A new chapter in a collection on Heidegger in the Islamicate World (Rowman & Littlefield, 2019) discusses the impact of Heidegger and on post-revolutionary Iranian art theory, and on the art theory of Seyyed Hossein Nasr, the Traditionalist successor of Frithjof Schuon in the United States. It is “Heidegger’s Role in the Formation of Art Theory in Contemporary Iran” by Amir Nasri, an Iranian scholar (pp. 55-67).
Nasri’s starting point is the Hawza-i andishe ve hunari islami (School of Islamic Thought and Art), known for short as the Hawza-i hunari (School of Art), the Tehran-based organization that in Nasri's view was “the most important artistic school of the first decade after the revolution.” The Hawza-i hunari’s art theory was, according to Nasri, impacted especially by three pre-revolutionary intellectuals: Ahmad Fardid (1910-94), Seyyed Hossein Nasr (b. 1933), and Daryush Shayegan (1935-2018). All three were in turn impacted by the great French Iranologist, Henry Corbin (1903-78), who was himself a follower of Heidegger.
Fardid, who was a professor of philosophy and Heidegger’s great advocate in Iran, is not now widely known, but it was he, according to Nasri, who was the inventor of the seminal term gharbzadegi (Westoxification or Occidentosis) that was famously popularized by the novelist Jalal Al-e Ahmad. After the revolution, Fardid became an influential theorist in the Islamic Republic; Nasr and Shayegan went into exile, Nasr permanently, but even so were read at the Hawza-i hunari. Nasr, as noted, became a leading Traditionalist; Shayegan moved away from Traditionalism, questioning whether “the tradition” had ever actually existed.
Nasri traces the influence of Heidegger in Corbin’s concept of the “ideal space,” born of Heidegger’s emphasis on the importance of the Origin (Ursprung) in art combined with Suhrawardi’s understanding of the ideal world. For Corbin, the “ideal space” was key to understanding Persian miniature painting. In this he was followed by Nasr and Shayegan, who also cited Heidegger directly while arguing that the art of the East and of the West do not share a common language. Both Nasr and Shayegan thus looked for the revival of Iranian art through the rediscovery of tradition, as did Fardid.
Nasr then combined Corbin's partly Heidegger-derived concept with Guénon's important pair of quality and quantity. The two-dimensional ideal space is, for Nasr, qualitative rather than quantitative: the quantitative leads to naturalism. Nasr's mature argument is not just Traditionalist, then, but also Heideggerian.
A Blog for the study of Traditionalism and the Traditionalists
moderated by Mark Sedgwick
Tuesday, March 10, 2020
Tuesday, March 03, 2020
New article on Traditionalism in Sweden
Olav Hammer has just published an excellent article on "Traditionalism in Sweden" in the International Journal for the Study of New Religions 10.1 (2019): 5–24.
After a general introductory discussion of Traditionalism, Hammer looks especially at three Swedish figures: Ivan Aguéli, Kurt Almqvist (1912–2001), and Tage Lindbom (1909–2001). The most interesting of these sections are those dealing with Almqvist and Lindbom, given that Aguéli has been discussed before.
It it not known how Almqvist first encountered Traditionalism, but he traveled to Switzerland to meet Frithjof Schuon in 1941, becoming Muslim and joining the Maryamiyya. After the war he became Sweden's leading Traditionalist, publishing two Swedish translations of selected works by Schuon and Guénon, and several Traditionalist books of his own, starting with Den glömda dimensionen (The Forgotten Dimension, 1959) and ending with Ordet är dig nära: om uppenbarelsen i hjärtat och i religionerna (The Word is Near to You, On Revelation in the Heart and in the Religions, 1994).
Almqvist's most important reader was Lindbom, originally a prominent member of Sweden's dominant political party, the Social Democrats. Lindbom contributed to establishing the postwar Social Democratic model in Sweden, but then became disenchanted, publishing Efter Atlantis (After Atlantis), which questioned socialism in particular and political ideology in general, in 1951. Some years later he read Almqvist's Den glömda dimensionen, contacted its author, and ultimately also joined the Maryamiya, in 1962, the year in which he published Sancho Panzas väderkvarnar (The Windmills of Sancho Panza), a more thorough attack on modern politics. A number of similar works followed, including Mellan himmel och jord (Between Heaven and Earth, 1970) and Agnarna och vetet (The Chaff and the Wheat, 1974), which Hammer discusses in some detail. Hammer sees Lindbom as "a right-wing political writer par excellence," a Sufi (as a Maryami) whose politics were paradoxically closer to Sayyid Qutb than to Sufism, given that--like Qutb--he dismissed human ideologies and turned instead to Divine authority.
