14. René Guénon: The Multiple States of Being
A Sourcebook in Global Philosophy - Mohammed Rustom
Gregory Vandamme [+]
Université catholique de Louvain
Description
René Guénon (d. 1951 CE) was a French metaphysician who exerted a profound influence on the dissemination in the West of metaphysical principles derived from the great spiritual and intellectual traditions of the East. Among the heritages from which Guénon draws abundantly in order to formulate his doctrinal synthesis is that of Advaita Vedanta (as formulated by Shankara), to whose technical vocabulary and conceptual categories he regularly takes resource. At the same time, Guénon himself would become personally involved with the Islamic tradition of Sufism, and in particular the school of Ibn ʿArabī. The major philosophical interest of Guénon’s work lies in his ability to translate the perspective of traditional metaphysics into a language accessible to contemporary readers, while also pointing up its distinctive differences with concepts and systems derived from Western philosophy. The text presented here, wherein Guénon proposes a philosophical justification for human freedom, represents the final chapter of his important work in ontology The Multiple States of Being. Our author addresses freedom at the metaphysical level, basing it on the articulation between “Being”—which for Guénon designates manifested being, or existence—and “non-being”—which designates unmanifested being, or the potentiality of existence. The text also responds to various modern theories of freedom, such as those of Descartes and Bergson.