O individualismo e a perda da tradição como causas da decadência da cultura ocidental segundo René Guenón : uma análise crítica

Abstract

The present study aimed to analyze the criticism of the French philosopher René Guenón to the West as to the loss of the tradition which, according to him, would have been caused by individualism and would have led the West to an intellectual decay. Although René Guenón is not a classical philosopher, his work is currently influential in several countries, with some centers of traditional doctrine studies in South American countries, such as the René Guénon Institute of Traditional Studies in São Paulo. Guenón criticizes the whole modern Western philosophical system for having moved away from traditional metaphysical conceptions and relegated to reason the solution of the dilemmas of humanity. According to him, the West has deviated from the true intelligentsia and has descended into a pragmatism in which only the practical utility of any concept is relevant. In his critique he attacks thinkers such as Descartes, Kant, and Martin Luther, whom he accuses of sealing the intellectual decadence of the West due to the use of reason and the break with medieval tradition. For him what sealed the western fall was the consolidation of individualism in the philosophical milieu, which would have prevented the study of a true metaphysics and thus removed all science from its essence. Martin Luther, on the other hand, is accused by Guenón of having given the final blow in this rupture of the west with the pure metaphysics for having caused the rupture of the western religion, which, according to him, was the holder of a traditional metaphysics. In analyzing his works we realize that his concern is with the remoteness of Western thought from the mystical metaphysics he defends, and all his criticisms are rooted in this mystical concept of metaphysics which he defends. In order to make the present analysis we have based on two works of his: Orient et Ocident and The Crisis of the Modern World, in which the criticisms referred are. In the course of the studies we realize that his statements are not shared by other philosophers and we use thinkers he criticized or contemporaries to demonstrate the invalidity of his criticisms. We conclude then that his ideas are wrong in many respects and that the best is not the return of the West to the past tradition, but the adequacy of the East to modern thought in harmony with its tradition, making the necessary adjustments for i