As Colier tells us, Guénon did not use the word “metapolitical” himself, but many of his late followers use it, and Colier argues that Guénon’s work was indeed metapolitical, not purely spiritual, as some claim. Guénon's metapolitical aim was “to neutralize the modern ethical domain and reorient it towards a… theocratic doctrine in which social and political structures are rooted in a permanent, rigid spiritual universality.”
That Guénon’s work has such political significance today is partly a result of this, and partly a result of the recent “globalization of capitalism and liberalism.” “Guénon reemerged at the beginning of the 21st century because his metapolitical work enables new extreme discourses to implement other ‘salvific’ alternatives. Liberated from Judeo-Christian [ethical] ‘shackles,’ neo-traditionalists profess radical measures to confront the perceived mounting threats, no matter the cost.” At the end of the thesis, Colier argues that “Together, Guénon, Evola, Eliade, Dumézil, and Schmitt have played their part as ‘horsemen of the Apocalypse.’ They toiled hard, often in obscurity, to cut loose the moral reins restraining the horse.”
Colier makes his argument primarily by placing Guénon in the context of the intellectual currents of his time, both French (Joseph de Maistre, Martinists, and others), as has been done before, but also beyond that: Spengler and Moeller van den Bruck and, especially, Neo-Thomism. As Colier points out, Guénon spent many years working with Western philosophy. He argues that Guénon’s esoteric/exoteric/initiatic mirrors Aquinas’s division between dogmatics, morality, and ritual. Perhaps, though I myself would trace the esoteric/exoteric pair to Sufism and earlier Western esotericism. He further argues that “through his exposure to the structured Masonic organization, Guénon learned about the crucial role of transmission, hierarchy, and alternative history, elements that became integral to Primordial Tradition and to Crisis.” Yes, but also through his contact with Sufism, in my view.
Finally, Colier also makes his case with a close reading of La Crise du monde moderne, and by pointing out how practically oriented were Guénon’s repeated hopes for the Catholic church would rediscover tradition and lead the salvation of the West.
A subsidiary argument is that Guénon was antisemitic, and that French scholars, especially, have knowingly or unknowingly obscured this. I think Colier is probably right—as he says, almost everyone else Guénon was in contact with was even more antisemitic. I am not sure exactly where this point gets us, beyond (perhaps) the neutralization of the Judeo element in the modern Judeo-Christian ethical domain.
Colier’s critique of Guénon includes the observation that conspiracy theories always follow the same pattern, “an effect looking for a cause,” and that Guénon’s approach to history rather fits this pattern. Indeed.
Interestingly, Colier pairs Julius Evola and Mircea Eliade among Guénon’s successors. Evola’s positions are well known, but there is a greater variety of views on Eliade. For Colier, Eliade’s “entire oeuvre reads like a manifesto for transforming the substitution of the ethical domain into its outright suppression.” The goal of Eliade’s archaic pagan religiosity was “to sever all Judeo-Christian roots of Western culture, especially its ethical domain, and substitute them with a mystical exaltation of the Sacred: cyclical, natural, and regional.” In this sense, perhaps, yes.
A good thesis, with many interesting observations along the way, though I am not entirely sure that Guénon's aim was really “to neutralize the modern ethical domain,” even if that may have been one of the consequences of his work.
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Excellent, even if this seems to be a slight caricature of Guenon who could also be interpreted as having started the discourse, along with Coomaraswamy, of anti-colonialism.
If Guénon was antisemitic why would he study so closely the Kabbala? Guénon criticized indeed some jewish authors but only for having departed from their spiritual tradition. The accusation of antisemiticism really makes little sense here ....
The argument made is that when one distinguishes between good traditional Jews and bad non-traditional Jews, one is being antisemitic towards the latter group.
Guenon was not antisemitic .
However , he regarded Judaism as a secondary tradition which derived from the Atlantean tradition , and not directly from the Primordial Tradition , and therefore of lesser importance compared to those traditions which derived more closely from that Tradition. such as the Indic traditions.
In his reviews of real antisemitic books such as those of Leon de Poncins, Guenon pointed out that it was too simplistic to pin all the deviations of the modern world on Jews , Freemasons . Jesuits or any other group whom conspiracy theorists liked to blame. Rather . the real source of the modern deviation were the counter-initiation who owed no allegiance to any ethnicity , religion or nation . He did however think that Jews who had abandoned their tradition could become agents of subversion ( Marx , Freud , Zaharoff, Trebitsch Lincoln etc ) , and this was like an inversion of the original mission of the Jews which was to be a nation of priests ( an example of corruptio optima pessima ) .
