Traditionalism as a Language - Alexander Dugin

The Philosophy Of Traditionalism, M., 2002

Lecture 1. Rene Guenon: Traditionalism as a language

Structuralism: language and metalanguage

Since the late NINETEENTH century, there developed the so-called “structural linguistics“. One of its founders was Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913), who discovered a number of the patterns of this discipline. Science has proven so popular and interesting (especially as a methodology), as an effective and expeditious way to solve a number of problems that it gave rise to a new turn in the philosophical and scientific methodology of the twentieth century, leading to the so-called “structuralism” and then from that “post-structuralism“.

Our century began with surprisingly accurate (like the rest of his aphorisms) phrase of Nietzsche, which gave the name to his early work: “We philologists“. And here, by understanding the extent to which we (as humans, as thinking beings) are “the linguists”, a number of philosophers drew attention to the problem of language.

Very roughly we can say that the language in structuralism, structural linguistics, shall be in a separate category, showing us a world predetermined by the fact that the world is structured by interrelated meanings, that is, language is understood as something that conjugates the sphere of the intelligible, the intellectual, scope of thinking, the noumenon and the phenomenological sphere, immediate ontic realities available to us to us in perception – of what exactly we are dealing with. Thus, between meaning (or, say, spirit) and matter is language. Language has, as noted by structural linguists, some “magic” autonomy – all bodily things in this world have it in their dissolution, an entrance into the language: filleting with the elements of language, things are redeemed, withdrawn from the world of corporeality through what is named. Simultaneously, in the opposite direction, through language the realm of the spirit affects the sphere of the flesh, matter. You can remember the plot of Hoffmann (repeated by E. Golovin), where the characters of the narrative for the evocation of spirits used conventional grammar. Structural linguists using the developed conceptual, rational, expressed essentially the same magical idea: the thing dissolves in the word, the word says a thing.

According to the hypothesis of Whorf-Sapir, “the reality around us is craftable by our language”. If something has no name – it simply is not. The Whorf-Sapir hypothesis, in principle, perfectly coincides with the characteristic view of the world in the Tradition that the existence of things dissolves in their names, and the names are able to create, to embody, to materialize a specific thing. Even at the household level, it is clear enough in a certain situation to say with the tone of “do” such-and-such, “silent”, “die”, “kill” or “thou shalt not kill” – and the material world begins to change. Yet no matter what the mechanisms and how they act, it is only obvious that the word has a huge “theurgic” value. The Theurgy ancient Greeks called the priestly art, by means of which people using spells and rituals that could impel the Deities in a certain way to express themselves.

Accordingly, the study of speech, language and its models is a kind of modern equivalent of “operational magic” that allows you to change, to transform reality and at the same time lead to the concrete world of phenomena to the conceptual, abstract model, eidetic reality, dissolving existence in some kind of conceptual ensemble. Today confirms a distorted view of the magical arts of antiquity: that they served only practical purposes and used the spiritual worlds to influence the situation and material things. Actually, it was the only one operational, application -one side of magic. There was another speculative side of magic, designed not to change existing material but to understand, to explain, to erect to the archetype, to unravel the inherent “sidereal meaning.”

Central in today’s lecture topic is the separation of Ferdinand de Saussure (and behind it all structuralist philosophy) the aggregate of the language into two parts: potential and actual. In different languages this division can be expressed in different terminology. In the French language le (“whole language”) is divided into la langue (potential part, “proper language”) and la parole (“word”) or le discours (“utterance”) is the relevant part. In Russian language you can talk about the division into language (potential) and speech (actual).

What does this mean? It is difficult to translate precisely these terms, because, by and large, it is not about simple ready definitions, but about the complex spiritual operations of the subtle differentiation (diacritice) separating two components of what appears to be a single reality. Language is ashwathama itself, a potential reality that is removed from the natural state, externalized, alienated and becoming “not a” at the very moment when the person speaks, carries out a discourse, a narrative.

At this point, the language is updated. When a person says something, it uses some invisible, “pre-laying” language mass that is not in actuality, selectively withdrawn from potentially present language, to pronounce (simple or complex) speech. In language there are two elements. The first is actually a language, a set of lexical, morphological patterns, vocabulary (thesaurus) and laws governing sentence structure. This language was insisted by structurality – there is a certain constant, the synchronous value; it is always, simultaneously and completely present. Perhaps the most interesting structural linguistics is the recognition of the independent reality of a complex synchronic existence of language in potential space. Language exists in a kind of permanent, abstract from concrete speech condition. It is alwayssself-identitified, sovereign, synchronistical. Specific speech (utterance) withdraws from it fragments, translating Genesis of language from a synchronous state to a diachronic sequence. Saying there is a consistent, language – at the same time. The language is divided into two parts: what it says, and then, by means of what they say is what they say.
Language as a potential part inextricably fused with the sphere of sense. And so, when structuralistism discovered this circumstance, it turned out that the language showing through it is not identical with the totality of all existing speeches (and even all possible speeches): it is always wider than what it says, and may be a separate object of study. The study of synchronic linguistic reality allows a wonderful way to highlight the mechanisms of social behavior, levels of psychoanalytic aspects of personality, structure, norms, and anomalies of up to radical somatic disorders. Thus arose the school of Lacan, the French psychoanalyst who combined structural linguistics with psychoanalysis and created a rather comprehensive doctrine. By the way, in Freud, in the book of reservations I first came across the idea of a combination of psychoanalysis and structural linguistics, linguistics as such. Lacan has deployed this theme, such as poststructuralist authors like Deleuze and Guattari, developed the methodology of the origin of language from the root vegetative level of physicality. It was a very interesting and very witty line of research. Deleuze, in “Logic of sense”, for example, shows how way, going from some initial perturbations bodily reality within the human being, there is metastructure language and logical thinking. Here, despite the modern rationalist context, pops up again old, archaic idea of operational significance of language, which not only reveals and veils (the Latin verb revelare means “to open” and “close” at the same time) status of corporal unconsciously-a vegetative human level, but also at the same time the opposite way affects the rights, changes his (and only his) body, governs it. Hence, the role of speech in mental health practice. Speech, conversation, story, discourse in some situations is able to cure serious mental illness.

This raises an interesting point: the structural study of language by linguistsand structuralists, in fact, also occurs through language. And here we come to the most important: methodologically, studying the language, structuralist, structural linguists have developed a special “superlanguage”, “metalanguage”.

The metalanguage is the language by which we study the language. This is a greater degree of generalization.

The very fact of opening a language separate from that of speech, is already deepening in a kind of “ontological revisionism” because ordinary consciousness (digital, binary, the mind, the proverbial “common sense”) cannot grasp the synchronic language. Ordinary consciousness understands the language just as speech, as a collection of speeches or like a pattern manifesting itself in speech. Ordinary consciousness is verbal, but not linguistic consciousness, it is sensitive to discourse, but muffled language.

The next step in understanding the ontology of language is to identify the needs and problems of metalanguage, which explores a certain language. It contains the most important is the fact that exploring language, and language models, structuralist were proprietary from some (протовлияний?), from certain paradigms, prefiguratively, predestined models, which studied that which underlies language.

