Evolutionism, …, provides a typical example of REASONING in the absence of sufficient premises. Modern scientism starts from the gratuitous and crude axiom that there is no reality outside sensorial, or virtually sensorial experience with the highly relative exception of psychology, a very limited domain which, in any case, can be reduced philosophically to a subtle mode of the sensorial; and since it starts from this axiom, it will reason in accordance therewith, leaving out of account premises that surpass it. sophiaperennis: Sophia Perennis and the theory of evolution and progress
Now in the case of a reality that does surpass the sensorial and empirical order, any such REASONING must evidently be false – as well might one reason about a sparrow while denying the existence of birds – and it will demonstrate its falsity by replacing the missing premises by purely functional hypotheses; and these hypotheses will betray their chimerical nature by their monstrousness, as witness the concepts of the ape-man or of “hominization”. All this is truly sinister if one considers that the essential truth has reference, on the one hand, to the transcendent Absolute and, on the other, to the suprasensible cosmos, or to the extrasensorial character of the greater part of the cosmos, including our souls which, precisely, appertain to this order. (Logic and Transcendence, p.93-94). sophiaperennis: Sophia Perennis and the theory of evolution and progress
All this shows that, to say the least, the word “philosopher” in itself has nothing restrictive about it, and that one cannot legitimately impute to this word any of the vexing associations of ideas that it may elicit; usage applies this word to all thinkers, including eminent metaphysicians – some Sufis consider Plato and other Greeks to be prophets – so that one would like to reserve it for sages and simply use the term “rationalists” for profane thinkers. It is nevertheless legitimate to take account of a misuse of language that has become conventional, for unquestionably the terms “philosophy” and “philosopher” have been seriously compromised by ancient and modern reasoners; in fact, the serious inconvenience of these terms is that they conventionally imply that the norm for the mind is REASONING pure and simple, (NA: Naturally the most ” advanced” of the modernists seek to demolish the very principles of REASONING, but this is simply fantasy pro domo, for man is condemned to reason as soon as he uses language, unless he wishes to demonstrate nothing at all. In any case, one cannot demonstrate the impossibility of demonstrating anything, if words are still to have any meaning.) in the absence not only of intellection, but also of indispensable objective data. Admittedly one is neither ignorant nor rationalistic just because one is a logician, but one is both if one is a logician and nothing more. (NA: A German author (H. Turck) has proposed the term “misosopher” -” enemy of wisdom”- for those thinkers who undermine the very foundations of truth and intelligence. We will add that misosophy – without mentioning some ancient precedents – begins grosso modo with ” criticism” and ends with subjectivisms, relativisms, existentialisms, dynamisms, psychologisms and biologisms of every kind. As for the ancient expression “misology,” it designates above all the hatred of the fideist for the use of reason.) sophiaperennis: What is a philosopher?
In short: we reject rationalism not because of its possibly plausible criticisms of humanized religion, but because of its negation of the divine kernel of the phenomenon of religion; a negation that essentially implies the negation of intellectual intuition, thus of that immanent Divine Presence which is the Intellect. The basic error of systematized rationality – by the way, it is wrong to attribute this ideology to the great Greeks – is to put fallible REASONING in place of infallible intellection; as if the rational faculty were the whole of Intelligence and even the only Intelligence. sophiaperennis: Extenuating circumstances for rationalism
To wish to replace REASONING by experience on the practical plane and in a relative fashion could still be meaningful; but to do so on the intellectual and speculative plane, as the empiricists and existentialists wish to do is, properly speaking, demented. For the inferior man, only what is contingent is real, and he seeks by his method to lower principles to the level of contingencies, when he does not deny them purely and simply. This mentality of the shudra has infiltrated Christian theology and has committed its well-known ravages. (NA: Some modernist theologians readily admit that there is a God – they find a few reasons for doing so – but they wish to justify this in a “provisional” and not in a “fixed” manner, while refusing of course the definitive formulations of the scholastics; whereas on this plane the truth is either definitive or it is not. A mode of knowledge which is incapable of furnishing the truth to us now, will never furnish it.) sophiaperennis: Existentialism
… intellection, on the one hand it necessarily expresses itself by means of reason and on the other hand it can make use of the latter as a support for actualization. These two factors enable theologians to reduce intellection to REASONING; that is to say, they deny it – while at the same time seeing in rationality an element that is more or less problematic if not contrary to faith – without seeking or being able to account for the fact that faith is itself an indirect, and in a way, anticipated mode of intellection. sophiaperennis: What is the intellect and Intellection?
