Traditionalist School = not greater than the sum of its parts

[causticus]

I think I'm finally wrapping up my interest and investigation in the Traditional School -- i.e. the Guenonian version of the Perennial Philosophy, which in my version of reality no single author or personage has a monopoly on defining, despite the endless protests of Rene Guenon's fanclub. I sort of discovered the Traditionalist School by accident upon joining a Facebook group by that name. I was already familiar with the concept of Sophia Perennis via the works of Aldous Huxley and Julius Evola; I had no idea about the Guenon cult however, which consists mostly of Westerners who have converted to Sufi Islam (following in the footsteps of their Guru, of course), University-educated Sufi Muslims living in the Anglosphere, and of course, native Westerners who have either converted to or have remained within the fold of the original Apostolic Christian Churches, i.e. Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy.

I ended up checking out (in some cases just skimming chapters, passages and sections that jumped out to me as being interesting) Guenon and a few of the other authors well-regarded by the fanclub, like F. Schuon, Huston Smith and a few others. These are obviously very intelligent scholars with an impeccable grasp of traditional metaphysical teachings. Not only extremely intelligent, but also possessing a far better understanding of pre-modern philosophy (i.e. actual philosophy) than just about the entirely of modern academia (which sadly isn't really saying much, tbh).

Brilliant metaphysical analysis aside, it's the central AIM of the Traditionalist School that really grinds my gears. Guenon himself was primarily motivated by his complete disdain for modernity and Western culture in general, which by his time in the early 20th century were one in the same,and by his time was a common trope among reactionary intellectuals. And thus, like any good modern European romanticist, he envisioned the only real solution to the modern state of degeneracy and nihilism as a full-scale retreat back into what he personally considered to be legit TRADITION; in other words, any long-established major religion that's not dead. A good ol' restoration to "tradition" was his primary AIM.

His central premise to support this AIM is the claim that there is a supposed "unity of religions" to be found among the major religious/spiritual traditions that survive to this day. They go at excruciating lengths to bolster this claim by demonstrating the similarities to be found between the metaphysical doctrines of both Eastern (Dharmic) and Western (Abrahamic) religions. Guenon and a few of the other authors make a convincing case for Advaita Vedanta (not to be confused with the Hindu tradition as a whole), the Platonic and Aristotelian embellishment of Christian theology and a Monist interpretation of Islam all to meet in one place and seemingly agree on a common metaphysical core principle. That's all fine and good, but once we delve deeper than the simple agreement that there's One Absolute source for all existence, then we run full-speed into a big wall of problems. The very vague central idea might be the same, but beyond that the major religions don't really agree on much of everything, especially when we start contrasting East from West. Of course the Traditonalist authors went to great lengths to employ a lot of sneaky semantics to pave over this problem, but the problem still exists nonetheless. I'll be following up on these problems in future entries.

Comments

[deketemoisont]

"pre-modern philosophy (i.e. actual philosophy)" - can you say when you're drawing that line?

"but beyond that the major religions don't really agree on much of everything" - I'd tended to think that if you listened to Christian and Muslim mystics in particular, you might find not much difference, and religions of South Asian origin might have similar things in some parts of their enormous variety. Do you consider even the first pair largely irreconciliable? (If the answer's in one the later posts I've yet to read, just point me.)

[causticus]

1. Guenon and his ilk would probably draw the line somewhere around Descartes. I don't necessarily believe in such a hard distinction (of "actual" vs. "fake" philosophy), as I see plenty of great thinkers after his time. But I do see all the metaphysical fundamentals being laid down before antiquity came to a close; subsequent philosophers essentially expanded on those core ideas.

2. Yeah the nondual mystics from various traditions tend to sound very similar when speaking on higher metaphysical ideas. Having said that, we can't just pretend the exoteric doctrines of the different religions cease to exist because the mystics from each happen to say similar things some of the time. At the end of the day, when there's a theological or doctrinal conflict within one of the religions in question, the exoteric and legalistic interpretations tend to win out.

[deketemoisont]

1) it does seem like most metaphysics everywhere came out of the Axial Age (whether or not that was actually a single event) - any hypothesis on why?

2) sure, they win - but does that make them right about the metaphysics, or just more competent on the physical? I think one could argue the fairly-similar mystics are right - though I don't hold any sort of mystical position.

[causticus]

1. I think it's due to a complex assortment of different factors. Though one simple material thing we can observe is that by the time of the axial age, phonetic alphabets became widespread. Thus the much greater ease of immortalizing complex ideas and substantial literary works.

2. Nope, by "win" I'm not imposing any value judgement, but rather just making on observation on which ideas and interpretations ended up becoming the enduring traditions and approaches. On that second part, sure, one could argue that the common patterns across traditions might be pointing at something "right" in the universal sense. This is essentially the basis of Perennialism.

[deketemoisont]

1) it might say more about a hole in my history knowledge than anything else, but having heard the phonetic script hypothesis, I wonder about how relevant was that given that Indians, I think, took pretty long to write a lot (despite having the capability) and Chinese writing even today is ... at most a bit phonetic?

2) I didn't mean a (moral?) value judgement either, but it sounds just barely plausible to me that ideologies *wrong* about metaphysics could have advantages on the physical (due to great focus on it, related to being wrong about the nonphysical - maybe you can see some of JMG's commentary about the Enlightenment in those terms?).