Overview
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In this chapter, René Guénon identifies a fundamental schism between East and West as a particular characteristic of the modern world. Although he has treated this question elsewhere, he returns to clarify certain aspects and dispel misunderstandings. There have always been diverse civilisations, each developing according to the aptitudes of a given people or race. Distinction, he insists, does not imply opposition. There can be a sort of equivalence between civilisations of very different forms, provided that they all rest upon the same fundamental principles, of which they represent only conditioned applications determined by varying circumstances. This is the case for all civilisations that Guénon calls normal or traditional. Between such civilisations there is no essential opposition, and any divergences are only external and superficial.
By contrast, a civilisation that recognises no superior principle, that is founded in reality only upon a negation of principles, is for that very reason deprived of any means of deep and effective understanding with others. Such understanding can be established only from above—that is, precisely by what is lacking in an abnormal and deviated civilisation. In the present state of the world, then, we have on one side all the civilisations that have remained faithful to the traditional spirit (the Eastern civilisations), and on the other side a properly anti-traditional civilisation, which is modern Western civilisation.
These considerations already show what is lacking in modern Western civilisation, both regarding the possibility of a genuine rapprochement with the East and in itself, for it to be a normal and complete civilisation. These two questions are so closely linked that they are but one. Guénon then announces that he will show more fully what the anti-traditional spirit consists in (which is properly the modern spirit) and what consequences it bears—consequences unfolding with pitiless logic in present events.
Before proceeding, he offers one final reflection. To be resolutely “anti-modern” is not to be “anti-Western.” On the contrary, it is the only valid effort to try to save the West from its own disorder. No Easterner faithful to his own tradition could envisage things otherwise. Some speak today of the “defence of the West,” which Guénon finds truly singular. As he will show, it is modern Western civilisation that threatens to overwhelm everything and drag all humanity into the whirlwind of its disordered activity. This defence is quite unjustified if directed against the East, for the true East dreams neither of attacking nor of dominating anyone. It asks only for its independence and tranquillity, which is perfectly legitimate.
The truth is that the West is indeed in great need of being defended, but only against itself—against its own tendencies which, if pushed to the end, will inevitably lead it to ruin. What should be said, therefore, is “reform of the West.” This reform, if it were what it ought to be—a true traditional restoration—would have as its natural consequence a rapprochement with the East. Guénon asks only to contribute, to the extent of his means, both to this reform and to this rapprochement, if there is still time and if such a result can be obtained before the final catastrophe towards which modern civilisation is advancing with great strides. But even if it were already too late to avert this catastrophe, the work accomplished with this intention would not be useless. It would serve in any case to prepare, however distantly, that “discrimination” of which he spoke at the beginning, and thereby to ensure the preservation of the elements that must escape the shipwreck of the present world to become the seeds of the future world.