René Guénon: "The social chaos"

Today marks the 70th anniversary of René Guénon's death. For the occasion, we want to publish an excerpt from his "The crisis of the modern world" (1927), a work that, despite having been published almost a century ago, is still illuminating today to understand the distortions of the world in which we live, especially considering the events we have witnessed in recent times.

di René Guénon

Adapted from The Crisis of the Modern World, 1927. Cover: Marten van Valckenborch, The Tower of Babel, 1595

In this study we do not intend to treat in a special way the social point of view, a point of view that interests us only very indirectly, representing only a rather distant application of the fundamental principles. Thus, it is not in the social domain that an essential rectification of the modern world could in any case begin. If this rectification were in fact implemented in reverse, starting from the consequences rather than from the principles, it would necessarily lack a serious basis and would be quite illusory. Nothing stable could ever result from this and one should always begin anew for having neglected to understand each other first of all about the essential truths. So, it is not possible for us to concede to political contingencies, even giving this word its broadest meaning, other value than that of simple external signs of the mentality of an era. But for this very reason we cannot even completely ignore the manifestations of modern disorder in the social domain proper, in their most characteristic forms, which reach up to the immediate post-war period. [1]: the most recent political-social phenomena, partly of "reaction" or "counter-revolution", for now we will leave them out of consideration, also because so far they have not developed all their possibilities to the point of giving substance to a definitive judgment from the point of view in which we place ourselves here exclusively, that is, from a universal and super-political point of view.

As mentioned earlier, in the current state of the Western world almost no one is in the place that would normally be due to him on the basis of his own nature. This is expressed by saying that caste no longer exists, since caste, understood in its true and traditional sense, is none other than the individual nature itself with all the special attitudes it implies and which predispose every man to fulfillment. of a given function and not of another. When access to any function is no longer controlled by any legitimate rule, the inevitable result is that everyone will be led to do whatever and often what they are least gifted at. The function that he will have in society will be determined, if not by chance, since chance does not really exist, by something that may appear to be chance, that is, by an intertwining of accidental circumstances of every kind. The last to intervene will be the only factor that he should count in such a case, that is, the difference in nature existing among men. The cause of such disorder is the denial of such a difference, a denial that implies that of every social hierarchy. And such a denial, which perhaps at first may have been barely conscious and more practical than theoretical, because the confusion of the castes preceded their complete suppression, or, in other words, because the nature of individuals was disregarded before ending. by not taking it into account - such a denial, let's say, it was constituted by the moderns in a pseudo-principle under the name of "equality".

Now, it would be too easy to prove that equality cannot exist under any circumstances, for the simple reason that it is impossible for two beings to be truly distinct and yet similar in every respect. It would be no less easy to point out all the absurd consequences that derive from this chimerical idea, in the name of which it was intended to impose complete uniformity everywhere, for example by imparting an identical teaching to everyone, as if everyone were equally capable of understanding the same things and as if, in order to make them understand, the same methods were suitable for everyone without distinction. On the other hand, we can ask ourselves whether it is more a question of "learning" than of truly "understanding", that is, if memory has not been substituted for intelligence in the totally verbal and "bookish" conception of modern teaching, which aims only to accumulate elementary and heteroclite notions and in which quality remains entirely sacrificed to quantity, as happens everywhere in the modern world for reasons that we will clarify later: it is always a question of a dispersion into the multiple. In this regard, there would be much to say about the democratic crimes of "compulsory education": but this is not the place to insist on it and, in order not to leave the scheme that we have proposed, we must limit ourselves to pointing out in the past this special consequence of the theories "Egalitarian" as one of those elements of disorder, which have become too numerous to be able to enumerate them all without omissions.

