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Revolt Against the Modern World

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REVOLT AGAINST THE MODERN WORLD by Sicilian noble Julius Evola formulates the doctrines and ideals of ancient tradition as embodied in the Indo-European ("Aryan") myths and ledgends of the Hindus, Germans, Romans, Greeks, Persians, Egyptians, Sumerians, Chinese, Japanese, Aztecs and Incas. Christian beliefs, especially those of Catholicism, and Islam's Koran also figure in this concept. Although Evola's ideas could be categorized as being occult and esoteric, they have absoloutely no relation to the "New Age" and humanist types of belief widely popular today. There is little in REVOLT about human brotherhood and "luhv," as these modern ideas come from inferior spiritualities that were opposed to Tradition. The concept of Tradition, as being self-existent from what is "above" and which is "transcendent" is very non material and abstract, so it is rather hard to put a finger on it. Furthermore, Evola's spirituality is not for everyone, which in fact, is the whole beauty of it.

Mankind, especially the denizens of the West, have lost touch with the divine, trancendent and superindividual elements in their lives and social structures. The current modern world is called the 'Kali Yuga' in Hinduism, the 'Iron Age' by Hesiod and the 'Age of the Wolf' in the Nordic Edda. The characteristics of the modern world are radical egalitarianism, confusion of gender and caste rolls and the non-functioning of divine regality. Evola is pro-caste system, showing that disorientation occurs when individuals within castes are unable to fulfill what their status in life.

There are many areas in this book which differ from most occult thought. Evola is strongly anti-feminist, and disdains female based spirituality as being opposed to the masculine principles in tradition. This is evidenced by the glorification of Heracles for having killed the warrior Amazonian tribeswomen, among other examples. Female sprituality tends to be regressive, which symbolically brings people back towards the darkness and unconsciousness of the womb rather than onward to greater action in the light, as embodied by masculine orientated spirituality, the Solar principle. The fact that the word "Aryan" appears about five times on nearly every page is also not in vouge. Evola voices contempt for the breakdown of the traditional family structure, the increased rate of divorce and sexual promiscuity.

In Evola's final analysis, he comes out against spectator sports as a mere plebian pastime, against dance concerts as the epitome of the mindless human mass under control, and demonizes modern day science as being the "science of dead matter." As far as religious outlook is concerned, Evola belives in some kind of myth that the ancestors of the Indo-Europeans came from a distant land in the north (Hyperborea, likely a vegetated Greenland before the Ice Age), and rejects Darwin's theory of evoloution. There are a good number of anti-Christian statements, but his assessment of Catholicism is relativly positive. As to God's Law, traditional men believed that the Law was given by the Divine from above to guide man, in keeping with the Biblical teaching. Evola is against the concept of religion as being merely moral and humanistic speculation without any unifying rites of worship. The tone throughout is very pessimistic, and his quote from a Hindu text describing the Kali Yuga that describes America down to the last detail. However there is a note of optimism: Hesiod wrote that he was glad that he was not born in the Iron Age. Evola disagrees with him. Anyone who is standing among the ruins in today's modern world in the name of what comes from above will be a greater hero then the ones in the ages before. As it was written on the Kamikaze aircraft, "You are gods who are free from all human yearnings."

The Modern Age is falling and the West is in an era of decadence. The darkest of all the dark ages, what the Hindus called the Kali Yuga, is before us and Ragnarok (Twilight of the Gods) is at hand. Tradition has been trammeled upon by modern utilitarian, pragmatist, and collectivist thought and the once sacred has been made profane. Mass-man is so caught up in collectivist thought and meaningless activity that he cannot be saved. Only a select group of elite traditionalists preserving the traditional Weltanschauung can restore a transcendent order to the world after the fall of this era. An ascetic neoscholasticism is needed to preserve the tradition intact while this cycle comes to an end.

This is the message of Julius Evola in _Revolt Against the Modern World_. In this book, Evola fully dispels the modern myth of progress and reveals it as nothing more than a cover for a decadent society. Evola spends the first part of this book and much of the second part expostulating a traditional world order based on the idea of immanence-transcendence, before it's break-up at the end of the Middle Ages. He explains how an occult band of knights, members of the warrior caste, preserved tradition in the form of chivalry, during this period. However, with the advent of modern times, this tradition has largely been lost to us. Evola develops a myth of man's origins in a Golden Age, a Hyperborean race at the pole. A conflict developed between North and South, and between "solar" and "lunar" forms of religion. This conflict was at the heart of medieval Catholicism, and was reflected in the growing separation between priest and ruler. Originally, Evola argues, the Church sanctified the monarchy (the emperor) by a special rite. However, when this practice ended it made possible conflicting national loyalties to split up the medieval picture. With the Protestant Reformation which produced a strong emphasis on individualism more damage was done to the traditional world. As such, the world of tradition was lost and covered up by a world based more and more on utilitarian, hedonist, and ultimately collectivist principles, especially as witnessed in the French and Russian revolutions. This is the grim state of affairs we find ourselves in today. (Evola leaves off with a view of Europe "enclosed in the pincers" of America and the Soviet state, with America becoming more and more collectivist in nature and thinking.)

Man must return to the values which are transcendent if he ever is to create a meaningful life. And, this is precisely what is absent from today's empty, hollow society. The philosophies of radical individualism and collectivism, nationalism and communism, pervade every aspect of our existence. And, we have lost much. Only by a return to tradition can we hope to achieve a new existence with a newfound meaning.

Julius Evola was a fascinating character with much of interest to the dreamer and the mystic. Unfortunately, he allied himself with fascism briefly; however this is not the true basis for his thought.

