Rene Guenon and Traditionalism

Discussion of the nature of Ultimate Reality and the path to Enlightenment.
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Arktos
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Rene Guenon and Traditionalism

Post by Arktos » Wed Feb 07, 2007 10:20 pm

Greetings everyone: After initial examination, I believe I have a found a very valuable web community of authentic seekers after the forgotten ways of virtue.

With that in mind, has anyone studied the French metaphysician Rene Guenon here? The ideas here and Guenon's own are broadly consonant: the modern world is inorganic and dysfunctional due its abandonment of spiritual, traditional values. Guenon pioneered what is called the "Traditional School" or Traditionalism. Guenon posited a higher esoteric unity of the orthodox religious traditions of the planet and considered modernity as the slavish Kali Yuga, the Dark Age of Aryo-Vedic tradition. Two key followers and adapters of Guenon's ideas were Frithjof Schuon and Julius Evola.

I suppose the purpose of this message is to suggest for the like-minded people here to look into Guenon, Evola, Traditionalism if they have not already done this...

Arktos
Posts: 18
Joined: Wed Feb 07, 2007 10:06 pm

Post by Arktos » Thu Feb 08, 2007 12:14 am

Intro to Guenon:

http://www.geocities.com/integral_tradition/guenon.html

(BTW, the site is an excellent collection anti-modernist figures and texts in general)

RENÉ GUÉNON (ABD AL-WAHID YAHYA)

Considered to be the founder of the Traditionalist school, Guenon was born in Blois, France on November 15, 1886. He devoted the early years of his life to the study of mathematics and philosophy. He went to Paris in 1906, where he maintained regular contact with various spiritualist groups. In 1909, he edited and published a review journal called La Gnose for which he wrote a number of essays and reviews on spirituality and esoterism. In 1910, he met the famous French painter Gustav Ageli, who had by that time embraced Islam and taken the name Abd al-Hadi. Guenon was initiated into Sufism in 1912 and became Muslim, taking the name Abd al-Wahid Yahya.

He finished his university education in 1916 with a thesis called "Leibniz and Infinitesimal Calculus". The same year, he met Jacques Maritain, one of the most influential Catholic thinkers of the 20th century. In 1921, he prepared his doctoral dissertation under the title "General Introduction to the Study of Hindu Doctrines". Guenon’s thesis was rejected by his doctoral committee, which led to his eventual abandonment of academia in 1923. The dissertation was later published as a book under the same title. In 1924, he published Orient and Occident, one of his major works on comparative philosophy and spirituality. This was followed by The Crisis of the Modern World (1927)--perhaps his most famous and widely read book.

A year after the publication of The Crisis of the Modern World, Guenon’s wife died. He went to Egypt in 1930 as part of a project for the study and publication of some Sufi texts. He never left Egypt again. He married Fatima, the daughter of the Sufi Shaykh Muhammad Ibrahim, in 1934 and settled in a house near al-Azhar University where he had regular contact with ‘Abd al-Halim Mahmud, the famous president of al-Azhar and scholar of Sufism. Although Guenon received occasional visits from such members of the Traditionalist School as Titus Burckhardt, Frithjof Schuon and Martin Lings, he remained largely reclusive during his years in Egypt, working on his major books and articles. Towards the end of his life, Guenon’s poor health, which had accompanied him throughout his life, deteriorated further, leading to his death on January 7, 1951.

Guenon’s writings span a wide array of subjects from metaphysics and symbolism to the critique of the modern world and traditional sciences. One of the constant themes of his corpus is the sharp contrast between the traditional worldview shared by various religions of the world and modernism, which he considered to be an anomaly in the history of mankind. His writings devoted to the critique of modernism and the modern world contain some of the most profound and enduring analyses of the modern world and its philosophical outlook. Orient and Occident and The Crisis of the Modern World, both published in the first half of the 20th century, are still widely read today and have been translated into various languages. In addition to these two books devoted exclusively to the critique of the modern world from a traditionalist point of view, Guenon’s other writings contain many references to metaphysical and philosophical misconceptions prevalent in modern Western societies.

The second part of Guenon’s corpus deals with traditional doctrines and it is in these works that Guenon attempts to revive traditional concepts and sciences that have been either ignored or lost with the rise of modern philosophy. Such works as The Reign of Quantity and the Signs of the Times, Multiple States of Being and Fundamental Symbols of Sacred Science are devoted to the revival of traditional doctrines and have been instrumental in the rise and spread of the Traditionalist School represented by such figures as Frithjof Schuon, Ananda Coomaraswamy, Titus Burckhardt, Marco Pallis, Seyyed Hossein Nasr and Martin Lings. In addition to these, some of Guenon’s writings deal with certain themes and specific religious traditions, all of which have been written from the same perspective of traditional metaphysics and esoterism. For this category of writings, we can mention The Symbolism of the Cross, Man and His Becoming According to the Vedanta, Introduction to the Study of Hindu Doctrines, and the Grand Triad.

Guenon’s view of science is an integral part of his endeavor of reviving the traditional worldview and cannot be properly understood in isolation from the general purview that he adopts throughout his works. The gist of Guenon’s metaphysical views also lies at the heart of the Traditionalist School: the primordial and perennial Truth, which manifests itself in a variety of religious traditions and metaphysical systems, has been lost in the modern world. The modernists seek to reduce all higher principles and levels of reality to their manifestation in the world of multiplicity and relative existence. Modern philosophy carries this out by reducing everything to the individualistic horizon of the subject and by relegating objective reality to the discursive constructions of the knowing subject. In the field of natural sciences, positivism and its scientistic allies similarly reject any reality that is beyond the reach and scrutiny of the quantitative measurement of physical sciences. In the social realm, the moral and aesthetic principles are left to the arbitrary decisions and consensuses of the majority, thus jeopardizing the objective reality of the truth. For Guenon, the malaise of the modern world is its relentless denial of the metaphysical realm, the metaphysical world being comprised of both philosophy and spirituality. Guenon sees everything in the world of creation as an application and manifestation of metaphysical principles that are contained in the perennial teachings of religions, and applies them to every single subject that he addresses in his works. Both the value of traditional sciences of nature and the misguided claims of modern secular science are judged in proportion to their proximity or distance from these principles. In this sense, Guenon is a metaphysician par excellence who has devoted his life to the diagnosis and correction of the metaphysical mistakes of the modern world.

