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The critiques by Frithjof Schuon of René Guénon are, along with Julius Evola’s critical essays on him, useful and interesting commentary on his body of work. The following are selections from the English translation of ‘Quelques critiques’ from René Guénon: Les Dossiers H (L’Age d’Homme, 1984). 

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Guénon has rendered us an inestimable service in presenting and expounding the crucial ideas of metaphysical science and pure intellectuality, of integral tradition and traditional orthodoxy, of symbolism and esoterism; and then in defining and condemning, with implacable realism, the modern aberration in all its forms. But this conspicuous merit should not prevent us—since ‘there is no right superior to that of truth’— from recognizing the often strange faults which Guénon’s works include; to point them out is not to fail to appreciate the author’s merits; on the contrary, it is to protect the essential content of the message and, in a certain way, to protect Guénon from himself.

 

Guénon all too readily gives the appearance of an unlimited knowledge and indulges in outbursts like the following: ‘This leads us to speak of the undue importance which, in the West, is customarily attributed to Buddhism: orientalists, because they are a little less ill acquainted with it than they are with other subjects, wish to see it everywhere, even where there is not the least trace of it.’ Now Guénon knew infinitely less about Buddhism than the least of the orientalists; but let us continue the quotation from Introduction to the Study of the Hindu Doctrines:

 

Obviously, when one encounters something with which one is not familiar, but which one knows to be of Eastern origin, one can always deal with the matter by declaring it to be Buddhist. Let it not be thought that we exaggerate; for there is no need to look very far to find, among other singularities, the Kwan-yin of Taoism transmuted into a Bodhisattva! ‘Official’ orientalists apply themselves all the more readily to this bizarre work of classification, intended to hide their more or less conscious embarrassment. . . .

 

What Guénon obviously did not know is that it is the Chinese themselves who identify Kwan-Yin with the Bodhisattva Avaloki-teshvara! Be that as it may,

 

Orientalists by virtue of the effective monopoly which they have succeeded in establishing to their profit, can be almost certain that no one is going to contradict them: what need those people fear who establish as a principle that there is no real competence . . . except such as is to be acquired at their own school.

 

So there it is!

 

When, in ‘Magic and Mysticism’[1], Guénon describes mystics by remarking upon their ‘passivity’ and comparing them, in other respects, to magicians—which one notes with amazement—one does not know of what he can be speaking; and one knows no better on being informed later that Joan of Arc and Saint Bernard were not mystics but that Saint John of the Cross was; and if Saint John of the Cross was a mystic, one does not see why such and such a Sufi who resembles him is not one also, apart from the usual question-begging about ‘initiation’ as opposed to ‘mysticism’. One of the most astonishing things is Guénon’s own astonishment over points which any child should understand. Thus, he is astonished at the ‘exaltation of suffering’ in Christianity, and he asks himself if this feature—‘the causes of which it would be interesting to investigate’!—has not been ‘superimposed on Christianity by the Western mentality. . .’ One would think that he had never heard either of the Passion or of the martyrs.

 

In his article on conversions, Guénon tells us that converts ‘are not very interesting,’ and he considers that ‘the converter and the converted give proof of a like incomprehension concerning the profound meaning of their traditions.’ ‘Go and preach to all nations,’ said Christ; he did not dream of forbidding proselytism or of belittling those who were converted. It is completely illogical to accept the existence of exoterism, which is willed by God, while not accepting that of exoterists, that is to say those limited to exoterism and capable, in consequence, of converting from one religion to another.

 

According to Guénon, to say that there are trials in life can only be an ‘abuse of language, the origin of which, moreover, it would be interesting to investigate’; the only ‘trials’ worthy of the name are ‘initiatic trials’, which have the signal distinction of being rites and not experiences of ‘profane’ life! Now, all the sacred scriptures speak of the trials of life: to suffer a trial is to be purified, and it is, at the same time, to prove whether one really believes what one is meant to believe; for a living faith in God confers patience and trust. To suffer heroically in God is without interest because it is profane; but to take some steps on a carpet inlaid with symbols in a Masonic Lodge, there is something interesting! And this is typical: for the sake of refuting the ordinary conception of a trial. Guénon ascribes to it an intention of pseudo-initiatic facility which no one else has ever dreamt of, and thus transforms, as in his text on the sacraments, his argument into a tilting at windmills.

 

More than once, one has the impression that Guénon reads into documents what he wishes to find in them. For Dante, ‘it is evident that the temporal authority of the monarch devolves upon him from the universal source of authority, without any intermediary’; this is the thesis of his treatise on monarchy; the emperor does not receive his authority from the pope. But Guénon on the contrary deems that

 

the emperors themselves . . . led astray by the extent of the power conferred on them, were the first to contest their subordination vis-à-vis the spiritual authority, from whom, nevertheless, they derived their power just like other sovereigns, but even more directly so.

