Commentary: The "Neoplatonic" Structure of Traditionalist Perennialism
This was a response I gave to some well measured questions concerning Traditionalist Perennialism, particularly the Schuonian variant. Most of the questions are not particularly new, and may have bad forms when asked in other ways, but the critic in question put them in a form that compelled a response, one that is more detailed than what I'd usually give. The questions are concerning:
The Exoteric/Esoteric distinction.
Morality, particularly the question of relativism.
Elitism, usually of the spiritual kind.
The possibility of a Christian perennialism, and its apparent contradiction.
With that piece of background, here is my (slightly edited) response:
Thank you for this, it is better than the critiques I normally hear from those uninformed about the traditionalist school. I’ll respond point by point. But before that, I will say that I believe the key to the perennialist system as expounded by Schuon, Guenon, Coomaraswamy, and their followers is found in Neoplatonism as such, or again, in a particular “Shankarite” understanding of Hinduism that is (strangely) consonant with the "monism" of the Neoplatonists. This acknowledgement of commonality is also present in David Bentley Hart’s work. He even somewhat equates the systems in an essay. For the Traditionalists in particular, the chain of being as found in Neoplatonism guides how they think about everything, from politics to how they understand tradition. Their dualisms are resolved in that (in the case of Schuon and Guenon, “five step”) chain of being. I won’t be able to use many quotes from main traditionalist authors because this is simply a stream of thought I don’t want to break up, but I hope I can get my points across. With that we can address your points
The Exoteric/Esoteric distinction is, in light of that clarification, an application of the platonic distinction between the sensible and intelligible within that chain of being. In understanding revelation as a “descent”, they believe this “descent” cannot but be thought in the terms appropriate to emanation and ultimately, “creation”. Just as the sensible is the realm of fragmentation, so is the exoteric a realm of fragmentation, between and within traditions. Exoteric traditions must be “sensibly” separate. But the nature of reality, in this “neo-neoplatonic” tradition, cannot be fragmented. Just as individuals of a species are united by an intelligible form, so must religions be united by an “intelligible religion”, and this is the “perennial tradition”. To use the famous example, just as the form of the flower manifests “perennially” in many places and at many times as individual flowers, with different properties and such, and similarly with more pronounced differences between animals (including humans), so too the perennial tradition manifests in time as different “individual” traditions who manifest the various possibilities of manifestation of the perennial tradition. It is important to note that no one has, or can “box” the perennial tradition. Schuon has stated more than once that he is simply expounding based on a particular tradition and that the true religion is simply impossible to put in words. It is the religion of heaven. He (and Guenon) considered Hinduism to be the purest expression of this tradition, but they did not consider Hinduism the perennial tradition, or that it was perfect. What they did was explain traditions in a way so as to “make clear” their intelligibility. This was not a perfect system, but a huge project whereby they tried to make traditions “transparent” to intellection. That is how they understood reason and its place. This is a “symbolic metaphysics”, right down to how they viewed scripture. Everything is a symbol in the sense that the sensible manifests and communicates the intelligible, if viewed right. If viewed wrong, it is as vanity and will leave one lost in the winds of life. So, it is important to not see the exoteric and esoteric as a strict dividing line between two planar regions, but as levels on a hierarchy analogous to that of the platonists (and the traditionalists are platonists). It is only with the symbols of the exoteric that one can know the esoteric. One cannot dispense with the language of Christianity in order to find the core of Christianity, Just as one doesn’t stab themselves in order to find their soul. As Schuon said, “the accident, whatever its quality, can never add anything to the Substance. But one could also contend that the accident is nothing other than the Substance, or that it partakes of the latter’s reality; or yet, that it possesses all the reality corresponding to its nature or possibility”. The unity of religions is found “through” them and not by picking them apart. This ambiguity of participation can be seen in the case of Christianity where there are times Schuon speaks of Christianity as an esoteric tradition, and yet still exoteric. As for his quote on the Trinity, Schuon simply means that the Trinity is an external codification of an eternal Truth, which can be identified with the very truth of God. That is what the exoteric really means, “individuation”, which on the "flat plane" does lead to conflict. There is only one absolute truth, and that is God himself, in his unapproachable Unity. All others must be relative. But relativity is not absolute separation, but limited participation in the full reality of the essence of all dogmas, God him/her/themself. This is nowhere more pronounced than in Cutsinger’s essay “disagreeing to agree” where he shows how, when understood well, and when we probe the “exoteric” depth of our tradition, we are open to truths that unite all things. He does this using the example of the Christian understanding of the incarnation and the Islamic Tahwid, without watering both down. He, as a Schuonian, took Schuon’s principles and enumerated the doctrines of both faiths “orthodoxly” and outlined their implications, and suddenly, that “transcendent horizon” (DBH’s words) where both doctrines meet in “unity without mixture” (pun intended) opened up. I have not seen a better explanation that shows that a proper understanding of the Trinity leads straight to perennialist beliefs.