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Of course, when we are faced with an idea, such as that of "equality", or "progress", or in front of others "Secular dogmas" which almost all our contemporaries have accepted blindly and most of whom have already begun to formulate themselves clearly during the eighteenth century, it is not possible for us to admit that such ideas arose spontaneously. Ultimately, it is a question of authenticity "Suggestions", in the strictest sense of the word, which however could produce an effect only in an environment already prepared to receive them. Therefore, if they did not create the overall mood that characterizes the modern era, they nevertheless contributed to nourish and develop it to a point, which otherwise would certainly not have been achieved. If these suggestions were to fail, the general mentality would be very close to changing orientation: for this reason they are so carefully favored by all those who have some interest in prolonging the disorder, if not even aggravating it - and this is also the reason for which in times, in which everything is expected to be subjected to discussion, these suggestions are the only things that should never be discussed. After all, it is difficult to determine exactly the degree of sincerity of those who make propagandists of such ideas, and to know to what extent certain people end up being taken by their own lies and being influenced by the act of wanting to influence others. Often in such propaganda the naive are indeed the best tools, because they bring you a conviction that it would be quite difficult for others to pretend, and that it is easily contagious. But behind all this, at least initially, there must have been a much more conscious action, a direction that can only come from men who are perfectly aware of their fact regarding the ideas circulated in this way. We have spoken of "ideas", but such a word fits very little here, it being evident that in this case we are not dealing with pure ideas at all, nor with anything that belongs as well as to the intellectual order. These are, if you like, false ideas, but it would be even better to call them "pseudo-ideas", destined above all to provoke sentimental reactions, this being the most effective and easiest way to act on the masses. Moreover, in this context, words have a greater importance than the concepts they should express and most of the modern "idols" are, indeed, but words, and we are faced with the curious phenomenon known under the name of " verbalism ”: the sonority of the words is enough to give an illusion of thought. The influence that demagogic speakers exert on crowds is, in this regard, very characteristic and it is not necessary to study it closely to realize that it is a procedure of suggestion comparable in all respects to that of hypnotists.

But without dwelling further on these considerations, let us return to the consequences of the negation of any true hierarchy and note that in the current state of things not only does every man fulfill his own function only exceptionally and almost accidentally, while it is just the opposite of normally. it should be the exception; but it also happens that the same individual is called upon to perform quite different functions successively, almost as if his attitudes could be changed at will. In an era of "specialization" to the bitter end, this may seem paradoxical, but it is so, especially in the political world obedient to democratic and liberal ideologies.

If the competence of the "specialists" is often illusory and in any case restricted to a very limited domain, the belief in such a competence is nevertheless a fact, so we can ask ourselves how it is that this faith no longer plays any part when it comes to career of politicians, where, in parliamentary regime, the most complete incompetence has rarely been an obstacle. However, thinking about it, one easily realizes that it is not surprising, that in short, it is a very natural result of the "democratic" conception, by virtue of which power comes from below and rests essentially on the majority, which has as a necessary corollary the exclusion of any true competence, given that competence is always a superiority , even if relative, and can only be owned by a minority. Here some explanations will not be useless to highlight, on the one hand, the sophisms hiding behind the "democratic" idea, and on the other, the links that connect this idea with the whole of modern mentality. Given the point of view in which we place ourselves, it is almost superfluous to point out that these observations will be formulated outside any party question and any political dispute. We consider these things in an absolutely disinterested way, as we would for any other object of study, trying only to realize as clearly as possible what lies at the bottom of it all; which, moreover, is the necessary and sufficient condition to dispel all the illusions that moderns have made in this regard. If, as has been said a little while ago about slightly different ideas, it is a question of “suggestion”, it will be enough to realize it and understand how suggestion works, to certainly prevent those illusions from developing and taking root. Against such things a somewhat in-depth and purely "objective" examination - as they say today in the special jargon borrowed from German philosophers - is much more effective than all sentimental statements and partisan polemics, which prove nothing and they are the expression of mere individual preferences.

