¶3 For moderns, nothing seems to exist outside what can be seen and touched; or at least, even if they theoretically admit that something else could exist, they hasten to declare it, not only unknown, but ‘unknowable’.1 This dispenses them from concerning themselves with it. If, nevertheless, there are some who seek to form some idea of an ‘other world’,2 since they appeal only to the imagination for this, they represent it to themselves on the model of the terrestrial world and transport into it all the conditions of existence that are proper to the latter, including space and time, and even a sort of ‘corporeity’.3 We have shown elsewhere, in spiritist conceptions, particularly striking examples of this kind of crudely materialised representation;4 but, if this is an extreme case, where this character is exaggerated to the point of caricature, it would be a mistake to believe that spiritism and the sects more or less akin to it have a monopoly on these sorts of things. Moreover, in a more general way, the intervention of the imagination in domains where it can give nothing, and which should normally be forbidden to it, is a fact that shows very clearly the incapacity of modern Westerners to rise above the sensible;5 many do not know how to make any distinction between ‘conceiving’ and ‘imagining’,6 and certain philosophers, such as Kant,7 go so far as to declare ‘inconceivable’ or ‘unthinkable’ everything that is not susceptible to representation. Thus all that is called ‘spiritualism’ or ‘idealism’ is, most often, only a sort of transposed materialism;8 this is true not only of what we have designated by the name of ‘neo-spiritualism’,9 but also of philosophical spiritualism itself, which nevertheless considers itself the opposite of materialism. Truth to tell, spiritualism and materialism, taken in the philosophical sense, cannot be understood without each other;10 they are simply the two halves of Cartesian dualism,11 whose radical separation has been transformed into a sort of antagonism; and, since then, all philosophy oscillates between these two terms without being able to go beyond them. Spiritualism, in spite of its name, has nothing in common with spirituality;12 its debate with materialism can only leave perfectly indifferent those who place themselves at a superior point of view, and who see that these contraries are, at bottom, very close to being simple equivalents, whose supposed opposition, on many points, reduces itself to a vulgar dispute of words.13
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Summary

Guénon observes that modern people tend to recognise only what can be seen and touched, declaring anything else ‘unknowable’ and thus ignoring it. When they do imagine an ‘other world’, they use the imagination to model it on the terrestrial world, including space, time, and even corporeity, as seen in spiritist conceptions. This reliance on imagination in domains where it has no place reveals the incapacity of modern Westerners to rise above the sensible, with many unable to distinguish ‘conceiving’ from ‘imagining’ and philosophers like Kant declaring anything not representable as inconceivable. He argues that what is called ‘spiritualism’ or ‘idealism’ is often merely transposed materialism, and that philosophical spiritualism and materialism are simply the two halves of Cartesian dualism, whose opposition is merely a dispute of words. From a superior point of view, these contraries are near equivalents and have nothing to do with true spirituality.