The question of morality is a vexed one for perennialists, and for Schuon in particular. In general, perennialists are often accused of moral relativism. I know that is not what you intended for all perennialists, and I find none of that in most of those I read anyway. But this is an accusation that has special force for Schuon. I have read Schuon’s moral pronouncements and winced more than a few times. But, then again, the same principles apply. What is evil? An absence. In DBH’s words, a partial good is also a partial evil. No one is unqualifiedly good, but God, as Christ says. This affects every single thing we do. Whatever good we do is partial, and is hence a partial evil. Works do not save, even if they are important. This is why contemplatives focus on “being”, not “doing”. Doings are secondary acts, motions in becoming, and are always privative in that sense, but Being is perfect, being simply is. In those scary “new age” words, being is to find one’s centre, and one’s centre is God, and it is God that is the eternal person of persons, all in all. Creation is incarnation, as JD Wood (who isn’t a perennialist) would say. This viewpoint is also as “Neoplatonic” as the come. More specifically, the ontological bases of Schuon’s moral pronouncements are found in Proclus. Quoting Antonio Vargas (also not a perennialist): “the Procline wiseman might very well read the Christian Scriptures as having “a divine inner sense, but a demonic surface”, as Proclus reads Homer”. What may, on the surface, have a privative and debased meaning, can be a symbol of higher things. Schuon is not here saying there was no sin, but that the sin is transcended, and it turns out for Good. The only way such a thing can happen is because higher good always burst through the lower, and the symbolic always confounds and embodies the historical (how else can one read the resurrection as true in both the historical and symbolic sense, as the authors portray it?) This is how the allegorical works. What is demonic can always have an angelic interpretation, especially because all symbols have two faces (e.g. dragons are both good, as in seraphim and in the eastern portrayal, and bad in the dragon in revelation). The exoteric is not invalid, it is absorbed, either by another exotericism (Schuon bases his reading also on the Islamic account of Solomon as a sage), or (and even simultaneously) an esoteric reading that gives a meaning for a particular purpose. One can disagree with the reading, but that doesn’t change the fact that the principle stands, otherwise we can’t even read scripture (for example, DBH has made it clear on one occasion that in a plain reading of Genesis, God is the bad guy, and the serpent told the truth).
The question of elitism is perhaps the most delicate part of this discussion, even more than the moral component since it is most likely the elitist stance that can lead to a moral relativism that fits the interest of the self-perceived elite. But, let me approach this from a direct angle: Why is elitism bad? Why is an aristocratic mindset bad? There is no escaping it. In our world at least, there are always elites. Elitism is as much self-proclaimed as it is constituted by outside attribution. It may not be an unqualified good (again, nothing but God is unqualifiedly good) but a world without elites is ultimately impossible save possibly in the eschaton. If you deny elites, they will simply go underground and be even more dangerous. But to be specific, does anyone really believe that everyone will understand God in terms appropriate to classical theism? Because that is all perennialism is: a thoroughly consistent and “reductive” classical theism, considered as both a rational exercise and a spiritual practice, done in the context of a religious tradition, in continuity with the many spiritual teachers of the past, especially (for perennialists like me) the Neoplatonists for whom philosophical speculation and piety in view of theosis were two sides of the same coin. One difference with the older pagan Neoplatonists is that, unlike them, perennialists are as universalist as they come. A traditionalist should not consider themselves better than anyone, especially those who are faithful to their god. If they are a spiritual elite, they are that for reasons of practicality. Some of us cannot simply be content with the usual words. Some are, and that is fine. Schuon himself notes that there are saints who knew nothing of classical theism yet are giants spiritually. They weren’t “intellectual” in the sense of being philosophers, but it is true that those who espouse the perennial philosophy or something similar, perhaps in the attenuated form of simple classical theism (For example, Thomism), are always in the minority. They are an “elite” of sorts, and this has nothing to do with money or status. It denotes nothing but a special vocation. The apokatastasis respects no one’s status. All will reach theosis, which is the goal anyway. If there’s anything I know that Schuon and Guenon attack, it is idea they consider false and misguided. One may disagree, but we should always note that they rarely ever attacked persons, least of all the common faithful, for whom Christ came. The “elitism” concerns a special vocation, that is, those for whom the Journey to God involves what may be called “theurgic philosophy”, in continuation with the older theurgists (and discontinuation in the form of their acknowledgement of universal salvation) and is very malleable to interpretation by nature.
Lastly, a Christian is a person that follows Christ, and who is Christ? The Logos made man, who, although fully embodied, was not constrained by that body but is still the omnipresent word. The perennialist, the Christian perennialist in this case, is one who grants that he is equally, and differently revealed in other traditions, and finds nothing in such a statement that contradicts any Christian dogma. For the Christian, Christ is himself the perennial tradition, who brought it to man, and has been bringing it to man, in ever novel forms. It is not by mistake Christ says he fulfils and doesn’t abolish the Torah. He is the “Uncreated Torah” of the Jewish esoterists. The only problem I think you can find with the perennial tradition is not its logic, as if it is understood right, is something most of us already believe. The problem is about agreement. Not everyone will agree that there is a perennial tradition. But that is not a rebuttal. Examined on its own basis, and charitably, it is true, and ultimately nothing else matters. One doesn’t need to know it to be saved. I would say everyone already knows it, but that isn’t needed. If one is already a universalist, one already grants a limited perennialism. I see nothing contradictory between being a Christian and being a perennialist, because I see both positions contained in each other. To end this long response, I will put two quotes from James Cutsinger, one from his “Perennial Philosophy and Christianity” and the other from his “The Mystery of the Two Natures”:
“The concern is often expressed that a perennialist interpretation of Christianity has the effect of demoting Christ, making him only one among a variety of competing saviors. But if ‘by their fruits’ (Matt. 7:20) one may discern whether religions are valid and if the good fruit of sanctity is often found growing along non-Christian paths, it will perhaps seem instead that the power and scope of the Son of God are actually much greater than Christians had been led to believe, and the perennial philosophy will itself appear as a kind of inclusivism, but with an inclusivity no longer centered on Christianity or the church or its sacraments, but on Jesus Christ, the saving Source of all wisdom.”
“Far from diminishing our full participation in Christ, prayerful reflection on the mystery of His two natures cannot but do Him great honor, for whatever a man’s traditional path toward salvation might be, it is one and the same Logos that is the true Savior of all. His scope is unlimited, extending far beyond the boundaries of the Christian religion to “other sheep which are not of this fold” (Jn 10:16), and His treasures are bequeathed to us all.”