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Logic & Transcendence

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Like the samurai of old Japan, the medieval crusaders had a saying concerning their swords: "Draw me not without provocation, sheathe me not without honor." The image inevitably comes to mind upon encountering the pen of Frithjof Schuon. It arises not because of any misplaced nostalgia for the past but precisely because here and now Schuon's weapon cuts through the lukewarmness, the dead-ends of the modern "-ism's"-materialism, relativism, determinism--with astonishing clarity and suppleness.

We live in a universe where everything meets and interpenetrates: ideologically, culturally and even sensorially. We are inundated with information, with experiences, but sorely lacking the unifying principles by which to assimilate these data. How can we steer a course that avoids the untenable rigidity of literalistic dogmatism on the one hand and the shapeless abyss of a relativism that accepts everything on the other?

Every stroke of Schuon's pen is in some sense a recalling to first principles. The way to these primary and unifying principles has become obscured by a plethora of errors affecting not just our thinking, but also our sentiments. Schuon clears the path in a series of brilliant essays that restore meaning to words. His fundamental message has been characterized variously as the "religio perennis" or "perennial philosophy," as quintessential esoterism, as universal metaphysics. What all these descriptions point toward is a perspective of "the Truth, the whole Truth and nothing but the Truth." What Schuon goes on to demonstrate with such masterful adroitness is how this Truth-which is synonymous with ultimate Reality-radiates and reverberates in the world around us as well as the world within us.

For readers just discovering Schuon, this may not be the book to begin with. But perseverance will reap a rich harvest.