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SUNY Series in Islam
Mirror of the Intellect: Essays on the Traditional Science and Sacred Art
Titus Burckhardt was Swiss and an eminent member of the traditionalist school. He is perhaps best known to the English-speaking public as the author of the following Sacred Art in East and West; Siena, City of the Virgin; Moorish Culture in Spain; and Science of the Cosmos, Science of the Soul. A generation ago, he won much acclaim for producing and publishing the first successful, full-scale facsimiles of the Book of Kells and other ancient manuscripts. In more recent years, he acted as a specialist advisor to UNESCO, with particular reference to the preservation of the unique architectural heritage of Fez, which was then in danger. The present volume is a complete collection of Burckhardt s essays, originally published in a variety of German and French journals. They range from modern science in its various forms, through Christianity and Islam, to symbolism and mythology. It is a rich collection. Burckhardt blends an accessible style with a penetrating insight. He interprets the metaphysical, cosmological, and symbolic dimensions of these sacred traditions from the perspective of timeless, spiritual wisdom."
269 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1987
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About the author
Titus Burckhardt
72 books104 followersTitus Burckhardt (Ibrahim Izz al-Din after his Islamic name), a German Swiss, was born in Florence, Italy in 1908 and died in Lausanne, Switzerland in 1984.He devoted all his life to the study and exposition of the different aspects of Wisdom tradition.
He was an eminent member of the "Traditionalist School" of twentieth-century authors. He was a frequent contributor to the journal Studies in Comparative Religion along with other prominent members of the school.
Burckhardt was the scion of a patrician family of Basel. He was the great-nephew of the art-historian Jacob Burckhardt and the son of the sculptor Carl Burckhardt. Titus Burckhardt was a contemporary of Frithjof Schuon – leading exponent of traditionalist thought in the twentieth century – and the two spent their early school days together in Basel around the time of the First World War. This was the beginning of an intimate friendship and harmonious intellectual and spiritual relationship that was to last a lifetime.
Burckhardt was, as his grandfather, a connoisseur of Islamic art, architecture and civilisation. He compiled and published work from the Sufi masters: Ibn Arabi (1165–1240), Abd-al-karim Jili (1365–1424) and Muhammad al-Arabi al-Darqawi (1760–1823).
He was an eminent member of the "Traditionalist School" of twentieth-century authors. He was a frequent contributor to the journal Studies in Comparative Religion along with other prominent members of the school.
Burckhardt was the scion of a patrician family of Basel. He was the great-nephew of the art-historian Jacob Burckhardt and the son of the sculptor Carl Burckhardt. Titus Burckhardt was a contemporary of Frithjof Schuon – leading exponent of traditionalist thought in the twentieth century – and the two spent their early school days together in Basel around the time of the First World War. This was the beginning of an intimate friendship and harmonious intellectual and spiritual relationship that was to last a lifetime.
Burckhardt was, as his grandfather, a connoisseur of Islamic art, architecture and civilisation. He compiled and published work from the Sufi masters: Ibn Arabi (1165–1240), Abd-al-karim Jili (1365–1424) and Muhammad al-Arabi al-Darqawi (1760–1823).
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
March 18, 2014
Une collection d'articles écrits par Titus Burckardt. Les sujets sont divers et variés qui vont du symbolisme (de l'eau par exemple) à l'étude des arts islamiques. Très jolie compilation qui donne une vue d'ensemble sur l’œuvre du grand burckardt.
December 20, 2018
Very good posthumous article collection.
My focus what on the excellent "Traditional Cosmology and Modern Science" part, which includes strong criticism and good remarks on Modern Physics, Traditional Symbolism and Modern Empiricism, Evolutionism and Modern Psychology.
Interesting to note that during the same year (1984) where this collection was released, Wolfgang Smith also released a book on the same topics (Cosmos and Transcendence).
The latter, concerning Modern Psychology, deserved to be expanded into a full book... Concerning this chapter, Burckhardt himself said, as a summary :
"Frithjof Schuon, after reading the present chapter, sent me the following reflections in writing: 'People generally see in Jungism, as compared with Freudism, a step towards reconciliation with the traditional spiritualities, but this is in no wise the case. From this point of view, the only difference is that, whereas Freud boasted of being an irreconcilable enemy of religion, Jung sympathizes with it while emptying it of its contents, which he replaces by collective psychism, that is to say by something infra-intellectual and therefore anti-spiritual. In this there is an immense danger for the ancient spiritualities, whose representatives, especially in the East, are too often lacking in critical sense with regard to the Modern spirit, and this by reason of a complex of ''rehabilitation"; also it is not with much surprise, though with grave disquiet, that one has come across echoes of this kind from Japan, where the psychoanalyst's "equilibrium" has been compared to the satori of Zen; and there is little doubt that it would be easy to meet with similar confusions in India and elsewhere. Be that as it may, the confusions in question are greatly favoured by the almost universal refusal of people to see the devil and to call him by his name, in other words, by a kind of tacit convention compounded of optimism to order, tolerance that in reality hates truth, and compulsory alignment with scientism and official taste, without forgetting "culture", which swallows everything and commits one to nothing, except complicity in its neutralism; to which must be added a no less universal and quasi-official contempt for whatever is, we will not say intellectualist, but truly intellectual, and therefore tainted, in people's minds, with dogmatism, scholasticism, fanaticism, and prejudice. All this goes hand in hand with the psychologism of our time and is in large measure its result."
