The Reign of Quantity & the Signs of the Times

Rating:
Summary: Best Book Money Can Buy
Review: It's extremely unfortunate that this book, "The Reign of Quantity" is out of print since it's the only book that presents a successful structural critique of "evolutionary" spirituality -- the cutting-edge of western propaganda.

Guenon's insights from the 1940s are even more relevant today since he described so well the nascent New Age scene and it's ability to lure potentially level-headed people into a cloud of deception.

Apparently Ramana Maharshi, the guru and sage promoter of Advaita Vedanta through self-enquiry, called R. Guenon, "the Great Sufi" and Guenon's associates visited Ramana Maharshi.

According to the website www.realization.org Ramana Maharshi stated, "There is no evolution."

Guenon argues this case in the context of the spiritual cycles of space-time based on the ratios 1:2:3:4.

Guenon's degree thesis in France was on the calculus and transcendental values.

"The Reign of Quantity" is the only book that develops the logic that western math, starting with the squaring of the circle, is inherently unjust, disharmonic and representative of the Kali Yuga.

This is the only book that cuts through the b.s. and gives the reader a clear view of current times but at the same time a clear vision of how to cut through these times.

Guenon gives great detail to the disharmonic forces that even call themselves "traditionalists" based on his writing yet are not accurate representatives of his work.

This inaccuracy proved to be the case with the two other so-called "traditionalist" founders -- Schuon and Evola.

Unfortunately Guenon's work has been dismissed by those who have not read him and Guenon's work has been ignored since it is too radical.

Hopefully, after Oxford University Press's forthcoming book on traditionalism, there will be a reprint of "the Reign of Quantity"

drew hempel

Rating:
Summary: Best Book Money Can Buy
Review: It's extremely unfortunate that this book, "The Reign of Quantity" is out of print since it's the only book that presents a successful structural critique of "evolutionary" spirituality -- the cutting-edge of western propaganda.

Guenon's insights from the 1940s are even more relevant today since he described so well the nascent New Age scene and it's ability to lure potentially level-headed people into a cloud of deception.

Apparently Ramana Maharshi, the guru and sage promoter of Advaita Vedanta through self-enquiry, called R. Guenon, "the Great Sufi" and Guenon's associates visited Ramana Maharshi.

According to the website www.realization.org Ramana Maharshi stated, "There is no evolution."

Guenon argues this case in the context of the spiritual cycles of space-time based on the ratios 1:2:3:4.

Guenon's degree thesis in France was on the calculus and transcendental values.

"The Reign of Quantity" is the only book that develops the logic that western math, starting with the squaring of the circle, is inherently unjust, disharmonic and representative of the Kali Yuga.

This is the only book that cuts through the b.s. and gives the reader a clear view of current times but at the same time a clear vision of how to cut through these times.

Guenon gives great detail to the disharmonic forces that even call themselves "traditionalists" based on his writing yet are not accurate representatives of his work.

This inaccuracy proved to be the case with the two other so-called "traditionalist" founders -- Schuon and Evola.

Unfortunately Guenon's work has been dismissed by those who have not read him and Guenon's work has been ignored since it is too radical.

Hopefully, after Oxford University Press's forthcoming book on traditionalism, there will be a reprint of "the Reign of Quantity"

drew hempel

Rating:
Summary: if only he could write
Review: Knowing the limitations of the Western mind in its current age of spiritual atrophy, I have written this review not for the sake of a self-centered adulation, but out of a sincere desire to recommend a spiritually vivifyng elixir to the thirsty Westerner lost in the desert his own artificial "world". Let there also be a note of caution: the unassuming grandeur of the author will sit well only with those who can distinguish between an ego, a mere desert mirage, and a true Self which is accessible only through the awakening of intellect after that impotent fetish of the modern West, namely rationalism, has been unmasked as a principal cause of the social chaos and the subsequent decline of the same. As an end-note, let this insight of Guenon, who realized himself intellectually through embracing Islam and taking an Arabic-Muslim name of Abd-el-Wahid Yahya, suffice as a summation of what Truth itself is: Unity beyond all distinctions. This notion disposes with the false doctrines such as scientific absolutism or relativism because both are grounded on the merely temporary and contingent elements of this world alone. Rene Guenon's uncompromising intellectuality and absence of sentimentalism will not please the modern audiences, but how could it be otherwise if we bear in mind that sentimentalism is nothing more than a transpose of a catatonic and truculent rationalism in which the Western man has been drowning since the tide of senility began in 14th century under the guise of "Renaissance"?

