Let's deconstruct "traditionalism"

[Romaios]

But you see modernism is already able to incorporate enough of the old stuff into the present, as it grew out of that.

If you look at it through the lens of Ecclesiastes (which I tried above), the traditionalism/modernism alternative is a mere illusion. People weren't that much different back then and aren't much different now. Enlightenment and progress are also (at least partly) anthropocentric illusions at the much larger scale of life/the Universe. They vanish into thin air like the dream of one who awakens when a volcano errupts or a tsunami comes. All we build is just cobwebs. Man did not irreversibly conquer nature or push his limits very far. We just like to believe so. We shouldn't fool ourselves, though.  

As I see it, progress is just expanding the boundaries of freedom, incorporating more, formerly oppressed groups.  While traditionalist movements are way more parochial and bitching at the present. Or at least the more progressive  parts of the present. They are all quite at peace with the most severe forms of economic injustice though.

Traditional ways seem to be more at peace with the universe, are less hostile to the environment, bring more emotional and spiritual balance. They are not militant and they are quite vulnerable. They don't fight evil with evil. They promote sustainable life-styles. They can be resilient - as the Tao Te Jing says about water. In the end, 'the meek shall inherit the earth'. Or what's left of it after the progressive and aggressive are done with it.  

[augustin717]

If you look at it through the lens of Ecclesiastes (which I tried above), the traditionalism/modernism alternative is a mere illusion. People weren't that much different back then and aren't much different now. Enlightenment and progress are also (at least partly) anthropocentric illusions at the much larger scale of life/the Universe. They vanish into thin air like the dream of one who awakens when a volcano errupts or a tsunami comes. All we build is just cobwebs. Man did not irreversibly conquer nature or push his limits very far. We just like to believe so. We shouldn't fool ourselves, though. 

All leftists know how fragile civilization is. No argument there.  But to deny that any change has ever happened. I don't know what illusion that is. Perennialism?!

[Alpo]

So, to quote one of your 'favourite' authors: "What is lost when something is gained?"   

Perhaps some idyllism, that never was as idyllic to begin with is lost, like a nice home-loomed shirt. What is gained? Berhaps more women getting to have a say in whom they marry? I think it's not a terrible exchange. Neither do some of those that tasted that, think so.

Culture is lost. I'd rather have people wearing traditional clothes, eating home-made food and speaking their native language than whole world wearing jeans, eating McFood and speakind American English

[augustin717]

So, to quote one of your 'favourite' authors: "What is lost when something is gained?"  

Perhaps some idyllism, that never was as idyllic to begin with is lost, like a nice home-loomed shirt. What is gained? Berhaps more women getting to have a say in whom they marry? I think it's not a terrible exchange. Neither do some of those that tasted that, think so.

Culture is lost. I'd rather have people wearing traditional clothes, eating home-made food and speaking their native language than whole world wearing jeans, eating McFood and speakind American English

No you cry over spilled milk. These changes though are due to the dynamics of global capital. But anyways no traditionalist grouplet will bring these back. Perhaps if global capital is crushed, or rather, socialized, then new "localisms" of that kind or who knows will arise.

[Alpo]

No you cry over spilled milk. These changes though are due to the dynamics of global capital.

Or global Socialism that created places like Alexanderplatz.

But anyway, I believe you are partly correct and that's one of the reasons why I haven't ended up as a Libertarian.

[Romaios]

All leftists know how fragile civilization is. No argument there.  But to deny that any change has ever happened. I don't know what illusion that is. Perennialism?!

Tradition (not traditionalism - its modern caricature) would be able to incorporate change. It just resists 'change for change's sake', 'progress for the sake of progress' or for fear one should be 'left behind'. Man should have a core, a soul that's not so easily sold to "any spirit" - the headscarves and the Byzantine garbs and the onion domes are nice, but not all-important or essential for salvation.

Traditional man doesn't want to be so open minded that his brain should fall out, as Chesterton put it. That's all.

[augustin717]

All leftists know how fragile civilization is. No argument there.  But to deny that any change has ever happened. I don't know what illusion that is. Perennialism?!

Tradition (not traditionalism - its modern caricature) would be able to incorporate change. It just resists 'change for change's sake', 'progress for the sake of progress' or for fear one should be 'left behind'. Man should have a core, a soul that's not so easily sold to "any spirit" - the headscarves and the Byzantine garbs and the onion domes are nice, but not all-important or essential for salvation.