As Buckhardt said : "There are some realms where dilettantism is unforgivable."
"It is significant that the tortoise, whose skeleton seems to indicate an extravagant adaptation to an animal 'armoured' state, appears all at once among the fossils, without evolution. Similarly, the spider appears simultaneously with its prey and with its faculty of weaving already developed."
An interesting book review of Evola's Ride the Tiger is included aswell.
My focus what on the excellent "Traditional Cosmology and Modern Science" part, which includes strong criticism and good remarks on Modern Physics, Traditional Symbolism and Modern Empiricism, Evolutionism and Modern Psychology.
Interesting to note that during the same year (1984) where this collection was released, Wolfgang Smith also released a book on the same topics (Cosmos and Transcendence).
The latter, concerning Modern Psychology, deserved to be expanded into a full book... Concerning this chapter, Burckhardt himself said, as a summary :
"Frithjof Schuon, after reading the present chapter, sent me the following reflections in writing: 'People generally see in Jungism, as compared with Freudism, a step towards reconciliation with the traditional spiritualities, but this is in no wise the case. From this point of view, the only difference is that, whereas Freud boasted of being an irreconcilable enemy of religion, Jung sympathizes with it while emptying it of its contents, which he replaces by collective psychism, that is to say by something infra-intellectual and therefore anti-spiritual. In this there is an immense danger for the ancient spiritualities, whose representatives, especially in the East, are too often lacking in critical sense with regard to the Modern spirit, and this by reason of a complex of ''rehabilitation"; also it is not with much surprise, though with grave disquiet, that one has come across echoes of this kind from Japan, where the psychoanalyst's "equilibrium" has been compared to the satori of Zen; and there is little doubt that it would be easy to meet with similar confusions in India and elsewhere. Be that as it may, the confusions in question are greatly favoured by the almost universal refusal of people to see the devil and to call him by his name, in other words, by a kind of tacit convention compounded of optimism to order, tolerance that in reality hates truth, and compulsory alignment with scientism and official taste, without forgetting "culture", which swallows everything and commits one to nothing, except complicity in its neutralism; to which must be added a no less universal and quasi-official contempt for whatever is, we will not say intellectualist, but truly intellectual, and therefore tainted, in people's minds, with dogmatism, scholasticism, fanaticism, and prejudice. All this goes hand in hand with the psychologism of our time and is in large measure its result."
As Buckhardt said : "There are some realms where dilettantism is unforgivable."
"It is significant that the tortoise, whose skeleton seems to indicate an extravagant adaptation to an animal 'armoured' state, appears all at once among the fossils, without evolution. Similarly, the spider appears simultaneously with its prey and with its faculty of weaving already developed."
An interesting book review of Evola's Ride the Tiger is included aswell.
July 10, 2018
Honestly, I enjoyed reading this book, as it was deconstructing and reconstructing numerous "concepts", "symbols" and "notions" in my head. Especially, for the Moslem architecture related articles (as the book is a collection of Burckhardt's aricles), wherein the meaning of Islamic art in general transcends the individualistic and quantitative point of view, to a qualitative, and universal one, in order to manifest the principle of Unity that the Islam encompasses.
And maybe my second best article is " Concerning the Barzakh" (islamic themes), connecting it with the Universal Man.
Burckhardt whole speech is based on fundamental notions, proven a priori by René Guénon. Therefore, it would be a great deal if one inquires and learns about Guénon's, especially his two maybe three great books : The reign of quantity and he signs of time, The modern world crisis, and the Man according to Vedanta doctrines.
There’s a precious sentence with which the author concludes his last article, which sums everything up :
“In the spiritual life there is no place for individual experiments; they are too ruinous”
And maybe my second best article is " Concerning the Barzakh" (islamic themes), connecting it with the Universal Man.
Burckhardt whole speech is based on fundamental notions, proven a priori by René Guénon. Therefore, it would be a great deal if one inquires and learns about Guénon's, especially his two maybe three great books : The reign of quantity and he signs of time, The modern world crisis, and the Man according to Vedanta doctrines.
There’s a precious sentence with which the author concludes his last article, which sums everything up :
“In the spiritual life there is no place for individual experiments; they are too ruinous”
October 10, 2014
Burckhardt has most eloquently elaborated how intellect is the one common source that feeds the various symbols of mysticism. He has no quarrel with any ideology and no restraint with any either. Burckardt writes directly from the heart and shows us that when we remove reason from the symbol, the remaining intellect is one, and the only true source of the Truth.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews