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<mask> (; , born April 7, 1933) is an Iranian philosopher and University Professor of Islamic studies at George Washington University. Born in Tehran, Nasr completed his education in Iran and the United States, earning a bachelor's degree in physics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a master's in geology and geophysics, and a doctorate in the history of science from Harvard University. He returned to his homeland in 1958 and was appointed a professor of philosophy and Islamic sciences at Tehran University. He held various academic positions in Iran, including vice-chancellor at Tehran University and President of Aryamehr University, and established the Imperial Iranian Academy of Philosophy at the request of Empress Farah Pahlavi, which soon became one of the most prominent centers of philosophical activity in the Islamic world. During his time in Iran, he also studied with several traditional masters of Islamic philosophy and sciences. The 1979 revolution forced him to exile with his family to the United States, where he has lived and taught Islamic sciences and philosophy ever since, establishing himself as one of the world's leading representatives of the Islamic philosophical tradition and the perennialist school of thought. Nasr writes and speaks from the viewpoint of perennial philosophy, which is based in metaphysics.Although Islam and Sufism are major influences on his writings, his perennialist approach inquires into the essence of all orthodox religions, regardless of their formal particularities. He is the author of over fifty books and more than five hundred articles. Biography

Origins
Seyyed <mask> <mask> was born on 7 April 1933 in Tehran to <mask> Valiallah Khan Nasr, who was a physician to the royal family, philosopher and homme de lettres, and one of the founders of modern education in Iran. Nasr's parents were originally from Kashan. His mother was well-versed in Persian literature and poetry. He is a descendant of Sheikh Fazlollah Nouri from his mother's side, is the cousin of Iranian philosopher Ramin Jahanbegloo as well as the father of American academic Vali <mask>. The surname "Nasr", which means "victorious", was given to his grandfather by the Shah.The title "Seyyed" indicates a descendant of the Prophet Muhammad. Education

Nasr completed his primary education in Tehran, and his education was supplemented by religious and philosophical discussions with his father and an entourage of theologians, ministers, scholars, and mystics. He immersed himself in the Koranic studies, Persian literature, Arabic and French languages at an early age. While he was completing his first year of secondary school at Firooz Bahram High School, his father was hurt in a serious accident, so his mother sent him to continue his education in the United States so that he would not be present at the time of his father's imminent death. He would later say that there are three things that his father left him: "first of all, love of knowledge for our own Persian culture, our religious, literary, philosophical tradition; secondly, an avid interest in what was going on in the West in the realm of science and philosophy, literature and everything else; thirdly, a sense of serenity that he had within himself." In the United States, Nasr first attended Peddie School in Hightstown, New Jersey, graduating in 1950 as the valedictorian of his class. He then applied to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston to study physics and was accepted with a scholarship.When he realized, after an encounter with the philosopher Bertrand Russell, that the study of physics would not bring answers to his questions, he enrolled in additional courses on metaphysics and philosophy with Giorgio de Santillana who introduced him to the works of René Guénon. From there, Nasr discovered the works of other Perennialist metaphysicians, notably Ananda Coomaraswamy, Frithjof Schuon, Titus Burckhardt, Martin Lings, and Marco Pallis. This school of thought has shaped Nasr's life and thinking ever since. The widow of Commaraswamy gave him access to the library of her late husband, and Nasr spent much of his time there and worked to catalogue the library. He visited Schuon and Burckhardt in Switzerland while still a student and was initiated into the Alawi branch of the Shadhili Sufi order. He considered the works of Schuon, with central importance given to the practice of a spiritual discipline in addition to doctrinal knowledge, especially instrumental in determining his intellectual and spiritual life. After receiving an MIT B.S.degree in physics in 1954, Nasr enrolled in the graduate program in geology and geophysics at Harvard University, where he received a Master of Science in both fields in 1956, and went on to pursue his PhD degree in the history of science and learning at the same university. He planned to write his dissertation under the supervision of George Sarton, but Sarton died before he could begin his dissertation work and so he wrote it under the direction of I. Bernard Cohen, Hamilton Gibb, and Harry Wolfson. At the age of twenty-five, Nasr graduated with a PhD from Harvard and completed his first book, Science and Civilization in Islam, the title being a direct tribute to Science and Civilization in China, the work by Joseph Needham which had for task to present to Westerners the complex developments of the history of science and technology in China, a mission Nasr was himself following for the Islamic civilization. His doctoral dissertation entitled "Conceptions of Nature in Islamic Thought" was published in 1964 by Harvard University Press as An Introduction to Islamic Cosmological Doctrines. Apart from mastering Arabic and French he was initially taught in his childhood, during his student years, Nasr also learned Greek, Latin, Italian, Spanish and German. Back to Iran
After receiving his Ph.D. from Harvard in 1958, Nasr was offered the position of associate professor at MIT, as well as a three year research position as a junior fellow followed by a formal teaching position at Harvard, but he decided to return to Iran. That same year, Tehran University hired him as associate professor of philosophy and the history of science.He continued his study of Islamic sciences with traditional Iranian masters and philosophers (Muhammad Husayn Tabataba'i, Allameh Sayyed Abul Hasan Rafiee Qazvini and Sayyid Muhammad Kazim Assar), completing his dual education, academic and traditional. He had married and started a family at this point. His son, Vali <mask>, would go on to become an academic and expert on the Islamic world. At thirty, <mask> <mask> <mask> was the youngest person to become a full professor at Tehran University. He was quickly recognized as an authority in Islamic philosophy, Islamic science and Sufism. For fifteen years he conducted a doctoral seminar in comparative philosophy and Islamic philosophy with Henry Corbin who was at that time the director of the French Institute for Iranian Studies in Tehran. Five years later he would be made the dean of the faculty of letters and then vice-chancellor of the university.In 1972, the Shah chose him to become the President of Aryamehr University (now Sharif University of Technology). There, Nasr created a faculty for the humanities in order to encourage the students not to focus exclusively on scientific matters. He also designed courses that focused on the assessment of modern technology and its impact on human society and the environment. During this time, he was also involved in the creation of the Islamic and Iranian studies departments at Harvard, Princeton, the University of Utah, and the University of Southern California. Nasr refused to engage in the politics of his country despite a number of offers for ministerial positions and ambassadorship. In 1974, Empress Farah Pahlavi commissioned him to establish and lead the Imperial Iranian Academy of Philosophy (now the Institute for Research in Philosophy), the first academic institution to be conducted in accordance with the intellectual principles of the Traditionalist School. During that time, Nasr, Tabataba'i, William Chittick, Peter Lamborn Wilson, Kenneth Morgan, Sachiko Murata, Toshihiko Izutsu, and Henry Corbin held various philosophical discourses.The book Shi'ite Islam and the traditionalist journal Sophia Perennis were products of this period. In 1978, he was named director of the Empress's private bureau, while continuing to teach philosophy at Tehran University, and serve as chancellor of Aryamehr University, and President of the Imperial Iranian Academy of Philosophy. Return to the West

In January 1979, the revolution put an end to the Pahlavi dynasty and Nasr, who was visiting London with his family at the time, was unable to return to Iran. He lost everything, including his manuscripts and library. His family settled in Boston. After a few months of teaching at the University of Utah, Nasr was appointed a professor of Islamic studies at Temple University in Philadelphia, which had the largest Ph.D. program in religious studies in the United States. During the 1980-1981 academic year, Nasr delivered the Gifford lectures at the University of Edinburgh, which were later published under the title Knowledge and the Sacred.According to William Chittick, "three out of the four of his first books in English (An Introduction to Islamic Cosmological Doctrines, Three Muslim Sages, and Science and Civilization in Islam) were published by Harvard University Press, and they immediately established him as one of the major and original voices in Islamic studies. His strong endorsement of the writings of Schuon and Burckhardt in these books were in turn instrumental in bringing the Traditionalist school to the notice of official academia". Nasr left Temple University in 1984 to become a professor of Islamic studies at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., a position he holds to this day. That same year, he established the Foundation for Traditional Studies which published the journal Sophia and works on traditional thought. He has authored over fifty books and over five hundred articles based on the principles of the philosophia perennis. He is regularly invited to give courses and conferences at various institutions and universities of the five different continents on the major themes for which he has become well known: Islam, philosophy, metaphysics, cosmology, anthropology, spirituality, religion, science, ecology, literature, art, etc. His works have been translated into twenty-eight different languages.Notable aspects of his works
Nasr's expertise encompasses traditional culture (wisdom, religion, philosophy, science and art), Western thought from antiquity to the present day, and the history of science. He argues in favor of revelation, tradition, and what he considers "scientia sacra", in opposition to rationalism, relativism, and modern western materialism. Nasr has not developed a new system of thought, but instead hopes to revive traditional doctrines that he believes have been  forgotten in the modern world. He is content to recall what, according to him, corresponds to the many manifestations of a timeless wisdom. Although Islam and Sufism are present throughout his writings, his universalist perspective, which is that of perennial philosophy, takes into account what he assumes to be the  common essence of all orthodox religions beyond their formal particularities or their current state: "My philosophical world is a kind of synthesis between the perennial philosophy, which I espouse and represent, and the Islamic philosophical tradition, which I have tried to revive and to which I also belong. And so I would say that for the first category, there are Guénon and Schuon; if I had to name a third person, then Coomaraswamy; and for the second category, Ibn Sina, Suhrawardı, Ibn Arabi, and Mulla Sadra." According to Sarah Robinson-Bertoni, Nasr is one of the principal figures in Islamic philosophy, working at the crossroads of Western and Islamic intellectual traditions.Harry Oldmeadow considers Nasr to be "of the living traditionalists the most widely known in academic circles". For him, Nasr's works are characterized by "rigorous scholarly methodology, an encyclopedic erudition about all matters Islamic, a robustness of critical thought, and a sustained clarity of expression"; and he is "the foremost traditionalist thinker" to base himself on "eternal wisdom (sophia perennis)" in order to provide a solution to the contemporary environmental crisis. The Perennialist or Traditionalist school