 

And he then adds in a footnote: ‘The Holy Empire begins with Charlemagne, and it is known that it was the pope who conferred upon him the imperial dignity. . . .’ But, according to Dante, it is not the pope who confers on the emperor his authority; in fact he does no more than consecrate him. This thesis of Dante’s does not prevent Guénon from citing its author at length on the subject of the respective attributions of pope and emperor, and from adding this:

 

it is rather astonishing . . . that he who wrote these lines [namely Dante] could sometimes have been presented as an enemy of the Papacy; no doubt . . . he denounced the inadequacies and imperfections which he could see in the state of the papacy in his day.

 

All that is indeed rather astonishing! Besides: if the emperors could be 'led astray by the extent of the power conferred upon them’—which is precisely what Dante denies—the function of emperor would be without legitimacy and humanly unrealizable; now the attitude of the emperors did not in reality derive from their power, but solely from a point of principle, hence of doctrine, and not of morality. Furthermore, it seems to me that the emperors ‘contested their subordination,’ not ‘vis-à-vis the spiritual authority’ as such, but vis-à-vis what they looked upon as the papacy’s abuses of power; for the pope and bishops were theoretically and practically princes, and therefore political authorities, and this by virtue of the Donation of Constantine which, for Dante, was contrary to the nature of things and consequently illegitimate. Dante did not confine himself to ‘denouncing the inadequacies . . . which he could see in the state of papacy in his day’; he denounced an entire aspect of the traditional papacy, namely the Constantinian aspect; and it is a truism to add that Dante was not an ‘enemy of the papacy,’ if by that is understood an enemy of pontifical authority.

 

For Dante, the authority of the pope comes from Christ and the authority of the emperor from natural law; so the pope cannot transfer his authority to the emperor any more than the emperor can transfer his authority to the pope, nor can either one have any right to the other’s authority. ‘He who can do the greater can do the lesser,’ it will be objected from the Guelph side; but this truth is only applicable to the pontiffs in a relative way and in respect of their sacerdotal competence, otherwise there would be no princes. ‘My kingdom is not of this world,’ said Christ, and ‘render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s’; which implies that the pope’s kingdom is not of this world, any more than is Christ’s, and that he should not lay claim to what is rightfully due to the emperor.

 

There is, on the part of Guénon, a strange confusion between containers and contents: for example, he asserts that the word ‘ideal’ signifies nothing because everyone can suppose it to mean just about anything; one might as well say that the word ‘animal’ signifies nothing because it can be understood in relation to any species at all, and so on. Or let us take the assertion that Hinduism is not a ‘religion’ because it is not composed of the three elements ‘dogma, morality, cult’: apart from the fact that these elements are necessarily to be found in it after a certain fashion, Hinduism is quite obviously a religion, seeing that it is concerned with realities that are both metaphysical and eschatological. What is typical for Guénon is to prefer to say that Hinduism is not a religion rather than to say that it is a religion of a different kind.

 

And likewise: nothing is clearer than the notions of the ‘subjective’ and the ‘objective’ but, for Guénon, these ‘present serious drawbacks from the point of view of clarity’ because one can attribute anything whatsoever either to the side of the subjective or the side of the objective!

 

There is a Guénon who boldly plunges into Non-Being, and there is another who seems not to know how to count up to three; I think this paradox is not without significance, and it is even a key to many things. Too often, our author allows himself strangely weak arguments: for example, when he reproaches modern mathematicians with ‘not knowing what number is,’ confusing number with the written character, and ‘using, in their notation, symbols whose meaning they no longer understand,’ as though these things had any connection whatever with what legitimately concerns mathematicians; or when he reproaches Pascal for having defined space as ‘a sphere whose center is everywhere and whose periphery is nowhere’—which is excellent when one understands its meaning—and for having spoken of two 'infinities’ instead of accepting a priori that the word ‘infinite’ can only have an absolute and metaphysical sense; or when he reproaches modern men for having a quantitative notion of money, which means absolutely nothing—quite apart from the fact that quantity also has its right to existence and that it is precisely quantity which is the raison d'etre of money; or when he asserts that the inhabitants of other planets would be quasi-invisible for us on account of their completely different sensations, for which I do not see the shadow of a justification since, like us, they exist in matter and since we are capable of perceiving even the Andromeda nebula; if they do not exist in matter the question does not arise and there is no reason to speculate on their faculties of sensation.

