Spiritual Transcendence in the Work of Frithjof Schuon, Part X: Man and Intellect / Further Reading

Keith Preston

6 months ago

Nov 03, 2025

ONE compelling argument that Schuon offers in support of the idea that a perennial truth lies at the root of the transcendental unity of religions is the quintessential “oneness” of humankind. We do, after all, share one very important faculty:

The sufficient reason for the existence of the human creature is the capacity to think; not to think just anything, but to think about what matters, and finally, about what alone matters. Man is the only being on earth able to foresee death and to desire survival, the only being who desires to know—and is capable of knowing—the why of the world, of the soul, of existence. No one can deny that it is in the fundamental nature of man to ask himself these questions and to have, in consequence, the right to answers; and, further, to have access to them precisely by virtue of this right, whether through Revelation or through Intellection, each of these sources of knowledge acting according to its own laws and within the framework of the conditions that correspond to it. (p.149)

Despite the fact that human thought, particularly in the case of Western philosophy, may be said to have constructed a cerebral cage for itself, it is necessary to rediscover the intellectual portals that remain available to us. These gateways to the Divine still exist, but we seem to have forgotten where they are.

Although some individuals will always be more intelligent than others, it nonetheless remains the case that all human beings possess the ability to arrive at the truth. In Schuon’s words:

The distinctive mark of man is an intelligence that is total, hence objective and capable of conceiving the absolute; to say that it possesses this capacity amounts, precisely, to saying that it is objective or that it is total. Objectivity, whereby human is distinguished from animal intelligence, would lack sufficient reason without the capacity to conceive the absolute or the infinite, or without the sense of perfection. (p.150)

Employing the Intellect to the fullest possible extent, therefore, is not simply a case of coming to terms with one’s place in the material world but involves the use of a suprarationality that can engage with “sensorial phenomena”.

To know the transcendent is thus to become aware of our ultimate cosmological destination. Once we learn to utilise the Intellect more efficiently, everything else begins to fall into place:

Intelligence as such is prolonged in will and in sentiment: if the intelligence is objective, will and sentiment will equally be so. Man is distinguished from animals by free will and by generous sentiment because he is distinguished from them by an intelligence that is total; totality of intelligence gives rise, by extension, to freedom of will and to generosity of sentiment or of character. For man alone is capable of willing what is contrary to his instincts or to his immediate self-interest; he alone can put himself in the place of others and feel with them and through them; and he alone is capable of sacrifice and of pity. (pp.150-151)

To rely solely upon Revelation, Schuon argues, rather than draw upon the Intellect, leads to “intellectual pride”. This is the result of separating what we perceive to be human intelligence from Divine Will. Once our basic intellectual faculties are rendered profane, i.e. merely concerning themselves with more earthly or mundane matters, they are divorced from the realm of the supernatural. What we often imagine to be intelligence, therefore, involves recognising nothing more than a partial realisation of our human capabilities. Schuon believes that without “nobleness of soul, piety and virtue” our levels of intelligence cannot blossom as Intellect at a comparatively higher level. In effect, our supreme powers of reasoning belong to God in the sense that without Divine perfection we remain incomplete:

Intelligence is either individual or universal; it is either reason or Intellect; if it is individual, it must find its inspiration in its universal root to the extent that it seeks to go beyond the domain of material facts. From another point of view, as we have said, it is either conceptual or existential and here too it needs to be extended: it must combine with its moral complement in order to be fully in conformity with what it seeks to perceive. Will for the Good and love of the Beautiful are the necessary concomitants of knowledge of the True, and their repercussions are incalculable. (p.152)

Reason alone, caught in the chaotic throes of arrogance and self-pride, will always remain something of an “infirmity” if it is not accompanied by spiritual transcendence. However, just as death in this world is necessary for life in the next, so too must human rationality become a crucial point of departure in the wider quest for Divine understanding:

The whole debate regarding the capacity or incapacity of the human mind to know God resolves itself thus: our intelligence can know God only “by God,” and therefore it is God who knows Himself in us. Reason can participate instrumentally and provisionally in this knowledge insofar as it remains united to God. It can participate in Revelation on the one hand, and in Intellection on the other, the first relating to God “above us” and the second to God “within us.” (p.153)

Those who hold that faith alone is necessary for salvation are completely incapable of appreciating this fact, simply because Revelation alone is considered to be supernatural whilst Intellect – such as it is interpreted by the average fideist – is ruthlessly demoted to the level of any other “natural” phenomenon. Intellectual intuition, which the German Romantics rightly perceived to be a vehicle that leads towards the qualities of Beauty and Truth, is dismissed as something that is fundamentally unattainable for the human mind.

Medieval philosophy, on the other hand, and particularly that of the thirteenth-century Catholic theologian, Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), offers a considerably more balanced view:

Thomism distinguishes the knowledge “obtained by natural reason” from that “obtained by grace,” which suggests that metaphysical certitudes would be gifts granted incidentally, whereas in reality there is also in man what we would paradoxically call a “naturally supernatural grace,” namely the Intellect. For a light that comes to us by sudden inspiration is one thing, and a light to which we have access through our “supernatural nature” is another, nevertheless, we could call this nature a “divine immanence” and thus dissociate it from the human, as indeed we do when we affirm that God alone can know God, be this within us or outside us. However that may be, the “natural” receptacle proportionate to the “supernatural” has already in itself something supernatural or divine. (pp.153-154)

Finally, although Schuon’s work on the underlying, preternatural character of world spirituality often finds itself straying from the point, necessarily so in most instances, The Transcendental Unity of Religions achieves its ultimate objective in that if one were to ask how it is feasible for one to belong to a religion which, at the level of the exoteric, may appear superficial in light of the esoteric truth that lies beyond it, the author is more than capable of demonstrating both comprehensively and conclusively that what we regard as the “realities” of human existence are significantly altered once man’s initial love for his Creator is dramatically transformed into an all-embracing knowledge of the Absolute. As far as Schuon is concerned, this is when the Intellect arrives back at the Divine Source.

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