The Reign of Quantity and the Signs of the Times (Le Règne de la Quantité et les Signes des Temps, 1945)

This book is the critique of modern Western civilization from the point of view of Traditional metaphysics, par excellence, giving but a 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. In the Reign of Quantity and the Signs of the Times (Le Règne de la Quantité et les Signes des Temps, 1945), René Guénon (ʿAbd al-Wāḥid Yaḥyá, al-Mālikī, ash-Shādhilī–al-ʿArabī–al-Ḥamdī: 1304–1370 н / 1886–1951 ᴀᴅ) (عبد الـواحد يحيیٰ الـمالكي الـشاذلي الـعربي الـحمدي) views history in terms of the Vedic concept of the manvantara (मन्वन्तर), the cycle of manifestation composed of Golden, Silver, Bronze, and Iron ages. This cycle is an inevitable descent from the pole of Essence (or forma; quality) toward the pole of Substance (or materia; quantity). Essence is qualitative while substance is quantitative. As the cycle progresses or descends, the very nature of time and space changes. In earlier stages, time is relatively eternal, as the cycle moves on, however, time begins to take over and accelerate, but this constant acceleration of time cannot go on forever. Time, the “devourer” ends by devouring itself. At the end of time, Time will be changed into space again. This ultimate timeless point is simultaneously the end of the cycle of manifestation and the beginning of the next. Before this ultimate transformation, in the latter days of the present cycle, certain final developments must take place. Since quantity has particularly to do with matter, the Reign of quantity must also be the reign of materialism. The age of miracles ceases, the world becomes less permeable to the influences of the higher planes of reality, and a reign of ‘inverted quality’ just before the end of the age: the triumph of the ‘counter-initiation’, the kingdom of Antichrist. With his fabled clarity and directness, Guénon indicates 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’. This text is considered the magnum opus among Guénon’s texts of civilizational criticism.