Lindbom is interesting not only as a Swedish Traditionalist but also as a rare example of an explicitly political Schuonian Traditionalist. There are many political Traditionalists, of course, but they generally follow Julius Evola, not Schuon. Followers of Schuon and Guénon may have political views, but they do not normally write about them, given the primacy of the transcendent over the political. Lindbom, however, was well established in political life before he encountered Traditionalism, and first became a Maryami relatively late in life, at the age of 53. This may be why he did not drop his earlier political interests and emphases.
After a general introductory discussion of Traditionalism, Hammer looks especially at three Swedish figures: Ivan Aguéli, Kurt Almqvist (1912–2001), and Tage Lindbom (1909–2001). The most interesting of these sections are those dealing with Almqvist and Lindbom, given that Aguéli has been discussed before.
It it not known how Almqvist first encountered Traditionalism, but he traveled to Switzerland to meet Frithjof Schuon in 1941, becoming Muslim and joining the Maryamiyya. After the war he became Sweden's leading Traditionalist, publishing two Swedish translations of selected works by Schuon and Guénon, and several Traditionalist books of his own, starting with Den glömda dimensionen (The Forgotten Dimension, 1959) and ending with Ordet är dig nära: om uppenbarelsen i hjärtat och i religionerna (The Word is Near to You, On Revelation in the Heart and in the Religions, 1994).
Almqvist's most important reader was Lindbom, originally a prominent member of Sweden's dominant political party, the Social Democrats. Lindbom contributed to establishing the postwar Social Democratic model in Sweden, but then became disenchanted, publishing Efter Atlantis (After Atlantis), which questioned socialism in particular and political ideology in general, in 1951. Some years later he read Almqvist's Den glömda dimensionen, contacted its author, and ultimately also joined the Maryamiya, in 1962, the year in which he published Sancho Panzas väderkvarnar (The Windmills of Sancho Panza), a more thorough attack on modern politics. A number of similar works followed, including Mellan himmel och jord (Between Heaven and Earth, 1970) and Agnarna och vetet (The Chaff and the Wheat, 1974), which Hammer discusses in some detail. Hammer sees Lindbom as "a right-wing political writer par excellence," a Sufi (as a Maryami) whose politics were paradoxically closer to Sayyid Qutb than to Sufism, given that--like Qutb--he dismissed human ideologies and turned instead to Divine authority.
Lindbom is interesting not only as a Swedish Traditionalist but also as a rare example of an explicitly political Schuonian Traditionalist. There are many political Traditionalists, of course, but they generally follow Julius Evola, not Schuon. Followers of Schuon and Guénon may have political views, but they do not normally write about them, given the primacy of the transcendent over the political. Lindbom, however, was well established in political life before he encountered Traditionalism, and first became a Maryami relatively late in life, at the age of 53. This may be why he did not drop his earlier political interests and emphases.
Friday, February 28, 2020
Yahya Bonnaud (1957-2019)
Yahya Bonnaud (1957-2019), the Shi'i Franco-Iranian Traditionalist, died on August 26, 2019 in a car accident in Côte d'Ivoire.
Bonnaud encountered the works of Guénon as a young man, and became Muslim in 1979. He studied with the great Malian ethnographer and Tijani Amadou Hampâté Bâ. In 1991, he published Le soufisme : « al-taṣawwuf » et la spiritualité islamique (Sufism: "al-taṣawwuf" and Islamic spirituality) with a preface by the French Traditionalist scholar of Ibn Arabi Michel Chodkiewicz.
While working on a PhD at the École pratique des hautes études in Paris with Henri Corbin, he studied with Sayyed Jalal-ed-Din Ashtiani, an Iranian philosopher who had himself studied under the Ayatollah Khomeini (and who also taught William Chittick). Bonnaud became Shi'i himself. His PhD dissertation was later published as L'Imam Khomeyni, un gnostique méconnu du xxe siècle : métaphysique et théologie dans les œuvres philosophiques et spirituelles de l'Imam Khomeyni (Imam Khomeini, an unrecognised gnostic of the twentieth century: metaphysics and theology in the philosophical and spiritual works of Imam Khomeini).
Bonnaud moved to Iran, where he lived in the city of Mashhad, working on a very scholarly translation of the Quran into French, referring to all the leading classical Shi'i authorities, and using copious notes to summarise his researches and thus the meanings that he had decided to translate. The note explaining the bismillah at the start of the fatiha was nine pages long. He also traveled abroad as an exponent of Shi'ism, and it was on such a mission that he lost his life.