Why today we are talking about the crisis of structuralism and poststructuralism, about the exhaustion of these areas – because of the exhausted (metalinguistic) paradigm, which itself was based on the structuralist school in general, originating from either positivist-Kantian source (Saussure), or (in the avant-garde versions of the “new left”) from the Marxist paradigm. In other words, language learning in structuralist models was conducted with the help of some already defined proto-structures (deeply buried), but, actually, it is quite certainly a limited model. The study of the nature of language was conducted from positions of another language.

In the case of structuralist learning the language was not clean (whether pure language learning – until the question), and obviously the specified models of the underlying meta-language were limited and predefined. Hence the priority interest of structuralists not to linguistic ontology, but to the evolution of speech.

Actually, hence the modern crisis of the “new left” philosophy. I’m not talking about the complete absence of its representatives in Russia. We have never adequately understood this philosophy, and now there’s nothing to understand. Today Europeans who once (10 years ago) all perfectly understood, no longer understand what is meant by Deleuze or Lacan, since the underlying metalinguistic milestones have completely changed. Marxist imply that the “new left”
exhausted the paradigm (which doesn’t mean “understood”) and the common denominator of linguistic research cannot serve. The field of linguistics the field of language studies came to a tragic end that requires a radical overcoming. If you look closely at the optimism in semiotic and linguistic studies in 60-70-x, including in our country) and to compare how similar problems are addressed now, we will notice a sharp contrast. Today in this area there is complete passivity, autism… Researchers have lost the nerve of what they were doing, suddenly forget the meaning and significance of what was done, losing the vital content of the categorical apparatus.
But there is one man, one author (and associated with his name philosophy in the twentieth century), which remained aloof from the interests of structural linguistics. This author is very, very important to structuralism, although he never reckoned to the structuralists. Now that this area in General has lost its intellectual heart beat (and with it the inherent meanings), the author (through his ideological legacy) may join it in full and retained the conceptual outfit, such as “irresistible cuirass” as a new type of weapon, because this field is empty, and it’s full. I talking about Renee Guenon.

Rene Guenon

Rene Guenon is the most correct, the most intelligent and the most important person of the twentieth century. Smarter, deeper, clearer, absolute work was not and probably could not be. It is no coincidence that the French traditionalist René Alleau in one volume dedicated to R. Guenon1, compared his work with that of Marx. Seemingly very different, opposite figures. Guenon is a conservative ultra-traditionalist. Marx was a revolutionary innovator, a radical Iconoclast subversive. But René Alleau absolutely correctly guessed the revolutionary message of Guenon’s exegesis, the extreme, brutal noncomformism of his position, his overthrowing of all and sundry, the totally radical nature of his thought. The fact that Rene Guenon was the only author, the only thinker of the twentieth century, and many centuries before that, who not only identified and entered into the secondary language paradigm, but also questioned the very essence of language (and meta-language). The language of Marxism was methodologically very interesting (especially at a certain historical stage), thinly reducing the historical existence of humanity by a clear and convincing formula to the confrontation of labor and capital (which, actually, was a colossal revolutionary and epistemological progress, as it allowed many things to be organized and brought in a more or less consistent, dynamic design). Being a paradigmatic Zeitgeist, Marxism was so popular as to win the minds of the best intellectuals of the twentieth century. But in the work of R. guénon is an even more fundamental analysis, an even more radical unmasking, an even broader ideological conflict, settling the entire question.

R. guénon developed one of the most important paradigmatic intellectual systems. Of course, in a vague form it existed before, and was to some extent used, but only Guenon identified it as a language. He did something similar to Saussure or other structural linguists. The most important aspect of the paradigmatic system of René Guénon, which he had deduced, and which is, perhaps, the most universal and the most powerful of the terms and concepts of our time, is the concept of the “language of modernity”.

The concept of “modern”, “modernity” as a concept

Historical scholarship has rightly opposed the New (modern) or modern society against traditional society. The meaning of the word le moderne – “modern”, “modernity” – in the mouth of Guénon, has such a tremendous value that it describes the entire meta-language of the world in
which we live. In fact, in the concept of “modernity” Guenon puts the idea of paradigms2, pre-empting a metalanguage, a language, and then – the field of discourses of modernity. You can imagine what is the degree of generalization?!

Structuralist indicated that in addition to the discourse of diachronic spoken speeches, arbitrarily developed verbal logical chains – a synchronic, synchronous, reality is constantly existing above and before verbal language, which they studied using a meta-language based on a special philosophical-linguistic methodology.

R. Guénon, on the other hand, and this structuralist model, and many other epistemological paradigms that determine the various more specific languages (in the structuralist sense), more specific paradigmatic complexes and socio-cultural structures, includes the term, concluding in clearly defined boundaries, grasping the whole thing, detecting, revealing the essence of modernity as a huge field, encompassing all of what we are dealing with what used to operating, not knowing that this is only one thing, and that beyond this there is a whole array of other opportunities other languages. All methodology, all the languages of modernity, her entire paradigm was incorporated by Guenon into a single concept, relegating “His Majesty” of language (meta-language) to the modern level of one of the possible languages among others. We can say he that destroyed the claim of modernity to be the universal language – a set of speeches, built on a certain logic and strictly specific rules- showing that there are other full models that are much more universal. He abruptly dropped the ontological degree, the ontological level that determines our entire civilization and all the realities of our world. And this is an important point. Referring to Guénon, seeing him as an author who has committed an analogue structuralist revolution, we can discover a whole new meaning of his work and understand the important orientation of his mission.

So, what is “modernity”? “Modernity in Guénon is a background paradigm, the operating system, a kind of computer language. The analogy with programming languages is very productive. With the development of computer technology, basic programming codes, computer language goes deeper and deeper into the background field. Gradually, there are languages that operate with the original machine language. Then there are users completely ignorant as to the original language and in the secondary, developed on its basis, and now hardly anyone remembers the early computer technology. At first, every computer user should have been in some way, albeit small, a programmer. Gradually this need disappeared, and accordingly, changed the understanding of how a computer works. Later there appeared more and newer operating systems, and eventually, even within the General theory of the process of programming, the existence of a computer language, dissipated. But the original machine language itself has not disappeared. It was just that it now moved beyond our attention to the background, where it no longer acted directly. We do not see it any more, this language is not apparent as it was before, in the first computers. Now we can’t even imagine what this language is; it exists on a different layer of computer equipment. In the end, there are people who know how to use a computer, who have mastery, but, nevertheless, have no idea of what lies at its technological base. As there are motorists who have no idea what is in the engine, and, nevertheless, can spend their life driving.

The definition of “modernity” in the teaching of Guenon – is selection ofof some paradigmatic pathomechanism that defines how the world works. We, as ordinary human beings, immersed in a process of becoming, tend to perceive what surrounds us, what we are and what is around us is taken for granted, as a kind of “everything”. It is from this “only” that wdeveloped our cognition;
getting an idea of what happened in the past, what the future will hold, we compare it with our “all”. This is our momentary “all” – it is for us all without the quotes. And outside it can only be analogy – analogy the past (memories), the analogy of the future (anticipation, of the gospel, planning). Guenon asserts that, in fact, the whole system of the operating system of today -our proverbial “all”- is none other than an imposed, malicious, abnormal, vicious, deeply distorted and inharmonious, artificial illusion, an artifact, a simulacrum, machination, and not “all.” Such a simulacrum of the operating system in the teaching of Guénon is called the “modern”, “the modern world.” Modernity, in his view, is an abortion. It is only one of the models, more precisely, the abnormal model within an infinitely large set of other possibilities. Just one of the languages, not some universal reality.

