Attempts to interpret the manifold aspects of the ternary heaven, earth and man, drawing mainly on Far-Eastern sources. This study aims to demonstrate the metaphysical, cosmological and spiritual perspectives underlying the Triad symbol.

Publié pour la première fois en 1945, ce texte oppose aux religions historiques la tradition unique et originelle de la connaissance ésotérique. Le monde moderne est décrit comme une monstruosité qui ne reconnaît aucune transcendance et privilégie le règne de la contingence, du quantitatif et de l'individualisme.

J'ai pris comme sujet de cet exposé la métaphysique orientale; peut-être aurait-il mieux valu dire simplement la métaphysique sans épithète, car, en vérité, la métaphysique pure étant par essence en dehors et au-delà de toutes les formes et de toutes les contingences, n'est ni orientale ni occidentale, elle est universelle. Ce sont seulement les formes extérieures dont elle est revêtue pour les nécessités d'une exposition, pour en exprimer ce qui est exprimable, ce sont ces formes qui peuvent être soit orientales, (...) soit occidentales; mais, sous leur diversité, c'est un fond identique qui se retrouve partout et toujours, partout du moins où il y a de la métaphysique vraie, et cela pour la simple raison que la vérité est une. S'il en est ainsi, pourquoi parler plus spécialement de métaphysique orientale? C'est que, dans les conditions intellectuelles où se trouve actuellement le monde occidental, la métaphysique y est chose oubliée, ignorée en général, perdue à peu près entièrement, tandis que, en Orient, elle est toujours l'objet d'une connaissance effective. Si l'on veut savoir ce qu'est la métaphysique, c'est donc à l'Orient qu'il faut s'adresser; et, même si l'on veut retrouver quelque chose des anciennes traditions métaphysiques qui ont pu exister en Occident, dans un Occident qui, à bien des égards, était alors singulièrement plus proche de l'Orient qu'il ne l'est aujourd'hui, c'est surtout à l'aide des doctrines orientales et par comparaison avec celles-ci que l'on pourra y parvenir, parce que ces doctrines sont les seules qui, dans ce domaine métaphysique, puissent encore être étudiées directement. Seulement, pour cela, il est bien évident qu'il faut les étudier comme le font les Orientaux eux-mêmes, et non point en se livrant à des interprétations plus ou moins hypothétiques et parfois tout à fait fantaisistes; on oublie trop souvent que les civilisations orientales existent toujours et qu'elles ont encore des représentants qualifiés, auprès desquels il. (shrink)

The Reign of Quantity gives a concise but comprehensive view of the present state of affairs in the world, as it appears from the point of view of the 'ancient wisdom', formerly common both to the East and to the West, but now almost entirely lost sight of. The author indicates with his fabled clarity and directness the precise nature of the modern deviation, and devotes special attention to the development of modern philosophy and science, and to the part played (...) by them, with their accompanying notions of progress and evolution, in the formation of the industrial and democratic society which we now regard as 'normal'. Guénon sees history as a descent from Form (or Quality) toward Matter (or Quantity); but after the Reign of Quantity-modern materialism and the 'rise of the masses'-Guénon predicts a reign of 'inverted quality' just before the end of the age: the triumph of the 'counter-initiation', the kingdom of Antichrist. This text is considered the magnum opus among Guénon's texts of civilizational criticism, as is Symbols of Sacred Science among his studies on symbols and cosmology, and Man and His Becoming according to the Vedanta among his more purely metaphysical works. (shrink)

This article examines the French esoteric scholar René Guénon's concepts of tradition, the Centre and the primordial state, and the symbols which he argues body them forth. In particular it discusses the symbolism of the heart and the Grail in Guénon's work. It uses a close reading of the earliest Grail romances to develop a critique of Guénon, and in particular of his concept of tradition and his attitude towards Christianity.