It doesn't want to be so open minded that one's brain should fall out, as Chesterton put it.

Chesterton was witty. Sometimes. Otherwise his thinking was hopelessly idealistic. He probably fathered much of today's traditionalist petty ideologies.

[ialmisry]

Why is it all important for nearly all self-described "traditionalists" to oppose women's rights, gay rights, worker's rights, immigration, Gypsies etc etc? For some pater familias to feel like he's big and has got power? In the end I think so...On the micro-level I mean. In the macro it's all about the power of capital to easily dispose people as needed by the demands of it's inner logic.

what a load of crap.  And from some one who lived, however briefly, under papa familias Ceaucescu, the very opposite of Tradition and traditionalism, and author (at least in name) of "The Decisive Victories of Socialism and the Triumph of Marxist-Leninism"
http://books.google.com/books/about/Victoriile_hot%C4%83r%C3%AEtoare_ale_socialismul.html?id=U37SXwAACAAJ

In the land that required each woman to put out five "children of Ceaucescu" (and mandated that their apparati be examined en masse at their workplace to make sure all was in proper working order), homosexuality was just as banned as before the EU entry, some workers were worked to death and the rest were just pretended to be paid, along with a generous use of the medieval corvee, nationals were expelled let alone letting foreigners come in (or even Romanians-I knew someone who was prosecuted for having come from Bessarabia), and Gypsies were herded into ghettos and their culture supressed...it seems you are coming here and doing a heavy load of projecting in your complaints about "Traditionalism," which seems to be nothing more your envy filled caricature of (white/WASP) American conservatism, especially of the evangelical sort, who have no concept of tradition although having one.

[augustin717]

Why is it all important for nearly all self-described "traditionalists" to oppose women's rights, gay rights, worker's rights, immigration, Gypsies etc etc? For some pater familias to feel like he's big and has got power? In the end I think so...On the micro-level I mean. In the macro it's all about the power of capital to easily dispose people as needed by the demands of it's inner logic.

what a load of crap.  And from some one who lived, however briefly, under papa familias Ceaucescu, the very opposite of Tradition and traditionalism, and author (at least in name) of "The Decisive Victories of Socialism and the Triumph of Marxist-Leninism"
http://books.google.com/books/about/Victoriile_hot%C4%83r%C3%AEtoare_ale_socialismul.html?id=U37SXwAACAAJ

In the land that required each woman to put out five "children of Ceaucescu" (and mandated that their apparati be examined en masse at their workplace to make sure all was in proper working order), homosexuality was just as banned as before the EU entry, some workers were worked to death and the rest were just pretended to be paid, along with a generous use of the medieval corvee, nationals were expelled let alone letting foreigners come in (or even Romanians-I knew someone who was prosecuted for having come from Bessarabia), and Gypsies were herded into ghettos and their culture supressed...it seems you are coming here and doing a heavy load of projecting in your complaints about "Traditionalism," which seems to be nothing more your envy filled caricature of (white/WASP) American conservatism, especially of the evangelical sort, who have no concept of tradition although having one.

Unlike you I do not look at a past epoch to be reproduced here and now. Or in the future. But your party runs on that sort of manure: "let's make America [great/christian, free/capitalist/libertarian etc] again." You all wail and weep for lost golden ages. It's what get you votes.

[ialmisry]

So, to quote one of your 'favourite' authors: "What is lost when something is gained?"   

Perhaps some idyllism, that never was as idyllic to begin with is lost, like a nice home-loomed shirt. What is gained? Berhaps more women getting to have a say in whom they marry? I think it's not a terrible exchange. Neither do some of those that tasted that, think so.

how much did many men have a say in whom they marry, in that "idylic time" you accuse them of?

[Romaios]

Chesterton was witty. Sometimes. Otherwise his thinking was hopelessly idealistic. He probably fathered much of today's traditionalist petty ideologies.

I would expect a decent "deconstruction of traditionalism" to be more complex a language game than a sentence-long sketch of some genealogy of "reactionary" ideas.

                     Name-calling.

                                   Petty.

                                         The high seat of judgement.

