Julius Evola's Revolt, Part 1: Worlds of Being, Worlds of Becoming

JULIUS Evola's (1898-1974) Revolt Against the Modern World was originally published in 1934, at a time when Europeans found themselves increasingly alarmed by the twin pillars of communism and liberalism. As a result, many began looking to the past for inspiration. Evola, realising that the rise of reactionary movements such as Italian Fascism and German National-Socialism were not enough to prevent the continuing decline of Western civilisation, offered a more transcendent vision of the world that sought to overcome this growing existential crisis. Despite its misuse by the likes of the so-called ‘Alt-Right’ and other fleeting pretenders, as well as its deliberate marginalisation by those academics who carefully restrict their interests to the likes of René Guenon and Frithjof Schuon, Evola's work remains a valuable resource in an otherwise unpredictable and uncertain age.

I first read Rivolta contro il mondo moderno in August 1996, when I was a Lefebvist Catholic. Many of the concepts were completely new to me and I soon realised that in order to grasp the Italian's most well-known and controversial work both fully and comprehensively it was necessary to familiarise oneself with the book's metaphysical and philosophical themes in significantly more detail. Indeed, whilst I already had a good knowledge of history and politics I had very little grounding in European paganism and Eastern spirituality. It was only after I had left the Church, the following year, that I gradually began expanding my literary horizons and accumulating the kind of spiritual understanding that would stand me in good stead for a far deeper appreciation of Evola's text.

By the turn of the millennium I had absorbed his ideas to the extent that I considered myself a Traditionalist and began applying them to various parts of my intellectual and spiritual life. More than twenty years on, after what I consider to be a further process of evolution, I have returned to Revolt Against the Modern World once again to see how it will stand the test of time. Not as a means of retrospectively attempting to whitewash the destructive modernity that still prevails, of course, but in terms of looking at the book through eyes that have since gleaned another two decades of knowledge. This series, therefore, is a personal odyssey, but one which offers a slightly more critical and penetrating approach to the book itself and I hope it will provide readers with a useful commentary to what can often be a difficult text.

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Revolt Against the Modern World was designed to meet the stiff challenges of a new age, one in which the illusory heights of European imperialism were rapidly on the wane and where economic depression, mass unemployment and the constant threat of Soviet internationalism were lurking at the back of the Continent’s folk-consciousness like a portent of terror and pandemonium.

With Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) having risen to power the previous year and another major war just five years away, the talk among the politicians, court economists and clueless problem-solvers was of “the decline of the West” and how best to save the Continent from imminent catastrophe. Evola had little time for such people:

In all this concern there is generally very little that goes beyond the amateurishness of intellectuals. It would be all too easy to show how often these views lack true principles, and how what is being rejected is often still unconsciously retained by those who wish to react, and how for the most part people do not really know what they want, since they obey irrational impulses. This is especially true on the practical plane where we find violent and chaotic expressions typical of a “protest” that wishes to be global, though it is inspired only by the contingent and terminal forms of the latest civilization. [p.xxviii.]

Whilst these words were written over ninety years ago, they clearly retain a large degree of relevance for those of us living at a time when modernity has entered an even more frantic and chaotic phase. Those whom Evola dismisses as “pseudo-intellectual” are, on the whole, thoroughly incapable of thinking beyond the end of their own noses and the Italian attributes this to an inability to appreciate that the faults of civilisation have been in the making for several centuries and the rot set in far earlier than inter-war ‘experts’ would have their respective populations believe. Evola compares it to the incubation of a disease:

Though modern men have come to perceive the West’s bleak future only recently, there are causes that have been active for centuries that have contributed to spiritual and material degeneration. These causes have not only taken away from most people the possibility of revolt and the return to normalcy and health, but most of all, they have taken away the ability to understand what true normalcy and health really mean. [p.xxiv.]

As always, if people have no clear sense of direction beyond spontaneous protests and the seductive deceit of party politics, we cannot expect the kind of outcome that offers a lasting solution for some of Europe's deep-seated problems:

In order for this to happen, it is necessary to leave the deceptive and magical “circle” and be able to conceive something else, to acquire new eyes and new ears in order to perceive things that have become invisible and mute with the passing of time. It is only by going back to the meanings and the visions that existed before the establishment of the causes of the present civilization that it is possible to achieve an absolute reference point—the key for the real understanding of all modern deviations—and at the same time to find a strong defence and an unbreakable line of resistance for those who, despite everything, will still be standing. [p.xxiv.]

