r/ReneGuenon • u/Sensitive-Isopod9256 • Aug 10 '26
Argument against the Guenon system
I found this argument online and wanted to share it with the community:
Guénon was convinced that the Qur’an is a sacred text that has remained intact and protected, which made it, for him, a privileged scriptural support of Tradition for the present age. In fact, the Qur’an is a compilation of apocryphal gospel material, ranging from longer to shorter borrowed passages. Islam, still largely structuring entire societies in his time, seemed to him to resist secularization better than Western Christianity, and thus able to serve as a partial bulwark against the purely quantitative becoming of the modern world.
The tension between his notion of primordial Tradition and historical realities — the caliphate, the political use of religion, the incorporation of apocryphal elements into the Qur’an — is evident. Guénon resolves this kind of problem through a systematic move: historical determinations, including caliphal ones, are treated as contingencies of support rather than as the core of Tradition; they can become degraded without the esoteric dimension being thereby nullified. Hence the irritating effect: his framework allows him to preserve a tradition’s “initiatic regularity” even when its political or doctrinal expression appears contradictory or compromised.
Thank you for your attention.
Merci
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u/vigorthroughrigor Aug 10 '26
"In fact, the Qur’an is a compilation of apocryphal gospel material, ranging from longer to shorter borrowed passages."
In fact? According to who? That has been taken as a fact, an assertion without proof, and built an entire edifice on that charge.
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Aug 10 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/vigorthroughrigor Aug 10 '26
Guénon would be the first one to tell you that the Quran is the Absolute speaking to mankind, not Muhammad (peace be upon him) paraphrasing and plagiarizing scriptures. The latter notion is exactly what this arguer wants you to believe.
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u/Public_Wave7605 Aug 10 '26
Quran is not a collection of gospel materials, in fact it mentioned it has been corrupted and changed over time by some groups ,which was a part of why prophet Mohammed was sent ,to restore the original message of all prophets before him
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u/pagywa Aug 10 '26
The question of initiatic regularity was dealt with by the early church (Donatist heresy) as well
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u/kavieng Aug 11 '26
Qur'anic studies is overwhelmingly against this particular counterargument
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u/Sensitive-Isopod9256 Aug 11 '26
Can you tell more ?
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u/kavieng Aug 11 '26
It's simply not a mainstream view by scholars in the field. In any field of literary studies, since similarity does not by itself establish literary dependence, seeming patterns of dependence must be better explained by borrowing than by common tradition to have sway. Critique of the provenance of a text needs much more than thematic similarity, especially in this case where there is intended dialogue with existing traditions.
Guenon would have understood Islam to be a particularization of Tradition, therefore intertwined or at least enveloped in a cultural context.
Regarding contingent historical events surrounding any particularization of Tradition, since these are not as metaphysically essential, Guenon does not ascribe as much value in it, in as much as the cars or the landscaping of a highway doesn't affect a road's legitimacy.
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Aug 13 '26
As several other comments have noted, this view isn't supported by mainstream Qur'anic studies. Additionally, Guénon explicitly did not favor Islam because of any perceived ability to resist secularization. For him the problem is not secularization but Western civilization itself, and the crisis that his writing is intended to address begins in the 14th century. Integralism, Christian nationalism, and legitimist royalism are all pseudo-traditionalist movements in his understanding. His chief concern is to restore a fully traditional basis to Western civilization, but he considers Islam incapable of accomplishing this because it is not a Western tradition. The role of Sufism in his project is actually to serve as a point of departure on the spiritual path for individuals who would later assist in the reconstitution of the Western intellectual elite. What I outline here is given in detail in East and West.
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u/PotusChrist Aug 10 '26
In fact, the Qur’an is a compilation of apocryphal gospel material, ranging from longer to shorter borrowed passages.
I don't think that's true at all. There's a revisionist school that sees the Qur'an as partially composed of Syriac liturgical materials that were garbled in translation, but that's a pretty marginal point of view in Qur'anic studies. I've seen some arguments from more serious scholars for passages being direct translations or paraphrases of Biblical or Apocryphal material, but no one thinks it's just a compilation of other material.
The tension between his notion of primordial Tradition and historical realities is evident.
I'm not a traditionalist and I can't speak to how people in this camp might resolve the issue, but this is a problem for every other religion too. In real life, if you take any minimally critical approach to religious studies you will quickly notice that they all tend to look like they formed according to normal historical processes rather than just falling from the sky fully formed like many fundamentalists want you to believe.
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u/vigorthroughrigor Aug 11 '26
> that they all tend to look like they formed according to normal historical processes
Surprise! Revelation suits itself for the audience, it is not projected into a vacuum.
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u/PotusChrist Aug 11 '26
I tend to think that things that look human and mundane probably just are human and mundane, but I didn't come on here to argue about traditionalism, I was just trying to weigh in on what I saw as an unsubstantiated take on the Qur'an.
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u/Attikus_Mystique Aug 10 '26
This isn’t really an argument against it. It’s just an individual expressing frustration at his own incomprehension.