The Crisis of the Modern World (Paperback)

Rene Guenon

ISBN 10: 8186569111 / ISBN 13: 9788186569115

Published by Indica Books, Varanasi, 2002

About this Item

Paperback. Guenon is not an "orientalist" but what the Hindus would call a guru. Ananda K. Coomaraswamy In the first half of the twenteeth century, a French man, Rene Guenon (18861951), struck the conscience of the Western world by reminding it about the spiritual knowledge that was at the heart of all traditional civilizations but that the modern Western world had completely lost sight of, and urged it earnestly to recover it before it would be too late. A profound knower of Hindu, Islamic, Taoist and other traditions, Guenon expounded, in the same way as A.K. Coomaraswamy with whom he regularly corresponded, the traditional metaphysics which gave a unity beyond the forms to the apparently different traditions of mankind. Though completely ignored by the official academic world, his message inspired quite a few seekers, and more than 50 years after his death his books are regularly republished and his influence grows steadily. In The Crisis of the Modern World, published for the first time in 1927, Guenon writes a relentless and radical criticism of the modern world, revealing its shallowness and its spiritual destitution when confronted with the traditional civilizations. Eighty years later, his words are still amazingly present and fully valid, but there is something that has definitely changed: the traditional East that Guenon sets against the modern West has disappeared in a great measure as Asia has taken, by its own choice or by the force of circumstances, to the same road than the West. The reflexions of Guenon about the modern world are thus in a big extent applicable to the India of today, in danger of being submerged by the strong flow of modern ways and conceptions and of forgetting the spiritual base that was always the foundation of its civilization and that was the main cause for its unique survival through so many centuries. Rene Guenon[1886-1951] struck the conscience of the western world by reminding it about the spiritual knowledge that was at the heart of all traditional civilizations but that the modern west had completely sight of. Shipping may be from our Sydney, NSW warehouse or from our UK or US warehouse, depending on stock availability.

Seller Inventory # 9788186569115

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Crisis of the Modern World (Paperback)
• Publisher: Indica Books, Varanasi
• Publication Date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 8186569111
• ISBN 13: 9788186569115
• Binding: Paperback
• Condition: new

About this title

Synopsis

Rene Guenon[1886-1951] struck the conscience of the western world by reminding it about the spiritual knowledge that was at the heart of all traditional civilizations but that the modern west had completely sight of.

About the Author

René Guénon (18861951) was one of the great luminaries of the twentieth century, whose critique of the modern world has stood fast against the shifting sands of intellectual fashion. His extensive writings, now finally available in English, are a providential treasure-trove for the modern seeker: while pointing ceaselessly to the perennial wisdom found in past cultures ranging from the Shamanistic to the Indian and Chinese, the Hellenic and Judaic, the Christian and Islamic, and including also Alchemy, Hermeticism, and other esoteric currents, they direct the reader also to the deepest level of religious praxis, emphasizing the need for affiliation with a revealed tradition even while acknowledging the final identity of all spiritual paths as they approach the summit of spiritual realization. René Guénon, of whom Jacob Needleman wrote in The Sword of Gnosis that no other modern writer has so effectively communicated the absoluteness of truth, is gradually being recognized by deeper thinkers as one of the few who have truly penetrated the seductive veil of the modern age. As an expositor of pure metaphysics and its application to the science of symbols, Guénon is without peer; and his extraordinarily prescient critique of the modern world is attracting more and more attention among cultural commentators. Little known in the English-speaking world till the recent appearance of his Collected Works in translation, Guénon has nevertheless long been recognized as a veritable criterion of truth by a vanguard of remarkable writers who evince that rare combination: intellectuality and spirituality. After a lonely childhood, often interrupted by ill health, Guénon navigated the seductive half-truths of occultism toward a deeper, unified vision offering a way out from the confusion and fragmentation of our time. Regarded by leading scholars as the first truly authentic interpreter of many Eastern doctrines in the West, Guénon never tired, in face of the seemingly inexorable process of dissolution in the twentieth century, of pointing to the transcendent unity of all religious faiths and the abiding Truth that contains them all.