When he discovered the writings of the most influential members of what would become the Traditionalist or Perennialist school (René Guénon, Ananda Coomaraswamy, Frithjof Schuon, Titus Burckhardt, Martin Lings), the student <mask> <mask> Nasr fully aligned himself to their perspective founded on the philosophia perennis. Thus, in the middle of a "materialistic century", this School provides Nasr with the keys to his spiritual quest: an esoteric doctrine and method within the framework of a Sufi path. For Patrick Laude:

For Nasr, the expression, "philosophia perennis", as understood by the Perennialist School refers to both the universal metaphysical truth and to its spiritual realization. The latter can only be considered, according to Nasr, in the framework of a tradition, thus with the aid of a method, rites, symbols and other means sanctified by revelation. The truth, though veiled, is innate to the human spirit and its realization leads to what he calls "knowledge", that is to say gnosis or wisdom (sophia), hence the expression "sophia perennis", common ground at the heart of all religions.Nasr clarifies that the notion of the philosophia perennis does not derive from a compilation "of wisdom writings of various historical traditions", which would have resulted in the conviction of the existence of common truths, but it is these very truths which, by "the practice of intellection, the use of the intellect" understood in a spiritual manner, are revealed to the human spirit which then observes "their presence in other times and climes and in fact in all the sacred traditions the world over". The language of the perennial philosophy is symbolism. God and the world

According to Seyyed <mask> Nasr, the "Divine Reality" includes, metaphysically speaking, an "Impersonal Essence" and a personal aspect that the believer "ordinarily identifies with God", in accordance with the perspective of "most religions". Only the "esoteric dimension" within these religions take into account the "Impersonal Essence", as can be seen most notably in "the Kabbalah, Sufism, and among many Christian mystics such as Meister Eckhart and Angelus Silesius". "God as ultimate Reality" is thus at the same time "Essence" and "Person" or "Supra-Being and Being". Understood in this way, God or the Principle,

God is not only "Absolute and Infinite", He is also "the Supreme Good or Perfection". Now, according to Nasr, the specificity of infinitude and of good in divinis requires that they exteriorize themselves, that is to say, that they manifest themselves in multiplicity, hence the world.A world that is imperfect despite the perfection of its source because, as Nasr explains, this exteriorization implies a distance from the "Good", hence the presence of evil; the latter, contrary to the good, does not have its root in God. This "imperfect world" – the visible and tangible world of man – constitutes only the periphery of a hierarchy of increasingly subtle "worlds" according to their degree of proximity to Being. For Nasr, God is the only reality, and the world, which participates in His reality is therefore "unreal", not as "nothingness pure and simple" but as "relative reality"; it is an illusion to consider the world, says Nasr, as "reality" in the same way as the Principle. Nasr holds that traditional wisdom or the sophia perennis "has always seen God as Reality and the world as a dream from which the sage awakens through [spiritual] realization [...] and the ordinary man through death". To consider the world as "the reality, [...] as is done by most modern philosophy [...] leads to nihilism and skepticism by reducing God to an abstraction, to the 'unreal', and philosophy itself to the discussion of more or less secondary questions or to providing clever answers to ill-posed problems". For Nasr, "Ultimate Reality" is at once "above everything" and "omnipresent" in the universe, "transcendent and immanent". On the human plane, still according to Nasr, "The Reality" – or "The Truth" – lies in the heart of man "created in the image of God", whence the possibility of a "unitive knowledge which sees the world not as separative creation but as manifestation that is united through symbols and the very ray of existence".The human being

"The key to the understanding of the anthrōpos", according to Nasr, is situated in "sapential teachings"; it is neither situated in "exoteric religious formulations", which relate essentially to "salvation", nor in what he considers to be "profane" science, generally evolutionary. Beyond his faith in "creationism ex nihilo" Nasr believes that the doctrines "of all traditions" attest that "the genesis of man, occurred in many stages: first, in the Divinity Itself so that there is an uncreated 'aspect' to man", hence the possibility of "supreme union"; then "in the Logos which is in fact the prototype of man and another face of that same reality which the Muslims call the Universal Man and which each tradition identifies with its founder"; after this, "man is created on the cosmic level and what the Bible refers to as the celestial paradise where he is dressed with a luminous body"; "he then descends to the level of the terrestrial paradise and is given yet another body of an ethereal and incorruptible nature"; finally, "he is born into the physical world with a body which perishes" but he principially remains a reflection of "the Absolute not only in his spiritual and mental faculties but even in his body". Thus, Nasr rejects biology's modern evolutionary synthesis, which he thinks is a "desperate attempt to substitute a set of horizontal, material causes in a unidimensional world to explain effects whose causes belong to other levels of reality". For Nasr, in

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 accordance with "the traditional view of the anthrōpos", the human being is a "bridge between Heaven and earth (pontifex)". Responsible to God for his actions, he is the custodian and protector of the earth, "on the condition that he remain faithful to himself as the central terrestrial figure created in the 'form of God', [...] living in this world but created for eternity". This aspect of humanity, for Nasr, "is reflected in all of his being and his faculties". Among these faculties, Nasr underlines the primacy of intelligence, sentiments, and will: "as a theomorphic being", his intelligence "can know the truth as such", his sentiments "are capable [...] of reaching out for the ultimate through love, suffering, sacrifice, and also fear", and his will "is free to choose [...], it reflects the Divine Freedom".But, "because of man's separation from his original perfection", a consequence "of what Christianity calls the fall", itself followed by further declines, these faculties no longer operate invariably according to their "theomorphic nature". Thus, "intelligence can become reduced to mental play", "sentiments can deteriorate to little more than gravitation around that illusory coagulation which [...] is the ego" and "the will can be debased to nothing other than the urge to do that which removes man from the source of his own being". "All traditional sciences of nature, [...] are also sciences of the self on the basis of the microcosmic-macrocosmic correspondence", therefore by virtue of an "inward link that binds man as the microcosm to the cosmos". This ideal man, underlines Nasr, is "primordial man [...] perfect, [...] plenary reflection of all those Divine Qualities", who knew everything "in God and through God". Knowledge and the intellect

According to <mask> <mask> Nasr, "man contains within himself many levels of existence", that "the Western tradition" synthesises in the ternary "spirit, soul, and body (pneuma, psychē, and hylē or spiritus, anima, and corpus". "The human spirit is an extension and reflection of the Divine Spirit", it coincides with the "intellect" and "resides at the center of the spiritual heart" of the human being. Nasr always uses the word "intellect" in "its original sense of intellectus (nous)" and not "of reason (ratio)", which is only its "reflection" and which "is identified with the analytical functions of the mind"; "the intellect is the light of the sacred shining upon our minds".The intellect, which "is the root and the center of consciousness" is also "the source of inner illumination and intellection", which Nasr, following Guénon, also calls "intellectual intuition", and that implies an "illumination of the heart and the mind of man", making possible a "knowledge of an immediate and direct nature, [...] tasted and experienced", which extends to "certain aspects of reality" up to "the Absolute Reality". The human intellect is "the subjective pole of the Word or of the Logos – the universal Intellect – by which all things were made and which constitutes the source of objective revelation, that is to say, formal and established religion". For Nasr, in the vast majority of cases, this "inner revelation", or intellection, cannot become operative except by virtue of an external revelation which provides an objective cadre for it and enables it to be spiritually efficacious", hence the necessity of faith and spiritual practices associated with the realization of the virtues, with the aid of the grace issuing from each revelation. Huston Smith summarises in an analysis of Nasr's works, that Nasr contends it is "God who knows Himself" through man. For Nasr, indeed, "discrimination between the Real and the unreal terminates in the awareness of the nondual nature of the Real, the awareness which is the heart of gnosis and which represents not human knowledge but God's knowledge of Himself", consciousness which is at the same time "the goal of the path of knowledge and the essence of scientia sacra". Nasr contends that this wisdom, which corresponds – beyond salvation -– to deliverance from the bonds of all limitation, "is present in the heart of all traditions", whether it be the Hindu Vedanta, Buddhism, the Jewish Kabbalah, the Christian metaphysics of an Eckhart or an Erigena, or Sufism. It alone "is able to solve certain apparent contradictions and riddles in sacred texts".The sacred

Terry Moore, in his introduction to a long interview that Seyyed <mask> <mask> gave to the Iranian philosopher Ramin Jahanbegloo, recalls that for Nasr,

Still, according to Moore, it is this relationship with the sacred, through the channel of "Tradition" that anchors Seyyed <mask> Nasr's worldview. Nasr considers the sense of the sacred as inseparable from any spiritual quest. This sense emanates from the awareness of the eternal and immutable reality of the Divine, which is both transcendent and immanent to all universal manifestation, therefore also to the human being. The sacred manifests itself in "revelation, the sacred rites of various religions, spiritual and initiatory practices, sacred art, virgin nature", in fact everything that transmits "the presence of the Divine". Metaphysics

For Nasr, true metaphysics – the scientia sacra –, which is the intellectual foundation of the Traditionalist School, "is the science of the Real; of the origin and the end of things; of the Absolute and in its light, the relative" and, as a corollary, of the degrees of existence. It is therefore:

True metaphysics, underlines Nasr, can only be assimilated by intellectual intuition, that is to say that it is necessarily associated with a path of spiritual realization, an approach foreign to modern philosophy, which has been instrumental in reducing the significance of metaphysics to just another mental activity. Metaphysical knowledge stems from the true understanding of symbolism.Religion and spirituality

