/lit/ - Literature

say it with me

>MONKEY MAN
>MONKEY MAN
>MONKEY MAN

Guenon is a monkey faggot.

>>19032110
Unironically touch grass. This is embarrassing. Monkeyman will not save you.

I studied classics at a renowned university in Germany, am generally averse to the modern world and its institutions and after years of lurking here, was finally memed into reading Guénon. I must say: the entire idea of sophia perennis seems like a misapprehension, or better exaggeration of the fundamentally true claim that man is imbued with a religious instinct. I mean to say that the universality of this instinct does not imply that the wisdom which follows from all is true or even reconcilable. If he had been serious in his project, he would have attempted to devise, for example, a way to reconcile the ethics of the Manusmitri with the egalitarianism of Christian and Islamic tradition. But he would fail, since they are mutually exclusive. His want for meaning seems genuine, but he gives the impression of being the unhappy progenitor of all those unfamiliar with the literature of the Western tradition (and thus mindlessly christening it as „decadent“) and subsequently turning towards the mystical, true and universal East. His style is also insufferable. Already in the introduction to „Revolt“ I encountered arguments which essentially were „old good, new bad“ without any shred of deeper analysis. If you want to read convincing criticism of modernity, you must read our authors (unfortunately also memes, some of them): Nietzsche, Spengler, von Hofmannsthal and Rudolf Borchardt. This simian Frenchman and would-be kebab is a waste of time.

ITT: authors /lit/ shills but has never once read. Pic not related.

>>18386239
Thanks for the gold, kind stranger

I would like to use this occasion to remind to all Guénonfags that René himself was an incorrigible hylic on two accounts. Firstly, look at that outfit. Those are the garments of an estranged Westerner embracing the Exotic as a form of spirituality, viz. as a provisional Ersatz-religion which per definitionem will never fulfill what both his upbringing and education had implanted within him. How can his Traditionalism be radical if its perpendicular aim is, by some snake-charming alchemy of Oriental, shell game prestidigitation, to escape his culturally and pedagogically implanted roots (radix, radices)? Secondly, perennial Traditionalism is inextricably bound to Modernity. Guénon remains a prisoner of the cell which he believed to have escaped.

WHY IS HE NOT TRANSLATED INTO GERMAN AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

>"The various ‘ladies’ celebrated by the poets attached to the mysterious organization of the Fedeli d’Amore from Dante, Guido Cavalcante, and their contemporaries to Boccaccio and Petrarch, are not women who actually lived on this earth but are all, under different names, one and the same symbolic ‘Lady’, who represents transcendent Intelligence or Divine Wisdom." ~ Rene Guenon, Insights into Christian a Esoterism

Is he right, or is he making grand sweeping claims with no evidence again?

>>16754677
...to this?

So what does he mean by initiation? Explain it to me and don't dumb it down. Do you get hazed with paddles by dudes in robes?

>>16496179

>However, we have no wish to exaggerate and must add that theories such as these are not exclusively encountered in modern times; examples are to be found in Greek philosophy also, the ‘universal flux’ of Heraclitus being the best known; indeed, it was this that led the school of Elea to combat his conceptions, as well as those of the atomists, by a sort of reductio ad absurdum. Even in India, something comparable can be found, though, of course, considered from a different point of view from that of philosophy, for Buddhism also developed a similar character, one of its essential theses being the ‘dissolubility of all things ’. These theories, however, were then no more than exceptions, and such revolts against the traditional outlook, which may well have occurred from time to time throughout the whole of the Kali-Yuga, were, when all is said and done, without wider influence; what is new is the general acceptance of such conceptions that we see in the West today.