Guenon opposes the notion of “modernity” – against the notion of “tradition”. Thus, this raises the interesting thing is that, from the point of view of philosophical structuralism, is central to the work. Guénon argues that there are two types of language: the language of modernity (including all the possibilities inherent in the concept of “modernity” that predetermine all the languages and even the meta languages in the framework of modernity) and the language of Tradition. And here arises the first conflict, the first line of separation: on the one hand modernity, on the other hand, Tradition. On the one hand the language of modernity, on the other hand – the language of tradition. Other researchers also use the term “modern society”, “traditional society”, “modern times”, “something that precedes a new time”, but usually all of us except the followers of Guénon. shared behind the scenes the standards of the modern paradigm, even if they are latent, and the whole terminology of traditional society is considered as something past and, correspondingly lower, and the Modern – as something present, close to the present, and, therefore, higher. In addition to our will, we operate in the operating environment of “modern” style, regardless of whether we understand the mechanisms of its functioning (as programmers), or treat it (as users) simply with inertia.

This is true for all people of the modern world, without exception, in the extent to which the language of the modern world, the highest and most profound paradigmatic model, determines our attitude to the process of time, to the history, to terminology. So: how do people not criticize modernity, all of them, even Marx (although Marx, it should be noted, was a true revolutionary who questioned the whole layers of reality, saying that it’s not reality, and the game of capital, not authentic existence, and the machinations of capital, its akin to suspicion gronowska?) sooner or later stops. Guenon goes much farther than others. Guenon is already in a completely different reality. He contrasts the language of Tradition, and the language of the modern world. He is beyond all the others trapped in modernity, with freedom from all of the other illusions of the modern world. He is such a huge conceptual distance from the element of the language of modernity that within many of his followers, the question arises – who is, in fact, Guenon3? Some of his disciples are fascinated and horrorified by it: he can’t be human, because man is, by definition, is a product of its environment (i.e. its programmed basic operating language). Guenon is something opposite of the “product of the environment”, including space. This inference led to possibly one of the most radical hypotheses about his avatar nature (researchers began to study the location of the house where he was born and the church where he was baptized in infancy, in which hand she was oriented, the street on which he lived, tried from his house to make a et of granite temple4…). So strong were his followers’ intuitive suspicions about his distance from the language of modernity, as expressed in the theoretical description of thilanguage as something separate, outside, without affecting the basic paradigmatic levels of perception of existence.

Anyway, Rene Guenon did not fit in our time. He was, said Michelle Balsan, “the largest intellectual miracle since the middle Ages”.

A miracle is a miracle, but nevertheless it does not end there. Rene Guenon absolutely no contemporary author, moreover, he is perhaps the farthest removed from the present, but something’s still wrong, because even in the world of authentic and organic Traditions such amazing characters, like Guénon, there were quite is few. Guénon is not just a messenger of Traditions in an environment that is based on the denial of Tradition. Things are probably more complicated.

Traditionalism and Tradition

Guénon himself said Tradition alone is truly important. Above all, the language of Tradtion as a system of perception confronts the modern world, the language of the modern world, and has every reason in the truth, the absolute truth. The language of Tradition Guénon is the last and highest court, which, as the fullness of the paradigmatic onto-epistemological possibilities, has the right to make its own judgment with respect to any normal or abnormal fragments of reality, including with respect to the paradigm (or languages) of modernity.Therefore, in the book “the reign of quantity and the signs of the times”5 Guenon suggests that Tradition is more important than traditionalism. Tradition as the act of belonging to a much more serious and deeper tradition puts the person in a true operating system, rather than a purely theoretical traditionalism, which is only a kind of intention, the desire to belong to the Tradition. This raises a very interesting point: if we understand by “traditionalism” recognition, acceptance and development of thethe paradigmatic models proposed Guénonnon, the situation is not so straightforward. The relationship between tradition and traditionalism are not so obvious as Guenon wrote himself, because if not understood by the traditionalism of other traditionalists, namely traditionalists following the Guenon, the “guenonists”, then the picture would be more interesting.

Guénon not just pointed to the fact that there is particular reality – the language of Tradition, in General, on a schematic level and described. He revealed the structurural skeleton which precedes the formulation of a specific historical historical incarnation. Therefore, to master the unveiled Guénon model is something other than to be an adept of this or that tradttion, to understand it, to manifest it to , to develop its logic. Guénon did the step that may be impossible within a tradition, for it is only within the modern world (the language of which is just complete nihilistic negation of the language of Tradition in its paradigmattic core) that it is possible to grasp the language of Tradition as something unified in its pure form of an ideal crystalization. Therefore Guenon did not speak on behalf of a particular tradition, and did not speak in its language(as he would have to do, if he was only the mouthptece of a particular tradition, which broadcasts on its own behalf) Guenon spoke generaly in his own language. It is a unique language that allows one to describe and to study the language of traditions and language of modernity (as a special case of degeneration that distorts the basic parameters of the language of tradition). Guenon has created a special metalanguage, and it is so universal and comprehensive that it can be adequately explore the structure of any language (in the moUnlike the technical metalanguage of linguists, the metalanguage of Guénon is indeed universal and its operation as a whole is free from the interference of a non-critical operating environment. Guénon firmly and consciously eliminated the root layer of the influence of the paradigm of “modernity.” He did this in a situation where the paradigm of Modernity was so total that the alternative paradigm of Traditionalism could be adopted only from the outside. The personal fate of Guénon was to move from the theoretical claims of traditionalism to the being-in-Tradition. But most importantly, this process was accompanied by a sharp reflection, the paradigmatic value of which far exceeds the modest framework of human destiny.

The uniqueness of Guénon is that his Traditionalist doctrine represents something radically new, previously unknown. Thanks to Guénon, due to the absorption of Guenon’s historical message, we can now not only understand any one particular historical tradition or more traditions (as specific discourses), but also to get an idea about the structure and nature of the Tradition itself. It is particularly important that methodologically, this occurs on a very contrasting background, comparing the Tradition with the language of the modern world. Therefore, Traditionalism (as Guénon, and us as followers of Guénon.) is a unique historical opportunity that exists solely within the language of modernity as the antithesis of this language. Only in our unique conditions (apocalyptic, by all indications) is there the possibility for generalization and universalization of the Traditional paradigms that were previously impossible under a number of circumstances. After all, being in the Tradition, we can’t see it from the outside; we exist as a part of it. At the same time, being in traditionalism, we by force of circumstances are placed outside the Tradition, but are able to purify and crystallize the idea of its essence, its skeleton. In practice, methodologically, this is done through the negation of the modern world, through the negation of the language of modernity. Such a denial is not an abstraction, it is a specific direct act.

None of the “people of the Tradition” could do it for the reasons which I have already said, none could create an elaborate description of the language of Tradition, to develop it as a universal metalanguage. Guénon did. He contrasted the language of Tradition, with the language of the modern world. This, first of all, and is the colossal revolutionary significance of Guenon. Anyone who follows Guenon, goes in the same direction, into the total negation of the modern world. The way this practice is carried out is through the sacrifice of the language of the modern world.

