Frithjof Schuon
{{short description|Swiss philosopher, poet and painter (1907-1998)}}
{{redirect|Schuon|the German footballer|Marcel Schuon}}
{{Use British English|date=March 2021}}
{{Infobox philosopher
|image = Frithjof-Schuon-circa-1980.jpg
|caption = Frithjof Schuon, c. 1980
|name = Frithjof Schuon
|birth_date = {{Birth date|1907|6|18|df=y}}
|birth_place = Basel, Switzerland
|death_date = {{Death date and age|1998|5|5|1907|6|18|df=y}}
|death_place= Bloomington, Indiana, U.S.
|nationality = {{ublist|Undetermined (1907 – c. 1920)|French (c. 1920 – c. 1950)|Swiss (c. 1950 – 1998)}}
|school_tradition = Perennial philosophy
Traditionalist School
|main_interests = Metaphysics, esoterism, philosophy, spirituality, religion, art
|notable_works = {{ublist|The Transcendent Unity of Religions|The Eye of the Heart|Logic and Transcendence|Esoterism as Principle and as Way|Form and Substance in the Religions}}
|signature=The signature of Frithjof Schuon.svg
|signature_alt=Frithjof Schuon's signature.
}}
{{Esotericism}}
Frithjof Schuon ({{IPAc-en|ˈ|ʃ|uː|ɒ|n}} {{respell|SHOO-on}}; {{IPA|de|ˈfʁɪtjɔf ˈʃuːɔn|lang}}; 18 June 1907 – 5 May 1998) was a Swiss metaphysician of German descent, belonging to the Traditionalist School of Perennialism. He was the author of more than twenty works in French on metaphysics, spirituality, religion, anthropology and art, which have been translated into English and many other languages. He was also a painter and a poet.
With René Guénon and Ananda Coomaraswamy, Schuon is recognized as one of the major 20th-century representatives of the philosophia perennis. Like them, he affirmed the reality of an absolute Principle – God – from which the universe emanates, and maintained that all divine revelations, despite their differences, possess a common essence: one and the same Truth. He also shared with them the certitude that man is potentially capable of supra-rational knowledge, and undertook a sustained critique of the modern mentality severed, according to him, from its traditional roots. Following Plato, Plotinus, Adi Shankara, Meister Eckhart, Ibn Arabī and other metaphysicians, Schuon sought to affirm the metaphysical unity between the Principle and its manifestation.
Initiated by Sheikh Ahmad al-Alawī into the Sufi Shādhilī order, he founded the Tarīqa Maryamiyya. His writings strongly emphasize the universality of metaphysical doctrine, along with the necessity of practising a religion; he also insists on the importance of the virtues and of beauty.
Schuon cultivated close relationships with a large number of personages of diverse religious and spiritual horizons. He had a particular interest in the traditions of the North American Plains Indians, maintaining firm friendships with a number of their leaders and being adopted into both a Lakota Sioux tribe and the Crow tribe. Having spent a large part of his life in France and Switzerland, at the age of 73 he emigrated to the United States.
