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Oriental Metaphysics

Explanations, And Traditional Definitions

by René Guénon in his work "La Métaphysique Orientale"


Edited Omar KN


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keywords:

Metaphysics
Oriental Metaphysics
Being
Non-Communicable
Intellectual Intuition
Transcendant Intellect
Metaphysic Knowledge
Reason
Eternal principles
Nature
Metaphysic Concepts



NB:
1. - Blue phrases: direct quotations from the text;
2. - Green coloured phrases: our explications close to the text, reformulated.

[Oriental metaphysics is more and different from a purely human, rational, profane and exterior kind of knowledge. p.8/9]

Metaphysics is what is beyond and above nature, therefore it is the one rightly to be called "the Supernatural". p.9

(The clearest admission of the inability of modern philosophy is that it substitutes the theory of knowledge with knowledge as such.)

There is by the way in every [area of] certainty something non-communicable; no one can really reach any kind of knowledge except by a strictly personal effort, and all someone else can do is to provide the occasion and to indicate the means how to achieve it. p.9

[One cannot define metaphysics, but only characterize it, because ] ''to define something is always to limit it.''

Metaphysics is the knowledge of the universal principles, [ a kind of knowledge, which goes beyond nature as such and beyond the phenomena, which can be comprehended by man.]

The domain of principles extend much further than some Occidentals have thought, who - nevertheless - have turned metaphysics but into a partial and incomplete mode. p.10

For the metaphysics of the Orient, Pure Being is neither the first, nor the most universal of principles, because it is already a determination; it is therefore necessary to go beyond being* - this is after all what is most important. p.10

[*What cannot be expressed in words, what outstrips any expression, Infinity.]

[Concerning the] metaphysical conceptions...
it is not about proceeding with the slightest 'abstractions' [of some kind or other], but seizing direct knowledge of the truth as it is. p.11

Science is a rational, discursive, always indirect kind of knowledge, a knowledge of reflection,
metaphysics is a super-rational knowledge, intuitiv and immediate.

There is an intellectual intuition and a sensible intuition;
the first is beyond reason, but the second is beneath it;
the latter cannot grasp the world of change and becoming, meaning nature, or rather a reversed part of nature.p.11

To the contrary, the domain of intellectual intuition is the domain of the eternal and immutable principles, which is the domain of metaphysics.

The transcendant intellect, in order to directly grasp the universal principles, must itself belong to the universal order; it is [then] not any more an individual faculty, and to conceive it as such would be self-contradictory, because it does not belong to the possibilities an the individual [human being] to outstrip its own limits, [meaning] to exit the conditions which define it as an individual [being].p.11

Reason is rightly and specifically a human faculty; but that which is beyond reason is truly 'non-human', it is this which renders possible metaphysical knowledge, and this one, it has to be said again, is not human knowledge.


René Guénon, his muslim name is ʿAbd al-Wāhid Yahya.


Related
link-in Metaphysics
link-in Quotes on Oriental Metaphysics, R G - updated, and longer version
link-in About René Guénon - ʿAbd al-Wāhid Yahya
link-in
La Métaphysique Orientale, Éditions Traditionelles, Paris 1993
by Shaykh Abd al Wahid Yahya, René Guénon
link-in DOWNLOAD: Oriental Metaphysics (pdf)





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