It is also important that in addition to a radical dualism – the language of Tradition against the language of the modern world – there is also a mitigated dualism. There are authors (which can hardly be called “traditionalists” in a Guénonist sense, but which were either under his direct influence, or under the influence of similar ideas), who set themselves a different task: to identify the elements of the language Tradition in the language of the modern world. They do differently, tactically – not the head-on confrontation, but “entrism”, “infiltration”, an evolutionary attempt to change the paradigm of modernity towards the paradigm of Tradition.

These are Mircea Eliade, Carl Gustav Jung, etc. This is a soft form of traditionalism. Orthodox “Guénonists” (e.g., J. Evola, Valsan or Titus Burkhart) practiced a total opposition, considering the modern world as a completely negative phenomenon, and its language – as the lies of the abomination. The second category of thinkers, by contrast, argued that the language of our time retained the remains of the main paradigmatic standards of the traditional complex. They insisted that the paradigm of modernity affected the human being only superficially, that the influence of the language of modernity afflicted only the rational process, that in the depths of human beings, as before, the paradigm of Tradition continued to operate (Jung called this reality the “collective
unconscious”).

Between Guénon (and “Guénonists”), on the one hand, and Eliade, Jung, etc.,on the other, there is a ratio similar to radical Marxism and European social democracy. The Traditionalism of Guénon insists on irreversibly pathological nature of the modern world and its language, and that the situation can only be corrected by a radical break with modernity, a kind of “revolt against the modern world”6, a “conservative revolution”.

Eliade and Jung believe that the modern world is not so very “modern” in its heart, and therefore, with some effort (but without revolutionary confrontation) it is easy to return to the usual path of “eternal return”7. This is a kind of “social democracy” from socialism.

Julius Evola, the most radical follower of Guénon, considered Eliade and Jung apostates who “sold out to the world occupation regime of the Kali-Yuga”. Other traditionalists disagree and achieve a similar, softer, traditionalism, introducing into the modern world subversive traditionalist themes, a kind of conceptual virus, thereby undermining the abnormal operating system, and bringing restoration. However, without Guénon’s analysis and actions, Eliade (and similar authors) would hardly be qualified; there would be no adequate terms and categories, which could accurately determine what, in fact, Mircea Eliade did in his works. Recognizing the correctness of the paradigms of the language of Tradition, he tried to find them in the modern world, to identify them as separate complexes and thus to reinterpret the modern world in order, ultimately, to carry out the “seizure of intellectual power.” His project, alas, did not work. In General, this path, the path of compromise, gives a definite positive effect, though, because thanks to Eliade a huge mass of people (and thanks to Jung – even more) were captured by the study of language Traditions, while Guénon was left deliberately by the author to a narrow intellectual elite, for a very limited number of heroic, uncompromising and radical people. Which is better: the quantitative growth of the fascination with the history of religions in “soft traditionalists”, sometimes not giving the desired quality, or the clarity of the circle of “strict Guénonists”, sometimes degenerating into inert and sterile critics, “moved with ressentimento”? The question is open, as in the case of figuring out who is right: the Communists or the social Democrats?

Quality time synchronism, the ontology of eternity

Moving on to more specific things. There are two essential elements that will allow us to understand what is the language of Tradition, and what is the language of modernity. In the language of Tradition, which Guénon revealed, is a set of postulates, fundamental principles that relate to the quality required for our global thinking in paradigmatic categories of time and space. When we talk about the understanding of space and time in language, Tradition and the language of our time, we find ourselves in the space of these two languages and begin to recognize the coordinates. As we mark the coordinate of this axis, two ambiguous uncertainties become more distinct, more concrete, more visibly outlined.

Modernity (or the modern lanugage) sees the unidirectional main reality as the fundamental mode of existence. This axiom, this postulate in modern language is not questioned. Time flows in one direction, and all that exists, exists within time. Everything that lies outside of time, if you can think of it, is some abstraction, an artificial construction, not having its own Genesis. This is some imaginary construct having, perhaps, some grounds for consideration, but in fact is ontologically negative. Consequently, the formation is the only form of existence of existence, and what there is, is in existence, in unidirectional time. Indeed, there is no such language in eternity. If it’s spoke, it’s pure neontological abstraction. The formation of the same, left alone, being taken as a kind of self-sufficiency and the only real form of existence of existence, receives a fundamental paradigmatic load. The process time becomes an entirely ontologically positive process – obviously a positive, because it, from him, through him being there. Genesis is identical with time, as outside time nothing exists. This positive attitude to time, the representation of time as a unidirectional process, and a denial of the existence of a self-contained eternity, is the main coordinate of the language of modernity. This language is structured around an ontological axis. Ordinary people of our time (modern language) – be it a philosopher, scientist, doctor, banker, janitor, linguist, mathematician, physicist, attendant or driver clearly do not understand this. The vast majority of people both from scientific (and unscientific) community are absolutly unaware of how deeply the concept of being as time – Sein Zeit als – determines the current understanding of reality. Genesis in the language of modernity is identical with time, to be more precise, unidirectional time, which in the deployment process is positive, because it carries in itself existence. Almost no one (the vast majority) ever thinks about this, unaware that all their arguments, all actions, all decisions, all plans and all opinions on the nature of things stem from exactly this premise that is one of the most important vectors of the language of modernity, but that there can and does exist a paradigmatic language (in structuralist sense) model, arranged a very different way.

If we subject to careful critical analysis any philosophical statement, any physical – but in general scientific – hypothesis, any idea of the chemical, social and cultural process, expressed in the framework of modernity, we find everywhere a constant bearer of time as one of the basic axes of language of modernity. Unidirectional time and the coincidence of time and being, the notion that the world exists only in this formation, which has a positive ontological (and axiological) character – this is the most important law of the paradigm of modernity.

Such quantitative (or modern) time is thought of as infinite, having no objective progression.
If you navigate to more specific manifestations of the language of modernity, to the level of families, of specific discourses, it is possible to identify two varieties of the ontologization of time. The most Orthodox one, from the point of view of a modern language, that most accurately reflect this inherent notion of time is a positivist approach, generalized by the worldview of liberal philosophy (F. von Hayek, B. Russell, K. Popper, I. Lakatos, etc.). Here time has no teleology, it flows unidirectionally without goals and tasks. This purely quantitative time of positivists and liberals is maximally close to the paradigmatic, of understanding the basic version of this position within the language of modernity. The Positivist (and postpositivist) approach, typical of classical science, deploys and explicitly reveals the most important rule of modern language – the identity of Being and Time. It is a kind of exemplary discourse, a language tautology – A = A, that informs us about the structure of the language in which it is uttered. This direction in the modern philosophy isolates the parameters of the meta-language of modernity, distinguishing its crystal clear paradigm from the unimportant and distracting details. A striking example here is Karl Popper8.

If we take Marxism, which, of course, is also part of the language of our time, it represents the opposite pole here. The historical process (even if the process “of matter”) is recognized as a certain teleological task. History flows to the universal intelligence and communism as an ontological and eschatological purpose.

