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| René Guénon |
There is a great deal of confusion about what Guénon and Evola meant by Tradition,
and while the terms "traditional" or "traditionalist" are frequently invoked these days, often the evocateur demonstrates in said usage that he does not in fact grasp it. I offer some quotes from Guénon for clarification.
Guénon
on the difference between philosophy, in the modern sense, and
Tradition (from "Crisis in the Modern World"):
"It
is true that the word 'philosophy' can, in itself, be understood in
quite a legitimate sense, and one which without doubt originally
belonged to it, especially if it be true that Pythagoras himself was
the first to use it: etymologically it denotes nothing other than
'love of wisdom'; in the first place, therefore, it implies the
initial disposition required for the attainment of wisdom, and, by a
quite natural extension of this meaning, the quest that is born from
this same disposition and that must lead to knowledge. It denotes
therefore a preliminary and preparatory stage, a step as it were in
the direction of wisdom or a degree corresponding to a lower level
of wisdom; the perversion that ensued consisted in taking this
transitional stage for an end in itself and in seeking to substitute
'philosophy' for wisdom, a process which implied forgetting or
ignoring the true nature of the latter. It was in this way that
there arose what may be described as 'profane' philosophy, in other
words, a pretended wisdom that was purely human and therefore
entirely of the rational order, and that took the place of the true,
traditional, supra-rational, and 'non-human' wisdom. However, there
still remained something of this true wisdom throughout the whole of
antiquity, as is proven primarily by the persistence of the
'mysteries', whose essentially initiatic character is beyond
dispute; and it is also true that the teachings of the philosophers
themselves usually had both an 'exoteric' and an 'esoteric' side,
the latter leaving open the possibility of connection with a higher
point of view, which in fact made itself clearly-though perhaps in
some respects incompletely-apparent some centuries later among the
Alexandrians. For 'profane' philosophy to be definitively
constituted as such, it was necessary for exoterism alone to remain
and for all esoterism simply to be denied, and it is precisely this
that the movement inaugurated by the Greeks was to lead to in the
modern world. The tendencies that found expression among the Greeks
had to be pushed to the extreme, the undue importance given to
rational thought had to grow even greater, before men could arrive
at 'rationalism', a specifically modern attitude that consists in
not merely ignoring, but expressly denying, everything of a
supra-rational order."
This
indicates that Tradition cannot be understood via the means of
modern, rationalistic philosophy, and that modern philosophy must
always be seen as ultimately incomplete.
As
for lower-t tradition versus Tradition, one must understand that the
former has absolutely nothing to do with the notion of Tradition,
which is rooted in the esoteric, not the social or historical - even
if there is a relationship. The social world is exoteric, and
therefore the least important aspect of Tradition.
From
"Introduction to the Study of the Hindu Doctrines":
“We
have constantly had occasion to speak of tradition, of traditional
doctrines or conceptions, and even of traditional languages, and
this is really unavoidable when trying to describe the essential
characteristics of Eastern thought in all its modalities; but what,
to be exact, is tradition? To obviate one possible misunderstanding,
let it be said from the outset that we do not take the word
“tradition” in the restricted sense sometimes given to it by
Western religious thought, when it opposes “tradition” to the
written word, using the former of these two terms exclusively for
something that has been the object of oral transmission alone. On
the contrary, for us tradition, taken in a much more general sense,
may be written as well as oral, though it must usually, if not
always, have been oral originally. In the present state of things,
however, tradition, whether it be religious in form or otherwise,
consists everywhere of two complementary branches, written and oral,
and we have no hesitation in speaking of “traditional writings”,
which would obviously be contradictory if one only gave to the word
“tradition” its more specialized meaning; besides,
etymologically, tradition simply means “that which is transmitted”
in some way or other. In addition, it is necessary to include in
tradition, as secondary and derived elements that are nonetheless
important for the purpose of forming a complete picture, the whole
series of institutions of various kinds which find their principle
in the traditional doctrine itself.
Looked
at in this way, tradition may appear to be indistinguishable from
civilization itself, which according to certain sociologists
consists of “the whole body of techniques, institutions, and
beliefs common to a group of men during a certain time”; but how
much exactly is this definition worth? In truth, we do not think
that civilization can be characterized generally by a formula of
this type, which will always be either too comprehensive or too
narrow in some respects, with the risk that elements common to all
civilizations will be omitted or else that elements belonging to
certain particular civilizations only will be included. Thus the
preceding definition takes no account of the essentially
intellectual element to be found in every civilization, for that is
something that cannot be made to fit into the category known as
“techniques”, which, as we are told, comprises “those classes
of practices specially designed to modify the physical environment”;
on the other hand, when these sociologists speak of “beliefs”,
adding moreover that the word must be “taken in its usual sense”,
they are referring to something that clearly presupposes the
presence of the religious viewpoint, which is really confined to
certain civilizations only and is not to be found in others. It was
in order to avoid all difficulties of this kind that we were content
at the start simply to describe a civilization as the product and
expression of a certain mental outlook common to a more or less
widespread group of men, thus making it possible to treat each
particular case separately as regards the exact determination of its
constituent elements.
