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.

In his final course of Gifford Lectures, delivered at the University of Glasgow in 1892, F. Max Müller concentrates on the essential unity or oneness of the objective Infinite in nature (God) and the subjective Infinite in man (soul), which is the final consummation of all religious and philosophical endeavours. Much time is spent discussing the relation of the soul to Brahman in the Hindu philosophy of Vedanta, and of similar strains in the Sufi branch of Islam.

Humanism fails to withstand the radical secularization of the humanist tradition. These lectures discuss the historical role of religion and religious knowledge in society, the need to study the phenomenon of religion as a source of cultural knowledge, and the potential of spiritual life to operate as an instrument of cultural change.

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.