 

In Man and His Becoming according to the Vedanta, we read that the waking state possesses a ‘relative reality and a stability sufficient to serve the needs of ordinary, profane life,’ but that its difference with regard to the dream state ‘does not imply an effective superiority of the waking state over the dream state when each is considered in itself,’ and that a ‘superiority which is valid only from a “profane” point of view cannot, metaphysically, be accounted a true superiority’! And Guénon even takes care to add that the ‘possibilities of the dream state are more extensive than those of the waking state,’ because ‘they allow the individual to escape, in a certain measure, from some of the limiting conditions to which he is subject in his corporeal modality’! So, whether a saint dreams of being a criminal, or a criminal dreams of being a saint, it is ‘metaphysically’ equivalent, and the criminal’s dream is even superior to the waking reality of the saint if the malefactor dreams of floating in the air without, moreover, having the option of dreaming anything else!

 

Or again: for Guénon the notion of ‘matter’ is factitious, confused, problematic; it has nothing fundamental about it and is to be found nowhere except in the modern West. This is incredible. And what, in an altogether general way, is the sensible substance that one can touch, measure, weigh, analyze, and possibly work or shape? And why, for goodness’ sake, would this not be matter? 1 do not know from where Guénon gets this enumeration of the five conditions of physical existence which he calls ‘corporeal’: space, time, form, number, and life. I am in agreement as regards the first four, but not as regards life, because what we are concerned with here is matter or, if one prefers, physical substance. If one adds life, which is not at all a general condition, it is likewise necessary to add other secondary categories such as color and so on. The Guénonians solemnly maintain that it is a question, not of life as vital force, but of a condition much more subtle and altogether general, which is absurd for two reasons: firstly, because it does not explain the absence—in the enumeration—of matter, and secondly, because this ‘life’ which is spoken of is not something that we can observe in the same way as we observe, without any difficulty, space, time, form, number, and matter. And if this mysterious thing named in fifth place is not what we call life, why give it that name?

 

One may, with good reason, wonder at the offhand manner with which Guénon treats entire peoples. He does not hesitate to say: ‘the Greeks, however mendacious they may have been.’ According to him, the Japanese constitute for the East an ‘anomaly’ and ‘do not truly belong to the yellow race’; they have virtually no right to exist seeing that modernism, hence error, suits their mentality better ‘after all’ than does Chinese civilization, which they made the mistake of ‘copying without real assimilation.’ It would be easy to refute these excesses. ‘There is,’ it seems, ‘nothing more dissimilar than a German and a Hindu’—which, be it said in passing, is complete nonsense from the anthropological point of view; and the Germans are only capable of producing encyclopedias which, we are told, has the advantage of sparing a tedious labor ‘to those who are capable of something else,’ the French no doubt. ‘As to the intellectuality of the Russians, it were better not to speak of it’; may one know what is the special demerit of Russian theologians, and in what way Russian philosophers of the nineteenth century are less ‘intellectual’ than their French confreres, such as Comte or Taine? The Latins, according to Guénon, are less remote from the East than the Germans—which is an error, because there are, at the very most, certain differences of accent in the common remoteness.

 

‘For us,’ writes Guénon in East and West, ‘the modem spirit originated above all in the German and Anglo-Saxon countries; it is in these same countries, naturally, that it is most deeply rooted and will live longest. . . .’ Really? What about the Renaissance? And Cartesianism? And the Encyclopedists? And the French Revolution? Have not all these created the modern world and have they not contributed powerfully to corrupting the Germanic countries?

 

Speaking of the Western hatred of Islam, Guénon is of the view that ‘fear contributes a good share of the motives for this hatred’ and that ‘this state of mind is due only to incomprehension’! That the West is of Christian substance, and that Islam rejects the Divinity of Christ and the legitimacy of the Church, seems to have escaped Guénon, who 'does not see the wood for the trees.’ Then, if there is something which certainly does not contribute to motives for the hatred of Islam, it is fear, the Europeans of the nineteenth century had no reason, absolutely none, to fear the Muslim world and their politics prove it. And if, on the other hand, they had a certain fear of the ‘yellow peril’—for which Guénon reproaches them—history is there to show them that they were by no means wholly mistaken!

 

Here is an altogether characteristic example from East and West:

 

These ‘young’ Easterners, as they call themselves in order better to indicate their leanings, could never gain a real influence among them; sometimes, without their knowledge, they are made use of in order to play a role which they do not suspect, and that is all the easier because they take themselves so seriously. . .

 

Everything is there: the overestimation of Eastern humanity and next the theory of puppets, typical for Guénonian ‘mythology’, without forgetting the little piece of perfectly gratuitous sarcasm.

