Traditionalism, Conservatism, and the Perennial Philosophy (Part III)

THE INDIAN EXPERIENCE AND PARALLELS

In India, based on the definition of the Sanatana Dharma, it can be said that adherence to hoary traditions is the essence of the native civilisation and its many sub-cultures. The constant references to original ancestors and their sacred practices and teachings in the Vedic texts find echo throughout the Bhagavat Geeta which commands fidelity of all to their specific dharma within the universal dharma in the great chain of Being (4). Buddhism equally, despite its reformist formally non- Vedic teachings also points to a very old anterior wisdom, alluded to in the Nikayas as an ancient city lost in the forest which the Buddha has rediscovered (5).

On that revered historical background, many predecessors and leaders of the Indian national revival that aimed to free the country from British colonial rule proclaimed the undying relevance of the Indic wisdom in its applications to society, the economy, and statecraft. Invocations of the ancestral heritage in its best features are found in the writings of Swami Dayananda, B. G. Tilak, Swami Vivekananda, Rabindranath Tagore, Sri Aurobindo, Annie Besant, M.K. Gandhi, K.B. Hedgewar, V. Savarkar, D. Upadhyaya and so many others. There is hence no denying that these eminent figures were authentic ‘Renaissance Conservatives’, acknowledging the evolution of mankind and critically accepting the positive elements of modernity while remaining anchored to various degrees in the wisdom of the Indic legacy. That position led all of them to reject the ideological tenets of Marxism and its affiliated theories.

Can we therefore draw a doctrinal bridge between conservatism in the Western hemisphere and what may be defined as the Indigenous Indian social and political philosophy, rooted in the ancient literature and scholarship? In short, the answer is yes if by Western (mostly European) conservatism we mean a patriotic and humanistic fidelity to the spiritual and cultural legacy of the nation, also in its universal dimensions. In Burke’s words: ‘Society is indeed a contract (but) as the ends of such a partnership cannot be obtained among generations, it becomes a partnership not only between those who are living but between those who are living, those are dead and those who are to be born’. 

Burke sternly condemned the skeptical deism of some fellow Whigs, such as Bolingbroke whom he had ridiculed in his well-known 1756 satirical essay entitled  A Vindication of Natural Society. He famously wrote that ‘[The] attempt to reform the state on the basis of metaphysical doctrines alone is bound to end in despotism’ but by metaphysics, he meant utopian notions and arbitrary experimental systems, not the traditional spiritual ideals and principles that a society inherits from its history and culture and that he defended and upheld all his life. 

Indeed, Burke, though a Liberal, rejected Fox’s revolutionary temptations and, in the same vein, expressed respect for India’s traditional socio-economic values and achievements that he vehemently accused the East India Company of destroying.

It is noteworthy that, almost a hundred years after Burke, John Ruskin’s aesthetically inspired critique of the industrial-capitalist England of his day and of the alienation and ugliness it hosted, as compared to the city-states of the Italian Renaissance (6), acted as a revelation for the young Mohandas Gandhi who wrote his emancipatory call for Hind Swaraj as a nativist version of Ruskin’s Unto This Last. Indeed, Ruskin’s philosophy, in  its opposition to the industrial, business-ruled society of the Europe of his time, is conservative according to the original meaning of that word, although it advocates de facto a return to the past for retrieving lost treasures. In that dimension, authentic conservatism implies enlightened preservation and dynamic revival of the most valuable elements of a civilisational heritage.

A final reflection on the necessary fusion of tradition and creativity that intelligent conservatism requires, if it is to remain viable, is found in the extensive works of the Russian-French neo-Hegelian philosopher and public administrator Alexandre Kojève who, in the middle of the last century, tried to chart a path for post-War France. Although he is regarded as a reformist Marxist, Kojeve believed in the need for a ‘Latin Empire’ that would bring together Southern European nations around their common Graeco-Roman heritage. According to him the Latin-Mediterranean civilisation fosters the ideal of otium (cultured leisure) and contemplation and exalts the role of the Sage who, in the Platonic episteme, is more than a philosopher (sophia above philosophia). Kojève contrasted the Mediterranean oikoumene (common home) with the Germanic union, whose protestant-style ethic is focused on work, collective discipline, and capital accumulation. He viewed the modern German polity as a natural ally of the Anglo-Saxon universalist ‘empire’ whose hegemonic ‘standardising’ and exploitive ambitions he presciently warned against. He even anticipated the possibility of an alliance of sorts between the ‘Latin Empire’ (or Community) and the Slavosphere that he perceived as the essential reality behind the socialist Soviet Union of his time (7).

