Knowledge and the Sacred

The text of the Gifford Lectures that Seyyed Hossein Nasr gave at Edinburgh in 1981, the first by a Muslim scholar. Nasr argues that knowledge was originally inseparable from the sacred, and that modern Western thought, from the Renaissance and Descartes onward, cut knowledge off from its spiritual root, leaving reason without a higher principle. Against this he defends tradition, understood not as custom but as truths of divine origin handed down through the religions, and a scientia sacra, a sacred metaphysical knowledge found at the heart of each of them. Later chapters treat the human being as a bridge between heaven and earth, set against modern 'Promethean' man; the cosmos as a revelation of the divine; time and eternity; traditional art; and the claim that the many religious forms share a single inner truth. The book closes with knowledge of the sacred as a path to deliverance. Critics argue that this perennialist view idealises tradition and treats modern science too harshly.

It is the fullest statement of the traditionalist or perennialist school, and a clear introduction to a critique of modernity that many religious readers still find persuasive.