The translation is rather pedantic and blunt, but one still senses the astuteness of the original behind the oft clumsy and stuttering English phrases. A work well done, nonetheless.

Rating:
Summary: Falling Down
Review: Like "The Crisis of the Modern World", a smaller work written years earlier, "The Reign of Quantity & the Signs of the Times" falls into that group of Rene Guenon's works which have been called "intellectual reform and criticism of the modern world." These works evaluate the principles (or as Guenon would insist the "pseudo-principles") behind the modern mentality in the light of traditional principles. However, "Reign" differs from "Crisis" in being a much more metaphysically challenging exploration of the nature and trajectory of the modern thing. For that reason, "Crisis" is a better book than "Reign" to begin your exploration of the country that is Guenon.

Guenon is a metaphysician with a wide but highly integrated vision of reality. You do not get the fullness of his thought in any one of his books, although some are more central than others. But because of the integrity of the whole corpus one book fills out or illuminates the ideas found in the others. This fact should be kept in mind when approaching him. Frustrations and perplexities will dissipate with further reading. For all that, there is no getting around the demanding nature of Guenon's thought.

Guenon sees modernity, in its materialist stage, as the "reign of quantity" i.e. a state of affairs in which an attempt is made to reduce all of reality to that which can be measured by the senses. This state of affairs is a "sign of the times" in that it tells us that we are at the end of the "Kali-Yuga" or "time of troubles." According to tradition, time is cyclical. One of the most significant of these cycles is the "Manvantara" which is made up of four "Yugas." The time covered by each of these "Yugas" is qualitatively different. The first, the "Krita-Yuga", is a time of light and closeness to the principle while the last, the "Kali-Yuga", is a time of darkness and distance from the light of the principle.

Guenon's book in made up of forty chapters which can be divided into three general sections. The first six or seven chapters lay out and explain the metaphysical principles needed to understand his critique of the modern world. In the next sixteen chapters he applies these principles to various aspects of modernity. In the remaining chapters he delineates the stages of the continuing movement away from the light of principles.

The first section is the most challenging but is essential for a full appreciation of the rest of the book. To begin, Guenon distinguishes two correlative metaphysical principles "Purusha" and "Prakriti." These are Hindu terms for the what, in the West since Aristotle, has been known as "act" and "potency." However, although he acknowledges their equivalence to the Aristotelian "act" and "potency, Guenon translates these terms as "essence" and "substance." While there are reasons for this, such a translation opens up much room for confusion. This is because these terms have been used in a different way for hundreds of years by Christian Philosophy. This is an involved subject, but not merely one of terminology. Rather it opens a window on to two very different, although not diametrically opposed, metaphysics, one Christian the other (Guenon's) Vedantist. In any case, the reader should study these first chapters with care in order to properly grasp Guenon's meaning.

All of what Guenon calls "manifestation" (i.e. the created universe) is composed of "Purusha" and "Prakriti." On the terrestrial plane these principles can be spoken of analogically in terms of "quality" and "quantity." Thus the conditions that limit the earthly world also participate in the principles of quality and quantity. Among these conditions are space and time. One of the most significant of Guenon's points is that while the modern mentality sees only quantitative aspects of space and time they cannot be so reduced. What Guenon has to say on this matter is very interesting, but the key point to see, in order to understand the shape of the book as a whole, is that symbolically the qualitative aspect of space is "above" and the quantitative aspect "below" just as in time the qualitative aspect is "before" and the quantitative aspect "after." As a result, just as terrestrial manifestation in space is an issuing forth of multiplicity from unity, so manifestation in time is a cyclic falling away from paradisal unity into dissolution.