From the standpoint of the paradigm of modernity, Marxism is a kind of “philosophical heresy”, although it remains within the language of modernity. This is an attempt to “internal exile” without going beyond it. It is possible to Express the idea differently: Marxism is the most contradictory statement from the standpoint of the normative rules paradigm of modern linguistics. This avant-garde speech challenges the elements of that language, on which, through which and by means of which it is made. Is a statement that attempts the recognition of the validity of language rules, the threat of demolition of all the language of present, and the proposal to use for the attainment of the critical model, the most alien structure. Marxism also is approaching the transition to the level of the metalanguage, as it seeks to interpret universal modernity. But if the liberal philosophy says this contemporary universal and total “Yes” (and therefore the metalanguage of liberals is congruent to the structure of modern), Marxism attempts to formulate a universal and total “no”, but not going beyond the approved modern (so the metalanguage offered by Marxism, is a radical critique). This clarification is needed for a new way to understand the convergence of Guenon with Marx in Rene Alleau. But this similarity is only up to a point. Marx stands on the border of the language of modernity, Guenon – on the other side of the border. Guenon is the transcendental language.

Traditionalism, Guenon asserts, as a basic coordinate of language traditions, develops a very different picture, a different notion of time. Guénon argues that the form of existence of the being for the benefit of eternity; that a being, which is eternal being, unchangeable, nowhere comes in the form of emanations, intact, remains intact and non-affected by any processes, always, through all sorts of forms of time and being self-sufficient, samozabvennoi(?), complete, absolute reality – a reality that is simultaneously possible, valid (in itself and for itself), the necessary and absolute. So in the language of Tradition predtermined radically different notion of time. Along with the relative form of existence of existence, which is existence in time or being in becoming, there is the eternal existence, being self sufficient and still, nothing affected, we find ourselves in a very different paradigm.

This is the first step: confirmation of the existence of eternity, of eternal existence and consequential existence, the idea of time as a process of ontological, existential descending order. Time, therefore, is not unidirectional, because it is ontologically dependant on a fixed ontology of eternity and revolves around it, arising from a primordial and unchanging, supra-temporal instance and being absorbed by it. From this side as dependent eternity infinitesimal particle, as a kind of otherness eternity, time is relative ontology. But, taken by itself, in isolation from eternity, it weighs nothing and means nothing, in a sense is simply not, this shadow aspect of time in paradigmatic language Traditions. In general, it is here the process of determining the reduction, gradual leniency from eternity itself, diachronic deployment of quality content in the direction of eternity existential descending. Therefore, time is not only a certain vector, a certain teleology, but this teleology is negative: it is a movement from plus to minus. From completeness to poverty. Understanding of the process time as degradation, as a secondary (and somewhat negative) category of the manifestation of the eternal being (since we are talking about going from high quality to low quality), gives us a totally different world, a different view about the nature of reality, different frame, different science, different culture, different art, different everything.

But there is another very important for the language traditions of the time: because eternity is absolute, permanent and complete, but time is relative and decreasing, it cannot decrease forever,
or even indefinitely. According to traditionalist language, the time decreases to a certain critical point, and when a sector of reality, captured by the time reaches a certain limit, eternal being again finds himself, and there is a new cycle. Thus, the time in the traditionalist picture at the same time and is teleological (oriented to specific quality limit) and cyclical. It moving from the fullness of the revelation of the existence denial of this revelation and, ultimately, when it comes to its extremely-critical boundaries, its positive part becomes infinitely small, the content side of time, its ontological cut, “spark of being” in the framework of the formation is exhausted, disappears, and then there is the special situation of the end times, the Apocalypse. Flipped the hourglass of the world, Genesis again finds himself in its splendor, in its eternal fullness, and there is a new EON, a new cycle.
So, if one has an understanding of time, one has a most important illustration of one of the two coordinate axes, which is Central to the language of Tradition. Guénon describes it in the book “the reign of quantity and the signs of the times”. Understanding time in the meta-language of modernity is radically different. It is not hard to understand now that the two languages describe and determine two very different realities, two worlds, with a radically different ontological structure. And here it is not different accents or axiological assessment – orientation, dealing with ethical issues, preferences, morality, etc. – but the very idea of what is and what is not. In the language of Tradition time in its pure form is not, and there is an eternity. In the language of modern times – the only thing that is there, and everything is just in time and eternity, on the contrary, no. It is not difficult to imagine the extent to which such a fundamental paradigmatic linguistic differences affect all other forms of existence of those beings who act according to the rules of the two so different from each other “operating systems”. What is important to understand first of all? – What we are not talking about this or that philosophical school, each of which claim their own. We are not talking about the opinions of groups, even religious institutions (say, atheists think so, idealists in another, Christians and Buddhists as something else). It is a more serious, deep and general thing. The language of our time in the most total sense interprets in its own paradigmatic way, in its own interpretive system, the conceptual and logical structure of a variety of doctrines as separate discourses, sayings, decrypted and evaluated in accordance with a special model. This common language of modernity can use other, more narrowly understood languages (including religious, scientific, cultural, secular, etc.), putting them in everywhere of the underlying, invisible, ashwathama directly, unspoken, but implied elements. This situation is similar to what Freudianism calls “complexes”. The complex itself never tells lies, tries to elude direct analysis, and the desired complex psychoanalytic practice, to man remembered that in infancy he was scared, for example, of a rattle or a cat, and it was his main life problem. If this is remembered, then he recovered, so consider the Freudian. There are, however, more severe situation: Don ‘t remember everything, and die untreated, of the complex.

So it is difficult to get to the bottom of, and to the basic elements of, language.
In structuralism and Traditionalism speaks of a kind of psychoanalysis, which affects not just the individual but the whole of science, religion, whole continents of consciousness. By a special method revealed deep underwater pulses that determine the whole structure of the subsequent designs of strata. The threads of a barely visible language is picked up somewhere at the bottom and climbed up, understood, unraveled, showing what is in the basis of subsequent discursive speech constructions that deny its artificiality. There is a term in American journalistic speech – conventional wisdom, “conventional wisdom”. Any trivial assertion is the product of conventional wisdom. It seems that this “wisdom” comes from itself and corresponds exactly to the direct and spontaneous voice of the human (and not human) existence. Actually, this is absolutely not true. “Conventional wisdom” – a rough, mechanical, artificial, fake, created and cast by social engineers in accordance with the specific tasks of manipulation and pattern language of modernity.

A comparison and contrast between the language and traditions of the language of our time, a study of their internal laws of language – it’s just the total destruction of the notorious conventional wisdom. This attack is on the deepest of paradigms that escape our attention even in the most serious and careful study of philosophy, when immersed in the essence of things. It reveals the ontological horizon, reservoirs and landscapes that have a fundamentally different nature, a different outline, a different configuration than are those who are engaged, immersed, uncritically, inertial, involved in a flat and ambiguous process of becoming.

Quality space

Now it is necessary to say a few words about the quality of the space. This is the second axis of language Traditions, on the one hand, and the language of modernity, on the other. In the language of our time space is seen as something that is quality free and homogeneous, as something quantitative. There is a special spatial world in the language of modernity. This spatial world language organizes our perception of space – length, with which we deal.

