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 […]
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 […]