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The Reign of Quantity & the Signs of the Times 4th Revised ed. Edition

4.6 out of 5 stars 25 customer reviews
ISBN-13: 978-0900588679
ISBN-10: 0900588675
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Product Details

  • Series: Collected Works of Rene Guenon
  • Paperback: 300 pages
  • Publisher: Sophia Perennis; 4th Revised ed. edition (June 9, 2004)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0900588675
  • ISBN-13: 978-0900588679
  • Product Dimensions: 6 x 0.7 x 9 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (25 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #474,705 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Format: Paperback
Like "The Crisis of the Modern World", a smaller work written years earlier, "The Reign of Quantity & the Signs of the Times" falls into that group of Rene Guenon's works which have been called "intellectual reform and criticism of the modern world." These works evaluate the principles (or as Guenon would insist the "pseudo-principles") behind the modern mentality in the light of traditional principles. However, "Reign" differs from "Crisis" in being a much more metaphysically challenging exploration of the nature and trajectory of the modern thing. For that reason, "Crisis" is a better book than "Reign" to begin your exploration of the country that is Guenon.
Guenon is a metaphysician with a wide but highly integrated vision of reality. You do not get the fullness of his thought in any one of his books, although some are more central than others. But because of the integrity of the whole corpus one book fills out or illuminates the ideas found in the others. This fact should be kept in mind when approaching him. Frustrations and perplexities will dissipate with further reading. For all that, there is no getting around the demanding nature of Guenon's thought.
Guenon sees modernity, in its materialist stage, as the "reign of quantity" i.e. a state of affairs in which an attempt is made to reduce all of reality to that which can be measured by the senses. This state of affairs is a "sign of the times" in that it tells us that we are at the end of the "Kali-Yuga" or "time of troubles." According to tradition, time is cyclical. One of the most significant of these cycles is the "Manvantara" which is made up of four "Yugas." The time covered by each of these "Yugas" is qualitatively different.
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Format: Hardcover
The Reign of Quantity and the Signs of the Times is a masterpiece by the enlightened perennial intellectual René Guénon, and is considered by many of those who can comprehend it to be his magnum opus. That having been said, beware of reading this for the wrong reasons, or with the wrong grounding.

I cannot stress the latter point any further than it has been, but I must say this: If you have never read René Guénon before, do not read this book! To those without proper grounding in Guénon's other works, such as 'East and West' or 'The Crisis of the Modern World', this book will seem full of strange enigmas and asides, and things that may not, on the surface, appear to be related to the topic at hand. However, for those who have read and properly comprehended one or both of those, particularly 'Crisis', what is said here will make far more sense, a great many enigmas will be cleared up, and many things that may have seemed to be off-topic and/or useless information will be put in their proper place in the reader's mind.

I can say little that hasn't been said by other reviewers (or that Guénon didn't say himself!), so instead I would like to devote a few moments to do what they didn't, and clear up any doubts that may've been put in your mind by the two reviewers who didn't recommend 'The Reign of Quantity'.
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Format: Paperback
Perhaps Guenon's greatest work, this book analyses the metaphysical roots of the crisis of this age, explaining the causes of the present condition to lie in modern civilization's rebellion against tradition -- not just one tradition, but the recurring and perennial tradition of every premodern civilization. The author's penetrating insight into modern science and the results of its monopoly over our age is fascinating. His critique of modernity is grounded in the traditional religious view which views human temporal existence not as an evolution, but a degression culminating in the "signs of the hour" and the emergence of the dajjal or the anti-christ. Guenon's radical critique of the 20th Century will no doubt be unpalatable for those to whom the wisdom of the ancients is ignorance relative to the quantum physics of today; but Guenon was well aware of the intellectual totalitarianism of the modern world-view. His objective was not a mass conversion to tradition. He sought rather to help open the eyes of a small number of people to the realities of the modern world and the illusion of progress. And this he did. A good number of prominent intellectuals were influenced by his works; among them: Huston Smith, Martin Lings, Gai Eaton, Seyyed Hossein Nasr, James Cutsinger, Toshiko Izutsu and host of others. Guenon died in the late 50's in Cairo, Egypt where he lived for almost twenty years as an adeherent of the Muslim faith. His last words were "Allah, Allah".
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Format: Paperback
It's extremely unfortunate that this book, "The Reign of Quantity" is out of print since it's the only book that presents a successful structural critique of "evolutionary" spirituality -- the cutting-edge of western propaganda.
Guenon's insights from the 1940s are even more relevant today since he described so well the nascent New Age scene and it's ability to lure potentially level-headed people into a cloud of deception.
Apparently Ramana Maharshi, the guru and sage promoter of Advaita Vedanta through self-enquiry, called R. Guenon, "the Great Sufi" and Guenon's associates visited Ramana Maharshi.
According to the website [...] Ramana Maharshi stated, "There is no evolution."
Guenon argues this case in the context of the spiritual cycles of space-time based on the ratios 1:2:3:4.
Guenon's degree thesis in France was on the calculus and transcendental values.
"The Reign of Quantity" is the only book that develops the logic that western math, starting with the squaring of the circle, is inherently unjust, disharmonic and representative of the Kali Yuga.
This is the only book that cuts through the b.s. and gives the reader a clear view of current times but at the same time a clear vision of how to cut through these times.
Guenon gives great detail to the disharmonic forces that even call themselves "traditionalists" based on his writing yet are not accurate representatives of his work.
This inaccuracy proved to be the case with the two other so-called "traditionalist" founders -- Schuon and Evola.
Unfortunately Guenon's work has been dismissed by those who have not read him and Guenon's work has been ignored since it is too radical.
Hopefully, after Oxford University Press's forthcoming book on traditionalism, there will be a reprint of "the Reign of Quantity"
drew hempel
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