In the spatial world of the modern language of all the items consist of interchangeable components – hence the idea of the quantum nature of space, which is nothing but the limit of bodily deployment of some alleged infinitesimal length (pure matter). By the way, one of the first catechists of the language of the modern world Rene Descartes said that there are only two things: “rational thinking” and “rational discourse”, and etendue, “length”, and space. Here it is purely quantitative, homogeneous l etendu is the fact that he understood the modern world. This space is isotropic, it right and left, top and bottom, the West and the East is not fundamentally different. Hence – as the limit – flows out the idea of One World, one world, “mondialisme”, the idea of unification of all countries, Nations and peoples into a single Commonwealth.

Why is it possible? It is not only possible, but necessary from the point of view of logic the language of modernity, since, in principle, the essential homogeneity of space diversity only makes some inaccuracy, distortion (gravity or box Louisville in modern physics), which is responsible for the fact that the space is not strictly the same everywhere. From the paradigmatic point of view of the language of modernity, this fact carries a certain subtile negative load, being optional the disturbance component, which gradually, in the process of totalization of the paradigm of modernity and development “civilization” must be overcome.

As in the case with the times, we never think about the quantitative space specifically, but the whole language of our time, all academic disciplines, methodologies, cultural and everyday acts have as a Wallpaper background, deeply rooted and hidden from direct critical reflections the idea of a homogeneous, quantitative space. This is a kind of “complex space”, organized on the basis of the Galilean-Cartesian systems. This is a local space.

In the language of Tradition has a totally different view about space – namely, the space quality.

It develops the concept of a cycle, the cyclic nature of reality. The cycle arises from the fact that there is eternity, and the spatial heterogeneity arises from the fact that there is a cycle. There is one character, the so-called “Celtic cross”. It is a circle with a cross, which is the most ancient and archaic Indo-European calendar, the oldest model cycle. This sign combines space and time, as is their Tradition. It’s like the time passed in the space or space, dynamically lively time. The whole cycle is covered from the perspective of eternity, where we see the beginning and the end is not consistently as a part of the establishment, and at the same time. We see synchronous and the beginning and the end and the middle. Therefore, turning to the presentation of the motion of the sun, the annual seasons, a certain portion of this figure, we can consider how the breakdown (left side) and the other (right side) – as a hoist. Placed in the matrix cycle, space acquires a quality value, some symbolic value. From now on, any object, any shape, any configuration of small and large objects with which we deal, borders, continents, acquires additional qualitative value, which is regarded not as something accidental, and as the voice quality of the space itself. And here it is not important whether a spatial symbolism (Yantra in Hinduism) is the product of human hands, or is it the handiwork of nature. You can see the wood that grows in itself, and to see inherent in the symbolic structure, and can contemplate the icon or Tibetan mandala, where similar harmonious symbolic figures artificially. For the traditional view, the language of Tradition is no difference between artificial character and the natural object does not exist. Drawn the real sun or the sun equally symbolize the Origin, existence, eternity. Because of this and there is a possibility of some magic transformations, transformations in Traditions. Tradition, accentuating the symbolic load, dissolves the existence of a homogeneous body, and the idea, the spiritual part, free light some of the things, creatures and items exempt from quantitative dark shell. The space is transformed, enlightened, spiritual, becomes alive. This is based on widely understood iconography Tradition, symbolism and sacred geography.

One of the partial applications of spatial language Tradition is the science of geopolitics. This is the most modern and technological, somewhat pragmatic, application of the principle of qualitative space. Geopolitics as a methodology contrasts sharply with the language paradigms of the modern world, because it is based on certain mythological and symbolic assumptions, virtually identical to the language elements of the Tradition. Therefore, the most consistent keepers of the Orthodoxy of modernism denies the fact of the existence of this science. Note that deep philosophical and ontological the foundations of geopolitics lies not only did Karl Schmidt in his work “Land and sea”10, but in their purest form we find it in rené guénon. in his book “East and West”11

Postguenonism

The language of Tradition (and especially traditionalism work as a kind of metalanguage Traditions, language description language Tradition) is common to all historical traditions. I’m not talking about the most radical conclusions of the work, where he argues the existence of metaphysical unity of traditions. On this issue there may be different views, I would not want to stop13. What is absolutely beyond doubt is the absolute unity and the authorization of approval of the paradigm of traditionalism, which brought Guenon, and universal applicability of this paradigm to all forms of tradition, no matter how they were expressed.

All existing tradition on its paradigmatic language level conflicts the hard way with the language of today, because of their inherent contradiction of basic facilities of basic ontological concepts. They are absolutely not reducible to each other, non-convertible, are mutually exclusive.

When we talked about the ontological axes – time and space – about their central role in language traditions and language of our time, we have tried to show that can not co-exist peacefully when they have a conflict of basic facilities, that between them there is a deep confrontation. There are two “armies” two “parties”, the “party” language of tradition and the “party” language of modernity.
So what is “Postguenonism”? “Postguenonism” is a term which is a kind of reaction to guenonism. Guenonistry – it’s authors, repeating Guenon, treat him as a guru, engage in repetition of involved guenonist discourse (without mastering his language) with very small deviations and considering this activity as a kind of intellectual hobby. Someone has been collecting stamps, some sadomasochism, and someone who consistently explores the crisis of the modern world, examining the signs of the times: it is a kind of niche for a certain type of European characters who see it as a discourse Guenon. To distinguish traditionalism of Guenon as a meta-language tradition from the reproduction of the discourse of Guenon, from simple repetition with variations of what was being said by Guénon, it is useful to introduce the term “postguenonism”. Is to be understood as an in-depth assimilation of the Traditionalism of Guenon as a fundamental language, really generalizing all other languages. But when guenonism becomes an internalized language, metalanguage, methodological and ontological at the same time paradigmatic structure and not a separate discourse, it can give an unexpected effect.

Postguenonism – is not just a position, it’s a mission, it is an imperative towards action. In this process of assimilating Guenon, understanding Guenon as a language and not as a speech, there are two components. The first – the study and assimilation of knowledge from positions of traditionalism (Guenonism) by living the particular tradition with which we are dealing. This is a process of gradual movement from traditionalism to the Tradition. This is a very subtle and delicate path. Depending on the order of the particular tradition or denomination in question here, it has its specifics, the pitfalls, the nuances and deadlocks. But this is a special theme. Let me just say that this way is not going as smoothly as it might seem at first glance, and “traditionalists” are often changing denomination as costumes, finding nowhere a strict compliance with guenonist theoretical orthodoxy.

The second component of postguenonism is a revision of the language of modernity from the Traditionalist perspective, that is, measuring the exact distance between what is exemplary modernity and what are the fragmented remnants of archaic structures, i.e. inertial existing elements of the language Tradition.

Postguenonism is realized mainly in two areas of action. On the one hand, is the application of the opened Guenon paradigm to separate real-life traditions. It is not as simple as it seems at first glance. When we apply the paradigmatic language tradition (traditionalist meta-language) to the real Orthodoxy, Buddhism, Judaism, Islam, to hermeticism – the living traditions and their authorities, we will put these areas (and these characters) certain conceptual methodological X-ray, which will highlight the structure of defects and deviations from the pure paradigm. This is a very serious and fundamental test of the adequacy of what appears as a tradition.

