Against the Modern World: Traditionalism and the Secret Intellectual History of the Twentieth Century [Hardcover]

Mark Sedgwick (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0195152972 | ISBN-13: 978-0195152975 | Publication Date: June 3, 2004

The first history of Traditionalism, an important yet surprisingly little-known twentieth-century anti-modern movement. Comprising a number of often secret but sometimes very influential religious groups in the West and in the Islamic world, it affected mainstream and radical politics in Europe and the development of the field of religious studies in the United States.
In the nineteenth century, at a time when progressive intellectuals had lost faith in Christianity's ability to deliver religious and spiritual truth, the West discovered non-Western religious writings. From these beginnings grew Traditionalism, emerging from the occultist milieu of late nineteenth-century France, and fed by the widespread loss of faith in progress that followed the First World War. Working first in Paris and then in Cairo, the French writer Ren� Gu�non rejected modernity as a dark age, and sought to reconstruct the Perennial Philosophy-- the central religious truths behind all the major world religions --largely on the basis of his reading of Hindu religious texts.
A number of disenchanted intellectuals responded to Gu�non's call with attempts to put theory into practice. Some attempted without success to guide Fascism and Nazism along Traditionalist lines; others later participated in political terror in Italy. Traditionalism finally provided the ideological cement for the alliance of anti-democratic forces in post-Soviet Russia, and at the end of the twentieth century began to enter the debate in the Islamic world about the desirable relationship between Islam and modernity

Editorial Reviews

Review

"An exceptionally well-informed book.... It is a marvellous inquiry on the mutual porosity of a wide range of sometimes mutually contradictory anti-modernist ideological trends, from anarchism to fascism, and mutually opposed ilieus, from dissidents to officers of secret services."--St�phane A. Dudoignon, Central Eurasian Reader

"Well-researched, well-written...an impressive scholarly achievement."--H-Net Reviews

"Against the Modern World is a genuinely startling book. In this massively researched and clearly written study, Mark Sedgwick seeks nothing less than to provide an alternative intellectual history of the twentieth century. Time and again, he offers unexpected connections, stresses the importance of forgotten or underestimated thinkers, and throws new light on the history of esoteric thought and religion. A wonderful contribution." --Philip Jenkins, author of The Next Christendom: the Coming of Global Christianity

"An erudite, graceful, and nuanced study of a movement that has enjoyed far more influence than attention in the modern world that it so despises."--Parabola

"Mark Sedgwick shows how Traditionalism is a major influence on religion, politics, even international relations. Famous scholars, theosophists and masons, Gnostic ascetics and Sufi sheikhs, jostle with neo-fascists, terrorists and Islamists in their defection from a secular, materialist West. As a study of esotericism and Western images of the East, Against the Modern World compares in importance with Edward Said's monumental Orientalism. Likewise, it deserves the widest readership."--Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, author of Black Sun and The Occult Roots of Nazism

This is an invaluable contribution to an ongoing and increasingly sophisticated discussion about modernity, the professional study of religion, and the religions themselves. What sets Sedgwick's narrative apart from most all previous accounts is his remarkable historical sweep (from the Italian Renaissance to today), his impressive grasp of the Muslim world, and, perhaps most of all, the humane grace with which he treats his historical subjects. Here they emerge with both their hearts and their warts intact, neither as intellectual fathers to slay nor as cultural gods to put on the proverbial pedestal, but as human beings struggling with some of the deepest religious problems and promises of our modern world. The result is a reading experience through which one comes to realize, with something of a start, that their story happens also to be ours.--Jeffrey J. Kripal, author of Roads of Excess, Palaces of Wisdom: Eroticism and Reflexivity in the Study of Mysticism

"An exceptionally well-informed book.... It is a marvellous inquiry on the mutual porosity of a wide range of sometimes mutually contradictory anti-modernist ideological trends, from anarchism to fascism, and mutually opposed ilieus, from dissidents to officers of secret services."--St�phane A. Dudoignon, Central Eurasian Reader

