The Crisis of the Modern World / Edition 4

by Rene Guenon, Arthur Osborne, James Richard Wetmore

Overview

It is no longer news that the Western world is in a crisis, a crisis that has spread far beyond its point of origin and become global in nature. In 1927, René Guénon responded to this crisis with the closest thing he ever wrote to a manifesto and 'call-to-action'. The Crisis of the Modern World was his most direct and complete application of traditional metaphysical principles-particularly that of the 'age of darkness' preceding the end of the present world-to social criticism, surpassed only by The Reign of Quantity and the Signs of the Times, his magnum opus. In the present work Guénon ruthlessly exposes the 'Western deviation': its loss of tradition, its exaltation of action over knowledge, its rampant individualism and general social chaos. His response to these conditions was not 'activist', however, but purely intellectual, envisioning the coming together of Western intellectual leaders capable under favorable circumstances of returning the West to its traditional roots, most likely via the Catholic Church, or, under less favorable ones, of at least preserving the 'seeds' of Tradition for the time to come.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780900588501
Publisher:	Sophia Perennis
Publication date:	05/22/2004
Series:	Collected Works of Rene Guenon
Edition description:	4th Rev ed.
Pages:	136
Product dimensions:	6.54(w) x 9.30(h) x 0.61(d)

Table of Contents

	Editorial Note	XI
	Preface	1
1	The Dark Age	7
2	The Opposition Between East & West	21
3	Knowledge & Action	33
4	Sacred & Profane Science	42
5	Individualism	55
6	The Social Chaos	69
7	A Material Civilization	81
8	Western Encroachment	97
9	Some Conclusions	107
	Index	119