The Crisis of the Modern World (Collected Works of Rene Guenon) Paperback – June 24, 2004

The scholarly world is never too short of what is in vogue as `critiques of modernity' that another addition to this stock would have been redundant. Guénon's The Crisis of the Modern World however, is not simply `another' of this but is distinguished by its profound wisdom, transcending conventional approaches that either diagnosed the symptoms and not the real disease or carried from an exclusively `philosophical' viewpoint, oblivious to the fact that `philosophy' itself is among modernity's offspring. Guénon's theme is sophia perennis, or primordial Wisdom, which seeks to resurrect the sacred metaphysics that lies at the root of the world's major religions.Guénon begins with the premise that the modern world as we know it corresponds exactly to the period of Kali Yuga (or Dark Age) in Hindu cosmology, similar to the Iron Age in Western traditional doctrine, a time when the forces of matter reign supreme and spirituality has been thoroughly eclipsed. In fact, history itself is a gradual process of declining spirituality and "progressive materialization", so that at the last phase of the human cycle (or the darkest of the Dark Age), mankind shall witness the abundance of material prosperity as has never been witnessed before, while simultaneously impoverished spiritually and utterly divorced from true intellectuality and hence truth itself.Intellectually, this decline is especially evident in science and philosophy. Philosophy - `love' of wisdom - became wisdom unto itself; `physics' - the science of `nature' in its totality - became a science that deals with only a portion of nature; astrology degraded into astronomy; alchemy degenerated into chemistry; and all that was once meaningful and bound to truth transcending the domain of matter and the world of sensible experience is reduced to bare facts bereft of truth, meaning and purpose. It is no wonder that the modern man today feels alienated from the world, from each other and from himself. The ancient sciences were invariably bound to metaphysical principles found in the world's great religions, made possible by the eminently religious and theocentric character of the earlier people. Truth for them is one, just as God is One. The different orders and aspects of Reality are but reflections of this same, single and universal truth. Whichever angle the truth is approached, contradictions only appear at the surface so that `specialization' would eventually lead to the convergence of the various disciplines, which explains why the ancients were so adept at mastering several different branches of knowledge at the same time, insofar as mastery of certain basic laws underlying all of reality permits their application to many different domains.Modernity by contrast, is built upon the spirit of opposition to religion (think of the Renaissance, Reformation and the Enlightenment) and therefore hostility to metaphysics and truth. Once the ultimate Truth is denied, the ground is cleared for the manufacture of many different "truths", tending naturally towards relativism and nihilism that are so prevalent in today's world. Indeed, relativism is the logical outcome of rationalism, this in turn being the result of humanism and individualism, which of course, is the "determining cause of the present decline of the West." Descartes' rationalism, instead of raising man to transcend himself towards truth, seeks to drag truth down to the "purely relative and human faculty" of rational thought. The mental outlook that made this possible is materialism, "a conception according to which nothing else exists but matter and its derivatives." Now this is significant even symbolically, for matter is essentially multiplicity and division, hence the source of strife and conflict.This decadence even manifests itself in the social order - from the separation of religion from the state, the triumph of mediocrity over the wise (democracy), the spread of `mass education' (which compromises the uniqueness of each individual) to the rise of the cult of `originality' in the intellectual domain, for whom it is better to create a new error than repeat an old truth. All this are but manifestations of the same catastrophe - neglect of spirituality, hence the loss of unity.Materialism is also tied to Western domination. The East has been traditionally religious, but in the face of (material) challenge and encroachment by the modern West, is now compelled to adopt the materialistic worldview to compete in this profane realm and in this regard, its religious past is certainly no guide. Where else would they seek guidance and `light', if not from the very civilization in which materialism organically springed forth? This is in fact how the present age fits neatly into that last phase of Kali Yuga as Guénon understands it, namely that the darkness of materialism will ultimately bring the whole world into its dominion (long before `globalization' and `end of history' became common lingo), marking finally the end of an era, i.e. the end of a human cycle, or Manvantara, where `the wheel stops turning.' This is when chaos, conflict and strife will erupt as never before, a time known in Christianity as the reign of the Antichrist and in Islam as the era of Dajjal.There is a way out - for the establishment of a spiritual elite to lead the masses out of this darkness. This elite necessarily has to operate covertly, like a secret puppeteer when others could not see the strings, for the masses have become deeply entrenched in their materialism, which continuously creates in them more artificial needs for materiality than it can satisfy. In the West, the only institution capable of bringing about this change is the Catholic Church, which alone is in possession of the sacred traditional doctrine of Christianity. Yet even then, Guenon remains skeptical and calls for the Western world to summon aid from what modicum of true spirituality is left in the East, unadulterated by the `modernized' outlook that is fast making headways throughout the Orient.

