Dzhemal Vs. Guenon
In this article the author makes an attempt to draw a comparison between Guenon’s and Dzhemal’s concepts. We decided to translate it to help our readers better understand Dzhemal’s opposition to Guenon, as he said in his own words: “Guenon must be overcome”.
Geydar Dzhemal acts as a radical critic of Guenon, and directs his criticism not to particular aspects of Guenonism, but to the entire paradigm of Guenon thought as a whole and gives an extremely harsh conceptual response to it. In this article, the author aims at the most concise summary of Dzhemal’s criticism, in no way claiming to be an exhaustive presentation of it.
First of all, it should be noted that Dzhemal began his intellectual career (minus the early Hegelian period) as a guenonist and, as he said in an interview, lived a complete identification with the doctrine of Guenon until he identified a point of discomfort and divergence for himself. Dzhemal dates the first impulse to overcome the Guenon to 1972. Subsequently, he subjected Guenonism to a fundamental revision, and in the late Dzhemal this finally resulted in the complete overcoming and overturning of Guenonian logic and methodology.
So, what is the essence of his criticism?
1. The tradition of the priests and the tradition of the prophets: an incomparable dualism
The fundamental, dogmatic thesis in the topic of Guenon is the principle of “transcendental unity of traditions”: Guenon postulates that all traditions go back to a single primordial Tradition, stem from it and, ultimately, are nothing more than branches and diverse expressions of this single Tradition. All contradictions, all differences between traditions exist only on the exoteric, external level, and on the esoteric, metaphysical level they are all essentially one.
This axiom of guenonism is understood by Dzhemal as a fundamental forgery and aberration. He contrasts Guenonian monism and universalism with the radical, incomprehensible metaphysical dichotomy of two poles — the tradition of the priests and the tradition of the prophets. This dichotomy is the axis of Dzhemal’s entire critical approach, affecting the entire structure of his thought (it is important to note that the “tradition of the priests” is a purely technical term of Dzhemal, denoting the whole set of non–creationist, non-Abrahamic traditions, that is, strictly speaking, manifestationism. Dzhemal himself does not use the term “manifestationism”, but uses the dramatic terms “paganism” and “natural religion” as synonyms for the “tradition of the priests”). At one time, Alexander Gelyevich Dugin, rethinking and correcting Guenon, put forward the thesis about the “transcendental unity of the language of tradition.” In this case, Dzhemal speaks, if you like, about the “transcendental dualism of two languages” — “priestly” and “prophetic”.
From this point of view, guenonism is a focus in which all the power lines of priestly metaphysics converge. At the same time, Guenon, following his universalist logic, tried his best to smooth out, obscure as much as possible the structural contradictions between manifestationist traditions and monotheistic creationism and present the latter as just an exotic version of the same integral tradition, simply adapted to the mentality of the people of the end of Kali Yuga. Thus, Guenon is exposed by Dzhemal as an apologist of the priestly line, who consciously or unconsciously ignored the unique meaning of the Abrahamic revelation of the prophets. Accordingly, between Guenonism and the priestly tradition, the priestly worldview, in a polemical context, Dzhemal puts an equal sign: polemizing with Guenonian traditionalism, Dzhemal polemizes with the priestly tradition, and vice versa. This is a fundamental intellectual move by Dzhemal, which must always be kept in mind in order to understand the specifics of his opposition to Guenon.
Let’s briefly focus on the analysis of the fundamental and most emphasized by Jemal principles underlying these two absolutely hostile, mutually exclusive traditions.
2. Metaphysics of priests and metaphysics of prophets
The main vector of the metaphysics of the priestly tradition is the desire for convergence, integration with pure being and the highest identity in the final reality, in a low-quality Absolute, except for which there is nothing, which removes everything. All priestly traditions and initiatory schools, without exception, are aimed at this ecstatic higher identity of subject and object. The most obvious illustration is the Hindu formula “Atman is Brahman”. The mediator of this identity is the “Great Being”, the harmonizer and stabilizer of the imbalance between being and logos. The “great being”, according to Jemal, is the “God” of the priestly tradition.
