Against Guénon ?

 René Guénon is an undisputed authority on the traditional approach to historical and philosophical studies, and his writings are becoming increasingly popular and gaining ever more passionate readers.

However, there is no shortage of critics and detractors of the great French intellectual: a recent essay in this vein is Contre Guénon by Belgian writer Jean van Win. The author is an avowed supporter of 'democratic values' (drugs? abortion? mafia? corruption?). For van Win, democracy, equality, women's emancipation, are principles worth living for and, if necessary, dying for: at the apex of these enlightened values, van Win places the 'duty of interference' (let's try to imagine the Belgian scribbler with helmet and bulletproof vest fighting in 'humanitarian' wars...).

To make the author's positions clearer, the volume's introduction states that he wishes to emphasise the extraneousness of Guénon's thought to Masonic humanitarianism, but we have no doubts anout this!

Therefore, the objections that Van Win raises against Guénon are those usually used by the progressive nonsense that we hear every day in the mass media. Guénonian thought is likened to fascism to nazism, to racism, to anti-semitism: all these arguments have a great effect on the larval psychology of the democratic flock...

For our enlightened essayist, René Guénon's cordial intellectual friendship with Julius Evola is a scandalous fact, even though in reality the two authors, although starting from a common critique of modernity, developed rather different strands of thought.

The author then mocks the world conspiracy theory of which Guénon was a careful scholar. Now that globalism is openly manifested with so much institutional recognition, the denialist thesis of regime propaganda debunks itself.

Where van Win's essay reaches tragicomic results is when the author attacks the fideistic attitude of traditionalist culture: if readers apply this critique to the egalitarian dogmas of contemporary culture, they will have a good laugh...

Beyond the cultural positions of the author of Contre Guénon, in the essay one can find reasons of interest on some points concerning Guénon's formation, his sources, his eclectic cultural frequentations. First of all, the fascination for the East seems due to a cultural fashion that has very ancient roots in Europe and, in particular, in France: the idea of the East as a place of origin, as an exotic horizon bearer of who knows what mysteries has always been a widespread commonplace. Guénon was particularly fascinated by India, which, however, he never had the opportunity to visit and, according to van Win, Guénon did not know Sanskrit and read Hindu texts only in translation. The French esotericist also frequented some Masonic lodges, but he was one of the most qualified contributors to the anti-Masonic press of the time! The conversion to Islam, then, contrasts with the passionate defence of the Catholic Church, of which Guénon was often a standard bearer in his writings. Finally, Guénon rarely cites the sources from which he drew inspiration.

Certainly, the life and work of Guénon can present ambiguous and contradictory aspects, but there is no doubt that the body of his writings describes with extraordinary precision the frightful metastasis of democratic degeneration. The denunciation of the pan-Satanism that infests the modern world has never been so convincing as in Guenon's lucid pages, which nevertheless never induce despair, but on the contrary encourage the reader, with an almost imperturbable language, to a firm stance and a virile assumption of responsibility.

Finally, it should be noted that van Win reproaches Guénon for the absence of references to Christian love. In reality, van Win himself, an author of clear Masonic sympathies, does not really express himself as an altar boy; and on the other hand it is universally known that egalitarian ideologies are by definition the factory of hatred!

Jean van Win, Contre Guénon, Éditions de La Hutte, Bonneuil-en-Valois 2010, pp.278