Traditionalism (philosophy)
Traditionalism ( integral traditionalism ; traditionalist school ) is a world view that combines philosophy / metaphysics , religion and mysticism / esotericism , has a decidedly anti- modern orientation and is based on a philosophy perennis and wants to renew it. The founder and best-known traditionalist is René Guénon . Other well-known representatives are Frithjof Schuon (“Islamic traditionalism”, Sufism ), Mircea Eliade (“soft” or “academic traditionalism”), Julius Evola (“political traditionalism”), Leopold Ziegler (“Christian-Catholic traditionalism”), Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy , Titus Burckhardt and Hossein Nasr .
reaction
Traditionalism was founded in France by Joseph de Maistre and Louis-Gabriel-Ambroise de Bonald and significantly further developed by the young Félicité de Lamennais . Other representatives were Augustin Barruel , Pierre-Simon Ballanche and Augustin Bonnetty. They rejected individual reason as the sole basis for making political decisions. Rather, the subjective individual will has to be subordinate to revelation. The rejection of autonomy, self-legislation and the liberal concept of freedom was motivated by anti-enlightenment.
criticism
Umberto Eco uses the term traditionalism as a term for an ideological rejection of modernity while maintaining the technological developments that it has socially prepared or made possible and defines this as one of 14 characteristics of primeval fascism. In contrast to Karl Mannheim's concept of traditionalism , according to which social renewals are rejected per se, what is required here is not the maintenance of a premodern state, but an ideology that emerged in modern times, such as the blood-and-soil ideology, is taken as the basis for political action . Eco's term is more similar to that of Invented Traditions and Myth.
literature
- Mark J. Sedgwick: Against the Modern World. Traditionalism and the Secret Intellectual History of the Twentieth Century. Oxford University Press 2004, ISBN 0195152972
Web links
- http://www.traditionalists.org - Web site about and for academic traditionalism research operated by Associate Professor Mark J. Sedgwick