¶7 Whoever says individualism necessarily says refusal to admit any authority superior to the individual, as well as any faculty of knowledge superior to individual reason;1 the two things are inseparable from each other. Consequently, the modern mind had to reject all spiritual authority in the true sense of the word,2 taking its source in the supra-human order, and every traditional organisation, which is essentially based on such an authority, whatever form it may take—a form that naturally differs according to civilisations. This is indeed what happened: to the authority of the organisation qualified to legitimately interpret the religious tradition of the West, Protestantism pretended to substitute what it called ‘free examination’,3 that is, interpretation left to the arbitrariness of each individual, even the ignorant and the incompetent, and based solely on the exercise of human reason. This was therefore, in the religious domain, the analogue of what ‘rationalism’4 was to be in philosophy; it was the door opened to all discussions, to all divergences, to all deviations; and the result was what it had to be: dispersion into an ever-growing multitude of sects, each representing only the particular opinion of a few individuals. Since, under these conditions, it was impossible to agree on doctrine, the latter quickly passed into the background, and it was the secondary aspect of religion, namely morals,5 that took first place: hence this degeneration into ‘moralism’6 which is so noticeable in present-day Protestantism. There occurred here a phenomenon parallel to that which we have pointed out with respect to philosophy; the doctrinal dissolution, the disappearance of the intellectual elements of religion, entailed this inevitable consequence: starting from ‘rationalism’, one was bound to fall into ‘sentimentalism’,7 and it is in the Anglo-Saxon countries that one could find the most striking examples of this. What is then involved is no longer religion, even diminished and deformed, but quite simply ‘religiosity’,8 that is to say, vague sentimental aspirations which are justified by no real knowledge; and to this last stage correspond theories such as that of ‘religious experience’ of William James, which goes so far as to see in the ‘subconscious’ the means for man to enter into communication with the divine. Here, the last products of religious decay merge with those of philosophical decay: ‘religious experience’ incorporates itself into ‘pragmatism’,9 in the name of which the idea of a limited God is advocated as more ‘advantageous’ than that of the infinite God, because one can feel for Him sentiments comparable to those one feels towards a superior man; and, at the same time, through the appeal to the ‘subconscious’, one ends up joining spiritism and all the ‘pseudo-religions’ characteristic of our epoch, which we have studied in other works. On the other hand, Protestant morality, eliminating more and more all doctrinal basis, ends by degenerating into what is called ‘secular morality’,10 which numbers among its partisans the representatives of all the varieties of ‘Liberal Protestantism’,11 as well as the declared adversaries of all religious idea; at bottom, in the one group as in the other, the same tendencies predominate, and the only difference is that not all go as far in the logical development of all that is implied therein.
←
→

Summary

Guénon states that individualism necessarily rejects any authority or faculty of knowledge superior to the individual and individual reason. Consequently, the modern mind rejected all true spiritual authority and traditional organisation, as seen in Protestantism’s substitution of ‘free examination’ for legitimate religious authority—interpretation based on arbitrary individual reason. This led to doctrinal dispersion into countless sects, with morality taking precedence over doctrine, resulting in degeneration into ‘moralism’. From rationalism, the inevitable fall into sentimentalism followed, reducing religion to mere ‘religiosity’—vague sentimental aspirations without real knowledge, as in William James’s theory of ‘religious experience’ appealing to the subconscious. This religious decay merges with philosophical pragmatism (advocating a limited God as more ‘advantageous’ than an infinite one) and, through the appeal to the subconscious, joins spiritism and pseudo‑religions. Protestant morality, losing its doctrinal basis, degenerates into secular morality, shared by liberal Protestants and declared adversaries of religion alike, differing only in how far they push the same underlying tendencies.

