The anthropologist Ruth Finnegan coined the expression “pathways of urban life” to describe the musical practices of a small British town. These pathways are made up of the web of social acts of those taking part in that musical life, and they hold so long as the relationships, and the habits they produce, retain their force and continuity. It is … Read more →
The perennial tradition — perennial philosophy, perennial wisdom, or eternal tradition — is supposedly the common substratum of all historical knowledge from the very origin of human culture: that which links together the great philosophical, religious, ethical, moral, and spiritual ideals, and so on. Well, this tradition does not exist. There are, of course, contents that may be shared, or … Read more →
Traditionalism is an ideology that regards certain past institutions as the most perfect and effective and links them with truth. It is a modern ideology, first explicitly formulated in the political circles that, in nineteenth-century France, reacted against the ravages of the Revolution. The concrete forms to which they appealed were those of the Ancien Régime: throne and altar. Since … Read more →