Desacralization of knowledge

In Nasr's assessment, desacralization of knowledge is one of the most significant aspects of secularism. He defines secularism in philosophical terms as ‘everything whose origin is merely human and therefore non-divine and whose metaphysical basis lies in this ontological hiatus between man and God'.[5] Secularism, Nasr argues, is an evil force that has caused science and knowledge to become desacralized. In this process, science and knowledge became separated and lost their homogenous character in the form of traditional knowledge.[6] The core idea of desacralization of knowledge is that modern civilization has lost the transcendent roots of knowledge in restricting knowledge to the empirical domain alone.[7]

Dictionary of Literary Biography states:

[Nasr's] central thesis is that true knowledge is profoundly and by its very essence related to the sacred. This idea, he argues, underlies the basic teachings of every traditional religion whether Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Islam or Christianity. Only in the Modern world, which he dates from the Renaissance, has the connection between knowledge and the sacred been lost.[8]

In Nasr's exposition, the words ‘to know’ and ‘knowledge’ forfeit their unidimensional character. In his view, "knowledge' extends in hierarchy from an empirical and rational mode of knowing to the highest form of knowledge, that is, the ‘unitive knowledge’, or al-ma’rifah." Similarly, "to know' extends from ratiocination to intellection."[9] By nature, argues Nasr, knowledge is inseparable from being and therefore related to the Sacred. To be human, Nasr argues, is to know. To know therefore means ultimately knowing the Supreme Self who is the source of all knowledge and consciousness.[10] It is the post medieval process of secularization and a humanism that has ultimately “forced the separation of knowing from being and intelligence from the Sacred”.[11]

Stefano Bigliardi of Al Akhawayn University states:

Knowledge of the Absolute means knowledge of the existence of superior spiritual levels, of the interrelatedness of the phenomena of nature, of the interrelatedness of their respective elements, and most importantly, of the derivation of everything from the Absolute itself. However, the awareness (and therefore the usage) of Intellect according to Nasr has been lost, together with the awareness of the Absolute itself. In Nasr’s reconstruction such oblivion characterizes the whole course of human thought that, in its dominant manifestations, can be described as a continuous desacralization of knowledge.[12]

Nasr explains that modern science has reduced multiple domains of reality to a mere psycho-physical one. Without a sacred vision, Nasr argues, science thus became concerned with the changes in material world alone. For the reason that modern science has abandoned the notion of hierarchy of being, scientific theories and discoveries can no longer appreciate the truths that belong to a higher order of reality. Modern Science, in Nasr's words, is therefore an ‘incomplete’ or ‘superficial science’ which only concerns with certain parts of reality while invalidating others.[13] It is based on the distinction between the knowing subject and the known object. Nasr argues that modern science has lost its symbolic spirit and the dimension of transcendence as it has repudiated the role of intellect in pursuing knowledge and truth by adopting a pure quantitative method.[14][15] The structure of reality, in Nasr's contention, is unchanging. What changes is the vision and perception of human being about that reality. Having no sense of permanence, modern western philosophy has reduced the reality to a mere temporal process. This phenomenon, Jane Smith notes, is what Nasr identifies as the desacralization of knowledge and the loss of the sense of the sacred.[16]

In saying 'I think, therefore I am,' Nasr contends, "Descartes was not referring to the divine I who some seven centuries before Descartes had uttered through the mouth of Mansur al-Hallaj, 'I am the Truth' (ana’l-Haqq), the Divine Self which alone can say I".[17][18]

The final step toward desacralization was taken by Hegel who reduced 'the whole process of knowledge to a dialectic inseparable from change and becoming'.[19][20]

The process of desacralization of knowledge had already begun with the ancient Greeks.[21] The rationalists and skeptics of ancient Greek philosophical traditions, Nasr argues, played a major role in the process of desacralization by reducing knowledge either to ratiocination or mere cognitive exercise.[22] In substituting reason for intellect and sensuous knowledge for inner illumination, the Greeks, is thus said to have pioneered the process of desacralization of knowledge.[23] Other major stages in the process of desacralization include the formation of Renaissance philosophical systems that had developed a concept of nature which is independent and self-creative.[24] The process, however, reached its climax in the thought of René Descartes[25] who 'made thinking of the individual ego the center of reality and criterion of all knowledge.'[26] Thereafter, knowledge, even if it were to reach distant galaxies, eventually became rooted in the cogito.[27]

Dictionary of Literary Biography summarizes:

