It is not for nothing that “LOGIC” (logikos) comes from “Logos,” which derivation indicates, in a symbolical fashion at least, that LOGIC – the mental reflection of ontology – cannot, in its substance, be bound up with human arbitrariness; that, on the contrary, it is a quasi-pneumatoLOGICal phenomenon in the sense that it results from the Divine Nature itself, in a manner analogous – if not to the same degree – to that of intellectual intuition . . . Let us admit that human LOGIC is at times inoperative; however, it is not inoperative because it is LOGICal, but because it is human; because, being human, it is subject to psychoLOGICal and material contingencies which prevent it from being what it is by itself, and what it is by its origin and in its source, wherein it coincides with the being of things. As is proved by the practice of meditation, intuition can arise through the workings of a rational operation – provisional and not decisive – which then acts as a key or as an occasional cause; on condition, of course, that the intelligence has at its disposal correct and sufficient data, and that it benefits from the concurrence of a moral health founded upon the sense of the sacred, and consequently capable of a sense of proportions as well as of aesthetic intuition. For all things are linked together: if the intelligence directly has need of rigor, it also indirectly has need of beauty. (GTUFS: DivineHuman, Transcendence Is Not Contrary to Sense)
It is not possible to emphasize too strongly that philosophy, in its humanistic and rationalizing and therefore current sense, consists primarily of LOGIC; this definition of Guénon’s correctly situates philosophical thought in making clear its distinction from “intellectual intuition,” which is direct perception of truth. But another distinction must also be established on the rational plane itself: LOGIC can either operate in accordance with an intellection or on the contrary put itself at the disposal of an error, so that philosophy can become the vehicle of just about anything; it may be an Aristotelianism conveying ontoLOGICal knowledge, just as it may degenerate into an existentialism in which LOGIC is no more than a blind, unreal activity, and which can rightly be described as an “esoterism of stupidity.” When unintelligence – and what we mean by this is in no way incompatible with “worldly” intelligence – joins with passion to prostitute LOGIC, it is impossible to escape a mental Satanism which destroys the very basis of intelligence and truth.
The validity of a LOGICal demonstration depends then on the prior knowledge which this demonstration aims at communicating, and it is clearly false to take as the point of departure, not a direct cognition, but LOGIC pure and simple; when man has no “visionary” – as opposed to discursive – knowledge of Being, and when he thinks only with his brain instead of “seeing” with the “heart,” all his LOGIC will be useless to him, since he starts from an initial blindness . . . The fact that the philosophic mode of thought is centered on LOGIC and not directly on intuition implies that intuition is left at the mercy of LOGIC’s needs . . . Some will certainly raise the objection that traditional metaphysics, whether of the East or the West, makes use of rational argumentations like any philosophy; but an argumentation a man uses to describe to his fellow men what he knows is one thing, and an argumentation a man uses on himself because he knows nothing is quite another. This is a capital distinction for it marks the whole difference between the intellectual “visionary” and the mere “thinker” who “gropes alone through the darkness” (Descartes) and whose pride it is to deny that there could be any knowledge which does not proceed in the same fashion. (GTUFS: LSelf, Orthodoxy and Intellectuality)
Logic (pure and simple): Pure and simple LOGIC is only a very indirect manner of knowing things; it is, before all else, the art of coordinating true or false data according to a given need for causality and this within the limits of a given imagination, so much so that an apparently faultless argument can yet be quite erroneous in function of the falseness of its premises; the latter normally depend not on reason or experience, but on pure intelligence and this to the very extent that the thing to be known is of an elevated order. What we are criticizing here is not the exactitude of science, far from it, but the exclusive level of this exactitude, which renders this quality inadequate and inoperative: man can measure a distance by his strides, but this does not enable him to see with his feet, if one may so express it. Metaphysics and symbolism, which alone provide the decisive keys to the knowledge of supra-sensible realities, are highly exact sciences – with an exactitude greatly exceeding that of physical facts – but these sciences lie beyond the scope of mere ratio and the methods it inspires in a quasi-exclusive manner. (GTUFS: TreasuresB, The Meaning of Ancestors)
Logic (supraLOGICal / ilLOGICal / acephalous / infra-LOGIC): Logic is nothing other than the science of mental coordination, of rational conclusion; hence it cannot attain to the universal and the transcendent by its own resources; a supraLOGICal – but not “ilLOGICal” – dialectic based on symbolism and on analogy, and therefore descriptive rather than ratiocinative, may be harder for some people to assimilate, but it conforms more closely to transcendent realities. Avant-garde philosophy is properly an acephalous LOGIC: it labels what is intellectually evident as “prejudice”; seeking to free itself from the servitudes of the mind, it falls into infra-LOGIC; closing itself, above, to the light of the intellect, it opens itself, below, to the darkness of the subconscious. (GTUFS: LSelf, Orthodoxy and Intellectuality)