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Title: On Awakening and Remembering: To Know Is to Be by Mark Perry, Huston Smith ISBN: 1887752404 Publisher: Fons Vitae Pub. Date: 01 June, 2001 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $21.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 2.33
Rating: 5
Summary: A Good Introduction to the Perennial Philosophy
Comment: A reviewer, from Boston, December 26, 2001,
A good introduction to the Perennial Philosophy
If you're interested in the philosophia perennis -- but have found the work of Frithjof Schuon sometimes difficult to penetrate -- this book provides not only a good introduction, but an in-depth discussion of many of the concepts underlying the Perennial Philosophy.
Also recommended: The Essential Writings of Frithjof Schuon, The Philosophy of Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Beyond the Post-Modern Mind by Huston Smith
Rating: 1
Summary: If You Find Capital Punishment Spiritually Uplifting...
Comment: Then you will love this reactionary tract. If you are an Islamic fundamentalist or an aspiring member of the inquisition, this is your stuff. Alas, pluralists, religious liberals, democrats, lovers of freedom of thought and tolerance need not apply. There is nothing especially new here, just the usual authoritarian blather about the One True Tradition underlying all of humankind's True (read dogmatic) Religions and Best (read repressive) Societies. As another reviewer rightly observes, this is mostly warmed over Schuon, with quotes from religious liberals like Emerson and Thoreau thrown in to mislead the less than wary. And we need this now?
Rating: 1
Summary: If you like the inquistion and theocracies
Comment: The title is a bit of misnomer and the same for the introduction. As stated by Huston Smith in the intro in the book is political/polemical in nature. It is not a text on awakening, being or dealing with spiritual psychology per se. Nor does it have anything really to do with following in the footsteps of Emerson or Thoreau. Perry merely quotes them because of name recognition. Emerson and Thoreau would have been aghast to be associated with such an antedeluvian like Perry.
What Perry attempts to cover he does well and flows from one topic to another smoothly. Style wise at times his writing reminds me of Schuon's - he has a penchant for being a obscurantist. In essence this work is a political meta-commentary on spirituality as found in Hinduism, Buddhism with a smattering of Islam and Neo-Platonic Christianity(as defined by Erigena not as understood by either the Catholic or Eastern Churches) and Taoism thrown in for good measure. He also tries to find common ground between them all and make the case that they are all talking about the same thing. In addition he tackles modernity and societal issues and lays out the problems as he sees it.
Problems:
Being a Perennialist Perry considers Judaism and Christianity as inferior spiritual paths and promotes Hinduism and Budhhism as superior ones. (Perennialists are generally followers of Sufism and Hinduism or Buddhism as Perennialism implicitly repudiates strict monotheism as understood by Jews and Christians). So if you are a Christian you will be offended by this book.
The book is also marred by Perry's fundamentalist beliefs about society . Perry attacks democracy, human rights as being untraditional and degenerate, churches for being active on social issues and especially Vatican II.(Vatican II is a favorite bugbear of Traditionalists along with Jung). Essentially anything post-reformation is bad. Engaging in historical revisionism and elitism he defends and even supports aristocracy and the divine right of kings as the best form of government! He claims that it is divinely ordained and uses scripture from various wisdom traditions to justify it. He even justifies Attila the Hun and Ghengis Khan as the wrath of god.
There is more than a bit of Manichean world hating stream of thought in his work. For him there is only the via negativa, the path of dealing with the pain of existence in order to gain release from life. There is no via positiva, the path of celebration and thanksgiving, no via creativa, the path of human creativity, no via transformativa, the path of creation renewed and mended. A truly hateful view life and creation to say the least.
His criticism of modernity is third rate(as he is Muslim living in Egypt). Writers like Lewis Mumford, Ellul, Theodore Roszak and Philip Sherrard have penned far better and thought out works than this one.
In Closing:
This book may have value for you if believe that inquistions, reducing women to chattel, theological fanaticism and priest kings are good for the world. Otherwise skip it as it is one of the most odious books written since Ayn Rands Atlas Shrugged or Mein Kampf.
Skip it and get Hossein Nasr's Knowledge of the Sacred. Nasr actually knows what he writes about and neither does he insult the reader.
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Title: Paths to the Heart: Sufism and the Christian East (Perennial Philosophy Series) by James S. Cutsinger ISBN: 0941532437 Publisher: World Wisdom Books Pub. Date: October, 2002 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: Spiritual Authority and Temporal Power (Guenon, Rene. Works.) by Rene Guenon, Henry D. Fohr, S. D. Fohr ISBN: 0900588462 Publisher: Sophia Perennis Et Universalis Pub. Date: July, 2001 List Price(USD): $18.95 |
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Title: Philosophy of Seyyed Hossein Nasr (Library of Living Philosophers Series) by Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Randall E. Auxier, Lucian W. Stone, Lewis Edwin Hahn ISBN: 0812694147 Publisher: Open Court Publishing Company Pub. Date: 30 November, 2000 List Price(USD): $36.95 |
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Title: A Treasury of Traditional Wisdom: Doctrine and Realization of the Spirit by Huston Smith, Whitall Perry ISBN: 1887752331 Publisher: Fons Vitae Pub. Date: April, 2001 List Price(USD): $45.95 |
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Title: The Reign of Quantity & the Signs of the Times (Guenon, Rene. Works.) by Rene Guenon, Lord Northbourne ISBN: 0900588675 Publisher: Sophia Perennis Et Universalis Pub. Date: October, 2001 List Price(USD): $21.95 |
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