If we are willing to acknowledge that every object we approach for knowledge purposes is first and foremost a foreign object that we also try to make familiar, our relationship to a foreign language or foreign culture could well be paradigmatic. Olivier Lacombe’s, René Guénon’s and René Daumal’s practices of translation and thought demonstrate this point admirably. In this article which concentrates on these three figures, and especially on the last one, I will try to show the relevance of a defamiliarization that would not resolve itself in familiarity, but that would take us from a state of relative ignorance to an acceptance of the need to give up our claims of control or ownership.