However
that may be, it remains nonetheless true, as far as the East is
concerned, that the identification of tradition with the entire
civilization is fundamentally justifiable. Every Eastern
civilization, taken as a whole, may be seen to be essentially
traditional. . . . As for Western civilization, we have shown that
it is on the contrary devoid of any traditional character, with the
exception of the religious element, which alone has retained it.
Social institutions, to be considered traditional, must be
effectively attached in their principle to a doctrine that is itself
traditional, whether it be metaphysical or religious or of any other
conceivable kind. In other words, those institutions are traditional
that find their ultimate justification in their more or less direct,
but always intentional and conscious, dependence upon a doctrine
which, as regards its fundamental nature, is in every case of an
intellectual order; but this intellectuality may be found either in
a pure state, in cases where one is dealing with an entirely
metaphysical doctrine, or else it may be found mingled with other
heterogeneous elements, as in the case of the religious or other
special modes which a traditional doctrine is capable of assuming.
[...]
In
Islam tradition exists under two distinct aspects, one of which is
religious—it is upon this aspect that the general body of social
institutions is dependent—while the other aspect, which is purely
Eastern, is wholly metaphysical. In a certain measure something of
the same sort existed in medieval Europe in the case of the
Scholastic doctrine, in which Arab influences moreover made
themselves felt to an appreciable extent; but in order not to push
the analogy too far it should be added that metaphysics was never
sufficiently clearly distinguished from theology, that is to say
from its special application to the religious mode of thought;
moreover, the genuinely metaphysical portion to be found in it is
incomplete and remains subject to certain limitations that seem
inherent in the whole of Western intellectuality; doubtless these
two imperfections should be looked upon as resulting from the double
heritage of the Jewish and the Greek mentalities.
In
India we are in the presence of a tradition that is purely
metaphysical in its essence; to it are attached, as so many
dependent extensions, the diverse applications to which it gives
rise, whether in certain secondary branches of the doctrine itself,
such as that relating to cosmology, or in the social order, which is
moreover strictly governed by the analogical correspondence linking
together cosmic existence and human existence. A fact that stands
out much more clearly here than in the Islamic tradition, chiefly
owing to the absence of the religious point of view and of certain
extra-intellectual elements that religion necessarily implies, is
the complete subordination of the various particular orders relative
to metaphysics, that is to say relative to the realm of universal
principles.
In
China, [there is ] the sharp division . . . [between] a metaphysical
tradition on the one hand and a social tradition on the other, and
these may at first sight appear not only distinct, as in fact they
are, but even relatively independent of one another, all the more so
since the metaphysical tradition always remained well-nigh
exclusively the appanage of an intellectual elite, whereas the
social tradition, by reason of its very nature, imposed itself upon
all without distinction and claimed their effective participation in
an equal degree. It is, however, important to remember that the
metaphysical tradition, as constituted under the form of “Taoism”,
is a development from the principles of a more primordial tradition,
formulated in the I Ching, and it is from this primordial tradition
that the whole of the social institutions commonly known under the
name of “Confucianism” are entirely derived, though less
directly and then only as an application to a contingent sphere.
Thus the essential continuity between the two principal aspects of
the Far-Eastern civilization is re-established, and their true
relationship made clear; but this continuity would almost inevitably
be missed if it were not possible to trace them back to their common
source, that is to say to the primordial tradition of which the
ideographical expression, as fixed from the time of Fu Hsi onward,
has been preserved intact for almost fifty centuries."
Therefore,
there can be a relationship between small-t tradition and Tradition,
but the latter is not dependent on the former - rather, it is the
other way around. The reason Guénon did not see the modern West as
a genuine civilization is because, according to the traditionalists,
there is no longer a connection between tradition and Tradition.
This should highlight the problem inherent in those who use the term
"traditionalist," invoking Evola and/or Guénon but who
clearly have no grasp of
this, and use it however they fancy, and also why tradition isn't
exactly irrelevant to an understanding of Tradition, but is certainly
woefully incomplete on its own. I offer this note as an attempt to
clarify the usage of this term.
John Morgan is Editor-in-Chief of Arktos
John Morgan is Editor-in-Chief of Arktos