 

In his Introduction to the Study of the Hindu Doctrines, Guénon speaks of the ‘main divisions of the East’; one of them, the Far East, ends with China at Tongking and Annam; Japan.'which we have left to one side in our general classification,’ does not form part of the Far East! Yet, at the time when Guénon published this book, Turkey was Kemalist; this did not suffice to cast Turkey into disgrace similar to that of Japan, nor to revise the judgement passed on the latter in proportion to the indulgence accorded Turkey. The infallible authority of Guénon had, as regards the yellow people of the East, a single source: Albert de Pouvourville who, in the end, converted to Catholicism! And that after having initiated Guénon in the name of Tong-Sang-Laut; this Taoist dignitary died, it appears, while Guénon was still at school. But to return to Turkey: ‘these “young” Easterners . . . could never gain a real influence among them,’ deems Guénon; and he publishes this opinion after a dozen years of Kemalist rule! However, the Japanese, for their part, have never hanged bonzes on the charge of failing to dress as Europeans!

 

The Guénonians will say that all this is of no importance; it is of the order of contingencies, not of principles. Now, leaving aside that this distinguo could lead us very far, it is, on the contrary, very important, not only because Japan constitutes an essential part of the Far East, but also because the opinions in question betoken a singular manner of observing, evaluating, and ‘reasoning’— whenever the 'dogmas’ of the system appear to be threatened.

 

Thus, the Chinese republic of Sun-Yat-Sen does not disturb Guénon; it is something ‘tolerated as transitory,’ given that China 'has always absorbed its successive conquerors.’ He forgets that these conquerors were more or less barbarian people of the yellow race who, without fail, were bound to be integrated into Chinese civilization—a case similar to that of the Goths who, having reached southern Europe, were necessarily integrated into Roman civilization; and he forgets more particularly that nothing in history is comparable to the modern spirit, which alone corrupts every spiritual and traditional value. It is unbelievable that it is Guénon who forgets this; and that he forgets it because what is at issue is China classified within the category ‘East’—the supposedly incorruptible East—by the Count de Pouvourville alias Matgioi, while Japan—reservoir of all Far-Eastern values—is fiercely excluded therefrom.

 

In a general way, the following conclusion is inescapable: Guénon is magisterial in his defense of the traditional East and his condemnation of the anti-traditional West, but he overestimates Eastern man as such and underestimates Western man as such. One might also say that he demolishes with the left hand what he constructs with the right; this would scarcely be an exaggeration. He addresses himself to the West but, as a matter of fact, he leaves the West nothing except Freemasonry—a highly problematic affair —and a ‘Christian tradition’ which concretely has every right to symbolism but which, abstractly and as an esoterism, merely begs the question; this conjectural Christianity is also allowed the right to be the ‘exoteric complement’ of the aforementioned Masonry! Western intellectuality? It amounts to Aristotelian Scholasticism; Guénon has a curiously poor regard for Neoplatonism, and he admitted to me that he had never read Meister Eckhart. Western sanctity? It amounts in fact to ‘mysticism’, a spirituality which, so it would appear, is ‘passive’, exoteric, profane, and very concerned with ‘phenomena’; an opinion which proves that Guénon is ignorant of mystical theology. It is no more than an exoterism; so there is no occasion to look in that quarter for an ‘initiatic’ attachment. Western esoterism? It emigrated after the destruction of the Templars; but, happily, there remains Masonry and the Compagnonnage! We must therefore seek to demodernize them, especially Masonry; Christianity will then be good enough to be added to it in the capacity of ‘technically indispensable exoterism’. Question: where does the Christian find any trace of all this in the words of Christ—in which he places his trust because their authority is Divine, and whose claims are consequently absolute? It is true that we are told there must also be a Catholic initiation, but ‘in such restricted circles that in point of fact they can be considered to all intents and purposes inaccessible . . .’ The Hesychast initiation, which is referred to in passing, is nothing but a gratuitous assumption; all the same, if Hesychasm did possess a supra-sacramental initiation, which is precisely what is excluded, it would not be accessible to Catholics. The sacraments? Heaven, it seems, has withdrawn from them their initiatic efficacy; and there it is. I shall say not only that this privation or restriction is impossible, but also that it would be profitless; it would confer nothing on the simple man and would deprive the elect of everything. The miracles of the saints? Mere ‘phenomena’ deserving the scorn of those who concern themselves with ‘serious matters’!

