Conference in Paris: René Guénon et l’Orient

René Guénon et l’Orient:

Perspectives critiques 100 ans après La métaphysique orientale (1925-2025) 

11 avril 2025 (9h-18h30) 

École Pratique des Hautes Études-PSL

Maison des Sciences de l’Homme, Salle 1 54, Bd Raspail, 75006, Paris 

Événement partenaire du FRÉSO (Association Francophone pour l’Étude Universitaire des Courants Ésotériques) et de l’ESSWE (European Association for the Study of Western Esotericism) 

Conférence organisée par : Roberto Corso (Università degli Studi di Napoli “Federico II”/École Pratique des Hautes Études-LEM) Comité scientifique : Jean-Pierre Brach (EPHE-LEM) ; Vincent Eltschinger (EPHE-GREI) ; Margherita Serena Saccone (Università degli Studi di Napoli “L’Orientale”) ; Thierry Zarcone (CNRS-GSRL) 

Nombre de places limité. Réservation requise en envoyant un e-mail à l’adresse suivante : roberto.corso@unina.it 

Programme 

Accueil (9h-9h15)

• Mot de bienvenue de Jean-Pierre Brach (École Pratique des Hautes Études-LEM) et de l'organisateur (9h15-9h30) 

Session 1 (9h30-11h) 

• Modératrice : Mayssa Coutard-Evangelista 
• Davide Marino (CAS-E, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg/University of Vienna) : Chinese Whispers. René Guénon and La métaphysique (extrême-)orientale 
• Alessandra Marchi (Università degli Studi di Cagliari) : Parcours soufis du traditionalisme guénonien en Italie 

Pause 11-11h30

 

Session 2 (11h30-13h) Modérateur : Roberto Corso 

• Hugo David (École Française d’Extrême-Orient) : René Guénon et le Vedānta : retour à la tradition ou nouveau syncrétisme ? 
• Dominique Wohlschlag (Chercheur indépendant) : Guénon et les cycles cosmiques 

Déjeuner libre 13h-15h

 

Session 3 (15h-16h30)

• Modérateur : Nathan Fraikin 
• Marco Giardini (Chercheur indépendant) : L’« Orient merveilleux » médiéval et ses relectures ésotériques au XXe siècle : la légende du Prêtre Jean entre les « études traditionnelles » et la théorie du « monde imaginal » 
• Youna Eskandari (École Pratique des Hautes Études-LEM) : René Guénon : orientaliste ou oriental? 

Pause 16h30-17h 

Session 4 (17h-18h30)

• Modérateur : Tom Fisher 
• Roberto Corso (Università degli Studi di Napoli “Federico II”/École Pratique des Hautes Études-LEM) : « La part de l’inexprimable ». Perspectives critiques sur les idées de métaphysique et d’Orient dans l’œuvre de René Guénon 
• Jean-Pierre Laurant (École Pratique des Hautes Études) : Apprendre à vivre au hasard d’une rencontre : René Guénon

Traditionalism available in paperback

Mark Sedgwick, Traditionalism: The Radical Project for Restoring Sacred Order (Pelican Books) is now available in paperback, at £10.99 in the UK, also available in Europe, but not in the US, where it's still $29.99 for the hardback from OUP.

Henry Corbin's critique of Traditionalism

A new article looks at a dispute in 1963 between Muhammad Hasan Askari (1919–1978), the most important Traditionalist in Pakistan, discussed in an earlier post here, and Henry Corbin (1903–1978), a leading French scholar of Islamic mysticism and in his youth an enthusiast of the work of René Guénon. It is Hadi Fakhoury, “Ibn ʿArabi between East and West: Henry Corbin and Guénonian Traditionalism.” Religiographies, vol. 3, no. 2 (2024): 25–45 available here (open source).

The dispute took place in the pages of a major French philosophical journal, Revue de métaphysique et de morale (Journal of metaphysics and ethics), and started with an article by Askari (available here) which compared Ibn ‘Arabi and Kierkegaard, the former understood in Traditionalist terms as an exponent of orthodox esotericism, and the later understood as representative of modernity. This article contained a passing criticism of Corbin which ensured that Corbin read it and, unusually, responded (here). Fakhoury suggests that one reason that Corbin responded may have been that he wanted to make clear his mature position on Traditionalism. Probably referring to his own early encounter with Traditionalism, he wrote that “reading the works of René Guenon can, at some point in one’s life, provoke a salutary shock.” An interesting perspective: perhaps that is, indeed, one of the main functions of Guénon’s work.