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The most decisive argument against "democracy" boils down to two words: the superior cannot emanate from the inferior, because the more cannot be drawn from the less. This is of an absolute mathematical rigor, against which there is nothing I can do. It matters to note that the very same argument, applied to another order, is also valid against "materialism": concordance not at all fortuitous, since the two attitudes are much more connected than it may seem at first sight. It is all too evident that the people cannot confer a power that they do not possess. True power can only come from above, and it is for this reason, let's say it in the past, that it can become legitimate only through the sanction of something superior to the social order, that is, of a spiritual authority: otherwise it is only a counterfeiting of power. , a state of fact unjustified because it lacks a principle, and such as to give rise only to disorder and confusion. This overturning of every hierarchy begins as soon as the temporal power wants to make itself independent of spiritual authority, and then subordinates it to itself, pretending to enslave it to materialistically political ends. This is the first usurpation that opens the way to all the others, and it could be shown, for example, that French royalty, starting from the fourteenth century, unconsciously worked to prepare the Revolution which was then to overthrow it. It is a point that we have developed in another work, so here we limit ourselves to this summary hint.

Defined as the self-government of the people, "democracy" is a real impossibility, something that cannot even exist as a brute fact, neither in our age nor in any other age. We must not be played by words: it is contradictory to admit that same men can be governed and rulers at the same time because, using the Aristotelian language, the same being cannot be in "act" and "potential" simultaneously and under the same regard. The relationship necessarily presupposes the presence of two terms: there cannot be governed if there are also governors, even if they are illegitimate and have no other right to power than what they themselves have arrogated to themselves. But the great skill of the democratic leaders of the modern world lies in making the people believe that it governs itself. And the people willingly let themselves be persuaded, especially since they feel flattered in this way, while they are unable to reflect what is necessary to realize such an impossibility.. To create this illusion, "universal suffrage" was invented: it is the opinion of the majority as the presumed principle of the law. What you don't realize is that public opinion is something that can be very easily managed and changed. By means of adequate suggestions in it one can always provoke currents in one or the other direction. We no longer remember who he talked about "Fabricate opinion": a very correct expression, although it must be said, on the one hand, that the apparent leaders are not always those who have the necessary means to achieve this. This last observation also explains why the incompetence of the most prominent politicians seems to have had only a very relative weight in the demo-liberal period to which we allude and where such conceptions still persist today. But since here we have not set out to analyze the mechanism of what could be called the "governing machine", we will limit ourselves to pointing out that this same incompetence offers the advantage of feeding the illusion in question: actually only in these conditions can the politicians in question appear to be the emanation of the majority, appearing almost as an image of it, since the majority, whatever the matter on which it is called to pronounce itself, will always be constituted by the incompetent, whose number is incomparably greater than that of men capable of making decisions with full knowledge of the facts.

This certainly allows us to say that the principle, according to which the majority should dictate the law, is essentially wrong. Even if such a principle, by the very force of things, is only theoretical and cannot correspond to any actual reality, it nevertheless remains to be explained how it could have taken hold on the modern spirit, it remains to be seen what are the tendencies of this principle. last to which it corresponds, and which it satisfies at least in appearance. The most visible error is precisely the one just indicated: the opinion of the majority can only be the expression of incompetence, which then results from lack of intellect or pure and simple ignorance. Here we could make some observations in terms of "Collective psychology" especially remembering the well known fact, that in a crowd the set of mental reactions that take place in the individuals who are part of it form a resultant which does not even correspond to the average level, but to that of the lowest elements. On the other hand, it should also be noted that certain modern philosophers have wished to carry into the intellectual order the "democratic" theory that makes the majority opinion prevail, making what they call "universal consensus" an alleged "criterion of truth". Even assuming that there are indeed things that all men agree on, this agreement, in itself, would prove nothing at all. Moreover, even if this humanity existed - which is doubtful already due to the fact that there will always be men who have no opinions whatsoever about a given question and that this question has never been asked - it would be impossible to verify it practically, so what is invoked in favor of an opinion as a sign of its truth is reduced to being only the assent of the greatest number, referring, moreover, to an environment necessarily limited in space and time. In this domain it appears even more clearly that the theory in question has no basis, because here it is easier to isolate it from the influence of sentiment, which instead almost inevitably plays a part as soon as one enters the political field. This very influence is one of the main obstacles to the understanding of certain things, even in those whose intellectual capacity is already more than sufficient to arrive at such an understanding effortlessly. Emotional impulses inhibit reflection, and one of the most vulgar skills of modern demagogic politics is that of drawing on such incompatibility.

