tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29711878.post5291130199272256589..comments2024-03-23T09:27:34.737+02:00Comments on Traditionalists: Is Hanifi Traditionalism Traditionalist?Mark Sedgwickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09998818251387897344noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29711878.post-53689011523272971052010-04-14T18:35:00.515+02:002010-04-14T18:35:00.515+02:00My thanks to Professor Sedgwick for the opportunit...My thanks to Professor Sedgwick for the opportunity to respond to his criticism. There is much more in his post I'd like to discuss besides the following two points, but that will have to wait for another forum.<br /><br />1. Separating “hard” and “soft” Traditionalism serves to make a distinction between those who openly acknowledge Guénon (which makes it <i>Guénonian</i> Traditionalism or “Traditionalism <i>sensu</i> Sedgwick”) and those who do not, yet who do appear to fit the conception of a Traditionalist <i>sensu</i> Sedgwick and (probably) took from Guénon. Hanifi Traditionalism is certainly not “hard”: it does not acknowledge Guénon directly. But is it a form of “soft” Traditionalism?<br /><br />I asked if Hanifi Traditionalism could have come into being without Guénonian Traditionalism. My conclusion is that it did not <i>need</i> Guénon and that, therefore, it is not “soft”. I also think that it did need Mr. Dugin’s “hard” Traditionalism, but that this is insufficient for calling it “soft”. Drawing upon a “Guénonian” is not the same as drawing upon Guénon. <br /> <br />I also asked if there’s a paper trail and if Mr. Noukhaev and Mr. Jachimczyk owe an intellectual debt to Guénon. I concluded that there is some indirect influence and the trace of a trail (Mr. Jachimczyk may have read him much earlier than the late 1990s), but that both are very weak.<br /><br />Writing history of ideas may take two opposite directions. In his book Mr. Sedgwick traces the influence of Guénon's ideas "up" through the 20th-century. I traced "down": not offspring, but the ancestry of a doctrine. Both approaches lead to a tree shape, one quasi focusing on the branches and the transfer of the family name (Guénon), the other on the roots and the blood.<br /><br />Starting with Guénon might lead one to include it in a catalogue of Guénonian Traditionalism. But looking back, I find Guénon's contribution is simply too diluted, one among many other debts and trails (e.g. the Holy Quran, the Medina Charter, Friedrich Engels, Henri Bergson, Magomed Mamakaev, Montgomery Watt).<br /><br />2. Mr. Dugin’s support for Kazakh neo-Eurasianism indeed shows that there is no need to add Traditionalist themes to Eurasianism to get Mr. Dugin’s support. My question, however, was not why Mr. Dugin collaborated with Mr. Noukhaev, but what led Mr. Noukhaev to adopt some of Mr. Dugin's ideas. Though I entertain the possibility in my thesis, I do not think that Mr. Noukhaev or Mr. Jachimczyk formulated their Traditionalism the way they did <i>primarily</i> to get his/Russian support.<br /><br />Instead, they recognized that neo-Eurasianism’s theoretical love of difference allowed them to carve out a Chechen niche for their Barbarism to occupy. Their ideas had already begun to take shape, they had already begun to look to the past when they consulted Dugin’s works in the summer of 1998. Mr. Dugin's support for Kazakh Eurasianism says something about him, not about the genesis and development of Mr. Noukhaev’s ideas.Eduard ten Houtennoreply@blogger.com