Julius Evola and the False Gods of Existentialism

The following is a full transcript of the speech I presented in Porto at the Colóquio Internacional: Julius Evola em Portugal (1974-2024) on Saturday October 19th, 2024. All Quotations are taken from Evola’s 1961 work, Ride the Tiger.

EXISTENTIALIST thought first appeared in the nineteenth century, when Christian philosophers such as Søren Kierkegaard and Fyodor Dostoevsky sought to address the meaning of human existence in what seemed like an increasingly meaningless world. In the following century, another wave of existentialists arrived in the shape of Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, Karl Jaspers, Martin Heidegger, Marcel Gabriel and various others.

Contrary to the deeply spiritual direction that had been adopted by Dostoevsky and Kierkegaard, twentieth-century existentialists were often communist, atheistic or both:

It is well known that there are two different types of existentialism. The first belongs to a group of philosophers by trade, whose ideas until recently were unknown outside their narrow intellectual circles. Second, there is a practical existentialism that came into vogue after World War II with groups that borrowed a few themes from the philosophical existentialists. They adapted them for literary purposes or as grounds for anti-conformist, pseudo-anarchist, or rebellious behaviour, as in the well-known case of yesterday's existentialists of Saint-Germain-des-Pres and other Parisian locales, inspired above all by Jean-Paul Sartre. [p.78]

Evola appreciates the fact that existentialism has the ability to tear the mask from the face of contemporary society and expose the many shortcomings of the present epoch in all their nakedness, even accepting that the latter branch of existentialism allows us to view the character of those who are both the victims and the agents of dissolution. At the same time, most are drawn from the ranks of the academic petit bourgeoisie and thus are far from being anti-conformist in any real sense.

The fact that Nietzsche arrived in the wake of the earlier existentialists, means that Evola has little interest in returning to the nineteenth century and therefore he confines his study of this phenomenon to the political thinkers of his own century. Nonetheless, they are still compared to Nietzsche on the basis that they are “modern men” who are “severed from the world of Tradition”. This means that their intellectual approach has been solely derived from the Western thought of the last few centuries, itself strongly contaminated, although Evola is slightly more tolerant in the case of Jaspers for having explored the metaphysical dimension of the present crisis. On the other hand, the German-Swiss thinker is criticised for dismissing spiritual authority and promoting a form of “rational illumination”:

These are the typical horizons of the intellectual of liberal-bourgeois origin. Ι, on the contrary, even though Ι have considered and will be considering modern problems, will not use modern categories to clarify or dismiss them. Moreover, even when the existentialists partially follow the right path, it happens as if by chance, not based on sound principles but with inevitable waverings, omissions, and confusions, and above all in a state of internal surrender. Worse yet, philosophical existentialists use an arbitrary terminology that they have specially invented, and which, especially in Heidegger, is of an inconceivable abstruseness, both superfluous and intolerable. [p.79]

The chief defining characteristic of existentialism is the idea that “existence precedes essence,” implying that values and judgements are something of an afterthought and secondary to the positing of the individual in time and space.

Martin Heidegger, despite appealing to large swathes of the Evolian milieu, adopts the same approach and his existential concept of “being here” (Da-sein) is the first principle of a philosophy which always begins with the location of the individual within a particular situation. Although this appears similar to Evola's own insistence that one must begin by discovering his or her authentic being, existentialists ultimately place too much emphasis on circumstance:

Jaspers, especially, brings to light the fact that every “Objective” consideration, when detached from the context of the problems and visions of the world, leads inevitably to relativism, scepticism, and ultimately to nihilism. The only viable path is that of an “elucidation” of the ideas and principles of the basis of their existential foundation, or of the truth of the “being” that each one is. It is like enclosing oneself in a circle. [p.80]

Heidegger's ontology, for all its faults, at least implores the individual to remain in position at all costs. The German also made a very important distinction between authenticity and inauthenticity, arguing that most people will accept conformity rather than seek to discover their true selves by overcoming the trappings of conventional morality or prevailing custom. This, he says, is expressed through “idle talk”, “curiosity” and “ambiguity”. Conversation becomes entirely worthless, mainly focussing on topics and events that fail to enliven its participants in any meaningful way. Rarely do mundane or routine discussions about the weather, for example, offer anything new to what we already know and people simply go through the motions.