As far as Guenon’s writings on science are concerned, we can apply the aforementioned two-fold distinction and analyze his views in two broad categories. While the first category of writings pertains to the critical analysis of modern science and its philosophical viewpoint, the second group of writings deals with traditional sciences of nature, such as cosmology, alchemy, philosophy of numbers, and the science of the soul, which Guenon elucidates as numerous applications of metaphysical principles to the domain of the relative and the physical.

To emphasize the deep contrast between the traditional and modern sciences, Guenon calls the former ‘sacred science’ and the latter ‘profane science’ (The Crisis of the Modern World, p. 37, 47). Sacred science, which, in this particular context, is synonymous with traditional science, is based on "intellectual intuition" on the one hand, and the acceptance of the hierarchy of being, on the other. For Guenon, intellectual intuition, which lies at the foundation of traditional societies, precedes discursive knowledge for it is directly related to the knowledge of the Absolute. The relative, which is the domain of physical sciences and their applications in the form of various quantitative methods and technology, is not to be denied but placed in its proper position in the great chain of being. Sciences of nature deal with the relative in the total economy of things, and in this sense they pertain to the world of multiplicity. This explains, according to Guenon, the existence of various traditional sciences that display significant differences in form and language from one traditional civilization to another but remain the same in essence and principle. When construed as multifarious adaptations and "illustrations" (Ibid., p. 48) of metaphysical principles to the realm of corporeal existence, the traditional cosmological and scientific systems that use different methodologies and languages within and across civilizations become justified.

In understanding Guenon’s notion of science, therefore, one can hardly overemphasize the significance of the relation between the Principle and its adaptations. For Guenon, metaphysics studies the Principle and provides principial knowledge whereas the sciences of nature investigate its earthly, relative, and multi-layered manifestation in the cosmos. Scientific theories, even when enunciated as empirically established and universal truths, cannot function as substitutes for higher principles but only as further corroborations of the principles of which they are but applications. In this regard, metaphysics, as Aristotle has said, is the science of all sciences, namely it is a knowledge that provides a total framework for all other forms of knowledge, whether based on theoria or praxis. Consequently, metaphysics connects all branches and forms of knowledge, supplying a frame of reference within which the physical sciences function. To carry this point a step further, Guenon reverses the relation between theory and experiment and gives priority to "preconceived ideas" – a point of view remarkably close to Thomas Kuhn’s concept of paradigm. For Guenon, it is a "peculiar delusion, typical of modern ‘experimentalism’, to suppose that a theory can be proved by facts whereas really the same facts can always be equally well explained by a variety of different theories" (Ibid., p. 42).

Guenon attributes this mistake to what he calls the "superstition of facts", a creation of modern profane science, which supposes that science investigates "bare facts" devoid of any subjective, theoretical or supra-sensual ingredients. By contrast, Guenon makes a radical intellectual claim and grounds all human understanding, theoretical, experimental or aesthetic, in intellectual intuition, which is also the main gateway to metaphysical knowledge. All knowledge is a form of understanding in one way or another – a conclusion voiced and articulated by many philosophers of modern hermeneutics. To use the terminology of the philosophy of science, we can assuredly say that Guenon would agree with the basic postulate that all observation is theory laden, i.e., it is preceded by a set of preconceived ideas and suppositions that cannot be accounted for within the exclusive purview of physical sciences. As we have pointed out before, sciences of nature are applications and adaptations of metaphysical principles to particular fields of study and as such derive their philosophical justification not from their subject matter, as the positivists would argue, but from those principles that inform and determine their purview. In this sense, scientific knowledge, insofar as it derives its justification from principles, is neither false nor useless. Thus Guenon emphatically states that "there is no question of maintaining that any kind of knowledge, however inferior, is illegitimate in itself; what is not legitimate is simply the abuse which occurs when subjects of this kind absorb the whole of human activity, as is the case today." (Ibid., p. 43).

It is from this point of view that Guenon takes up the question of the rise of the experimental method in modern sciences. He puts the question in the following way: "Why have the experimental sciences received a development in the modern civilization such as they have never received at the hands of any other civilization before?" (Ibid., p. 42). Guenon answers this crucial question by underscoring a powerful tendency of the modern world, and it is the exclusive concern of the modern mind with what is given to us in our immediate sense experience. Natural sciences by definition confine themselves to the corporeal realm and provide a systematic access to what can be tested only in the sensible world. The sciences thus deal with the most minimal aspect of reality, which is what is immediately available to us in terms of sensation, feelings, experiences, and so on. Once the quantitative dimension of things is construed to be the ultimate foundation of what can be known and studied, philosophy, following Kant and his students, becomes a handmaid of physics, viz., a mere interpreter of the data supplied by physical sciences.

For Guenon, this represents the peak of modern reductionism, which turns all intellectual endeavors into bad philosophy. This is what Guenon calls "the reign of quantity" as the title of his most important work on traditional sciences of nature states (See his The Reign of Quantity and the Signs of the Times, Introduction). As Guenon puts it, the reason why the experimental method has gained an unprecedented prominence in the modern world is that the physical sciences "confine their attention to things of the senses and to the world of matter, and also that they lend themselves readily to the most immediate practical applications; their development, going hand in hand with what may well be termed the "superstition of facts", is thus quite in accordance with the specifically modern tendencies, whereas preceding ages would, on the contrary, have been unable to find sufficient inducements for becoming absorbed in this direction to the extent of neglecting the higher orders of knowledge." (The Crisis of the Modern World, pp. 42-3).

