Middle East Studies Association of North America (MESA)

Traditionalism, the Perennial Philosophy and Islamic Studies

King of the Castle: Choice and Responsibility in the Modern World, 2nd ed. by Gai Eaton;
Symbol &Archetype: A Study of the Meaning of Existence by Martin Lings; Traditional Islam
and the Modern World by Seyyed Hossein Nasr; Islamic Spirituality: Manifestations, (World
Spirituality, An Encyclopedic History of the Religious Quest, Vol. 20; Preface to the Series by
Ewert Cousins) by Seyyed Hossein Nasr
Review by: Carl W. Ernst
Middle East Studies Association Bulletin, Vol. 28, No. 2 (December 1994), pp. 176-180
Published by: Middle East Studies Association of North America (MESA)
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 MESA Bulletin 28 1994

Traditionalism, the Perennial Philosophy and Islamic Studies

Carl W. Ernst, University of North Carolina

King of the Castle: Choice and Responsibility in the Modern World, by Gai
Eaton. 216 pages. 2nd ed., Cambridge: The Islamic Texts Society, 1990. isbn
0-946621-21-7

Symbol & Archetype: A Study of the Meaning of Existence, by Martin

Lings. 141 pages, index. Cambridge: Quinta Essentia, 1991. isbn 1-870196-04

Traditional Islam and the Modern World, by Seyyed Hossein Nasr. 335
pages, index. London: Kegan Paul International, 1990. $19.95 (Paper) isbn 0
7103-0332-7

Islamic Spirituality: Manifestations, edited by Seyyed Hossein Nasr. (World

Spirituality, An Encyclopedic History of the Religious Quest, Vol. 20; Preface
to the Series by Ewert Cousins) 548 pages, bibliography, contributors, photo
graphic credits, index of names. New York: The Crossroad Publishing Compa
ny, 1991. isbn 0-8245-0768-1.

ONE OF the least known aspects of the rejection of Western modernism has
taken place on the margins of Europe's encounter with Islam. Although social
scientists working in Middle Eastern studies have safely been able to ignore the
Perennial Philosophy and the exponents of Tradition, specialists in religious
studies have had more exposure to this unexpectedly post-modern school of

thought. This philosophy originates in the Traditionalist position developed by

a number of ultramontane French Catholic thinkers of the nineteenth century:
Joseph de Maistre (d. 1821), L. de Bonald (d. 1840) and F.R. de Lammenais (d.
1854). As a philosophy of history opposed to the rationalism of Enlightenment
philosophes, it elevated tradition (particularly the Catholic church) to a position
of divine and absolute authority. So extreme was the opposition of some Tradi
tionalists to modernism that they were excommunicated in 1855 for their rejection
of reason. Yet the traditionalist critique of modernism still held an appeal, and
it subsequently was adopted by members of the French occult and esoteric under

ground at the turn of the century. Crucial was the notion of tradition, which even
for Lammenais had included a primitive or primordial revelation that was not
limited to Christianity (this would later reappear as Wilhelm Schmidt's primitive
monotheism). Sacred traditions could be numbered in the plural, and thus all
religions were to be regarded as manifestations of a Perennial Philosophy that is
one and eternal.

What is especially relevant for Islamic studies is that, despite their theoretical
respect for Catholicism, most of the adherents of the Perennial Philosophy were
attracted to Islam, though some were more closely associated with Buddhism
(Marco Pallis, A.K. Coomaraswamy) or Taoism (de Pourvourville). Disenchant

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MESA Bulletin 28 1994

ment with the excesses of the European Enlightenment and modernism would
seem to be the primary reason. The nineteenth century spawned a host of ideo

logical offspring: the pseudo-religion of nationalism, the positivistic belief in

science, racism and evolutionism as a rationale for unbridled imperialism, the
erosion of the public role of religion. Against these promethean enterprises the
Perennialists held out the more-than-human authority of primordial revelation,
divine gnosis adapted providentially to different circumstances in the form of
religions and a devolutionistic view of history that sees modernity as a debased
and demonic revolt against reality. Islamic theological emphasis on unity, the