General notes

  1. « inconnaissable » — Rendered as ‘unknowable’. Guénon refers here to Kantian and positivist agnosticism, which limits knowledge to the domain of phenomenal appearances and declares the ‘thing in itself’ (Ding an sich) inaccessible to human understanding. This concept often serves to dismiss a priori any spiritual or metaphysical reality without having to deny it formally. ↩︎
  2. « autre monde » — Rendered as ‘other world’. Guénon means by this expression the planes of reality superior to the material world (subtle, spiritual or principial worlds). In traditional thought, these worlds are as real as the sensible world, but accessible through intellectual and not sensible means. ↩︎
  3. « corporéité » — Rendered as ‘corporeity’. Guénon criticises here the tendency to imagine spiritual realities in a quasi-corporeal form, which is a disguised materialist reduction. Representations of paradise as a physical garden or of the soul as a subtle ‘double’ of the body are examples of this ‘corporeity’ projected onto the beyond. ↩︎
  4. conceptions spirites — Rendered as ‘spiritist conceptions’. Guénon extensively criticised spiritism (notably in The Spiritist Fallacy, 1923) as a pseudo-scientific attempt to study the ‘invisible’ world using materialist methods. Spiritism, for him, is a caricature of true spirituality because it transposes the categories of the sensible world (space, time, mechanical causality) into domains where they do not apply. ↩︎
  5. incapacité à s’élever au-dessus du sensible — Rendered as ‘incapacity to rise above the sensible’. Guénon diagnoses here a fundamental limitation of the modern mentality: the impossibility of accessing pure intellective knowledge, that is to say direct and non-imaginative knowledge of metaphysical realities. Modern man, a prisoner of the sensible, can conceive only what he can represent or imagine. ↩︎
  6. « concevoir » et « imaginer » — Rendered as ‘conceiving’ and ‘imagining’. Guénon establishes here a capital distinction: conceiving belongs to the pure intellect (the capacity to grasp intelligible realities that are non-spatial and non-temporal), while imagining consists of forming sensible representations (visual, auditory, tactile images). The modern confusion between these two faculties is one of the major causes of practical materialism. ↩︎
  7. Kant — Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) is the philosopher who most contributed to limiting knowledge to the phenomenal domain. His doctrine of ‘transcendental idealism’ affirms that we can know only phenomena as they appear to us through the a priori forms of sensibility (space and time), and not things as they are in themselves (noumena). Guénon sees in this limitation one of the roots of modern practical materialism. ↩︎
  8. spiritualisme et idéalisme comme matérialisme transposé — Rendered as ‘spiritualism and idealism as transposed materialism’. Guénon maintains that philosophical spiritualism (which admits a spiritual reality distinct from matter) and idealism (which reduces all reality to thought or representation) remain, despite their appearances, prisoners of the same categories as materialism: they only ‘transpose’ into an abstract language conceptions that are still material. For example, the ‘soul’ of spiritualism is often conceived as a quasi-corporeal substance, and the Platonic ‘Idea’ misunderstood becomes a mental representation. ↩︎
  9. « néospiritualisme » — Rendered as ‘neo-spiritualism’. Guénon means by this term the spiritualist currents of the 19th and early 20th centuries (such as spiritism, theosophy, occultism) which, under religious or esoteric appearances, only transpose materialist and scientific conceptions into the supposedly ‘spiritual’ domain. They seek to ‘prove’ scientifically the existence of the soul or the beyond, which is already a concession to materialism. ↩︎
  10. spiritualisme et matérialisme comme termes complémentaires — Rendered as ‘spiritualism and materialism as complementary terms’. Guénon affirms that spiritualism and materialism are two faces of the same dualism (inherited from Descartes). They share the same conception of substance (material or spiritual), the same radical separation between body and mind, and the same incapacity to go beyond this opposition. They are ‘contraries’ that imply each other, like hot and cold or high and low. ↩︎
  11. dualisme cartésien — Rendered as ‘Cartesian dualism’. Guénon refers to the philosophy of René Descartes (1596-1650), who posited a radical separation between res extensa (extended matter) and res cogitans (thinking mind). This rupture, according to Guénon, is at the origin of the modern impossibility of understanding the unity of being and prepared the ground both for materialism (which absolutises res extensa) and for spiritualism (which absolutises res cogitans). ↩︎
  12. spiritualité distinguée du spiritualisme — Rendered as ‘spirituality distinguished from spiritualism’. Guénon insists on a capital distinction: spirituality is an ontological reality and a state of being (access to superior principles), while spiritualism is a philosophical doctrine among others. One can be a spiritualist without being spiritual (this is the case with most modern spiritualist philosophers). True spirituality is beyond the opposition between materialism and spiritualism. ↩︎
  13. dispute de mots — Rendered as ‘dispute of words’. Guénon takes up here a classic theme of the critique of philosophical quarrels: many debates opposing supposedly contradictory doctrines (such as materialism and spiritualism) are in reality only verbal misunderstandings. Terms are taken in different senses by each camp, and the dispute bears more on words than on things. True knowledge, for its part, goes beyond these superficial oppositions. ↩︎