Life and work
=Basel, Switzerland (1907–1920)=
Frithjof Schuon was born in Basel, in the German-speaking part of Switzerland, on 18 June 1907. He was the younger of the two sons of Paul Schuon and Margarete Boehler, both of whom were of German origin (the former from Swabia and the latter from Alsace). His father, an amiable and distinguished man, was a concert violinist, and the household was one in which not only music but literary and spiritual culture were present. The Schuons, themselves raised as Catholics, brought their sons up as Protestants, though not in hostility to the Catholic Church.Michael Fitzgerald, Frithjof Schuon Messenger of the Perennial Philosophy, World Wisdom, 2010, p. 1Jean-Baptiste Aymard, Frithjof Schuon: Life and Teachings, SUNY, 2002, pp. 5–7
At primary school, Schuon met the future metaphysician and art specialist Titus Burckhardt, who remained a lifelong friend. From the age of ten, his search for truth led him to read not only the Bible but also the Upanishads, the Bhagavad-Gītā and the Quran, as well as Plato, Emerson, Goethe and Schiller. Schuon would later say that in his early youth four things had always moved him most profoundly: "the holy, the great, the beautiful, the childlike".Michael Fitzgerald, Frithjof Schuon Messenger of the Perennial Philosophy, World Wisdom, 2010, pp. 3, 6
=France (1920–1940)=
In 1920, Schuon's father died and his mother decided to return with her young sons to her family in nearby Mulhouse, France,Jean-Baptiste Aymard, Frithjof Schuon: Life and Teachings, SUNY, 2002, p. 9 where Schuon became a French citizen, consequent upon the Treaty of Versailles.Pierre-Marie Sigaud, Dossiers H : René Guénon, L’Âge d’Homme, 1984, p. 321 [https://books.google.com/books?id=emRGdNwTYFgC&pg=PA321] One year later, when he was 14, he was baptized as a Catholic. In 1923 his brother entered a Trappist monastery, and Schuon left school in order to provide for the family, finding work as a textile designer.Jean-Baptiste Aymard, Frithjof Schuon: Life and Teachings, SUNY, 2002, p. 10
He then immersed himself in the world of the Bhagavad-Gītā and the Vedānta; this call of Hinduism sustained him for ten years, though he was perfectly aware that he could not become Hindu himself. In 1924, while still living in Mulhouse, he discovered the works of the French philosopher René Guénon, which served to confirm his intellectual intuitions and provided support for the metaphysical principles he had begun to discover.Barbara Perry, "Introduction" in Frithjof Schuon, Art from the Sacred to the Profane, World Wisdom, 2007, p. xiv Schuon would later say of Guénon that he was "the profound and powerful theoretician of all that he loved".
File:Frithjof Schuon in Paris 1929.jpg
In 1930, after 18 months in Besançon on military service in the French army, Schuon settled in Paris. There he resumed his profession as a textile designer, and began to study Arabic in the local mosque school.Michael Fitzgerald, Frithjof Schuon Messenger of the Perennial Philosophy, World Wisdom, 2010, p. 26 Living in Paris also gave him the opportunity to be exposed to various forms of traditional art to a much greater degree than before, especially the arts of Asia with which he had had a deep affinity since his youth.{{Citation needed|date=January 2021}}
At the end of 1932 he completed his first book, Leitgedanken zur Urbesinnung, which would be published in 1935 and later translated into English under the title Primordial Meditation: Contemplating the Real. His desire to leave the West, whose modern values were so contrary to his nature, combined with his growing interest in Islam, prompted him to go to Marseille, the great port of departure for the East. There he made the acquaintance of two key personages, both of them disciples of Sheikh Ahmad al-Alawī, a Sufi in Mostaganem, Algeria. Schuon saw the sign of his destiny in these encounters, and embarked for Algeria.Jean-Baptiste Aymard, Frithjof Schuon: Life and Teachings, SUNY, 2002, pp. 16–17 In Mostaganem he entered Islam, and spent nearly four months in the Sheikh's zāwiya. The Sheikh gave him initiation and named him `Īsā Nūr ad-Dīn. However, Schuon was soon forced to return to Europe under pressure from the French colonial authorities.Michael Fitzgerald, Frithjof Schuon Messenger of the Perennial Philosophy, World Wisdom, 2010, pp. 32, 34