historiographic concept of Islam as final revelation in a sequence of prophetic

dispensations and the oppositional position of Islamic countries as the largest bloc
undergoing European colonization, all made Islam attractive to Traditionalists
seeking an authentic affiliation. Christianity has been too severely battered and
corrupted to serve as a refuge (ultra-Catholic Rama Coomaraswamy regards the
current papacy as illegitimate because of its abandonment of medieval ritual); it
is not easy to convert to Hinduism, orthodox Judaism or tribal traditions, and
Buddhism may not be a valid option in the West. That seems to leave Islam.
Traditionalist converts to Islam, some of whom were affiliated with the
Alawi-Shadhili Sufi order, included Swedish painter Ivan Agueli ('Abd al-Hadi,
d. 1917), French esotericists Leon Champrenaud ('Abd al-Haqq) and Rene
Guenon ('Abd al-Wahid Yahya, d. 1951 in Cairo) and Guenon's Swiss colleag
ues, Titus Burckhardt and Frithjof Schuon ('Isa Nur al-Din, now in Bloomington,
Indiana). Their translations of Islamic mystical texts (especially from the school
of Ibn 'Arabi) and a series of books on Islam and religion found a receptive
audience. The French journal Etudes Traditionnelles, and its English counterpart
Tomorrow, later named Studies in Comparative Religion, popularized the views
of the school; a representative collection of essays is found in The Sword of
Gnosis (1974), edited by Jacob Needleman. The Traditionalist perspective is now
shared principally by a small but influential number of mostly Muslim intellectu
als in Europe and America, but increasingly also in other countries such as Paki
stan and Malaysia. The books under review are all written by Muslim authors
who are Traditionalists, adherents of the Perennial Philosophy in the sense just
explained, though each has a particular emphasis and point of view.
Charles Le Gai Eaton's King of the Castle is a reissue of a work first pub
lished in 1977, with a brief new preface commenting on the personal character
of the book and its genesis from a youthful work called The Richest Vein (1947).
Its goal is "to proclaim the abnormality of the modern age and to unmask its
pretensions" (p. 111). The title ironically describes the situation of modern man
in terms of the children's game of one-upmanship. In a series of eight essay-like
chapters (there is no index), Eaton successively takes up society, economics,
philosophical anthropology and religion. More willing to comment directly as a
political conservative than other Traditionalists, Eaton views totalitarianism (both
Nazi and Communist) as the most typical product of anti-traditional modernity,
citing Hannah Arendt, Simone Weil and Bruno Bettelheim in support. An attack
on bureaucratic officialdom is justified by a nostalgic evocation of the indepen

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 MESA Bulletin 28 1994

dence of small businessmen and peasants (here Catholic conservative Gustave

Thibon is called in support). The style is intense, dramatic and ironic verging on
sarcasm whenever modernity is addressed (i.e., most of the time). Spiritual
authorities such as the Qur'an and Rumi are quoted frequently, and many analo
gies and anecdotes are used as hooks to hang the argument on. The primary
purpose, however, is not to advocate mysticism but to inculcate a doctrine that
will strengthen one's resistance to the corrosive forces of modernity; this is an
extended sermon, from a universalist Islamic position, championing the lonely
role of religion in an evil age.
Martin Lings is well known to Islamicists for his studies of Qur'anic calligra
phy, for his biography of the Algerian Sufi shaykh Ahmad al-'Alawi (A Sufi Saint
of the Twentieth Century, 1971), and for his biography of the Prophet Muhammad
(1983). Formerly a curator of Oriental manuscripts in the British Museum, he
has also written on Shakespeare and other subjects. This little book is a collec
tion of ten essays on symbolism in various religious traditions. The first, "What
is Symbolism?" uses Qur'anic examples to define symbols as reflections of higher

reality in images that reveal the relationship of the microcosm to the macrocosm;

knowledge of this relationship, gained through traditional scriptures and rituals,

is necessary to overcome the fall from the perfection of primordial man. Subse
quent essays reflect comparatively on the significance of symbols such as the
clashing rocks that bar the path to the spiritual world ("The Decisive Boundary"),
polarity ("The Symbolism of Pairs"), trinity ("The Symbolism of the Triad of
Primary Colours"), the king-pontiff("The Archetypes of Devotional Homage")
and sacred liturgy ("The Language of the Gods"). More specialized topics are
considered in "The Quranic Symbolism of Water," "The Symbolism of the Lumi
naries in Old Lithuanian Songs," "The Seven Deadly Sins" and "The Symbolism
of the Mosque and the Cathedral." The method of analysis is comparative,
following Coomaraswamy in using multiple examples from different religious
traditions and reducing them to a single metaphysical meaning. Lings confidently
uses one tradition to explicate another, e.g., Brahma, Shiva and Vishnu elucidate
the Christian Trinity, while the Gospel of John describes the character of the
Prophet Muhammad. The book is a good example of a programmatic exegesis
of Traditionalist metaphysics as systematized by Schuon.
Seyyed Hossein Nasr's Traditional Islam and the Modern World is a collec
tion of eighteen essays firstpublished in 1987, defending traditional Islam against
both modernism (whether European or Islamic) and its contrary, fundamentalism.
Nasr, who is well known for his many studies of Islamic science, culture and
spirituality, here touches upon a wide array of subjects in an attempt to correct
not only the standard distortions of Orientalism, but also the misinterpretations
deriving from political journalism, Marxism and so-called "resurgent Islam."
The first section, "Facets of the Islamic Tradition," discusses jihad, work ethics
and male-female relations in order to demonstrate the notion of tradition as the
all-encompassing revelation of the sacred through both history and nature. Build
ing explicitly on the Perennial Philosophy according to Guenon and Schuon, these
sections tie Tradition to specifically Islamic touchstones: the terms din and sun
nah, the standard hadith collections (both Sunni and Shi'i), Safavid Iran and

