The Limits of Philosophical Language and Traditional Knowledge by René Daumal

Abstract

This text is a prologue to the translation of René Daumal’s essay “The limits of philosophical language and traditional knowledge”. In the introduction, a brief biographical and intellectual review of the author is made, and the recurring themes of his work related to this article are reviewed. Daumal characterizes the nodal center of Philosophy as “experimental metaphysics”: a discipline that fully engages all human faculties (speculation, sensation and praxis) and before which a problem becomes inescapable: either language is an instrument for its teaching and conservation, a guide, or operates as a seal that prevents philosophical experience. The author compares two modes of verbal transmission of knowledge that tried to avoid “the risk of becoming an end in itself”; we refer to the philosophical dialogues of the Platonic work and the Upanishads. This triggers an investigation into the function of language for the Vedic religion.