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But let's go deeper into the question: what exactly is this law of the greatest number invoked by modern more or less democratic governments as their only justification? It is simply the law of matter and brute force, the very law by virtue of which a mass carried by its own weight crushes everything in its path. Precisely here is the point of interference between the "democratic" conception and "materialism" and what causes that conception to be intimately linked to the current mentality. It is the complete reversal of the normal order, since it is the proclamation of the supremacy of multiplicity as such, a supremacy which actually exists only in the material world. [2]. On the other hand, in the spiritual world, and even more simply in the universal order, unity is at the top of the hierarchy, being the principle from which every multiplicity proceeds. [3]; but when the principle is denied or lost sight of, there is nothing left but pure multiplicity, identifying itself with the same matter.

On the other hand, the mention now made of weight is more than a simple comparison, because weight, in the domain of physical forces in the most common sense of the term, actually represents the descending and comprehensive tendency, which creates in being an ever greater limitation and which at the same time proceeds in the direction of multiplicity, figured here by an ever increasing density [4]; and it is this tendency that indicates the sense according to which human activity has developed since the modern age. It should also be noted that the matter, due to its power of division and at the same time of limitation, is what the scholastic doctrine calls the "principle of individuation", which brings back the considerations now exposed to what we said previously about individualism. Precisely the trend now in question could be said the "individualizing" tendency, that according to which what the Judeo-Christian tradition designates as the "fall" of beings separated from the original unity takes place [5]. The multiplicity considered to be outside its principle and as such unacceptable to be traced back to unity, in the social order is the collectivity conceived as the mere arithmetic sum of the individuals that compose it, and that it is no longer connected to any principle superior to individuals. . From that point of view the law of the collectivity is precisely the law of the greatest number on which the varieties of the "democratic" idea are based.

On this, it is necessary to stop for a moment to prevent possible confusion. Speaking of modern individualism we have considered almost exclusively its manifestations in the intellectual order. One might believe that in the social order the case is quite different. Indeed, if the term "individualism" were taken in its narrowest meaning, one might be tempted to contrast the collectivity with the individual and to think that phenomena, such as the increasingly intrusive part of anti-liberal collectivist states and the growing complexity of the relative centralized social institutions , are the sign of a tendency against individualism. In reality, it is not a question of anything similar: the collectivity is nothing more than the sum of individuals and as such it is not the opposite of these, just as the state itself is not conceived in the modern day, that is, as a simple expression of the mass. , in which no superior principle is reflected (extreme case: the authoritarian mass-state of materialist Sovietism). Now, it is precisely the negation of every super-individual principle that constitutes individualism which we have defined it. If therefore in the social field there are conflicts between various tendencies deriving all equally from the modern spirit, these conflicts are not between individualism and something else, but only between the multiple varieties or the multiple consequences to which individualism itself gives rise; and it is easy to realize that, as long as there is no principle capable of truly unifying multiplicity from above, such conflicts will be ever more numerous and more serious in our age than in any past time, since whoever says individualism necessarily says division - and this division, with the state of chaos that it generates, is the fatal consequence of any civilization that is only material, the root of division and multiplicity being properly matter itself.