[ialmisry]

Why is it all important for nearly all self-described "traditionalists" to oppose women's rights, gay rights, worker's rights, immigration, Gypsies etc etc? For some pater familias to feel like he's big and has got power? In the end I think so...On the micro-level I mean. In the macro it's all about the power of capital to easily dispose people as needed by the demands of it's inner logic.

what a load of crap.  And from some one who lived, however briefly, under papa familias Ceaucescu, the very opposite of Tradition and traditionalism, and author (at least in name) of "The Decisive Victories of Socialism and the Triumph of Marxist-Leninism"
http://books.google.com/books/about/Victoriile_hot%C4%83r%C3%AEtoare_ale_socialismul.html?id=U37SXwAACAAJ

In the land that required each woman to put out five "children of Ceaucescu" (and mandated that their apparati be examined en masse at their workplace to make sure all was in proper working order), homosexuality was just as banned as before the EU entry, some workers were worked to death and the rest were just pretended to be paid, along with a generous use of the medieval corvee, nationals were expelled let alone letting foreigners come in (or even Romanians-I knew someone who was prosecuted for having come from Bessarabia), and Gypsies were herded into ghettos and their culture supressed...it seems you are coming here and doing a heavy load of projecting in your complaints about "Traditionalism," which seems to be nothing more your envy filled caricature of (white/WASP) American conservatism, especially of the evangelical sort, who have no concept of tradition although having one.

Unlike you I do not look at a pat epoch to be reproduced here and now. But your party runs on that sort of manure: "let's make America [great/christian, free/capitalist/libertarian etc] again."

and what do you call that manure your party, and more to the point, world-view runs on?

[ialmisry]

So, to quote one of your 'favourite' authors: "What is lost when something is gained?"  

Perhaps some idyllism, that never was as idyllic to begin with is lost, like a nice home-loomed shirt. What is gained? Berhaps more women getting to have a say in whom they marry? I think it's not a terrible exchange. Neither do some of those that tasted that, think so.

Culture is lost. I'd rather have people wearing traditional clothes, eating home-made food and speaking their native language than whole world wearing jeans, eating McFood and speakind American English

No you cry over spilled milk. These changes though are due to the dynamics of global capital. But anyways no traditionalist grouplet will bring these back. Perhaps if global capital is crushed, or rather, socialized, then new "localisms" of that kind or who knows will arise.

So this is no honest discussion of Traditionalism.  Just another Marxist rant.

[augustin717]

Chesterton was witty. Sometimes. Otherwise his thinking was hopelessly idealistic. He probably fathered much of today's traditionalist petty ideologies.

I would expect a decent "deconstruction of traditionalism" to be more complex a language game than a sentence-long sketch of some genealogy of "reactionary" ideas.

                     Name-calling.

                                   Petty.

                                         The high seat of judgement.

Is it petty to say that Chesterton wasn't a a thinker of the highest caliber? Perhaps unnecessary in this tread but hardly name calling.

[ialmisry]

All leftists know how fragile civilization is. No argument there.  But to deny that any change has ever happened. I don't know what illusion that is. Perennialism?!

Tradition (not traditionalism - its modern caricature) would be able to incorporate change. It just resists 'change for change's sake', 'progress for the sake of progress' or for fear one should be 'left behind'. Man should have a core, a soul that's not so easily sold to "any spirit" - the headscarves and the Byzantine garbs and the onion domes are nice, but not all-important or essential for salvation.

It doesn't want to be so open minded that one's brain should fall out, as Chesterton put it.

Chesterton was witty. Sometimes. Otherwise his thinking was hopelessly idealistic. He probably fathered much of today's traditionalist petty ideologies.

He has passed the test of time.

Marx, in the dust heap of history, failed.

[tweety234]

In so far as they tried to imitate/reproduce "Byzantium" the Phanariotes probably only succeeded in making a caricature out of it. After all they were at the mercy of the Sultan/Padishah. It was a "let's pretend" sort of a game.

watch how you are speaking about my ancestors.

[augustin717]

All leftists know how fragile civilization is. No argument there.  But to deny that any change has ever happened. I don't know what illusion that is. Perennialism?!

Tradition (not traditionalism - its modern caricature) would be able to incorporate change. It just resists 'change for change's sake', 'progress for the sake of progress' or for fear one should be 'left behind'. Man should have a core, a soul that's not so easily sold to "any spirit" - the headscarves and the Byzantine garbs and the onion domes are nice, but not all-important or essential for salvation.

It doesn't want to be so open minded that one's brain should fall out, as Chesterton put it.

Chesterton was witty. Sometimes. Otherwise his thinking was hopelessly idealistic. He probably fathered much of today's traditionalist petty ideologies.

