7/30/2019 COOMARASWAMY ON GUENON http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/coomaraswamy-on-guenon 1/6 Eastern Wisdom and Western Knowledge Author(s): Ananda K. Coomaraswamy Source: Isis, Vol. 34, No. 4 (Spring, 1943), pp. 359-363 Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of The History of Science Society Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/225646 . Accessed: 06/09/2013 12:48 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. . The University of Chicago Press and The History of Science Society are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Isis. http://www.jstor.org
Eastern Wisdom and Western KnowledgeAuthor(s): Ananda K. Coomaraswamy
Source: Isis, Vol. 34, No. 4 (Spring, 1943), pp. 359-363Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of The History of Science Society
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/225646 .
Accessed: 06/09/2013 12:48
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.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of
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of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].
.
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slaves. To the writer there does not seem to beany relationship whatever between slavery andsoil exhaustion, nor any relationship between soilexhaustion and the Civil War.
Attention should be called to a major sourceof error in historical research of the character ofSoil exhaustion and the Civil War. The inves-tigator may go to the original sources and consult
all of the available documents, and yet, if hisproblem has scientific or technical aspects, hemay miss facts which invalidate his conclusions.Perhaps research of this kind should be done bya committee of specialists and not by an individual.
University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia
EASTERN WISDOM AND WESTERN KNOWLEDGE 1
By ANANDA K. COOMARASWAMY
East and West and The Crisis of the ModernWorld are, with the exception of Man and his Be-coming which appeared under other auspices(London, Rider, 1928), the first of a series inwhich all of RENE' GuE'NON's already published
works in French will appear in English. M. RENIEGUE'NON is not an "Orientalist" but what theHindus would call a Guru, formerly resident inParis, and now for many years in Egypt, wherehis affiliations are Islamic. His Introduction gene-rale a' l'e'tude des doctrines hindoues appeared in1921 (Paris; 2nd ed. 1932). As a preliminary tohis further expositions of the traditional philos-ophy, sometimes called the Philosophia Perennis(et Universalis must be understood, for this "phi-losophy" has been the common inheritance of allmankind without exception), GUENON leared theground of all possible misconception in two large
and rather tedious, but by no means unnecessaryvolumes, L'Erreur spirite (i.e. "Fallacy of Spiritu-alism," a work for which Bhagavad Giti XVII. 4,"Men of darkness are they who make a cult of thedeparted and of spirits" might have served as amotto), Paris, 1923, 2nd ed. 1930, and Le Theo-sophisme, histoire d'une pseudo-religion, Paris,1921, 2nd ed. 1930. These were followed byL'Homme et son devenir selon le Vedanta andL'Esoterisme de Dante (both Paris, 1925), Le roidu monde (Paris, 1927), St. Bernard (Marseille,1929), Orient et Occident and Autorite' spirituelleet pouvoir temporel (both Paris, 1930), Le symbo-
lisme de la croix (Paris, 1931), Les etats multiplesde l'etre (Paris, 1932) and La me'taphysiqueorientale (Paris, 1939,-a lecture delivered atthe Sorbonne in 1925). In the meantime im-portant articles from GUENON'S pen appeared
1 Apropos of the works of RENE GuENON, now being trans-lated into English; two volumes of the English translationhave already appeared (London, Luzac, 194142). The authorof this essay, deeply versed in Western as well as in Easternlore, is the leading mystical philosopher in this country andthe most able to study GuE'NoN'sviews from the inside. TheEditor of Isis and the majority of its readers do not sharethose views but welcome an authoritative and sympatheticexplanation of them. (G.S.).
