In East and West, Rene Guenon makes this fundamental claim:
“So long as western people imagine that there only exists a single type of humanity, that there is only one ‘civilization’, at different stages of development, no mutual understanding will be possible. The truth is that there are many civilizations, developing along very different lines, and that, among these, that of the modern West is strangely exceptional, as some of its characteristics show.
One should never speak absolutely of superiority or inferiority, without making it quite clear from what point of view the things to be compared are being considered, even supposing that they are comparable. There is no civilization which is superior to the others from every point of view, because man cannot be equally active at the same time in every direction, and because there are some ways of development which seem actually incompatible with one another.”
By “stages of development”, Guenon does not mean what Westerners call “progress”. He rejects Enlightenment notions of progress—such as Hegelianism, Marxism and similar schemes—that would force other cultures into some pre-defined historical pattern. Furthermore, there are groups dedicated to “saving Western civilization”, though what they would save are the more degenerate aspects of that civilization. There is no possibility of an alliance with them.