Lateral thinking, or the ability to view the problems we face from every possible angle, is the only possible way for an individual to grasp the “ultimate meaning” that lies behind the West's continuing malaise.

Evola speaks of “stone guests” who, whilst maintaining their strength and fortitude in the face of an approaching storm, nonetheless continue to plant and nurture the seeds of a more superior and transcendent world amid the poisoned soil of the old. Indeed, the vast difference between these two realms - one promising the joy of new life and the other a way of death and decrepitude - leads Evola to employ the term “dualism of civilisations”. This expression should not lead us to assume that his dichotomy between Tradition and Modernity is somehow comparable to Samuel Huntington's (1927-2008) “clash of civilisations,” something that became a convenient weapon in the hands of Western capitalism during the unwarranted assault on its economic rivals, for Evola is questioning the nature of all forms that express the hallmarks of modern civilisation and that includes those which have arisen outside the West itself. As he explains:

The considerations that follow will constantly revolve around the opposition between the modern and the traditional world, and between modern and traditional man; such an opposition is ideal (that is, morphological and metaphysical) and both beyond and more than a merely historical opposition. [pp.xxx-xxxi.]

That which Evola describes as “decadence” is said to have begun as early as the eighth century BCE and rapidly accelerated over a period of two centuries. It is no accident that this sudden development can be traced to the point at which history itself is said to have begun, indicating that the gradual supplantation of oral mythology with formal certitudes in written form set a dangerous precedent by which everything prior must suddenly be discounted on the basis that it is somehow tantamount to ignorance, superstition and barbarism. In effect, however, what began as a systematic concealment of ancient values eventually led to

an even longer cycle known in the East as the “Dark Age,” in the classical world as the “Iron Age,” and in the Nordic sagas, as the “Age of the Wolf.” In any event, during historical times and in the Western world, a second and more visible phase corresponds to the fall of the Roman Empire and to the advent of Christianity. A third phase began with the twilight of the feudal and imperial world of the European Middle Ages, reaching a decisive point with the advent of humanism and of the Reformation. [p.xxxi.]

These important factors will be explored later in the series, but as the reader has no doubt realised it is these tumultuous events which Evola attributes to the coming of the modern world. If, on the other hand, one refuses to observe the dictates of the official historians then part of the solution lies in moving beyond the realms of history itself.

In fact the pre-historical figure described by Evola as the “Traditional man” had a different mindset entirely and rather than seek to (re)interpret the mythological period in a purely retrospective fashion - thus endowing it with the twisted values of modernity - we must seek to recapture it in the way that it was intended. Not read, but lived; not in word, but in deed; not in books, but around the fireside and at the parental knee.

Thinking beyond history also means operating outside the constraints of time, replacing “history” and “becoming” with “rhythm and space”. Whilst this may seem confusing in that Traditional societies are located in the past, it is not necessary to posit either them or their attributes within the limitations of chronology. Revolt Against the Modern World's real juxtaposition is not between history and pre-history, but ‘twixt Modernity and Tradition. This, in other words, is what Evola means by “dualism of civilisations”.

Given Evola's hostility towards historiography, one could be forgiven for imaging that it would be rather difficult to provide an overview of the ancient and modern worlds without recourse to history books, but although his suspicion of “hidden influences” precludes him from following the typical academic route he states that

what matters in history are all the mythological elements it has to offer, or all the myths that enter into its web, as integrations of the "meaning of history itself. Not only the Rome of legends speaks clearer words than the historical Rome, but even the sagas of Charlemagne reveal more about the meaning of the king of the Franks than the positive chronicles and documents of that time, and so on. [p.xxxiv.]

Needless to say, there are plenty of court historians who line up to take a literary swipe at what they regard as Evola's selectivity and yet he is wont to reject this criticism on account of his critics being “modern men” whose notions are formed “outside Tradition”.

