Why? and Why.

Let's move on to the second paragraph of Schuon's essay on Man in the Cosmogonic Projection. 

I realize we've discussed this subject in the past, but it's always helpful to review important principles, especially when practically the whole world -- AKA the World -- believes otherwise and exerts a constant pressure to conform to its anti-principles. 

I'm not complaining about the latter, mind you. Rather,

Unless what we write seems obsolete to modern man, immature to the adult, and trivial to the serious man, we have to start over.

Here's the first sentence:

The question of the "why" of creation has given rise to many speculations.

I detest speculation, except in the strict classical sense of the term, which doesn't refer to impotent conjectures of the can-I-buy-some-pot-from-you style midwit intellectual adventurer. 

Rather, real speculation involves nailing down the ultimate reasons for things. It is simultaneously the most useless (because it isn't for the sake of something else) and useful knowledge there is (because it pertains to our origins and end, or to the whole reason for being here).

You could say that practical and utilitarian knowledge is material and efficient (like science), whereas speculative knowledge is formal and final, AKA vertical.  But for this very reason, it is actually more certain than merely scientific knowledge, which is by definition tentative and preluminary, always on-the-way-to.

To what?

From what?

Yes, and yes.  

the cosmogonic projection [what we call "cosmogenesis"] has as its ultimate cause the infinitude proper to the Absolute.

This sentence is ineluctably true even if you would prefer that it not be, for there is no truth in the absence of Truth itself; this latter principle is either explicit or implicit, but without its vertical/ontological sponsorship, our local epistemological franchise is rendered blankrupt, and no coherent or consistent statement about anything is possible. We will no doubt return to this subject latter.

Now, to say infinitude is to say All-Possibility and consequently the overflowing of the divine potentialities, in conformity with the principle that the Good wills to communicate itself.

In Christian metaphysics this would be analogous to kenosis, the following definition of which taken from Essential Theological Terms, by Justo Gonzalez. It is "A term derived from the Greek word for emptying," in reference to a passage in Philippians, which forms

the basis of a christological view that sought to explain the possibility of the incarnation by claiming that the eternal Word, or Logos, of God divested himself of the divine attributes that are incompatible with being human... 

By virtue of what other principle could God possibly make himself not-God? Here's a passage from Lossky's Mystical Theology that describes it more concretely (I could find better ones, but this is close to hand): 

As we have said may times, the perfection of the person consists in self-abandonment: the person expresses itself most truly in that it renounces to exist for itself. It is the self-emptying of the Person of the Son, the Divine kenosis.

Later he describes "His true humanity which voluntarily submitted to death as a final stripping, emptying, and culmination of the divine kenosis."

Which goes to a debate I often have with myself, going to the question of whether it is possible to root theology in a more universal metaphysics, but let's not get sidetracked; we'll no doubt return to this question too as we proceed.  

It is said that God "created" the world by a "free act of His will," but this is only to stress that God does not act under constraint; this last term somehow lends itself to confusion for it goes without saying that God is indeed "obliged" to be faithful to His Nature and for that reason cannot but manifest Himself by a quasi-eternal or co-eternal chain of creations... 

Analogously, since God's essence is love, we could say that  he "constrained" by it as well. This probably sounds a bit suspicious, but in my view this "constraint" is precisely what distinguishes the trinitarian Christian God from the less differentiated God of, say, Islam. 

The Muslim would insist that God has no constraints whatsoever, but this has certain baleful consequences for man and civilization, for it means that -- for example -- God doesn't do things because they are good; rather, things are good because he does them. 

It makes for a morally arbitrary, unintelligible, and impenetrable world from the human perspective, with no speculative basis for natural law or theology -- a God of pure will. It reduces any speculative Why? to Because I said so. Very much like the left that way.  It's why authoritarian leftism is so congenial to assouls such as Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, Linda Sarsour, and Keith Ellison.