"Well-researched, well-written...an impressive scholarly achievement."--H-Net Reviews

"An erudite, graceful, and nuanced study of a movement that has enjoyed far more influence than attention in the modern world that it so despises."--Parabola

"Against the Modern World is a genuinely startling book. In this massively researched and clearly written study, Mark Sedgwick seeks nothing less than to provide an alternative intellectual history of the twentieth century. Time and again, he offers unexpected connections, stresses the importance of forgotten or underestimated thinkers, and throws new light on the history of esoteric thought and religion. A wonderful contribution." --Philip Jenkins, author of The Next Christendom: the Coming of Global Christianity

"Mark Sedgwick shows how Traditionalism is a major influence on religion, politics, even international relations. Famous scholars, theosophists and masons, Gnostic ascetics and Sufi sheikhs, jostle with neo-fascists, terrorists and Islamists in their defection from a secular, materialist West. As a study of esotericism and Western images of the East, Against the Modern World compares in importance with Edward Said's monumental Orientalism. Likewise, it deserves the widest readership.--Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, author of Black Sun and The Occult Roots of Nazism

This is an invaluable contribution to an ongoing and increasingly sophisticated discussion about modernity, the professional study of religion, and the religions themselves. What sets Sedgwick's narrative apart from most all previous accounts is his remarkable historical sweep (from the Italian Renaissance to today), his impressive grasp of the Muslim world, and, perhaps most of all, the humane grace with which he treats his historical subjects. Here they emerge with both their hearts and their warts intact, neither as intellectual fathers to slay nor as cultural gods to put on the proverbial pedestal, but as human beings struggling with some of the deepest religious problems and promises of our modern world. The result is a reading experience through which one comes to realize, with something of a start, that their story happens also to be ours.--Jeffrey J. Kripal, author of Roads of Excess, Palaces of Wisdom: Eroticism and Reflexivity in the Study of Mysticism

"I have rarely read an academic book with such ease and pleasure and, at the same time, learned so much novel and relevant information unavailable in previous western research. ...one of the most fascinating books in the history of ideas published in recent years."
--Patterns of Prejudice

About the Author

Mark Sedgwick is Assistant Professor of History at the American University in Cairo, and is the author of Sufism: The Essentials (2000).

Product Details

• Hardcover: 384 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (June 3, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0195152972
• ISBN-13: 978-0195152975
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.3 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (28 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,811,919 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Mark Sedgwick was born in London, and grew up in England, Spain, and France. His interest in history and the world beyond the West was first awakened by his grandfather, who celebrated his 21st birthday in Egypt during the 1919 Revolution, saw some of the Turkish War of Independence, and then moved on to Imperial India. Mark studied history at Oxford University, did a PhD on Sufism at the University of Bergen in Norway, and taught for 20 years at the American University in Cairo. He now teaches at Aarhus University in Denmark, where he is Coordinator of the Arab and Islamic Studies Unit.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

35 of 47 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Traditionalists: a term too ambiguous, July 30, 2004

By 

Alen - See all my reviews

This review is from: Against the Modern World: Traditionalism and the Secret Intellectual History of the Twentieth Century (Hardcover)

