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Traditionalist School

Encyclopedia : T : TR : TRA : Traditionalist School

The Traditionalist School of thought (not to be confused with the "traditionalism" professed by some ultra-conservative Roman Catholics (see Traditionalist Catholic), was founded in its current form by the French metaphysician René Guénon, although its precepts are considered to be timeless and to be found in all authentic traditions. It is also known as perennialism, the perennial philosophy, or Sophia Perennis. The term Philosophia Perennis goes back to the Renaissance, while the ancient Hindu expression Sanatana Dharma - Eternal Doctrine or Norm - has much the same signification.

The other founding figures of the Traditionalist School were the German-Swiss philosopher Frithjof Schuon and the Ceylonese scholar Ananda Coomaraswamy. To these were added over time such figures as Titus Burckhardt, Huston Smith, Martin Lings, and Seyyed Hossein Nasr.

Contents

Fundamental tenets

The fundamental tenets of this school or philosophy may be stated as follows:

  1. All authentic religious traditions are true, deriving from the Primordial Tradition. Guénon's work draws extensively on Hindu, Taoist, Muslim, Judaic and Christian sources. At first, following certain Hindu schools, he rejected Buddhism as heretical, but Dr. Coomaraswamy, at the instigation of Marco Pallis (a Traditionalist convert to Tibetan Buddhism) demonstrated the essential orthodoxy of Buddhism and its consistency with Vedanta. Guenon, accordingly, authorised amendments to references to Buddhism in his earlier works.
  2. Contrary to the modern idea of "progress", and in accordance with all traditions, the world is in a state of intellectual and spiritual decline, inevitable from the very start of an historical cycle. We are at present in what the Classical West called the Iron Age, and the Hindus Kali Yuga.
In addition to this, the Western world, unlike other cultures, has lost its connection to the Primordial Tradition. This took place first in the Classical era, was rectified by Christianity, which re-introduced a modified form of the Primordial Tradition, but the severance began again at the time of the Renaissance (this is a somewhat truncated account. The reader is referred to Guénon's Crisis of the Modern World for a fuller one).

Values

Traditionalists accord a high value to the intellectual activities of the pre-modern world and non-Western societies and a good deal of their work lies in the sciences of metaphysics and symbolism, as well as the discussion and elucidation of the various spiritual traditions. Where they venture into such realms as social criticism it is clearly from a Traditionalist perspective which turns the Progressivist/Evolutionist assumptions of modernist theorists (both "left" and "right") and of post-modernists alike on their heads.

A exposition of the views of this movement can be found in Seyyed Hossein Nasr's Knowledge and the Sacred and Harry Oldmeadow's Traditionalism.

References

Books and resources

See also

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