During his speech to the recent conference on Tradition in the Modern World (University of Alberta, September 23-24, 2006, 16 minutes), the Prince of Wales indicated what his favorite Traditionalist reading was. First and foremost came Sacred Web, to which he evidently subscribes. He also seems to read Sophia. The writers he mentioned by name were Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Martin Lings, and René Guénon (for The Reign of Quantity).
The Prince of Wales, then, is even better read in Traditionalism (in its Maryami version) than I thought (though it is interesting that he pronounces 'Guénon' in the English, rather than the French, way--with a w). His speech, like his reading, again made clear his admiration for those who offer us an alternative to the "disintegration" and "deracination" of "modernism," but did not otherwise clarify his own personal position.
7 comments:
Please explain you use of the term deracination.
It was the Prince of Wales who used the term "deracination," not me.
I imagine that what he meant was that modernity cuts people off from so many of their roots--cultural, religious, spiritual; perhaps even family. The other term he used to characterize modernity was "disintegration." In one view, the two go together. Consider two oft-quoted lines from William Butler Yeats' poem "The Second Coming"
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world
If the loss of the center--of tradition--means that everything falls apart (disintegrates), we are by definiton separated from our roots in the centre.
I'm indebted to you Dr Sedgwick for explaining.
Was the term used by Evola and if so in what context?
To be honest, I don't know. I'm not even sure what the Italian for "deracination" is!
I had a quick search for uses of "radice" [root] in the fullest Evola text archive I know of (http://www.juliusevola.it) and came up with no uses that suggest he was thinking in quite these terms.
The terms that come to mind for Evola's characterization of modernity are "decline," "decadence," or even "subversion," not "deracination."
I can't say why but something about the term seems Evolian.
Anyone else have any ideas?
The only place I've ever seen it is in Aristasian material. Presumably Prince Charles is not an Aristasian.
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