Traditionalism: The Radical Project for Restoring Sacred Order
by Mark Sedgwick
Pelican, £25, 432 pages
Traditionalism has lately been used, confusingly, to label phenomena as diverse as the geopolitics of (alleged) Putin guru Aleksandr Dugin, the psychology of Jordan Peterson and King Charles III’s views on architecture and the environment. Mark Sedgwick’s new book does much to clarify the picture.
Traditionalism boasts an intellectual lineage stretching back to the Catholic priest and Venetian humanist Marsilio Ficino (1433-1499). Ficino developed an integrative approach to what we would now term “comparative religion”. For Ficino, echoes between Jewish, Christian and Muslim texts dealing with mystical experience posed prima facia challenges for Christianity’s claims to a monopoly on revealed truth.
