la règne de la quantité et les signe des temps 1945
Guénon wrote a lot of books about a lot of subjects. The recently reviewed Symbols Of Sacred Science is regarded Guénon’s primary book about symbolism, The Reign Of Quantity is regarded his primary metaphysical book. Indeed, the first part of the book is very and very literary meta-physical, but the title of the book has two parts. The book speaks about how the modern man came to regard quantity more valuable than quality (the is ‘the sign of our time’) and during the course of the book, Guénon speaks about this and the results of it. The book is quite a difficult read. Not only the English is pretty ‘high-flying’ (I suppose the original France was too), but the subjects often are too. Just a few of the 40 chapter titles: “Spatial Quantity and Qualified Space”, “The Qualitative Determinations of Time”, “The Illusion of ‘Ordinary Life'”, “The Degeneration of Coinage”, “The Successive Stages in Anti-Traditional Action” and then Guénon goes on with a few subjects that still appeal to many: “Neo-Spiritualism”, “The Misdeeds of Psychoanalysis”, “The Confusion of the Psychic and the Spiritual”, concluding with chapters about “Pseudo-Initiation” (and ‘counter-initiation’), “From Anti-Tradition to Counter-Tradition” and “The Great Parody: or Spirituality Inverted”. Like with Perspectives On Initiation, I get the feeling that Guénon keeps telling what is not ‘it’, but he doesn’t really say what ‘it’ is. Also I don’t always understand what he means or where he is going to. He does have a point on most cases, but I sometimes get lost. This is due to the language, long sentences and paragraphs. Not the best book to start with if you never read Guénon I think, maybe it was even a bit too soon for me to read. There are many things to think about, but not really answers or ‘solutions’, just many many questions. (9/4/06 -3-)
Read quotes of Guénon here.
sophia perennis 2004 * isbn 0900588675