The intellect is a receptive faculty and not a productive power: it does not “create,” it receives and transmits; it is a mirror reflecting reality in a manner that is adequate and therefore effective. In most men of the “iron age” the intellect is atrophied to the point of being reduced to a mere virtuality, although doubtless there is no watertight partition between it and the reason, for a sound process of REASONING indirectly transmits something of the intellect; be that as it may, the respective operations of the reason – or the mind – and of the intellect are fundamentally different from the point of view that interests us here, despite certain appearances due to the fact that every man is a thinking being, whether he be wise or ignorant. sophiaperennis: What is the intellect and Intellection?
An analogous definition, which is still more concise and even richer in symbolic value, is to be found in Moslem esotericism: ‘The Sufi (that is to say man identified with the Intellect) is uncreated.’ Since purely intellectual knowledge is by definition beyond the reach of the individual, being in its essence supra-individual, universal or divine, and since it proceeds from pure Intelligence, which is direct and not discursive, it follows that this knowledge not only goes infinitely farther than REASONING, but even goes farther than faith in the ordinary sense of this term. sophiaperennis: Difference between Metaphysics and Philosophy
Now, though dogma is not accessible to all men in its intrinsic truth, which can only be directly attained by the Intellect, it is none the less accessible through faith, which is, for most people, the only possible mode of participation in the divine truths. As for intellectual knowledge, which, as we have seen, proceeds neither from belief nor from a process of REASONING, it goes beyond dogma in the sense that, without ever contradicting the latter, it penetrates its ‘internal dimension’, that is, the infinite Truth which dominates all forms. sophiaperennis: Difference between Metaphysics and Philosophy
Profane philosophy is ignorant not only of the value of truth and universality in Revelation, but also of the transcendence of the pure Intellect; (NA: For example, the Cartesian Cogito is neither conformable to Revelation, nor the consequence of a direct intellection: it has no scriptural basis, since according to Scripture the foundation of existence is Being and not some experience or other; and it lacks inspiration, since direct intellective perception excludes a purely empirical process of REASONING. When Locke says Nihil est in intellectu quod non prius fuerit in sensu, the statement is false in the same two respects; firstly, Scripture affirms that the intellect derives from God and not from the body – for man, “made in the image of God,” is distinguished from animals by the intelligence not by the senses – and secondly, the intellect conceives of realities which it does not discern a priori in the world, though it may seek their traces a posteriori in sensory perceptions.) it entails therefore no guarantee of truth on any level, for the quite human faculty which reason is, insofar as it is cut off from the Absolute, is readily mistaken even on the level of the relative. The efficacy of REASONING is essentially conditional. sophiaperennis: Profane “thinkers”
It is the sophists, with Protagoras at their head, who are the true precursors of modern thought; they are the “thinkers” properly so called, in the sense that they limited themselves to REASONING and were hardly concerned with “perceiving” and taking into account that which “is.” And it is a mistake to see in Socrates, Plato and Aristotle the fathers of rationalism, or even of modern thought generally; no doubt they reasoned – Shankara and Ramanuja did so as well – but they never said that REASONING is the alpha and omega of intelligence and of truth, nor a fortiori that our experiences or our tastes determine thought and have priority over intellectual intuition and logic, quod absit. sophiaperennis: Protagoras
Taking into account the fact that according to a – rightly or wrongly – universally recognized terminology, the word “philosophy” designates all that extrinsically pertains to thought, we would say that there is a philosophy according to the “spirit,” which is founded on pure intellection – possibly actualized by a particular sacred Text – and a philosophy according to the “flesh,” which is founded on individual REASONING in the absence of sufficient data and of any supernatural intuition; the first being the philosophia perennis, and the second, the ancient Protagorism as well as the rationalist thought of the moderns. (NA: Even if it resists being rationalism, which is of no importance and which evokes this line of Shakespeare: “Though this be madness, yet there is method in it.”) sophiaperennis: Protagoras
