The Crisis of the Modern World

by Rene Guenon

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. 80 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 reflex ions 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 foundations of its civilization and that was the main cause for its unique survival through so many centuries.

About the Author:

René Guénon (November 15, 1886 – January 7, 1951) was a French author and intellectual who remains an influential figure in the domain of metaphysics, having written on topics ranging from metaphysics, sacred science and traditional studies to symbolism and initiation. His works, written and first published in French, have been translated into more than twenty languages.

In his writings, he proposes either "to expose directly some aspects of Eastern metaphysical doctrines", these doctrines being defined by him as of "universal character" or "to adapt these same doctrines [for western readers] while keeping strictly faithful to their spirit"; he only endorsed the function of "handing down" those Eastern doctrines, while stating their "non-individual character".