Overview
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In the Preface, René Guénon addresses the reader directly, stating that while his earlier work East and West provided useful indications on certain questions, subsequent events—unfolding with ever-increasing speed—now demand complementary clarifications. These clarifications are necessary because certain confusions, which he had already laboured to dispel, have recently reappeared in an aggressive form. Although Guénon abstains from polemic, he considers it good to set matters right once again, noting that many elementary considerations are so foreign to modern minds that one must return to them repeatedly, explaining them from different angles.
Guénon then turns to the title of the present volume, The Crisis of the Modern World, and explains what he means by “crisis.” In its ordinary acceptation, “crisis” means that the modern world has reached a critical point where a profound transformation or change of orientation is imminent. However, for Guénon, this is only part of the meaning. From a more general point of view, the whole modern epoch—in its entirety—represents a period of crisis for the world. We are now approaching the denouement, which explains why events unfold with accelerated speed. This abnormal state of affairs has lasted for centuries, but its consequences have never been as visible as they are now. While it may continue for some time, Guénon argues, it cannot last much longer.
Guénon then draws attention to the etymology of the word “crisis,” which is often lost sight of in current usage. Etymologically, “crisis” is partially synonymous with “judgment” and “discrimination.” A truly critical phase is one that leads immediately to a favourable or unfavourable solution, in which a decision intervenes one way or another, and in which it becomes possible to render a judgment on results obtained, weighing the “pro” and the “contra,” and seeing on which side the balance definitively tips. Guénon makes no pretension of establishing such a discrimination completely, as the crisis is not yet resolved. Nevertheless, he proposes to contribute, to the extent that his means permit, to giving those who are capable of it the awareness of certain well-established results, and thus to prepare the elements that will serve for the future “judgment” from which a new period of human history will open.
Guénon acknowledges that these expressions will evoke in some minds the idea of the Last Judgment, and he says this is not wrongly so. The weighing of the “pro” and “contra” and the discrimination of positive and negative results can suggest the distribution of the elect and the damned into two immutably fixed groups. Even if only an analogy, Guénon insists, it is a valid and well-founded analogy, in conformity with the very nature of things.
Guénon then addresses the idea of the “end of the world,” which haunts many minds today. While he regrets the extravagances and messianic ravings to which this misunderstood idea gives rise, he insists that one cannot dispense with taking this fact into account. The most convenient attitude—to set such things aside as mere errors or insignificant reveries—is insufficient. Even if they are errors, Guénon argues, one must seek out the reasons that provoked them and the part of truth, however distorted, that they contain, because absolute error is nowhere to be found. The preoccupation with the “end of the world” is closely linked to the general malaise of the present. People feel obscurely that something is indeed close to ending, and their uncontrolled imaginations produce disordered and materialised representations. However, Guénon states that he will not be reproached for excessive indulgence toward pseudo-religious manifestations or modern errors. He always strives to place himself at the sole point of view that matters: that of impartial and disinterested truth.
Guénon then rejects a merely “psychological” explanation of the idea of the “end of the world” as insufficient. To stop there, he writes, would be to allow oneself to be influenced by modern illusions. Some people feel confusedly that something is ending, and although their perception is vague and subject to false interpretations, it is nonetheless a very real perception. The crisis is apparent enough, and many unequivocal signs lead to the same conclusion. This end is not the “end of the world” in the total sense that some give to it, but it is at least the end of a world. If what must end is Western civilisation in its present form, Guénon explains, then those who see nothing outside it easily believe that everything will end with it.
To bring things back to their just proportions, Guénon states that we are indeed approaching the end of a world—that is, the end of an epoch or a historical cycle, which may also correspond to a cosmic cycle, as all traditional doctrines teach. There have been many such events in the past, and there will be others in the future. Given the present state of the world, Guénon holds that the coming change will have a very general scope and will affect more or less the whole earth. The laws that govern such events are applicable analogically to all degrees. Thus what is said of the “end of the world” in its most complete sense is still true, all proportions considered, when it is simply a question of the end of any world whatsoever in a much more restricted sense.
Finally, Guénon explains that these preliminary observations will aid in understanding the considerations that follow. He has made frequent allusions to cyclical laws in other works, and although a complete exposition of these laws may be difficult to present in a form accessible to Western minds, one must have some data on this subject to form a true idea of the present epoch. Guénon will therefore show that the characteristics of this epoch are indeed those that traditional doctrines have indicated for the cyclical period to which it corresponds. This will also show that what appears as anomaly and disorder from a certain point of view is nevertheless a necessary element of a vaster order. However, Guénon insists, this is not a reason to resign oneself passively to trouble and obscurity. On the contrary, it is a reason to work, as far as one is able, to prepare the exit from this “dark age,” the end of which many signs already allow us to glimpse as more or less near. Equilibrium, Guénon concludes, is the result of the simultaneous action of two opposing tendencies; all partial and transitory disequilibria finally contribute to the realisation of total equilibrium.