Having set the stage with these principles, Guenon proceeds in the second section to examine the ways in which the modern life is a dwelling in these lower regions of time and space. He examines in depth and, as always, in the light of traditional principles, a series of modern movements and characteristics: industrialization, the cult of originality, dependence on statistics, the tendency to oversimplify, the hatred of secrecy, rationalism, materialism, mechanism, the love of "ordinary life", the degradation of coinage, popularization, etc.

In the last section Guenon distinguishes two sub-phases of the final phase of the "Kali-Yuga": "solidification" and "dissolution." "Solidification" characterizes the hardcore materialist sub-phase of the "Kali-Yuga", which is identical to the "reign of quantity" of the title. There is a kind of stagnate and hopeless "security" that sets in during this sub-phase because man has cut himself off from all influences outside the corporeal world. However this "security" is an unstable illusion and soon "malefic" influences begins to penetrate his materialist shell. This penetration marks the beginning of the second sub-phase.

This sub-phase is "dissolution." It is does not exist in air-tight distinction from "solidification" rather the two overlap, just as "postmodernism" overlaps "modernism." In "dissolution" the materialist pseudo-edifice of "solidification" crumbles to dust. "Pseudo-initiatic", anti-traditional movements such as Theosophy and Spiritualism embody the "spirit" of the "dissolution" sub-phase. These clear the ground a much greater danger which comes at the very end of the "Kali-Yuga", a full-blown "counter-tradition" with a "counter-initiation." If anti-traditional movements are a "deviation" i.e. a straying from the traditional way, "counter-traditional" movements lead their followers down the way opposite tradition i.e. into the abyss

Rating:
Summary: Falling Down
Review: Like "The Crisis of the Modern World", a smaller work written years earlier, "The Reign of Quantity & the Signs of the Times" falls into that group of Rene Guenon's works which have been called "intellectual reform and criticism of the modern world." These works evaluate the principles (or as Guenon would insist the "pseudo-principles") behind the modern mentality in the light of traditional principles. However, "Reign" differs from "Crisis" in being a much more metaphysically challenging exploration of the nature and trajectory of the modern thing. For that reason, "Crisis" is a better book than "Reign" to begin your exploration of the country that is Guenon.

Guenon is a metaphysician with a wide but highly integrated vision of reality. You do not get the fullness of his thought in any one of his books, although some are more central than others. But because of the integrity of the whole corpus one book fills out or illuminates the ideas found in the others. This fact should be kept in mind when approaching him. Frustrations and perplexities will dissipate with further reading. For all that, there is no getting around the demanding nature of Guenon's thought.

Guenon sees modernity, in its materialist stage, as the "reign of quantity" i.e. a state of affairs in which an attempt is made to reduce all of reality to that which can be measured by the senses. This state of affairs is a "sign of the times" in that it tells us that we are at the end of the "Kali-Yuga" or "time of troubles." According to tradition, time is cyclical. One of the most significant of these cycles is the "Manvantara" which is made up of four "Yugas." The time covered by each of these "Yugas" is qualitatively different. The first, the "Krita-Yuga", is a time of light and closeness to the principle while the last, the "Kali-Yuga", is a time of darkness and distance from the light of the principle.

Guenon's book in made up of forty chapters which can be divided into three general sections. The first six or seven chapters lay out and explain the metaphysical principles needed to understand his critique of the modern world. In the next sixteen chapters he applies these principles to various aspects of modernity. In the remaining chapters he delineates the stages of the continuing movement away from the light of principles.

The first section is the most challenging but is essential for a full appreciation of the rest of the book. To begin, Guenon distinguishes two correlative metaphysical principles "Purusha" and "Prakriti." These are Hindu terms for the what, in the West since Aristotle, has been known as "act" and "potency." However, although he acknowledges their equivalence to the Aristotelian "act" and "potency, Guenon translates these terms as "essence" and "substance." While there are reasons for this, such a translation opens up much room for confusion. This is because these terms have been used in a different way for hundreds of years by Christian Philosophy. This is an involved subject, but not merely one of terminology. Rather it opens a window on to two very different, although not diametrically opposed, metaphysics, one Christian the other (Guenon's) Vedantist. In any case, the reader should study these first chapters with care in order to properly grasp Guenon's meaning.