When I first saw the book I was delighted to see that an important school of thought in the twentieth century has finally found the attention it deserved. But my delight was changed to disappointment after reading through the chapters of the book.
First of all, one may call many thinkers with very divergent ideas "traditionalists," but one cannot make blanket statements and judgments about all of them based on the thoughts and deeds of some. It is as if one condemned Sartre as being a Nazi, because he was an Existentialist philosopher like Heideger, and Heideger, in some point, agreed with Hitler! There is a huge difference between a Rene Guenon and a Mircea Eliade, between an Evola and a Schuon, and one can put them all in one category only in some very superficial way, as exactly it is done in this book. The difference in the outlook and philosophy of these thinkers is sometimes as enormous as possible. Their political thought was even more divergent: the author has not been able to give even one example of any endorsement of Nazism, Fascism, or any totalitarian system by Guenon, Schuon, or Coomaraswami, whom he regards as the most influential among the traditionalists and as "hard" traditionalists (there is no example indeed; actually these people and their loyal followers always opposed and condemned that kind of regimes), yet he cleverly asserts Eliade (his "soft" traditionalist) and Evola's approval of fascism in a way to convince the reader of the whole party's guilt.
Secondly, when reading a book about some philosophy, one expects the critical examination of the philosophy in itself, and not some here and there told stories, whether factual or fictional, coupled with some not very important aspects of the philosophy in question. A reader who does not know much about traditionalists finishes the book without achieving any in-depth information about any of the personage covered in this book.
Thirdly, some very influential traditionalists are absent: As a traditionalist philosopher and thinker, Titus Burckhardt, for example, was far more important than Evola, yet it seems that the author, in order to achieve his purpose, had to leave some space for a fascist Evola. (Interesting to notice that, Burckhardt wrote an article against Evola's views).
And finally, the book is has a lot of misinformation: if you interview only somebody's enemies, you will most probably end up with the wrong information. To write impartially needs hearing both sides of a story.

40 of 54 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Substantial Reduction of My Ignorance, August 5, 2004

By 

Robert Morris (Dallas, Texas) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Against the Modern World: Traditionalism and the Secret Intellectual History of the Twentieth Century (Hardcover)

Frankly, until reading Against the Modern World, I knew nothing about Traditionalism nor about the Perennial Philosophy which René Guénon (1886-1951) formulated, based on the basic truths of the world's great religions. I found Sedgwick's book so interesting because it offers answers to questions such as these:

1. How does Sedgwick define "modern"?
2. Why was Guénon so opposed to it?
3. Why has Traditionalism attracted such a wide, deep, and diverse following worldwide?
4. What is the relationship between Traditionalism and Orientalism?
5. What are the most relevant historical "streams and counterstreams"? Why?
6. What have been the nature and extent of cultural displacement?
7. What role has the tactic of (in italics) entrisme (end italics) played during the development of Traditionalism?
8. What is Frithjof Schuon's significance?
9. Why have various religious leaders rejected Traditionalism?
10. What are Traditionalism's sub-denominations and how do they differ from each other?

During the Religioscope interview (5 June 2004), Sedgwick explains that "the real reason that I became interested in Traditionalism as a subject for research was growing astonishment at the extent and importance of the movement. I remember spending an evening, shortly after the Internet had reached Egypt, looking through the various editions and translations of Guénon's works in European library catalogs-I couldn't believe it. And the more I looked, the more I found, and the more convinced I became that here was a story worth the telling." According to Sedgwick, advocates of Guénonian Traditionalism share a conviction that "the modern world is not the result of progress out of darkness but of descent into darkness, that this - the time we live in - is a last age, a pretty low point of a last age at that. What has been lost - and what needs to be recovered, reinstated even - is `tradition.' And tradition can be fairly precisely defined, as the truths that should have been handed down from time immemorial, approximately the perennial philosophy, the original [in italics] Ur-religion [end italics] of humanity."

Sedgwick goes on to suggest that "Traditionalists are those who want to recover what has been lost, and who also recognize the `true' nature of modernity. And recognize that one of the most important aspects of modernity is inversion - that the world sees the valuable as worthless and the worthless as valuable, the good as bad and bad as good. Guénon never saw a punk, but it would have made a lot of sense to him. And with that comes `counter-initiation' - religious movements that are actually irreligious, that actually lead away from what religion is meant to lead to. Again, Guénon would have nodded knowingly at certain recent developments in the Catholic Church. Against counter-initiation, the only thing left is real, genuine initiation - into traditional esoterism."

I have included these brief excerpts from the Religioscope interview because I think they help to indicate what Sedgwick's objectives were when he set out to examine Guénonian Traditionalism. In my opinion, he achieves all of them but it remains for others far better qualified than I am to comment on the validity of his assumptions and conclusions re the questions listed earlier. I do wish to reiterate that I am grateful for what I have learned about "Traditionalism and the secret intellectual history of the twentieth century."