He has passed the test of time.

Marx, in the dust heap of history, failed.

You are a troll... yawn...

[ialmisry]

Chesterton was witty. Sometimes. Otherwise his thinking was hopelessly idealistic. He probably fathered much of today's traditionalist petty ideologies.

I would expect a decent "deconstruction of traditionalism" to be more complex a language game than a sentence-long sketch of some genealogy of "reactionary" ideas.

                     Name-calling.

                                   Petty.

                                         The high seat of judgement.

Is it petty to say that Chesterton wasn't a a thinker of the highest caliber? Perhaps unnecessary in this tread but hardly name calling.

in a thread started for petty name calling, sure is.

[ialmisry]

All leftists know how fragile civilization is. No argument there.  But to deny that any change has ever happened. I don't know what illusion that is. Perennialism?!

Tradition (not traditionalism - its modern caricature) would be able to incorporate change. It just resists 'change for change's sake', 'progress for the sake of progress' or for fear one should be 'left behind'. Man should have a core, a soul that's not so easily sold to "any spirit" - the headscarves and the Byzantine garbs and the onion domes are nice, but not all-important or essential for salvation.

It doesn't want to be so open minded that one's brain should fall out, as Chesterton put it.

Chesterton was witty. Sometimes. Otherwise his thinking was hopelessly idealistic. He probably fathered much of today's traditionalist petty ideologies.

He has passed the test of time.

Marx, in the dust heap of history, failed.

You are a troll... yawn...

"Sleep, sleep sweet Prince. Your time for rest has finally come. All the lies, and the deceit. Are finally undone. Sleep, sleep sweet Prince. Your job is done."

[Jetavan]

All leftists know how fragile civilization is. No argument there.  But to deny that any change has ever happened. I don't know what illusion that is. Perennialism?!

Tradition (not traditionalism - its modern caricature) would be able to incorporate change. It just resists 'change for change's sake', 'progress for the sake of progress' or for fear one should be 'left behind'. Man should have a core, a soul that's not so easily sold to "any spirit" - the headscarves and the Byzantine garbs and the onion domes are nice, but not all-important or essential for salvation.

It doesn't want to be so open minded that one's brain should fall out, as Chesterton put it.

Chesterton was witty. Sometimes. Otherwise his thinking was hopelessly idealistic. He probably fathered much of today's traditionalist petty ideologies.

He has passed the test of time.

Marx, in the dust heap of history, failed.

You are a troll... yawn...

"Sleep, sleep sweet Prince. Your time for rest has finally come. All the lies, and the deceit. Are finally undone. Sleep, sleep sweet Prince. Your job is done."

Sounds like Eminem lyrics.

[ialmisry]

To save this thread from its OP:

Traditionalism: the dead world of the living; the orientation of keeping a fossil on life support indefinitely, resisting any signs of life, growth and change.

[Romaios]

Is it petty to say that Chesterton wasn't a a thinker of the highest caliber? Perhaps unnecessary in this tread but hardly name calling.

So what? I wasn't quoting him as "a thinker of the highest caliber" or Scripture to base the core of some lofty argument on him. There's room for comedians, babushkas, novelists, Elders, politicians and so forth on a thread like this (in the best postmodern fashion), I should think - or do you indeed intend it to be a dead-serious deconstruction and a definitive demolition of all the idola tribus of the Orthodox?

Just imagine if Isa started to say which leftist sages he disconsiders as "thinkers of the highest caliber"...  

Oh - I just missed one. Marx is in the garbage bin of history already.  

[augustin717]

Ladies and gents, we've spent a couple of pleasant hours yelling at each other I hope. I'll go soon. Might come back later .

[augustin717]

Oh - I just missed one. Marx is in the garbage bin of history already.  laugh Roll Eyes

Yeah, and Chesterton's guilds and yeomen and elves and dwarfs are all back i  swing. Can one be more puerile than Isa?!

[ialmisry]

Is it petty to say that Chesterton wasn't a a thinker of the highest caliber? Perhaps unnecessary in this tread but hardly name calling.

So what? I wasn't quoting him as "a thinker of the highest caliber" or Scripture to base the core of some lofty argument on him. There's room for comedians, babushkas, novelists, Elders, politicians and so forth on a thread like this (in the best postmodern fashion), I should think - or do you indeed intend it to be a dead-serious deconstruction and a definitive demolition of all the idola tribus of the Orthodox?