That which Heidegger calls “everydayness” is perhaps no more evident than in the daily barrage of trivial junk that we see handed around on social media, inviting us to engage in the ultimately commonplace and monotonous. Not merely to engage in it, but also to regurgitate and perpetuate it. Heidegger interprets this behaviour as a form of “inauthentic” existence, but is nonetheless aware that we cannot fully escape the world into which we have been thrust.

Evola's Ride the Tiger may appreciate Heidegger's observations about modern existence but still harbours deep-seated reservations about the philosophy's dependence on time and space:

The affinity of these ideas with the positions already defined here is, however, relative, because existentialism is characterized by an unacceptable overvaluation of “situationality.” “Dasein” for Heidegger is always “being-in-the-world.” The destiny of the “boundary situation” is, for Jaspers as well as for Marcel, a liminal fact, a given in the face of which thinking halts and crashes. Heidegger repeats that the characteristic of “being-in-the-world” is not accidental for the Self: it is not as though the latter could exist without it, it is not that man firstly is, and then has a relation with the world - a causal, occasional, and arbitrary relationship with that which is. [pp.80-81]

Having developed a sense of inner detachment, the Traditionalist is not passively adopting Heidegger's role of “being-in-the-world” but minimising the effects of the external world as far as possible. This is precisely where transcendence comes into play.

If one recalls Evola's disparaging thoughts on theism, or the “personal God” of modern Christianity, one realises that existentialism is also proposing a form of anti-theism on account of making the “I” the very centre of Being. From Evola's perspective, although the later existentialists were mostly atheists - Marcel Gabriel being a notable exception - the inclusion of the transcendent aspect removes theism from the equation. To question this transcendence, however, something which is naturally equated with God (or gods), is to undermine one's very Being.

* * *

Directing his monocled gaze towards Sartre, who combined aspects of Heidegger's Being and Time with the dialectics of atheistic communism, Evola is eager to point out that the French thinker and novelist was part of a continuing trajectory:

Of all the existentialists, Sartre is perhaps the one who has most emphasized “existential freedom.” His theory essentially reflects the movement toward detachment that has led to the nihilistic world. Sartre speaks of the nihilating act of the human being, which expresses his freedom and constitutes the essence and the ultimate meaning of every motion directed at a goal, and, in the final instance, of his whole existence in time. [p.83]

It is hard to avoid the fact that Sartre was undeniably the worst of a bad bunch, with his theory of moving away from a state of being in order to attack the non-being that he interpreted as the source of potential freedom. To act, for Sartre, brings this nothingness into the world:

This occurs not only when freedom calls being into question by doubting, interrogating, seeking out, and destroying it, but also in any desire, emotion, or passion, without any exception. Freedom is then presented to us as “a nihilating rupture with the world and with oneself,” as pure negation of the given: not being that which is, but being that which is not. Through repetition, this process of rupture and transcendence that leaves nothing behind itself and goes forward towards nothing, gives rise to the development of existence in time (to “temporalization.”) [ibid.]

Sartre believed that nothingness is experienced as reality, something he explained by reminding us that when a friend is absent he or she is still part of that same reality. Nothingness is not simply a mental concept, therefore, for non-being appears within the limits of human expectation. Real or concrete nothingness can only be applied to things which are truly impossible, such as a square circle. Meanwhile, the nothingness (or “no thing-ness”) in which we exist provides free consciousness in which our duty is to make choices and decisions. Ultimately, Sartre believed, this leads to anguish because we suddenly realise that the safety-net has been removed and we are left to our own devices.

