René Guénon: Evening

René Guénon was French metaphysician. Explore interesting quotes on evening.

René Guénon: 56 quotes14 likes

“Is it because Westerners have come to lose their intellectuality through over-developing their capacity for action that they console themselves by inventing theories which set action above everything, and even go so far, as in the case of pragmatism, as to deny that there exists anything of value beyond action; or is the contrary true, that it is the acceptance of this point of view that has led to the intellectual atrophy we see today?”

Source: The Crisis of the Modern World (1927), p. 47

“The guiding function exercised by a true elect, and even the very existence of this elect—since it must exercise this function if it exists at all—is utterly incompatible with democracy. … A real elect, as we have said, can only be an intellectual one; and that is why democracy can arise only where pure intellectuality no longer exists, as is the case in the modern world.”

Source: The Crisis of the Modern World (1927), p. 98

“Philosophy … is interesting because it expresses, in a form as clearly defined as possible, the tendencies of this or that period, much more than it really creates them; and even if it can be said to direct them to a certain extent, it does so only secondarily and when they are already formed.”

Source: The Crisis of the Modern World (1927), p. 75

“Have we not arrived at that terrible age, announced in the Sacred Books of India, "when the castes shall be mingled, when even the family shall no longer exist?"”

La crise du monde moderne (The Crisis of the Modern World) (1927)

“There is thus all the more reason to exercise extreme vigilance … against anything that may lead the being to become "fused," or preferably and more accurately "confused" or even "dissolved," in a sort of "cosmic consciousness" that shuts out all "transcendence" and so also shuts out all effective spirituality. This is the ultimate consequence of all the anti-metaphysical errors known more especially in their philosophical aspect by such names as "pantheism," "immanentism," and "naturalism."”

Source: The Reign of Quantity and Signs of the Times (1945), p. 288