Just imagine if Isa started to say which leftist sages he disconsiders as "thinkers of the highest caliber"...  

Oh - I just missed one. Marx is in the garbage bin of history already.  

To be fair, he was good at observation, just not so hot on analysis. And prediction. Forget it.

His followers can be good.  I was upbraided once or twice here for my admiration of the work of the recently deceased Eric Hobsbawm, because he was Marxist.  He's by far not the only Marxist who produced quality work (no, Ceausescu wasn't one).

[ialmisry]

Oh - I just missed one. Marx is in the garbage bin of history already.  laugh Roll Eyes

Yeah, and Chesterton's guilds and yeomen and elves and dwarfs are all back i  swing. Can one be more puerile than Isa?!

I guess the child will judge that.

[brastaseptim]

Hmm... "traditionalism." To be honest, I'm fine with tradition, being the spiritual mongrel of Roman Catholicism, Greek Catholicism, and Orthodoxy I am. But when I think "traditionalist" I think finger-pointing aggressive person who thinks we should all live in the world of pre- Vatican II Catholicism or pre-Soviet Era Orthodoxy because it was absolutely flawless back then, and calls anyone hwo disagrees a heretic.

[Romaios]

A quote to rescue this thread from oblivion and, perhaps, put it on a more productive and decent track.

I don't know much about the author, I  just happened to like this:

La tradizione non e il passato, ma la memoria e lo spessore storico di cio che di volta in volta e attuale.

"Tradition is not the past, but the memory and the historical depositary of that which, from time to time, becomes actual (relevant to the present)."

Stefano Levi della Tore

Sounds a bit like Matthew 13:52 - "Therefore every scribe who hath been made a disciple to the kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that is a householder, who bringeth forth out of his treasure things new and old."


                                                                                                                           

[Romaios]

Another one, more to the liking of Augustin (I dare hope) - though it's more green than red:

...Con il resto della mia vita mi accingo a fare il cristiano, al quale è stato indicato un percorso, il cui compito non consiste nel dire agli altri quale sia questa via, ma nel percorrerla fino in fondo (chi si fida di me mi fa piacere se mi sta vicino, chi non si fida mi fa piacere se gira alla larga). Per i cristiani non è importante tanto l’essere credenti quanto essere credibili: come si potrebbe tacere oggi di fronte all’avvelenamento dell’aria, dei cibi, dell’acqua ?

With the rest of my life I gird myself to be a Christian, to whom a path has been indicated the point of which does not consist in telling others how this life should be, but in following it to the end (I'll be happy if those who trust me are by my side; those who don't - I'd rather they turned and walked away). For Christians it's not so important to be believers as to be credible: how could one remain silent today, when the earth, the food, the water are being poisoned?   

Gino Girolomoni

[Romaios]

I hope no one scoffs at the idealism of children, though they be not "thinkers of great calibre":

Freedom is…

Free is someone
who does what he/she ought to,
not someone who does what he/she wants.

Free is someone who loves everybody,
not someone with guns,
with rifles,
who wants to go to war,
who wants to kill.

Free is also the field,
the unseen wind
which blows from one place to another.

This is true freedom.

Fatima Numun Rahman -12 years old.

[augustin717]

Yeah one bible verse thrown in here one out there that's gonna greatly illuminate a discussion with which the writer of Ecclesiastes was very acquainted to.
I didn't wanna talk about tradition here. No sane man will deny there is such a thing and its inescapable, but about that byproduct first of the changes brought about by the French Revolution that is sometimes called traditionalism/integrism / conservatism even. And that sometimes was jus a lament for the lost privileges at times bitching about present some other times a political project to restore l'ancien Régine etc. And its very cartoonish Internet offshoots ,

[ialmisry]

Yeah one bible verse thrown in here one out there that's gonna greatly illuminate a discussion with which the writer of Ecclesiastes was very acquainted to.
I didn't wanna talk about tradition here. No sane man will deny there is such a thing and its inescapable, but about that byproduct first of the changes brought about by the French Revolution that is sometimes called traditionalism/integrism / conservatism even. And that sometimes was jus a lament for the lost privileges at times bitching about present some other times a political project to restore l'ancien Régine etc. And its very cartoonish Internet offshoots ,

as already pointed out, you are wedded to a false chronology.  The traditionalism of the Optimates brought on by the Conflict of the Orders and the rise of the Novi Homines predate the French Revolution by two thousand years.