According to Nasr, man is "a theomorphic being living in this world but created for eternity" because his "soul is immortal". The post-mortem salvation of the soul, reminds Nasr, is "the first duty of man", according to every religion, – a soul tainted here below by its "centrifugal tendencies", its "passions". Nasr contends that all religions have an origin in God, reveal the paths which "leads to either felicity in the hereafter or damnation, to the paradisal or infernal states", and require "faith". Each new "descent" of a revelation brings a particular "spiritual genius", "fresh vitality, uniqueness and the grace which make its rites and practices operative, not to speak of the paradisal vision which constitutes the origin of its sacred art or of the sapience which lies at the heart of its message". This wisdom, continues Nasr, accounts for the "Ultimate Reality", which is both "beyond everything and at the very heart and center of man's soul", that is to say in his "spirit". The quest for wisdom or knowledge, through "spiritual practice" and the "cultivation of virtues", can lead to "salvation in the highest sense of this term, which means total deliverance from the bonds of all limitations". Nasr argues that spirituality requires a constant practice and a rigorous discipline within the framework of a religion, and he considers the current commercialization of the "pseudo-spiritual" to be indicative of people wanting the spiritual result without the effort.Daoud Riffi emphasizes that Sufism is the spiritual path followed by Seyyed <mask> <mask> in a universalist framework which attests to the principial unity of all major religions. Nasr's Sufism relates to the intellect in its medieval sense, that is, the spiritual heart: "True knowledge is therefore a matter of the heart, not of the mind, and the fruit of an interior asceticism." Exoterism and esoterism

Nasr says that every integral religion "possesses at once an external or exoteric dimension" and "an inner or esoteric dimension". The first is "concerned with the external and formal aspect of human life" with a view to the posthumous salvation of those "who follow the precepts" of their religion and who "have faith in its truths". The second concerns "the formless and the essential" with a view to the realization of "the Supreme Essence, here and now". These two dimensions unfold in "a hierarchy of levels from the most outward to the most inward which is the Supreme Center". Nasr thus distinguishes three modes of "approaching ultimate Reality": "the ways of work, love and knowledge", which correspond to as many predispositions of human nature.The most interiorizing paths integrate those which are less so, but the latter, not necessarily possessing the capacity "to understand what is beyond them", sometimes become the causes of "tensions" within the same religion. Nasr adds that "all human beings can be saved if only they follow religion according to their own nature and vocation". And he warns "on the social level, on the level of human action, the barriers and conditions established by the exoteric dimension of the religion should not be transgressed", including by those who "follow the path of esoterism, the inward or mystical path". Since there are "questions that exoterism cannot answer," it is important "for religion to keep alive the reality and the significance of esoterism for people who have the capability and need to understand the inner or esoteric dimension of the tradition". This is what Islam, for example, continues to accomplish today with its inner dimension, Sufism, which remains a living tradition. On the other hand,

The essential unity of religions

In a commentary on a work by Nasr, Adnan Aslan reports that for Nasr, the various religions are "forms of the eternal truth which has been revealed by God to humankind through various agencies". It is this common truth which constitutes "the transcendent unity of religions", he says, referring to the expression proposed by Frithjof Schuon."It is only on the level of the Supreme Essence [...], standing above all the cosmic sectors from the angelic to the physical within which a particular religion is operative, that the ultimate unity of religions is to be sought". This unity, for Nasr, is "not to be found at the level of external forms; [...] religions do not simply say the same thing despite the remarkable unanimity of principles and doctrines and the profound similarity of applications of these principles". At the heart of every religion lies "what Schuon calls the religio perennis", that is to say, "a doctrine concerning the nature of reality and a method for being able to attain what is Real". Doctrine and method vary from one religion to another but their essence and goal are universal. As a result, no religion is in itself "better" than another, concludes Nasr, since "all authentic religions come from the same Origin", but in practical terms it is nevertheless necessary "to distinguish the possibilities" that remain valid in the current state of "degradation" of each of the religions. For Nasr, given the celestial origin of all religions, it is appropriate to respect their slightest particularities and to treat them "with reverence, as every manifestation of the sacred should be". Interreligious dialogue

According to Jane I. Smith, Nasr is "one of the most visible partners" of Islamic-Christian dialogue thanks to "his training in Christian theology and philosophy, combined with his remarkable knowledge of all Islamic sciences".Nasr points out that ordinary believers consider their religion to be the religion. Injunctions such as: "I am the way, the truth, the life" (Jesus) or "No one sees God unless he has seen me" (Mohammed), necessarily lead, for these same believers, to the certainty of the pre-eminence of their own religion, a conviction that could lead to the refusal to consider other religions as valid. This refusal, for Nasr, can be considered as legitimate since it stems from revelation, therefore from God; God wants to "save souls", he does not ask the believer to deal with "comparative religion" nor to accept the validity of other revelations. In a traditional world, such exclusivism presented no hindrance, but in today's world, the mixing of populations calls many believers to question the value of the religions they encounter daily. Religion as it is seen in the world, says Nasr, "comes from the wedding between a Divine Norm and a human collectivity destined providentially to receive the imprint of that Norm." Thus, "racial, ethnic and cultural differences" constitute "one of the causes for multiplicity" of religions, "but religion itself cannot be reduced to its terrestrial embodiment". For Nasr, there is only one truth and it necessarily manifests itself in "all the different authentic religious universes, otherwise God would not be merciful and just".But it is not, according to Nasr, the exoteric level, that of divergences, which allows access to a true understanding and acceptance of other religions; only esotericism, which transcends the formal dimensions of religions, allows, according to him, uncompromising adherence to the authenticity of all revelations, by recognizing in them a supra-formal unity which resolves these very differences. Nasr actively participates in the dialogue between Christians and Muslims. In 2008, he was the main Muslim speaker, opposite Benedict XVI, at the first Catholic-Muslim Forum organized by the Vatican. For Nasr, "one of the reasons why it is so difficult to have a deep religious dialogue today" with Christians, is due – besides their conviction "that there is no salvation outside the Church" – to the absence of an "esoteric dimension, interior [...], mystical", which centuries of secularism have stifled. For Islam, which is not "theologically threatened by the presence of other religions in the same way that Christianity is", the influence of secularism occurred much later than in the West, and Sufism, which is its interior dimension, continues to inspire "the most profound doctrines that have been formulated concerning the plurality of religions and the relationship between them". For Nasr, as Jahanbegloo emphasizes, dialogue is "not only a pursuit of truth, but also a challenge to spiritual responsibility" of each religion to try to "heal the wounds of the present-day secularized world" in which we live. Tradition

In Knowledge and the Sacred, Nasr defines tradition as follows:

For Nasr, the tradition therefore presents two aspects: "one is truths that are of a transcendent order in their origin, that came from the Divine, from God", revealed at the birth of each of the great religions and, on the other hand, the transmission of these truths by these same religions and by the civilizations they have generated; tradition is therefore not limited to religion – this is its heart – but it is deployed in all areas of a culture, hence the names "traditional art, traditional sciences, traditional architecture, traditional music, traditional clothing, etc."Following René Guénon – to whom he is "indebted for clarifying this fundamental concept" –, Nasr refers to a "Primordial Tradition", which he defines as being the single truth from which emanate all truths, the immutable and timeless archetype from which all traditions originate. According to Nasr, at a time when Heaven and Earth were still "united", the original or archetypal man was directly enlightened, spiritually and intellectually, by the Primordial Tradition. The value of tradition, for Nasr, is not manifested by a simple nostalgia for the past, it stems from the wisdom that this tradition conveys, instructing the human being on his own nature and that of the world, and calling him to achieve his original perfection. Only the truths conveyed by tradition, continues Nasr, allow us to grasp the full scope of the errors of modern thought and its misdeeds on man and nature. Ecology

It was in 1966, during the Rockefeller Foundation Lectures at the University of Chicago, that <mask> <mask> Nasr, for the first time, made public the importance that he placed on nature and his concern for its degradation. He was one of the first philosophers to turn to this question and he is considered to be the founder of environmentalism in the Muslim world. In several works he deals with the causes of the mutilation of the planet and the restorative remedies.Causes

Tarik Quadir argues that "the ecological crisis, for Nasr, is only an externalization of an inner malaise [...] due in large part to the various applications of modern [western] science. [...] Following the loss of the vision of the universe proper to medieval Christian worldview, [...] this science ignores or denies the existence of any reality other than that of the material aspect of nature". Indeed, as Nasr explains, "the Renaissance and its aftermath […] witnessed the rise of a secular humanism and the absolutization of earthly man with immeasurable consequences for both the world of nature and traditional civilizations conquered by this new type of man, who gives free rein to his Promethean ambition to dominate nature and its forces in order to gain wealth or to conquer others civilizations, or both. [...] Nature, more than a lifeless mass, has thus become a machine to be dominated and manipulated by a purely earthly man". Thus, it is "to modernism and its false presumptions about the nature of man and the world", that Nasr attributes "the destruction of the natural environment", in addition to "the disintegration of the social fabric", and he deplores that all States, "from monarchies to communist governments, to revolutionary regimes, […] all want to copy avidly Western science and technology, without thought of their cultural, social and environmental consequences". Nasr believes that another cause of ecological problems is found in scientism, that is, the conviction that "modern science provides if not the only, at least the most reliable means to true knowledge" and that it leads thereby "to human progress", as imagined by those who evaluate a human society solely in terms of its economic growth. Nasr corroborates the observation that the development of the current economic system rests largely on human passions, which it feeds in its turn, thus generating a continuous blossoming of new needs which, in reality, are only desires.Finally, "if modern man destroys nature with

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 such impunity, it is because he looks upon it as a mere economic resource". Remedies

