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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'. Guenon 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'-Guenon 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 Guenon'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.
'Without vision the people perish.' So wrote the poet William
Blake. Lord Northbourne (1896-1982) was a man of exceptional and
comprehensive vision, who diagnosed the sickness of modern society
as stemming from the severance of its organic links with the
wholeness of life. But like his better-known younger contemporary
E. F. Schumacher (author of Small is Beautiful), whose work
developed along very similar lines, Northbourne's occupation as a
practicing organic farmer (he coined the term) was joined to a deep
conviction that humanity does not live by bread alone, and that the
fullness of life properly integral to human nature demands
obedience to sacred law. Thus his vision of life came to embrace
the interrelationship of God, humanity, and the soil as a unity
presupposing a way of life in stark contrast to that of the myopic,
mechanististic world he saw encroaching on all sides. And so, as it
becomes increasingly evident that such a way of life stands to
emperil our very future and that of the delicate ecosystem on which
all life depends, it is time to re-examine the work of this
pioneering thinker. In an age of specialization and fragmentation,
we have much to learn from Northbourne, whose vision of what is
required by a truly meaningful and sustainable society embraced
religion, farming, the arts, the rural crafts, monetary form, and
traditional metaphysics. Northbourne's later works, Religion in the
Modern World and Looking Back on Progress, present his wider
reflections on the Divine and human society, but always with the
sensibility of a man who knows the soil, recalling in many ways the
writings of Wendell Berry. He corresponded with Thomas Merton, as
well as mountaineer and Tibetan Buddhist Marco Pallis (The Way and
the Mountain), who introduced him to the school of perennialist
writers. Northbourne translated Ren Gu non's The Reign of Quantity
and the Signs of the Times, described by Huston Smith as one of the
truly seminal books of the twentieth century, as well as Frithjof
Schuon's Light on Ancient Worlds and Titus Burckhardt's Sacred Art
in East and West. He was also an accomplished flower gardener and
watercolorist, and a frequent contributor to the British periodical
Studies in Comparative Religion, described by Schumacher as one of
the two most important journals to read. Sophia Perennis is
republishing all three of Northbourne's works, a fourth volume of
uncollected essays spanning agriculture and metaphysics, as well as
the 23-volume Collected Writings of Ren Gu non, including The Reign
of Quantity. Lord Northbourne (1896-1982) was a man of exceptional
vision, who already in the 1940s diagnosed in detail the sickness
of modern society as stemming from the severance of its organic
links with the wholeness of life. A leading figure in the early
organic farming movement, his writings profoundly affected such
other pioneers as Sir Albert Howard, Rolf Gardiner, Ehrenfried
Pfeiffer, and H. J. Massingham. His path led him on to a profound
study of comparative religion, traditional metaphysics, and the
science of symbols, which he employed in incisive observations on
the character of modern society. His later writings exercised
considerable influence on his younger contemporaries E. F.
Schumacher and Thomas Merton, and in many ways anticipate the
essays of Wendell Berry. The republication of this milestone
ecological text will be followed by three volumes of Northbourne's
later metaphysical and cultural writings. "A major text in the
organic canon, too long out-of-print" - Philip Conford, The Origins
of the Organic Movement "We have tried to conquer nature by force
and by intellect. It now remains for us to try the way of love." -
From the book (possibly for front cover, if not too long?)
Rene Guenon (1886-1951) is undoubtedly one of the luminaries of the
twentieth century, whose critique of the modern world has stood
fast against the shifting sands of recent philosophies. His oeuvre
of 26 volumes is providential for the modern seeker: 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, at the same time it
directs the reader 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. Guenon's early
and abiding interest in mathematics, like that of Plato, Pascal,
Leibnitz, and many other metaphysicians of note, runs like a
scarlet threat throughout his doctrinal studies. In this late text
published just five years before his death, Guenon devotes an
entire volume to questions regarding the nature of limits and the
infinite, both with respect to the calculus as a mathematical
discipline, and to the symbolism of the initiatic path. This book
therefore extends and complements the geometrical symbolism Guenon
employs in several of his other works, especially The Symbolism of
the Cross, The Multiple States of the Being, and Symbols of Sacred
Science. A sampling of chapter titles will convey some sense of
this remarkable work: 'Infinite and Indefinite', 'Degrees of
Infinity', 'Zero is not a Number', 'The Law of Continuity',
'Vanishing Quantities', 'Various Orders of Indefinitude', 'The
Arguments of Zeno of Elea', 'The True Conception of Passage to the
Limit'. The Collected Works of Rene Guenon brings together the
writings of one of the greatest prophets of our time, whose voice
is even more important today than when he was alive. Huston Smith,
author of The World's Religions, etc.
Lord Northbourne (1896-1982) was a man of exceptional vision, who
already in the 1940s diagnosed in detail the sickness of modern
society as stemming from the severance of its organic links with
the wholeness of life. A leading figure in the early organic
farming movement, his writings profoundly affected such other
pioneers as Sir Albert Howard, Rolf Gardiner, Ehrenfried Pfeiffer,
and H. J. Massingham. His path led him on to a profound study of
comparative religion, traditional metaphysics, and the science of
symbols, which he employed in incisive observations on the
character of modern society. His later writings exercised
considerable influence on his younger contemporaries E. F.
Schumacher and Thomas Merton, and in many ways anticipate the
essays of Wendell Berry. The republication of this milestone
ecological text will be followed by three volumes of Northbourne's
later metaphysical and cultural writings.
A thoroughgoing critique of the modern world from the point of view
of traditional metaphysics, pointing out the false assumptions at
the root of many contemporary problems.
Collected essays on critqueing the belief in progress from a
traditionalist point of view from which so-called progress oftens
appears as regress.
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