Yes, the writer of Ecclesiastes was very acquainted by the course of human events.  And "bitching about present", whether restoration of old regimes or erection of new utopias, predates the Biblical writer as well.

[augustin717]

Don't just bring in red herrings. You know well that all contemporary traditionalist/conservative discourse originate not with the Optimates but with a reaction to the ideals of the French Revolution.oh com'on American conservatism someof it at least is just frozen 18th century liberalism. They don't even have a throne and altar to rally their troops around.

[ialmisry]

Don't just bring in red herrings. You know well that all contemporary traditionalist/conservative discourse originate not with the Optimates but with a reaction to the ideals of the French Revolution.

Evidently not, as American conservatism, your favorite target, predates the French Revolution.

[Achronos]

All leftists know how fragile civilization is. No argument there.  But to deny that any change has ever happened. I don't know what illusion that is. Perennialism?!

Tradition (not traditionalism - its modern caricature) would be able to incorporate change. It just resists 'change for change's sake', 'progress for the sake of progress' or for fear one should be 'left behind'. Man should have a core, a soul that's not so easily sold to "any spirit" - the headscarves and the Byzantine garbs and the onion domes are nice, but not all-important or essential for salvation.

It doesn't want to be so open minded that one's brain should fall out, as Chesterton put it.

Chesterton was witty. Sometimes. Otherwise his thinking was hopelessly idealistic. He probably fathered much of today's traditionalist petty ideologies.

He has passed the test of time.

Marx, in the dust heap of history, failed.

Yet true Communism has never really been tried.

You really think places like China are truly communist?

[Romaios]

I didn't wanna talk about tradition here. No sane man will deny there is such a thing and its inescapable, but about that byproduct first of the changes brought about by the French Revolution that is sometimes called traditionalism/integrism / conservatism even. And that sometimes was jus a lament for the lost privileges at times bitching about present some other times a political project to restore l'ancien Régine etc. And its very cartoonish Internet offshoots ,

The French Revolution was violent - it was bound to produce a violent reaction. Evil breeds evil.

There are different "traditions" which produce different types of traditionalisms. There are curious fusions and contaminations of ideas. Someone catches a bug overseas or reads a book by some crazy author and returns home and wants to start a revolution. The blind leading the blind. Why should one follow them? 'Change can only be for the better. It can get no worse than this.' It could and it did.

I just can't - for the life of me - understand why the ideology of the French Revolution needed to be exported everywhere as the optimal and universal model for progress, together with the machines of the Industrial Revolution. Why did that hatred need to become the new social religion of the masses? I just can't believe that the upper classes were all equally corrupt, evil and oppressive all throughout the world. There were far more places where Communism was forcefully imposed (worse than Islam) than where it was peacefully embraced by the masses. You'll say that's how revolution works...     

History - progress - dynamics of capital... Paroles. (That's how you probably view Bible verses, too.)     

[augustin717]

Don't just bring in red herrings. You know well that all contemporary traditionalist/conservative discourse originate not with the Optimates but with a reaction to the ideals of the French Revolution.

Evidently not, as American conservatism, your favorite target, predates the French Revolution.

Com'on. What some paleos think it's american conservatism (jefferson et co) is only a frozen piece of 18th century liberalism/progressivism. It's not like they have a throne and altar to rally their minions around.

[Romaios]

Yet true Communism has never really been tried.

The same argument can be made for Christianity - Fr. Alexander Men used to say that "Christianity is only just beginning":

http://www.editionsducerf.fr/html/fiche/fichelivre.asp?n_liv_cerf=4527

[xariskai]

The biblical and Orthodox understanding of Tradition should be considered in a different category than what many of the above posts describe, not at all incorrectly, as traditionalism. Holy Tradition as it is understood in the Eastern Church is congruent to but not reducible to such phenomena.

The Greek word and its cognates refer to something that is handed down or delivered/received. Some examples:

1 Cor 11:2: I commend you because you remember me in everything and hold firmly to the traditions, just as I delivered ["traditioned"] them to you.
1 Cor 11:23: For I received from the Lord that which I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus in the night in which He was betrayed took bread
2 Thess 2:15: So then, brethren, stand firm and hold to the traditions which you were taught, whether by word of mouth or by letter from us.
2 Thess 3:6: "keep away from every brother who is idle and does not live according to the teaching you received from us."
Gal 1:14: "I was advancing in Judaism beyond many of my contemporaries among my countrymen, being more extremely zealous for my ancestral traditions."

