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The Comparative Study of Eastern and Western Metaphysics: A Perennialist Perspective

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Abstract

The comparative study of Eastern and Western philosophy has been hindered and/or distorted by Eurocentric assumptions about “philosophy”, especially the overvaluation of rationality as an instrument of knowledge. The widespread discounting of Eastern thought derives, in large measure, from the modern Western failure to understand the nature of the traditional metaphysics of both the Occident and the East. This failure can be remedied by recourse to the work of a group of “traditionalist” or “perennialist” thinkers who expose the limitations of many approaches to the comparative study of philosophy in general and metaphysics in particular.

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Notes

  1. Plato, Alcibiades II, 144D.

  2. On Paul Deussen (1845–1919), see Halbfass, W. (1990). India and Europe: An essay in philosophical understanding (pp. 128–133). Delhi: Motilal Barnarsidass; On Theodor I. Stcherbatsky (1866–1942), see Bapat, P. V. (1956). 2500 years of Buddhism (pp. 343–344). New Delhi: Government of India.

  3. E. Dühring quoted in W. Halbfass, India and Europe, p. 153.

  4. See Nasr, S. H. (1981). Knowledge and the sacred (p. 43). New York: Crossroad. See also Watson, I. (1972). The anti-wisdom of modern philosophy. Studies in Comparative Religion, 6(4), 221–224. (Autumn).

  5. See King, R. (1999). Orientalism and religion: Postcolonial theory, India and the ‘mystic East’ (pp. 28–34). London: Routledge. One might also note in passing that African influences on the Western tradition are generally subsumed under the rubric of ‘Greek philosophy’, as if Hypatia, Augustine, Origen, Cyril and Tertullian were surrogate Greeks-a point made by the African philosopher Innocent Onyewuenyi. See R. King, p. 29.

  6. See W. Halbfass, op. cit., 162–163.

  7. Merton, T. (1963). Gandhi on non-violence (p. 3). New York: New Directions.

  8. Some of the linkages and comparisons have become commonplace: Confucius-Aristotle; Mencius-Aquinas; Sankara-Eckhart, Spinoza, Kant, Bradley; Nagarjuna-Hume, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Wittgenstein, Derrida; Dogen-Heidegger.

  9. See Parkes, G. (1996). Nietzsche and East Asian thought: Influences, impacts and resonances. In B. Magnus, & K. M. Higgins (Eds.), The Cambridge companion to Nietzsche. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

  10. Nasr, S. H. (1972). Conditions for a meaningful comparative philosophy. Philosophy East and West, 22(1), 53.

  11. S. H. Nasr, Conditions for a meaningful comparative philosophy, p. 55 (italics mine).

  12. A. Bharati, review of Harold Coward, Derrida and Indian Philosophy in Philosophy East and West, 42:2, April 1992, p. 340.

  13. S. H. Nasr, Conditions for a meaningful comparative philosophy, p. 55.

  14. See K. Oldmeadow, Traditionalism: Religion in the Light of Perennial Philosophy, Ch 8.

  15. S. H. Nasr, Conditions for a meaningful comparative philosophy, p. 57.

  16. Ibid., 59.

  17. For an overview see K. Oldmeadow, op. cit. For a recent and often ill-informed ‘critique’ of traditionalism see Sedgwick, M. (2004). Against the modern world: Traditionalism and the secret intellectual history of the twentieth century. New York: Oxford University Press.

  18. See Huxley’s (1970). The Perennial Philosophy (first published 1944). New York: Harper & Row.

  19. From Bradley, F. H. (1952). Appearance and reality quoted by S. Radhakrishnan: “Reply to My Critics”. In P. A. Schilpp (Ed.), The philosophy of Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (p. 791). New York: Tudor.

  20. For some discussion of this term by a modern philosopher see Hospers, J. (1956). An introduction to philosophical analysis (p. 211ff). London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

  21. Nasr, S. H. (1976). Man and nature (p. 81). London: Allen & Unwin.

  22. Schuon, F. (1975). Logic and transcendence (p. 204 n9). New York: Harper & Row.

  23. Guénon, R. (1974). Oriental metaphysics. In J. Needleman (Ed.), The sword of gnosis (pp. 43–44). Baltimore: Penguin.

  24. Tauler quoted in Kelley, C. F. (1977). Meister Eckhart on divine knowledge (p. 4). New Haven: Yale University Press.

  25. Nasr, S. H. (1968). Man and nature: The spiritual crisis of modern man (pp. 81–82). London: Allen & Unwin. See also Coomaraswamy’s undated letter to ‘M’, in Selected Letters of Ananda Coomaraswamy, ed. R.P. Coomaraswamy & A. Moore Jnr, New Delhi: Indira Gandhi National Center, 1988, p. 10: ‘…traditional Metaphysics is as much a single and invariable science as mathematics.’

  26. 1 Corinthians II.11. The Absolute may be called God, the Godhead, nirguna Brahman, the Tao, and so on, according to the vocabulary at hand. See Schuon, F. (1996). Light on the ancient worlds (p. 96 n1). London: Perennial Books.

  27. Coomaraswamy, A. K. (1977). ‘A lecture on comparative religion’ quoted in R. Lipsey. Coomaraswamy: His Life and Work (p. 275). Princeton: Princeton University Press. Also see Coomaraswamy, A. K. Vedanta and western tradition. In R. Lipsey (Ed.), Selected papers 2: Metaphysics (p. 6). Princeton: Princeton University Press.