Second: Guenon described the main characteristics of the modern world, the language of modernity in its net paradigm (which basically coincides with the case of liberal theories), but the surrounding real modernity has significant deviations from the ideal, from the basic model. These deviations are inertial elements of Tradition (les residues, les vestiges) that pervade modernity.

The real “modern world” is much more traditional than the ideal “modern world”. Specific discourses of this world only aspire to the purity of the correct language of modernity. Accordingly, traditionalism as a method that allows an unexpected way to look at many modern phenomena, and open their inertial archaic nebula. The phase asserting that the language of modernity is the antithesis of the language of Tradition begs a second phase: the opening inside the modern world of various regions, deviating from the language of modernity, and hence, subject to adequate interpretation in the context of language Tradition. This is especially important because between the language of tradition and the language of the modern is not even nearly equal: the language of our time is an extremely distorted, aborted fragment of language tradition, which is primary, not only historically, but also ontologically, metaphysically. As the level of a purely quantitative matter is unattainable in principle, and the attempt to make a total reduction to it is only an impossible intention12, the absolutization of the language of modernity is unattainable in practice. Modernity is not to be cleansed of Tradition, as such a pure negation is ontically impossible to achieve. This line was developed by M. Eliade, Jung and their followers.

However, there is the reverse circumstance. Modern (even authentic) traditions are in practice much more modern than it may seem at first glance. The fundamental language of Tradition gradually recedes under the pressure of the operating systems of today. And where the external facade remains unchanged and traditional, often at the level of exegesis (interpretation, interpretation, exploration and understanding) can be a quite modern spirit. Of course, a continuous tradition always retain the ability to recover the true traditional linguistic dimension, but in certain cases, to do is not easy, and a huge percentage of the authentic confessions not only contributes to this, but all kinds of obstacles. This is such a serious circumstance that in certain limiting cases seemingly secular and “modern” currents more archaic, sacral and, ultimately, Traditionalist traits can be detected than in certain varieties of denominations, with historical continuity. So, for example Soviet or Chinese communism contain more elements of the language of Tradition (expressed, however paradoxically and contradictory) than modern Protestant theology.

Traditionalism (as postguenonism) is in our eschatological conditions something more than just belonging to a particular tradition. A traditionalist, not even practicing any religion (that, however is quite rare, as it is contrary to natural logic of Traditionalism), but having mastered Guenon, the language of Tradition, is closer to it (or, at least, is sharprly and tragically aware of their distance from it) than a person who looks and formally belongs to an authentic tradition (including initiatory or esoteric), but does not make a complex and painful process of uprooting language paradigms of modernity.

Guenon said that Traditionalism – is only an intention, only an expression of the desire to join the Tradition. In fact, everything is much more complicated. In our point of the cycle, Traditionalism is what validates the Tradition of authenticity, it captures the presence (or absence) of the elements of the language of modernity.

The picture that I describe is very simple. If to realize, to learn, to make the contents of your own consciousness, then many things will become clear. Everything can be reduced to simple formulas, however, these simple elements will allow you to clear huge paradigmatic blockages and drifts in religious, philosophical, ethical and practical problems. Identification and comparison of paradigmatic languages is a very important operational technique. After all, even real living tradition may at some point just forget about the fundamental maxims of Traditionalism. For example, understanding God and divine reality in some Christian and even half orthodox thinkers becomes a relation to something subject to time. Christian (and even Orthodox) theologians have so interpreted the historical change of epochs – before Christ, after Christ. Everything changes with the incarnation of the Son, true, but the Divine is always transcendental to the story, it makes history, but is never identified with her14…
For example, the Jesuit Pierre de Chardin said that God and evolution of the material world – it’s the same thing. This is definitely the language of modern vestments (evolutionism) in pseudo-Christian “theological” garments. But the element of identification of being and time can very often be found among not so odious authors. The paradigmatic language of our time – this thing is not simple (there is no place to hide, not even by using a large number of prostrations, fasting, prayers, diligent self-improvement). He is like the devil, the spiritual dog that can easily penetrate behind closed doors: even into the saints and hermits he somehow found a way to sneak. The language of our time is the devil, the Antichrist, as conservatives say, the mental wolf. The language of modernity remains invisible and imperceptible inside decomposed conceptual, ontological, semantic, metaphysical or other traditions by partial or complete preservation of their external aspects. This is a very serious moment. Traditionalism has enormous religious, spiritual, eschatological significance because it is directly linked with the restoration of the most meaningful and important aspects of the Tradition. Of course, if Traditionalism is limited to criticism of the modern world, it remains inert, impotent, sterile. Such critical a postguenonism, dealing only with modernity and exposing all of its aspects, is important as pre-nihilistic phase, but insufficient. A full and complete postguenonism suggests the presence of both these elements. On the one hand positive “criticism from the right” of particular living traditions, with the entry in them, development and learning, and on the other – the most severe rejection of the modern world on the level of opening and exposing its deepest linguistic paradigms.
Among the ordinary guenonists (not postguenonists as we are) there is a characteristic delusion: they repeat the critical theme directed against the modern world, which was developed by Guenon, with minor additions. Perceiving guenonism as speech (discourse), invectives against the meta-language of our time are considered as something fixed, once and for all. But the modern world is also changing, and efficiently and substantially. The modern world is degrading. Being a complex of anomalies, the degeneration goes from bad to worse.

What happens in the progressive process of “modernizing” of the modern world? Anything that was not modern enough, that does not entirely reflect the perfect language of the modern world with its crystalline paradigm, is gradually worn away and overcome.

Look at the dynamic processes in the ideological sphere of the twentieth century! It clearly shows how modernity gradually belches forth from what was internally less modern. Not to say that we reject this process truly traditionally, but in the modern language it was more traditional than the rest. Applying this model of analysis, one can notice that in the twentieth century the most “traditional” from “modern” ideologies ideology were the so-called “third way”. Being the least modern, they fell first, overcome by more modern ideological forms. Communist regimes were more modern than the ideology of the “third way”, but less modern than liberal. This raises a very interesting point that was overlooked by critics of the modern world among the conventional guenonists. Liberal discourse, consistently winning (and displacing) first the Nationalist and then the Communist ideologies, gradually approaching the pure language model of the present, practically identified with it.
What guénon recognized as the basis of the language of modernity, was most fully proclaimed radical liberals B. Russell, K. Popper, R. Aron, F. von Hayek, F. Fukuyama, J. Soros. The modern discourse of militant liberal ideologues of the West and their philosophical subservient (Philippe Nemo, Henri-Bernard lévy, andré Glucksmann, etc.) is not just speech, expressed in modern language, but it’s practically the language. So they talk about the “end of history”, about “the exhaustion of any discourse” about “the postmodern”. Postmodern is the beginning of an era of triumphant liberalism, the last dash of the modern world for its ideal language. From now on, nothing new to say anymore, only the citation, recycling, “Remix” committed in the past – in the previous stages of history – statements. “The end of history”, understood in a liberal, there is a limit to the manifestations of the language of modernity in his latest, “eschatological” form. Liberals see things exactly the same, as we, the followers of Guénon.. So between us there are real tensions of dialogue, which is true of the intellectual content of the ongoing processes.
All the events of the world around us (the fall of the ruble, military conflicts, resignations of governments, new discoveries in archaeology) is a struggle between two opposing camps. One pole is a tiny camp of postguenonists, almost not existing, like a grain in the desert, the other giant of the liberal camp of the language of modernity, which claims to global dominance.
The little camp of postguenonism is, however, the heir to a giant ontological domain that is concentrated in the language of Tradition. In it is an incredible wealth of meanings. And these meanings are alive, they move, how the continents rise and fall. This is real life, which can be anything – good, bad, successful, disastrous, but that’s life. Traditions are different: sinister, benevolent, sometimes conflicting. But this is not so important, because only in them, in the world of language of Tradition, in the world of traditionalism today focus tremendous energy real existence, which contrasts their inner wealth and outer poverty with the opposite pattern of liberal peace based on cleaned and polished the language of modernity, where sparkling abundant advertising tinsel covers a suffocating semantic vacuum…

