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The Crisis of the Modern World (Collected Works of Rene Guenon)

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This book is perhaps the best introduction to the thought of a difficult, little known, but immensely important thinker. I say "thinker", but that word does not adequately describe Rene Guenon (1886-1951), a man difficult to characterize because he does not fit into any of the categories of thought current in our culture.

Perhaps the best word to describe him is "sage" with all the overtones of antiquity, orientality, and wholeness that that word evokes. He is certainly not a "philosopher" in the usual understanding of that word, nor is he a "theologian", although all his thought is centered on the Source of all reality.

A student of Guenon, Jean Borella, has written an extremely helpful essay called "Rene Guenon and the Traditionalist School" which can be found in the book "Modern Esoteric Spirituality". Borella finds five fundamental themes in Guenon's writings, among which is the theme of "intellectual reform and criticism of the modern world". This is the theme that informs "The Crisis of the Modern World".

Guenon begins with a PREFACE in which he meditates on the word "crisis". This word can be understood to mean a "critical phase" i.e. a turning point for either better or worse, but it can also be understood, in keeping with its original meaning, to suggest a time in which the thing in crisis is ripe for judgment and discernment. Accordingly, the remainder of Guenon's book is his judgment of modernity and its fate in the light of traditional doctrine.

In the next chapter, THE DARK AGE, Guenon sketches the traditional doctrine of the human cycle or "Manvantara". (A more complete explanation of this can be found in "The Myth of the Eternal Return" cf. my review) According to this teaching we are now far into the fourth age of the world, called the "Kali Yuga" ("time of troubles"), which is characterized by a remoteness from the principle and source of human flourishing and therefore darkness, materialism, and chaos. This doctrine is the very opposite of the modern notion of progress.

In THE OPPOSITION BETWEEN EAST AND WEST, Guenon traces the cause of this opposition to the West's abandonment of the traditional and normal mentality which has been retained for the most part by the East. (Guenon was writing in 1927.) By "East" he means the Chinese, Indian, and Islamic Civilizations, and by "West" he means Europe and America. He sees the solution to this opposition in a return to tradition by a western intellectual elite. It should be noted that Guenon gives the words "tradition" and "intellectual" a very exact and easily misunderstood meaning.

In KNOWLEDGE AND ACTION Guenon examines the subordination of contemplation to action as the key difference separating the modern from the traditional world, and therefore West from East. From this inversion results the mental scattering and agitated monotony characteristic of modern times. Here we see Guenon's understanding of "intellectual" and its coordination with "tradition". The intellect is the supra-rational faculty which beholds tradition i.e. that which is given or "handed over." (from the Latin "tradere" to give over.)

Continuing the discussion of knowledge, Guenon distinguishes SACRED SCIENCE AND PROFANE SCIENCE in the next chapter. The sacred or traditional sciences proceed from and lead back to principles which are grasped in intellectual intuition. Profane or modern sciences view the same objects as the sacred sciences, but from the "profane point of view" which is to say in ignorance or blindness of the principles from which these objects flow. Guenon discusses ancient and modern physics, astrology and astronomy, and alchemy and chemistry.

The "root error and cause" of modern science is INDIVIDUALISM according to Guenon. Here again we must be careful to understand the word as Guenon uses it. The individual in question is distinguishing himself not from the rest of human society, but from the supernatural world or the authority of the realm of principles. Individualism then, which is at the heart of modernity, is nothing more than a negation. Guenon explains how modern errors follow from individualism in philosophy and religion and looks at such manifestations of individualism as "originality".

In chapter 7, THE SOCIAL CHAOS, Guenon examines democracy and its modern psuedo-priniciple, social equality. He finds democracy's appeal to the law of the greatest number to be nothing more than an appeal to the law of the brute force of matter, because matter is by nature a multiplicity as distinguished from spirit which is by nature a unity.