From the point of view of knowledge properly so-called, REASONING is like the groping of a blind man, with the difference that – by removing obstacles – it may bring about a clearing of vision; it is blind and groping due to its indirect and discursive nature, but not necessarily in its function, for it may be no more than the description – or verbalization – of a vision which one possesses a priori, and in this case, it is not the mind that is groping, but the language. If we compare REASONING to a groping, it is in the sense that it is not a vision, and not in order to deny its capacity of adequation and exploration; it is a means of knowledge, but this means is mediate and fragmentary, like the sense of touch, which enables a blind man to find his way and even to feel the heat of the sun, but not to see. (NA: It is said that angels do not possess reason since they have vision of causes and consequences, which obviously does not signify an infirmity.) sophiaperennis: Reason
If on the one hand REASONING can give rise to – but not produce – intellection and if on the other hand intellection is necessarily expressed by REASONING, a third combination is also possible, but it is abnormal and abusive; namely the temptation to support a real intellection by aberrant REASONING; either because the intellection does not operate in all domains on account of some blind spot in the mind or character, or because religious emotivity involves the thought towards solutions stemming from expediency, given that faith is inclined to allow, even if only subconsciously, that “the end sanctifies the means. sophiaperennis: Reason
If on the one hand REASONING can give rise to – but not produce – intellection and if on the other hand intellection is necessarily expressed by REASONING, a third combination is also possible, but it is abnormal and abusive; namely the temptation to support a real intellection by aberrant REASONING; either because the intellection does not operate in all domains on account of some blind spot in the mind or character, or because religious emotivity involves the thought towards solutions stemming from expediency, given that faith is inclined to allow, even if only subconsciously, that “the end sanctifies the means. sophiaperennis: Reason and Intellection
As for intellection, on the one hand it necessarily expresses itself by means of reason and on the other hand it can make use of the latter as a support for actualization. These two factors enable theologians to reduce intellection to REASONING; that is to say, they deny it – while at the same time seeing in rationality an element that is more or less problematic if not contrary to faith – without seeking or being able to account for the fact that faith is itself an indirect, and in a way, anticipated mode of intellection. sophiaperennis: Reason and Intellection
Cartesianism – perhaps the most intelligent way of being unintelligent – is the classic example of a faith which has become the dupe of the gropings of REASONING; this is a “wisdom from below” and history shows it to be deadly. The whole of modern philosophy, including science, starts from a false conception of intelligence; for instance, the modern cult of “life” sins in the sense that it seeks the explanation and goal of man at a level below him, in something which could not serve to define the human creature. But in a much more general way, all rationalism – whether direct or indirect – is false from the sole fact that it limits the intelligence to reason or intellection to logic, or in other words cause to effect. sophiaperennis: Reason and Intellection
In theology as in philosophy, and to varying degrees, one encounters a deliberate way of REASONING in a given manner and in a given direction in order to support a certain axiom, and to exclude from the intelligence all possibilities which do not serve this end. The subjectivists will say that the same holds true for all demonstrations, but this is not so, since in the case of a certitude independent of all sentimental postulates, the arguments result objectively from the certitude to be demonstrated, and not subjectively from our desire to prove it. sophiaperennis: About the rational mode of knowledge
Plato represents the inward dimension, subjective extension, synthesis and reintegration, whereas Aristotle represents the outward dimension, objective extension, analysis and projection; but this does not mean that Aristotle was a rationalist in the modern sense of the word. For the ancients, in fact, “reason” is synonymous with “intellect”: REASONING prolongs intellection more or less, depending upon the level of the subject matter under consideration. sophiaperennis: Plato