The tradition of the prophets has a completely different modality from the priestly one and is brought into this world by the prophets. The essence of the monotheistic message is that the infinite[Editor’s note: Not infinite, but the one that is percieved by pagans as infinite], low–quality Absolute, which is the last instance of perception, is an “absolutely” hostile fate to the living God. [Editor’s Note: Dzhemal never positioned fate as “hostile” to the God, but the God as the only one who can overcome it]
According to Dzhemal, revelation breaks the vicious circle of universal identity and testifies to a source that is beyond all analogies, declares absolute war on natural mind (experience, feelings, etc.). Instead of subject-object identity, radical subject-object distinction is placed at the center of ontology and anthropology. In the perspective of monotheism, human is a locum tenens on behalf of an absolutely transcendent, hidden and incomprehensible Subject, which is fundamentally not given either in images, analogies, or comparisons and is a counterpoint to everything that exists. Such phenomena within Islam as Sufism (of which, as is known, Guenon was an adept) with its holistic, “cryptomanifestationist” principle “Wahdat-al-wud-jud” (“unity of being”) are regarded by Jemal in the optics of “pure monotheism” as deviation and subversive priestly influence.
One tradition insists on pure being, that perception is a function of this being, arises as a kind of epiphenomenon. The other insists that everything that surrounds us as an object of perception is a sign of what makes this perception itself possible. One tradition of order, hierarchy, system, authority, value and ultimate ultimate meaninglessness, because it represents once and for all a given ontological program that is erased and renewed, the eternal return of an equal. He is opposed by the second tradition, the tradition of the anti-system, the revolutionary tradition, which does not put the hierarchy of being in anything, the advantage of other eons of time, opposes the absolute, actual “here and now” to the eons of time.
In the optics of the “tradition of the Prophets”, the essence of the highest instance of ontology is exposed as «Nothing that destroys» (Heidegger), “bad infinity” (Hegel), infinite entropy, pure Abyss, “absolute dynamics of extraverted negativity”, and the reality created by it is like a concentration universe, overcoming which is the highest categorical imperative on the path of humankind.
Dzhemal summarizes the opposition of the priests and prophets in the following words: “Guenon (as we remember, speaking of Guenon, Dzhemal means the priestly tradition — author’s note) describes reality as it is, while it needs to be rethought from a different angle — what it should be. Being(existance), which from the point of view of Guenon is the “most optimal” of all possible, is a fundamental error that is embedded in the program format of the first principle… Being is not a self–sufficient super-value, but a challenge and a task statement in the course of which it must be overcome.”
This revolutionary message is embedded, according to Dzhemal, in the revelations of all monotheistic prophets. The revolution of the prophets is a rebellion against reality, against pure fate. It is on this idea of a radical counter-ontological revolution that Dzhemal’s concept of “historical finalism” is based.
3. The Kshatriya Revolution against Priestly Conservatism
The philosophical “fault line” between Guenon and Dzhemal continues along the key topic of “counter-initiation” for Guenon’s discourse, which will be discussed below. Guenon considered the so-called “Revolution of Kshatriyas (warriors) against Brahmins (priests)” to be the first global manifestation of counter-initiation. Guenon regards it in the context of sacred history as the starting point of “counter-initiation”, as the first link in a series of catastrophes on the way to “earthly hell”, to modernity and postmodernity.
Dzhemal, starting from a basic metaphysical attitude, evaluates the Kshatriya uprising in a radically different way. In Dzhemal’s optics, the dialectic of the confrontation between priests and warriors is providentially connected with the drama of the Abrahamic prophetic revelation. Warriors and priests are two fundamentally opposing consciousnesses. Kshatriyas are carriers of heroic consciousness, the will to the new, to the «radically non–existent before», to revolution. The priests correspond to Wisdom, the will to eternity, to the “eternal return of an equal”, the will to be. For thousands of years, the priests have been trying to shackle the potential of the Kshtarii, warriors with spiritual shackles and prohibitions in order to turn them into servants of a harmonious pyramidal system of hierarchical subordination, to relegate them to the functional role of gendarmes.
The prophets, according to Dzhemal, come to remove the magic of these spiritual prohibitions from them and turn them into a shock vanguard of all the disadvantaged in order to solve forever the ontological problem of injustice. Complementing this thesis, Jemal points out that the Prophets themselves embody the archetype of the warrior, which is why the prophetic message resonates so deeply with the Kshatriya “heroic consciousness”.
