The Essential Titus Burckhardt: Reflections on Sacred Art, Faiths, and Civilizations (Perennial Philosophy) - Softcover

Titus Burckhardt

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0941532364 ISBN 13: 9780941532365

Publisher: World Wisdom, 2003

Synopsis

An introduction to the thought of one of the greatest perennialist authors of the twentieth century.

About this title

About the Author:

William Stoddart was born at Carstairs in Scotland in 1925. He studied modern languages, and later medicine, at the universities of Glasgow, Edinburgh, and Dublin. For many years he was assistant editor of the influential British journal Studies in Comparative Religion. He spent most of his working life in London, England, and retired to Windsor, Ontario in 1982.

Dr. Stoddart has made a life-long study of the great religious traditions of the world, and in this connection has traveled widely in Europe, North Africa, Turkey, India, and Ceylon. He has contributed many articles to international journals, and has translated books and articles from German and French into English. As an author he is probably best known for his short surveys of Sufism, Buddhism, and Hinduism aimed at Western readers.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

The following excerpt is taken from the first two paragraphs of Chapter 1:

How to Approach Medieval and Oriental Civilizations

In order to understand a culture, it is necessary to love it, and one can only do this on the basis of the universal and timeless values that it carries within it. These values are essentially the same in all true cultures, that is to say, in cultures which meet not only the physical, but also the spiritual needs of man, without which his life has no meaning.

Nothing brings us into such immediate contact with another culture as a work of art which, within that culture, represents, as it were, a "center." This may be a sacred image, a temple, a cathedral, a mosque, or even a carpet with a primordial design. Such works invariably express an essential quality or factor, which neither an historical account, nor an analysis of social and economic conditions, can capture. A similarly rich insight into another culture can be found in its literature, especially in those works that deal with eternal verities. But such works are by definition profound and symbolical, and are mostly unintelligible to the modern reader without the aid of a detailed commentary. A work of art, on the other hand, can, without any mental effort on our part, convey to us immediately and "existentially" a particular intellectual truth or spiritual attitude, and thereby grant us all manner of insights into the nature of the culture concerned. Thus one can more readily understand the intellectual and ethical forms of a Buddhist culture if one is familiar with the Buddha-image that is typical of it; and one can much more easily form a picture of the religious and social life of the Middle Ages if one has first assimilated the architecture of a Romanesque Abbey or a Gothic cathedral—always assuming, of course, that one is sufficiently sensitive to the forms of an authentic traditional art.

About this edition

• Publisher: World Wisdom
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0941532364
• ISBN 13: 9780941532365
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 360
• Editor: William Stoddart