monthly in La Voile d'Isis, later Atudes Tradi-tionelles, a journal that was in many respectsunique but of the fate of which, since the appear-ance of the 5th no. of the 44th volume in May1940, nothing is known here; this journal was
devoted to "La Tradition Perpetuelle et Unanime,reveele tant par les dogmes et les rites des religionsorthodoxes que par la langue universelle des sym-boles initiatiques." Of articles that have appearedelsewhere attention may be called to "L'Esote-risme Islamique" in Cahiers du Sud, 22me annee,1935. Excerpts from GUE'NON'Sritings, with somecomment, have appeared in Triveni (1935) and inthe Visvabharati Quarterly (1935, 1938). A workby L. DE GAIGNERON entitled Vers la connaissanceinterdite (Paris, 1935) is closely connected withGuENON'S; it is presented in the form of a discus-sion in which the Atman (Spiritus), Mentalie
("Reason," in the current, not the Platonic sense)and a Roman Abbe take part; the "forbiddenknowledge" is that of the gnosis which the modernChurch and the rationalist alike reject, thoughfor very different reasons,-the former because itcannot tolerate a point of view which considersChristianity only as one amongst other orthodoxreligions, and the latter because, as a great Orient-alist (Professor A. B. KEITH) has remarked,"such knowledge as is not empirical is meaninglessto us and should not be described as knowledge"(Aitareya iranyaka, Oxford, 1909, p. 42)-analmost classical confession of the limitations of
the "scientific" position.GUENON'SFrench is at once precise and limpid,
and inevitably loses in translation; his subjectmatter is of absorbing interest, at least to anyonewho cares for what PLATO alls the really seriousthings (Laws 803 B, C; Philebus 58 A; Republic521 C, D; Timaeus 47 B, etc.). Nevertheless ithas often been found unpalatable; partly forreasons already given, but also for reasons thathave been stated, paradoxically enough, by a re-viewer of BLAKNEY'S Meister Eckhart in theHarvard Divinity School Bulletin (XXXIX, 1942,p. 107), who says that "To an age which believes
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in personality and personalism, the impersonalityof mysticism is baffling; and to an age which istrying to quicken its insight into history the in-difference of the mystics to events in time is dis-concerting." As for history, GUENON'S "he whocannot escape from the standpoint of temporalsuccession so as to see all things in their simul-taneity is incapable of the least conception of themetaphysical order" (La me'taphysique orientale,p. 17) adequately complements JACOB BEHMEN'S
designation of the "history that was once broughtto pass" as "merely the (outward) form of Chris-tianity" (Sig. Rerum XV. 24). For the Hindu, theevents of the Rgveda are nowever and dateless,and the Krishna Lil& "not an historical event";and the reliance of Christianity upon supposedlyhistorical "facts" seems to be its greatest weakness.The value of literary history for doxography isvery little, and it is for this reason that so manyorthodox Hindus have thought of Western scholar-ship as a "crime": their interest is not in "whatmen have believed," but in the truth. A furtherdifficulty is presented by GUENON'Sncompromis-ing language; "Western civilization is an anom-aly, not to say a monstrosity." Of this a reviewer(BETTY HEIMANN in BSOAS., X, 1942, p. 1048)has remarked that "Such sweeping remarks cannotbe shared even by critics of Western achieve-ments." I should have thought that now that itsdenouement is before our eyes, the truth of such astatement might have been recognized by everyunprejudiced European; at any rate ProfessorLA PIANA has said that "what we call our civiliza-tion is but a murderous machine with no con-science and no ideals" (Harvard Divinity SchoolBulletin, XXVII. 27) and might well have saidsuicidal as well as murderous. It would be verveasy to cite innumerable criticisms of the samekind; Sir S. RADHAKRISHNAN holds, for example,that "civilization is not worth saving if it continueson its present foundations" (Eastern ReligionzsanzdWestern Thought, p. 257), and this it would behard to deny; Professor A. N. WHITEHEAD hasspoken quite as forcibly,-"There remains theshow of civilization, without any of its realities"(Adventures of Ideas, 1933, p. 358).