Thus Guenon considers the rise of modern science not as a natural outcome of advances in experimental methods but rather as a result of a fundamental change in modern man’s Weltanschauung, which Guenon takes to be a "process of degeneration" from the point of view of intuitive-metaphysical knowledge. By the same token, the infinitely detailed data gathered by the sciences about the quantitative dimension of reality signifies, for Guenon, not a deepening of knowledge but "dispersion in detail … which can be pursued indefinitely without advancing a single step further in the direction of true knowledge." (Ibid., p. 41). As Guenon has explained in the Reign of Quantity and his other writings, this is a result of the severing of scientific knowledge from higher principles outlined by traditional metaphysics. Another important outcome of this process is that the natural sciences are now concerned primarily with practical applications, and in many cases this is combined with a will to power. This is the common confusion between science and technology. As Guenon puts it: "…it is not for its own sake that Westerners in general cultivate science as they understand it; their primary aim is not knowledge, even of an inferior order, but practical applications, as may be inferred from the ease with which the majority of our contemporaries confuse science and industry, so that by many the engineer is looked upon as a typical man of science" (Ibid., p. 41).

Guenon assigns two interrelated functions to the sciences of nature when they are conceived in their traditional setting. The first pertains to the fact that sciences as "applications of the doctrine … allow of linking up all the different orders of reality one to another and of integrating them in the unity of the total synthesis." (Ibid., p. 47). Said differently, natural sciences analyze the hierarchy of being and show the underlying unity that exists in various domains of the cosmos. The second function of the traditional sciences of nature is rather pedagogical in that they prepare us for higher forms of knowledge: "they [i.e., natural sciences] constitute, for some people at least, and in accordance with their own particular aptitudes, a preparation for a higher type of knowledge and a kind of pathway leading towards it, while from their hierarchical arrangement, according to the levels of existence to which they relate, they form as it were so many rungs of a ladder with the aid of which it is possible to raise oneself to the heights of pure intellectuality."

Guenon has further developed the above themes in The Reign of Quantity and the Signs of the Times with more emphasis on the analysis of various scientific concepts from the traditional point of view. With great mastery and lucidity, Guenon deals with such concepts as quantity and quality, prime matter, "spatial quantity and qualified space", time, individuation, unity and simplicity, "solidification of the world", geometrical symbols, numbers, change and becoming, and a host of other concepts, all analyzed with a view towards underscoring the deep intellectual transformation that took place with the rise of modern secular science. In this particular book whose title summarizes a great deal of its message, Guenon focuses on the quantification of reality in the name of scientific measurement, prediction, exactitude.

As the most prominent defender of traditional metaphysics and philosophy of science in the 20th century, Guenon has played a key role in the development of a highly critical position towards what Wolfgang Smith has called modern ‘scientism’. Even though Guenon has remained somewhat unknown in Western academic circles owing to his scathing criticism of the modern worldview and uncompromising defense of tradition, his writings have made a deep impact on many intellectuals and writers in the West and the East.

Bibliography
Rene Guenon’s major works include the following:

The Crisis of the Modern World, tr. by A. Osborne, M. Pallis, R. Nicholson (London: Luzac, 1962).
The Multiple States of Being, tr. by Jocelyn Godwin (New York: Larson, 1984).
The Reign of Quantity and the Signs of the Times, tr. by Lord Northbourne (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1972).
Symbolism of the Cross, tr. by Angus Macnab (London: Luzac, 1958).
East and West, tr. by William Massey (London: Luzac, 1941). See also the new translation by Martin Lings (New York: Sophia Perennis, 2001).
The Esotericism of Dante, tr. by Henry D. Fohr (New York: Sophia Perennis, 2001).
The Great Triad, tr. by Peter Kingsley (Cambridge: Quinta Essentia, 1991).
Insights into Islamic Esoterism and Taoism, tr. by Henry D. Fohr (New York: Sophia Perennis, 2001).
Introduction to the Study of Hindu Doctrines, tr. by M. Pallis (London: Luzac, 1945).
Man and His Becoming According to the Vedanta, tr. By R. Nicholson (London: Luzac, 1946).
The Metaphysical Principles of the Infinitesimal Calculus, tr. by Henry D. Fohr (New York: Sophia Perennis, 2001).
Spiritual Authority and Temporal Power, tr. by Henry D. Fohr (New York: Sophia Perennis, 2001).
Fundamental Symbols: The Universal Language of Sacred Science, tr. by Alvin Moore, revised and edited by martin Lings (Cambridge: Quinta Essentia, 1995).

Arktos
Posts: 18
Joined: Wed Feb 07, 2007 10:06 pm

Post by Arktos » Thu Feb 08, 2007 12:20 am

Sample of his writings:

http://www.geocities.com/integral_tradition/faqr.html

AL-FAQR ('SPIRITUAL POVERTY')

This article appears in Studies in Comparative Religion Winter Issue (1973)


The contingent being may be defined as one that is not self-sufficient, not containing in himself the point of his existence; it follows that such a being is nothing by himself and he owns nothing of what goes to make him up. Such is the case of the human being in so far as he is individual, just as it is the case of all manifested beings, in whatever state they may be for, however great the difference may be between the degrees of Universal Existence, it is always as nothing in relation to the Principle. These beings, human or others, are therefore, in all that they are, in a state of complete dependence with regard to the Principle "apart from which there is nothing, absolutely nothing that exists"; it is the consciousness of this dependence which makes what several traditions call "spiritual poverty".

At the same time, for the being who has acquired this consciousness, it has, as its immediate consequence, detachment with regard to all manifested things, for the being knows from than on that these things, like himself, are nothing, and that they have no importance whatsoever compared with the absolute Reality. This detachment implies essentially and above all, in the case of the human being, indifference with regard to the fruits of action as is taught particularly in the Bhagavad-Gita, and which enables the being to escape from the unending chain of consequence which follows this action; it is "action without desire" (nishkaama karma), which "action with desire" (sakaama karma), is action carried out in view of its fruits. "The true cause of things is invisible and cannot be grasped defined or determined. It can be attained in deep contemplation by him who is re-established in the state of perfect simplicity, and by no one else"(Lie-Tseu).