Sartre's contention that human action is the basis of absolute freedom infers that life involves an endless series of choices and even deciding not to act is said to be a choice. As Evola continues, Sartre's

man is like someone in a prison without walls; he cannot find, either in himself or outside himself, any refuge from his freedom; he is destined, is sentenced to be free. He is not free to accept or refuse his freedom; he cannot escape it. Ι have already mentioned this state of the mind as the most characteristic evidence of the specific, negative sense that freedom has assumed in a certain human type in the epoch of nihilism. Freedom that cannot cease to be such, that cannot choose to be or not to be freedom, is for Sartre a limitation, a primordial, insuperable, and distressing “given.” [p.84]

In terms of style, Sartre's philosophy seems to have inherited the perceived burden of human existence from Heidegger's inference that we are “thrown” into the world like helpless babes.

Evola makes a crucial point when he notes how the existentialists speak of responsibility and yet never reveal who one must be responsible to. It is not in the nature of historical nihilism to appeal to moral sensitivities and even the transcendent man of Tradition has learnt to cast aside such bourgeois notions.

* * *

As mentioned previously, earlier in the twentieth century Heidegger had developed the idea that individuals are catapulted into existence by a process known as “thrownness”. This term doesn't just relate to the initial act of coming into existence, as people are also said to be projected forward in this manner throughout their entire lives. This may sound like a form of determinism, or even a basic lack of free will, but Heidegger's view is that past, present and future constantly interact with one another. It is impossible for an individual to create him or herself anew, because the choices we make are determined by who we are in the present based on who we were in the past. This, perhaps, appears to suggest that the more unfortunate individual can somehow be absolved of blame when it comes to the reasons behind his or her own predicament, but when dealing with the potential of the individual Heidegger never really explained whether he was attributing this to environmental or biological factors and when it came to the age-old debate between nature and nurture he tended to remain on the fence. Saying that, there is a fine line between Heidegger's concept of “thrownness” and John Locke's notorious tabula rasa, at least if we are to assume that an individual is condemned to be a prisoner of his own circumstances.

Apart from its terminological difficulties, Evola considers the theory of “Dasein” to be extremely problematic. As he intimates, when Heidegger's individual is roughly hurled into existence he or she is confronted by a feeling of existential angst. This is presented as something that is quite different to standard notions of terror:

Fear arises in the face of the world, due to external, physical situations or perils; it would not exist if angst did not exist, caused by the feeling of the generally problematic nature of one's own being, and by the feeling that one not yet is; that one might be, but also might not be. This theory is another witness to the climate of modern existence and to a basic traumatization of being. It goes without saying that it would be absolutely incomprehensible in an integrated human type, who is ignorant of angst, hence also of fear. [p.86]

The root of Heidegger's “Dasein” is nothingness, but if one simply amounts to nothing there can be no metaphysical basis for existence. Evola describes this form of existentialism as “purely horizontal,” because the individual can only exist within time and thus he or she must become in order to be.

If we are to accept being as some kind of ontological “project,” as Heidegger and Sartre do, then it must be viewed within a more general context:

What is in question is not “being,” but one of its determined modalities: recognized, willed, and assumed. Since being in the transcendent dimension is not at stake, the sense of one's own problematic nature is relativized and defused, and one does away with the metaphysical angst that the existentialists' man, having a different internal constitution, feels, and indeed is bound to feel. [p.87]

As for Sartre's idea that being is a “fundamental project,” both he and other members of the existentialist school fail to explain where being itself comes from. Alternatively, the Traditionalist view rests on the concept that life is “timeless, pre-cosmic, and pre-natal”. This means, of course, that we enter the world, not as a blank slate, but with an inherent nature. This is why a famous Zen koan asks: “Show me your original face before you were born.” Clearly, the existentialist who believes that “existence precedes essence” cannot possibly admit this concept into his narrow reasoning.

