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Metaphysics - mainpage
01_Mahiyya - Asking What It Is S H Nasr
On the Unfolding of the Islamic Intellectual Tradition W. C. Chittick
Statement of tawhīd - No True Reality but the Reality of the Real
Being and Existence Muhyiddīn Ibn al-ʿArabī
Insights Into The Nature of Existence Muhyiddin Ibn 'Arabi, W.C. Chittick
On The Oneness of God OmarKN
The Oneness of Being Rosabel Ansari
On The Supreme Principle - Metaphysics René Guénon
On the Supreme Principle and Metaphysics May Not Be Limited R. Guénon
On The Supreme Identity René Guénon
On The Doctrine Of Non-Duality René Guénon
The Multiple States of Being, pt1 René Guénon
The Metaphysical Doctrine of Shaykh A.H. Mahmud
Islamic Metaphysics S H Nasr
Metaphysical Foundations Charles Upton
Oriental Metaphysics René Guénon
What Is Metaphysics? Ekrem Demirli
Metaphysics - Why Is It Necessary Today? OmarKN
On The Supreme Principle - The Source, Sustaining Force, Final Goal OmarKN
Under the Hegemony of This Civilisation Hasan Spiker
The Five Bifurcations of Western Thought and Religion Hasan Spiker
Metaphysics of Islam (Prolegomena) Syed Muhammad Naquib Al Attas
Prolegomena to the Metaphysics of Islam Syed Muhammad Naquib Al-Attas
Intellect, Reason and Unity Of Being S H Nasr
Titles are linked.
A revival of philosophy—and, in particular, metaphysics—is crucial for a restoration of genuine faith fortified with reason and genuine civilization that cultivates care for the common good.
Its pursuit (are) the first causes of things.
Islamic metaphysics should be presented as what it
is, that is, the science of Ultimate Reality, which is the one (al-Ahad)
or Allah, who has revealed Himself in the Quran, and not as a discredited branch of rationalistic philosophy. There has been no Islamic school
whose teachings are not based on the doctrine of the One, who is both
Absolute and Infinite.
In the study of this Sublime Principle, Muslim sages developed several languages of discourse … but always seeing Pure Being not as the first link in the ‘great chain of being,’ but as the Source that transcends existence altogether. S H Nasr
Human history is cyclical, all traditions agree on that times are cyclically 'wearing down' more or less and according to Islam we are in the 'Latter Times' (ākhiru zamān), when the Antichrist (Dajjāl) will appear and the beasts of Gog and Magog:
Especially in times as ours, when knowledgeable leaders of religion are fewer and fewer and when sacred knowledge is taken away, traditional metaphysics and theology (ilāhiyyāt) are all the more necessary:
→ Without traditional metaphysics, theology declines.
→ Without theology, religion and spirituality are judged only by their power to produce experience.
→ When experience is the only criterion of spirituality, intensity becomes its only measure.
→ When intensity alone becomes the goal, love and truth are excluded, and darkness fills the gap.” SAC134 Charles Upton
For the metaphysics of the Orient, pure being is neither the first, nor the most universal of principles, because it is already a determination; it is therefore necessary to go beyond being [i.e. to what cannot be expressed in words, what outstrips any expression, Infinity,] this is after all what is most important. RG
Traditional Islam as it is generally understood, does not endorse perennialism. If it is claimed - as followers of perennialism do - that the world-religions or religious traditions are all equally valid roads to God, who is the Supreme Being, then this is not the case and contradicts all the teachings of Islam.
However there are common principles of those world-religions or religious traditions, because these principles are eternal. OKN “Sound Islamic doctrine affirms the oneness of heavenly religions although the dispensations and scriptures are more than one.” GFH
Not only can metaphysics not be limited to the consideration of any complementary aspects of Being, may it concern those very special aspects such as the soul (mind) and matter, or on the contrary those aspects [which are] as universal as possible, such as those which could be designated by the terms 'essence' and 'substance', but metaphysics can never be limited by the concept of pure Being [even] in all its universality, because it may not be [limited] by absolutely anything.
