The comparative study of Eastern and Western philosophy has been hindered and/or distorted by Eurocentric assumptions about “philosophy”, especially the overvaluation of rationality as an instrument of knowledge. The widespread discounting of Eastern thought derives, in large measure, from the modern Western failure to understand the nature of the traditional metaphysics of both the Occident and the East. This failure can be remedied by recourse to the work of a group of “traditionalist” or “perennialist” thinkers who expose the limitations of (...) many approaches to the comparative study of philosophy in general and metaphysics in particular. (shrink)

This study outlines a new proposal on the creation of Islamic Anthropology on the basis of "perennialist epistemology", to use Aslan's term (2005:55). A previous proposal of this kind had been put forward by Akbar S. Ahmed in his Toward Islamic Anthropology: Definition, Dogma and Directions (1986). While Ahmed's proposed Islamic Anthropology aims at assessing and arguing with Western anthropologists over their misconceptions about Islamic societies they observe, then preparing and replying to their study in a scholarly manner by "creating (...) their own alternative scholarship" (1986:55), this author's recommended Islamic Anthropology aims at finding philosophia perennis or sophia perennis or religio perennis or "essential commonality" (Beinorius 2005:237) or "transcendent unity" (Aymard & Laude 2004:38) between Islamic, other religious and ethnic cultural manifestations, or rather, in Indonesian context, between Islamic, other religious and adat cultural manifestations. The building of Islamic Anthropology of perennialist bend in Indonesia is imperative since in the aftermath of national economic crisis and dethronement of Pres. Soeharto, Anthropology academia in Indonesia relishes the freedom of no longer having to serve the regime socio-political agenda. Post-Soeharto era of decentralization, liberalization, emancipation, and democratization provides favourable opportunity for Anthropology to set its own purely academic goals (Ramstedt 2005 :215). This new situation also enables anthropologists from diverse epistemological traditions to contribute directly to establishment of new kinds of Anthropology based on their specific epistemologies. To clarify what is meant by his perennialism-based Islamic Anthropology, the author herein elaborates the perennialist epistemology on which he bases his suggested Islamic Anthropology, explains the perennialist ontology on which the epistemology is based, delineates how to build an Islamic Anthropology based on the perennialist epistemology, and lastly exemplifies application of the perennialist method in Islamic Anthropology he proposes. (shrink)

The present paper is based on the contention that there are two conceptions of the understanding of nature, nature as an object and nature as environment. The former understanding of nature is enhanced by instrumental rationality, which is said to be the cause of ecological crisis. It is shown in the paper that till the nineteenth century, Christian scholars and theologians have neither judged nature according to human utility nor have they made earthly man as the measure of all things. (...) They have considered man as a channel of grace for nature because man only can cast light into the world of nature through his active participation. This excellence was distinctively evident in some of the Christian saints, mystics, and theologians like Origen, Irenaeus, St. Bonaventure, Gregory of Nyssa, Dionysius the Aropagite, and St. Francis of Assisi. For them, nature was sacred and there was a definite disdain of the artificialities of sedentary life. According to them, species is the manifold ideas in the divine mind which at a particular cosmic moment have become imprinted in the corporeal world and retain their reality on other planes of existence. In a word, the present paper argues for re-inventing the spiritual significance of nature by the humanization of the cosmos and the cosmicization of the human because the foundations of Christian tradition were built on a relation among man, God, and the cosmos where the unity and multiplicity in nature is related to the concept of Trinity in Christianity as well as to the cosmic character of Christ. (shrink)

In cultivating a Western inclination toward Eastern wisdom, it is important to seek the foundations that sustain traditional practices toward such end. In a secularised and modern world view, the tendency has been to extract and abstract foundational practices such as mindfulness meditation and contemplation within an objectivist or scientistic prejudice. While leading to interesting results, it cannot ascertain a wisdom that is quantified and decontextualised. In response, contextual effort in postmodern pedagogical literature—while well placed—is often marred with confusions concerning (...) Eastern and metaphysical foundations. As a result, one is led away from the very wisdom being qualified; furthermore, conceptual and theoretical paradoxes arise and consequently elude those that formulate them. Thus, in feeling secure in response to a particular ‘yáng’ world view of modernity, many postmodern criticisms suffer an exclusively ‘yīn’ character. For us, imbalance in any direction forfeits the path Eastern education approaches wisdom. In our conceptual analysis, we contextualise that modernity was never too yáng, but too yáng-in-yīn. Therefore, what is missing in pedagogical theory is not the yīn element, as presumed by postmodern critique, but the yáng element, in continual balance with the yīn, and vice versa. (shrink)