In Sartre, the concept of a pre-existing state goes no further than an “original freedom” that contains the basis for all future manifestations on the field of existence. Nonetheless, it is here that we find an inversion of Traditional principles and the Frenchman speaks of a “unitary synthesis” from which the possibilities of the present are derived. Contrary to a more metaphysical approach, he insists there is no return to an original source and - employing a gambling term - that “the bets are already laid”. For Evola, the Sartrean thesis rests on a doubled-edged sword:

We therefore face a curious contrast between two distinct themes: that of formless freedom having nothingness as its basis, and that of a species of destiny, a primal determination that basically annuls the former or renders it as illusory as ever. This mirrors an inner sensation typical of a period of dissolution. [p.88]

Existentialism's steadfast refusal of metaphysics has often been criticised by those members of the school with a more acute understanding of spirituality, such as Marcel and Jaspers, but even they do not go far enough to rectify the notion of a world in which God is wholly absent.

Ironically, although Evola agrees with Jaspers that we must be true to ourselves he dislikes the philosopher's attitude towards what he describes as the appearance of “boundary situations”. You would think this four-fold situation of possibilities in which one is confronted by either struggle, death, hazard or guilt would allow the individual to test his or her ability to “ride the tiger,” but Jaspers perplexes his Italian counterpart by adopting a passive role in the way that one might simply trust in God.

Moreover, Evola tells us, Heidegger fails to attribute being to any higher principle than the “voice of conscience” and even this is devoid of religious connotation in the sense that he is advocating a similar form of passivity to that of Jaspers.

Whilst the latter understands that our ontological roots lie “not in an abyss, but a realm of freedom” from which “authentic being speaks,” he taints his existentialism with the moral categories of good and evil. Evola finds three examples of this approach in Jaspers: (i) the idea that “evil” is applied to the individual who fails to exercise his or her freedom of decision, (ii) that “evil” is a consequence of weakness and self-deception, and (iii) “evil” interpreted as something that is consciously willed. The alternative, for Jaspers, is goodness in the form of love. As Evola explains:

No comment is needed to indicate how little unconditioned is the “unconditioned demand” of which Jaspers speaks. One does not have to go as far as Nietzsche in exalting the opposite kind of behaviour, such as lawlessness, cruelty, and “super-human” hardness, in order to realize that Jaspers has fallen head-first into the orbit of religious or social moralizing, and that the case of a de-conditioning rupture that Ι have described, which incurs the extreme test of one's own ontological status and the verification of one's sovereignty, has no place in his system. [p.91]

The lack of any transcendent dimension to existentialist thinking is said by Evola to resemble the pessimism one finds in Schopenhauer. Heidegger's “thrownness,” for example, may seem comparable to the Fall of Man but without any point of supreme reference the individual is simply left to deal with the resulting angst.

The fact that Heidegger and Sartre each operate within the framework of Western philosophy, means they have inherited an “extroverted religious attitude” which seeks to negate any positive approach to existence by way of the constant spectre of original sin. By preventing access to all other avenues of life, existentialism demands that there is but one path:

Such an order of ideas could obviously only appeal to a human type who was so off centre with regard to transcendence as to feel that it was external to himself. This makes him incapable of identification with the principle of his own choice and his own freedom before time; and hence, as counterpart, the Sartrean sensation of freedom as something alien to which one is condemned. [p.92]

Of course, for the emergence of humankind from the realms of the unconditioned to be portrayed in such negative terms is clearly nonsensical and Evola compares it to a man who is forced to choose just one form of entertainment for the evening - reading, for example, rather than dancing or going to the cinema - and then being made to feel guilty for it.

Needless to say, this does not represent a form of freedom in any real sense and yet in existentialist terms this is precisely what is being proposed. As for the metaphysical plane, which manifests its own “free power,” one can safely say that the Infinite is not centred on negation but affirmation. That which is conditioned, such as man, is

not the fall from a sort of substantialized “totality,” but the simple use of the possible. Arising from this idea, one can see the absurdity of speaking of existence as a fault or sin, merely by virtue of being a determined existence. Nothing prevents us from adopting the contrary point of view, for example, that of classical Greece, which sees in limit and form the manifestation of a perfection, a completion, and a kind of reflection of the Absolute. [p.93]

Seeking to incorporate transcendence within the sphere of one's own existence, Evola contends, can furnish us with a “foundation of calm and incomparable security” that allows for “absolute decisiveness in action”.

