Tag: philosophy

By René Guénon:

La vérité est qu’il n’existe pas en réalité un « domaine profane », qui s’opposerait d’une certaine façon au « domaine sacré » ; il existe seulement un « point de vue profane », qui n’est proprement rien d’autre que le point de vue de l’ignorance . C’est pourquoi la « science profane », celle des modernes, peut à juste titre, ainsi que nous l’avons déjà dit ailleurs, être regardée comme un « savoir ignorant » : savoir d’ordre inférieur, qui se tient tout entier au niveau de la plus basse réalité, et savoir ignorant de tout ce qui le dépasse, ignorant de toute fin supérieure à lui-même, comme de tout principe qui pourrait lui assurer une place légitime,

There is no better way to summarize the state of the modern sciences, each of which is solitarily following its own path towards ever more complete mastery of the details and ever more complete ignorance of the whole. This progress consists, in fact, as Guénon himself says, of a regression of intelligence. This knowledge that is detached from the whole of what is called reality, isolated and useless, without being the result of the search for a broad understanding, without having profound implications for the way in which we view the present, the past, the existence and its reasons for being, is really no better than ignorant knowledge.

Beyond the unavoidable damage to the reputation of some of the authors analyzed, the thesis that permeates Paul Johnson’s Intellectuals seems to be convincingly justified by the variety of examples offered in the work. Johnson shows that every “intellectual” who believes himself capable and wants to reform the world according to his own ideas ends up, sooner or later, possessed by them, which means worshipping them and holding them above the truth, which means taking sides with them to the detriment of real people. Possessed, he becomes a moral monster, refuting through his conduct any possible nobility contained in the idea that has dominated him. On the other hand, Johnson also shows that the way out of the magnetic attraction of ideas can only be through a sincere appreciation of the truth and the awareness that an idea is not worth a life. It is a work that, like good moralistic treatises, humanizes by exposing dehumanization.

It cannot be accepted for a second that authors such as Kierkegaard, Pascal and Dostoevsky have been lumped together with figures such as Heidegger and Sartre in this so-called existentialism. In fact, what is most surprising is that it was precisely Sartre who proposed such a bundling, as if he were part of a fictitious current and claiming to have absorbed them all, without being immediately challenged on the absurdity of imagining an evolution from Pascal to Sartre. One can see, for example, that Sartre uses arguments such as “l’existence précède l’essence” or “l’homme n’est rien d’autre que ce qu’il se fait” in order to paint a man isolated from his circumstances, created from nothing and independent from the start, something visibly antagonistic to Christian thought. And it is certainly similar disparities that separate Sartre from many others labeled “existentialists”. Imagining a “philosophical current” that unites them is something that only interests Sartre himself, and it should not convince anyone.