Traditionalism and Russia

What can you say about postguenonism (Traditionalism) in relation to the Russian situation? For us, the implementation of the programme of postguenonism is paramount, the only major state, national, social and cultural task. We only have one author that should be read is Rene Guenon. We have only one task – to understand what he wanted to say, to make his thinking our thinking, the language of our language. Only in this way can be formulated, to grope and find the things that really matter in national, in national context. Outside of that, any change in. governments, disasters and social upheavals (even the positive ones) are metaphysically equal to zero, because outside of postguenonism no spirituality, no social justice, no life – nothing.

It is worth to emphasize a very important methodological point. Implementing the program of postguenonism in relation to the Orthodox tradition15, I came to the conclusion that there is an ideal form, which actually is our “national guenonism”. It’s the Old Believers, of old Christianity, which, since the second half of the SEVENTEENTH century, actually is in the ontological, eschatological and apocalyptic state, where it is crystal-clear and easy to understand the positions expressed by Guenon. There is not just the proximity or similarity of the positions (at the level of discourses), but almost complete identity. Adequately internalized Guenonism (i.e.postguenonism) in Russia and in the framework of Orthodoxy is an extremely old reality which preserves the paradigmatic traditionalist language, upon which rests the entire Christian tradition. Cycloplegia (or historical “ecclesiology”) of Christianity is adequately represented in this sector of Orthodoxy. Old belief is a conceptual reality, which comes to the fore when applying the traditional method to the consideration of the whole Orthodox tradition.

Let me emphasize that this conclusion is not the result of personal acquaintance with the old believer community. Rather, adherence to the strict logic of postguenonism led me to the conviction of the authenticity and the highest values of the old belief, and then to contacts (extremely productive and meaningful) with the Old Believers.

And because this conclusion is purely theoretical and true on an abstract level, the objective (sometimes dissonant, fragmented, troubled) state of today’s Old Believers (far, of course, from the inherent therein epistemological and eschatological standards) does not change anything about the adequacy of our beliefs. From now on, if properly search and use adequate conceptual tools, within the Old Faith we find all that we need.

Apocalypse and linguistics

People waste themselves in the actual. Sumerian language, I think, was dead at the time when it had said everything it could say, therefore, furthering the story demanded Assyrian languages, other languages. Language, being a potentially inexhaustible in its ontological centre, in a synchronic state, was in its diachronic forward development limited. And here comes a very interesting observation: the occurrence of language Guenon, the emergence of Guenon, his terminology, his model, his ontologically revolutionary paradigm shift occurred at precisely the moment when the tradition of the modern world was on the verge of (one foot beyond) existence. Only then it was possible to see and embrace all the contours of the ontological fact that developed, thinned and wasted in history.
We, as heirs of Guénon, are the successors of a very disturbing, very desperate, almost hopeless position. We stubbornly defend what has historically lost, ended. Because as we approach the end of the cycle being gradually leaves the process of becoming, remove yourself from it, and does not increase the scale of its presence, and the traditionalism arose in a critical, limiting situations.
Postguenonism – as the knowledge and the ensuing action – very tragic. But I am happy with the following: we see rapidly the exhaustion the content of the discourses, based on the norms of the language of modernity.

This allows you to anticipate, anticipate, anticipate the emergence of a new, long-awaited era, when the situation will be somewhat different (radically different). Today our language (our traditionalist discourse) is minimized instead, most hidden. Even when we speak loudly, publicly and openly, it is more like a sermon in the catacombs than shouting from the rooftops. From our camp to a wider collective soul after filtration, the thought police, heard only the crackling, whistling and coughing: this is “the last man” and Fukuyama has turned on the silencer.

But I am deeply convinced that in this “external dusk” we are not just powerless and only sad ascertaining the events witnessed, but the last small unit defending in the midst of the desolation of the Holy vessel. Lost in the winter at the end of time the little warlike faculty of the New University (new – because it belongs to reality, shining on that side of the marginal limits). The Department of “Fisher-Kings” that studies the laws of linguistics. I began with what Friedrich Nietzsche called one of his works “We philologists”. I dare to hope that he was to some extent meant to us.

09.09.1998

Notes:
1 Rene Alleau “De Marx a Guenon: d’une critique “ri stage” a une critique “principielle” des societes modernes, Les dossiers H, Paris, 1984.>>
2 the Greek word paradeigma literally means “that which determines the nature of existence, manifestation, staying out of existence” (para- is “over”, “above”, “across”, “about”, and deigma – “expression”, “manifestation”). In the broadest sense, is the original sample matrix, which acts not directly, but through their existence, defining their structure. The paradigm is not manifested by itself and not amenable to direct reflection of structuring the reality that, to stay in the background, sets the basic, fundamental proportions of the human thinking and human existence. The specificity of the paradigm is that in her epistemological and ontological moments not yet separated, and are subject to differentiation only as a basic intuition, passing through paradigmatic grid, issued in this or that statement epistemological or ontological nature. The term paradigm was used in Platonic and Neoplatonic philosophy to describe a higher, transcendent of the sample, determining the structure and form of material things.>>
3 Allemand, Jean-Marc: “Rene Guenon et les Sept Tours du Diable”, Guy Tredaniel/Editions de la Maisnie, Paris, 1990.>>

4 ibid.>>
5 R. Guenon “Le Regne de la Quantite et les Signes des Temps.” Paris, 1995.>>

6 Julius Evola “Rivolta contro il modo moderno”, Roma, 1969.>>
7 Mirchea Eliade “Le Mythe de l”йternel retour”, Paris, 1949.>>
8 K. Popper “the open society and its enemies”, I-II, M., 1992.>>
9 R. Guenon “Le Regne de la Quantite et les Signes des Temps.” Paris, 1995.>>
10 Carl Schmitt “Land and Sea”, entirely in English published in proc. Dugin A. “Foundations Of Geopolitics”, Moscow, 2000.>>
11 Rene Guenon “Orient et Occident”, Paris, 1983.>>
12 A. Dugin “the Metaphysics of the Good News”, in proc. A. Dugin “Absolute Motherland”, M., 1999.>>
13 Cm. Guenon R. “Le Regne de la Quantite et les Signes des Temps.” Paris, 1995.>>
14 In detail this topic is consecrated in the “Metaphysics of the Good News”, the decree. op.>>
15 A. Dugin “the Metaphysics of the Good News”, in proc. A. Dugin “Absolute Motherland”, M., 1999.>>