All of what Guenon calls "manifestation" (i.e. the created universe) is composed of "Purusha" and "Prakriti." On the terrestrial plane these principles can be spoken of analogically in terms of "quality" and "quantity." Thus the conditions that limit the earthly world also participate in the principles of quality and quantity. Among these conditions are space and time. One of the most significant of Guenon's points is that while the modern mentality sees only quantitative aspects of space and time they cannot be so reduced. What Guenon has to say on this matter is very interesting, but the key point to see, in order to understand the shape of the book as a whole, is that symbolically the qualitative aspect of space is "above" and the quantitative aspect "below" just as in time the qualitative aspect is "before" and the quantitative aspect "after." As a result, just as terrestrial manifestation in space is an issuing forth of multiplicity from unity, so manifestation in time is a cyclic falling away from paradisal unity into dissolution.

Having set the stage with these principles, Guenon proceeds in the second section to examine the ways in which the modern life is a dwelling in these lower regions of time and space. He examines in depth and, as always, in the light of traditional principles, a series of modern movements and characteristics: industrialization, the cult of originality, dependence on statistics, the tendency to oversimplify, the hatred of secrecy, rationalism, materialism, mechanism, the love of "ordinary life", the degradation of coinage, popularization, etc.

In the last section Guenon distinguishes two sub-phases of the final phase of the "Kali-Yuga": "solidification" and "dissolution." "Solidification" characterizes the hardcore materialist sub-phase of the "Kali-Yuga", which is identical to the "reign of quantity" of the title. There is a kind of stagnate and hopeless "security" that sets in during this sub-phase because man has cut himself off from all influences outside the corporeal world. However this "security" is an unstable illusion and soon "malefic" influences begins to penetrate his materialist shell. This penetration marks the beginning of the second sub-phase.

This sub-phase is "dissolution." It is does not exist in air-tight distinction from "solidification" rather the two overlap, just as "postmodernism" overlaps "modernism." In "dissolution" the materialist pseudo-edifice of "solidification" crumbles to dust. "Pseudo-initiatic", anti-traditional movements such as Theosophy and Spiritualism embody the "spirit" of the "dissolution" sub-phase. These clear the ground a much greater danger which comes at the very end of the "Kali-Yuga", a full-blown "counter-tradition" with a "counter-initiation." If anti-traditional movements are a "deviation" i.e. a straying from the traditional way, "counter-traditional" movements lead their followers down the way opposite tradition i.e. into the abyss

Rating:
Summary: The roots of our unbalanced world.
Review: Perhaps Guenon's greatest work, this book analyses the metaphysical roots of the crisis of this age, explaining the causes of the present condition to lie in modern civilization's rebellion against tradition -- not just one tradition, but the recurring and perennial tradition of every premodern civilization. The author's penetrating insight into modern science and the results of its monopoly over our age is fascinating. His critique of modernity is grounded in the traditional religious view which views human temporal existence not as an evolution, but a degression culminating in the "signs of the hour" and the emergence of the dajjal or the anti-christ. Guenon's radical critique of the 20th Century will no doubt be unpalatable for those to whom the wisdom of the ancients is ignorance relative to the quantum physics of today; but Guenon was well aware of the intellectual totalitarianism of the modern world-view. His objective was not a mass conversion to tradition. He sought rather to help open the eyes of a small number of people to the realities of the modern world and the illusion of progress. And this he did. A good number of prominent intellectuals were influenced by his works; among them: Huston Smith, Martin Lings, Gai Eaton, Seyyed Hossein Nasr, James Cutsinger, Toshiko Izutsu and host of others. Guenon died in the late 50's in Cairo, Egypt where he lived for almost twenty years as an adeherent of the Muslim faith. His last words were "Allah, Allah".

Rating:
Summary: Worth Reading
Review: Probably the most penetrating and scathing onslaught of the Modern World to be written from the perspective of cyclical order of time in the Twentieth Century by a French mathematician who converted to Islam and who articulated the perennial philosophy with an extraordinary insight and foresight. His works stand out because his critiquing platform is from the Oriental Metaphysical perspective. While some of his criticisms are a bit extreme, there is enough substance here to provoke a serious evaluation of our current epistemological crisis in the West.