The Reign of Quantity gives a concise but comprehensive view
of the present state of affairs in the world, as it appears from the
point of view of the ‘ancient wisdom’, formerly common both to the East
and to the West, but now almost entirely lost sight of. The author
indicates with his fabled clarity and directness the precise nature of
the modern deviation, and devotes special attention to the development
of modern philosophy and science, and to the part played by them, with
their accompanying notions of progress and evolution, in the formation
of the industrial and democratic society which we now regard as
‘normal’. Guénon sees history as a descent from Form (or Quality)
toward Matter (or Quantity); but after the Reign of Quantity-modern
materialism and the ‘rise of the masses’-Guénon predicts a reign of
‘inverted quality’ just before the end of the age: the triumph of the
‘counter-initiation’, the kingdom of Antichrist. This text is
considered the magnum opus among Guénon’s texts of civilizational criticism, as is Symbols of Sacred Science among his studies on symbols and cosmology, and Man and His Becoming according to the Vedanta among his more purely metaphysical works. See reviews at Amazon.Com, here.
of the present state of affairs in the world, as it appears from the
point of view of the ‘ancient wisdom’, formerly common both to the East
and to the West, but now almost entirely lost sight of. The author
indicates with his fabled clarity and directness the precise nature of
the modern deviation, and devotes special attention to the development
of modern philosophy and science, and to the part played by them, with
their accompanying notions of progress and evolution, in the formation
of the industrial and democratic society which we now regard as
‘normal’. Guénon sees history as a descent from Form (or Quality)
toward Matter (or Quantity); but after the Reign of Quantity-modern
materialism and the ‘rise of the masses’-Guénon predicts a reign of
‘inverted quality’ just before the end of the age: the triumph of the
‘counter-initiation’, the kingdom of Antichrist. This text is
considered the magnum opus among Guénon’s texts of civilizational criticism, as is Symbols of Sacred Science among his studies on symbols and cosmology, and Man and His Becoming according to the Vedanta among his more purely metaphysical works. See reviews at Amazon.Com, here.