In Plotinus the essence of Platonism reveals itself without any reserves. Here one passes from the passion-centered body to the virtuous soul and from the soul to the cognizant Spirit, then from and through the Spirit to the suprarational and unitive vision of the ineffable One, which is the source of all that exists; in the One the thinking subject and the object of thought coincide. The One projects the Spirit as the sun projects light and heat: that is to say, the Spirit, Nous, emanates eternally from the One and contemplates It. By this contemplation the Spirit actualizes in itself the world of the archetypes or ideas – the sum of essential or fundamental possibilities – and thereafter produces the animic world; the latter in its turn engenders the material world – this dead end where the reflections of the possibilities coagulate and combine. The human soul, brought forth by the One from the world of the archetypes, recognizes these in their earthly reflections, and it tends by its own nature toward its celestial origin. With Aristotle, we are much closer to the earth, though not yet so close as to find ourselves cut off from heaven. If by rationalism is meant the reduction of the intelligence to logic alone and hence the negation of intellectual intuition (which in reality has no need of mental supports even though they may have to be used for communicating perceptions of a supramental order), then it will be seen that Aristotelianism is a rationalism in principle but not absolutely so in fact, since its theism and hylomorphism depend on Intellection and not on REASONING alone. (NA: Hylomorphism is a plausible thesis, but what is much less plausible is the philosopher’s opposition of this thesis to the Platonic Ideas, of which it is really only a prolongation, one that tends to exteriorize things to a dangerous degree just because of the absence of those Ideas.) And this is true of every philosophy that conveys metaphysical truths since an unmitigated rationalism is possible only where these truths or intellections are absent. (NA: Kantian theism does not benefit from this positive reservation; for Kant, God is only a “postulate of practical reason,” which takes us infinitely far away from the real and transcendent God of Aristotle.) sophiaperennis: Plato
The evolutionist rationalists are of the opinion that Aristotle, being the father of logic, is ipso facto the father of intelligence become at last mature and efficacious; they obviously are unaware that this flowering of a discipline of thought, while having its merits, goes more or less hand in hand with a weakening, or even an atrophy, of intellectual intuition. The angels, it is said, do not possess reason, for they have no need of REASONING; this need presupposes in fact that the spirit, no longer able to see, must “grope.” It may be objected that the greatest metaphysicians, hence the greatest intellectual intuitives, made use of REASONING; no doubt, but this was only in their dialectic – intended for others – and not in their intellection as such. It is true that a reservation applies here: since intellectual intuition does not a priori encompass all aspects of the real, REASONING may have the function of indirectly provoking a “vision” of some aspect; but in this case REASONING operates merely as an occasional cause, it is not a constitutive element of the cognition. We will perhaps be told that REASONING may actualize in any thinker a suprarational intuition, which is true in principle, yet in fact it is more likely that such an intuition will not be produced, as there is nothing in the profane mentality that is predisposed thereto, to say the least. sophiaperennis: Aristotle
Platonism, which is as it were “centripetal” and unitive, opens onto the consciousness of the one and immanent Self; on the contrary, Aristotelianism, which is “centrifugal” and separative, tends to sever the world – and with it man – from its divine roots. This can serve theology inasmuch as it needs the image of a man totally helpless without dogmatic and sacramental graces; and this led St. Thomas to opt for Aristotle – as against the Platonism of St. Augustine – and to deprive Catholicism of its deepest metaphysical dimension, while at the same time immunizing it – according to the usual opinion – against all temptation to “gnosis.” Be that as it may, we could also say, very schematically, that Plato represents the inward dimension, subjective extension, synthesis and reintegration, whereas Aristotle represents the outward dimension, objective extension, analysis and projection; but this does not mean that Aristotle was a rationalist in the modern sense of the word. For the ancients, in fact, “reason” is synonymous with “intellect”: REASONING prolongs intellection more or less, depending upon the level of the subject matter under consideration. sophiaperennis: Comparison between Plato and Aristotle
It is a mistake to see in Socrates, Plato and Aristotle the fathers of rationalism, or even of modern thought generally; no doubt they reasoned – Shankara and Ramanuja did so as well – but they never said that REASONING is the alpha and omega of intelligence and of truth, nor a fortiori that our experiences or our tastes determine thought and have priority over intellectual intuition and logic, quod absit. sophiaperennis: About Plato and/or Aristotle