In any case, if we are to read GUENON at all, wemust have outgrown the temporally provincialview that has for so long and so complacentlyenvisaged a continuous progress of humanity cul-minating in the twentieth century and be willingat least to ask ourselves whether there has notbeen rather a continued decline, "from the stoneage until now," as one of the most learned men inthe States once put it to me. It is not by "science"that we can be saved: "the possession of thesciences as a whole, if it does not include the best,will in some few cases aid but more often harm theowner" (PLATO, 4lcibiades, II. 144 D). "We are
obliged to admit that our European culture is aculture of the mind and senses only" (WORRING-
TON, Form in Gothic, p. 75); "the prostitution ofscience may lead to world catastrophe" (LEROY
WATERMAN in JAOS, LVIII. 410); "our dignityand our interests require that we shall be thedirectors and not the victims of technical andscientific advance" (Rt. Hon. HERBERT MORISON
in the British Association Report, Science andWorld Order, January 1942, p. 33); "Few willdeny that the twentieth century thus far hasbrought us bitter disappointment"(Professor J. M.MECKLIN in Passing of the Saint, p. 197). "We arenow faced with the prospect of complete bank-ruptcy in every department of life" (LIONEL GILES
in Luzac's Oriental List). ERIc GILL speaks of the"monstrous inhumanity" of industrialism, and ofthe modern way of life as "neither human nornormal nor Christian . . . It is our way of thinkingthat is odd and unnatural" (Autobiography, pp.145, 174, 279). Our sense of frustration is perhapsthe most encouraging sign of the times. We havelaid stress on these things because it is only tothose who feel this frustration, and not to thosewho still believe in progress, that GUENON ad-dresses himself; to those who are complacenteverything that he has to say will seem to bepreposterous.
The reactions of Roman Catholics to GUiNON
are illuminating. One has pointed out that he isa "serious metaphysician," i.e. one convinced ofthe truth he expounds and eager to show theunanimity of the Eastern and Scholastic traditions,and observes that "in such matters belief and un-derstanding must go together" (WALTER SHEW-
RING in the Weekly Review, January 1939). Credeut intelligas is a piece of advice that modernscholars would, indeed, do well to consider; it is,perhaps, just because we have not believed thatwe have not yet understood the East. The sameauthor writes of E. and W., "RENi GUiNON is oneof the few writers of our time whose work is reallyof importance . . . he stands for the primacy ofpure metaphysics over all other forms of knowl-edge, and presents himself as the exponent of amajor tradition of thought, predominantly East-
ern, but shared in the Middle Ages by the scho-lastics of the West . . . clearly GUANON'S positionis not that of Christian orthodoxy, but many,perhaps most, of his theses are, in fact, better inaccord with authentic Thomist doctrine than aremany opinions of devout but ill-instructed Chris-tians" (Weekly Review, August 28, 1941). Weshould do well to rememberthat even ST. THOMAS
AQUINASid not disdain to make use of "intrinsicand probable proofs" derived from the "pagan"philosophers.
GERALD VANN, on the other hand, makes themistake which the title of his review, "Rene
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Guenon's Orientalism" (in the New EnglishWeekly, September 1941), announces; for this isnot another "ism," nor a geographical antithesis,but one of modern empiricism and traditionaltheory. VANN springs to the defence of the veryChristianity in which GUANONimself sees almost
the only possibility of salvation for the West; onlypossibility, not because there is no other body oftruth, but because the mentality of the West isadapted to and needs a religion of just this sort.But if Christianity should fail, it is just becauseits intellectual aspects have been submerged, andit has become a code of ethics rather than adoctrine from which all other applications can andshould be derived; hardly two consecutive sen-tences of some of Meister ECKHART'S sermonswould be intelligible to an average modern con-gregation, which does not expect doctrine, andonly expects to be told how to behave. If GUANON
wants the Westto turn to Eastern metaphysics, it
is not because they are Eastern but because thisis metaphysics. If "Eastern" metaphysics differedfrom a "Western" metaphysics-as true Phi-losophy differs from what is often so called in ourmodern Universities-one or the other would notbe metaphysics. It is from metaphysics that theWest has turned away in its desperate endeavourto live by bread alone, an endeavour of whichthe Dead Sea fruits are before our eyes. It is onlybecause this metaphysics still survives as a livingpower in Eastern societies, in so far as they havenot been corrupted by the withering touch ofWestern, or rather, modern civilization (for thecontrast is not of East and West as such, but of"those paths that the rest of mankind follows as amatter of course" with those post-Renaissancepaths that have brought us to our presentimpasse), and not to Orientalise the West, but tobring back the West to a consciousness of theroots of her own life and of values that have beentransvalued in the most sinister sense, thatGUANON asks us to turn to the East. He does notmean, and makes it very clear that he does notmean, that Europeans ought to become Hindusor Buddhists, but much rather that they, whoare getting nowhere by the study of "the Bibleas literature," or that of DANTE "as a poet,99should rediscover Christianity, or what amountsto the same thing, PLATO ("that great priest," asMeister ECKHART calls him). I often marvel atmen's immunity to the Apology or the seventhchapter of the Republic; I suppose it is becausethey would not hear, "though one rose from thedead."