  28. See R. Guénon, op. cit., p. 53.

  29. Schuon, F. (1968). In the tracks of buddhism (p. 33). London: Allen & Unwin.

  30. F. Schuon, Logic and transcendence (p. 13). See also Schuon, F. (1981). Esoterism as principle and as way (pp. 15ff). London: Perennial Books.

  31. Letter to J. H. Muirhead, August 1935, in A. K. Coomaraswamy, Selected Letters, p. 37.

  32. Nasr, S. H. (1972). Sufi essays (p. 86). London: Allen & Unwin. See also Schuon, F. (1961). Stations of wisdom (p. 42). London: Perennial Books.

  33. Lings, M. (1975). What is sufism? (p. 93). London: Allen & Unwin.

  34. Schuon, F. (1967). Spiritual perspectives and human facts (pp. 162–163). London: Perennial Books. Cf. A. K. Coomaraswamy: ‘...and every belief is a heresy if it be regarded as the truth, and not simply as a signpost of the truth’; from ‘Sri Ramakrishna and Religious Tolerance’ in Selected Papers 2, p. 38. See also Schuon, F. (1981). Sufism, veil and quintessence (p. 2). Bloomington: World Wisdom.

  35. A. K. Coomaraswamy, ‘Vedanta and Western Tradition’, Selected Papers 2, p. 6.

  36. Schuon, F. (1976). Understanding Islam (p. 24). London: Allen & Unwin. See also F. Schuon, Stations of wisdom, pp. 18ff.

  37. Burckhardt, T. (1972). Alchemy (p. 36 n1). Baltimore: Penguin.

  38. Quoted in S. H. Nasr, Man and nature, p. 35.

  39. Quoted in Schumacher, E. F. (1977). A guide for the perplexed (p. 49). London: Jonathan Cape.

  40. F. Schuon, Spiritual perspectives and human facts, p. 10.

  41. F. Schuon, Esoterism as principle and as way, p. 28.

  42. R. Guénon quoted in F. Schuon, Stations of wisdom, p. 29 n1.

  43. See F. Schuon, Esoterism as principle and as way, p. 28.

  44. F. Schuon, Understanding Islam, p. 149.

  45. F. Schuon, Logic and transcendence, p. 37.

  46. S. Prabhananda, & C. Isherwood (Ed.) (1970). Shankara’s crest jewel of discrimination (p. 73). New York: Mentor.

  47. F. Schuon, Logic and transcendence, p. 37.

  48. A. K. Coomaraswamy, ‘Vedanta and Western Tradition’, Selected Papers 2, p. 8. See also S. H. Nasr, Knowledge and the Sacred, p. 6.

  49. F. Schuon, Logic and transcendence, p. 34.

  50. Schuon, F. (1995). The transfiguration of man (p. 4). Bloomington: World Wisdom.

  51. Here we are at the opposite end of the spectrum not only from the philosophical relativists but from those who hold a ‘personalist’ or ‘existentialist’ view of truth.

  52. Nietzsche in Beyond Good and Evil, taken from Extract 13 in R. J. Hollindale (Ed.) (1977). A Nietzsche reader. Harmondsworth: Penguin. See also F. Schuon, Logic and Transcendence, p. 34 and The Transfiguration of Man, p. 4. (For a striking passage on both the grandeur and the ‘dementia’ of Nietzsche’s work see Schuon, F. (1990). To have a center (p. 15). Bloomington: World Wisdom.

  53. See A. K. Coomaraswamy, ‘Vedanta and western tradition’, Selected Papers 2, p. 9.

  54. Schuon, F. (1991). Roots of the human condition (p. 86). Bloomington: World Wisdom.

  55. F. Schuon, Understanding Islam, p. 111.

  56. Schuon, F. (1975). The transcendent unity of religions (rev. ed., pp. xxviii–xxx). New York: Harper & Row.

  57. Russell, B. (1989). A history of western philosophy (first published 1949) (pp. 453–454). London: Allen & Unwin.

  58. Steiner, G. (1978). Heidegger (p. 11). Glasgow: Collins.

  59. F. Schuon, Sufism, Veil and Quintessence, p. 123, n10.

  60. F. Schuon, Sufism, veil and quintessence, pp. 115–128. See also F. Schuon, The Transfiguration of Man, p. 3.

  61. F. Schuon, Sufism, veil and quintessence, p. 125.

  62. Letter to Artemus Packard, May 1941, A. K. Coomaraswamy, Selected Letters, p. 299.

  63. Suzuki was, to some degree, guilty of what Richard King calls the ‘Buddhification’ of Eckhart. See R. King, Orientalism and Religion, p. 157.

  64. Eliade, M. (1969). The quest: History and meaning in religion (p. 63). Chicago: University of Chicago.

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  1. Philosophy and Religious Studies Program, Arts Program, La Trobe University Bendigo, P.O. Box 199, Bendigo, 3552, Bendigo, Australia

    Harry Oldmeadow

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Oldmeadow, H. The Comparative Study of Eastern and Western Metaphysics: A Perennialist Perspective. SOPHIA 46, 49–64 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-007-0005-8

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