The Crisis of the Modern World

Email

Whatsapp

Facebook

Pinterest

Twitter

Copy link

Rene Guenon's The Crisis of the Modern World was published for the first time in 1927, initially in French and then later translated into English by Arthur Osborne. In the book, the author has written a radical account of the modern world, of how India of today is getting disappeared by the strong flow of the Western World and of forgetting the spiritual foundations on which its civilizations were built. While the present book is crucial for the students, researchers and teachers of Hinduism and Philosophy, it will prove to be an interesting read for a layperson alike.

When writing East and West a few years ago, we thought we had said all that was required, at least for the time being, concerning the questions dealt with in that book. Since then, however, events have followed one upon another with ever increasing speed, and while this has not made it necessary to alter a single word of what we have written, it provides an opportunity for certain additional explanations and for the development of lines of thought which we did not feel called upon to stress in the first instance. These explanations have become the more imperative since we have recently seen reaffirmed in a distinctly aggressive manner some of those very confusions we had already tried to dispel. For this reason, while carefully holding aloof from all controversies, it has seemed to us advisable to present matters once more in their true perspective. In this connection there are certain considerations, often of a quite elementary nature, which appear so alien to the vast majority of our contemporaries, that in order to make them generally understood it is necessary to return to them again and again, presenting them in their various aspects and explaining more fully, as circumstances permit, any points likely to give rise to difficulties which could not always be foreseen from the outset.