'Traditionalism' by Mark Sedgwick
There is “tradition!” as Tevye sings in Fiddler on the Roof—many traditions, actually, that give structure and meaning to those who follow them. What Mark Sedgwick means by Traditionalism, capital T, is a particular set of ideas that coalesced during the last century. According to Sedgwick, Traditionalism “has been used to encourage respect for the environment, compose great music, and reduce hostility between different religions.” But self-styled Traditionalists have also been spotted among the advisors to Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin. Clearly then, Traditionalism is a subject that needs to be recognized for its potential to influence our world—for good or ill.
Sedgwick, professor of Arab and Islamic Studies at Denmark’s Aarhus University, has written Traditionalism in a textbook-like format with enough redundancies to remind even the laziest student of his central points. He identifies an early 20th century French philosopher, Réne Guéron, as Traditionalism’s wellspring. From there, Traditionalism flowed through two mainstreams, one through the writings of the Italian fascist-sympathizer Julius Evola and the other through the Swiss Sufi Frithoj Schuon, albeit calling Evola a fascist and Schuon a Sufi puts their trains of thought on too narrow a track.
Sedgwick’s challenge is that his three central figures disagreed on many points. What they shared is the conviction that modernity is a flawed project, resulting in profound alienation (Marx would agree) and lack of meaningful values with bureaucracy filling the void of inspiration. The dehumanization of a materialistic society leads to homogenization, a global monoculture crushing diversity—true cultural diversity, not the bumper sticker sentiments of smugly comfortable Americans. Sedgwick’s three Tradionalists held that history moves in cycles—and that we are in the midst of a bad one. As Sedgwick acknowledges, many who don’t identify as Traditionalists believe many of those same things.
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In Sedgwick’s stimulating account, Traditionalism becomes nearly as broad as Christianity or socialism as a concept with many disciples and many heresies. His three leading figures are united by an appreciation for the importance of small groups, of the initiated or the likeminded, willing to challenge the commonplace notions of the present day. Despite many differences, Guéron and Schuon have exerted influence over academic and popular studies in comparative religion and art history. Neither proposed a specific political agenda, although implications can be drawn.
Evola was the political extremist among them, and his writings have been inspirational to far right movements across the world, including Hungary, Russia and the U.S. in the person of Steve Bannon. Not unlike Lenin, impatient with Marx’s theory on the inevitability of history, Bannon just can’t wait for the cycle of history to turn. He wants his Utopia and he wants it now. “And, in order to achieve this,” Sedgwick writes, “the modern world order had first to be disrupted—which was the function that Bannon had hoped that Trump would fulfil.”