"Simplicity" meaning the unification of all the being's powers, is a feature of the return to the "primordial state"; and here is seen the whole difference that separates the transcendent knowledge of the sage from ordinary and "profane" knowledge. This "simplicity" is also what is called elsewhere the state of "childhood" (in Sanskrit baalya), to be understood of course in the spiritual sense, and this "childhood" is considered in the Hindu doctrine as an indispensable condition for attaining to true knowledge.

This recalls the corresponding words in the Gospels; "Whosoever shall not receive the Kingdom of God as a little child shall in no wise enter therein" (St. Luke, XVIII 17.), "Thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent and hast revealed them unto babes. (St. Matthew, XI. 25; St. Luke, X. 21.) "Simplicity" and "smallness" are here equivalents, in reality, of the "poverty" which is so often mentioned also in the Gospels, and which is generally very much misunderstood: "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven" (5t. Matthew, V. 2.)

This "poverty" (in Arabic al-faqr) leads, according to Islamic esotericism, to al-fanaa, that is, to the extinction of the "ego"; (footnote: This "extinction" is not without analogy, even as to the literal meaning of the term which is used for it, with the Nirvana of the Hindu doctrine; beyond al-fanaa there is fanaa' al-fanaa' the extinction of the extinction, which corresponds similarly to Pariniroana.) and, by this "extinction" the "divine station" is reached (al-maaqam al-ilaahii), which is the central point where all the distinctions inherent in the more outward points of view are surpassed and where all the oppositions have disappeared and are resolved in a perfect equilibrium. "In the primordial state, these oppositions did not exist. They all spring from the diversification of the beings (inherent in manifestation and, like it, contingent), and from their contacts caused Faqirs of Refai Tariqat Kataragama by the Universal gyration (that is by the, rotation of the "cosmic wheel" around its axis). They cease then and there to affect the being that has reduced its distinct ego and its particular movement to almost nothing" (Choang-Tseu).

This reduction of the "distinct ego", which finally disappears by being reabsorbed into a single point, is the same thing as al-Fanaa, and also as the "emptiness" mentioned above; moreover, it is clear, according to the symbolism of the wheel, that the "movement" of a being becomes more reduced the nearer this being is to the center.

The "simplicity" referred to above corresponds to the unity "without dimensions" of the primordial point, which marks the end of the movement back to the origin. "The man who is absolutely simple sways by his simplicity all beings, so effectively that nothing sets itself against him in the six regions of space, nothing is hostile to him, and fire and water do not injure him"(Lie-Tseu). In fact, he remains at the center, which the six directions have issued from by radiation, and where, in the movement that takes them back, they come to be neutralized two by two, so that, in this single point their threefold opposition ceases entirely, and nothing that results from them or that is situated in them can reach the being who dwells in immutable unity.

Through his not setting himself against anything, nothing can set itself against him, for opposition is necessarily a reciprocal relation, which calls for the presence of two terms, and which is there fore incompatible with principal unity; and hostility which is only a result or an outward manifestation of opposition, cannot exist in connection with a being that is outside and beyond all opposition. Fire and water, which are the type of opposites in the "elemental world", cannot injure him, for, in actual truth, they no longer even exist for him as opposites, having returned, by balancing and neutralizing each other through reunion of their qualities, which, though apparently opposed to each other, are really complementary, into the indifferentiation of primordial ether.

This central point, through which there is, for the human being, communication with the higher or "celestial" states, is also the "narrow gate" of the Gospel symbolism and from what has gone before it will be easily understood who are the "rich" who cannot pass beyond it; they are the beings who are attached to multiplicity, and who are therefore incapable of rising from distinctive knowledge; to unified knowledge. This attachment, in fact, is the exact opposite of the detachment mentioned above, just as wealth is the opposite of poverty, and it involves the being in the indefinite series of the cycles of manifestation.

The attachment to multiplicity is also, in a certain sense, the Biblical "temptation", which, by making the being taste the fruit of the "Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil", moves him away from the original central unity and stops him from reaching the "Tree of Life"; and it is just by that, in fact, that the being is subjected to birth and death. The seemingly endless path of multiplicity is depicted exactly by the coils of the serpent winding round the tree that symbolizes the "Axis of the World"; it is the path of "those who are led astray (ad-daalliin), of those who are in "error" in the etymological sense of the word, as opposed to the "straight path" (as-siraat al-mustaqiim), in vertical ascension along the axis itself, the path that is spoken of in the first Surat of the Quran. (footnote: This "straight path" is identical with the Te or "Rectitude" of Lao- Tse, which is the direction to be followed by a being in order that his existence may be in accordance with the "way" (Tao), or, in other words, in conformity with the Principle.)

"Poverty", "simplicity" and "childhood", are no more than one same thing, and the process of being stripped which all these words express (footnote: It is the "being stripped of metals" in the Masonic symbolism.) culminates in an extinction" which is, in reality , the fullness of the being, just as "inaction" (wu-wei) is the fullness of activity , because it is from it that all the particular activities are derived; "The Principle is always inactive, and yet everything is done by it"(Tao-Te-Ching).
The being who has reached in this way the central point has realized, by this very means, the human state in its entirety; he is the "true man" (chenn-jen) of Taoism, and when, starting from this point to rise to the higher states, he has achieved the perfect fulfillment of his possibilities, he will have become the "Divine Man" (sheun-jen) who is the "Universal Man" (al-insaan al-kaamil) of Islamic esotericism. So it can be said that it is those without are the "rich" from the standpoint of manifestation who are really the "poor" with regard to the Principle, and inversely; that is what the following Gospel sentence expresses very clearly, "The last shall be first and the first shall be last" (St. Matthew, XX, 16.); and we are compelled to see in this respect, once again, the perfect agreement of all the traditional doctrines, which are no more than the diverse expression of the one Truth.

