“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

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Aug. 21, 2023. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Is it because Westerners have come to lose their intellectuality through over-developing their capacity for action that…" by René Guénon?
René Guénon photo
René Guénon 28
French metaphysician 1886–1951

Related quotes

Dmitry Peskov photo

“We accuse Western countries of taking a series of unlawful actions that has led to the blockade.”

Dmitry Peskov (1967) Russian politician

Said about the Russian blockade of Ukrainian ports, stopping export of food from Ukraine, quoted in "Russia slams sanctions, seeks to shift blame for food crisis" https://www.opb.org/article/2022/05/26/russia-slams-sanctions-seeks-to-shift-blame-for-food-crisis/, OPB/Associated Press, 26 May 2022
CNN Interview (March 2022)

Adolphe Quetelet photo

“The analysis of the moral man through his actions, and of the intellectual man through his productions, seems”

Adolphe Quetelet (1796–1874) Belgian astronomer, mathematician, statistician and sociologist

Preface of M. Quetelet
A Treatise on Man and the Development of His Faculties (1842)
Context: The analysis of the moral man through his actions, and of the intellectual man through his productions, seems to me calculated to form one of the most interesting parts of the sciences of observation, applied to anthropology.

Elinor Ostrom photo
Andy Andrews photo
Aristotle photo
Karl Mannheim photo
Friedrich Hayek photo

“Since the value of freedom rests on the opportunities it provides for unforeseen and unpredictable actions, we will rarely know what we lose through a particular restriction of freedom.”

Friedrich Hayek (1899–1992) Austrian and British economist and Nobel Prize for Economics laureate

“Principles or Expediency?” Toward Liberty: Essays in Honor of Ludwig von Mises on the Occasion of his 90th Birthday (29 September 1971)
1960s–1970s

Bertrand Russell photo

“Many of the actions by which men have become rich are far more harmful to the community than the obscure crimes of poor men, yet they go unpunished because they do not interfere with the existing order.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Source: 1910s, Proposed Roads To Freedom (1918), Ch. V: Government and Law

Related topics