>It should be noted too that under the influence of the very recent idea of ‘progress’, ‘philosophies of becoming’ have, in modern times, taken on a special form that theories of the same type never had among the ancients: this form, although it may have multiple varieties, can be covered in general by the name ‘evolutionism’. We need not repeat here what we have already said elsewhere on this subject; we will merely recall the point that any conception allowing for nothing other than ‘becoming’ is thereby necessarily a ‘naturalistic’ conception, and, as such, implies a formal denial of whatever lies beyond nature, in other words the realm of metaphysics— which is the realm of immutable and eternal principles. We may point out also, in speaking of these anti-metaphysical theories, that the Bergonian idea of pure duration’ corresponds exactly with that dispersion in instantaneity to which we alluded above; a pretended intuition modeled on the ceaseless flux of the things of the senses, far from being able to serve as an instrument for obtaining true knowledge, represents in reality the dissolution of all possible knowledge.

>>16408631
Guenon.

>>16342672

>Ayn Rand ran off crying, avoiding Guenon's (PBUH) eyes as he stared straight ahead towards the object of his ire. Plato was the start of the West's metaphysical destruction. Discursive thought, categorization and specialization, even scientism started with this one man. The East was even protected from Plato's corrosive and anemic "metaphysics" for thousands of years, but in the end was overtaken by scientism, globalization and other disgusting forms of modern thought. Guenon (PBUH) knew that he was the lynchpin, the axis of evil and the first domino in the chain; it was time refute the entirety of the western deviation from Tradition.

It should also be noted that guenon does in fact look like a monkey wearing an Islamic garb in this photo

This now leads us to elucidate more precisely the error of the idea that the majority should make the law, because, even though this idea must remain theoretical— since it does not correspond to an effective reality— it is necessary to explain how it has taken root in the modern outlook, to which of its tendencies it corresponds, and which of them— at least in appearance— it satisfies. Its most obvious flaw is the one we have just mentioned: the opinion of the majority cannot be anything but an expression of incompetence, whether this be due to lack of intelligence or to ignorance pure and simple; certain observations of ‘mass psychology’ might be quoted here, in particular the widely known fact that the aggregate of mental reactions aroused among the component individuals of a crowd crystallizes into a sort of general psychosis whose level is not merely not that of the average, but actually that of the lowest elements present. It should also be noted, though in a slightly different connection, that some modern philosophers have even tried to introduce the democratic theory, according to which the opinion of the majority should prevail, into the intellectual realm itself, principally by claiming to find a ‘criterion of truth’ in what they call ‘universal consent’. Even supposing there were some question upon which all men were in agreement, this agreement would prove nothing in itself; moreover, even if such a unanimity really existed— which is all the more unlikely in that, whatever be the question, there are always many people who have no opinion at all and have never even thought about it— it would in any case be impossible to prove it in practice, so that what is invoked in support of an opinion and as a sign of its truth amounts merely to the consent of the majority— the majority of a group moreover that is necessarily very limited in space and time. In this domain the bankruptcy of the theory is even more obvious since it is easier to remove from it the influence of sentiment, which almost inevitably comes into play in the field of politics. It is this influence that is one of the chief obstacles in the way of understanding certain things, even for those who in themselves possess an intellectual capacity sufficient to understand them without difficulty; emotional impulses hinder reflection, and making use of this incompatibility is one of the dishonest tricks practiced in politics.

What would he have made of Kripke and Lewis’ multiple worlds semantics/ontology?

>>14984859

>" The West was Christian in the Middle Ages, but is so no longer; if anyone should reply that it may again become so, we will rejoinder that no one desires this more than we do, and may it come about sooner than all we see round about us would lead us to expect. But let no one delude himself on this point: if this should happen, the modern world will have lived its day"

- Rene Guenon (pbuh), The Crisis of the Modern World pg. 96

>>14917351
You don't, it's a self refuting relativism dressed in a very bad poetic language. Read Introduction to Hindu Doctrines.

How is Guenon so based?

>>14523308
>>14523294
Based

>>14523316
Cringe and sadpilled! Many such cases.