Arktos
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Joined: Wed Feb 07, 2007 10:06 pm

Post by Arktos » Thu Feb 08, 2007 12:32 am

Here is an intro to the second most prominent Traditionalist, Sicilian aristocrat Julius Evola:

(The similarity of arrived viewpoints between The Absolute thinkers and the Traditionalists is quite interesting)

http://www.centrostudilaruna.it/jenseitseng.html

Julius Evola, A Philosopher in the Age of the Wolf
An Appreciation for his 100th Anniversary

Baron Julius Evola, whose hundredth anniversary is celebrated on May 19th of this year, is correctly regarded as the intellectual figurehead of the Italian Right. Whatever anti-fascist propaganda may say to the contrary, he was never the "gray eminence of Mussolini," but he, above all others, rivals the Duce in his influence over several generations of Italian Right-wingers. The MSI leader Almirante has called him by the memorable term of "Our Marcuse, only better." But "anti-Marcuse" would have been more apt, because while Evola, like Marcuse, diagnoses modern man as "One-dimensional," he does not seek to replace him with new illusions: instead of Utopia, he offers Tradition.

In France, Evola's influence has been growing since the 1970s, thanks to the circle of thinkers called the "New Right." In Germany, in contrast, Evola's important works have only recently become available, either reprinted or for the first time; but here, too, his name, if not always his work, has inspired a new generation of Right-wing intellectuals. In the 1930s, it was in fact Germany that counted at least as much as Italy for Evola's reception. The great German poet Gottfried Benn wrote enthusiastically about "Revolt Against the Modern World":

"It is a book whose ideas and assumptions extend the horizons of almost every European problem to a degree hitherto unknown and unseen. Anyone who has read the book will see Europe differently. It is the first broad-ranging presentation of one of the basic spiritual impulses that is still active in Europe today--meaning by "active" that which is epoch-making, far-reaching in its destruction of feelings about the world, changing, and redirecting: it is the impulse that opposes history. For this very reason, it is an eminently important book for Germany, because history is a specifically German problem, and the philosophy of history a professedly Germanic form of self-understanding" ("Die Literatur," 1935).

Evola himself was seeking contacts not only in National Socialist circles, but also, and preferably, among men of the "Conservative Revolution" who exhibited a strong religious foundation. Wilhelm Stapel, who attempted to give National Socialism a theological basis, Carl Schmitt, the Cathlolic "Crown-Judge of the Third Reich," Othmar Spann, the Viennese theoretician of the composite State, who had a great influence on the nationalistic movement of the Sudeten Germans, Prince Rohan, the nationalist with a European outlook: these were Evola's correspondents and connections of choice in Germany. But Evola was not entirely at home in this camp, either. More than others, he deserves to be called a "loner," a solitary thinker in a derelict landscape: the philosopher in the Age of the Wolf.

Beside the influence of certain currents of the times such as Dadaism and Existentialism, which Evola soon left behind him, it was above all the experience of Nietzsche that he shared with many others of his generation, together with the biographical fact of action at the front in the First World War. Evola discovered the great teacher in the Frenchman, René Guénon.

Just like Evola, Guénon had once frequented various theosophical and esoteric-cultic circles, and then, out of disgust with the neo-Spiritualist distortions of ancient traditions and religions (such as would today be called "New Age") developed his own "traditional" doctrines. The commonality of Indo-Germanic and Asiatic traditions led him to discover a Primordial Tradition that had held universal sway before the fall into history. In the Vedanta of India, especially, this tradition was still clearly perceptible. The traditional world was contrasted with the modern world of soulless quantity and the power-grabbing of the masses.

In addition, Evola was much influenced by researches into prehistory, for instance those of Herman Wirth, which were able to verify the ancient myths of the Nordic, solar origin of culture. However, in Evola's traditional reconstruction of the Primordial Tradition this took on a very different meaning from what Wirth had given it.

Hierarchy, form, virility, transcendence, authority, sovereignty: these are some of the components of the solar world-image that Evola tries to keep intact through the steady devolution that is part of the cosmic cycle. His first magnificent assault on this condition took the form of his book "Revolt Against the Modern World" (1934, English tr., 1996), whose world-image was commented on thus by Gottfried Benn:

"What is it, then, this world of Tradition? First, it is a novel and evocative representation; no naturalistic or historical concept, but a vision, an erection, an enchantment. It evokes the world as universal, super-earthly and super-human. But this evocation can only arise and take effect when there are still remnants of this universality present, so that just to approach and grasp it is to be exceptional, elite, elect. This concept allows cultures to be liberated from humanity and from history, and to elevate their differences to a metaphysical plane, where they can be rebuilt in freedom and give birth to a new image of man: the ancient, lofty, transcendent man who is the bearer of Tradition".

Evola had realized that his previous proposal for a "pagan imperialism" ("Imperialismo pagano," 1928) was unviable, and had abandoned it. He himself thought that he had been forced into a narrow, anti-Catholic direction under the influence of Freemasony. Similarly, he later judged his single-minded fixation on the "Jewish question" of the 1930s governments as a mistake, traceable to those hidden powers that were thus able to pursue their own activities in the background.

The Ghibelline movement, as Evola presented it, entailed the priority of the Emperor, hence of a secular lord with his own sacral claims, as against the Papacy as bearer of priestly values. Priority did not mean anti-clericalism, because all anti-clericalism has a tendency to deny every sacred value, including those of the warrior and the military leader.

This already leads us to Evola's next major work, "The Mystery of the Grail" (1937, Eng. tr., 1998), which is concerned with exactly this sacred kingship, as it lived on in the Grail epics. Evola clearly indicates the non-Christian origins of these sagas: the legend of the Grail is the Saga of the Empire. And this Empire is the Imperium that has only been adopted by Christianity: in the last analysis, it is the world ordered according to traditional values. When the world falls into disorder, the secret knighthood that carries on and restores the solar Order of the inner Empire is again concealed, until the Grail is found once more.

