical. He addresses every dimension of human […]
Abstract: “There is a well-known saying of’All ibn Abi ‘falib, the cousin and son-in law of the Prophet of Islam and representative par excellence of Islamic esoterism and metaphysics, according to which one should pay attention to what is said and not who has said it. This teaching has been close to my heart since […]
Abstract: “Ex nihilo nihilo fit: Nothing comes from nothing, and Avicenna and his philosophy are no exception. Indeed, multiple influences were at work in the formation of his thought. In this chapter, I consider a few of these influ- ences so as to provide a general backdrop against which to situate the intel- lectual and […]