In A MATERIAL CIVILIZATION, Guenon summarizes his judgment on the modern civilization of the West. It is characterized by materialism which Guenon defines as living life as if nothing existed but the material world. It is therefore a disease that infects the West almost completely, even including those who acknowledge the world of the spirit but live as do those who do not.

In chapter 8, WESTERN ENCROCHMENT, Guenon discusses the spread of the modern mentality into the East and takes issue with the opinions of Henri Massis expressed in his book "Defense of the West". (Massis was a disciple of Charles Marras founder of "Action Francaise", a French Monarchist organization.) Guenon finds Massis to completely misunderstand Eastern doctrines, and sees him as a fine example of "low-grade" traditionalism.

In SOME CONCLUSIONS, Guenon discusses the prospects for the reestablishment of a Western traditional elite whose purpose would be to somewhat curtail the disastrous effects of materialism, and transmit the traditional doctrine into the new world that will follow the present dissolution.

This is only the briefest summary of a book rich in depth and insight in spite of its small size. Anyone who carefully reads and meditates on its contents cannot help but feel the singular power and purity of the author's intelligence, even though one may question some of the doctrines it contains. Many would find its contents incomprehensible or even scandalous but "he who has ears to hear, let him hear."

This book is for those that, unsatisfied with the course os the modern world and it's oppressive materialism, are looking for convincing explanations, out of the common political and economical vision. The author examines the deep factors that conducted our world to it's present unbalance, demonstrating that, since the Middle Age, the Occident went further and further away, with increasing velocity, from the principles that ruled all the humanity until that momment. Principles that presume an hierarchy of values, from the highest (spiritual) ones to the basic (material) ones; principles that are within the essence of the traditional civilizations, that harmonize man and nature. We find examples of traditional civilizations with the north-american native tribes (as the Hopi and Sioux, among others); the Tibet, before the chinese invasion; the medieval Japan... René Guénon (1886-1951), with this book that is at once masterly and accessible, don't give us illusions about the future of our civilization. Instead he provides us with new and wide horizons, with tools that enables us to evaluate and stand up to the great challenges of the modern world crisis. It's the best way to make a first contact with René Guénon and the traditional view.

This book is very special, in that it forms a perfect introduction to Traditional thought and critique. People used to the spirit-negating attitudes of our times may be both shocked and annoyed at the writer's conclusions. Others may find their beliefs and basic feelings clearly articulated for the very first time.

Guenon never uses the apologetics about religion and spiritual matters so common in almost every book on these subjects. he assumes the reader shares his beliefs and views and wastes no time trying to convince us that God exists, spirit is superior to matter, or that there is value in religion. Once reading this refreshing prespective, is hard not to be changed.

Rene Guenon makes an excellent case when he presents the ontologically corrupt nature of our time in his _Crisis of the Modern World_. Guenon's prose, as noted by other readers, translates horribly into English from the original French. Never before have I read "paragraph long" sentences and Guenon is probably one of the few authors who uses semicolons and colons more frequently than periods in his ultra-dense prose. His train of thought is difficult to follow but once concentrated upon closely it is apparent how insightful Guenon is explaining his subject. He was an early twentieth century advocate of the "perennialist" philosophy: all of the world's genuine religious faiths share a common root and esoteric teachings that have been obscured by the process of time. The modern world, whose historical origins lay during the Renaissance period, is the spiritual nadir of this time "cycle" according to Guenon's understanding of ancient Hindu mythology. It is marked by a decline in the role of spiritual élites, both exoteric and esoteric religious devotion, and by the subsequent rise in the study of material, empirical sciences, and the ascendancy of secular humanist philosophy and the replacement of objective, transcendent religion with sentimental moralism. Guenon's perspective is interesting because he defends the Catholic Church as Europe's sole remaining traditional body, despite dropping out of the Catholic fold. Guenon instead affiliated himself with Freemasonry and the study of Hindu texts, and who later in life moved to Egypt and converted to Islam in order to live in a more traditional (i.e. non-Western) society. Guenon decries the fact that the West has lost touch with its religious roots and is in the meantime corrupting the traditional eastern societies. He also notes how the current, anti-traditional Western advocates of democracy and thus majority rule "by the people" are in fact in the minority if the East and its views are taken into consideration. All mental activity and emphasis in the West have become geared to the external and purely rational, not toward the "intellectual" in the classic sense of the term. Consider the apocalyptic nature of the pro-sports phenomenon:

