Synopses & Reviews
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'. Gunon 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'-Gunon 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 Gunon'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.
Table of Contents
Quality & quantity -- Materia signata quantitate -- Measure & manifestation -- Spatial quantity & qualified space -- The qualitative determinations of time -- The principle of individuation -- Uniformity against unity -- Ancient crafts & modern industry -- The twofold significance of anonymity -- The illusion of statistics -- Unity & simplicity -- The hatred of secrecy -- The postulates of rationalism -- Mechanism & materialism -- The illusion of ordinary life -- The degeneration of coinage -- The solidification of the world -- Scientific mythology & popularization -- The limits of history & geography -- From sphere to cube -- Cain & Abel -- The significance of metallurgy -- Time changed into space -- Toward dissolution -- The fissures in the great wall -- Shamanism & sorcery -- Psychic residues -- The successive stages in anti-traditional action -- Deviation & subversion -- The inversion of symbols -- Tradition & traditionalism -- Neo-spiritualism -- Contemporary intuitionism -- The misdeeds of psychoanalysis -- The confusion of the psychic & the spiritual -- Pseudo-initiation -- The deceptiveness of prophecies -- From anti-tradition to counter-tradition -- The great parody or spirituality inverted -- The end of a world.