It is absolutely clear from all these works that Evola took no political position, but rather a position that was against all politics, against the trading of political parties, against the wooing of the voting masses, against the predominance of economic over cultural values. Consequently, he never belonged to any party, and never cast a vote. It is from this that the epithet of "fascist thinker" is derived. But then the Fascists would have had to aspire to this, and realize it. Was this the case?

Certainly there were efforts in this direction in Italy and in Germany, but there were far more that tended to nullify them. Evola drew up the balance-sheet in this regard in "Fascism, viewed from the Right" (1964, unfortunately not translated).

The two books "Men Among Ruins" (1953, English tr. forthcoming 1999) and "Riding the Tiger" (1961) are both concerned with the new situation of the total victory of Americanism and Bolshevism: they give an orientation to those few who still have the courage to hold themselves upright among the debris. The requirement for this is the inner attitude of "apoliteia," which refuses to get involved in the business of political brawling. It refuses to be used by either of the two materialistic super-powers. There is no inner sympathy for the collapse of existent institutions, because they are built on the sands of democracy--built by Freemasons with the cheap mortar of the Enlightenment. These institutions, no longer even caricatures of the traditional ones, deserve to perish. As Nietzsche says (approximately): if they are falling, one should give them a push. Although one can expect no direct successes, it is rather a matter of one's actions. Evola is not a passive thinker, whining wordily over the miseries of the world, but one who summons to action. It is precisely the man who does not resign himself to a hopeless situation but acts, who shows himself a warrior--a Kshatriya. If Evola lists all the false paths and hindrances, it is not to deter from action, but to avoid illusions.

Action without illusion and the renunciation of all Utopias: that is the essence of what has been called "Right-wing anarchism." Evola inspired thereby a new generation of the Italian Right, who could find nothing in postwar Italy that was worth defending any more. The brilliant head of this group, Giorgio Freda, proclaimed a battle-cry in his study "The Disintegration of the System." Freda wanted to create a Folk-state through the destruction of the system, which would re-erect the traditional hierarchies and structures. Thus "Nazi-Maoism" was born.

Another direction was that of the New Right, which drew the absolutely contrary conclusion from the retreat from politics: Meta-politics. Think-tanks and cultural journals are supposed to dominate discourse on behalf of the Right, and only after that can the questions of power be posed. The representatives of this tendency, such as Alain de Benoist, Robert Steuckers, and Marco Tarchi, often refer to Evola... but also to many others, including utterly incompatible modernists such as social biologists, "behavioral researchers," and technocrats--anything that in some way can be assimilated to the Right.

Recently, Evola has become a leading figure for a completely apolitical youth sub-culture: the intelligent element of the Dark Wave/Gothic scene. Music and fashion alone have long been insufficent here. Evola is presented as the model for an upright lifestyle, without direct political connections. We can see an expression of this in a compact disk that brings together several different music groups for Evola's 100th anniversary ["Cavalcare la Tigre"]. It is a symptom of Evola's new popularity, whose happiest aspect would be the vogue for publication of his works in German, if everything were not so wretchedly done as the unfortunate translation of "Riding the Tiger." It has come to the point of translating Evola not from the Italian originals but from the American editions, in a further symptom of Europe's hopeless collapse: Evola has to be imported from America, because there is apparently no one left in Europe who can speak Italian and German!

Would Evola have expected to be so popular by the time of his 100th birthday? What significance would he have attributed to the fact? Is the Evola-fashion just another strategy for disconnection from his traditional contents and distortion of them? Is Evola as icon more important than his teachings about the Tradition?

Action, not questions! But no illusions.

Martin Schwarz

From "Deutsche Stimme", 6/98.

Arktos
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Post by Arktos » Thu Feb 08, 2007 12:44 am

Sample of Evola's writings:

http://www.galacticapublishing.com/HyperboreanTheme.htm

The Hyperborean Theme

http://www.geocities.com/capitolhill/14 ... ation.html

On the Secret of Degeneration

Anyone who has come to reject the rationalist myth of "progress" and the interpretation of history as an unbroken positive development of mankind will find himself gradually drawn towards the world-view that was common to all the great traditional cultures, and which had at its centre the memory of a process of degeneration, slow obscuration, or collapse of a higher preceding world. As we penetrate deeper into this new (and old) interpretation, we encounter various problems, foremost among which is the question of the secret of degeneration.

In its literal sense, this question is by no means a novel one. While contemplating the magnificent remains of cultures whose very name has not even come down to us, but which seem to have conveyed, even in their physical material, a greatness and power that is more than earthly, scarcely anyone has failed to ask themselves questions about the death of cultures, and sensed the inadequacy of the reasons that are usually given to explain it.

We can thank the Comte de Gobineau for the best and best-known summary of this problem, and also for a masterly criticism of the main hypotheses about it. His solution on the basis of racial thought and racial purity also has much truth in it, but it needs to be expanded by a few observations concerning a higher order of things. For there have been many cases in which a culture has collapsed even when its race has remained pure, as is especially clear in certain groups that have suffered slow, inexorable extinction despite remaining as racially isolated as if they were islands. An example quite close at hand is the case of the Swedes and the Dutch. These people are in the same racial condition today as they were two centuries ago, but there is little to be found now of the heroic disposition and the racial awareness that they once possessed. Other great cultures seem merely to have remained standing in the condition of mummies: they have long been inwardly dead, so that it takes only the slightest push to knock them down. This was the case, for example, with ancient Peru, that giant solar empire which was annihilated by a few adventurers drawn from the worst rabble of Europe.

