Editor’s Note: In this essay, Jason Reza Jorjani makes a convincing case against perennial philosophy, which tends to promote a static, anti-philosophical approach to truth.
If the New Right is to become the intellectual and spiritual vanguard of the Indo-European world, we archeo-futurists must recognize that the very idea of Sophia Perennis – which can be traced to Medieval Iran – is fundamentally anti-philosophical, and that the likes of Evola and Guenon were terribly wrong to legitimate Islam.
Recently the think tank of the Iranian Renaissance organization to which I belong asked me to give a presentation on whether, or to what extent, anything worthy of the name “Philosophy” transpired in Iran during the so-called ‘Islamic Golden Age.’ Although talks within the think tank are usually confidential and despite the particularly controversial content of this presentation, originally entitled “Where is the Iranian Hegel?”, the moderator of our sessions apparently considered it so educational that the decision was made to post it publicly. Since the cat is more or less out of the bag on this, I see no harm in sharing with you a heavily redacted portion of this presentation that has profound significance for the ideological structure of the New Right movement.
You see, in the course of preparing for this presentation, something that I had long suspected came into crystal clear focus for me: “Perennial Philosophy” is not Philosophy at all. In fact, it…