Concept
Desacralization of knowledge
Overview
In traditionalist philosophy, desacralization of knowledge or secularization of knowledge is the process of separation of knowledge from its perceived divine source—God or the Ultimate Reality. The process reflects a paradigm shift in modern conception of knowledge in that it has rejected divine revelations as well as the idea of spiritual and metaphysical foundations of knowledge, confining knowledge to empirical domain and reason alone.
The theme of desacralization frequently appears among Traditionalist writers, starting with French metaphysician René Guénon, who earlier spoke of "the limitation of knowledge to its lowest order." Iranian philosopher Seyyed Hossein Nasr most notably examined and defined the process of desacralization of knowledge in his 1981 Gifford Lectures, which were later published as Knowledge and the Sacred.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
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He has speculative knowledge as regards the mode; for whatever we know speculatively in things by defining and dividing, God knows all this much more perfectly. Now of things which He can make, but does not make at any time, He has not a practical knowledge, according as knowledge is called practical from the end. But He has a practical knowledge of what He makes in some period of time.
Aquinas Thomas, Summa Theologica, Part I
States what Desacralization of knowledge is; the author is tied to Desacralization of knowledge in the knowledge graph.
Experience shows that sometimes the sense of external oppression, as by censorship, acts as a challenge and arouses intellectual energy and excites courage. But a belief in intellectual freedom where it does not exist contributes only to complacency in virtual enslavement, to sloppiness, superficiality and recourse to sensations as a substitute for ideas: marked traits of our present estate with respect to social…
John Dewey, The public and its problems
States what Desacralization of knowledge is.
The last and chief fruit of these Principles is, that one will be able, by cultivating them, to discover many truths I myself have not unfolded, and thus passing by degrees from one to another, to acquire in course of time a perfect knowledge of the whole of philosophy, and to rise to the highest degree of wisdom. For just as all the arts, though in their beginnings they are rude and imperfect, are yet gradually…
René Descartes, Selections from the Principles of Philosophy
The author is tied to Desacralization of knowledge in the knowledge graph.
Philosophers who discussed Desacralization of knowledge
Related ideas
- Empiricism
- David Harvey
- University of Notre Dame
- Iran
- Seyyed Hossein Nasr
- Modernity
- Metaphysics
- Thomas Aquinas
- Ontology
- Postmodernism
- Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
- Knowledge
- Paradigm shift
- René Descartes
- Renaissance
- Revelation
- Illuminationism
- Skepticism
- Secularism
- Spirituality
- Abraham Maslow
- Transcendence (religion)
- Neo-Confucianism
- Duns Scotus
Place in the tradition
Part of Contemporary Islamic philosophy.
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