If we look at the secret of degeneration from the exclusively traditional point of view, it becomes even harder to solve it completely. It is then a matter of the division of all cultures into two main types. On the one hand there are the traditional cultures, whose principle is identical and unchangeable, despite all the differences evident on the surface. The axis of these cultures and the summit of their hierarchical order consists of metaphysical, supra-individual powers and actions, which serve to inform and justify everything that is merely human, temporal, subject to becoming and to "history." On the other hand there is "modern culture," which is actually the anti-tradition and which exhausts itself in a construction of purely human and earthly conditions and in the total development of these, in pursuit of a life entirely detached from the "higher world."

From the standpoint of the latter, the whole of history is degeneration, because it shows the universal decline of earlier cultures of the traditional type, and the decisive and violent rise of a new universal civilization of the "modern" type.

A double question arises from this.

First, how was it ever possible for this to come to pass? There is a logical error underlying the whole doctrine of evolution: it is impossible that the higher can emerge from the lower, and the greater from the less. But doesn't a similar difficulty face us in the solution of the doctrine of involution? How is it ever possible for the higher to fall? If we could make do with simple analogies, it would be easy to deal with this question. A healthy man can become sick; a virtuous one can turn to vice. There is a natural law that everyone takes from granted: that every living being starts with birth, growth, and strength, then come old age, weakening, and disintegration. And so forth. But this is just making statements, not explaining, even if we allow that such analogies actually relate to the question posed here.

Secondly, it is not only a matter of explaining the possibility of the degeneration of a particular cultural world, but also the possibility that the degeneration of one cultural cycle may pass to other peoples and take them down with it. For example, we have not only to explain how the ancient Western reality collapsed, but also have to show the reason why it was possible for "modern" culture to conquer practically the whole world, and why it possessed the power to divert so many peoples from any other type of culture, and to hold sway even where states of a traditional kind seemed to be alive (one need only recall the Aryan East).

In this respect, it is not enough to say that we are dealing with a purely material and economic conquest. That view seems very superficial, for two reasons. In the first place, a land that is conquered on the material level also experiences, in the long run, influences of a higher kind corresponding to the cultural type of its conqueror. We can state, in fact, that European conquest almost everywhere sows the seeds of "Europeanization," i.e., the "modern" rationalist, tradition-hostile, individualistic way of thinking. Secondly, the traditional conception of culture and the state is hierarchical, not dualistic. Its bearers could never subscribe, without severe reservations, to the principles of "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's" and "My kingdom is not of this world." For us, "Tradition" is the victorious and creative presence in the world of that which is "not of this world," i.e., of the Spirit, understood as a power that is mightier than any merely human or material one.

This is a basic idea of the authentically traditional view of life, which does not permit us to speak with contempt of merely material conquests. On the contrary, the material conquest is the sign, if not of a spiritual victory, at least of a spiritual weakness or a kind of spiritual "retreat" in the cultures that are conquered and lose their independence. Everywhere that the Spirit, regarded as the stronger power, was truly present, it never lacked for means - visible or otherwise - to enable all the opponent's technical and material superiority to be resisted. But this has not happened. It must be concluded, then, that degeneracy was lurking behind the traditional facade of every people that the "modern" world has been able to conquer. The West must then have been the culture in which a crisis that was already universal assumed its acutest form. There the degeneration amounted, so to speak, to a knockout blow, and as it took effect, it brought down with more or less ease other peoples in whom the involution had certainly not "progressed" as far, but whose tradition had already lost its original power, so that these peoples were no longer able to protect themselves from an outside assault.

With these considerations, the second aspect of our problem is traced back to the first one. It is mainly a question of explicating the meaning and the possibility of degeneracy, without reference to other circumstances.

For this we must be clear about one thing: it is an error to assume that the hierarchy of the traditional world is based on a tyranny of the upper classes. That is merely a "modern" conception, completely alien to the traditional way of thinking. The traditional doctrine in fact conceived of spiritual action as an "action without acting"; it spoke of the "unmoved mover"; everywhere it used the symbolism of the "pole," the unalterable axis around which every ordered movement takes place (and elsewhere we have shown that this is the meaning of the swastika, the "arctic cross"); it always stressed the "Olympian," spirituality, and genuine authority, as well as its way of acting directly on its subordinates, not through violence but through "presence"; finally, it used the simile of the magnet, wherein lies the key to our question, as we shall now see.

Only today could anyone imagine that the authentic bearers of the Spirit, or of Tradition, pursue people so as to seize them and put them in their places -- in short, that they "manage" people, or have any personal interest in setting up and maintaining those hierarchical relationships by virtue of which they can appear visibly as the rulers. This would be ridiculous and senseless. It is much more the recognition on the part of the lower ones that is the true basis of any traditional ranking. It is not the higher that needs the lower, but the other way round. The essence of hierarchy is that there is something living as a reality in certain people, which in the rest is only present in the condition of an ideal, a premonition, an unfocused effort. Thus the latter are fatefully attracted to the former, and their lower condition is one of subordination less to something foreign, than to their own true "self." Herein lies the secret, in the traditional world, of all readiness for sacrifice, all heroism, all loyalty; and, on the other side, of a prestige, an authority, and a calm power which the most heavily-armed tyrant can never count upon.

With these considerations, we have come very close to solving not only the problem of degeneration, but also the possibility of a particular fall. Are we perhaps not tired of hearing that the success of every revolution indicates the weakness and degeneracy of the previous rulers? An understanding of this kind is very one-sided. This would indeed be the case if wild dogs were tied up, and suddenly broke loose: that would be proof that the hands holding their leashes had become impotent or weak. But things are arranged very differently in the framework of spiritual ranking, whose real basis we have explained above. This hierarchy degenerates and is able to be overthrown in one case only: when the individual degenerates, when he uses his fundamental freedom to deny the Spirit, to cut his life loose from any higher reference-point, and to exist "only for himself." Then the contacts are fatefully broken, the metaphysical tension, to which the traditional organism owes its unity, gives way, every force wavers in its path and finally breaks free. The peaks, of course, remain pure and inviolable in their heights, but the rest, which depended on them, now becomes an avalanche, a mass that has lost its equilibrium and falls, at first imperceptibly but with ever accelerating movement down to the depths and lowest levels of the valley. This is the secret of every degeneration and revolution. The European had first slain the hierarchy in himself by extirpating his own inner possibilities, to which corresponded the basis of the order that he would then destroy externally.