Metaphysics cannot be defined as 'the knowledge of being' in an exclusive way as did Aristotle: then it is but ontology, which without doubt belongs to [a section of] metaphysics, but which for that reason does not mean that ontology constitutes all of metaphysics. RG
When thinking about the Supreme Principle one needs to know what is meant by principle in the first place. To stick to its real meaning is even more pressing considering the fact that in the postmodern world, “principles are always and everywhere lacking, … the word being commonly applied more or less regardlessly to things that are least worthy of it, and sometimes even to things that imply the negation of all true principle.”
[This is on the contrary a doctrine,] which places itself at the point of view of metaphysics and which has therefore not received any denomination in occidental philosophy, which is ignoring it. We will call this doctrine 'non-dualism' or better still 'the doctrine of non-duality', if (one wishes) to translate the Sanskrit term adwaita-vāda as exactly as possible, a term which has no common equivalent in any European language. …
[The doctrine of] Non-Dualism does not pretend that one of the two terms [of soul or matter] could purely and simply be reduced to the other; [instead] it considers them - one and the other - simultaneously as a unity of a common principle of a more universal order, and in which they are also contained, no longer as opposites, but as complementaries, by some sort of polarization which does not all affect the essential unity of this commom principle. RG - at Signposts
The contingent being may be defined as one that is not self-sufficient, not containing in himself the point of his existence; it follows that such a being is nothing by himself and he owns nothing of what goes to make him up. Such is the case of the human being in so far as he is individual, just as it is the case of all manifested beings, in whatever state they may be for, however great the difference may be between the degrees of Universal Existence, it is always as nothing in relation to the Principle. RG
However far the 'solidification' of the sensible world may have gone, it can never be carried so far as to turn the world into a 'closed system' such as is imagined by the materialists.
The very nature of things sets limits to 'solidification' and the more nearly those limits are approached the more unstable is the corresponding state of affairs; in actual fact … the point corresponding to a maximum of 'solidification' has already been passed, and the impression that the world is a 'closed system' can only from now onwards become more and more illusory and inadequate to the reality. RG
• What Is Traditional Islam?
S H Nasr
Islamic Tradition ≠ ’Fundamentalism’:
“Two centuries ago, if Westerners or others were to study Islam, they would have encountered but a single Islamic tradition.” [Although there also were numerous schools of thought and interpretations, and both orthodoxy and heterodoxy in belief as well as in practice, they would however all] “have belonged in one degree or another to the Islamic tradition; that is, to that single tree of Divine Origin whose roots are the Quran and the traditions of the Prophet of Islam, or Hadith,” [a body of tradition that has grown from those roots over some fourteen centuries in nearly every inhabited quarter of the globe.]
"In any case, what Westerners call civilization, the others would call barbarity, because it is precisely lacking in the essential, that is to say, a principle of a higher order."
René Guénon, East And West, 1924
صلّى الله على سيّدنا محمّد و على آله و صحبه و سلّم
The blessings and peace of Allah on the Prophet, his Family, and his Companions, ( sallAllahu `aleihi wa sallam ) .
Related texts
Some quotes by René Guénon - english; français
Disclaimer: First of all it is Islam that reigns (see Sura 5:3).
Traditional Islam does not accept the notion that the world-religions (and even less so any man-made belief system) would be equally valid paths to God, these are perennialist interpretations. Even so, they (their laws) still reflect some sacred truth, so they did not turn into falsehood by being abrogated. These are 2 (two) different points to be kept in mind.
• In the words of Muhyiddīn Ibn `Arabi: ”The religious laws are all lights, and the law of Muhammad ﷺ among these lights is as the sun's light among the light of the stars…”
”So all paths return to look to the Prophet's path ﷺ : if the prophetic messengers had been alive in his time, they would have followed him just as their religious laws have followed his law.…” [further reading]
