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International Dialogue

International Dialogue

Desmond Maurer

Abstract

A book by Rusmir Mahmutćehajić is always an event. His books are normally relatively short and always make a clear argument, albeit an argument many are unwilling to hear. For those with eyes to see and ears to hear, he goes straight to the heart of the matter—and his theme is always the same—how to live a good life and how to be a good person, under the troubling conditions of modernity. His answer is also consistent—it is by the embrace of plurality and difference in the service of this one goal, the ethically good life, an embrace that is informed by immersion in tradition and the wisdom of our elders and of those who have pondered the eternal questions before us (as represented by the philosophia perennis in the lineage of René Guénon). By contrast, he sees modernity as a series of reductive projects that apply unitary schemes of life to create different species of human, eradicating difference within the group by establishing absolute difference between groups. Surrender to modernity replaces tradition and rootedness and inherited wisdom with functional indoctrination. The former approach thus places the proper realization of the self (in line with what Kant would term the categorical imperatives, as taught by the intellectual traditions) above all other goals, while the latter values the self essentially as an instance of the group. The former is inherently ethical and intellectual, the latter inherently alienated and instrumentalized.

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