95 of 133 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Form without substance, November 4, 2004

By 

Leonard Fox (Charleston, SC USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Against the Modern World: Traditionalism and the Secret Intellectual History of the Twentieth Century (Hardcover)

It is ironic that this book, which purports to expose the "secret intellectual history of the twentieth century" provides an excellent justification for the Traditionalist antipathy toward the profane character of contemporary Western society. The thinly veiled attitude of hostility to Traditionalism, and the patronizing contempt for its insights, with which the text is permeated, reveals far more about the author than about his subject matter. Masquerading as a work of scholarship, the book is little more than a collection of ad hominem attacks on some of the greatest intellectual and spiritual minds of the past hundred years, without any attempt to evaluate objectively the profound ideas developed by these individuals. It is more usual to find material of this sort - much of it based on gossip, rumor, and innuendo - in a supermarket tabloid than in a publication by Oxford University Press.

It is quite difficult to write a serious review of a book that contains nothing serious except pretensions. Despite its scholarly facade (69 pages of notes and an 8-page bibliography), the work is essentially form without substance. A few comments would perhaps be useful, however:

A large amount of space in Sedgwick's book is devoted to Frithjof Schuon and some of his closest associates, e.g., Titus Burckhardt, Leo Schaya, Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Martin Lings, and Whitall Perry. A glance at the book's bibliography will indicate the extent of the author's research into their writings: Of the more than twenty books by Frithjof Schuon, only three appear there (in addition to the limited circulation autobiography with which Sedgwick is so preoccupied); Burckhardt's "Fez, City of Islam" is listed, but not his "Introduction to Sufism," or his "Alchemy: Science of the Cosmos, Science of the Soul," or any of his translations of Arabic texts; Schaya's "The Universal Meaning of the Kabbalah" is absent, as are Lings's "Book of Certainty" and Perry's monumental "Treasury of Traditional Wisdom," to name just a few of some of the most important contributions to Traditionalist literature. Although Sedgwick writes at length about "Etudes Traditionelles," he does not even mention "Studies in Comparative Religion," the most significant English-language Traditionalist journal, in which articles that were to become classics of Traditionalist thought were published.

It is amusing to see that, in the spirit of "the reign of quantity and the signs of the times," Sedgwick appears to equate the value of a book with its sales record. He says, in speaking of the 220 books by "Schuon and 23 other identified followers" published between 1950 and 1999, that "none [had] sales as impressive as Merton's 'Seven Storey Mountain' or Smith's 'Religions of Man.' " In the next paragraph, he notes that "only a few" of what he calls "hard" Traditionalist books "achieved significant sales" (p. 167). Sedgwick thus betrays his fundamental ignorance of the fact that Traditionalism is not and has never been a spiritual perspective intended for the "broad masses."

It would be possible quite easily to expose the cover-to-cover ignorance and trivialization of great ideas that Sedgwick so blatantly reveals in this book, but it would require far more space than Amazon permits for a review. From the standpoint of purely external appearance, though, it should be said that this book was appallingly edited and proofread. Indeed, it is difficult to believe that a publisher of such eminence as Oxford would permit the work to be printed as it was. There are typographical errors, incorrect diacritics (especially in Romanian), solecisms, questionable translations, omitted and duplicated words, misspelled names, and other inexcusable mistakes.

Mr. Sedgwick seems to be critical of the Traditionalist tendency to see beyond the forms of exoteric religion to the underlying divine truth present in the nucleus of those forms. The greatest mystics of all religions, however, have also been "guilty" of this:

Meister Eckhart says: "We shall find God in everything alike, and find God always alike in everything." And Ibn al-`Arabi writes: "My heart has opened unto every form: it is a pasture for gazelles, a cloister for Christian monks, a temple for idols, the Ka`ba of the pilgrim, the tables of the Torah, and the book of the Qur'an. I practice the religion of Love; in whatsoever directions its caravans advance, the religion of Love shall be my religion and my faith."