Some of his contemporaries suspected Kojève of being an apologist for Communism and the USSR but his suggestions about the direction of French policy influenced General De Gaulle with whom he corresponded and who read his writings. De Gaulle promoted the vision of a French-led European community, independent of the United States and Great Britain and open to Russia.  ‘Europe from the Atlantic to the Urals’ was a project he alluded to in various speeches from 1950 onwards.

In that line of thinking, as President of France, De Gaulle steadfastly opposed the admission of the United Kingdom into the young European community and frequently spoke against US foreign policy and the expanding American ideological influence.

Kojève’s work was a source of inspiration for Francis Fukuyama who also wrote about the End of History (8)  according to a neoliberal-globalist interpretation. Much earlier, the French philosopher had predicted a convergence of socio-political systems into a single planetary community, in line with the Hegelian (and not Marxist) dialectic and he thought that human beings, freed from the enslaving burden of toil, would dedicate most of their time to the cultivation of their respective post-historical intellectual, artistic and spiritual legacies. As a utopian idealist imbued with a deep respect for tradition, and a ‘Ghibelline’ faith in the ‘Holy Imperial’ archetype, Kojève may be regarded as a universalist Conservative who unknowingly echoed, in the Western classical context, the essence of the Sanatana and Rashtra Dharma, at once particularist and cosmic.

Hence it can be said that, if Indic traditional reformers belong to the international sodality of ‘perennial philosophers’, like the Chinese Confucians, they may find common ground with many of the classical Conservative thinkers but not with ‘Thatcherian’ capitalist liberals who hold that society -if it exists at all – is the outcome of a mere contract crafted to regulate the competition between individuals pursuing their personal, and often conflicting interests.

The End

NOTES:

1-Perennial Philosophy was defined in modern terms by Aldous Huxley in a book so entitled but the doctrine has its roots in antiquity and professes the existence of a supreme, divinely inspired universal wisdom that is common to the higher spiritual teachings of all religions and traditions. Agostino Steuco during the Italian Renaissance first used that definition whereas his contemporary Marsilio called it the Prisca Theologia. Twentieth Century perennial philosophers such as René Guénon, Ananda Coomaraswamy, and Mircea Eliade were traditionalists and regarded the agnostic, materialist and technocratic aspects of contemporary civilisation as manifestations of spiritual regression and cultural decline. Though, with rare exceptions, ‘Perennialists’ were not active in politics, they rejected all or most of the legacy of the French and other ‘Leftist’ revolutions as well as liberal capitalism and electoral democracy, They may therefore be regarded as true Conservatives, even if many ‘mainstream’ conservatives did not share their spiritual and philosophical convictions rooted in Platonism. Hermetism, Christian or Islamic mysticism and oriental esoteric schools of thought.

2- Pierre Gaxotte, La Révolution française (1928)

3-Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)

4-Sloka 42,43 of the second chapter of the Bhagavad Geeta reads: yāmimāṁ puṣhpitāṁ vāchaṁ pravadanty-avipaśhchitaḥ
veda-vāda-ratāḥ pārtha nānyad astīti vādinaḥ
kāmātmānaḥ swarga-parā janma-karma-phala-pradām
kriyā-viśheṣha-bahulāṁ bhogaiśhwarya-gatiṁ prati

It is a recall of the ageless Vedas but not so necessarily in their formal literal interpretation that prescribes elaborate rituals and ceremonies to the deities. Sri Krsna tells Arjuna to understand the higher and inner meaning of the Divine Word or Knowledge (Veda), ‘the Spirit above the Letter’ in the Pauline sense. In the following chapter (3, sloka 10) the Lord advises the Pandava prince to follow and respect the immemorial natural order as instituted ‘in the beginning’ by Prajapati, the Generator of the universe: saha-yajñāḥ prajāḥ sṛiṣhṭvā purovācha prajāpatiḥ
anena prasaviṣhyadhvam eṣha vo ’stviṣhṭa-kāma-dhuk

There can be no more succinct enunciation of the essence of true conservative inspiration and aspirations.

5-Nagara Sutta in Samyutta Nikaya, 12-65. The Buddha talks about when, walking on the old path followed by the Enlightened One, he discovered a lost antique city and asked the king to rebuild it in all its original splendor. It is a metaphor for the rediscovery of immemorial wisdom which is a return to a venerable past, a synthesis of restoration and revival.

6-John Ruskin, The Stones of Venice (1851-53)

7-Jonathan Culbreath, The Latin Empire: Alexandre Kojve’s European Conservatism in The European Conservative,  April 8, 2023. https://europeanconservative.com/articles/author/jonathan-culbreath/

8-Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and The Last Man (1992)