Clinton Minnaar

This is an MSc. dissertation submitted to the University of Cape Town, 2001. It includes a full and detailed exposition of the epistemology of the Traditionalist school, with a detailed treatment of the nature of the supra-individual intelligence (Intellect), the nature of mystical experience, and a Traditionalist critique of contemporary neo-Kantian scholarship. The Traditionalist esoteric ecumenicism—theory of a transcendent unity of religions—is seen to include a twofold definition of esotericism: firstly, an esotericism as mystical path, dependent and continuous vis-à-vis exotericist religious ‘form’; and secondly, an esotericism in the pure state, i.e. the philosophia perennis, or religio perennis—independent and discontinuous vis-à-vis the exotericist religious form.

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