At a time when people are capitulating to their emotions as never before, we must learn to overcome the psychological chaos of the present age and adopt the “necessary stature” that will help us remain impervious to the challenges that confront us.

* * *

Ride the Tiger concludes its detailed analysis of existentialism by returning to Heidegger. Observing that his German counterpart adopts the role of a philosophical “agnostic,” Evola is eager to demonstrate once and for all that his work is at odds with the ontological transcendence one finds in Tradition:

We have seen that the obscurity already inherent in existentialism is exacerbated in Heidegger by his view of man as an entity that does not include being within itself (or behind it, as its root), but rather before it, as if being were something to be pursued and captured. Being is conceived here as the totality of possibilities, with regard to which one is to blame, or, taking the other meaning of Schuld, in debt. The existentialists never explain why this is the case, or why one should feel this destiny of seizing a pandemic totality at all costs. [p.95]

Rather than feel that he or she is a part of being, the Heideggerian interpretation of ontology rests on a coercive “thrownness” by which the individual has no say in the matter. When Heidegger's man is cast into time, Evola explains, he in expected to go chasing after situations and events that lie ahead of him and which, inevitably, remain elusive. There is thus no “authentic temporality,” because the individual is incomplete.

Being, for Heidegger, lies “outside and before” us and Evola describes it as “a retreat forward” in the sense that the individual simply has nowhere else to go. Alternatively, the Traditionalist is capable of transforming his or her actuality in space and time in accordance with existing principles. In Evola's words, the “accent falls away from the I” and is redirected towards the “transcendent dimension - to Being.”

The real problem lies with Heidegger's theory of “Being-towards-death,” something French theologian Henry Corbin insisted is far too entrenched in the affairs of human finitude and confines Heideggerian thought to the kind of historicity that is ultimately incapable of appreciating the more essential issue of “Being-towards-the-other-side-of-death”. The fact that Heidegger spent considerably less time dealing with human ethics, Corbin believed, precludes him from realising that his own analysis of “Dasein” actually contains the essential secret that allows us to move away from a purely secular interpretation of history. Once the limitations of “being-towards-death” are overcome, the reunification of ethics and ontology will result in a deeper sense of presence and one which can allow mankind to progress beyond the horizon of finitude and ask “to what is human presence present?”

From Heidegger's perspective, being is time and time is finite and therefore when we die our time logically comes to an end. To become an authentic human being, he reasons, we must constantly focus on our eventual demise and it is this “being-towards-death” that transforms Western philosophy into a four-fold system based on one's knowledge and understanding of finitude. This involves (i) cutting off relations with others and learning to stand alone, (ii) never doubting that life will definitely come to an end, (iii) appreciating that, by contrast, the time of our death is indefinite, and (iv) realising that finitude represents the “possibility of impossibility” in terms of ultimately bringing our freedom to an end.

Evola says of Heidegger's “Being-towards-death” that when “Dasein” is finally seen to experience the full anguish of its own imminent destruction it displays a total acquiescence:

This emotional colouring is again typical and significant, showing how the condition of passivity persists even here, in the face of that “end” that represents the “accomplishment,” as in the dual sense of the Greek word telos, in the context of the traditional doctrine of mors triumphalis (triumphal death). Heidegger proceeds with an accusation of a form of “inauthenticity” and diversionary tranquilization aimed not only at the stupid indifference to death but also at the attitude that judges the preoccupation with death, and anguish in the face of it, as effeminate and cowardly, preferring to face it with impassibility. He speaks of the “courage to have anguish in the face of death,” which is absolutely inconceivable, not to say ridiculous, for an integrated human type. [p.97]

To speak of “courage” and yet do nothing to either perpetuate one's existence or die on one's own terms, however inevitable it might seem, is a form of capitulation.

Existentialist philosophy often finds itself immersed in speculation about man's future extinction, but as Corbin intimates there is no indication that Heidegger had any real idea about what follows in the wake of our death – or, indeed, what precedes our existence.

