Traditionalists in the AK

Omar commented: "Just wanted to remind you that Erdogans chief advisor is Ibrahim Kalin who is also a disciple of Seyyed Hossein Nasr. That means traditionalism is now at the core of a modern political movement, the AK Party."

Dr Ibrahim Kalin is Chief Foreign Policy Adviser to Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and so certainly close to the AK leadership.

Dr Kalin of Turkish origin and is an assistant professor at the Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University in Washington, DC, where he works on post-Avicennan Islamic philosophy, notably Mullah Sadra; he has just published a book on Mullah Sadra's concept of "transcendent wisdom," Knowledge in Later Islamic Philosophy: Mulla Sadra on Existence, Intellect and Intuition (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010). Dr Kalin is also active in the Common Word initiative, which has been pursuing real dialog with Western churches since 2006.

I have often been told of interest in Traditionalism among the AK leadership, which would not be a great surprise, given the popularity in Turkey of the work of Dr Nasr. Dr Kalin seems very much to follow the model of Dr Nasr. Both men are of Muslim origin, both teach in DC and are authorities on "traditional" Islamic mystical philosophy, and both are active in the Common Word initiative.

My thanks to Omar for this information.

Call: Concepts of Tradition in Phenomenology

The 2011 issue of Studia Phaenomenologica is dedicated to the topic: Concepts of Tradition in Phenomenology.

As it is commonly known, Husserl’s phenomenology demanded at its first breakthrough a total refutation of all uncertified knowledge, theory or meaning inherited from the past. However, the development of phenomenological inquiry gradually resulted in a more ambiguous attitude towards history and tradition. On the one hand, history and tradition are necessary but still unfortunate distortions, which hinder phenomenological research in its strive for original self-givenness; on the other hand, they become themselves universal phenomena that must be explored as such.


As recent publications of late Husserlian manuscripts have revealed, Husserl himself became more and more aware of these topics in his last decade, as he was finally inclined to interpret the Life-world itself in its full concreteness as a “generative tradition”. Tradition in this sense pertains to all meaning sprung from earlier acquisition. Therefore, the concept obviously exceeds its ordinary meaning, exclusively related to inter-subjective historical inheritance, by gaining a fundamental importance for all areas of phenomenological analysis, as they all have the characteristic of “traditionalizing”. Thus, there is “tradition” at work in all action or bodily movement, in every instance of a given situation and in any relation to another thing or being.


Understood in this broad sense, the term does not address only the genetic fact of sedimentation, but also a specific, “habitual” quality that things allow to see through themselves, as bearers of a past. Hence, the theme marks an intersection of various problematic strata in Husserlian phenomenology, starting from the correlation of genetic and static phenomenology, following through different aspects of phenomenological methodology, and up to several ground-themes of phenomenological research, such as historicity, memory, language, bodily existence, inter-subjectivity, life-world and others.


The same twofold relation to tradition – of growing thematic interest, on the one hand, and utter criticism, on the other – shows in the post-Husserlian phenomenology as well. Heidegger, for instance, is from his early beginnings convinced that history should be the true guideline for phenomenological research, while at the same time pleading for a systematic destruction of the philosophical tradition. A similarly ambiguous position defines his later project of transcending metaphysics, and certainly other examples can be found as well.


The aim of our 2011 issue is therefore to explore the two fundamental poles that define the phenomenological approach of tradition: the task of understanding the problem of tradition thematically, on one hand, and the necessity of confronting it methodically as a residual distortion, on the other hand.

For further information, see the full Call for Papers at http://studia-phaenomenologica.com/?page=advertise.

Rousselot de Surgy

Only distantly related to Traditionalism, but here is an appeal for help: does anyone know anything about Jacques Philibert Rousselot de Surgy (b. 1737), author of Mélanges intéressans et curieux, ou abrégé d’histoire naturelle, morale, civile, et politique de l’Asie, l’Afrique, l’Amérique, et des Terres polaires, “dont la date de décès est inconnue des usuels et qui aurait été censeur royal” (BNF)? He wrote an entry on Sufism in his mélanges that is so unusual that I would love to know more about him.

Mark Sedgwick

New book on Massignon, Corbin, Guenon, and Schuon

An interesting new book by Patrick Laude: Pathways to an Inner Islam: Massignon, Corbin, Guenon, and Schuon (Albany: SUNY Press, 2010; $80; 219 pp; ISBN13: 978-1-4384-2955-7).

Laude, who writes as both a scholar (GWU) and as an insider, deals with the views of the two great scholars and the two great Traditionalists (who in some ways resembled the scholars and in other ways very much differed from them) on "Sufism, Shi‘ism, and the Definition of Inner Islam," "The Qur’an," "The Prophet," "The Feminine," "The Universal Horizon of Islam," and "The Question of War" (these being the titles of his main chapters).

One of Laude's initital premises is that "outsiders" such as the four he bases his book on are actually better situated to understand Islam than are most Muslims, because of what he calls the "ideologization" of Islam in the modern world. Be this as it may, the book promsies a careful and well-researched study of the theology of Massignon, Corbin, Guenon, and Schuon, if not necessarily of Islam.

Article on Martin Lings (and photos)

A new survey article on Martin Lings by Amira Kotb, in French, but with some rare photographs even if you don't read French. Closer to hagiography than academic norms, but informative.