 

Guénon sees everywhere in the West ‘total ignorance’; he does not notice that it is far more a case of a refusal to accept than of ignorance pure and simple. The West is not necessarily—and

totally!—ignorant of certain truths; it can even note them very well, but hardens itself against them; it closes its ears, and therein lies the drama and the crime of the West. When the Westerner is told that he is ignorant of everything, that he has no idea—not the slightest —of anything, and is then presented with a Sufi treatise, for example, he is at once bewildered, disappointed, and indignant, he who knows Plotinus, Meister Eckhart, and Angelus Silesius, to mention only these three.

 

True, there are: pure metaphysics, the relationship between esoterism and exoterism, initiation, doctrinal and methodical gnosis, traditional civilizations, the modern error; but traditional values do not present themselves exactly as Guénon would have it. They are sometimes much simpler, their mystery is often relative or even more or less accidental; things are not so hidden and inaccessible; it is chiefly man that makes them so from the fact that he does not wish to hear anything about them and that he persecutes those who understand more than he himself wishes to

understand. And all this is much less total and less administrative than Guénon imagines; there are not only causal relationships of a ‘horizontal’ kind, there is also the unforeseen, which is ‘vertical’ in nature. Admittedly, there is traditionally that which is secret, but it is less arrogant and often more contingent than Guénon thinks; paradoxically, Guénon seems readily to lose sight of the fact that doctrine is always something relatively outward; he is the first to admit it, but in fact, he often appears to forget it, and this is not the least of his inconsequence.

 

When Guénon sees fit ‘formally to state’ that 'there is, to our knowledge, no one in the West who has expounded authentic Eastern ideas, other than ourself,’ one is entitled to feel amazed and to concede, at the very least, extenuating circumstances to Guénon’s orientalist adversaries. At the end of a chapter in his Theosophy: History of a Pseudo-Religion, Guénon declares that there is, in the East, nothing which even distantly resembles the idea of reincarnation; has he then never read the Manava-Dharma-Shastra? It is extremely distressing, when one has no interest in criticizing Guénon —on the contrary, one has, a priori, an interest in supporting him—to have to recognize that his adversaries are better informed and sometimes even show more understanding than he; it is all the more distressing, seeing that it was not they who began the squabble. Be that as it may, what matters to us is not the prestige of a given author, but the Truth, and Guénon himself has not failed expressly to insist on this distinguo!

 

It is obvious that criticisms such as those made in the preceding pages are capable of giving rise to objections. It therefore seems appropriate to stress once more— for we are aware of the thanklessness of our undertaking— that our criticisms are in no wise leveled at what constitutes the irreplaceable value of the Guénonian writings, but uniquely at whatever, in these writings, runs the risk of prejudicing the essential.

 

It is essential to understand the following: at the time that Guénon first manifested his mission, he was alone; he faced alone a world that was against him and that would and could not accept him, a world, in short, that was fundamentally hostile to him. This terrible solitude, reinforced by certain traits of character, gravely traumatized him, to the point that he saw enemies even where there were none, and hostile intentions even in benevolent attitudes; we mention these things, not in order to express any pointless blame, but simply to account for a situation which was not without its consequences, and for which, we repeat, Guénon was not entirely responsible. He had heroically crossed a bridge, and he was the first to do so; after him, others crossed this bridge; the way had been opened.

 

A point that we must mention in spite of its obviousness is the following: when we consider ourselves obliged to criticize certain aspects of Guénon’s writings—and we do not have the choice to do otherwise—we are always aware of the perfect probity of the author: of the total absence in his character of any kind of ambition or duplicity; he was the most disinterested man that one could imagine, but he perhaps relied too much on his intelligence alone. Be that as it may, what counts above all and what has priority before all else, are obviously the constituent—and essential—elements of the Guénonian message. We refer to its contents, which, given their importance and their loftiness, cause it in fact to be a message. First of all there is the idea of tradition, and thus of traditional orthodoxy; this is the postulate that cuts short the purely cerebral argumentations of all profane ideologies, however subtle or brilliant. Then there are, and even above all, the crucial ideas of intellectual intuition’, of ‘pure metaphysics’ (and thus also of pure intellectuality), that is, of esoterism and of universality, without for getting all the questions relating to symbolism, or those touching on the mystery of spiritual realization. All of this, in Guénon’s writings, entails— and determines the nature of—a masterly and courageous rejection of the modern deviation.

 

For us, the works of Guénon are not so much an attempt to create an ’intellectual elite’, such as was envisaged— on an incontestably problematical basis—in his book East and West, as the radiance of pure principles: the presentation, both precise and profound, of crucial ideas, and thus of indispensable truths. And for these keys, we owe Guénon an unfailing gratitude.

 

1. Perspectives on Initiation (Sophia Perennis, 2004), chap. 2.