Quadir maintains that for Nasr, it is not by technology that environmental problems can be solved in the long term, being themselves the consequence of this technology. According to Nasr, the critique of the extraordinary technological development is certainly necessary, but the real critique must start with the root of the problem, i.e. with oneself, because in a desacralized West, few are aware of what Nasr considers the raison d'être of human life and of nature. This consciousness, for Nasr, is present in the wisdom of the various religious traditions, "as well as in their cosmologies and sacred sciences". And it alone makes it possible to rediscover "the sense of the sacred", in particular with regard to nature,because deprived of this sense, the human being remains immersed in the ephemeral, abandoning himself to his own lower nature, with an illusory feeling of freedom. As a consequence, the philosopher Ramin Jahanbegloo argues that Nasr's goal "is to negate the totalitarian claims of modern science and to reopen the way to the religious view of the order of nature, developed over centuries in the cosmologies and sacred sciences of the great traditions"."Once the awareness comes of what really nature is, warns Nasr, that nature is not just an 'it', that it is a living reality and has a sacred content, that it has an inner relation with our own inner being, [...] that we cannot destroy nature without destroying ourselves. [...], then we will begin to respect her" and, consequently, the dominant technology will initiate a reconversion. Realizing then, by this interior transformation, that true happiness is not linked to consumption, the human being will recognize his "real and not imagined needs", the only solution to slow down the uncontrolled appetite which leads to the daily rape of the planet. Critique of modernism

Nasr says that it was in the Renaissance in the West (14th-16th centuries) that the "modernist" or reductive vision of the human condition and the universe began to take shape, and spread to other continents during the past two centuries. This ideology is characterized by "the rejection of the theocentric view of reality", hence an absolutization of the human to the detriment of the Divine, but of a human denying his "pontifical nature", therefore reduced "to his rational and animal aspects, [wandering] in a desacralized wasteland, oblivious to his origin" and living only at the periphery of his being and of the universe. Nasr considers that after the Renaissance, faith no longer had the monolithic cohesion of the Middle Ages. The "new man" is no longer defined by "his celestial archetype and his Edenic perfection", nor by his "symbolic and contemplative spirit", but by his "individuality, reason, the senses, corporeality [and his] subjectivism".Nasr contends that this marked the beginning  of the ever increasing secularization of man and of knowledge, which, step by step, lead the West to skepticism, relativism, individualism, materialism, progressivism, evolutionism, historicism, scientism, agnosticism, atheism and, ultimately, what he considers the present chaos. According to Nasr, given that the wisdom conveyed by the various traditional civilizations finds its origin in a divine revelation, these civilizations have always transmitted a fair representation of man and his purpose. Thus, as Joseph E. B. Lumbard notes, for Nasr, "only tradition can provide the weapon necessary to carry out the vital battle for the preservation of the things of the spirit in a world which would completely devour man as a spiritual being if it could". According to Nasr:

The theory of evolution
For Nasr, the results of modern scientific investigation of nature are defined by the "oblivion of intellect" and, thus, are "severed from Divinity and highly compartmentalized". He maintains that the scientific explanations for the origins of the natural world are "purely physical" and "aimed at reducing man to matter while excluding divinity and teleology from nature". On this basis, Nasr rejects the theory of evolution, claiming that it is "an ideology, it is not ordinary science," that it is "more a pseudo-religion than a scientific theory," that it “requires more faith than is claimed by any religion for its founder or even for God,” and that evolution is both metaphysically and logically impossible. The sociologist Farzin Vahdat sees this as part of Nasr's rejection of secular reason and secular science, and more broadly of the modern world, and Salman Hameed in an editorial for Science identified Nasr as one of a few Islamic creationists active in Western academic institutions.Marietta Stepaniants observes that, for Nasr, "the absurdity of that theory" is that it offers "horizontal and material causes in a unidimensional world, to explain effects whose causes belong to other levels of reality". As an alternative, Nasr defends his vision of an Islamic philosophy of science that accepts "limited biological changes" occurring throughout time, but rejects the idea that solely natural mechanisms account for what he calls "creativity". He contends that evolutionary biology is a "materialist philosophy" rather than a "real science with a true empirical foundation" and contrasts a Darwinian vision of life with his God-centered perspective of nature based in the traditional Islamic understanding of life and creation. Nasr contends that evolutionism is one of the cornerstones of the contemporary worldview and has contributed directly to the modern world's degradation of the spiritual significance and sacredness of God's creation, as stated in "sacred scriptures" such as the Quran. Philosophy

Commenting on an article that Muhammad Suheyl Umar dedicated to him, Nasr speaks of his own "philosophical position":

For Nasr, the true "love of wisdom" (philosophia) was shared by all civilizations until the emergence, in the West, of a thought which dissociated itself more and more from the spiritual dimension as a result of the occultation of the sapiential core of religion and the divorce of philosophical intelligence from faith. Apart from the case of certain Greek currents such as sophistry and skepticism, as well as the episode of nominalism towards the end of the Middle Ages, it was really during the Renaissance, continues Nasr, that "the separation of philosophy and of revelation" began, despite the maintenance in certain isolated circles of a true spirituality. With the development of individualism and the emergence of rationalism and skepticism, only the purely human faculties – reason and the senses – "determined knowledge, although faith in God still persisted to a certain extent", but that was not enough to hold back "the progressive desacralization of knowledge which characterizes European intellectual history" from this period on  and which "led to the completely profane philosophy of today".However, "the very separation of knowledge from being, which lies at the heart of the crisis of modern man is avoided in the Oriental traditions, which consider legitimate only that form of knowledge that can transform the being of the knower". Adnan Aslan notes a passage from Nasr in which he endorses Plato's commentary in the Phaedo, which equates philosophy with "the practice of death"; this death, for Nasr, corresponds to the extinction of the "I", a necessary stage for the realization of the "Self" or of the "Truth". Several works by Nasr support critical analyzes of those he considers to be engines of modern deviation: Descartes, Montaigne, F. Bacon, Voltaire, Hume, Rousseau, Kant, Comte, Darwin, Marx, Freud, Aurobindo, Theilhard de Chardin and others. In addition, his writings abundantly cite those who, for him, convey authentic wisdom: Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato, Plotinus, Augustine, Shankara, Erigena, Avicenna, al-Bīrūnī, Suhrawardī, Ibn Arabī, Rūmī, Thomas Aquinas, Eckhart, Dante, Mullā Sadrā, Guénon, Coomaraswamy, Schuon, Burckhardt, Lings, etc. Scientism

Patrick Laude submits that Nasr is "the only foremost perennialist writer to have received an intensive and advanced academic training in modern sciences" while Joseph E. B. Lumbard contends that "as a trained scientist", Nasr is well suited to argue about the relationship between religion and science. Summarizing Nasr's thought, Lucian W. Stone, Jr. writes in The Dictionary of Modern American Philosophers: "According to Nasr, while the traditional sciences – which include biology, cosmology, medicine, philosophy, metaphysics, and so on –, understood the natural phenomena and humanity as vestigia Dei (signs of God), modern science has severed the universe, including humans, from God. The natural world or cosmos has a meaning beyond itself, one of which modern secular science is intentionally ignorant".Nasr argues that historically Western science is "inextricably linked to Islamic science and before it to the Greco-Alexandrian, Indian, ancient Iranian as well as Mesopotamian and Egyptian sciences". Denying this heritage, the Renaissance already – despite some resistance –, but especially the 17th century (Descartes, Galileo, Kepler, Newton), imposed new paradigms in accordance with the ambient anthropocentrism and rationalism, and with the secularization of the cosmos, which have resulted in a "unilateral and monolithic science, [...] bound to a single level of reality [...], a profoundly terrestrial and externalized science". While not denying the prowess "of a science limited to the physical dimension of reality", Nasr nonetheless argues that "alternative worldviews drawn from traditional doctrines remain constantly aware of the inner nexus which binds physical nature to the realm of Spirit, and the outward face of things to an inner reality which they at once veil and reveal". For the traditional sciences of all civilizations, the universe is formed by a hierarchy of degrees, the most "external" or "lowest" degree being the physical world, the only one that modern science recognizes; this lower degree reflects the higher degrees of the universe "by means of symbols which have remained an ever open gate towards the Invisible". Nasr speaks of "certain intuitions and discoveries" of contemporary scientists, "which reveal the Divine Origin of the natural world", a deduction that scientism does not want to admit, "the scientific philosophers are much more dogmatic than many scientists in denying any metaphysical significance to the discoveries of science". Scientism presents "modern science not as a particular way of knowing nature, but as a complete and totalitarian philosophy which reduces all reality to the physical domain and does not wish under any condition to accept the possibility of the existence of non-scientistic worldviews". However, Nasr notes, a large number of eminent physicists "have often been the first to deny scientism and even the so-called scientific method [...], seeking to go beyond the scientific reductionism which has played such a great role in the desacralization of nature and of knowledge itself".According to Lumbard, Nasr considers that:

Art

In his reflections on art, Seyyed <mask> Nasr bases himself on "the traditional perspective which is by nature meta-historic and perennial". For him, all art "must convey the truth and beauty" and "a meaning that is ultimately universal" because it is independent of "the ego of the individual artist". He cites as examples the traditional art, "whether it be Persian and Arabic in the Islamic world, Japanese and Chinese in the Far East, Hindu and Buddhist in the Indian world, medieval Christian in the West", as well as the arts of the "primal people of the Americas, Australia and Africa, who in a sense, belong to one family". "That art is the reflection of a Platonic paradigm, idea, or archetype, in the Platonic sense, in the world of physical forms." Thus, in traditional art, specifies Nasr, the artist "is an instrument for the expression of certain symbols, of certain ideas, [...] which are beyond the individual and are executed artistically through traditional techniques" because they belong to the "spiritual world"; "this is where the great difference between traditional and modern art comes from". An art is considered traditional "not because of its subject matter but because of its conformity to cosmic laws of forms, to the laws of symbolism, to the formal genius of the particular spiritual universe in which it has been created, its hieratic style, its conformity to the nature of the material used, and, finally, its conformity to the truth" as expressed by the religious milieu from which it comes. As for sacred art, "which lies at the heart of traditional art [, it] has a sacramental function and is, like religion itself, at once truth and presence"; it "involves the ritual and cultic practices and practical and operative aspects of the paths of spiritual realization".In a traditional society, says Nasr, one does not distinguish between sacred art and religious art but "in the post-medieval West and also outside of the Western world since the 19th century, in fact wherever you already have had the decadence of the traditional arts", religious art is characterized only by its subject, at the expense of "its means of execution and its [supra-individual] symbolism" which "belong to the suprahuman realm". Today "much of what is called religious art is no longer traditional but individualistic and psychological." For Nasr, the degeneration of Western art since the Renaissance is the consequence of a "view of man as a purely secular and earthly being". From symbolic as it was, art became more and more naturalistic, as can be seen, for example, by comparing the sculptures of Chartres Cathedral to those of Michelangelo, or paintings of the Virgin by Raphael to those of the Middle Ages. But, tired of indefinitely reproducing beings and objects deprived of life, naturalism faded in the second half of the 19th century in front of "this new very ingenious wave of impressionist art which tries to capture some of the qualities of nature […] using light and colors [...], without simply emulating the external forms of nature". This movement, however, was only a "transient phase, and soon the whole world of form broke down from below, [...] starting with Picasso and continuing to our own day". The "cracks in the confines of the solidified mindset created by centuries of humanism, rationalism and empiricism" have opened access to the most "inferior" influences.According to Nasr, most modern artists "become completely enmeshed in their own egos [...], leading lives which are in many cases not morally disciplined, whereas the traditional perspective", on the contrary, "seeks to free us through spiritual discipline [...] destroying the stranglehold that the lower ego has upon our immortal soul". The traditional artist "does not try to express his own feelings and ideas", as the modern artist does; "Art for art's sake" is not his credo, nor is "innovation, originality and creativity" because, unlike the modern artist, he knows that art has as its goal "the attainment of inner perfection and [...] human need[s] in the deepest sense [...], which are spiritual", intimately linked to "beauty and the truth." "All beauty", writes Nasr, "is a reflection of Divine Beauty and can lead to the Source of that reflection"; but the contemporary rubs shoulders with "ugliness, unaware that the need for beauty is as profound in the human being as the [...] air that we breathe". For Nasr, there are artists in the present day, rooted in a true spirituality and who express it or attempt to express it in their art, with the humility demanded by "light of the truth and the millennial heritage of traditional art, most of which was produced […] by anonymous artists who humbled themselves before the reality of the Spirit and through their transparency were able to reflect the light of the spiritual world in their works". Awards and honors
In 2000, a volume was devoted to him in the Library of Living Philosophers. Templeton Religion and Science Award (1999)
 First Muslim and first non-Western scholar to deliver the prestigious Gifford Lectures. Honorary Doctor from the Faculty of Theology of Uppsala University, Sweden (1977)
 In 1977, La Perse, pont de Turquoise ('Persia, the turquoise bridge'), which he co-authored with Roloff Beny won the Prix Charles Blanc of the Académie Française.Works

Nasr is the author of over fifty books and five hundred articles (a number of which can be found in the journal, Studies in Comparative Religion)  on topics such as Traditionalist metaphysics, Islamic science, religion and the environment, Sufism, and Islamic philosophy. He has written works in Persian, English, French, Arabic and Indonesian. 1) (1999)
 The Pilgrimage of Life and the Wisdom of Rumi: Poems and Translations (2007)
As editor
 An Annotated Bibliography of Islamic Science, edited with William Chittick and Peter Zirnis (3 vols., 1975)
 Isma'ili Contributions to Islamic Culture (1977)
 The Essential Frithjof Schuon (1986)
 Shi'ism: Doctrines, Thought, and Spirituality, edited with <mask> Vali Reza Nasr and Hamid Dabashi (1988)
 Expectation of the Millennium: Shi'ism in History, edited with <mask> Vali Reza <mask> and Hamid Dabashi (1989)
 Islamic Spirituality (Vol. 1: Foundations, 1987; Vol. Sources and Bibliography

 This work is a bibliography of <mask> <mask> <mask> from 1961 to 2014 including translation of his works in 28 languages. (From the publisher.) Notes

See also

References

External links

 Faculty page at Columbian College of Arts & Sciences
 Google Scholar Page

20th-century Iranian philosophers
21st-century Iranian philosophers
1933 births
Iranian expatriate academics
American writers of Iranian descent
American Sufis
Iranian Sufis
Iranian Shia Muslims
American Shia Muslims
Traditionalist School
Columbian College of Arts and Sciences faculty
Academics of the University of Edinburgh
Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumni
Peddie School alumni
People from Tehran
Scholars of Sufism
Shia scholars of Islam
Living people
Chancellors of the Sharif University of Technology
Iranian emigrants to the United States
Islamic philosophers
American Islamic studies scholars
Iranian researchers
Muslim

masks: Hossein Seyyed Seyyed Nasr Seyyed Hossein Nasr


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<mask> (5 March 1913 – 29 January 1996) was an optical mineralogist and collaborator applying the electron microprobe to petrology. His involvement in the Apollo program brought him to the attention of the British media and public. He was also interested in moon rocks and the moon itself. Biography
<mask> was born in Ruislip, Middlesex to a Scandinavian father and English mother. He went to Trinity Hall, Cambridge in 1932, the first year of C E Tilley's new Department of Mineralogy and Petrology, and attained a first class degree. This was followed by a PhD, which was a substantial study of Scottish metamorphics, under P. C. Phillips at Cambridge in 1938. He went to join the staff at Manchester University, and in 1939 on the outbreak of World War II was put to work studying industrial slag mineralogy in order to improve the efficiency of the furnace process.In 1949 he returned to Cambridge University as a Lecturer and as Museum Curator in Tilley's Department. He carried on with his work in laterites and widened his interest to calcareous rocks. With the collaboration of J. V. P. Long began using the electron microprobe to study rocks and minerals. He took in hand an extensive but ill-organised collection of meteorites in the museum and from his study with electron probe work discovered the "Agrell effect", the decrease in the nickel content of kamacite as a boundary with taenite is approached. In 1962 Agrell was appointed Visiting Professor on the American Geological Institute scheme. For two and a half years he was busy with Professorships at the University of Minnesota and at Berkeley and occasional field trips. One of these field trips took him to a road-side quarry on Highway 101 just south of Laytonville California.The local mineralogists superficially thought that the minerals were ordinary amphiboles. <mask> realized that the optics were wrong for that, and soon found that he had three new mineral species to name. Three of his colleagues at Cambridge had just published a famous five volume set called "The Rock Forming Minerals" by Deer, Howie and Zussman, so each of the authors got one of the minerals named after him. Playfully named, deerite was the mineral found with each of the other two, "but the junior author's minerals, howieite and zussmanite, never occurred together". (Reference: see published paper, below.) His work on meteorites, and the discovery of the Agrell effect, led to him being accepted not only as a Principal lunar sample Investigator for the Apollo program, but also the only non-American petrologist member of the preliminary examination team at Houston. When he returned to Britain with moon rock in a carpet bag, he almost became a national celebrity for his appearances as the "expert geologist" in the BBC television coverage of astronauts collecting lunar rocks and soils.He was pioneer in bringing geology to the general public. He published seminal papers on the constitution of the lunar soil and on lunar basalt mineralogy. <mask> became a Fellow of Trinity Hall in 1964 Once interest in the Apollo programme declined, <mask> returned to meteoritics, his curatorial duties, and teaching final year students. As he came to the end of his career during the 1970s, he passionately wanted Cambridge to remain a centre of extraterrestrial sample research and attracted talented workers to form a flourishing planetary sciences group there. <mask> retired in 1980, at the same time as the Mineralogy and Petrology Department merged into the new Department of Earth Sciences an outcome that he had quietly helped to achieve. Retirement made little difference to his level of activity and the award of a Leverhulme Emeritus Fellowship allowed him to return to the Marysvale district of Utah to continue work he had started in the 60s. In 1983 he was elected President of the Mineralogical Society of Great Britain.Three years later, in 1986, he suffered a stroke at the wheel of his car which involved him in a serious road accident. Although he managed to achieve some further research successes this effectively put an end to his work. <mask> was an outstanding optical mineralogist and pioneer of precise chemical analysis for petrographic studies, Although he was an excellent communicator, he was a poor formal lecturer partly because of a slight stammer and he disliked writing because of a mild word dyslexia. This affected the amount of recognition he received. His strength was in practical teaching and many of the students he taught and also advised unofficially went on to become leaders in their fields. His memory is perpetuated by the mineral agrellite (NaCa2Si4O10F). Agrell married Jean Imlay, a former fellow graduate student at Cambridge whose skills included fluency in Russian and computing.They had three sons. Publications
 Agrell, S. O.; and Long, J. V. P. "The Application of the scanning X-ray microanalyser to mineralogy", in X-ray Microscopy and Microanalysis (Engstrom, A.; Coslett, V. E.; and Pattee, H. H.; editors), (1960), Elsevier, Amsterdam (NL), pp. 391– 400
 Agrell, S. O.; Long, J. V. P.; and Ogilvie, R. E.; Nickel content of Kamacite near the interface with taenite in iron meteorites (1963), Nature 198, 749–750
 Agrell, S. O.; Polythermal metamorphism of limestones at Kilehoan, Ardnamurehan, Scotland (1965), Mineralogy Magazine 34, 1 15
 Agrell, S. O.; Bown, M. G.; and McKie, D.; Deerite, howieite and zussmanite, three new minerals from the Franciscan of the Laytonville district, Mendocino Co., California (1965) American Mineralogist 50, 278
 Agrell, S. O.; Peckett, A.; Boyd, F. R.; Haggerty, S. E.; Bunch, T. F.; Cameron, E. N.; Dence, M. R.; Douglas, J. A. V.; Plant, A. G.; Traill, R. J.; James O. B.; Keil, K.; and Prinz, M.; Titanian chromite, aluminium chromite and chromian ulvospinel from Apollo 11 rocks (1970), Proceedings of the Apollo ll Lunar Science Conference, Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta, l (Suppl. 1), 81–6

References

 Chinner, Graham; Memorial of Stuart Olof Agrell, American Mineralogist, Volume 83, pages 666–668, 1998
 Pillinger, Colin; Hutchison, Robert; and Scott, Edward R. D.; Memorial: Stuart Olof Agrell, Meteoritics and Planetary Science, vol. 31, p. 931