“…movement and change are actually prized for their own sake…outward action…fleeting…dispersion…a tendency toward instantaneity, have for its limit a state of pure disequilibrium, which…would coincide with the final dissolution of this world; and this too is one of the clearest signs that the final phase of the Kali Yuga is at hand.”- Rene Guenon, ‘The Crisis of the Modern World’The French metaphysical scholar Rene Guenon (1886-1951) is considered to be one of the greatest of all in the western world. Guenon was no mere occultist. He was an authority on the Sanskrit teachings, Sufism, Taoism, and many others including western esoteric traditions. ‘The Reign of Quantity’ is his masterwork and was the turning point in my own understanding as he convinced me to accept the Cycles of Time as reality.Guenon’s ‘The Crisis in the Modern World’ was written in 1942 (three years before my own birth) and describes our current times with prescient and increasing accuracy. In the chapter on ‘Knowledge and Action’ Guenon explains in his razor-like French precision that the modern world, its sciences and philosophies, its very foundations have become completely disconnected from any metaphysical truth. The reason for this is our ongoing Kali Yuga descent into matter and limited five-sense perception, which blocks our understanding of the Invisible Realms that are the support and substratum of this entire universe.The people who have become prominent in all fields of modern life simply are no longer capable of understanding the real underlying metaphysical principles that are the substratum of the temporal illusory earth we stand upon. Thus the various and always changing theories that become the basis of our lives are profoundly flawed, unsound, and subject to collapse. Rene Guenon: “It is impossible in any way to separate knowledge from the process by which it is acquired.” The intelligence that is now held in high esteem is of the lowest order — regardless of how many corporate global policy institute think-tanks these modern era PhD priests are ensconced within.True knowledge consists in 'identification'...Guenon: “…for all true knowledge essentially consists in identification with its object.” This is the traditional ancient way of immersing consciousness to reach wisdom knowledge and is precisely what the shamans still today practice. In the west and spreading around the globe, this process of intense identification is overlooked and “…they admit nothing higher than rational or discursive knowledge, which is necessarily indirect and imperfect, being…reflected knowledge.” One is reminded of Plato’s shadows in a cave being taken as real.This ‘lower type of knowledge’ has become more and more valued ‘only insofar as it can be made to serve immediate practical ends.’ Our modern western culture has become absorbed and obsessed with action, scientific and mathematical theories that produce profitable results, and have denied everything that lies beyond the grasp of their own limited five-sense perception. These servants of the corporatist scions are blind to the fact that acts thus disconnected from metaphysical truth degenerate — “from the absence of any principle, into an agitation as vain as it is sterile.”We are lost in what Guenon back in 1942 called “dispersion in multiplicity, and in a multiplicity that is no longer unified by consciousness of any higher principle.” This external multiplicity is merely the temporal ‘appearance’ generated by the eternal Real, the One substratum beneath all appearances. And yet the best and seemingly the most intelligent are consumed in its quantitative analysis, a bottomless pit of frantic change for its own sake and profit.Guenon: “…in daily life, as in scientific ideas, it is analysis [of external multiplicity] driven to an extreme, endless subdivision, a veritable disintegration of human activity in all the orders.” Nothing is of value that cannot generate profit, while the wisdom that is born from silent contemplation is ridiculed. Thus we live in an intellectual environment suffused in “the inaptitude for synthesis and the incapacity for any sort of concentration.”This incessant frantic descent into ever increasing multiplicity and complexity is, as Rene Guenon says, the result of “a pretended intuition modelled on the ceaseless flux of things of the senses, far from being able to serve as an instrument for obtaining true knowledge, represents in reality the dissolution of all possible knowledge.”An intelligence that has been disconnected from the immutable imperishable substratum that lies beneath ‘the curtain of each atom’ [Mahmud Shabistari's Sufi poem] is necessarily precariously unstable and inclined to collapse. Without metaphysical wisdom, each temporal ‘fix’ our elitist servant PhD’s come up with will only lead us closer to the final moments of this Kali Yuga.Rene Guenon would not have been surprised to witness our current predicament. Guenon offers us one last profound comfort in the final sentence of his brilliant ‘The Reign of Quantity’: “…it can be said in all truth that the ‘end of a world’ never is and never can be anything but the end of an illusion.”

There were about twenty pages loose.

René Guénon gives a shockingly accurate diagnosis about the modern/Western world. The West seems to have abandoned Tradition at around the Renaissance and Reformation, and then in earnest at the time of the Enlightenment. Now nothing remains other than that which can be perceived via the physical senses. All that is transcendent and beyond the natural world is denied existence, and with that meaning and purpose has been abandoned as well.

Estou relendo a tradução em inglês. A tradução em português me foi emprestada. Toda a obra de René Guenon merece ser relida com calma. E é o que estou fazendo! Ele tornou-se ainda em vida um Mestre do Sufismo. Previu com décadas de antecedência as mudanças que hoje estamos vendo. Estou lendo com muito vagar pois ainda tenho outros livros para ler.

Guenon further developed his thought and work after this book. Nevertheless, it is a must read. An eye opener for anyone who feels that the modern world has some deeply rooted problems

A must read for everyone.

Written in 1946 and everything said applies today