General notes

  1. raison individuelle — Rendered as ‘individual reason’. This designates the discursive and logical faculty proper to the human being considered as a mere individual, as opposed to pure intellect or intellectual intuition which transcend the domain of individuality. Guénon establishes a fundamental distinction between reason, a limited instrument proper to the human domain, and the intellect (intellectus), a supra-individual faculty participating directly in metaphysical knowledge. The refusal of any cognitive instance superior to individual reason constitutes, for Guénon, one of the essential marks of modern individualism. ↩︎
  2. autorité spirituelle au vrai sens du mot — Rendered as ‘spiritual authority in the true sense of the word’. Authentic spiritual authority, from the traditional perspective, is that which takes its source from the supra-human order, that is, from a divine or metaphysical transcendence. It is not to be confused with temporal power (auctoritas versus potestas), nor with merely human intellectual authority. This authority is embodied in traditional organisations whose function is to transmit and legitimately interpret a sacred doctrine, whether the priesthood in Catholicism, the brāhmaṇas in Hinduism, or the ‘ulamā’ in Islam. ↩︎
  3. libre examen — Rendered as ‘free examination’ (or ‘private judgment’). The Protestant principle of ‘free examination’ (sola scriptura interpreted individually) denies the necessity of a qualified ecclesiastical authority to interpret Scripture. Guénon sees in this a typical manifestation of modern individualism: each individual becomes the sovereign judge of religious truth, without recognition of any hierarchy of spiritual competence. This principle inevitably leads to the dissolution of all common doctrine and to the proliferation of divergent interpretations. ↩︎
  4. rationalisme — Rendered as ‘rationalism’. Guénon means here modern philosophical rationalism, which posits discursive human reason as the sole legitimate source of knowledge, excluding all revelation or intellectual intuition of a higher order. This rationalism, which flourished especially from the seventeenth century onwards (Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, then the Enlightenment), finds its religious equivalent in Protestant free examination. Both share the same individualistic presupposition: the autonomy of individual reason in the face of any transcendent authority. ↩︎
  5. morale — Rendered as ‘morals’ or ‘morality’. Guénon rigorously distinguishes the intellectual or doctrinal essence of religion (metaphysical knowledge, revealed truths) from its secondary and practical aspects, among which morality figures. From a traditional perspective, morality is only the application, to the order of action, of an intellectual doctrine that grounds and justifies it. When doctrine weakens or disappears, morality, deprived of its foundation, tends to become autonomous and to degenerate into ‘moralism’, that is, into a set of sentimental or social prescriptions without any true metaphysical basis. ↩︎
  6. moralisme — Rendered as ‘moralism’. By ‘moralism’, Guénon designates the reduction of religion to morality, and more specifically to sentimental or utilitarian precepts, detached from any intellectual doctrine. Moralism characterises, according to him, modern Protestantism, particularly in its liberal forms, where the emphasis is placed on ‘values’, social beneficence, or personal edification, to the detriment of metaphysical truth and sacred rites. This degeneration is parallel, in the religious order, to that which, in the philosophical order, reduces metaphysics to psychology or morality. ↩︎
  7. sentimentalisme — Rendered as ‘sentimentalism’. Sentimentalism designates the tendency to substitute feeling, emotion, or subjective experience for intellectual knowledge as the criterion or foundation of religious life. Guénon sees in sentimentalism the logical outcome of rationalism: when reason, deprived of its higher principle (pure intellect), finds itself incapable of grasping truth, one comes to invoke the ‘heart’ or ‘feeling’ as a substitute cognitive instance. This drift is particularly visible in Anglo-Saxon liberal Protestantism, with theories such as that of ‘religious experience’. ↩︎
  8. religiosité — Rendered as ‘religiosity’. Guénon opposes religion as a traditional institution structured by doctrine, rites, and legitimate spiritual authority, to ‘religiosity’, a vague sentimental disposition or subjective aspiration without objective content or attachment to a chain of orthodox transmission (silsilah in Islam, apostolicity in Christianity). Religiosity characterises, according to him, the most degraded forms of modern religion, where the individual forges his own spirituality from his personal impressions, often eclectically drawing from diverse traditions that he uproots from their context. ↩︎
  9. pragmatisme — Rendered as ‘pragmatism’. Guénon refers to the pragmatism of William James, Charles Sanders Peirce, and John Dewey, a philosophical doctrine that evaluates the truth of an idea by its practical consequences and its ‘efficacy’ or ‘utility’. From this perspective, a religious belief is not true because it corresponds to an objective metaphysical reality, but because it ‘works’, because it produces beneficial effects in experience. Guénon sees in pragmatism an extreme manifestation of the dissolution of intellectual truth in favour of subjective and utilitarian criteria. ↩︎
  10. morale laïque — Rendered as ‘secular morality’ or ‘lay morality’. ‘Secular morality’ designates, in the French context of the Third Republic, a moral system taught in state schools, detached from all religious or metaphysical reference, and founded on supposedly universal principles such as reason, justice, or solidarity. Guénon emphasises that this morality, issuing from the degradation of Protestant morality, ends up joining the positions of those who reject all religion, thus showing the continuity between religious individualism and atheistic individualism. ↩︎
  11. Protestantisme libéral — Rendered as ‘Liberal Protestantism’. Liberal Protestantism is a theological current that emerged in the nineteenth century (notably with Friedrich Schleiermacher, Albrecht Ritschl, Adolf von Harnack) which adapts Christianity to the presuppositions of modern thought: historical criticism of the Bible, relativisation of dogmas, emphasis on subjective religious experience and morality, rejection of ‘supernatural’ elements. Guénon sees in it an advanced form of doctrinal dissolution where Protestantism, having lost all traditional authority, retains of religion only a sentimental and ethical shell, incapable of resisting secularisation. ↩︎