ICRAA.org

CIRCLE

Traditionalism- A Nostalgia for the Past?

T

traditionalism

Talking of “traditionalism” Frithjof  Schuon writes:

there  is  certainly  nothing  pejorative  about  the word itself, and indeed it is a far broader term and even less open to argument than “esoterism”; as a matter of fact, however, it has come to be associated—arbitrarily and  reprehensibly so—with an image that inevitably devalues its meaning, namely, “nostalgia for the past”; it is difficult to believe that such an idiotic and dishonest circumlocution would  be  freely  employed  as  an  argument  against  strictly  doctrinal positions, or even purely logical ones. Those who look back longingly at  some  past  age  because  it  embodied  certain  vital  values  are  criticized for adhering to these values because they are found in the past or  because  the  critic  would  like  to  place  them  there  “irreversibly”; one might as well say that the acceptance of an arithmetical proof is not the sign of an unimpaired functioning of the intelligence but of a morbid obsession with numbers. If to recognize what is true and just is “nostalgia for the past”, it is clearly a crime or disgrace not to feel this nostalgia.

— Schuon, Frithjof, Logic and Transcendence, (World Wisdom, 2009) 5

About the author

Waqar Akbar Cheema

Add comment