The Civilisational Categories of Guénon and the Global Ascendancy of Ellul’s Technique
The works of René Guénon, written between the 1920s and his death in 1951, present a stark contrast between the “East” and the “West.” A careful reading, however, reveals that these are not primarily geographical terms but rather civilisational and spiritual categories. Guénon’s “East” signifies a society grounded in tradition, where metaphysical principles and sacred knowledge form the supreme authority, shaping all aspects of life from social hierarchy to politics and art. The “West,” in his lexicon, denotes a post-traditional society defined by its turn toward materialism, rationalism, and secularism, a civilisation that had lost its connection to transcendent principles. Guénon’s analysis allows for the possibility that the West was not always the “West” in his sense; before a series of historical ruptures in the mid-to-late Middle Ages, it too met the criteria for a traditional society. These key events include the decline of the medieval synthesis in the 13th and 14th centuries, the Renaissance, the Protestant Reformation, and the Scientific Revolution.
The Erasure of Guénon’s “East” by Ellul’s “Technique”
The principal contention that the “East” Guénon describes no longer exists can be illuminated by Jacques Ellul’s concept of “technique,” as articulated in his seminal work, The Technological Society (first published in French in 1954). Ellul defines technique as “the totality of methods rationally arrived at and having absolute efficiency (for a given stage of development) in every field of human activity”. It is not limited to machines or technology, but encompasses all rational, standardised procedures and organisational structures, including bureaucracies, and the goal-oriented rationality that pervades modern life. This is a multi-dimensional phenomenon encompassing material technologies, organisational practices, and a technical mindset. It recognises Levels 4 and 5 of the five levels of reality only and resolutely denies transcendence.
Ellul argues that technique has become an autonomous force, expanding its reach into all areas of human life and creating a unified, homogenising global system. Its characteristics include rationality, artificiality, automatism, self-augmentation, monism, and universalism. A crucial dimension of its expansion is what Ellul terms “human technique”—methods such as propaganda, advertising, pedagogy, and media that “make the individual the object of technique,” integrating humans into the technical system and adjusting them to its needs. This process is what wipes out the traditional differences Guénon identified.
In Guénon’s critique, the West is defined by a cluster of interlocking characteristics that together represent a complete inversion of the traditional worldview. Central to this is the idolatry of progress—an unquestioning belief in indefinite material and social advancement that, for Guénon, is a purely modern superstition with no foundation in traditional doctrine. This is inseparable from materialism, a mindset that restricts ‘reality’ to the tangible, measurable order, reducing quality to quantity and viewing matter not as a principle of multiplicity to be transcended but as the sole object of concern . This leads to a civilisation dominated by utilitarianism and scientism, where science is valued almost exclusively for its practical, industrial applications and the construction of ever more powerful machines, a pursuit that ultimately enslaves humanity to its own creations .
This materialist outlook is accompanied by sentimentalism and humanism, which elevate the individual human subject, his emotions, and his desires to the supreme position, thereby cutting him off from any transcendent principle. This anthropocentric focus degenerates, in Guénon’s view, into a form of solipsism and psychological individualism, where the subjective self becomes the only measure of truth and reality. The social expression of this is egalitarianism, which destroys natural hierarchies and traditional social orders, dissolving higher unities into a chaotic mass of competing individuals. This quantitative, materialistic ethos manifests in democratic institutions like universal suffrage, which, in Guénon’s estimation, reduces collective decision-making to a mere function of numerical power, as well as in the reduction of all social distinction to the possession of material wealth .
The Global Subsumption of Tradition
The globalisation of technique means that all modern nations, regardless of their geographical location or historical traditions, are now subject to the same imperatives of efficiency, rationalisation, and standardisation. Modern nations like India or China, with their commitment to technological advancement, economic rationalisation, and bureaucratic systems, are, in effect, part of the “West” in Guénon’s civilisational sense. They have embraced “technique,” thereby abandoning the traditional societal model that Guénon associated with the “East.” The cultural and civilisational dichotomy that Guénon observed is being eliminated by the all-encompassing logic of technique; any differences that remain between nations are superficial compared to their underlying technical unity. The world is now a single, “technological society”.