DIALOGUE AND UNIVERSALISM

No. 12/2003

Algis Udavinys

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 (19071998)
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 peren-
nis.

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 con-
temporary 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 tradi-
tional 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 con-
templating Intellect, therefore episteme or gnosis cannot produce the union
140 Algis Udavinys

higher than that with the self-thinking Intellect (nous) and Being (to on). Frith-
jof 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 an-
cient 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 theo-
logical 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 Eckharts 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 Neopy-
thagorean, 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 Pla-
tonic distinction between nous and dianoia. Since mystagogy of Schuon is sup-
ported 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 fol-
lowers 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.
 Approach to Philosophy, Theology, and Metaphysics 141

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 the-
ory 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 fac-
ulty, 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 iden-
4
tity between the knower and the known in the Intellect. This is the basic Aris-
totelian 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 rea-
sons of spiritual pedagogy, perhaps) quite radically and without much of qualifi-
cations 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 tradi-
tional 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 philoso-
phers wrestled with their own shadows, since they did philosophy naively, with-
out 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, Aristotles 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, techno-
logical and ideological goals, which characterizes much of modern and post-
modern philosophy in the West under the various masks of logical analysis,
5
Baconian scientific method, or Marxist scientific socialism. The term phi-
losophy becomes even more ambiguous when we realize that neither Peripatet-

2
Ibid., p. 9.
3
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.
142 Algis Udavinys

ics, nor Neoplatonists would have approved of what the modern Western profes-
sors have made out of Hellenic philosophy, which itself at most instances is
rooted in the Mediterranean wisdom tradition and frequently adopts mystery lan-
guage 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 de-
6
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 Platos Parmenides or reveal the koinonia ton dogma-
tonthe 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
ones vision of the world and a metamorphosis of ones being and personality.
Jean Trouillard also emphasizes that la theologie neoplatonicienne nest pas sim-
ple thorie mais egalement conversion. Elle ne peut etre entierement detache de
la theurgie et du mythe initiatique dont elle sort et vers lesquels elle nous tourne.
Son efficacit deborde le langage rationnel pour employer celui de la poesie
8
inspire.
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, con-
cerns 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 realiza-
tion 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. 105131 and John Peter Kenney Mystical Monothe-
ism. 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. 99100.
9
Frithjof Schuon, The Transcendent Unity of Religions, pp. 1718.
 Approach to Philosophy, Theology, and Metaphysics 143

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 an-
amnesis, the above mentioned dichotomy in its present form makes sense only
when some general and particular contexts of modern Western (or even Chris-
tian) 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 philosophyantropine 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 letre et conjoint aux causes primordiales par lintermediare 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 meil-
leure que toute sagesse et toute science humaine, puisquelle concentre en elle
les avantages de la divination, les forces purificatrices de laccomplissement des
rites et tous les effets sans exception de linspiration 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 rep-
12
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. There-
fore Marinus says about Proclus master Syrianus: as through a kind of pre-
liminary 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. 1112.
11
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.
144 Algis Udavinys

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 en-
cosmic 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 supe-
riority 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 philoso-
phical ideas not as principles from which religious positions can be deduced but
us parallels or illustrations that lend intelligibility and consistency to the reli-
gious 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 quest-ce qui empecherait ceux qui
philosophent theoretiquement dariver a lunion 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 philosophi-
cal 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 rea-
son 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 im-
portant 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.
 Approach to Philosophy, Theology, and Metaphysics 145

either the only or the most perfect metaphysician (cf. Arist. Metaph.A.2.983a5-
14
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 Aris-
totle. But theologia for Plato has not necessarily privileged status: it means sim-
ply talk about the gods or theorizing about the nature of divinity. The applica-
tion 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 treat-
ment of the gods of myth and ritual. For Neoplatonists, the ancient quarrel be-
tween 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 com-
plementary. 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 dialec-
tical 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 reminis-
cent of the language of mysteries, or more precisely, they belong, according to
Porpfyry, Hierocles and Proclus, to the Golden Chain of Platonism which tran-
scends the boundaries of cities and schools, if can be applied to historical proc-
16
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 strug-
gle 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, Aristotles Metaphysics Viewed by the Ancient Greek Commen-
tators. Studies in Aristotle, ed. Dominic J. OMeara, 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 com-
mentary by E.R. Dodds, 2nd ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992, p. 187.
16
John Glucker, Antiochus and the Late Academy, Hypomnemata, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht
in Gttingen, 1978, p. 314.
146 Algis Udavinys

17
cerned. Some scholars try to discern the origins of this confrontation in the
Alexandrian Jewish intellectual milieu from which Philo sprang. To those Alex-
andrian 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 exegeti-
cal themes, Hellenic philosophy really dominates the field, and that Moses and
18
the Jewish prophets are virtually converted into Greek philosophers. As cer-
tain Neoplatonic philosophers, who sought to harmonize, say, Plato and Chal-
dean 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 fal-
sity of these concepts, but the insufficiency of men; on the other hand, the wis-
dom 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 relig-
ion, 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 Platos philosophy. For he alone, as Proclus believes,
went beyond the intelligible for his highest principlethe 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 OMeara, 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. Philos 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. 5051.
 Approach to Philosophy, Theology, and Metaphysics 147

conceptions developed by Syrianus and Proclus could be traced back to Plato

himself, but to remind that these Neoplatonic philosophers deal almost exclu-
sively 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). Lascese 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 sattacher 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 lamour, cette admirable triade, mais aussi
lesperance des vrais biens, une immuable receptivite a legard de la lumiere
divine, lextase enfin qui nous separe de toutes les autres occupations, pour que
lon sunisse 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, there-
fore such hieratic philosophers as Iamblichus and Proclus, for instance, stand on
the same sacred ground as their Islamic heirs in the Golden Chain of peren-
nial 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 gram-
mar 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.

20
H. D. Saffrey, Quelques aspects de la spiritualite des philosophes neoplatoniciens de Jam-
blique a Proclus et Damascius. Revue des Sciences philosophiques et theologiques 68, 1984,
p. 174.