Thoughts on Decline of the West Vol. 1

 

 

     Already on such a young blog I have dispensed with the notion of "book review", because I think my attitude isn't so much whether to recommend a book so much as it is to offer up some considerations on it.  If I were a snooty university-type, I would call this "engaging in discourse" or "participating in dialogue" with the books, but I am not that type, at least I hope not.  So these posts will be "Thoughts on ___" until further notice.

    Anyway, I have recently finished, about a year and change after starting it, the first volume of Oswald Spengler's Decline of the West.  It's quite a grand work of history, covering politics, art, mythology, religion, ethics, metaphysics, etc. in a sweeping survey that attempts to establish "a morphology of world-history".  I would characterize Spengler as an anti-perennialist, not because he directly contradicts the idea of a perennial philosophy, but in that he very strictly emphasizes what Civilizations have in common within themselves and how they are all mutually incommensurable.  This will be the subject of my first consideration, followed by sundry others in no particular order.

Book Review: Fullness of God

 

    Having spent a lot of time reading Julius Evola's works, I've known about René Guénon and Frithjof Schuon for a while, yet only recently have I delved into these other two major perennialists of the 20th century.  This book, received as a Christmas gift (appropriately), is a compendium of miscellaneous writings by Schuon on the subject of Christianity.  The Wikipedia article will give a much better summary, but for now all the introduction I'll give Schuon is that he was originally interested in practicing Hindu advaita vedānta, however due to the caste-restriction there, he opted instead to practice Islamic sufism and Plains-Indian shamanism—nevertheless, he was essentially a perennialist along with Guénon.  It seems he has written books and essays on pretty much every religion out there.