While working on a PhD at the École pratique des hautes études in Paris with Henri Corbin, he studied with Sayyed Jalal-ed-Din Ashtiani, an Iranian philosopher who had himself studied under the Ayatollah Khomeini (and who also taught William Chittick). Bonnaud became Shi'i himself. His PhD dissertation was later published as L'Imam Khomeyni, un gnostique méconnu du xxe siècle : métaphysique et théologie dans les œuvres philosophiques et spirituelles de l'Imam Khomeyni (Imam Khomeini, an unrecognised gnostic of the twentieth century: metaphysics and theology in the philosophical and spiritual works of Imam Khomeini).
Bonnaud moved to Iran, where he lived in the city of Mashhad, working on a very scholarly translation of the Quran into French, referring to all the leading classical Shi'i authorities, and using copious notes to summarise his researches and thus the meanings that he had decided to translate. The note explaining the bismillah at the start of the fatiha was nine pages long. He also traveled abroad as an exponent of Shi'ism, and it was on such a mission that he lost his life.
Thursday, February 20, 2020
James Cutsinger (1953-2020)
James S. Cutsinger (1953-2020), an important follower of Frithjof Schuon and a notable Eastern Orthodox Traditionalist, died on February 19, 2020.
Cutsinger completed a PhD. in theology and comparative religious thought at Harvard in 1980, and then taught religious studies at the University of South Carolina in Columbia, South Carolina, from 1980 until 2018. He was best known for his Advice to the Serious Seeker: Meditations on the Teaching of Frithjof Schuon (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997) and for his
Splendor of the true: A Frithjof Schuon reader (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2013).
Among his other books were Paths to the Heart: Sufism and the Christian East (Bloomington: World Wisdom, 2004) and Not of This World: A Treasury of Christian Mysticism (Bloomington: World Wisdom, 2003).
Cutsinger completed a PhD. in theology and comparative religious thought at Harvard in 1980, and then taught religious studies at the University of South Carolina in Columbia, South Carolina, from 1980 until 2018. He was best known for his Advice to the Serious Seeker: Meditations on the Teaching of Frithjof Schuon (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997) and for his
Splendor of the true: A Frithjof Schuon reader (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2013).
Among his other books were Paths to the Heart: Sufism and the Christian East (Bloomington: World Wisdom, 2004) and Not of This World: A Treasury of Christian Mysticism (Bloomington: World Wisdom, 2003).
Thursday, February 13, 2020
Call for Papers for conference on Islam and esotericism in Belgium
Call for Papers: “Islamic Esotericism in Global Contexts,”
2020 Meeting of the European Network for the Study of Islam and Esotericism (ENSIE)
24-26 September 2020, Université catholique de Louvain, Louvain la-Neuve, Belgium
Deadline for submissions: 1 May, 2020
The European Network for the Study of Islam and Esotericism (ENSIE) invites you to submit proposals for its 2020 meeting. The theme for the meeting is “Islamic Esotericism in Global Contexts”. The aim is to consider the relationship between Islam and esotericism, and Islamic esotericism, in a global context, shifting the emphasis not only from Western perspectives, but also being more inclusive of the experience of Islam beyond the Arabo-Persian domains. We encourage proposals that give prominence to the agency of non-Western actors in negotiating and challenging social, political, and doctrinal “realities” as they manifest in the writings and activities of esoteric groups and systems. The chronological scope thus stretches from medieval to contemporary times. We encourage papers outlining suitable methods of investigation, re-evaluating accepted conceptual frameworks, formulating effective comparative research, and foraying into new textual frontiers.
We invite papers that engage with these aims, but proposals that do not relate to the 2020 meeting theme are also welcome.
There is no fee for attending the meeting and accommodation will be provided, but the cost of travel is the responsibility of individual participants.
Further information at http://ensie.site/conferences.html.
24-26 September 2020, Université catholique de Louvain, Louvain la-Neuve, Belgium
Deadline for submissions: 1 May, 2020
The European Network for the Study of Islam and Esotericism (ENSIE) invites you to submit proposals for its 2020 meeting. The theme for the meeting is “Islamic Esotericism in Global Contexts”. The aim is to consider the relationship between Islam and esotericism, and Islamic esotericism, in a global context, shifting the emphasis not only from Western perspectives, but also being more inclusive of the experience of Islam beyond the Arabo-Persian domains. We encourage proposals that give prominence to the agency of non-Western actors in negotiating and challenging social, political, and doctrinal “realities” as they manifest in the writings and activities of esoteric groups and systems. The chronological scope thus stretches from medieval to contemporary times. We encourage papers outlining suitable methods of investigation, re-evaluating accepted conceptual frameworks, formulating effective comparative research, and foraying into new textual frontiers.
We invite papers that engage with these aims, but proposals that do not relate to the 2020 meeting theme are also welcome.
There is no fee for attending the meeting and accommodation will be provided, but the cost of travel is the responsibility of individual participants.
Further information at http://ensie.site/conferences.html.
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