Interestingly, the Baron notes that within that same transcendent world truth was always viewed as “non-human” and this explains why there are so many subtle differences from civilisation to civilisation. The form may be different, but the spirit is the same. For the historians and scientists, on the other hand, such diversity is a mark of conflict and discordance:

It is in this way that a sense of certainty and of transcendent and universal objectivity is innerly established, that nothing could ever destroy, and that could not be reached by any other means. [p.xxxv.]

This method is used by Evola throughout the text, meaning that the traditions of both East and West can be examined and elucidated side by side and that their concordances far outweigh those between the modern West and its own rapidly diminishing past.

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Evola’s work is divided into two sections, ‘The World of Tradition’ and ‘Genesis and Face of the Modern World’. In the opening chapter of Part One, the author redefines his “dualism of civilisations” as a “doctrine of the two natures”. There is nothing particularly new about this approach and it involves the separation of physical and metaphysical that many other philosophers have discussed down the centuries, but Evola is keen to emphasise that this is not a mere theory that has been handed down to us by the ancients but a valid source of knowledge on which the very foundations of Tradition rest.

Indeed, the German thinker Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) made this observation long before Evola and his division of the noumenal and phenomenal realms was itself something that had sought to correct the dualistic errors of Cartesianism and its separation of body and mind. For Evola, it is a question of how one defines reality:

Certainly, there are those who believe in something beyond the realm of phenomena. When these people admit the existence of something else, however, they are always led to this conclusion by a scientific hypothesis or law, or by a speculative idea, or by a religious dogma; they cannot escape such an intellectual limitation. [p.3.]

The purely materialistic approach, therefore, completely precludes any type of transcendent reality and all attempts to address our problems without going beyond history to appreciate the deeper causes behind them are inevitably doomed to failure.

Within the context of a Traditional or “primitive” society, humans are not merely in touch with their immediate surroundings in a way that the denizens of the modern age are incapable of emulating, but they are also spiritually aware to the extent that the “invisible” dimension is wholeheartedly felt and experienced. Conversely, we should not assume that such a realm is viewed in the way that we ourselves interpret the supernatural:

Traditionally speaking, the notion of “nature” did not correspond merely to the world of bodies and of visible forms—the object of research of contemporary, secularised science—but on the contrary, it corresponded essentially to part of an invisible reality. [p.4.]

Evola regards this phenomenon as a “substratum” of the natural world, although in terms of the manner in which we are ultimately impermanent creatures and forced to comply with the cycle of birth and death it is nonetheless human and, thus, inferior to that which is attributed to the gods.

This subtle distinction is what Evola likes to categorise as “the world of being” and “the world of becoming”. Whilst the latter corresponds to the realm of nature that we can see, the former is superior on the basis that it retains its perfection and has not drifted into a state of materialisation and “perennial instability”.

This is not to suggest that the “world of being” cannot be approached by those of us existing in the here and now, of course, and this is achieved through the development of the inner self:

Asceticism traditionally consisted in values such as mastery over oneself, self-discipline, autonomy, and the leading of a unified life. By “unified life” I mean an existence that does not need to be spent in search of other things or people in order to be complete and justified. The traditional representations of this other region were solar symbols, heavenly regions, beings made of light or fire, islands, and mountain peaks. [p.5.]

Nonetheless, that which Evola posits as the “doctrine of the two natures” is in line with many of the world's belief-systems and allows for the possibility that we can experience birth in either of the two realms: mortal or immortal. Interestingly, much like the Buddhists he views “the world of being” as a release from the constraints of the material and “the world of becoming” as a descent in which freedom devolves into a form of dependence and attachment.

Approached in this fashion, it is clear to see that each relies on the other in the way that the poles work together to maintain the balance of the earth. Once “the world of being” is either ignored or overlooked by those who pin their colours to the twin masts of scientism and progress, all forms of human authority collapse into a profane heap of irrelevance and inauthenticity. Whilst Evola will have more to say about this polar symbolism later on, he also believes in the principle of initiation as something which employs both “heroic action” and “contemplation” in an attempt to reconnect the two worlds; just as the Bifrost bridge of northern mythology stretches between the environs of Asgard and Midgard.