"There is no longer any place for intelligence, or anything else that is purely inward, for these are things that can neither be seen nor touched, that can neither be counted nor weighed; there is only place for outward action in all its forms, even those that are the most completely meaningless. For this reason it should not be a matter of surprise that the Anglo-Saxon mania for sport gains ground day by day: the ideal of the modern world is the 'human animal' who has developed his muscular strength to the highest pitch; its heroes are athletes, even though they be mere brutes; it is they who awaken popular enthusiasm, and it is their exploits that command the passionate interest of the crowd. A world in which such things are seen has indeed sunk low and seems near its end" (92).

The only hope for the West, Guenon notes, is for a spiritual elite, an initiated aristocracy of sorts, to guide society into the next "Golden Age." However, the forces of the modern world prevent such a naturally dispersed and alienated group from organizing and turning back the clock. Nevertheless, the modern world, built as it is on materialistic presuppositions, will experience a catastrophe (_Crisis_ was written in the 1920s before the first nuclear weapons were constructed) that will usher in the next "cycle," the "new heaven and new earth" according to the Gospel. With the proliferation of nuclear technology and the continuing Mideast conflict, Guenon remains to be proven wrong. I disagree with Guenon's rejection of Catholicism for shady esotericism, Hinduism and Islam, but overall he reveals the modern world for the false, temporal sham that it really is.

In perhaps his most important work, _The Crisis of the Modern World_, traditionalist thinker Rene Guenon outlines his philosophy and shows how the traditional outlook is opposed by modern developments. Guenon begins by noting that the modern world has brought about a crisis, conceived by many in terms of apocalypse and the "end times" (the coming dark age of the Kali Yuga in terms of Hindu cyclical cosmology), which can only be resolved by a return of the West to the traditional outlook. Taking off from what he had written earlier in a book entitled _East and West_, Guenon notes that the worldviews of West and East are profoundly different from each other, the East maintaining its traditions, while the West creeps towards degeneracy in the form of modernism and materialism. Much of this book is spent contrasting East and West, attempting to demonstrate exactly where the West has gone astray (both in its attempts to colonize the East and in its rampant materialism and modernism). In the East, three great traditions remain corresponding to the Near, Middle, and Far East respectively. These are the traditions of Islam, the traditions of India (especially Hinduism), and the traditions of the Chinese civilization. Guenon believes that only one possible source for traditional renewal remains in the West, and that is the Catholic (meaning "universal") Church, which he opposes to Protestant Christianity or modern day "rationalism", for example. Tranditionalism places an emphasis on both "primordialism" and universality, in line with its Vedantist roots. Guenon also notes several contrasting distinctions between the traditional viewpoint and that of the modern day (the Western materialist/"rationalist" outlook). Part of this involves the contrast between sacred and profane science. Modernists emphasize profane science, attempting to desacralize nature, and place their priority in both pragmatism and the material world. Such a view has come even to relegate metaphysical notions of truth to the realm of the purely pragmatic and utilitarian. Guenon also notes how the modern day world is dominated by a mass democratic levelling brought about by what he terms "individualism". It is this form of "individualism" which has led to materialism and an emphasis on pure pragmatics (quantity as opposed to quality), although he contrasts this to the more genuine view of the traditional man which remains opposed to the encroaching influences of force, through the state for example. Guenon sees much to criticize in the democratic development of the West, seeing in democracy a form of mass levelling. Opposing these developments within the modern world, Guenon calls for a new intellectual elite, who will serve to revive tradition where it is to be found. This revival also centers around the schism between East and West. In this sense, those among the "intellectual elite" must either opt to integrate the traditions of the East (which remain viable) into the West or attempt to restore genuine Western tradition (such as that which exists in a form of decline within the Catholic Church). Guenon remains a champion of the East and notes the Western bias and attempt to dominate the traditional East, citing several sources of this problematic, where he means by the West the modern materialist-driven West and not the traditional West. This book serves as an important introduction to the thinking of Rene Guenon, who is the father of the traditionalist school which also includes Ananda Coomaraswamy, Frithjof Schuon, Julius Evola, and Mircea Eliade, among others. It serves to highlight many of the contrasts which exist between the modern world (undergoing crisis) and the traditional outlook. Guenon notes that while there is a tendency for those among the traditional camp to despair, given the bleak outlook presented by the modern world (which may be destroyed in catastrophe given its false foundations), that this tendency should be overcome, particularly by those among his chosen elite. Guenon quotes several important passages from the Gospel accounts to illustrate his point. Truly the modern world represents the traditional Kali Yuga of the Hindu cycle, a dark age of rampant materialism, and a decline from the once golden age of spiritual tradition.

