“In a traditional civilization it is almost inconceivable that a man should claim an idea as his own; [...] If an idea is true, it belongs equally to all who are capable of understanding it; if it is false, there is no credit in having invented it. A true idea cannot be 'new', for truth is not a product of the human mind; it exists independently of us, and all we have to do is to take cognizance of it; outside this knowledge there can be nothing but error: but do the moderns on the whole care much about truth, or do they even know what it is? Here again words have lost their real meaning, inasmuch as some people-for instance contemporary pragmatists-go so far as to misappropriate the word 'truth' for what is simply practical utility, that is to say for something that is quite foreign to the intellectual order. The logical outcome of the modern deviation is precisely the negation of truth, as well as of the intelligence of which truth is the object.”
Quote by René Guénon
Work
The Crisis of the Modern World
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