A l'occasion du cinquantenaire de la mort de René Guénon, l'auteur retrace la vie de ce philosophe qu'un commentateur qualifia d'invisible, tant il fut discret et effacé. De son enfance en milieu catholique à son adhésion à l'islam, en passant par son intérêt pour l'ésotérisme, l'occultisme, l'hindouisme et son initiation maçonnique, Guénon surprend en se montrant un infatigable chercheur d'absolu et un précurseur du dialogue interreligieux. Cet ouvrage très complet propose une vivante évocation de la tradition symbolique, que (...) class='Hi'>René Guénon a eu le mérite d'épurer. Sa pensée, tout en interrogeant les apports de l'Orient à l'Occident, les mythes et les symboles, dénonce les pseudo-religions, les sectes, le théosophisme ou l'erreur spirite, et évite le piège du syncrétisme. René Guénon estimait que tout homme doit tendre à la réalisation spirituelle et il fut un juge impitoyable de notre civilisation occidentale matérialiste. Jean-Luc Maxence éclaire l'itinéraire exceptionnel de cet auteur qui, en une vingtaine de livres, marqua plusieurs figures de son époque, de René Daumal à Louis Pauwels ou Raymond Abellio, et dont l'œuvre était considérée comme " l'une des plus singulières de ce temps " par le cardinal Daniélou, même si celui-ci ne partageait pas ses idées. Rebelle, inclassable, la pensée du " philosophe invisible " appartient au patrimoine de la philosophie. (shrink)

Plotinus –IIIth Century– have devoted two Enneads to the teaching about the Beauty: Ennead I,8 (1) – «On Beauty»– and Ennead V,8 (31) –«On the Intelligible Beauty»–. The purpose of the paper is to establish the different aspects that the Neoplatonic philosopher states in relation with the kalokagathós on three diverse levels: the aesthetic perception, the intuition of beautiful activities and the contemplation of the Beautiful that it is displayed to the Good/One. It is commented also the differences with Plato (...) and some distinctions with the interpretations in regard to the Beautiful that have been outlined by some contemporary scholars and writings. (shrink)

The present article problematizes current dominating approaches to method and theory in the study of religion by pointing to their inapplicability to theorists working outside secular worldviews. The first section of this article introduces decolonialist narratives by touching on important topics which are subsumed within larger discussions, such as secularism, positionality, and others. This is done by putting René Guénon (1886–1951) in conversation with other theorists, the foremost of whom is Bruce Lincoln. Section two introduces Guénon using Wael Hallaq's (...) categorisation of him as a subversive author, and sections three and four elaborate on his subversion through touching on two key theories. The first relates to problematizations of the term ‘religion’ itself along with a treatment of Guénon's actual theory of religion. The second is Guénon'smetaphysicalmethod, which, contrasted against the historical, opens new avenues for our study of the past in manners unrestricted to materialism alone, expanding thereby the academic frameworks with which we come to the table in the academic study of religion. (shrink)

The first English-language biography of the well-known traditionalist metaphysican René Guénon, including a separate section assessing the impact of his work in the Western world, and an extensive annotated bibliography.

René Guénon (1886-1951) is undoubtedly one of the luminaries of the twentieth century, whose critique of the modern world has stood fast against the shifting sands of recent philosophies. His oeuvre of 26 volumes is providential for the modern seeker: pointing ceaselessly to the perennial wisdom found in past cultures ranging from the Shamanistic to the Indian and Chinese, the Hellenic and Judaic, the Christian and Islamic, and including also Alchemy, Hermeticism, and other esoteric currents, at the same time (...) it directs the reader to the deepest level of religious praxis, emphasizing the need for affiliation with a revealed tradition even while acknowledging the final identity of all spiritual paths as they approach the summit of spiritual realization. The present volume, first published in 1958 by Guénon's friend and collaborator Paul Chacornac, whose bookstore, journal (first called Le Voile d'Isis, later changed to Études Traditionnelles), and publishing venture-Éditions Traditionnelles-were so instrumental in furthering Guénon's work, was the first full-length biography of this extraordinary man to appear, and has served as the foundation for the many later biographies that have appeared in French, as well as the lone biography in English, René Guénon and the Future of the West, by Robin Waterfield. Its translation and publication in conjunction with The Collected Works of René Guénon represents an important step in the effort to bring Guénon's oeuvre before a wider public. (shrink)

