Seyyed Hossein Nasr is an Iranian philosopher, theologian and Islamic scholar. He is a public figure who has been widely recognized in the media – in both the US and Europe – as a spokesman for perennialist ideas. He is University Professor of Islamic studies at George Washington University. Born in Tehran, Nasr completed his education in Iran and the United States, earning a bachelor’s degree in physics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a master’s in geology and geophysics, and a doctorate in the history of science from Harvard University. He returned to his homeland in 1958, turning down teaching positions at MIT and Harvard, and was appointed a professor of philosophy and Islamic sciences at Tehran University.
Dr. Seyyed Hossein Nasr
Life, Exile, and Intellectual Legacy
Dr. Seyyed Hossein Nasr held various academic positions in Iran, including vice-chancellor at Tehran University and President of Aryamehr University, and established the Imperial Iranian Academy of Philosophy at the request of Empress Farah Pahlavi, which soon became one of the most prominent centers of philosophical activity in the Islamic world. During his time in Iran, he studied with several traditional masters of Islamic philosophy and sciences.
The 1979 revolution forced him to exile with his family to the United States, where he has lived and taught Islamic sciences and philosophy ever since. He has been an active representative of the Islamic philosophical tradition and the perennialist school of thought.
Nasr’s works offer a critique of modern worldviews as well as a defense of Islamic and perennialist doctrines and principles. Central to his argument is the claim that knowledge has become desacralized in the modern period, meaning that it has become severed from its divine source – God or the Ultimate Reality – which calls for its resacralization through the utilization of sacred traditions and sacred science. Although Islam and Sufism are major influences on his writings, his perennialist approach inquires into the essence of all orthodox religions, regardless of their formal particularities. His environmental philosophy is expressed in terms of Islamic environmentalism and resacralization of nature. He is the author of over fifty books and more than five hundred articles.
When Dr. Nasr discovered the writings of the most influential members of what would become the Traditionalist or Perennialist school (René Guénon, Frithjof Schuon, Ananda Coomaraswamy, Titus Burckhardt, Martin Lings), the student Seyyed Hossein Nasr fully aligned himself to their perspective founded on the philosophia perennis.
I had discovered a worldview about which I felt complete certitude (yaqın). I felt that this was the truth that satisfied me intellectually and accorded with my life existentially. It was in harmony with the faith that I had. It was universalist in its metaphysical perspective and also critical of Western philosophy and science in a manner that spoke directly to my concerns.
Thus, in the middle of a “materialistic century”, this School provides Nasr with the keys to his spiritual quest: an esoteric doctrine and method within the framework of a Sufi path.
…Seyyed Hossein Nasr’s background is remarkable in at least three ways: first, he is a public figure who has been widely recognized in the media – in both the US and Europe – as a spokesman for perennialist ideas. […] Second, he is the only perennialist writer who is closely identified with a given religious tradition, both as being born in it and as being a world expert on many of its dimensions. […] Thirdly, Nasr is the only foremost perennialist writer to have received an intensive and advanced academic training in modern sciences. […] His familiarity and identification with Islam, his validation as a recognized scholar and respected member of the scholarly community, and his conceptual proficiency in modern scientific languages have all contributed to make him a particularly apt interpreter of perennialist ideas in the contemporary public arena.
Patrick Laude