1913 births
1996 deaths
English mineralogists
Alumni of Trinity Hall, Cambridge
Fellows of Trinity Hall, Cambridge
20th-century British geologists
People from Ruislip

masks:
Stuart Olof Agrell
Agrell
Agrell
Agrell
Agrell
Agrell
Agrell


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<mask> (born <mask>; January 30, 1928 – July 31, 2019), commonly known as <mask>, was an American theatrical director and producer known for his work in musical theater. One of the foremost figures in 20th century American theater, <mask> became associated throughout his career with many of the most noteworthy musicals in Broadway history, including West Side Story, Fiddler on the Roof, Cabaret, Sweeney Todd, and Phantom of the Opera, the longest running show in Broadway history. Many of his productions broke new ground for musical theater, expanding the possibilities of the form by incorporating more serious and political subjects, such as Nazism (Cabaret), the difficulties of marriage (Company), and the forcible opening of 19th-century Japan (Pacific Overtures). Over the span of his career, he garnered a record-setting 21 Tony Awards, including eight for directing, eight for producing the year's Best Musical, two as Best Producer of a Musical, and three special awards. Early life
<mask> was born to an affluent family in Manhattan, the son of Blanche ( Stern) and <mask>. He was adopted by his stepfather, Milton A<mask>, a stockbroker.His family was of German Jewish descent. Following his graduation from the Franklin School, later called the Dwight School, in New York, he entered the University of Pennsylvania, where he followed a liberal arts curriculum and graduated in three years at age 19. He later served two years with the United States Army in post-World War II Germany. Career
<mask> began work in the theatre as an assistant stage manager to theatrical producer and director George Abbott. Along with Abbott, he co-produced The Pajama Game, which won the 1955 Tony Award for Best Musical. He received Tony Awards for 1956's Damn Yankees, 1960's Fiorello! and 1963's A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, and Tony nominations for 1958's West Side Story and New Girl in Town.He went on to direct and produce his own productions in 1962 beginning with the unsuccessful A Family Affair followed by his first critically successful musical, She Loves Me (Tony nomination, 1964). He received a Tony Award for producing Fiddler on the Roof (1965) and almost gave up musical theatre before his Tony winning success directing and producing with Kander and Ebb's Cabaret in 1966, followed by Kander and Ebb's Zorba (Tony nomination, 1969). 1970 marked the start of his greatest creative collaboration, with composer/lyricist Stephen Sondheim. They had previously worked on West Side Story and their association spawned a long string of landmark productions, including Company (Tony Award, 1970), Follies (Tony Award, 1971), A Little Night Music (Tony Award, 1973), Pacific Overtures (Tony nomination, 1976), Side by Side by Sondheim (Tony nomination, 1977), and Sweeney Todd (Tony Award, 1979). Following Merrily We Roll Along (1981), which ran for 16 performances, they parted ways until Bounce in 2003. He received a Tony nomination for directing On the Twentieth Century (1978) and won twice for the Andrew Lloyd Webber musicals Evita (1980) and The Phantom of the Opera (1988). Between them, <mask> was offered the job of directing Cats by Lloyd Webber but turned it down and directed A Doll's Life (1982) with lyricists Betty Comden and Adolph Green.The musical continued the story of Nora Helmer past what Henrik Ibsen had written in A Doll's House. It ran for five performances; The New York Times wrote, "It was overproduced and overpopulated to the extent that the tiny resolute figure of Nora became lost in the combined mechanics of Broadway and the Industrial Revolution." Broadway wags dubbed the show either "A Doll's Death" or, due to the omnipresent portal out of which Nora slammed in the prologue, "A Door's Life." <mask>'s other commercially unsuccessful musicals included Grind (Tony nomination, 1985), which closed after 71 performances, and Roza (1987). However, his production of The Phantom of the Opera eventually became the longest-running show in Broadway history. <mask> ultimately stopped producing because he "became more interested in directing". Kiss of the Spider Woman, which he directed in 1993, received the Tony Award for Best Musical.In 1994, <mask> became a Kennedy Center Honoree. He received a 1995 Tony Award for directing Showboat, and was nominated again for 1999's Parade. In 2000, he was awarded the National Medal of Arts. In 2006, <mask> was awarded a Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Theatre. In 2007, he directed his last original musical on Broadway, LoveMusik and on May 20 of that year, he gave the commencement address at Gettysburg College in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. He was presented with the American Academy of Achievement's Golden Plate Award by awards council member and author Toni Morrison at a 2007 ceremony in Washington, D.C. In 2008 <mask> was the keynote speaker at Elon University's Convocation for Honors celebration.<mask> co-directed, with Susan Stroman, the 2010 musical Paradise Found. The musical features the music of Johann Strauss II as adapted by Jonathan Tunick with lyrics by Ellen Fitzhugh. The book was written by Richard Nelson, based on Joseph Roth's novel The Tale of the 1002nd Night. The musical premiered at the Menier Chocolate Factory in London on May 19, 2010 and closed on June 26, and starred Mandy Patinkin. A retrospective of <mask>'s work titled Prince of Broadway was co-directed by <mask> and Susan Stroman and presented by Umeda Arts Theater in Tokyo, Japan in October 2015. The book was written by David Thompson with additional material and orchestrations by Jason Robert Brown. <mask> was slated to direct The Band's Visit in 2016 but withdrew due to scheduling conflicts.Prince of Broadway opened in August 2017 at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre in New York with a cast featuring Chuck Cooper, Janet Dacal, Bryonha Marie Parham, Emily Skinner, Brandon Uranowitz, Kaley Ann Voorhees, Michael Xavier, Tony Yazbeck, and Karen Ziemba. In addition to musicals, <mask> also directed operas including Josef Tal's Ashmedai, Carlisle Floyd's Willie Stark, Puccini's Madama Butterfly, and a revival of Bernstein's Candide (Tony Award, 1974). In 1983 <mask> staged Turandot for the Vienna State Opera (conductor: Lorin Maazel; with José Carreras and Éva Marton). <mask> was the inspiration for John Lithgow's character in Bob Fosse's film All That Jazz. He was also assumed to be the basis of a character in Richard Bissell's novel Say, Darling, which chronicled Bissell's own experience turning his novel 7½ Cents into The Pajama Game. According to Masterworks Broadway, "besides his achievements as a producer and director, <mask> is also known for bringing innovation to the theatrical arts. In collaboration with Stephen Sondheim, he was a pioneer in the development of the 'concept musical,' taking its departure from an idea or theme rather than from a traditional story.Their first project of this kind, Company (1970), was a solid success and paved the way for other innovative musicals." According to The New York Times, "He was known, too, for his collaborations with a murderer's row of creative talents, among them the choreographers Bob Fosse, Jerome Robbins, Michael Bennett and Susan Stroman; the designers Boris Aronson, Eugene Lee, Patricia Zipprodt and Florence Klotz; and the composers Leonard Bernstein, John Kander, Stephen Sondheim and Andrew Lloyd Webber." The Harold Prince Theatre at the Annenberg Center of the University of Pennsylvania is named in his honor. A documentary titled <mask>: The Director's Life was directed by Lonny Price and broadcast on PBS Great Performances in November 2018. In 2019, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts presented an extensive exhibit honoring the life and work of <mask>. <mask> served as a trustee for the library and on the National Council of the Arts of the National Endowment for the Arts. At the behest of Lotte Lenya, whom he cast in Cabaret (1966), <mask> also served on the Board of Trustees of The Kurt Weill Foundation for Music and as a judge of their Lotte Lenya Competition.Andrew Lloyd Webber said: "There isn't anybody working on musical theater on either side of the Atlantic who doesn't owe an enormous debt to this extraordinary man....Hal was very minimalist with his sets. People think of Phantom as this great big spectacle. That's an illusion. Hal always looked at the show as this big black box in which the stage craft enabled you to believe there was this impressive scenery all around you." Jason Robert Brown said: "More than anything else, when I think about Hal, I think about his belief in theater. He believed in what it could do....He thought a lot about the world and the political systems and emotional support systems in it. He was very much a political artist."Personal life
<mask> married Judy Chaplin, daughter of composer and musical director Saul Chaplin, on October 26, 1962. They are parents of <mask>, a director, and <mask>, a conductor. Actor Alexander Chaplin, best known as "James Hobert" on Spin City, is <mask>'s son-in-law. At the time of his death, <mask> lived in Manhattan and Switzerland. Death
<mask> died in Reykjavík, Iceland, on July 31, 2019, at the age of 91. The marquee lights of Broadway theatres were dimmed on July 31, 2019, in the traditional gesture of honor. A memorial was held at Broadway's Majestic Theatre on December 16, 2019.Work

Stage productions
Source: Playbill (vault); Internet Broadway Database

 Tickets, Please! (1950) – assistant stage manager
 Call Me Madam (1950) – assistant stage manager
 Wonderful Town (1953) – stage manager
 The Pajama Game (1954) – co-producer
 Damn Yankees (1955) – co-producer
 New Girl in Town (1957) – co-producer
 West Side Story (1957) – co-producer
 Fiorello!

masks:
Harold Smith Prince
Harold Smith
Hal Prince
Prince
Prince
Harold Smith
. Prince
Prince
Prince
Prince
Prince
Prince
Prince
Prince
Prince
Prince
Prince
Prince
Prince
Prince
Legacy Prince
Prince
Harold Prince
Harold Prince
Prince
Prince
Prince
Daisy Prince
Charles Prince
Prince
Prince
Prince


