Tradition and Modern World: Questions of Symbolism

Abstract

The concept of ”Public Art” or ”Public” can never be obvious. The stage set of ”The Asian Art and Aesthetics” itself, raises a question on the issue of the individuality of Oriental Art from the Western (Occident) Art. That is to say, there is a question raised whether the concept of ”art” is only limited to the internal culture, or if it really has the universality that exceeds any particular form of a culture. Then, what does it truly mean when we speak of ”Public Art” in our time? If there is a thing that can be called the ”peculiar art” does really exist in a culture, if it is really accepted only within the interior of a specific culture, would not the Public Art also be accepted only within the interior of the individual culture? On the other hand, if the ”Public sphere” is that which entirely covers the present (modern) world, and, if the ”Public Art” is that which covers a ”global” range, the relation between the Public Art and Asian Art becomes completely contradictory. This rough sketch is enough to tell us that the concept of Public can never be separated from the historicity of a culture and the conflict of the modernity. When we bring Public Sphere of the art or a culture into a question, the question what we must raise is the confrontation between tradition and anti-tradition in the modern world. My paper will review the intercultural commensurability based upon the works of Rene Guenon who offered us a coherent discussion about the concept of the tradition. According to Guenon, the modern world has no relation to the true globalism. Because the universality which abstracts the identity of the region is the ”Anti-traditional” thought, that is to say a tendency peculiar to the Western world (at least in the era when Guenon; non lived). Anti-tradition makes the mutual understanding of different cultures impossible. On the contrary, in order that different traditions will cultivate the mutual understanding, the identity of the tradition must be kept up. When a specific tradition maintains its own particularity, the insight into the principle will be sustained. Since every tradition comes from the same principle as mutually different actus, such insight makes an inter-cultural understanding possible. Guenon considers the essence of the culture in the view of a tradition, and recognizes its main point in the form of the religion. But, in this paper, I try to draw Guenon's thought into the problem of the art.