With freedom offered as the sole ground of all existence, Heidegger's thought is destined to stand on the notion of a purely “anthropocentric” inquiry and this accusation has been levelled at the German on numerous occasions.

Similarly, when Jaspers approaches the question of existentialism in relation to the “defeat and failure” that often greets our confrontation with situations that appear to lie beyond our control he merely suggests that we face reality with the authenticity of “desperation and anguish”:

This solution consists of recognizing one's own defeat, one's own checkmate or foundering, even in the effort of gaining or somehow attaining being: only at that point, as the negative somersaults into the positive, does one enter the presence of being, and existence opens itself to being. [p.99]

For Jaspers - who, unlike other existentialists, does not leave out the question of metaphysics - the failure of the self is a form of personal fulfilment. To willingly comply with our own downfall is said to provide an ecstatic glimpse into the relationship between the finite and the transcendent. However, when Jaspers suggests that the individual under duress is better off “diving into the All-encompassing” he ignores the simple fact that transcendent being is itself the very ground of existence and that this experience is not exactly a revelation.

Whilst the existentialists had readily accepted the Nietzschean mantle, it was only thinkers such as Kierkegaard, Jaspers and Marcel who had made an attempt to combine the philosophy with some form of spirituality. Apart from Marcel's welcome demolition of Sartre, which I examined in one of my previous books, Evola suggests that this was a largely ineffectual enterprise and that the transcendent became nothing more than an “object of faith and devotion”. As he continues:

Taken as a whole, the existential balance adds up to a negative. It acknowledges the structural duality of existence and transcendence, but the centre of gravity of the Ι does not fall on the transcendent, but on the existent side. Transcendence is basically conceived as the “other,” whereas one ought rather to conceive it the other way around, with one's own determined, “situational” being, one's Dasein, as “'other”' to the true Self that one is. The former represents a simp1e manifestation in the human state, and is subject to the corresponding conditions, which are re1ative because they often act in various ways according to the attitudes one assumes. [pp.100-101]

Furthermore, the Italian speaks of a “transcendent confidence” that springs from the inner self and which has the ability to face anything. He juxtaposes existentialism's “modern man in crisis” with Tradition's “modern man beyond crisis”.

One might reasonably debate just how “modern” the latter really is, of course, particularly when he has drawn upon the strength of his own interior reserves in flagrant disregard of modernity itself. Attacking the “armchair intellectuals” that populate the existentialist movement, Evola makes it perfectly clear which type of individuals he values most:

Men in revolt within the chaotic life of the great cities, or men who have passed through the storms of steel and fire and the destructions of the last total wars, or have grown up in the bombed-out zones, are the ones who possess in greater measure the premises for the reconquest of a higher sense of life and for an existential overcoming, not theoretical but genuine, of all the problems of man in crisis; and these are also the points of departure for any corresponding speculative expressions. [pp.101-102]

To a certain extent, Evola admits, the idea of “Dasein” may have some value if we are prepared to take into consideration the pre-existing dimension that Heidegger and others leave out. Not pre-existing as a form of reincarnation, but in relation to the non-human character of “Dasein” before it enters the realms of time and space.

The theistic variants of existentialism, at least where they exist, avoid this question entirely and confine their discussion to the purely manifest or conditioned human being whose ontology is a consequence of creation. If one is to ride the tiger, however, a more general picture of our origins needs to be taken into account and this involves the idea that one acts as one has always acted – both here on earth and on the transcendent plane:

As an opening to the doctrine of pre-existence, it generates an unequalled force. It reawakens the consciousness of one's origins and of a higher freedom in the heart of the world, the awareness of having come from far away, thus also that of a distance. The natural effects will be along the lines indicated: the relativization of everything that seems so important and decisive in human existence as such, but in terms absolutely opposed to indifference, sloth, and alienation. [pp.102-103]

Understanding that one's being has a more transcendent significance not only allows the individual to express the true Self in its entirety, but live in accordance with what we are and what we shall become.