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<mask> ( Kagawa Shinji ; born 17 March 1989) is a Japanese professional footballer who plays as a midfielder for Belgian First Division A club Sint-Truiden and the Japan national team. He is widely regarded as one of the best Japanese players of all time. <mask> began his professional career in his homeland with Cerezo Osaka before joining Borussia Dortmund in 2010. After two years with Dortmund, <mask> signed for Manchester United on a four-year contract. Two years later, he returned to Dortmund. <mask> holds the records for most appearances and goals by a Japanese player in UEFA club competitions. Since making his senior international debut in May 2008, he has won over 90 caps and scored over 30 goals.On 29 November 2012, <mask> was named Asian Football Confederation International Player of the Year. Club career
<mask> was born in Kobe, Hyōgo Prefecture. He started playing football at the age of five. He joined Marino Football Club from 1994 to 1999, Kobe NK Football Club from 1999 to 2001, and FC Miyagi Barcelona in Sendai from 2001 to 2005. Cerezo Osaka
Cerezo Osaka noticed his talent and signed him at the age of 17. He was the first player in Japan to sign a professional contract before graduating from high school, except players promoted from youth teams of the J.League clubs. In 2007, he gained a regular position but the club missed promotion to the J.League Division 1.It was in 2009 that he became the top scorer of J.League Division 2 and drew widespread attention. Borussia Dortmund

2010–11 season

In the summer of 2010, <mask> transferred from Cerezo to Borussia Dortmund for €350,000. The relatively modest cost of the transfer was because of a release clause in Kagawa's contract with Cerezo, which allowed him to leave the club cheaply if he had an opportunity to play in Europe. On 23 August 2010, he made his debut appearance in the Bundesliga, starting for his new club Dortmund. After scoring his first two competitive goals for the club in the UEFA Europa League qualifying tie against Qarabağ FK, he continued this form with his first goal in the Bundesliga match against VfL Wolfsburg, which Dortmund won 2–0. In the Revierderby against arch-rivals Schalke 04, which Dortmund won 3–1, <mask> claimed pre-match that he would score two goals; he accomplished the feat, making him a fan favourite in the process. <mask> missed half of the Bundesliga season because of an injury he picked up on international duty with Japan, but managed to score eight goals in 18 appearances.His strong effort in the first half of the season helped his side finish as champions of the Bundesliga, and he was even named in the Bundesliga Best XI. 2011–12 season
Kagawa was back in time for the start of the 2011–12 Bundesliga campaign and quickly found his way back into the starting line-up. Kagawa scored his first goal of the new Bundesliga season on 18 September, coming on in a disappointing 2–1 loss to Hannover 96, as Dortmund gave up two goals in the last three minutes. On 22 October, <mask> opened the scoring in the seventh minute as Dortmund crushed 1. FC Köln 5–0 in front of 80,200 home fans at the Signal Iduna Park. Kagawa scored again on 5 November, as Dortmund brushed aside VfL Wolfsburg 5–1 and moved within two points of league leaders Bayern Munich. Kagawa scored a late consolation against Arsenal in a 2–1 loss in the group stage of the Champions League.On 28 January 2012, <mask> scored twice in Dortmund's 3–1 win against Hoffenheim. <mask> scored the only goal of the game against Werder Bremen on 17 March, heading in a pass from İlkay Gündoğan in the eighth minute. <mask> scored two goals in Dortmund's 6–1 thrashing of Cologne on 25 March, keeping Dortmund five points ahead of Bayern in the title race. <mask> won the Bundesliga with Borussia Dortmund in 2012 as they set a Bundesliga record scoring the most points in a season in the Bundesliga, with 81. <mask> also scored a goal and provided an assist for Dortmund against rivals Bayern Munich in the 2012 DFB-Pokal Final. He scored a total of 13 goals and had 8 assists during that season. Manchester United

On 5 June 2012, it was announced by Manchester United that the club had reached an agreement with Borussia Dortmund and <mask> for his transfer, a deal that made him the first Japanese player to join the club.The fee was reported to be an initial £12 million, with a further £5 million in possible add-ons. The transfer was completed on 22 June after Kagawa passed his medical at Manchester United and received his UK work permit. On 3 July, it was revealed that Kagawa would wear the number 26 shirt for United. <mask> spoke about his former club, Borussia Dortmund, saying, "I will carry this club, their great fans, and the whole city in my heart forever and will follow their results with great interest." On 18 July 2012, <mask> was handed a two-minute appearance to mark his Manchester United debut in Durban, South Africa, against AmaZulu in a pre-season friendly match. <mask> made his first start for the Red Devils against Ajax Cape Town on 21 July 2012, and scored his first goal against Shanghai Shenhua four days later. He made his Premier League debut on 20 August 2012, playing the full 90 minutes of United's 1–0 defeat away to Everton.He scored his first goal against Fulham on 25 August in his home debut for the club. After Tom Cleverley's shot was parried by Fulham goalkeeper Mark Schwarzer, Kagawa scored on the rebound from close range. On 19 September, <mask> was given his first Champions League start as United played against Galatasaray. He provided an assist for the winning goal scored by Michael Carrick in a 1–0 win. On 23 October, he set up Javier Hernández for United's first goal in an eventual 3–2 Champions League victory against Braga. In that match, however, he twisted his knee, which left him sidelined for two months. <mask> returned from injury in January 2013.On 2 March 2013, <mask> scored his first hat-trick for United and also became the first Asian player to score a hat-trick in the Premier League, in his team's 4–0 home win against Norwich City. On 22 April, Kagawa played a part in the title-winning match against Aston Villa in which United won 3–0; he became the first Japanese player to win a Premier League title. On 12 May, <mask> was included in the United squad to play against Swansea City in Alex Ferguson's last home game before retirement, which United won 2–1. On the same day, Kagawa received his Premier League medal and was voted Man of the Match. Return to Dortmund
On 31 August 2014, <mask> officially returned to his former club, Borussia Dortmund, for an undisclosed fee thought to be around £6.5 million and signing a contract until 30 June 2018. He was assigned the shirt number 7 which was vacated by Jonas Hofmann who had left Dortmund to 1. FSV Mainz 05 on loan.On his return debut, Kagawa scored a goal and set up another to help Dortmund win 3–1 against SC Freiburg. On 14 July 2017, <mask> extended his contract with Dortmund until 2020. In the first half of the 2018–19 season, a combination of injury and coach Lucien Favre's preference to play Marco Reus as a central attacking midfielder meant <mask> played just four times for Dortmund. That led to <mask> joining Turkish club Beşiktaş on loan for the remainder of the season. Zaragoza
On 9 August 2019, <mask> completed a transfer to Real Zaragoza of Spain's Segunda División, penning a two-year contract. He debuted for the club on 17 August 2019, in the 2019–20 Segunda División opening match against Tenerife at La Romareda, which Zaragoza won 2–0. Eight days later, he scored his first goal in a 1–1 draw against Ponferradina.On 2 October 2020, <mask>'s contract was terminated by Zaragoza. PAOK
On 27 January 2021, <mask> joined Super League Greece club PAOK on a one-and-a-half-year contract. On 18 December 2021, due to not being part of Razvan Lucescu's plans, despite some opportunities at the start of the 2021-22 season, <mask> mutually terminated his contract with the club and for no recompense for the remaining six months. <mask> left PAOK almost after a year, having only 12 appearances in competitive games, of which only three were as a starter. Sint-Truiden
On 10 January 2022, <mask> signed with the Belgian club Sint-Truiden. International career
Kagawa played as a member of the Japan national under-20 football team in the 2007 FIFA U-20 World Cup held in Canada. In 2008, he was also selected to play as a member of the Japanese team for the 2008 Summer Olympics.On 24 May 2008, he made his senior international debut in a friendly Kirin Cup match. Japan won the match against Ivory Coast 1–0. However, was not selected in Takeshi Okada's final 23 squad for the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa. In September 2010, he scored the only goal of the game in Japan's win over Paraguay in Yokohama. <mask> was included in the 2011 AFC Asian Cup by coach Alberto Zaccheroni. In the quarter-final against Qatar, he scored two goals. The game ended in 3–2 win for Japan.In the semi-final against South Korea, <mask> broke his metatarsal bone and missed the final where Japan beat Australia after extra-time. <mask> was named in Japan's 23-man squad for the 2013 FIFA Confederations Cup and scored the second goal for his country during the group stage match against Italy, which ended in a 4–3 loss. He was selected for his first World Cup in 2014, but made little impact as the "Samurai Blue" was eliminated at the group stage. At the 2015 AFC Asian Cup, <mask> scored Japan's second goal during a 2–0 defeat of Jordan in the group stage and was named as man of the match. <mask> participated in Japan's quarter-final match against the United Arab Emirates. After the match ended 1–1 after extra time, <mask>, who was Japan's final kicker in the penalty shoot-out, hit the post with his kick, as Japan ended up losing the shoot-out 5–4. Style of play
A technically and creatively gifted player, <mask> is a versatile attacking midfielder who primarily plays in a playmaking role.He can additionally play on either the left or right flank. Kagawa has good composure on the ball and disciplined decision making and passing. He is an agile player who tends to roam around the opponents' defense looking for an intelligent and creative pass or through ball. He has great attacking play both on and off the ball. He also has great attacking positioning which allows him to have one of the best eyes for goal. Perhaps his best qualities are his agility, passing discipline, creativity, positioning during attack and the ability to pick out a key pass. He's fairly quick and can attack and score goals himself.Whilst playing for Japan, he has played in a left midfield, or a central attacking midfield role. Career statistics

Club

International

Scores and results list Japan's goal tally first, score column indicates score after each Kagawa goal. Honours
Borussia Dortmund
Bundesliga: 2010–11, 2011–12
DFB-Pokal: 2011–12, 2016–17

Manchester United
Premier League: 2012–13
FA Community Shield: 2013

PAOK
Greek Cup: 2020–21
Japan
AFC Asian Cup: 2011

Individual
Bundesliga Player of the Hinrunde: 2010
kicker Bundesliga Team of the Season: 2010–11, 2011–12
kicker Bundesliga First half of the 2012 Season, Only one selected for world class. VDV Team of the Season: 2011–12
ESM Team of the Season: 2011–12
AFC Asian International Player of the Year: 2012
Bundesliga Team of the Season: 2015–16
IFFHS Asian Men's Team of All Time: 2021