Schuon did not consider his affiliation to Islam as a conversion, since he did not disavow Christianity; in each revelation he saw the expression of one and the same truth, in different forms. But for him, in the Guenonian perspective that he held at the time, Western Christianity no longer seemed to offer the possibility of following a "path of knowledge" under the guidance of a spiritual master, whereas such a path was still open within the framework of Sufism, Islamic esoterism.Michael Fitzgerald, Frithjof Schuon Messenger of the Perennial Philosophy, World Wisdom, 2010, p. 40Jean-Baptiste Aymard, Frithjof Schuon: Life and Teachings, SUNY, 2002, p. 61
Schuon reported that one night in July 1934, while immersed in reading the Bhagavad-Gītā, he experienced an extraordinary spiritual event. He said that the divine Name Allāh took possession of his being, and that for three days he could do nothing but invoke it ceaselessly. Shortly afterwards, he learned that his Sheikh had died on the same day.Michael Fitzgerald, Frithjof Schuon Messenger of the Perennial Philosophy, World Wisdom, 2010, pp. 36–37
In 1935 he returned to the zāwiya of Mostaganem, where Sheikh Adda ben Tounes, Sheikh al-Alawī's successor, conferred on him the function of muqaddam, thus authorizing him to initiate aspirants into the Alawī brotherhood. Returning to Europe, Schuon founded a zāwiya in Basel, another in Lausanne and a third in Amiens. He resumed his profession as a textile designer in Alsace for the next four years.Jean-Baptiste Aymard, Frithjof Schuon: Life and Teachings, SUNY, 2002, pp. 21–22
[[File:Frithjof Schuon with René Guénon in Cairo, 1938.jpg|thumb|left|upright=1.10|
in Cairo, 1938
One night towards the end of 1936, after a spiritual experience, Schuon sensed, without a shadow of a doubt, that he had been invested with the function of spiritual master, of sheikh. This was confirmed, he later related, by visionary dreams that several of his disciples reported having had the same night.{{refn|group=note|This was also the case for the investiture of Sheikh al-Alawī – Schuon's master –, since Sheikh al-Būzīdī had not designated a successor. Jean-Baptiste Aymard, Frithjof Schuon: Life and Teachings, SUNY, 2002, pp. 22–23 + Martin Lings, A Sufi Saint of the Twentieth Century, George Allen and Unwin, 1971, p. 63.}} The differences of perspective between Schuon and the Mostaganem zāwiya gradually led to Schuon's assuming independence,{{refn|group=note|As did his own sheikh, Ahmad al-Alawī, with regard to the Darqāwīyyah tariqa. Martin Lings, A Sufi Saint of the Twentieth Century, George Allen and Unwin, 1971, p 84.}} supported by Guénon.Jean-Baptiste Aymard, Frithjof Schuon: Life and Teachings, SUNY, 2002, pp. 23–24
In 1938, Schuon traveled to Egypt, where he met Guénon, with whom he had been in correspondence for 7 years.Michael Fitzgerald, Frithjof Schuon Messenger of the Perennial Philosophy, World Wisdom, 2010, p. 42 In 1939, he embarked for India with two disciples, making a long stopover in Cairo, where he saw Guénon again. Shortly after his arrival in Bombay, World War II broke out, forcing him to return to Europe. Serving in the French army, he was interned by the Nazis, who were planning to incorporate all soldiers of Alsatian origin into the German army to fight on the Russian front. Schuon escaped to Switzerland, which was to be his home for forty years.Jennifer Casey (ed.), DVD Frithjof Schuon Messenger of the Perennial Philosophy, World Wisdom, 2012, 43'10"
=Lausanne, Switzerland (1941–1980)=
He settled in Lausanne, where he continued contributing to the Guénonian journal Études Traditionnelles, as he had done since 1933. In 1947, after reading Black Elk Speaks by John G. Neihardt, Schuon, who had always been deeply interested in the North American Indians, was convinced that Black Elk knew much more about Sioux tradition than was contained in the book. He asked his American friends to seek out the old chief. Following this initiative, the ethnologist Joseph E. Brown collected from Black Elk the description of the seven Sioux rites which would form the content of The Sacred Pipe.Harry Oldmeadow, Black Elk, Lakota Visionary. The Oglala Holy Man and Sioux tradition, World Wisdom, 2018, p. 116
In 1948 Schuon published his first book in French, De l'Unité transcendante des religions. Of this book, T. S. Eliot wrote: "I have met with no more impressive work in the comparative study of Oriental and Occidental religion."Huston Smith, "Providence Perceived: In Memory of Frithjof Schuon", Sophia Journal, Vol. 4, N° 2, 1998, p. 29 All his subsequent works – more than twenty – would be written in French, apart from a major reworking in German of the text of The Transcendent Unity of Religions (Von der Inneren Einheit der Religionen), published in 1982.
