Difference between Philosophy, theology and gnosis
In a certain respect, the difference between philosophy, theology and gnosis is total; in another respect, it is relative. It is total when one understands by “philosophy,” only rationalism; by “theology,” only the explanation of religious teachings; and by “gnosis,” only intuitive and intellective, and thus supra-rational, knowledge; but the difference is only relative when one understands by “philosophy” the fact of thinking, by “theology” the fact of speaking dogmatically of God and religious things, and by “gnosis” the fact of presenting pure metaphysics, for then the genres interpenetrate. It is impossible to deny that the most illustrious Sufis, while being “ gnostics” by definition, were at the same time to some extent theologians and to some extent philosophers, or that the great theologians were both to some extent philosophers and to some extent gnostics, the last word having to be understood in its proper and not sectarian meaning.
If we wish to retain the limitative, or even pejorative, sense of the word philosopher, we could say that gnosis or pure metaphysics starts with certainty, whereas philosophy on the contrary starts from doubt and only serves to overcome it with the means that are at its disposal and which intend to be purely rational. But since neither the term “philosophy” in itself, nor the usage that has always been made of it, obliges us to accept only the restrictive sense of the word, we shall not censure too severely those who employ it in a wider sense than may seem opportune.(1) Theory, by definition, is not an end in itself; it is only — and seeks only — to be a key for becoming conscious through the “heart.” If there is attached to the notion of “philosophy” a suspicion of superficiality, insufficiency and pretension, it is precisely because all too often — and indeed always in the case of the moderns — it is presented as being sufficient unto itself.
“This is only philosophy”: we readily accept the use of this turn of phrase, but only on condition that one does not say that “Plato is only a philosopher,” Plato who said that “beauty is the splendor of the true”; beauty that includes or demands all that we are or can be.
1. Even Ananda Coomaraswamy does not hesitate to speak of “Hindu philosophy,” which at least has the advantage of making clear the “ literary genre,” more especially as the reader is supposed to know what the Hindu spirit is in particular and what the traditional spirit is in general. In an analogous manner, when one speaks of the “Hindu religion,” one knows perfectly well that it is not a case—and cannot be a case — of a Semitic and western religion, hence refractory to every di fferentiation of perspective; thus one speaks traditionally of the Roman, Greek and Egyptian “ religions,” and the Koran does not hesitate to say to the pagan Arabs: “To you your religion and to me mine,” although the religion of the pagans had none of the characteristic features of Judeo-Christian monotheism.
If Plato maintains that the philosophos should think independently of common opinions, he refers to intellection and not to logic alone; whereas a Descartes, who did everything to restrict and compromise the notion of philosophy, means it while starting from systematic doubt, so much so that for him philosophy is synonymous not only with rationalism, but also with skepticism. This is a first suicide of the intelligence, inaugurated moreover by Pyrrho and others, by way of a reaction against what was believed to be metaphysical “dogmatism.” The “Greek miracle” is in fact the substitution of the reason for the Intellect, of the fact for the Principle, of the phenomenon for the Idea, of the accident for the Substance, of the form for the Essence, of man for God; and this applies to art as well as to thought. The true Greek miracle, if miracle there be — and in this case it would be related to the “Hindu miracle” — is doctrinal metaphysics and methodic logic, providentially utilized by the monotheistic Semites.