The issue of "East and West" is not merely atheoretical (we must remind the modern readerthat from the standpoint of the traditional phi-losophy, "theoretical" is anything but a term ofdisparagement) but also an urgent practical
problem. PEARL BUCK asks, "Why should preju-dices be so strong at this moment? The answerit seems to me is simple. Physical conveyanceand other circumstances have forced parts of theworld once remote from each other into actualintimacy for which peoples are not mentally or
spiritually prepared . . . It is not necessarytobelieve that this initial stage must continue. Ifthose prepared to act as interpreters will do theirproper work, we may find that within anothergeneration or two, or even sooner, dislike andprejudice may be gone. This is only possible ifprompt and strong measures are taken by peoplesto keep step mentally with the increasing close-ness to which the war is compelling us" (Asia,March 1942, italics mine). But if this is to happen,the West will have to abandon what GUE:NONallsits "proselytizing fury," an expression that mustnot be taken to refer only to the activities of
Christian missionaries, regrettable as these oftenare, but to those of all the distributors of modern"civilization" and those of practically all those"educators" who feel that they have more to givethan to learn from what are often called the "back-ward" or "unprogressive" peoples; to whom itdoes not occur that one may not wish or need to"progress"if one has reached a state of equilibriumthat already provides for the realization of whatone regards as the greatest purposes of life. Itis as an expression of good will and of the bestintentions that this proselytizing fury takes on itsmost dangerous aspects. Only this year Vice-Presi-
dentWALLACE has
said that "Older nations2will
have the privilege to help younger nations getstarted on the path to industrialization . . . As theirmasses learn to read and write, and as they becomeproductive mechanics [what PLATOalled fla'vavot,ARISTOTLE "living tools," and we "wage-slaves"or "hands" ], their standard of living will doubleand treble." To many this can only suggest thefable of the fox that lost its tail, and persuadedthe other foxes to cut off theirs. An industriali-zation of the East may be inevitable, but do notlet us call it a blessing that a folk should be re-duced to the level of a proletariat, or assume thatmaterially higher standards of living necessarilymake for greater happiness. The West is onlyjust discovering, to its great astonishment, that"Material inducements, that is, money or thethings that money can buy" is by no means socogent a force as has been supposed; "Beyondthe subsistence level, the theory that this incentiveis decisive is largely an illusion" (National Re-search Council, Fatigue of Workers, 1942, p. 143).As for the East, as GUENON ays, "The only im-
2 What this really means is that the younger nations areto help the older to industrialize themselves! For America isstill adolescent, from an Indian or Chinese point of view, andin fact.
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pression that, for example, mechanical inventionsmake on most Orientals is one of deep repulsion;certainly it all seems to them far more harmfulthan beneficial, and if they find themselves obligedto accept certain things which the present epochhas made necessary, they do so in the hope offuture riddance . . . what the people of the Westcall 'rising' would be called by some 'sinking';that is what all true Orientals think" (E. and W.,pp. 44, 71). It must not be supposed that becauseso many Eastern peoples have imitated us inself-defence that they have therefore accepted ourvalues; on the contrary, it is just because the con-servative East still challenges all the presupposi-tions on which our illusion of progress rests, thatit deserves our most serious consideration.
There is nothing in economic intimacies that islikely to reduce prejudice or promote mutual un-derstandings automatically. Even when Europeanslive amongst Orientals, "economic contact betweenthe Eastern and Western groups is practically theonly contact there is. There is very little social orreligious give and take between the two. Each livesin a world almost entirely closed to the other-and by 'closed' we mean not only 'unknown' butmore: incomprehensible and unattainable" (J. H.BOEKE, Structure of Netherlands Indian Economy,1942, p. 68). That is an inhuman relationship, bywhich both parties are degraded.
