Seyyed Hossein Nasr

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Image:Sayyed Hosein Nasr book cover.jpgSeyyed Hossein Nasr, (Persian: سيد حسين نصر) A lifelong student and follower of Frithjof Schuon, Persian philosopher and renowned scholar of comparative religion, is a prominent authority in the fields of Islamic esoterism, sufism, philosophy of science, and metaphysics. He may be now the most famous Sufi Philosopher in the West.

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Life

He received his PhD from Harvard after receiving his undergraduate degree in Physics from MIT, and became a full professor by the age of 30. During his studies he became acquainted with the works of the prominent perennialist authority Frithjof Schuon. This school of thought has shaped Professor Nasr's life and thinking ever since. Professor Nasr has been a disciple of Frithjof Schuon for over fifty years and his works are based on the doctrine and the viewpoints of the Perennial Philosophy.

Nasr is a well-known and highly respected intellectual figure both in the West and the Islamic world. An eloquent speaker with a charismatic presence, Nasr is a much sought-after speaker at academic conferences and seminars, university and public lectures, and also radio and television programs in his areas of expertise. Possessing an impressive academic and intellectual record, his career as a teacher and scholar spans over four decades.

Born in 1933, Professor Nasr began his teaching career in 1955 when he was still a young doctoral student at Harvard University. Over the years, he has taught and trained an innumerable number of students who have come from the different parts of the world, and many of whom have become important and prominent scholars in their fields of study.

He has trained different generations of students over the years since 1958 when he was a professor at Tehran University, Arya Mehr University (where he was appointed president in 1972), and then in America at Temple University and at The George Washington University since 1984 to the present day. The range of subjects and areas of study in which Professor Nasr has engaged himself over the course of his academic career and intellectual life are immense. As demonstrated by his numerous writings, lectures and speeches, Professor Nasr speaks and writes based on the doctrine and the viewpoints of the Perennial Philosophy and with great authority on a wide variety of subjects, ranging from philosophy to religion to spirituality, to music and art and architecture, to science and literature, to civilizational dialogues and the natural environment.

For Professor Seyyed Hossein Nasr, the quest for knowledge, specifically knowledge which enables man to understand the true nature of things and which furthermore "liberates and delivers him from the fetters and limitations of earthly existence," has been and continues to be the central concern and determinant of his intellectual life.

Professor Nasr was also a student of Allameh Tabatabaei, a spiritual scholar whose commentary on the Qur'an Tafsir al-Mizan is widely known as one of the best commentaries. In the 1970s, Empress Farah Pahlavi of Iran appointed professor Nasr as head of the Imperial Iranian Academy of Philosophy, the first academic institution to be conducted in accordance with the intellectual principles of the Traditionalist School. During that time, Nasr, Tabatabaei, William Chittick, Kenneth Morgan, Sachiko Murata, Toshihiko Izutsu, and Henry Corbin would meet and hold various philosophical discourses. The famous book Shi'ite Islam was one product of this period.

This experiment ended with the arrival of the Islamic revolution, which forced Professor Nasr to emigrate to the United States.

Professor Seyyed Hossein Nasr is currently University Professor of Islamic Studies at The George Washington University.

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Awards and honors

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Works

Nasr is the author of over fifty books and five hundred articles on Islamic science, religion, and the environment, in 4 languages, including:

  • The Essential Frithjof Schuon Selected and Edited by Seyyed Hossein Nasr ISBN 0-941532-92-5
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See also

Iranian religious intellectual circle

Other religious and traditional scholars

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External links

tr:Seyyid Hüseyin Nasr

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