" Si René Guénon apparaît bien, au XXe siècle, comme l'incontestable représentant du renouvellement de la " Connaissance Sacrée ", il est cependant un domaine, paradoxalement, encore relativement peu exploré dans le cadre des études portant sur son œuvre et qui pourtant est essentiel, et où son autorité, nous semble-t-il, s'impose de façon majeure, c'est celui de la Métaphysique. La Métaphysique de René Guénon fait suite au Dictionnaire de René Guénon, et à ce titre doit être regardé (...) comme son complément théorique naturel, permettant d'offrir aux lecteurs de l'œuvre de Guénon un éclairage approfondi portant sur les bases essentielles de la doctrine éternelle à laquelle il consacra toute sa vie. Cette doctrine, se perdant dans la nuit des temps, est attachée à la " Tradition primordiale " d'une manière extrêmement intime, à ce point tel d'ailleurs que l'on peut dire qu'elle en est sa substance la plus intérieure. ". (shrink)

A l'occasion du cinquantenaire de la mort de René Guénon, l'auteur retrace la vie de ce philosophe qu'un commentateur qualifia d'invisible, tant il fut discret et effacé. De son enfance en milieu catholique à son adhésion à l'islam, en passant par son intérêt pour l'ésotérisme, l'occultisme, l'hindouisme et son initiation maçonnique, Guénon surprend en se montrant un infatigable chercheur d'absolu et un précurseur du dialogue interreligieux. Cet ouvrage très complet propose une vivante évocation de la tradition symbolique, que (...) class='Hi'>René Guénon a eu le mérite d'épurer. Sa pensée, tout en interrogeant les apports de l'Orient à l'Occident, les mythes et les symboles, dénonce les pseudo-religions, les sectes, le théosophisme ou l'erreur spirite, et évite le piège du syncrétisme. René Guénon estimait que tout homme doit tendre à la réalisation spirituelle et il fut un juge impitoyable de notre civilisation occidentale matérialiste. Jean-Luc Maxence éclaire l'itinéraire exceptionnel de cet auteur qui, en une vingtaine de livres, marqua plusieurs figures de son époque, de René Daumal à Louis Pauwels ou Raymond Abellio, et dont l'œuvre était considérée comme " l'une des plus singulières de ce temps " par le cardinal Daniélou, même si celui-ci ne partageait pas ses idées. Rebelle, inclassable, la pensée du " philosophe invisible " appartient au patrimoine de la philosophie. (shrink)

Né à Blois en 1886 et enterré au Caire sous le nom d'Abd el-Wâhed Yahiâ en 1951, René Guénon est l'homme par qui le scandale arrive. Il dénonce la décadence de l'Occident moderne, fruit d'une lente dégénérescence de son héritage métaphysique et se tourne, au grand dam des catholiques, vers l'Orient devenu, selon lui, le refuge ultime de la "Tradition". Cette dernière notion, centrale chez Guénon, élève toutes les traditions religieuses de l'humanité au même niveau de transcendance tout en (...) reconnaissant à chacune d'entre elles sa dimension spirituelle spécifique. Un point de vue tout simplement révolutionnaire dans les années 30. Dès lors, il appartient à l'individu de se déterminer spirituellement par un processus de connaissance graduée qui dépasse largement le seul exercice d'un rite religieux. C'est la voie ésotérique par essence, qui suscitera l'émergence à travers le monde (Europe, Etats-Unis, Russie, etc) d'innombrables"chapelles" initiatiques se réclamant de Guénon, avec notamment les groupes soufis dirigés par Schuon, Vâlsan ou Pallavicini. Chose frappante, un lien inextricable s'est peu à peu tissé entre cette perspective ésotérique et l'horizon politique. En témoignent la "spiritualité héroïque" de Julius Evola dans l'Italie des années trente mais aussi les résonances guénoniennes qu'on découvre dans l'engagement politique de Simone Weil ou de Carl Schmitt. Parallèlement à l'activité des revues Le Voile d'Isis/Etudes Traditionnelles, les apports de Mircea Eliade, d'Henry Corbin ou de Raymond Abellio achèvent de perpétuer le rayonnement guénonien, si controversé soit-il. Cette mise en perspective monumentale de l'oeuvre de René Guénon révèle, de manière décisive, une figure cardinale du XXe siècle et dévoile l'étendue de son rôle dans la construction de la pensée occidentale moderne. (shrink)