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.

This book show us the roots of our modern world. This book is for those that, unsatisfied with the course os the modern world and it?s oppressive materialism, are looking for convincing explanations, out of the common political and economical vision. The author examines the deep factors that conducted our world to it?s present unbalance, demonstrating that, since the Middle Age, the Occident went further and further away, with increasing velocity, from the principles that ruled all the humanity until that momment. Principles that presume an hierarchy of values, from the highest (spiritual) ones to the basic (material) ones; principles that are within the essence of the traditional civilizations, that harmonize man and nature. We find examples of traditional civilizations with the north-american native tribes (as the Hopi and Sioux, among others); the Tibet, before the chinese invasion; the medieval Japan... Ren? Gu?non (1886-1951), with this book that is at once masterly and accessible, don?t give us illusions about the future of our civilization. Instead he provides us with new and wide horizons, with tools that enables us to evaluate and stand up to the great challenges of the modern world crisis. It's the best way to make a first contact with Ren? Gu?non and the traditional view.

Luiz Pontual (irget@reneguenon.net), director of Ren? Gu?non's Institute, April 9, 1999. See our site irget@reneguenon.net and buy our book at Amazon.com

René Guénon was a French thinker who is often regarded as the founder of Traditionalism. He wrote "The crisis of the modern world" in 1927. It's his most accesible work, and arguably the only well known one. The book is rather short and should be considered an introduction to Guénon's philosophy, rather than a final statement of it.

Guénon was a dissident Catholic when he wrote "The crisis of the modern world". Later, he moved to Egypt and converted to Sunni Islam. Meanwhile, Traditionalism became a very heterogenous movement, evolving in all kinds of unexpected directions, many of whom Guénon would have disapproved of. (The story is told in Mark Sedgwick's scholarly study "Against the modern world".)

Being "modern", I find relating to Guénon's book difficult. He rejects virtually everything in the modern world: philosophy, science, democracy, social equality, individualism, nationalism and materialism. He criticizes modern Western religion, seeing it as shallow, materialistic or sentimentalist. German idealism isn't good either, and Theosophy is also in for a whipping. Guénon's rejection of modernity is very radical. Some conservatives long for the Holy Alliance or the ancien regime, others want to revive the spirit of the Renaissance or classical Greece, and still others simply want Ike and Jim Crow back. Guénon, on the other hand, rejects the Renaissance and also criticizes classical Greece and Rome. To him, the kind of philosophy that makes human reason paramount and hence rejects "tradition" is already on the slippery slope to modernity. In a sense, he is quite correct: it's difficult to imagine modern science without a prior development of philosophy, and this kind of philosophy did indeed start in ancient Greece.

