The Critique of Modern Science and Politics: A Reflection on the Nature of the State in Traditionalist Thought

One of the contemporary thought movements which has a relation with philosophy and Islamic mysticism and emerged first in the western world is the thought movement of traditionalists or the followers of the Eternal Wisdom. In fact this thought trend is a rereading of philosophical (hekmi) and divine traditions of the pre-modern civilizations. In this framework knowledge can be achieved through eternal philosophy and by intuitive reason and politics is a kind of instrument for reaching the ideal traditional life. According to the traditionalists democracy as the favorite way of government of the modern world by denying the hierarchical thinking cannot transcendentalise all aspects of human beings and in this essay on the basis of the traditionalists’s views including Seyyed Hossein Nasr’s the religious sultanate as the favorite way of government and the theory of state is studied. We also tried to put forward the traditionalism’s fundamental criticisms of the modern science and civilization in different aspects including the state in order to explain some of the prerequisites of traditionalism for evolution in modern order in different areas of thinking and society and to make clear the results of this way of thinking for the modern world. This essay is an effort to make clear the traditional ways of living and thinking in the contemporary world including the political life and from the viewpoint of state by explaining the traditionalists’ logic of denial (of the modern world). It is also an effort to find an answer to the questions: “how should we encounter the modern thought and how should we find an alternative to traditionalism for the current situation?”.