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MESA Bulletin 28 1994

Sufism. At the same time, the very abstraction of certain neologisms used here
(e.g., "Islamicity," "Shari'ite"), and the synthetic transcendence of historical
tensions such as that between Sunnis and Shi'is, point toward the recent and

retrospective nature of the defense of tradition. Part II, "Traditional Islam and

Modernism," dwells further on the contrast between the modern anthropomorphic

lack of principles and the wholeness and transcendence characteristic of traditional
attitudes. Nasr's criticisms of modernistic traits (especially the political reduction
of religion to ideology and ethics) are often astute and revealing. Part III, "Tra
dition and Modernism—Tensions in Various Cultural Domains," builds up the
cumulative critique of modernism with seven essays that urgently call upon Mus
lim intellectuals to take stock of their plight. The main areas discussed here are
education, philosophy and architecture, in all of which, argues Nasr, Western
influence has systematically eroded the original Islamic basis in most Muslim
countries. Part IV, "Western Interpreters of the Islamic Tradition," delivers
warm testimonies to a few European scholars who have transcended Orientalism

by their intense personal engagement with Islam. A Catholic (Louis Massignon),

a Protestant (Henry Corbin) and a Muslim (Titus Burckhardt) are presented as
reminders that there can be genuine spiritual encounters with Islam on the part
of Western intellectuals who have not succumbed to secularism and modernism.
The concluding "Postscript" adds messianism to the list of Muslim responses to
modernism and gives final reflections on the significance of modernism itself, the
various trends commonly lumped together as "fundamentalism" and the remaining

representatives of traditional Islam. Nasr speaks passionately but irenically of the

need for an intellectual dimension to the critique of modernism. This book is
probably the best recent example of a Traditionalist perspective on Islam.
Islamic Spirituality: Manifestations, is the companion to Islamic Spirituality:
Foundations. These two volumes have sought to avoid historicism and rationalis
tic skepticism, both of which tendencies are described as alien to Islam. As part
of a series on World Spirituality, this volume treats Sufism as the inner or spiritu
al aspect of Islam, and Nasr describes this collection of articles as the first at

tempt to treat Sufism on a global scale. The authors of the separate articles are

mostly Muslims (including a number of Traditionalists). The Introduction and a

Prelude on the Sufi orders are contributions by Nasr, followed by twenty-five
essays on separate topics. Part One, "Islamic Spirituality as Manifested in Sufism
in Time and Space," contains fifteen essays on particular Sufi orders, schools and

regions. Part Two, "Islamic Literature as Mirror of Islamic Spirituality," has six

essays on Arabic, Persian, Turkish, Indo-Muslim, Malay and African literatures.

Part Three, "The Spiritual Message of Islamic Art and Thought," has four gener
al essays on the special topics of theology and philosophy, hidden sciences, music
and dance and art. Regrettably there is no list of illustrations aside from untitled
credits for the seventeen photographs reproduced here. In the limited amount of
space available, the articles are inevitably brief and summary treatments that will
be helpful primarily to students seeking a first bibliographic orientation to a
particular subject. A number of the authors are leading scholars in the study of
Sufism (K.A. Nizami, A. Schimmel, J. Nurbakhsh) who have perforce compres
sed presentations made in fuller detail elsewhere. Still, some articles are disap

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 MESA Bulletin 28 1994

pointingly brief and cursory, to the extent of being not much more than a list of

names; particularly inadequate is the article on Arabic Sufi literature, a subject

that cries out for full treatment. To my mind the most successful articles are
those by William Chittick on Ibn 'Arabi and Rumi, the programmatic essay by
Nasr on "Theology, Philosophy and Spirituality" and the survey by Jean-Louis
Michon on "Sacred Dance and Music in Islam." Since not all contributors share
the same philosophical perspective, one does not get from the volume a clear or
uniform Perennialist view of Sufism.
What is the significance of the Traditionalist school for Islamic studies?
Their rejection of historicism poses a difficulty for most Islamicists, whether
humanists or social scientists. If the premise of the Perennial Philosophy is
conceded, then much of the apparatus of modern scholarship, admittedly a prod
uct of the Enlightenment, stands condemned. The sketch given above attempts
to outline the intellectual background of Traditionalism as a response to European
modernism; that historical placement ironically makes Traditionalism neither
traditional nor distinctively Islamic. Before the specific cultural crises caused by
modernism, it was neither necessary nor possible to formulate a defense of tradi
tion as such. Yet one can also see why the Perennial Philosophy would be an
attractive option for Muslim thinkers seeking a position from which to resist the
cultural imperialism of the secular West. If Muslim thinkers accept the autono
mous reason of the European enlightenment, there is no longer any room for

transcendence, nor any intellectual justification for remaining Muslim. Tradi

tionalism, then, is a theological critique of modernism that has found a natural

rallying point in the tradition most threatened by the West, i.e., Islam. Modern
ism is being challenged on many fronts. The assertion of the need for sacred
doctrine and Tradition is frankly authoritarian, however, and it will only appeal
to a minority; while its fundamentalist rival strives for a mass following, Tradi
tionalism will continue to be an intellectual option for some Muslims (and
non-Muslims) in the post-modern world.

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