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Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books Knowledge and the Sacred Summary In Knowledge and the Sacred Nasr analyzes humanity’s pursuit of knowledge and proposes that in every culture throughout human history humanity’s quest for knowledge has been a sacred activity as men and women seek to discover the Divine.

Drawing from many traditions including philosophy, Islam, Judaism, Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, Confucianism, and Zoroastrianism, Nasr explores humanity’s quest for knowledge and quest for the Divine and how these quests relate to one another throughout history.

KEY WORDS: Islam, Iran, Sacred, Secular, Tradition, Knowledge, Science, History, Oriental, Philosophy • • • • • In Knowledge and the Sacred Nasr explores the human quest for knowledge and proposes that throughout human history men and women have searched for knowledge which through time and in various cultures has been a sacred activity to discover the Divine.

In chapter 1 Knowledge and Desacralization Nasr explores human knowledge and how modern women and men have lost the sense of awe, wonder and the sacred.

“Today modern man has lost the sense of wonder, which results from his loss of the sense of the sacred, to such a degree that he is hardly aware how miraculous is the mystery of intelligence, of human subjectivity as well as the power of objectivity and the possibility of knowing objectively.” He argues that every human has the ability to know the sacred because “consciousness is itself proof of the primacy of the Spirit or Divine Consciousness of which human consciousness is a reflection and echo.

Nasr traces the historical process of the desacralization of knowledge and language and how the separation of the sacred and the profane has influenced modern humanity. In chapter 2 What is Tradition? Nasr explains the impact of the desacralization of knowledge had on human knowledge.

“Truth had to be stated anew and reformulated in the name of tradition precisely because of the nearly total eclipse and loss of that reality which has constituted the matrix of life of normal humanity over the ages.” He states, “Tradition, like religion, is at once truth and presence. It concerns the subject which knows and the object which is known.

It comes from the Source from which everything originates and to which everything returns.” In chapter 3 The Rediscovery of the Sacred: The Revival of Tradition Nasr explores the recent return to humanity’s understanding the sacred by returning to tradition.