René Guénon is a major figure for anyone who recognises a need to rediscover the spiritual roots from which Western society has become so comprehensively alienated. Immersing himself in the search for spiritual truth, he chose Islam as the vehicle for his spiritual life. Settling in Egypt, he clarified and deepened our understanding of the teachings of traditional metaphysics, his central message being that there is at the source of all humanity's traditions a 'Primordial Tradition' -- a Universal Metaphysics (...) which sets out the principles that underlie this Tradition. The truths it embodies are universal and unchanging, and form part of a unified body of higher knowledge which transcends the multiplicity of religious dogmas and philosophical systems that abound in Western society. He wrote about the need to transcend the formal and emotional aspect of religion in order to prepare ourselves for an understanding of 'pure metaphysics'. He explained how traditional societies achieved this, exploring the symbols used, in order to help individuals forward to levels of understanding which are otherwise inaccessible to minds blinkered by the limitations of the currently prevailing Western approach to existence and its meaning. (shrink)

I have always considered that the two questions respecting God and the Soul were the chief of those that ought to be demonstrated by philosophical rather than ...

Manifeste de la philosophie cartésienne, le Discours de la méthode (1637) est tout à la fois le récit d'un cheminement intellectuel et l'illustration magistrale d'un projet : fonder l'unité des sciences et constituer une science universelle. Foyer d'une oeuvre foisonnante, le Discours revendique les droits de la raison contre toute tradition et toute autorité. C'est pourquoi il assigne à la philosophie une tâche : s'élever à 1a certitude. La présente édition, augmentée d'un dossier, entend mettre en évidence le jeu de (...) résonances qui relie le Discours aux autres textes de Descartes. (shrink)

I argue that the offense generation pattern of slurring terms parallels that of impoliteness behaviors, and is best explained by appeal to similar purely pragmatic mechanisms. In choosing to use a slurring term rather than its neutral counterpart, the speaker signals that she endorses the term. Such an endorsement warrants offense, and consequently slurs generate offense whenever a speaker's use demonstrates a contrastive preference for the slurring term. Since this explanation comes at low theoretical cost and imposes few constraints on (...) an account of the semantics of slurs, this suggests that we should not require semantic accounts to provide an independent explanation of the offense profile. (shrink)

I argue that inferences from highly probabilifying racial generalizations are not solely objectionable because acting on such inferences would be problematic, or they violate a moral norm, but because they violate a distinctively epistemic norm. They involve accepting a proposition when, given the costs of a mistake, one is not adequately justified in doing so. First I sketch an account of the nature of adequate justification—practical adequacy with respect to eliminating the ~p possibilities from one’s epistemic statespace. Second, I argue (...) that inferences based on demographic generalizations tend to disproportionately expose group members to the risks associated with mistakenly assuming stereotypical propositions, and so magnify the wrong involved in relying on such inferences without adequate justification. (shrink)

Several authors have recently suggested that moral factors and norms `encroach' on the epistemic, and because of salient parallels to pragmatic encroachment views in epistemology, these suggestions have been dubbed `moral encroachment views'. This paper distinguishes between variants of the moral encroachment thesis, pointing out how they address different problems, are motivated by different considerations, and are not all subject to the same objections. It also explores how the family of moral encroachment views compare to classical pragmatic encroachment accounts.