When describing the essential features of metaphysic, we said that it constitutes an intuitive, or in other words, immediate knowledge, as opposed to the discursive and mediate knowledge which belongs to the rational order. Intellectual intuition is even more immediate than sensory intuition, for it is beyond the distinction between subject and object which the latter allows to subsist ; it is at once the means of knowledge and the knowledge itself, and m it subject and object are identified. Indeed, no knowledge is really worthy of the name except in so far as it has the effect of bringing about such an identification, although in all cases other than that of intellectual intuition this identification always remains incomplete and imperfect ; m other words there is no true knowledge except that which participates to a greater or less extent in the nature of pure intellectual knowledge, which is the supreme knowledge. All other knowledge, being more or less indirect, has at best only a symbolic or representative value ; the only genuinely effective knowledge is that which permits us to penetrate into the very nature of things, and if such a penetration may be effected up to a certain point in the inferior degrees of knowledge, it is only in metaphysical knowledge that it is fully and totally realizable.

The immediate consequence of this is that knowing and being are fundamentally but one and the same thing; they are, so to speak, two inseparable aspects of a single reality, being no longer even really distinguishable in that sphere where all is “without duality.” This in itself is enough to show how purposeless are all the various “ theories of knowledge ” with metaphysical pretensions which occupy such a prominent place in modem Western philosophy, sometimes even going so far, as in the case of Kant for example, as to absorb, or at least to dominate, everything else. The only reason for the existence of such theories arises from an attitude of mind shared by almost all modern philosophers and originating in the Cartesian dualism ; this way of thinking consists in artificially opposing knowing and being, an opposition which is the negation of all true metaphysic. Modern philosophy thus ends by wishing to substitute the theory of knowledge for knowledge itself, which amounts to an open confession of impotence on its part ; nothing is more characteristic in this respect than the following declaration of Kant : “The chief and perhaps the only use of all philosophy of pure reason is, after all, exclusively negative, since it is not an instrument for extending knowledge, but a discipline for limiting it .” Do not such words amount purely and simply to spying that the only aim of philosophers should be to impose upon everyone else the narrow limits of their own understanding ? Here we see an inevitable consequence of the systematic outlook, which, let it be repeated once more, is anti-metaphysical in the highest degree.

>>14186620
RETROACTIVELY

This now leads us to elucidate more precisely the error of the idea that the majority should make the law, because, even though this idea must remain theoretical— since it does not correspond to an effective reality— it is necessary to explain how it has taken root in the modern outlook, to which of its tendencies it corresponds, and which of them— at least in appearance— it satisfies. Its most obvious flaw is the one we have just mentioned: the opinion of the majority cannot be anything but an expression of incompetence, whether this be due to lack of intelligence or to ignorance pure and simple; certain observations of ‘mass psychology’ might be quoted here, in particular the widely known fact that the aggregate of mental reactions aroused among the component individuals of a crowd crystallizes into a sort of general psychosis whose level is not merely not that of the average, but actually that of the lowest elements present. It should also be noted, though in a slightly different connection, that some modern philosophers have even tried to introduce the democratic theory, according to which the opinion of the majority should prevail, into the intellectual realm itself, principally by claiming to find a ‘criterion of truth’ in what they call ‘universal consent’. Even supposing there were some question upon which all men were in agreement, this agreement would prove nothing in itself; moreover, even if such a unanimity really existed— which is all the more unlikely in that, whatever be the question, there are always many people who have no opinion at all and have never even thought about it— it would in any case be impossible to prove it in practice, so that what is invoked in support of an opinion and as a sign of its truth amounts merely to the consent of the majority— the majority of a group moreover that is necessarily very limited in space and time. In this domain the bankruptcy of the theory is even more obvious since it is easier to remove from it the influence of sentiment, which almost inevitably comes into play in the field of politics. It is this influence that is one of the chief obstacles in the way of understanding certain things, even for those who in themselves possess an intellectual capacity sufficient to understand them without difficulty; emotional impulses hinder reflection, and making use of this incompatibility is one of the dishonest tricks practiced in politics.