ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the modern world as being dependent upon a culture of forgetting. It focuses on one particular critic of modernity, the French perennialist Ren Gunon. Gunon shows us that antimodernism is not time-bound or limited to a particular milieu. Mark Sedgwick suggests that Gunon has had some impact in Islamic countries, such as Iran and Turkey, but not Egypt, despite the fact that he lived in the latter country for over 20 years. Accordingly, Luc Benoist suggests that tradition is akin to the spiritual relationship between a master and pupil, that it to say of a formative influence analogous to that of spiritual vocation or inspiration, as actual for the spirit as heredity is for the body. The notion that civilisation is declining and is in need of a fundamental renewal is an ancient one consistent with Greek and Roman thought.
