It is quite
striking how Guenon and Berdyaev complement one another. Guenon is detached,
objective, and wholeheartedly concerned with the Principial Truth, which alone
can give reality and meaning to the phenomenal world; Berdyaev, emotional as
only a Slav can be, is subjective and passionately concerned with individual
man's search for meaning in concrete terms, personal and inescapably related to
his situation as the centerpiece of the Great Triad. In the symbolism of
ancient Rome,
they represent the two faces of Janus, the oldest of the gods and the holiest
and most exalted, who faced both ways, towards and away from man, and so
eminently represented man's special status vis-a-vis the eternal world. This
twofold stance reminds us that, as Berdyaev said,
Knowledge
of the divine life is not attainable by means of abstract philosophical thought
... but only by means of a con-crete myth which conceives the divine life as a
passionate destiny of concrete and active persons, the divine Hypostases.
This at first
sight seems very far from Guenon's impersonal insistence on shedding all
personal emotional elements, of which one must be stripped if one is to achieve
that 'pure intellectual intuition' which he sees as the sole way of attainment.
But this very stripping and detachment is itself an entirely personal
undertaking and one which demands a total personal commitment. If by Berdyaev's
'concrete myth' we understand, as I think we are entitled to, Guenon's
understanding of the function of all dogmatic formulations and religious
doctrines, we an understand the necessity of anthropomorphic language and the
symbolic representation of Principial Thoth by means of rites and ceremonies,
which are, as it were, its local dress and language. Moreover, the entire
contents of the phe-nomenal world are a reflection of pan of the contents of
the all in all, the Pleroma. Their manifestation can by symbolically described
as the drama enacted between God and Himself, the Son of Man is also the Son of
God.
But as Berdyaev says, all 'this is in the
sphere of mythology: an attempt to express the inexpressible, for no words are
adequate here. However, provided we remain aware that words can be no more than
an approximation, at least we do the best we an, and, provided we constantly
recall their true nature as clothes, not the body clothed, then in them we
possess a valid and authentic key to the mystery of the metaphysics of history.
Guenon and
Berdyaev, who came from widely different back-grounds, were both, to borrow a
phrase from Nietzsche 'aristocratic radical', aristocratic not by birth or
lineage but through being men of are intellectual and spiritual quality who
naturally felt themselves to be members of a human elite. We are aristocrats
in the inner man, as Eckhart says, by virtue of that true self, the Funkelein
or Scintilla, the Divine Spark, that which 'I' hear and heed, as in Psalm as:
Audiam qui Ioquiter in me, dominus Deus (I hear who speaks within me, the Lord God).
Both Guenon and Berdyaev possessed an all-embracing concern for the fate of humanity and a
humble perseverance in sharing their insights. Both left far behind the
cultural and religious environments in which they were raised and fearlessly
followed the search for truth wherever it led them. Both were frequently
misunderstood by those whom they had left behind, but nevertheless never became
resentful or arrogant. They were in Paris
at the same time but I have found no evidence that they ever met, though they
must have been aware of one another's writings. Guenon, who was not noticeably
lenient towards Christian thought in its degenerate state, neverthe-less
believed that the Eastern Church had retained somewhat more of the authentic
tradition than the West. A comparative study of their work would surely prove
fruitful.
Both
believed that it was possible for man here and now to encounter God or
Principial Truth, and Guenon would surely have agreed with Berdyaev when he
wrote,
What is
needed is not so much to set certain ends before one and to realize them in the
practical world making use of evil means in doing so. as to display, express
and radiate a creative energy of one's own, in knowledge, in love, in a sense of
community, in freedom and in beauty. and to be self-determined in the strength of
one's awareness of the end
All this
is, for this student at least, implicit in the whole of Guenon's writings, the
study of which remains sterile and mere intellectual trilling unless it
motivates us to search for the Ultimate Reality and live it as we search for
it. This will involve above all the recognition that while, as Guenon always
maintained, it is absolutely necessary to be an active participant in one of
the great traditional religions, nevertheless all systems, dogmas, doctrinal
and credal formulations are of secondary importance in that they are only
different ways of viewing the Ultimate Truth. By their very nature they can
only be landmarks or boundary fences defining one's position, rather than
infallible and total enunciation of the truth.
The search
for deliverance alone can give meaning to the history of the individual, and
so, collectively to the history of a nation or a civilization. Deliverance, not
from the fatigues and constraints of our earthly life, but from illusion and
falsehood: the attainment of what in Hindu terminology is called moksha and in
the Christian tradition Beatific Vision, defined by Karl Rahner as
From "René Guénon and the Future of the West: The Life and Writings of a 20th-Century Metaphysician" by Robin Waterfield