File:Catherine Schuon on mountain in Swiss Alps.jpg
In 1949 Schuon married Catherine Feer, a German Swiss with a French education who, besides being deeply interested in religion and metaphysics, was also a gifted painter.Jean-Baptiste Aymard, Frithjof Schuon: Life and Teachings, SUNY, 2002, p. 35 He received Swiss citizenship shortly after his marriage. While always continuing to write, Schuon and his wife travelled widely. Between 1950 and 1975, the couple visited Morocco about ten times, as well as numerous European countries, including Greece and Turkey, where they visited the house near Ephesus presumed to be the last home of the Virgin Mary.Michael Fitzgerald, Frithjof Schuon Messenger of the Perennial Philosophy, World Wisdom, 2010, pp. 74–75
In the winter of 1953, Schuon and his wife travelled to Paris to attend performances organized by a group of Crow dancers. They formed a friendship with Thomas Yellowtail, the future medicine man and Sun Dance Chief. Five years later, the Schuons visited the Brussels World's Fair, where 60 Sioux were giving performances on the theme of the Wild West. New friendships were made on this occasion also. File:Frithjof Schuon with Thomas Yellowtail in Switzerland in 1953.jpgThus it was that in 1959 and again in 1963, at the invitation of their Indian friends, the Schuons journeyed to the American West, where they visited various Plains tribes and had the opportunity to witness many aspects of their sacred traditions. During the first of these visits, Schuon and his wife were adopted into the Sioux family of Chief James Red Cloud, grandson of Chief Red Cloud, and a few weeks later, at an Indian festival in Sheridan, Wyoming, they were officially received into the Sioux tribe.Michael Fitzgerald, Frithjof Schuon Messenger of the Perennial Philosophy, World Wisdom, 2010, pp. 85, 89Barbara Perry, "Introduction" in Frithjof Schuon, Art from the Sacred to the Profane, World Wisdom, 2007, p. xv Schuon's writings on the central rites of Native American religion and his paintings of their way of life attest to his particular affinity with their spiritual universe.Jean-Baptiste Aymard, Frithjof Schuon: Life and Teachings, SUNY, 2002, p. 39
The 1970s saw the publication of three works considered as particularly important by his biographers composed of articles previously published in the French journal Études Traditionnelles. These works have been translated under the titles Logic and Transcendence, Form and Substance in the Religions, and Esoterism as Principle and as Way.Jean-Baptiste Aymard, Frithjof Schuon: Life and Teachings, SUNY, 2002, p. 46Seyyed Hossein Nasr, "Introduction" in The Essential Frithjof Schuon, World Wisdom, 2005, pp. 60–61, 540
Throughout his life, Schuon had great respect for and devotion to the Virgin Mary, and expressed this in his writings. As a result, his teachings and paintings are imbued with a particular Marian presence. His reverence for the Virgin Mary has been studied in detail by American professor James Cutsinger, who relates the two episodes in 1965 when Schuon experienced an especial Marian grace.James Cutsinger, "Colorless Light and Pure Air: The Virgin in the Thought of Frithjof Schuon", Sophia Journal, Vol. 6, N° 2, 2000, p. 115 Hence the name Maryamiyya ("Marian" in Arabic) of the Sufi tarīqa he founded as a branch of the Alawiyyah-Darqawiyyah-Shadhiliyyah order.Michael Fitzgerald, Frithjof Schuon Messenger of the Perennial Philosophy, World Wisdom, 2010, pp. 99, 83
=United States (1980–1998)=
In 1980, Schuon and his wife emigrated to the United States, settling in Bloomington, Indiana, where there was already a large community of disciples.Jean-Baptiste Aymard, Frithjof Schuon: Life and Teachings, SUNY, 2002, p. 47 The first years in Bloomington saw the publication of a number of important works including From the Divine to the Human, To Have a Center, Survey of Metaphysics and Esoterism, and Roots of the Human Condition.Harry Oldmeadow, Frithjof Schuon and the Perennial Philosophy, World Wisdom, 2010, p. 16
File:A portrait of Frithjof Schuon in his home.jpg