If Christian mythology attributes the Fall of Man and the Rebellion of the Angels to the freedom of the will, then it comes to much the same significance. It concerns the frightening potential that dwells in man of using freedom to destroy spiritually and to banish everything that could ensure him a supra-natural value. This is a metaphysical decision: the stream that traverses history in the most varied forms of the traditional-hating, revolutionary, individualistic, and humanistic spirit, or in short, the "modern" spirit. This decision is the only positive and decisive cause in the secret of degeneration, the destruction of Tradition.

If we understand this, we can perhaps also grasp the sense of those legends that speak of mysterious rulers who "always" exist and have never died (shades of the Emperor sleeping beneath the Kyffhäuser mountain!). Such rulers can be rediscovered only when one achieves spiritual completeness and awakens a quality in oneself like that of a metal that suddenly feels "the magnet", finds the magnet and irresistibly orients itself and moves towards it. For now, we must restrict ourselves to this hint. A comprehensive explanation of legends of that sort, which come to us from the most ancient Aryan source, would take us too far. At another opportunity we will perhaps return to the secret of reconstruction, to the "magic" that is capable of restoring the fallen mass to the unalterable, lonely, and invisible peaks that are still there in the heights.

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Post by Arktos » Thu Feb 08, 2007 1:02 am

Rough intro to esoteric, Traditional Christianity here:

http://www.monachos.net/forum/archive/i ... -2150.html

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Post by hades » Thu Feb 08, 2007 6:58 am

Looks like the only one interested in Rene Guenon and your thread is you.

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Post by Diebert van Rhijn » Thu Feb 08, 2007 7:40 am


Hades, shut up.

Arktos, I'll come back to your topic in a few. Seems interesting.


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Post by hades » Thu Feb 08, 2007 8:27 am

Diebert van Rhijn wrote: Hades, shut up.

Just a heads up Arktos...some people here like to make emotional outbursts.

=[

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Post by Diebert van Rhijn » Sat Feb 10, 2007 7:47 am

Arktos, first of all thank you for introducing Guenon to me as he might be worthy to study further in depth in the future. I can certainly understand his gravitation toward the Muslim and Sufi traditions. For now I'll make observations on a few sentences I selected from your post to test the waters.
the modern world is inorganic and dysfunctional due its abandonment of spiritual, traditional values.
Unless the spiritual and traditional values have grown themselves into something dysfunctional and worthy to dispose or else transpose completely. This was what for example Nietzsche's writing was mostly attempting to point out.

No matter how valuable and lofty certain values and ideas were in the past, even they are not timeless and have to die and be reborn like everything else.

From this perspective Traditionalism seems to me more like a 'tomb of God', more a longing for a re-creation of past glory than it's really concerned with creation, life and exploring ultimate existence. Which lies never in the non-existent past or tradition.

Modernism might indeed be destructive and nihilist but that doesn't mean it's "inorganic" or unwanted or unwelcome in any way. It's just the way the river flows and the flood rises. There are days I cringe about it too but at the same time I can see it cannot be any other way. It's like a great purge.
As Guenon puts it, the reason why the experimental method has gained an unprecedented prominence in the modern world is that the physical sciences "confine their attention to things of the senses and to the world of matter, and also that they lend themselves readily to the most immediate practical applications; their development, going hand in hand with what may well be termed the "superstition of facts", is thus quite in accordance with the specifically modern tendencies, whereas preceding ages would, on the contrary, have been unable to find sufficient inducements for becoming absorbed in this direction to the extent of neglecting the higher orders of knowledge."
Science confines itself with a purpose here. Its attempted compartmentalization looks to me as a function of scientific method itself. It was crucial for its own development, just like specialization and mass production and education was. Compare this with the processes of the introduction of the printing press. Or the automobile industry. Or television. Their very nature beings heaven and hell. Progress and downfall.

Abstraction can bring the illusion of solid facts but that's not the fault of science but the need in the believers and followers of Science. Without science the same crowd would embrace most likely another faith.

These are my first thoughts when reading about Guenon and I'm curious to see what you think on these matters.


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Leyla Shen
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Post by Leyla Shen » Sun Feb 11, 2007 7:34 am

Diebert wrote:
Without science the same crowd would embrace most likely another faith.
But I think that is precisely the point the author is highlighting---the reason that this crowd has embraced science/experimentalism in particular.

The will and mechanism to unconsciousness.
These are my first thoughts when reading about Guenon and I'm curious to see what you think on these matters.
Yes, I am curious to see what Arktos's thoughts are on this, too.

.

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Jamesh
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Post by Jamesh » Sun Feb 11, 2007 3:22 pm

One of the sentences in the second dudes rubbish was:

There is a logical error underlying the whole doctrine of evolution: it is impossible that the higher can emerge from the lower, and the greater from the less.

Only if you believe the higher is intrinsically greater, which it is clearly not, it simply has more complexity. The food chain and atomic structures clearly shows us that greater does arise from the less.

I didn't try and understand the document posted, perhaps this conclusion is explained by the text, in some round about way.

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ExpectantlyIronic
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Post by ExpectantlyIronic » Sun Feb 11, 2007 4:10 pm

Arktos,

Take a look at records of the average lifespan of folks throughout history, or perhaps any book at all on what life was like prior to the enlightenment versus now. Things have improved. I'm really unaware of any good argument for perennialism, and I didn't find any in the essays you posted (which could have easily been summarized).

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Wild Fox Zen
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Post by Wild Fox Zen » Tue Feb 13, 2007 8:43 pm

Arktos, please comment on neo-traditionalism's supposed history of anti-semitism.

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