All major contemporary scholars would concur with the proposition tradition (apostolic tradition) existed prior to the composition of any New Testament book (e.g. 1 Cor 11:23; there are many examples in the NT and the relevant academic literature).

Although Protestantism and Roman Catholicism have historically discussed tradition as a separate category from scripture, Orthodox regard scripture as an *example* of tradition -something handed down- as was also common in the early fathers (e.g. Clement of Alexandria uses the phrase "as the scripture traditioned" G. L. Prestige, Fathers and Heretics, pp. 13f. citing strom I.21, 142.2, 7.18, 109.2).

This is quite in accord with NT usage which speaks of the Gospel itself as "traditioned":
1 Cor 15:1 Now I make known to you, brethren, the gospel which I preached to you, which also you received, in which also you stand,
Gal 1:9 As we have said before, so I say again now, if any man is preaching to you a gospel contrary to what you received, he is to be accursed!
Cf. 1 Clem 42: "The message was delivered orally by our Lord to the apostles and was handed on orally by them to their successors."

There is, I think, a disparity between the paleo-orthodox view of tradition as something handed down and the Roman Catholic idea of tradition as something quite specifically located in the papal office, in the manner Pope Pius IX reflected when he said "I am Tradition"; cf. also Jaraslov Pelikan's statement "Pope Pius did not attempt to prove that the doctrine of the assumption was taught as such in scripture or confessed in the earliest documentary witnesses to the Christian and Catholic faith. Instead, he attached his promulgation of the dogma to the development of a tradition for which there is admittedly no authentic witness... among the Fathers of either the East or the West prior to the end of the fifth century" (Jaroslav Pelikan, Development of Christian Doctrine: Some Historical Prolegomenna (Yale, 1979), p. 38).

What is meant by Holy Tradition in Orthodox understanding is more than simply texts and teaching in a secular sense, incorporating the actual message, right worship, right prayer, and so on, not in the sense of hermeneutics, exegesis, and/or historical analysis (albeit not necessarily severed from such things by any means) but in the sense of theoria, which is to say that only those who live the Word through the Holy Spirit can know the Word and be receptacles or vehicles of Holy Tradition -as opposed to "mere traditions":

"Byzantines... presupposed a concept of Revelation which was substantially different from that held in the West. Because the concept of theologia in Byzantium ...was inseparable from theoria ("contemplation"), theology could not be -as it was in the West- a rational deduction from 'revealed' premises, i.e. from Scripture or from the statements of an ecclesiastical magisterium... Not that a rational deductive process was completely eliminated from theological thought, but it represented for the Byzantines the lowest and least reliable level of theology. The true theologian was the one who saw and experienced the content of theology; and this experience was considered to belong not to the intellect alone ...but to the 'eyes of the Spirit,' which place the whole man -intellect, emotions, and even sense- in contact with divine existence" (John Meyendorff, Byzantine Theology, pp. 8f.).

"Theoria is a 'spiritual perception of the one sent by God.. possible only to the believer' ("Theorao" in Arnt and Gingrich, eds., A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Early Christian Literature, 1b). It is an insight into God's Word that cannot be received by one who is a 'fleshly' Christian, one whose diet consists of only milk, not meat (1 Cor 3:1-2). This one's spiritual senses will e numbed and handicapped (1 Cor 2:14) and will never be able to have his senses fine-tuned so as to discern Good and evil (Heb 5:13-14). The one with a theoritic vision has a heart trained to see Truth, a heart transformed by the Spirit toward purity and godliness. 'Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God' (Matt 5:8)" (cf. Jordan Bajis, Common Ground: An Introduction to Eastern Christianity for the American Christian, ch 7).

"The pure notion of Tradition can then be defined by saying that it is the life of the Holy Spirit in the Church, communicating to each member of the Body of Christ the faculty of hearing, of receiving, of knowing the Truth in the Light which belongs to it" -Vladimir Lossky, In the Image and Likeness of God, p. 152).

[augustin717]

I didn't wanna talk about tradition here. No sane man will deny there is such a thing and its inescapable, but about that byproduct first of the changes brought about by the French Revolution that is sometimes called traditionalism/integrism / conservatism even. And that sometimes was jus a lament for the lost privileges at times bitching about present some other times a political project to restore l'ancien Régine etc. And its very cartoonish Internet offshoots ,

The French Revolution was violent - it was bound to produce a violent reaction. Evil breeds evil.