Guénon is more positive towards the Middle Ages, but he places the beginning of the modern world in the 14th century rather than the late 15th or early 16th centuries. Modernity is older than both the Renaissance and the Reformation. Again, he has a certain point. In another book, he points to the dissolution of the Knights Templar as the decisive event. Despite their attack on the Templars, Guénon nevertheless regards the Catholic Church as the only traditional organization left in the Western world, and he hopes that it's medieval spirit can somehow be revived. (As already mentioned, he later abandoned this hope, and converted to Islam.)

However, Guénon's alternative isn't a simple return to some traditional religion. Rather, he believes in the existence of a primordial and secret spiritual tradition, which isn't identical to any of the established religions. Those who reject modernity should convert to a traditional religion and follow its precepts, but this is simply a matter of outer forms. The real message of Guénon is the secret doctrine supposedly underlying all religions, a doctrine known only to a small group of elect.

But what is this esoteric message? In "The crisis of the modern world", Guénon liberally uses Hindu terminology. He talks about the kali yuga, the blending of castes, the roles of the Brahmanas and the Kshatriyas, and so on. He mentions the Vedas and the Bhagavad-Gita. However, he also incorporates ideas of a more uncertain provenance: legends of sunken or lost continents, ideas about frequent pre-columbian contacts with the New World, and something that sounds like conspiracy theory. Finally, he mentions ancient astrology and alchemy, two ideas presumably derived from the Hermetic tradition. Thus, Guénon isn't simply calling for a return to pre-modernity or conservative religion. His Traditionalism turns out to be a blend of many different ideas, some of whom are suspiciously similar to those of Theosophy, a new religious movement Guénon vehemently opposes!

"The crisis of the modern world" isn't simply an attack on modernity. It's also an attempt to create what is, in effect, a new religion. But what could be more modern than that? Ironically, René Guénon might have been more modern than he imagined.

To a modern (!) reader, Guénon's book also sounds hopelessly naïve and idealist. He attacks the constant agitation and strife of the modern world. Point taken. But there was plenty of agitation and strife during the Middle Ages as well, not to mention the ancient world, and it's difficult to imagine that India was any better in this regard than the rest. Guénon also hopes that East and West will understand each other and come to live in peace, if only the West could return to its traditional culture. But Muslims and Christians constantly fought each other during the Middle Ages. Yet, the book never mentions the crusades. It's difficult to imagine that a Catholic Europe and a revived Muslim world would enter into ecumenical negotiations.

Perhaps a Traditionalist will respond, that this observation is correct but beside the point, since we have lived in the kali yuga (the dark age) for about 6000 years. But this leads to another problem: there were indeed peaceful civilizations before this time, such as the Indus Valley Civilization, and perhaps Minoan Crete, and many Neolithic settlements. However, these societies, with their strangely egalitarian traits and/or worship of nature or the Goddess, doesn't seem to conform to the "traditional data" expounded by Guénon.

Somehow, it feels as if René Guénon might have been following the wrong tradition...

Dare to breathe in the fresh mountain air of this truly *classical* approach to existence. The post-Christian West has become a technotopic wasteland of whiny, anti-hierarchical weaklings addicted to an empty convenience-based life-style devoid of higher goals and concerns. Guenon reveals how the deviant modern world has traded the tiered functionalism of Traditional civilization, in which all ideal human types might flourish according to their dharmic specificity, for the dysfunction of mass democracy and dysgenic egalitarianism, where inhuman bureaucratic collectivism thrives in proportion as all potential above-average natures are suppressed and forbidden from setting themselves against the leveled and mentally uniformized populaton of socially-engineered ethical nonentities. In the structurelessness of the modern world the masses become more and more uninhibited and a brutal centralism is all that can stem the inevitable chaos of a Christ-less subhumanity disdainful of its highest heritage and all transcendent distinctions.