In addition to protecting agents’ autonomy, consent plays a crucial social role: it enables agents to secure partners in valuable interactions that would be prohibitively morally risk otherwise. To do this, consent must be observable: agents must be able to track the facts about whether they have received a consent-based permission. I argue that this morally justifies a consent-practice on which communicating that one consents is sufficient for consent, but also generates robust constraints on what sorts of behaviors can be (...) taken as consent- communicating. (shrink)

The problem of moral disagreement has been presented as an objection to contextualist semantics for ‘ought’, since it is not clear that contextualism can accommodate or give a convincing gloss of such disagreement. I argue that independently of our semantics, disagreements over ‘ought’ in non-cooperative contexts are best understood as indirect metalinguistic disputes, which is easily accommodated by contextualism. If this is correct, then rather than posing a problem for contextualism, the data from moral disagreements provides some reason to adopt (...) a semantics that allows contextual variance in the meanings of ‘ought’. (shrink)

Some, but not all, of the mistakes a person makes when acting in apparently necessary self-defense are reasonable: we take them not to violate the rights of the apparent aggressor. I argue that this is explained by duties grounded in agents' entitlements to a fair distribution of the risk of suffering unjust harm. I suggest that the content of these duties is filled in by a social signaling norm, and offer some moral constraints on the form such a norm can (...) take. (shrink)

Sometimes speakers within a linguistic community use a term that they do not conceptualize as a slur, but which other members of that community do. Sometimes these speakers are ignorant or naïve, but not always. This article explores a puzzle raised when some speakers stubbornly maintain that a contested term t is not derogatory. Because the semantic content of a term depends on the language, to say that their use of t is semantically derogatory despite their claims and intentions, we (...) must individuate languages in a way that counts them as speaking our language L, assigns t a determinately derogatory content in L, and still accommodates the other features of slurs’ linguistic profile. Given the difficulty of doing this, there is some reason to give a non-semantic analysis of the derogatory aspect of slurs. The author suggests that rather than dismissing the stubborn as semantically incompetent, we would do better to appeal to expected uptake as moral reasons for the stubborn to adjust their linguistic practices. (shrink)

Recently, an increasing number of scholars have been showing interest in old-fashioned racism again. While recent studies on old-fashioned racism apparently increase our knowledge of this psychological theory of racism, the studies actually shed light on a different type of racism, namely offensive racism. The aim of this text is to argue that psychological theories of racism, like old-fashioned racism and modern racism, depend on societies’ social norms. I will show that questionnaires are highly sensitive to social norms, and if (...) there is change in social norms, the original measurement object alters. The theory of old-fashioned racism implicitly assumes agents that follow (or conform to) the social norm to behave prejudiced. Today, however, this social norm does not exist in Western societies. If agents express the same prejudices today, they indicate their willingness to breach the social norm to behave unprejudiced. Thereby, classic old-fashioned racism measures reflect a new kind of racism today. (shrink)

A regulative norm for permissible defense distinguishes the conditions under which we will hold defenders to be innocent of any wrongdoing from those in which we hold them responsible for assault or manslaughter. The norm must strike a fair balance between defenders' security, on the one hand, and other agents’ legitimate claim to live without fear of suffering mistaken defensive harm, on the other. Since agents must make defensive decisions under high pressure and on only partial information, they will sometimes (...) make mistakes. We have reason to want a norm that considers a mistake permissible when it was highly likely on the evidence that defense was proportionate and necessary to avert a threat. However, adopting an evidentialist norm under non-ideal conditions is treacherous business. I briefly survey empirical data suggesting that the type and extent of bias prevalent in the US renders a straightforward evidentialist norm unjust, and thus since the legal practice in the US relies on such a norm, we must explore avenues for reform. Preferably this will take the form of adopting a modified evidential norm, and I explore some promising options. If this proves impossible, however, then we have to accept a strict regulative norm (which does not consider any mistakes permissible), as the sole just alternative. (shrink)

A ‘vestigial social practice' is a norm, convention, or social behavior that persists even when few endorse it or its original justifying rationale. Begby (2021) explores social explanations for the persistence of prejudice, arguing that even if we all privately disavow a stereotype, we might nevertheless continue acting as if it is true because we believe that others expect us to. Meanwhile the persistence of the practice provides something like implicit testimonial evidence for the prejudice that would justify it, making (...) it rational for members of the next generation to acquire the corresponding prejudiced beliefs. This paper distinguishes between three different types of vestigial social practice in terms of the underlying explanatory mechanisms, and argues that the persistence of prejudicial social stereotypes is most tightly linked not to others’ beliefs or expectations, but to the ways that material infrastructure constrains options shapes social outcomes. Given that, the persistence of a practice only provides grounds to infer that most people endorse the corresponding prejudiced belief only if we are in a position to dismiss relevant alternative explanations. (shrink)

While common sense and rationality often have been viewed as two distinct features in a unitifed cognitive map, this this volume offers novel, even paradoxical views of the relationship. Touching on various disciplines, it considers what constitutes human rationality, behavior, and intelligence.

