René Guénon

Quotes

• “Metaphysics, because it opens out a limitless vista of possibilities, must take care never to lose sight of the inexpressible, which indeed constitutes its very essence.”
• “Europeans, since the days when they began to believe in "progress" and in "evolution," that is to say since a little more than a century ago, profess to see a sign of inferiority in this absence of change, whereas for our part, we look upon it as a balanced condition which Western civilization has failed to achieve.”
• “Is it because Westerners have come to lose their intellectuality by over-developing their capacity for action that they console themselves by inventing theories that set action above everything else, and even, as in the case of pragmatism, go so far as to deny that there exists anything of value beyond action; or is the contrary true, namely, that it is the acceptance of this point of view that has led to the intellectual atrophy we see today?”
• “Matter is essentially multiplicity and division, and this-be it said in passing-is why all that proceeds from matter can beget only strife and all manner of conflicts between peoples as between individuals. The deeper one sinks into matter, the more the elements of division and opposition gain force and scope; and, contrariwise, the more one rises toward pure spirituality, the nearer one approaches that unity which can only be fully realized by consciousness of universal principles.”
• “There is an exact correspondence between a world where everything seems to be in a state of mere 'becoming', leaving no place for the changeless and the permanent, and the state of mind of men who find all reality in this 'becoming', thus implicitly denying true knowledge as well as the object of that knowledge, namely transcendent and universal principles.”
• “It was however only in the nineteenth century that men began to glory in their ignorance–for to proclaim oneself an agnostic means nothing else–and claimed to deny to others any knowledge to which they had no access themselves; and this marked yet one more stage in the intellectual decline of the West.”

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Key facts

Born

René-Jean-Marie-Joseph Guénon , ( 1886-11-15 ) 15 November 1886, Blois , Loir-et-Cher , France

Died

7 January 1951 (1951-01-07) (aged 64), Cairo , Egypt

Other name

Abdalwahid Yahia

Spouse

Fatima ​ ( married</span>"}]]}'>m. 1934 ) ​

Era

20th-century philosophy

Region

French philosophy Islamic philosophy Hindu philosophy

School

Orientalism Advaita Vedanta Sufism Nondualism Platonism Traditionalism

Main interests

Metaphysics Symbology Mythology Esoterism Gnosticism History Freemasonry Mathematics Social criticism

Notable ideas

Unity of metaphysics Critique of modernity from the perspective of ancient wisdom traditions Refounding Western esotericism using Eastern ideas Guénonian metaphysics

via Wikipedia infobox

Wikidata facts

Image

Rene-guenon-1925 (cropped).jpg

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