Traditional Quotes and Symbols
The higher must include the lower, the knower must include the known, the universal must include the individual, and the free the less free.
…the various conditions or layers of human nature can be thought of in terms of a varying number of concentric circles, with the outer circle corresponding to the physical condition, and the center to the Intellect. The advantage of this schema, which was well-known to medieval philosophers, and to which we shall return later, is that it illustrates the order of basic realities in the simplest way. However, its limitations, and its partial fallacy are immediately evident in that the very element representing supra-personal and universal truth — namely the Intellect— appears as the smallest thing — a mere point.
The reason for this is that the entire scheme with its differentiation between “external” and “internal” is determined by an individual or “subjective” point of view. As the object of perception, the physical world appears comprehensive to subjective experience, while the Intellect, which is to the physical world what the source of light is to an illuminated room, appears as an elusive, invisible point.
But taking the different levels of reality, as revealed in man, not in their subjective role, but in their actual existence, it becomes clear that the higher must include the lower, the knower must include the known, the universal must include the individual, and the free the less free.
The applied schema can thus be reversed: the Intellect then corresponds to the outer circle, because in its knowledge it encompasses everything (not in any spatial sense), just as the soul with its consciousness and its mental powers encompasses the body. This is also a manner in which the system of concentric circles—one encompassing the next one—was applied by the medieval philosophers. They saw in it not only a reflection of the essential structure of man, but of the entire universe, for the various degrees of reality existed before the individual beings that share in it.
If the physical world were not essentially, and in its verynature, included in the world of the soul, there would be no perception, and the impressions that we receive of the external world would merely be so many random coincidences. And if the physical, as well as the psychical, world were not encompassed by the Intellect, there would be no universally valid knowledge that surpasses the individual.
One can thus speak, not only of a physical universe, but also of a psychical and an intellectual universe, and of one encompassing the other according to the spatial symbolism which we apply metaphorically.
Titus Burckhardt: The Cosmology of the Arab Philosophers
The higher must include the lower, the knower must include the known, the universal must include the individual, and the free the less free.
…the various conditions or layers of human nature can be thought of in terms of a varying number of concentric circles, with the outer circle corresponding to the physical condition, and the center to the Intellect. The advantage of this schema, which was well-known to medieval philosophers, and to which we shall return later, is that it illustrates the order of basic realities in the simplest way. However, its limitations, and its partial fallacy are immediately evident in that the very element representing supra-personal and universal truth — namely the Intellect— appears as the smallest thing — a mere point.
The reason for this is that the entire scheme with its differentiation between “external” and “internal” is determined by an individual or “subjective” point of view. As the object of perception, the physical world appears comprehensive to subjective experience, while the Intellect, which is to the physical world what the source of light is to an illuminated room, appears as an elusive, invisible point.
But taking the different levels of reality, as revealed in man, not in their subjective role, but in their actual existence, it becomes clear that the higher must include the lower, the knower must include the known, the universal must include the individual, and the free the less free.
The applied schema can thus be reversed: the Intellect then corresponds to the outer circle, because in its knowledge it encompasses everything (not in any spatial sense), just as the soul with its consciousness and its mental powers encompasses the body. This is also a manner in which the system of concentric circles—one encompassing the next one—was applied by the medieval philosophers. They saw in it not only a reflection of the essential structure of man, but of the entire universe, for the various degrees of reality existed before the individual beings that share in it.
If the physical world were not essentially, and in its verynature, included in the world of the soul, there would be no perception, and the impressions that we receive of the external world would merely be so many random coincidences. And if the physical, as well as the psychical, world were not encompassed by the Intellect, there would be no universally valid knowledge that surpasses the individual.
One can thus speak, not only of a physical universe, but also of a psychical and an intellectual universe, and of one encompassing the other according to the spatial symbolism which we apply metaphorically.
Titus Burckhardt: The Cosmology of the Arab Philosophers