Thus it is not surprising that from the strictly theological point of view, gnosis is the “enemy number one.” By its recourse to intellection it seems to make Revelation redundant and even superfluous, which in theological language is called “submitting Revelation to the judgement of reason”; this confusion – which is not disinterested – between reason and intellection is altogether typical. Plato’s anticipated retort is the following, and it is all the more justified in that religious sentimentalism has had extremely serious, if providential, consequences since “it must needs be that offenses come”: “All force of REASONING must be enlisted to oppose anyone who tries to maintain an assertion and at the same time destroys knowledge, understanding and intelligence.” (Sophist, 249). sophiaperennis: About Plato and/or Aristotle
2. Kant calls “transcendent al subreption” (Erschleichung) the trans formation” of the purely ” regulative” idea of God into an objective reality; which once more proves that he is unable to conceive certitude outside a REASONING founded on sense experience and operating beneath the reality which he pretends to judge and deny. In short, Kantian ” criticism’ consists in calling liar” whoever does not bend to its discipline; agnostics do practically the same, by decreeing that no one can know anything, since they themselves know nothing, or desire to know nothing. sophiaperennis: Kantianism
All the hopeless pedantic of this philosophy becomes glaringly apparent in the notion of “sophistications”: this is the name it gives to REASONING which are devoid of “empirical premises,” and which enable us to infer something of which (so it appears) we have no idea – as, for example, when we infer the reality of God from the existence of the world or the qualities it manifests. sophiaperennis: Kantianism
The philosopher, who in other respects displays so little of the poet, does nevertheless have enough poetic imagination to describe conclusions of this kind as “sophistical mirages” (sophistische Blendwerke); that a REASONING might simply be the logical and provisional description of an intellectual evidence, and that its function might be the actualization of this evidence, in itself supralogical, apparently never crosses the minds of pure logicians. sophiaperennis: Kantianism
In the Cogito ergo sum all is lost, since consciousness of being is subordinated to the experience of thought; when being is thus blurred it carries thought downwards with it, for if it is necessary to prove being, it is necess ary also to prove the effi cacy of the intelligence, hence the validity of its conclusions, the soundness of the ergo. Guénon, who had the great merit of restoring to the conceptions of intellectuality and of orthodoxy their true and universal meaning, once wrote to us on the subject of the Cogito: “In order to see all that is involved in Descartes’ saying ‘I think, therefore I am,’ it is necessary to consider the twofold reduction which this effects: firstly, the ‘I’ is reduced to the soul alone (the body being excluded); and secondly, the soul itself is reduced to thought, ‘a substance the whole nature of which consists solely of thinking’; the distinction which he maintains between substances and their respective principal attributes seems to be primarily verbal since for him the principal attribute expresses completely the essence or the nature of the substance. There has been much discussion on the question of knowing whether the Cartesian formula ought really to be considered as an argument or line of REASONING; the ergo however does not seem open to any interpretation other than as signifying a deduction. The same objection can also be applied to the famous ‘ontological argument’; everything that it contains which is true and metaphysically valid comes down to the affirmation ‘Being is,’ where there is no trace of argument. In this connection one could recall the absurd philosophical question of the ‘criterion of truth,’ that is to say the search for an external sign by which truth would infallibly be recognized; this question is among those that cannot be solved becaus e they do not really arise.” sophiaperennis: Descartes and the Cogito
Cartesianism – perhaps the most intelligent way of being unintelligent – is the classic example of a faith which has become the dupe of the gropings of REASONING; this is a “wisdom from below” and history shows it to be deadly. The whole of modern philosophy, including science, starts from a false conception of intelligence; for instance, the modern cult of “life” sins in the sense that it seeks the explanation and goal of man at a level below him, in something which could not serve to define the human creature. But in a much more general way, all rationalism – whether direct or indirect – is false from the sole fact that it limits the intelligence to reason or intellection to logic, or in other words cause to effect. sophiaperennis: Descartes and the Cogito