Neither must it be assumed that the Orientthinks it important that the masses should learnto read and write. Literacy is a practical necessityin an industrial society, where the keeping ofaccounts is all important. But in India, in so far asWestern methods of education have not been im-posed from without, all higher education is im-parted orally, and to have heard is far moreimportant than to have read. At the same timethe peasant, prevented by his illiteracy andpoverty from devouring the newspapers and maga-zines that form the daily and almost the onlyreading of the vast majority of Western "literates"is, like HESIOD'sBoetian farmers, and still morelike the Gaelic speaking Highlanders before theera of the board schools, thoroughly familiar withan epic literature of profound spiritual significance
and a body of poetry and music of incalculablevalue; and one can only regret the spread of an"education" that involves the destruction of allthese things, or only preserves them as curiositieswithin the covers of books. For cultural purposesit is not important that the masses should beliterate; it is not necessary that any one should beliterate; it is only necessary that there should beamongst the people philosophers (in the tradi-tional, not the modern sense of the word), andthat there should be preserved deep respect on thepart of laymen for true learning that is the an-tithesis of the American attitude to a "Professor."
In these respects the whole East is still far in ad-vance of the West, and hence the learning of theelite exerts a far profounder influence upon societyas a whole than the Western specialist "thinker"can ever hope to wield.
It is not, however, primarily with a protectionof the East against the subversive inroadsof Western "culture" that GUENON is concerned,but rather with the question, What possibility ofregeneration, if any, can be envisaged for theWest. The possibility exists only in the event ofa return to first principles and to the normal waysof living that proceed from the application of firstprinciples to contingent circumstances; and as itis only in the East that these things are still alive,it is to the East that the West must turn. "It isthe West that must take the initiative, but shemust be prepared really to go towards the East,not merely seeking to draw the East towards her-self, as she has tried to do so far. There is noreason why the East should take this initiative,and there would still be none, even if the Westernworld were not in such a state as to make anyeffort in this direction useless . . . It now remainsfor us to show how the West might attempt toapproach the East" (E. and W., p. 161).
He proceeds to show that the work is to be donein the two fields of metaphysics and religion, andthat it can only be carried out on the highest in-tellectual levels, where agreement on first prin-ciples can be reached and apart from any propa-ganda on behalf of or even apology for "Westerncivilization."
The work must be undertaken, therefore, by an"elite." And as it is here more than anywhere thatGUENON'S meaning is likely to be wilfully misin-terpreted, we must understand clearly what hemeans by such an elite. The divergence of theWest and East being only "accidental,""the bring-ing of these two portions of mankind together andthe return of the West to a normal civilizationare really just one and the same thing." An 6litewill necessarily work in the first place "for itself,since its members will naturally reap from theirown development an immediate and altogetherunfailing benefit." An indirect result-"indirect,"
because on this intellectual level one does notthink of "doing good" to others, or in terms of"service," but seeks truth because one needs itoneself-would, or might under favorable con-ditions, bring about "a return of the West to atraditional civilization," i.e. one in which "every-thing is seen as the application and extension ofa doctrine whose essence is purely intellectual andmetaphysical" (E. and W., p. 241).
It is emphasized again and again that such anelite does not mean a body of specialists or scholarswho would absorb and put over on the West theforms of an alien culture, nor even persuade the
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West to return to such a traditional civilization asexisted in the Middle Ages. Traditional culturesdevelop by the application of principles to con-ditions; the principles, indeed, are unchangeableand universal, but just as nothing can be knownexcept in the mode of the knower, so nothing valid
can be accomplished socially without taking intoaccount the character of those concerned and theparticular circumstances of the period in whichthey live. There is no "fusion" of cultures to behoped for; it would be nothing like an "eclecticism"or "syncretism" that an Elitewould have in view.Neither would such an Elite be organized in anyway so as to exercise such a direct influence asthat which, for example, the Technocrats wouldlike to exercise for the good of mankind. If suchan elite ever came into being, the vast majorityof Western men would never know of it; it wouldoperate only as a sort of leaven, and certainly on
behalf of rather than against whatever survivesof traditional essence in, for example, the Greek Or-thodox and Roman Catholic domains. It is, indeed,a curious fact that some of the most powerful de-
fenders of Christian dogma are to be foundamongst Orientals who are not themselves Chris-tians, or ever likely to become Christians, butrecognize in the Christian tradition an embodimentof the universal truth to which God has never noranywhere left himself without a witness.