Mark, I appreciate your balanced review of Colier’s thesis, but I must strongly disagree with endorsing the claim that René Guénon was antisemitic.
This accusation, notably also advanced by Paul Fenton, is both inaccurate and misleading. Guénon held the Jewish Kabbalah in high regard as a major repository of esoteric knowledge and a key link to the Primordial Tradition. In Le Roi du Monde (1927), he devotes significant attention to concepts such as the Shekinah, Metatron, Melchizedek, and Luz, presenting Melchizedek as the symbol of the junction between the Hebrew tradition and the Primordial Tradition. He explicitly stated in a 1933 letter to Olivier de Fremond (in my collection) that a deep understanding of the Bible requires the study of Kabbalah. He also drew structural parallels between the Sephirot and Hindu chakras, showing his appreciation for its metaphysical value.
Guénon’s few remarks on modern Zionism in his Theosophisme (a late, largely secular nationalist ideology) do not constitute antisemitism. As many Jewish authors have themselves pointed out, anti-Zionism is not synonymous with antisemitism. Guénon’s critiques were always doctrinal and civilizational, aimed at modernity, psychologism (including Freud), and deviations from tradition, but never ethnic or racial. He condemned other modern currents regardless of their origin.
The attempt to paint Guénon as antisemitic often stems from discomfort with his Islamic initiation by Catholics, his supra-confessional perspective, and his critique of certain specifically modern Jewish intellectual currents. This does not withstand serious examination of his work. Far from ignoring or disparaging the Kabbalah, Guénon recognized its importance more clearly than many of his critics.
A serious and objective re-reading of Guénon, free from confessional or ideological agendas, remains necessary.
To some extent it depends on what one means by "antisemitic." In many ways Guénon was indeed not antisemitic, but if one considers it to be antisemitism to believe that some (if not all) Jews have a negative impact on Western society, it is not so clear. The thesis can be downloaded at the link I gave; look at pp. 150-168, and see what you think.
How does this thesis pose Guénon as an attack on the, quote, "Judeo-Christian religion," when that term wasn't even common until after WW2? I checked the thesis and the author never explains this. If he's talking about the broad Abrahamic intellectual tradition, modern scholarship (like, post-1980) generally includes Islam within that European heritage, and the continued use of "Judeo-Christian" today is generally seen as a far-right dog whistle.
"but if one considers it to be antisemitism to believe that some (if not all) Jews have a negative impact on Western society, it is not so clear". So is it anti - Catholic to believe ( as Guenon did ) that some Catholics such as Philip le Bel and Descartes had a negative impact on western society ?
It might be Francophobic to believe that French intellectuals have had a negative impact on Western society, but antisemitism is more complicated than Francophobia because of the existence and consequences of so many Jewish-conspiracy myths, whereas I do not know of many French-conspiracy myths... But let me remind everyone that the argument that Guénon was antisemitic is really Colier's, not mine, and those who take issue with it should refer to Colier's thesis.
I cannot believe you do not see the difference between a religious identity and an ethnic one
There is an important difference, but my impression is that antisemitism is generally more about (perceived) ethnicity than about religion.
Guenon was more critical of the European mentality, all the way back in the Greco-Roman era as illustrated in his first book. From there he continued to see its deviation in the modern era as something that came to engulf the entire planet in the darkest era of the Kali Yuga. The dominant materialistic and exploitative group is European and Guenon made no secret of it. In fact this materialism is a point of great pride for modern Europeans and they use it to dehumanize everyone else as they ironically violently cut off humanity from its legitimate spiritual origins. However, the few things he had to say about Jews who had deviated from their tradition is suddenly problematic. Why are some above any criticism while others aren't?
There were abolitionist movements (almost all of them European by the way), before Guenon and Coomaraswamy were born. For example in England, there was William Wilberforce who fought against slavery and exploitation as early as 1807. Guenon and others may have contributed in some way to such discourse, but they definitely did not start it.
Well said !
Regarding French conspiracies, France was often presented as pulling the strings of the Jesuits in XIXth century Germany. Conversely, Catholic hostility to masonry was also given to see its secret masters as French Jacobins.
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