The Reign of Quantity & the Signs of the Times

Front Cover
Sophia Perennis, 2001 - History - 284 pages
""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." --Descripción del editor.
 

Contents

Introduction
1
Quality and Quantity
11
Materia Signata Quantitate
16
Measure and Manifestation
23
Spatial Quantity and Qualified Space
31
The Qualitative Determinations of Time
38
The Principle of Individuation
45
Uniformity against Unity
49
The Significance of Metallurgy
152
Time changed into Space
159
Toward Dissolution
165
The Fissures in the Great Wall
172
Shamanism and Sorcery
177
Psychic Residues
185
The Successive Stages in AntiTraditional Action
191
Deviation and Subversion
197

Ancient Crafts and Modern Industry
55
The Twofold Significance of Anonymity
62
The Illusion of Statistics
68
Unity and Simplicity
74
The Hatred of Secrecy
82
The Postulates of Rationalism
89
Mechanism and Materialism
96
The Illusion of Ordinary Life
101
The Degeneration of Coinage
107
The Solidification of the World
113
Scientific Mythology and Popularization
120
The Limits of History and Geography
128
From Sphere to Cube
137
Cain and Abel
144
The Inversion of Symbols
202
Tradition and Traditionalism
208
NeoSpiritualism
215
Contemporary Intuitionism
220
The Misdeeds of Psychoanalysis
227
The Confusion of the Psychic and the Spiritual
235
PseudoInitiation
241
The Deceptiveness of Prophecies
252
From AntiTradition to CounterTradition
261
or Spirituality Inverted
267
The End of a World
275
Index
281
Copyright

Common terms and phrases

Bibliographic information