Moralism and Materialism
René Guénon — Civilization and Progress (5)
“ The conception of ‘moral progress’ represents the other predominant factor in modern mentality besides ‘material progress’, that is: sentimentality.
We are well aware that some people seek to oppose the domain of sentiment to that of matter, to make the development of the one a sort of counterbalance against the spread of the other, and to take for their ideal an equilibrium as settled as possible between these two complementary elements.
Such is perhaps -when all is said and done- the thought of the intuitionists who, associating intelligence inseparably with matter, hope to deliver themselves from it with the help of a rather vaguely defined instinct.
Such is still more certainly the thought of the pragmatists, who make utility a substitute for truth and consider it at one and the same time under its material and moral aspects.
Indeed, materialism and sentimentality -far from being the opposition- can scarcely exist one without the other, and they both attain side by side to their maximum development.
Materialism and sentimentality -far from being the opposition- can scarcely exist one without the other
It is easy to see the cause of this phenomenon: where intellectuality is reduced to a minimum, it is quite natural that sentiment should assume the mastery; and sentiment -in itself- is very close to the material order of things: there is nothing in all that concerns psychology more narrowly dependent on organism, and -in spite of Bergson- it is obviously sentiment and not intellect that is bound up with matter.
The intuitionists may reply -as we are well aware- that intelligence -such as they conceive it- is bound up with inorganic matter (it is always Cartesian mechanics and its derivations that they have in mind) and sentiment with living matter, which seems to them to rank higher in the scale of existences.
But whether inorganic or living, it is always matter, and in its domain there can never be any but sensible things; it is indeed impossible for the modern mentality, and for the philosophers who represent it, to escape from this limitation.
It follows then that the ‘moralism’ of our contemporaries is really nothing but the necessary complement of their practical materialism; and it would be an utter illusion to seek to exalt one to the determent of the other. ”
René Guénon — East and West 1924