As Guenon has so perfectly stated, "What [modern] Westerners call civilization, the others would call barbarity, because it is precisely lacking in the essential, that is to say a principle of a higher order."

The sheepfold shall grate, but true power can only come from submission to the Divine Logos, the superior cannot emanate from the inferior, the herd cannot confer what it does not possess.

"Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning" (James 1:17).

"This is why, according to Hindu doctrine, Brahmins should keep their minds constantly turned toward supreme knowledge, whereas Kshatriyas should rather apply themselves to a study of the successive stages by which this is gradually to be reached" (page 52).

Chances are if you have heard about Traditionalism in one way or the other, the title of this book was what caught your attention somewhere down the line. In an age marked by such unbridled enthusiasm for the great progressive march towards the better society located somewhere ahead in the misty future (by our would-be elites, at least), it is seldom to find a view opposed to this uncritical optimism that is both profound, serious and spiritual. With Traditionalism and its prime promoter Réne Guénon, we have this available with his scathing critique of the modern world and all that that entails. Born a Frenchman in the late 1800's into a bourgeois family and a promising path laid before him via university studies and a comfortable existence, he would eventually end up a convert to a Sufi order of Islam living in Cairo, Egypt in the 1950's. Quite a journey, in other words. In the years that passed between his birth and his death, he would end up writing a body of work that is perhaps the most impressive and dissecting collection of books written, namely his writings on religion and Traditionalism that are available in excellent editions in the series "Collected Works of Rene Guenon" that are available here on Amazon, among other places. This book, as mentioned, and his magnum opus The Reign of Quantity and the Signs of the Times Perennial Wisdom Series along with the magnum opus of baron Julius Evola Revolt Against the Modern World, should give the prospective reader a profound understanding of both Traditionalism and the world in general. This slim volume, as opposed to the other two books mentioned, also carry the advantage of being short and condensed, thereby being easy to read even for those not yet used to the rather floating prose of Traditionalist authors. The chapters included tell a story in themselves, and they are as follows: "The Dark Age", "The Opposition between East and West", "Knowledge and Action", "Sacred and Profane Science", "Individualism", "The Social Chaos", "A Material Civilization", "Western Encroachment" and finally "Some Conclusions".

The great quality of Guénon is that he to a very small degree uses time- or place-specific examples or references whilst writing his volumes: the books are written to be read a hundred years into the past, or three hundred years into the future (even if *that* future at the present time seems rather bleak the way things are going). He is in other words the opposite of a present-day politician with a memory that last about as long back in the past as the previous election. Guénons grim view of modernity and its promoters will not endear him to readers used to actually participating joyfully in the institutions and debates of this degraded age, but then again, such persons would not have been the kind of readers that Guénon would have wished to reach. For, as he points out on page 66: "Modern man, instead of attempting to raise himself to truth, seeks to drag truth down to his own level[...]". Is this not a good point, if you reflect upon it? If an unpleasant truth is presented to a modern audience, isn't the usual tactic these days to just ignore it and pretend it was never offered? This seems to me to be the cause if the issue is politics, culture, environmentalism, religion or any other "controversial" issue, yet Guénon simply cuts through the entire net of lies that the modern world constantly spins with his penetrating gaze. That being said, Guénon does not propose that Traditionalists attempt to tackle the world head-on, (somewhat contrary to the warrior-mentality of his friend Evola, as described in his Metaphysics of War), but rather that those aware of these issues attempt to form a intellectual elite capable of influencing the world indirectly via contact with the higher principle, and also carrying on the seeds of Tradition in a rapidly descending age that seems to be spinning out of control. Yesterday the 7th billion "world-citizen" was born, fittingly enough in the Philippines.

If you wish to simply shout out: "STOP, I WANT OFF!" the modernist carousel of madness, reading this book would be an excellent start. It is perhaps the most important book written, if you take length and impact into consideration. Five stars and beyond for this classic must-read.