¶15 There is a word that was brought into honour at the Renaissance, and which summed up in advance the whole programme of modern civilisation: that word is ‘humanism’.1 It was indeed a matter of reducing everything to purely human proportions, of abstracting from every principle of a higher order, and, one might say symbolically, of turning away from heaven under the pretext of conquering the earth; the Greeks, whose example one claimed to follow, had never gone so far in this direction, even at the time of their greatest intellectual decadence, and at least utilitarian concerns had never come to the forefront among them, as was soon to happen among moderns.2 ‘Humanism’ was already a first form of what has become contemporary ‘secularism’;3 and, by wanting to bring everything back to the measure of man, taken as an end in himself, one ended up descending, step by step, to the level of what is most inferior in him, and by seeking hardly anything more than the satisfaction of needs inherent in the material side of his nature, a search quite illusory, moreover, for it always creates more artificial needs than it can satisfy.4
Summary
The word ‘humanism’, brought into honour at the Renaissance, summed up the programme of modern civilisation. It meant reducing everything to purely human proportions, abstracting from every higher principle, turning away from heaven under the pretext of conquering the earth. The Greeks, even at their greatest intellectual decadence, had never gone so far, and utilitarian concerns never came to the forefront for them. Humanism was a first form of contemporary ‘secularism’. By bringing everything back to the measure of man taken as an end in himself, one ended up descending to what is most inferior in him, seeking only the satisfaction of material needs — an illusory search that always creates more artificial needs than it can satisfy.
General notes
- « humanisme » — Rendered as 'humanism'. Guénon uses the term 'humanism' not in its modern sense (the study of classical letters), but in its ideological sense: the doctrine that places man at the centre of everything, denies or ignores all transcendence, and makes man the measure of all things. This word sums up for him the fundamental orientation of modernity. Humanism is the refusal of the traditional spirit, which subordinated the human to the divine, the relative to the Absolute. Man takes himself as his own end, instead of conceiving himself as a means towards a superior end. Guénon sees in humanism the intellectual source of modern secularism, materialism and individualism. ↩︎
- Grecs … préoccupations utilitaires — Rendered as 'Greeks … utilitarian concerns'. Guénon qualifies his judgment on the Greeks. Although they introduced philosophy (which he criticises), they never reduced all thought to the useful or the material. The Greeks of the decadence still had a sense of beauty, contemplation, disinterested speculation. Modern humanism goes further in the rejection of the transcendent and in the valorisation of the useful. Guénon opposes Greek civilisation (even decadent) to modern utilitarianism: the Greeks did not put the useful in the foreground; moderns have. This is a sign of the aggravation of the cyclical fall. ↩︎
- humanisme … laïcisme — Rendered as 'humanism … secularism'. Guénon establishes a filiation between Renaissance humanism and modern secularism (separation of Church and State, exclusion of religion from the public sphere, indifference or hostility to the religious fact). Secularism is the political and social outcome of humanism: a society organised as if God did not exist, as if man were the sole principle of authority. Guénon is resolutely opposed to this secularism, which he considers a deviation from the normal order. This does not mean defending a particular theocracy, but recalling that a traditional society is always founded on a supra-human principle. ↩︎
- descente au plus inférieur … besoins artificiels — Rendered as 'descent to the most inferior … artificial needs'. Guénon describes the internal logic of humanism: by putting man in the place of God, one ends up reducing man to his lowest parts (instincts, material needs). Humanism promised the flourishing of man, but it led to a materialist and utilitarian conception of existence. The search for the satisfaction of needs (economic, hedonistic, security) is endless: it constantly creates new artificial needs (advertising, fashion, consumption) without ever satisfying spiritual aspirations. This is a critique of consumer society avant la lettre, and an affirmation of the vanity of the pursuit of the useful as a supreme end. ↩︎