In the meantime, M. GUENON asks "Is thisreally 'the beginning of an end' for the moderncivilization? . . . at least there are many signswhich should give food for reflection to those whoare still capable of it; will the West be able toregain control of herself in time?" Few would denythat we are faced with the possibility of a totaldisintegration of culture. We are at war with our-selves, and therefore at war with one another.Western man is unbalanced, and the question, Canhe recover himself? is a very real one. No one towhom the question presents itself can afford toignore the writings of the leading living exponent
of a traditional wisdom that is no more essentiallyOriental than it is Occidental, though it may beonly in the uttermost parts of the earth that it isstill remembered and must be sought.
QUERIES AND ANSWERS
ANSWERS O QUERYNO.97. Early referencesofossil fishes (See Isis 33, 56-58, 335, 689-90; 34,24).
(1) 'ICHTHYOLITE'ENTIONEDN CUNEIFORMTEXTSOFASSURBANIPAL'SIBRARY?To the learneddiscussion of the earliest classic text on fossilfishes in Isis (33, 689-90, 1942), I have only aslight material correctionto add. HERMANNIELS
has already noticed that no fossils whatsover areand can be found in the quarries of Paros, sourceof the white Parian marble. The correct reading isPharos, this being the island Lesina off the Dal-matian coast where they still abound.
Mineralogists and geologists call the slate con-taining impressions of fossil fishes 'Ichthyolite' (abeautiful specimen found in the Hercynian moun-
tains is reproduced in FR. Jos. DOELGERX@YC,col. III pl. CII, cf. vol. II p. IX note 3).I wonder whether this term does not offer the
best explanation for the Babylonian word abannuni 'stone of fish' written TAG-kJA (BRUNNOW'Ssign-list Nr. 11822; 2644). This can be read inSumerian NA-IJA (or KU). BARTON r. 224-abnu, the usual determinative sign for a mineral(abnu BRUNNOW229). aban nuni 'fish-stone' hasbeen tentatively explained Zeitschrift f. Assyri-ologie XIV 358 as os sepiae.
One might equally think of the lentil-shapedchalk-stonesfound in cray-fish,often used for
medicinal purposes as the aban nuni was. But Ithink nevertheless that aban nuni 'fish-stone' mayvery well be a stone with fossil fish imprints. Ifthis explanation is correct, it would carry the first
surviving mention of ichthyolite slate back to thecuneiform tablets of ASSURBANIPAL'Sibrary, pos-sibly to the hoary old wisdom of the Sumerians.
(2) APULEIUS OF MADAURA(Apologia 41, p.4829 .31 Helm) mentions the fossil fishes found andeagerly collected in the mountains of Gaetulia inNorth Africa:
'me non negabunt n Gaetuliaemediterraneismontibus uisseubi piscesperDeucalionisdiluviareperientur.'
Having been accused-among other allegedlymagical practices-of 'having split a fish,' he saysin his own defense 'they are not going to deny
that I have been in the landlocked mountains ofGaetulia where, through the floods of Deucalion'-the Noah of the Greek deluge story-'fisheswill he founchL'
1Cf. SCIWABE, in PAULY-WISSOWA'sealencyclopddieol.II col. 248 who takes these words as a straightforwardassertion of APuLEius that he went to these mountains andfound there-by splitting the slate-fossil fishes. BurTLERand
OwExq n their commentary to APuLEIUsApologia, Oxford1914 p. 100 criticise SCHWABEand think that the statementis ironical and asserts a patent absurdity as if he meant tosay 'it would need a Deucalionic flood to bring fishes tothe mountains of Gaetulia where-as they will not deny-Istayed at the critical time.'
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