A popular informal argument suggests that statistics about the preponderance of criminal involvement among particular demographic groups partially justify others in making defensive mistakes against members of the group. One could worry that evidence-relative accounts of moral rights vindicate this argument. After constructing the strongest form of this objection, I offer several replies: most demographic statistics face an unmet challenge from reference class problems, even those that meet it fail to ground non-negligible conditional probabilities, even if they did, they introduce (...) new costs likely to cancel out any justificatory contribution of the statistic, but even if they didn’t, demographic facts are the wrong sort to make a moral difference to agents’ negative rights. I conclude that the popular argument should be rejected, and evidence-relative theories do not have the worrisome implication. (shrink)

Law-enforcement agencies are increasingly able to leverage crime statistics to make risk predictions for particular individuals, employing a form of inference that some condemn as violating the right to be “treated as an individual.” I suggest that the right encodes agents’ entitlement to a fair distribution of the burdens and benefits of the rule of law. Rather than precluding statistical prediction, it requires that citizens be able to anticipate which variables will be used as predictors and act intentionally to avoid (...) them. Furthermore, it condemns reliance on various indexes of distributive injustice, or unchosen properties, as evidence of law-breaking. (shrink)

Rights to do wrong are not necessary even within the framework of interest-based rights aimed at preserving autonomy. Agents can make morally significant choices and develop their moral character without a right to do wrong, so long as we allow that there can be moral variation within the set of actions that an agent is permitted to perform. Agents can also engage in non-trivial self-constitution in choosing between morally indifferent options, so long as there is adequate non-moral variation among the (...) alternatives. The stubborn intuition that individuals have a right to do wrong in some cases can be explained as stemming from a cautionary principle motivated by the asymmetry between the risk of wrongly interfering and that of refraining from interfering. (shrink)

Can we hold agents responsible for their implicitly biased behavior? The aim of this text is to show that, from the nurturing stance, holding subjects responsible for their implicitly biased behavior is justified, even though they are not blameworthy. First, I will introduce the nurturing stance as Daphne Brandenburg originally developed it. Second, I will specify what holding somebody responsible from the nurturing stance amounts to. Third, I show how and why holding responsible can help a subject develop an impaired (...) capacity. Fourth, I analyze empirical data about holding prejudiced subjects responsible and highlight that the internal motivation to control prejudiced reactions decreases implicit attitudes’ influences. Furthermore, the data show that in order to be appropriate moral demands have to acknowledge the target's autonomy and competence. In sum, from the nurturing stance, holding implicitly biased subjects responsible is appropriate if they can adequately respond to the moral demands. (shrink)

The coming of bioethics -- The coming of bioethicists -- "Choices on our conscience": the inauguration of the Kennedy Institute of Education -- "Hello, Dolly": bioethics in the media -- Celebrating bioethics and bioethicists -- Thinking socially and culturally in bioethics -- Reminiscences of observing participants -- Bioethics circles the globe -- Bioethics in France -- The development of bioethics in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan -- The coming of the culture wars to American bioethics.

This study evaluated the integration of psychology ethics into an introductory psychology course. Students in two general psychology sections were exposed to an infusion of psychology ethics in teaching, research, and clinical practice, whereas students in two sections were exposed to traditional course content. Students completed a pre and post-test assessment including a psychology ethics questionnaire and open-ended responses to three ethics case studies. Students in the ethics group displayed a statistically significant increase in scores on both measures from pre (...) to post-test. However, students in the traditional group showed no improvement in scores. (shrink)