The exaggerated antagonism of warriors and priests postulated by Dzhemal, which is a sociological projection of the antagonism of two metaphysics — prophetic and priestly, carries a key importance for the entire topic of Dzhemal’s thought. Asserting the antagonism of warriors and priests on the one hand and prophetic and priestly traditions on the other, this time Dzhemal comes close to synthesizing sociological and theological aspects in a single methodology.
4. Guenon’s “conspiracy theory” against Dzhemal’s “conspiracy theory”
Let’s turn once again to counter-initiation. In Guenon’s discourse, “counter-initiation” is a kind of “conspiracy” concept. The Guenon counter–initiation is an “active engine of the fall” and a “driving force of progress” in a profane sense. To summarize, the Guenon scheme consists in the fact that warriors rise up against the priests, then the merchants, the bourgeoisie, rise up against the warriors and, finally, the extreme stage — the sudras, lumpens, rise up against the merchants. This is the last phase of degeneracy and profanity.
Dzhemal, in turn, responds to this Guenon’s conspiracy theory with his conspiracy theory, which at first glance may seem extremely extravagant.
Dzhemal puts forward the thesis, unprecedented for Guenon, that “there is no profanity. Profanity is a kind of mask, a kind of private phenomenon, which is a certain propaganda program designed to confide in the consciousness of the most peripheral segments of the population, mass and wide peripheries. The sacred authority has not disappeared anywhere and could not disappear. Hierocracy has not disappeared anywhere, but exists in a much more brutal total form.” The tactics of the crypto-hierocracy is that the secret sacred authority puts systems of “stubs”, veils between its true power and what the mass consciousness perceives. In particular, parliaments, liberal institutions, open civil society, market laws, and so on — all this is nothing more than a system of such stubs, some kind of built-up screens, behind which the same reality stands. Moreover, Dzhemal argues that from a certain time in Europe, the hierocracy itself began to prepare actions like the Great French Revolution[Editor’s note: Dzhemal doesn’t mention French Revolution particularly, but says: «…since a certain time in Europe, the hierocracy itself began to prepare wars and revolutions in order to really preserve its power by making external changes..» also says: «The hierocracy caste, by the way, is not a single organism. There is a certain conservative part that is tied to external institutional aspects. It is usually “surrendered”, because without “surrender”, without manipulation, nothing works. Moving from an open hierocracy to a crypto hierocracy, some part has to be sacrificed. Usually, the conservative, pompous, front part is “surrendered”. There are always certain closed echelons of authority. These are esoteric orders in relation to the external church. There are inner circles in the bowels of the orders themselves. There is the same division — the conservative, visible part, on the one hand, and the flexible, hidden part, which is focused on the fact that “the more everything changes, the more everything remains the same.”»] in order to really maintain its power and in order to create at the final stage “a fully controlled, zombified society called: open, civil, market” The final meaning, the teleology of these hierocratic maneuvers is reduced to the realization of the Pyrenialist project, the project of the eternal man, which is a separate chapter in the philosophy and “conspiracy” of Dzhemal.
5. The Meaning of Modernity
Thus, following Dzhemal’s logic, hierocracy is the genuine, behind-the-scenes author of Modernity. And at the same time, paradoxically, speaking about the metaphysics of Modernity, Dzhemal interprets it as an act of rebellion inspired by heroic consciousness against the dissolving element of the universal wisdom of the priests. The fundamental intention of Modernity is interpreted as the “Faustian anti-traditionalism” of the project organizer, whether in the field of abstract speculation or civilizational construction. In this regard, Dzhemal’s assessment of Descartes, the most odious European philosopher from the point of view of Guenon, is highly characteristic. Descartes, according to Dzhemal, is “the Western philosopher closest to pure monotheism”, since he “challenged the European pantheistic (manifestationist, holistic par excellence) tradition, which considers the world as an infinite unity flowing into each other.” Descartes said that reality consists of two moments — extension (res extensa) and thought (res cogitans), which carries the potential of a point of opposition, opposing the whole created subject.
Author: Evgeny Kaguanov
Original: https://dzen.ru/a/XmsFzWM5jCEUlpUQ