Traditional Art and Secular Art from the Viewpoint of Frithjof Schuon

Throughout his works, Schuon has made numerous references to concepts like traditional art, sacred art, religious art, and secular art. The first question that comes to one’s mind upon reading his works is how these concepts are related with each other and what contrasts and overlaps are found among them. It seems that Schuon saw the main opposition between the two concepts of traditional art and secular art while the two other or similar concepts could be as well defined and understood in the light of the traditional and the secular. This paper is an attempt to view the two opposing type of art from different perspectives. It can be said that this opposition is basically set on the two arts’ different cosmological and anthropological grounds. The traditional art’s ideology believes in the hierarchical order in both spheres of cosmology (macrocosm) and anthropology (microcosm) with at least three distinct spheres, whereas secular art’s ideology believes in two believes in a univalent - or optimum two spheres – for each man in the world. Therefore, the whole opposition between the two types of art could be explained based on this principal opposition.