<p>"This amounts to saying that he [i.e. modern man] becomes scarcely more than what would be described in current language as ‘a body without a soul', and that in the most literal sense of the words. [..] the individual really no longer has any 'name' that belongs to him, because he is emptied of the qualities which that name should express; he is thus really 'anonymous', but in the inferior sense of the word.</p>

The Modern Man

<p>This is the anonymity of the 'masses’ of which the individual is part and in which he loses himself, those 'masses' that are no more than a collection of similar individuals, regarded purely and simply as so many arithmetical 'units'. Units' of that sort can be counted, and the collectivity they make up can thus be numerically evaluated but in no way can each one of them be given a denomination indicating that he is distinguished from the others by some qualitative difference."</p>

Arithmetical Units

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'. Guénon 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'-Guénon 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 Guénon'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.

Ahmad 's Key Ideas from The Reign of Quantity and the Signs of the Times
by Rene Guenon

The Modern Man

Arithmetical Units

Ahmad 's ideas are part of this journey:

Related collections

Discover Key Ideas from Books on Similar Topics

Ahmad 's Key Ideas from The Reign of Quantity and the Signs of the Timesby Rene Guenon

The Modern Man

Arithmetical Units

Ahmad 's ideas are part of this journey:

Related collections

Discover Key Ideas from Books on Similar Topics

Ahmad 's Key Ideas from The Reign of Quantity and the Signs of the Times
by Rene Guenon