About the Book
Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. Pages: 135. Chapters: Rene Guenon, Thomas Aquinas, Aristotle, Arthur Schopenhauer, Ayn Rand, Hilary Putnam, Rene Descartes, George Berkeley, Saul Kripke, John Locke, Alan Watts, Donald Davidson (philosopher), Alvin Plantinga, Stuart Wilde, Alfred North Whitehead, Graham Priest, Wolfgang Smith, Charles Hartshorne, Ananda Coomaraswamy, G. E. Moore, Frithjof Schuon, Nicolai Hartmann, J. M. E. McTaggart, Thomas Brown (philosopher), David Lewis (philosopher), Nathan Salmon, Melissus of Samos, Olavo de Carvalho, P. F. Strawson, Sir William Hamilton, 9th Baronet, Gilbert Simondon, Friedrich Adolf Trendelenburg, Dickinson S. Miller, William Desmond (philosopher). Excerpt: Rene Guenon (November 15, 1886 - January 7, 1951), also known as Shaykh Abd al-Wahid Yahya, was a French author and intellectual who remains an influential figure in the domain of metaphysics, having written on topics ranging from metaphysics, "sacred science" and traditional studies to symbolism and initiation. In his writings, he proposes either "to expose directly some aspects of Eastern metaphysical doctrines," these doctrines being defined by him as of "universal character," or "to adapt these same doctrines for Western readers while keeping strictly faithful to their spirit"; he only endorsed the act of "handing down" these Eastern doctrines, while reiterating their "non-individual character." He wrote and published in French and his works have been translated into more than twenty languages. Rene Guenon was born in Blois, a city in central France approximately 100 miles ( 160 km) from Paris. Guenon, like most Frenchmen of the time, was born into a Roman Catholic family. Little is known of his family, although it appears that his father was an architect. By 1904, Guenon was living as a student in Paris, where his studies focused on mathematics and philosophy. He was known as a brilliant student, notably in mathematics, in spite of his poor health. As a young student in Paris, Guenon observed and became involved with some milieux which were, at that time, under the supervision of Papus. Under the name "Tau Palingenius" Guenon became the founder and main contributor of a periodical review, La Gnose ("Gnosis"), writing articles for it until 1922. From his incursions into the French occultist and pseudo-masonic orders, he despaired of the possibility of ever gathering these diverse and often ill-assorted doctrines into a "stable edifice." In his book The Reign of Quantity and the Signs of the Times he also pointed out what he saw as the intellectual vacuity of the French occultist movement, which, he wrote, was utterly insignificant, and more importantly, had be