Nasr analyzes the modern desacralization of knowledge and the consequent eclipse of human intelligence[..].[..]The roots of the crisis, he says, go back as far as the rationalists and skeptics of ancient Greece, but more immediate and grave in effect was the humanism of the Renaissance which shifted the focus of knowledge from God to human beings and from the sacred cosmos to the secular order, and the full blown rationalism of the Enlightenment which reduced human knowledge to reason alone. Nasr contends that epistemology since Descartes has taken an increasingly reductionist trajectory in which the traditional doctrine of knowledge rooted in intellection and revelation was replaced by an idolatry of reason. Rationalism gave way to empiricism, with its tendency to reject metaphysics altogether; and empiricism has been followed by various forms of irrationalism, including existentialism and deconstructionism. The general course of modern history has been one of desacralization and decay, robbing humanity of intelligence and stripping the cosmos of beauty and meaning.[28]

Liu Shu-hsien, a Neo-Confucian philosopher, writes:

Nasr's critique of modem European philosophy has also presented a very interesting perspective. He pointed out that Descartes's individual was not referring to Atman or the divine I, but rather the "illusory" self, which was placing its experience and consciousness of thinking as the foundation of all epistemology and ontology and the source of certitude. After the Humean doubt, Kant taught an agnosticism which in a characteristically subjective fashion denied to the intellect the possibility of knowing the essence of things. This situation further deteriorated into the Hegelian and Marxist dialectics, as they denied that there is anything immutable behind the appearance, and this loss of the sense of permanence was characteristic of mainstream thought of modem Western philosophy. In the analytic philosophy and irrational philosophies that followed, the sacred quality of knowledge was completely destroyed.[29]

One 'powerful instrument' of desacralization in history includes the theory of evolution,[30] which, in Nasr's words, 'is a desperate attempt to substitute a set of horizontal, material causes in a unidimensional world to explain effects whose causes belong to other levels of reality, to the vertical dimensions of existence.'[31] He argues that the theory of evolution and its use by modernists and liberal theologians like Aurobindo Ghose and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin has been a 'major force' in the process of desacralization of knowledge.[32] The 'roots of the betrayal', in David Burrel's words, however, may well be found 'on the other side of Descartes', in the high scholasticism which includes the thought of Aquinas and Bonaventure and Duns Scotus. Their syntheses, Nasr argues, 'tended to become over-rationalistic in imprisoning intuitions of a metaphysical order in syllogistic categories which were to hide, rather than reveal, their properly speaking intellectual rather than purely rational character.'[33]

The occasion of the 'fall' of the West is marked by its turn towards desacralized knowledge, which begins with the adoption of the rationalist wing of ancient Greek thought, particularly Aristotle.[34]

Externalisation and desacralization of knowledge has led to the belief that all that can be understood is science in terms of information, quantification, analysis and their subsequent technological implications. The questions of religion, God, eternal life and the nature of the soul are all outside the realm of scientific knowledge and thus are only matters of faith.[35] The desacralized knowledge has affected all areas of culture including art, science and religion. It has had an impact on human nature as well.[36] Moreover, the effect of desacralized, profane knowledge is felt within the value system, thought processes and structure of feelings.[37] The desacralized knowledge and science, Nasr argues, affects the employment of technology and has resulted in ecological catastrophes in present world. It results in highly compartmentalized science whose ignorance of the divine destroys the outward and inward spiritual ambience of human beings.[38][39]

For Liu Shu-hsien the process of desacralization of knowledge is not as bad as Nasr has anticipated. On the contrary, Shu-hsien argues, there is an overwhelming necessity for desacralization of knowledge within the domain of empirical science for the reason that the quest of certainty is no longer a viable objective.[40] For David Harvey, the Enlightenment thought sought demystification and desacralization of knowledge and social organization in order to free human beings from their bonds.[41] Svend Brinkmann independently argues on the need for desacralization of knowledge stating that 'if knowing is a human activity, it is always already situated somewhere – in some cultural, historical and social situation'.[42] David Burrell argues on the other hand that, in a world that is explicitly postmodern, scholars are more at ease with Nasr's criticism of ‘Enlightenment philosophical paradigm’ than ever before. Those who would argue that ‘if knowledge cannot be secured in Descartes’s fashion, it cannot be secured at all’ might find themselves dragging along their modern presumptions.[43]

• Disenchantment
• Secularization

• Kalin, Ibrahim (2000). "The Sacred versus The Secular: Nasr on Science". In Hahn, Lewis Edwin; Auxier, Randall E.; Stone Jr., Lucian W. (eds.). The Philosophy of Seyyed Hossein Nasr. Open Court. ISBN 978-0812694147.

• Chapter One: Knowledge and Its Desacralization From Knowledge and the Sacred by Seyyed Hossein Nasr