According to Patrick Laude, Schuon became known, through his many books, articles and letters, "as the principal spokesman of the intellectual current sometimes referred to in English speaking countries as perennialism", or the Traditionalist School.Patrick Laude, Keys to the Beyond, Frithjof Schuon's Cross-Traditional Language of Transcendence, SUNY, 2020, pp. 7, 97 During his years in Lausanne and Bloomington he regularly received visits from "practitioners and representatives of diverse religions".Michael Fitzgerald, Frithjof Schuon Messenger of the Perennial Philosophy, World Wisdom, 2010, pp. 78, 119
Thomas Yellowtail remained Schuon's intimate friend until his death in 1993, visiting him every year and adopting him into the Crow tribe in 1984. During these sojourns, Schuon and some of his followers organized what they called "Indian Days", in which Native American dances were performed,Renaud Fabbri, Frithjof Schuon: The Shining Realm of the Pure Intellect, MA diss., Miami University, 2007, p. 30 leading some to accuse him of practising ritual nudity.Arthur Versluis, American Gurus, Oxford University Press, 2014, p. 170 [https://books.google.com/books?id=G2yVAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA170] These gatherings were understood by disciples as a sharing in Schuon's personal insights and realization, not as part of the initiatic method he transmitted, centered on Islamic prayer and the dhikr.Jean-Baptiste Aymard, Frithjof Schuon: Life and Teachings, SUNY, 2002, p. 62Jean-Baptiste Aymard, "Approche biographique", Connaissance des Religions Journal, Numéro Hors Série Frithjof Schuon, 1999, p. 61
In 1991, one of Schuon's followers accused him of misconduct during collective gatherings. A preliminary investigation was begun, but the chief prosecutor concluded that there was no proof, noting that the plaintiff was of extremely dubious character and had been previously condemned for making false statements in another similar affair in California.Renaud Fabbri, Frithjof Schuon: The Shining Realm of the Pure Intellect, MA diss., Miami University, 2007, p. 47 The prosecutor declared that there were no grounds for prosecution, and the local press made amends.News articles on Schuon's 1991 legal ordeal can be found on accuratenews.net [https://accuratenews.net/] Some articles and books, including Mark Sedgwick's Against the Modern World,Mark Segdwick, Against the Modern World, Oxford University Press, 2004, p. 171 ff. discuss this event and the related "primordial" practices of the Bloomington community.Arthur Versluis, American Gurus, Oxford University Press, 2014, p. 171 [https://books.google.com/books?id=G2yVAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA171]
Schuon continued to receive visitors and maintain a correspondence with followers, scholars and readers. At the very end of his life, he wrote a major collection of over three thousand lyrical "teaching-poems" (Lehrgedichte), which combine metaphysics and spiritual counsel, as well as reminiscences of his life. Like the poems of his youth, these were written in his native German, following a series in Arabic and another in English.Michael Fitzgerald, Frithjof Schuon Messenger of the Perennial Philosophy, World Wisdom, 2010, pp. 131–132 They are a poetic synthesis of his philosophical and spiritual message,Patrick Laude, Frithjof Schuon: Life and Teachings, SUNY, 2002, p. 115 which is articulated around four key elements: "truth, prayer, virtue and beauty".William Stoddart, "Introduction" in World Wheel: Poems by Frithjof Schuon, Vol. I, World Wisdom, 2006, p. x Less than two months before his death on May 5, 1998 at the age of 90, Frithjof Schuon wrote his last poem:Jean-Baptiste Aymard, Frithjof Schuon: Life and Teachings, SUNY, 2002, pp. 52, 54
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Ich konnte nicht; ich musste weiter dichten.
Doch diesmal legt sich meine Feder nieder,
Denn es gibt andres Sinnen, andre Pflichten;
Wie dem auch sei, was wir auch mögen tun:
Lasst uns dem Ruf des Höchsten Folge leisten –
Lasst uns in Gottes tiefem Frieden ruhn.
Das Weltrad VII, CXXX
I could not do so; I had to write more poems.
But this time my pen lies down of itself,
For there are other preoccupations, other duties;
Be that as it may, whatever we may wish to do:
Let us follow the call of the Most High —
Let us repose in God's deep Peace.
World Wheel VII, CXXXFrithjof Schuon, World Wheel, Volumes VI-VII, World Wisdom, 2006, p. 167[http://www.frithjofschuon.info/english/library/read_poetry.aspx?Category=World+Wheel+VII]{{Clear|left}}
oil painting by F. Schuon, 1959
oil painting by F. Schuon,
1963