Corbin’s basic argument was that Askari seemed better acquainted with the writings of Guénon than with those of Ibn ‘Arabi, and that Ibn ‘Arabi was more complex than the Traditionalists suspected. “Anyone,” wrote Corbin, “who has devoted his life to seeing the texts for himself will find it impossible to accept that the last word has been said in René Guénon’s work.” That is, I think, true.

Beyond this, Corbin also accuses Traditionalism of a “bias towards systematic rationalism” without really explaining why, and also of “denouncing and devaluing everything that has to do with personal individuality. Fleeing into the impersonal and the spirit of ‘orthodoxy.’” This, said Corbin, was “strangely in tune with the intellectual fashion of the day,” by which he probably meant the varieties of totalitarianism that he saw smothering the personal. As Fakhoury writes, “for both Guénonian Traditionalism and Corbin, the interpretation of Ibn ‘Arabi has implications far beyond mere historical accuracy. Indeed, their respective retrieval of Ibn ‘Arabi is intrinsically connected to, and motivated by, a series of wider, interrelated questions.”

Fakhoury contrasts the approaches of Corbin and the Traditionalists nicely:

Rather than a “return to tradition,” Corbin seeks to go one step before tradition, as it were, that is, to recover the spiritual source that gave rise to it in the first place. This implies a continuous “re-activation” and “re-creation” of tradition in the present, literally, its “modernization” – a word that derives from the Latin modo, meaning “now existing” or “just now.”

 An important and interesting article.

Ivan Aguéli and Ibn ʿArabi

In a new article, Gregory Vandamme revisits the relationship between Ivan Aguéli and the thought of Ibn ʿArabi. It is Gregory Vandamme, “Akbarian Anarchism: Ivan Aguéli (d. 1917) on Islam, Freedom and Shariʿa,” Religiographies 3, no. 1 (2024): 6–24. Available open access here.

To quote from Vandamme’s conclusion,

The various elements of Islamic tradition [Aguéli] engages with are deeply intertwined with his ideal of freedom… The case of Aguéli reveals the hermeneutical potential and adaptability of Ibn ʿArabi’s ideas... The defining characteristic of Ibn ʿArabi’s thought that Aguéli cultivates and develops lies in its capacity to structure itself around paradoxes that balance the informal with the formal, the universal with the particular, and the collective with the individual… While Aguéli’s philosophy ultimately operates within a metaphysical perspective, it also incorporates practical considerations and social and political reflections... The formal and normative framework of the Islamic religion is neither relativised nor undermined…

Aguéli’s philosophy also reveals the paradoxical dimension of the question of universality. Islam… is capable of preserving cultural diversity and particularities… arguing that only the union of East and West can bring about the advent of an authentic “kingdom of God.” While Aguéli can, in many respects, be considered one of the progenitors of the Traditionalist movement, his conception of Islam’s universal dimension stands apart from the views of figures with a far more pronounced influence.

Faouzi Skali, Corbin, and C.G.Jung

A new article looks carefully at one aspect of the thought and teachings of Faouzi Skali, the Moroccan Sufi active in both Morocco and France whose point of departure was Guénon and Traditionalism. It is Ricarda Stegmann,  “Re-Spiritualising the World: Ibn ʿArabi in the Thought of Faouzi Skali,” Religiographies 3, no. 2 (2024): 88–102, available here.

Stegmann shows that Skali follows other Traditionalist in leaning heavily on Ibn ʿArabi, as did Guénon, who was introduced to Ibn ʿArabi as the prime example of Sufi thought by Ivan Aguéli. So far, no great surprise. What is a surprise is that, as Stegmann shows through a painstaking comparison of understandings of the two crucial concepts of ʿālam al-mithāl and futuwwa, Skali’s reading of Ibn ʿArabi draws not just on the Traditionalist Titus Burckhardt, as one might expect, but also on Henry Corbin, in some ways a Traditionalist fellow-traveler, who himself reads Ibn ʿArabi through lenses borrowed from C. G. Jung. So a certain amount of Jung is visible in Skali. Why? Because, suggests Stegmann, “Skali uses this recent reception of Ibn ʿArabi through Corbin because Corbin’s work has a similar objective to re-sacralise history as well as current life worlds.” This makes sense. 

An interesting article based on high-quality scholarly detective work that shows how different strands of modern “spiritually relevant” scholarship intertwine. “Spiritually relevant,” incidentally, is Stegmann’s apt term for the work of people like Corbin who live up to mainstream scholarly standards but also go a long way beyond the standard objectives of modern scholarship.