A historical book given from a different, traditional point of view!
As a follow-up to his much-discussed work The Crisis of the Modern World (1927), French thinker and traditionalist Rene Guenon's short essay Spiritual Authority and Secular Power (1929) examines the metaphysical principles that legitimize political and spiritual hierarchies of every society, especially of the modern West. At the same time, he points out the problem of the West's gradual departure from traditional values that disturb the relationship between the spiritual and the temporal, thereby injuring the healthy development of civilization. Using historical evidence from India and the medieval West, as well as events of his own time, René Guenon describes humanity's descent from the original unity of the two modes of power, spiritual and secular, to modern disharmony and imbalance. However, the author, relying on the principles of Traditionalism but also on the reflection of the poet and political philosopher Dante Alighieri, maintains the certainty that, regardless of the phenomena, the renovation and the final restoration of unity will definitely happen, however delayed it may be.
“Secular power is about the world of action and change. The true function of the priesthood is, above all, a function of knowledge and teaching, and for this reason, its proper attribute is wisdom.'
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