That said, we must still insist on an immediate consequence of the "democratic" idea in general, and in particular of the "collectivist" one: it is the negation of the elite understood in its only legitimate meaning. Not for nothing "democracy" opposes "aristocracy", this second word, at least when understood in its etymological sense, designating precisely the power of the elite. Which, almost by definition, can only be a minority, and its power or, to put it better, its authority, deriving from its intellectual superiority, can have nothing in common with the numerical strength on which the "democracy ”, The essential character of which is to sacrifice the minority to the majority and, as we said earlier, quality over quantity and the elite over the mass. The leading function of a true elite and its very existence (since for it to exist and have such a function is one and the same), are radically incompatible with "democracy", which is intimately connected to the "egalitarian" concept, that is to the negation of each hierarchy: at the bottom of the "democratic" idea is the claim that any individual is equivalent to the other by the fact that they are equal numerically, although they can only be numerically equal. A true elite, as we have already said, can only be intellectual in the super-rationalistic sense that we have always given to this term: hence "democracy", and with it every liberal individualism and every collectivism, can only make its way where the Pure intellectuality no longer exists, as is the case in the modern world. Except that equality being impossible in fact, and being practically impossible to suppress any difference between men, in spite of any work of leveling it ends, with a curious illogism, with the inventing of false elites, multiple elites, which claim to replace themselves to the royal elite alone. And these false elites are based on the consideration of various superiorities, eminently relative and contingent, and always of a material nature. We can easily see this by noting that almost everywhere the social distinction that counts most today is that based on luck, on goods, that is, on a completely external superiority of an exclusively quantitative order; the only one, in short, that is compatible with "democracy" because it proceeds from its own point of view. However, it must be said that even those who currently pose as adversaries of such a state of affairs, to the extent that they do not involve any principle of a higher order, remain unable to effectively remedy such a disorder, even if they do not risk to aggravate it by going even further in the same direction.

We believe that these brief reflections will be enough to characterize what in the contemporary social world has acted in the most destructive way and, at the same time, to show that in this field, as in every other, there is only one way to decisively get out of chaos: to restore intellectuality and thus reconstitute an elite which, in the super-political and clearly metaphysical meaning we give to this term, currently in the West must be considered non-existent, not being able to give that name to isolated elements and without cohesion, which can only represent possibilities not yet developed. In fact, in such elements one can generally find only tendencies or aspirations, which undoubtedly lead them to react against the modern spirit, without, however, a corresponding influence being able to be exercised effectively. What they lack is true knowledge, they are traditional data, data that cannot be improvised and for which, especially in circumstances so unfavorable in every respect, an intelligence left to itself can make up for only very imperfectly and weakly. There are therefore only scattered efforts, often diverted due to the lack of principles and doctrinal orientation. It could be said that the modern world defends itself by means of its own dispersion, from which even its adversaries cannot escape. And so things will go as long as they remain on "profane" terrain, where the modern spirit has an obvious advantage, being its own and exclusive terrain: on the other hand, if they remain in this field, this does not prove that such a spirit, in spite of everything, retains considerable power over them? For this reason many people, although animated by an indisputable good will, are unable to understand that it is necessary to start from principles and they insist on dissipating their energies in this or that relative domain, social or similar, in which in such conditions nothing lasting and of real it can be accomplished. The true elite, on the other hand, will not have to intervene directly in these domains, or even mix with external action. It will direct everything by means of an imperceptible influence for the common man, the deeper the less it will be visible. If one thinks of the power of those suggestions, of which we spoke a little while ago, which however do not presuppose any true intellectuality, one can also suspect what, a fortiori, would be the power of an influence like this, exercising in an even more hidden way. because of its very nature, and its origin from pure intellectuality: a power which, however, instead of being crippled by the division inherent in the multiple and by the weakness inherent in all that is lie or illusion, would instead be intensified by concentration in unity of the principle and would be identified with the very force of truth.

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Note:

[1]  Here we allude to the first post-war period 1918-1939. The following sentence is one of those that the A. had thought it appropriate to add to the first Italian edition of this book (The crisis of the modern world), released in 1937. Ndt.

[2] Just read S. Tomaso d'Aquino to see that numerus stat ex parte materiae.

[3] From one order of reality to another, the analogy here, as in every similar case, is strictly applied in the opposite sense.

[4] One such trend is what Hindu doctrine calls Thomas and that it equates to ignorance and obscurity. It will be noted that, according to what we said a little while ago about the application of analogy, the compression or condensation in question is the opposite of concentration considered in the spiritual or intellectual order; therefore, although this may appear singular at first, it actually corresponds to the division and dispersion in the multiple. The same occurs for the uniformity achieved starting from the bottom, from the level of the lowest, which constitutes the opposite extreme of the superior and main unit.

[5] For this Dante places the symbolic seat of Lucifer at the center of the earth, that is, at the point where the forces of weight converge on all sides. From this point of view, it is the inverse of the center of spiritual or "celestial" attraction, symbolized by the sun in most traditional doctrines.