There are different "traditions" which produce different types of traditionalisms. There are curious fusions and contaminations of ideas. Someone catches a bug overseas or reads some book by an crazy author and returns home and wants to start a revolution. The blind leading the blind. Why should one follow them? 'Change can only be for the better. It can get no worse than this.' It could and it did.

I just can't - for the life of me - understand why the ideology of the French Revolution needed to be exported everywhere as the optimal and universal model for progress, together with the machines of the Industrial Revolution. Why did that hatred need to become the new social religion of the masses? I just can't believe that the upper classes were all equally corrupt, evil and oppressive all throughout the world. There were more places where Communism was forcefully imposed (worse than Islam) than where it was peacefully embraced by the masses. You'll say that's how revolution works...    

History - progress - dynamics of capital... Paroles. (That's how you probably view Bible verses, too.)      

once the means of production change social relations follow suite.  You can't well wish it away. Although those that try are sometimes endearing.

[Achronos]

Yet true Communism has never really been tried.

The same argument can be made for Christianity - Fr. Alexander Men used to say that "Christianity is only just beginning":

http://www.editionsducerf.fr/html/fiche/fichelivre.asp?n_liv_cerf=4527

I agree with you.

[ialmisry]

Don't just bring in red herrings. You know well that all contemporary traditionalist/conservative discourse originate not with the Optimates but with a reaction to the ideals of the French Revolution.

Evidently not, as American conservatism, your favorite target, predates the French Revolution.

Com'on. What some paleos think it's american conservatism (jefferson et co) is only a frozen piece of 18th century liberalism/progressivism. It's not like they have a throne and altar to rally their minions around.

Neither did the Optimates.  And yet there they were.

I can criticize the American conservatives (paleo and neocon) as not being conservative, but you can hardly do so, given your viewpoint.

[augustin717]

Yeah you can become a monarchist I guess defending the divine right of the Stuarts over the British throne and ergo USA. That would only be more cartoonish

[Romaios]

once the means of production change social relations follow suite.  You can't well wish it away. Although those that try are sometimes endearing.

When more people think alike, they may just wish things away, can't they? That's how revolutions work...

The means of production can still change and so can social relations.

There were societies where class struggle was not as sharp or unbearable to demand rebellions. Ideally, that's what we pray for in church: a peaceful, well-ordered, established society. That entails rulers (whether they be elected presidents or monarchs or emperors) and some sort of social order, not anarchy.

The dictatorship of the proletarians also had rulers: some were complete idiots, others were tyrannical brutes. Equally or even more oppressive than the "filthy burgeois"... God save us from them all!

[ialmisry]

I didn't wanna talk about tradition here. No sane man will deny there is such a thing and its inescapable, but about that byproduct first of the changes brought about by the French Revolution that is sometimes called traditionalism/integrism / conservatism even. And that sometimes was jus a lament for the lost privileges at times bitching about present some other times a political project to restore l'ancien Régine etc. And its very cartoonish Internet offshoots ,

The French Revolution was violent - it was bound to produce a violent reaction. Evil breeds evil.

There are different "traditions" which produce different types of traditionalisms. There are curious fusions and contaminations of ideas. Someone catches a bug overseas or reads some book by an crazy author and returns home and wants to start a revolution. The blind leading the blind. Why should one follow them? 'Change can only be for the better. It can get no worse than this.' It could and it did.

I just can't - for the life of me - understand why the ideology of the French Revolution needed to be exported everywhere as the optimal and universal model for progress, together with the machines of the Industrial Revolution. Why did that hatred need to become the new social religion of the masses? I just can't believe that the upper classes were all equally corrupt, evil and oppressive all throughout the world. There were more places where Communism was forcefully imposed (worse than Islam) than where it was peacefully embraced by the masses. You'll say that's how revolution works...    

History - progress - dynamics of capital... Paroles. (That's how you probably view Bible verses, too.)      

once the means of production change social relations follow suite.  You can't well wish it away. Although those that try are sometimes endearing.

yeah, well, those of us living in the real world, and not in the theories of Marxist academicians, aren't bound by such presuppositions.

"means of production" and "social relations" I've found rather vaguely defined, too much so to make dogmatic pronouncements as to causation "following suite."

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