| Author Quoted | Frithjof Schuon |
| Title Quoted | Comprendre l'Islam |
| Date (Year/Month/Day) | 1963/10/04 |
| Imprint | Paris : Gallimard. 1961 |
| Quotation | Two minds more different than those of Karl Barth and Frithjof Schuon would be hard to imagine, yet I am reading them both. Barth with his insistence on "God in the highest": completely unattainable by any human tradition and Schuon with his philosophia humanis [humanistic philosophy] (am reading his excellent book on Islam [Comprendre l'Islam, 1961]). True, Barth is a greater mind and there is an austere beauty in his Evangelical absolutism (closer to Islam than one would think!!) but there is another side to him-his love of St. Anselm and of Mozart. Schuon naturally oversimplifies his "contrast" between Islam and Christianity. One has to know what he's really doing! I wrote this morning to Marco Pallis (who sent the Schuon book) about his Way and the Mountain (the other night I dreamed about the way). |
| Quotation Source | Dancing in the Water of Life: Seeking Peace in the Hermitage. The Journals of Thomas Merton, Volume 5, 1963-1965.; Edited by Robert E. Daggy. / San Francisco : Harper Collins. 1997, p. 22 |
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| Link to Merton's Copy |
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