Notes

References

External links

1989 births
Living people
Sportspeople from Kobe
Association football people from Hyōgo Prefecture
Japanese footballers
Japan youth international footballers
Japan international footballers
Association football midfielders
J1 League players
J2 League players
Bundesliga players
Regionalliga players
Premier League players
Süper Lig players
Segunda División players
Super League Greece players
Cerezo Osaka players
Borussia Dortmund players
Borussia Dortmund II players
Manchester United F.C. players
Beşiktaş J.K. footballers
Real Zaragoza players
PAOK FC players
Sint-Truidense V.V. players
Olympic footballers of Japan
Footballers at the 2008 Summer Olympics
2011 AFC Asian Cup players
AFC Asian Cup-winning players
2013 FIFA Confederations Cup players
2014 FIFA World Cup players
2015 AFC Asian Cup players
2018 FIFA World Cup players
Japanese expatriate footballers
Expatriate footballers in Germany
Expatriate footballers in England
Expatriate footballers in Turkey
Expatriate footballers in Spain
Expatriate footballers in Greece
Expatriate footballers in Belgium
Japanese expatriate sportspeople in Germany
Japanese expatriate sportspeople in England
Japanese expatriate sportspeople in Turkey
Japanese expatriate sportspeople in Spain
Japanese expatriate sportspeople in Greece
Japanese expatriate sportspeople in Belgium

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Shinji Kagawa
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<mask> (13 August 1935 – 17 March 1999) was a British comedian and popular entertainer on television in the 1970s and 1980s. He rarely appeared without Emu, a mute, highly aggressive arm-length puppet modelled on the Australian flightless emu bird. Early life
<mask> was born on the Isle of Sheppey, Kent, England in 1935. He attended Delemark Road School and the County Technical School, Sheerness. After national service with the RAF, he qualified as an electrician. TV career

Australia
<mask> moved to Australia in 1956. His first job in television was as a lighting technician with TCN Channel 9 in Sydney.He then began appearing on air, notably as Constable Clot in Channel 9's Kaper Kops with Reg Gorman and Desmond Tester, a regular segment in its children's afternoon programming. Clot proved very popular and soon gained his own segment, Clot in the Clouds, which depicted Constable Clot daydreaming about having other professions, such as a world-famous brain surgeon, 'Blood Clot.' Later he worked with Marilyn Mayo as co-host of a children's breakfast TV programme, The Super Flying Fun Show, playing a wacky character named 'Caretaker Clot,' an extension of his Kaper Cops role. <mask> first used Emu as a puppet in this show. There are conflicting reports as to how this came about: The 2003 Channel 4 documentary <mask>: A Bird in the Hand states bluntly, "In fact, Emu was a Channel Nine creation". Other sources cite a Channel Nine producer, Jim Badger, who said that he had requested a reluctant <mask> to use Emu. <mask> assigned to himself full authorship of Emu, stating, "Sure I found him in a cupboard, but I had put him there in the first place.I concocted him, nobody else." The bird subsequently became a regular part of <mask>'s set on cabarets back in the United Kingdom and Australia. Britain
<mask> returned to the UK in 1971 and signed with International Artists (after Emu tore up the office). Soon after, his Australian success translated to his native country with <mask> appearing on several children's and adult light entertainment shows. His first UK television appearance came on the ITV show Saturday Variety, but it was his appearance in the 1972 Royal Variety Performance that provided his springboard to national recognition. Emu
<mask> used Emu to create a kind of gleeful havoc, while not accepting blame for it. The simple, effective conceit of a false arm attached to <mask>'s jacket, which cradled the emu, made it appear that the neck and head moved of its own volition.This apparently independent movement gave the illusion that the bird had its own personality, which entailed sudden, unprovoked, and often violent attacks on anyone and anything that came too close. During these events <mask> would imitate half-hearted attempts to pull the bird away from its victim but would often become embroiled in the fracas, rolling around on the floor, creating theatrical mayhem. When <mask> left The Super Flying Fun Show and Australia, a duplicate of Emu was made so the character could continue on the show, much to <mask>'s annoyance, and comedian Marty Morton took over <mask>'s co-hosting position in Australia. <mask> and Emu were regulars on The Hudson Brothers Razzle Dazzle Show, which aired for one season as a Saturday morning kids' show on American broadcaster CBS in 1974-75. There were apparently no boundaries to Emu's outrageous behaviour. At least two people have publicly reported <mask>'s sexual assault of women using Emu as a cover. Darts champion Eric Bristow wrote: ‘He used the puppet to feel up women and stick his hand between people's legs.’ In a 2007 interview with Chortle, the late veteran comedy producer Michael Hurll said to <mask> ’ "Look <mask>, you’ve got your hand in that emu, up girls’ skirts and squeezing their tits; doing things you would get locked up for."More common was <mask>'s physical assault of people and things using Emu. In 1972, <mask> destroyed The Queen Mother's bouquet of flowers during the after-show line-up at the aforementioned Royal Variety Performance after which he appeared in many other shows. During 1976 <mask> made his most famous appearances when Hull's Emu repeatedly attacked Michael Parkinson during his eponymous chat show, eventually causing the interviewer to fall off his chair. Fellow guest Billy Connolly threatened, "If that bird comes anywhere near me, I'll break its neck and your bloody arm!" Perhaps mindful of his professional future, <mask> swiftly curtailed his Emu behaviour. In later years, Parkinson later referred to it as "that bloody bird." This led to his own television series Emu's Broadcasting Company (1975–1980), Emu's World, EMU TV and Emu's All Live Pink Windmill Show.He was the subject of This Is Your Life in 1982 when he was surprised by Eamonn Andrews at Thames Television's Euston Road Studios. In 1983 he published a book of poetry. Also in 1983 he appeared in the US on The Tonight Show, attacking host Johnny Carson, even after he was told not to by the producers, and Richard Pryor in one of the comedian's first public appearances after undergoing major emergency reconstructive surgery on his face. Later life
By the 1990s, <mask> was seen less frequently on TV, although he continued to appear in pantomime and television commercials. He won the 1993 "Pipe Smoker of the Year" award. Nonetheless, his name remained well known, and comedians Richard Herring and Stewart Lee included a "not <mask>" character in their 1996 television sketch show Fist of Fun, played by Kevin Eldon. This character was performed as a grotesque imitation of <mask> and was finally unmasked by the real <mask> who appeared (minus Emu) in the last episode of the series.It was to be <mask>'s penultimate television appearance. A 2003 Channel 4 documentary, <mask>: A Bird in the Hand, suggested that <mask> nursed an increasing resentment towards his puppet, believing that the success of the bird prevented him from pursuing other avenues in show business. He saw himself, according to the makers of the programme, as a talented performer who could have developed a more varied career in the entertainment industry had he not been repeatedly forced to play the 'and Emu' role. <mask> once complained, "I want to write but Emu doesn't leave me the time. I want to be a comedian in my own right, but again Emu won't let me do it." Personal life
<mask> married his first wife Sandra in 1958; they had two daughters, Deborah and Danielle. He was a fan of the football club Bristol Rovers, and he recorded a song called "Bristol Rovers All the Way" in 1974, with the squad of that time.In the late 1980s Hull bought Restoration House in Rochester for £270,000 but the cost of renovations and an unpaid tax bill resulted in bankruptcy in 1994. <mask>'s second wife, Cher Hylton-<mask>, already had a daughter, Catrina, and the couple had three children together: Toby, Amelia, and Oliver. Cher, who had been instrumental in his success, moved to her home country of Australia with the children while <mask> remained in England and relocated to a shepherd's cottage in East Sussex. Death
On 17 March 1999, <mask> climbed onto the roof of his bungalow, in Winchelsea to adjust the television aerial. He slipped and fell. Following an inquest, the coroner recorded a verdict of accidental death. Legacy
Prior to <mask>'s death, Lee and Herring had planned to revive their "not <mask>" character for their contemporary series, This Morning with Richard Not Judy, but although they filmed several sketches – in which the character would die after performing a pointless stunt – the footage was never used.Instead, the final episode of the second and final series of This Morning with Richard Not Judy concluded with a post-credits sketch featuring Kevin Eldon's <mask> character, fading out to a simple dedication reading "This series is dedicated to <mask>." <mask> and Emu were also the subject of the song "No One Knew the Real Emu" by The Toy Dolls (2004). Upon <mask>'s death, Michael Parkinson reminisced that he had found him to be "a very charming, intelligent, and sensitive man – quite unlike the Emu." He observed that the puppet "was the dark side of <mask>'s personality, and very funny, provided it was not on top of you." His son Toby brought Emu out of retirement for the first time since his father's death during the 2003 pantomime season, appearing in Cinderella at the Theatre Royal, Windsor. <mask> and Emu appeared in their own series on CITV. In June 2018, Phil Fletcher famous for his Hacker T. Dog creation for CBBC bought one of the last remaining Emu puppets for £8,860 at Chippenham Auction Rooms in Wiltshire.<mask> also made an appearance in the strategy map game Hearts of Iron IV as an easter egg as the leader of the Australian Non-Aligned party, and the country's name becomes the Emu Empire. See also

Bernie Clifton, contemporary comedian with ostrich puppet based comedy routine
Arthur! and the Square Knights of the Round Table, Australian series for which <mask> was a writer. References

External links
 The <mask> Tribute Website
 BFI: List of series made
 Sausage.net: Emu's Broadcasting Company

1935 births
1999 deaths
20th-century British comedians
20th-century English screenwriters
20th-century English male actors
Accidental deaths from falls
Accidental deaths in England
British male television writers
Butlins Redcoats
English male comedians
English male television actors
English puppeteers
English television writers
Male actors from Kent
People from the Isle of Sheppey

masks:
Rodney Stephen Hull
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Rod Hull
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