It is worth pausing over this question of doctrinal proofs a little longer: firstly, a distinction must be made between rational or logical proof and intellectual or symbolic proof; the first is fallible to the extent that the propositions of the syllogism may be false, and the likelihood of this will increase with the loftiness of the order of reality; the second on the contrary depends on premises which cannot but be exact, since they identify with the very nature of things, or, to put it more clearly, since they are not other than the realities whose “proof” will be like a reflection and which therefore can reveal their evidence, precisely. The spiritual or symbolic proof– which we may also term “ontological” so as to distinguish it from the simply “logical” proof–thus depends on a direct knowledge which, as such, is exact by definition, and it serves not to conclude from the known to the unknown, but to become aware of the unknown with the help of the known: consequently the link between the two will not be a rational operation, but intellectual intuition, even though REASONING, being natural to man, may obviously play a role of provisional support of occasional cause. sophiaperennis: Rationalism
It is not surprising that the aesthetics of the rationalists admits only the art of classical Antiquity, which in fact inspired the Renaissance, then the world of the Encyclopedists of the French Revolution and, to a great extent, the entire nineteenth century. Now this art – which, by the way, Plato did not appreciate – strikes one by its combination of rationality and sensual passion: its architecture has something cold and poor about it – spiritually speaking – while its sculpture is totally lacking in metaphysical transparency and thereby in contemplative depth. (NA: In Greek art there are two errors or two limitations: the architecture expresses REASONING man inasmuch as he intends to victoriously oppose himself to virgin Nature; the sculpture replaces the miracle of profound beauty and life by a more or less superficial beauty and by marble.) It is all that the inveterately cerebral could desire. A rationalist can be right – man not being a closed system – as we have said above. In modern philosophy, valid insights can in fact be met with, notwithstanding that their general context compromises and weakens them. Thus the “categorical imperative” does not mean much on the part of a thinker who denies metaphysics and with it the transcendent causes of moral principles, and who is unaware that intrinsic morality is above all our conformity to the nature of Being. sophiaperennis: Rationalism
If the Freudian psychology declares that rationality is but a hypocritical cloak for a repressed animality, this statement, evidently of a rational nature, falls under the same reproach ; Freudianism, were it right, would itself be nothing else but a symbolistic denaturing of psychophysical instincts. Doubtless the psychoanalysts will say that, in their case, REASONING is not function of repressions, which they do not care to admit ; but it is difficult to see, first on what grounds this exception would be admissible in terms of their own doctrine, and second, why this law of exception would apply only in their favor and not in favor of those spiritual doctrines which they reject with such animus and with a monstrous lack of any sense of proportion. In any case, nothing can be more absurd than for a man to make himself the accuser, not of some psychological accident or other, but of man as such : whence comes this demigod who accuses, and from where does he obtain this faculty for accusation? If the accuser himself is right, this must mean that man is not bad after all and that he is capable of objectivity. Otherwise we would have to admit that the champions of psychoanalysis are Divine beings unpredictably fallen from heaven, a somewhat unlikely proposition, to say the least. (Logic and Transcendence, p. 10-11). sophiaperennis: The Sophia Perennis and Neo-spiritualism
(In Hindu shaktism) … femininity is what surpasses the formal, the finite, the outward; it is synonymous with indetermination, illimitation, mystery, and thus evokes the “Spirit which giveth life” in relation to the “letter which killeth.” That is to say that femininity in the superior sense comprises a liquefying, interiorizing, liberating power: it liberates from sterile hardnesses, from the dispersing outwardness of limiting and compressing forms. On the one hand, one can oppose feminine sentimentality to masculine rationality — on the whole and without forgetting the relativity of things — but on the other hand, one also opposes to the REASONING of men the intuition of women; now it is this gift of intuition, in superior women above all, that explains and justifies in large part the mystical promotion of the feminine element; it is consequently in this sense that Haqiqah, esoteric Knowledge, may appear as feminine. (Roots of the Human Condition, p. 40-41) sophiaperennis: Femininity