Occasionally you will run across a text that is so difficult to categorize that most attempts to understand it within a pre-existing framework will come across as sophomoric. _Revolt Against The Modern World_ is such a work. However, difficulty in labeling does not mean that the book cannot be criticized. It's important to read this book with neither an air of detached superiority or to blindly swallow the concepts therein. You can learn a lot from this one.

Evola was the chief proponent of a little-known philosophical doctrine known as Traditionalism. When reading _Revolt_, however, you don't ever get a definition of what Traditionalism actually _is_. Rather, Evola draws upon his encyclopedic knowledge of ancient history and mythology to show how Traditional societies manifested themselves - most effectively in ancient Indo-Aryan society and its four-tier caste system - in their taking for granted the existence of a divine order. A multidisciplinary approach is necessary here, and this book will appeal to anyone interested in history, anthropology, sociology, or esoterica. By refusing to define exactly how this divine order should manifest itself in the realm of the social, Evola pulls no punches. Rather, he shows how the Divine (taken for granted) _did_ manifest itself in the social. Traditional man, he says, was aware of the existence of the Divine and his social institutions and mode of life reflected this larger, grander element of human existence. By the end of the first half of the book he's shown so many examples of how such Traditional societies were ordered that it almost becomes a bit tiresome, but when examining such disparate groups - ancient Greeks, Incans, Chinese, and Indians - it's hard to not be convinced that they all shared some extraordinary commonalities. Extrapolating these commonalities will allow you to deduce a semblance of Divine order from which they emanate.

To Evola's Traditional man, everything in his environment reflected a higher transcendtal order. As a corollary to that, modern "mass man" views nature, history, and his own self and actions as aberrations having no inherent purpose whatsoever. Modernism is not any sort of "progression" from a primitive supernatural worldview but rather a mindset only possible in a very ephemeral point of the four-stage cycle of Hindu cosmology (Kali Yuga) or the Ragnarok of Norse mythology.

By refusing to apologize for its operating paradigm the writing is more brisk and refreshing, as it does not have to offer apologies to modernism or anti-spiritualism on every page. It does occasionally bog down into polemics; Evola takes stabs at all sorts of modern ailments (or his perception thereof) - feminism, egalitarianism, consumerism, and the like, but doesn't offer any sort of prescription for any of it. It's all a part of the cycles. Needless to say, this book isn't going to sit well with Marxists! However, it won't sit well with armchair fascists either, at least those with the brains to really understand what he's saying (if they even exist). Evola _is_ very careful, when making assertions about the correct role of women and men and races of people, to show how all talk of say, the proper role of the sexes is meaningless without a direct living experience of transcendental order on the part of all society memebers. This will undoubtedly strike a nerve with many of us, who have long felt that there is just something that isn't "right" about modern existence and do not feel the need to rationalize the existence of God. When understanding Evola's notion of races, for example, Evola clarifies how the "strictly biological" interpretation of races of men is limiting, a decadent product of modernity. He views a "race" of individuals more as a group that embodies a particular spirit or life force. In this sense, he echoes the "root race" concept that has been well expounded upon in esoteric literature, especially Theosophy. However, viewing everything as a Divine emanation is impossible for most modern men - even those with an open mind can probably not implicitly "understand" it. Keep this in mind when reading Evola.

From a historical perspective, it's important to realize that at the time of his writing the appeal of fascist philosophy seemed to offer some sort of return to Traditional principles, but when one examines Evola's disenchantment with fascism, it becomes clear that he was certainly not a fascist. At the time of writing, radical egalitarianism in the form of Communism was a very real threat in terms of wiping out every notion of culture. Given this, it's no more surprising that some prominent intellectuals sided with Fascist movements. This is open to criticism, but think of how many prominent intellectuals were socialists or communists. History had not yet made it apparent that both of these movements were inherently just totalitarian. I don't believe that Evola's brief involvement with Mussolini invalidates his work; his change in status to that of an "enemy" by the fascist parties in Germany and Italy should attribute a degree of honesty to his work. By the time of this book's writing, Evola does not seem to have any political agenda. He does not believe that a return to Traditional principles is possible. Rather, he's just interested in showing you how it "is". Jose Ortega y Gasset's "The Revolt of the Masses" and Fromm's "Escape from Freedom" are good companions to this book, as they both illustrate the dangers of corruption of the natural, or Traditional, order by mass movements and lowest common denominatorism. Whether or not you think Evola's caste systems and kingships remain the best solution to these problems, however, will probably still be a lot to swallow.

With that being said, you're not left with much after reading this book besides intellectual satiation. Like Oswald Spengler, Evola views "history" as the process of inexorable cyclical forces of waxing and waning. Truly, Traditional principles have a history of creating "successful" societies that Marxist ones do not, but a return to them is impossible for the time being. Whether the Kali Yuga prophecy plays out will remain to be seen, but at least you'll hit the ground running after reading this book.

Evola examines the different ages of society as spoken of in ancient sacred texts in religions like Hindu. The golden age is ruled by sacred kings, the silver age is ruled by the warrior aristocracy, the bronze age is ruled by merchants, and the iron age is ruled by the plebs or serfs. We are currently in the age of iron, according to Evola. Evola believes in the decline of society as it moves farther from the golden age. His erudition is both broad and deep, having read most of the important works of societies from different ages all over the world. He justifies the authoritarianism and hierarchies of the golden age and he criticizes the decadent philosophies of subsequent ages. The sacred texts and traditional society advocate a hierarchal order.

He is extreme in his justifications of tradition. What about widow burning, isn't that wrong? --Well no, not really. In the traditional society, a woman is to sacrifice herself totally to her husband, so if he dies, she is to go out with him, otherwise the community would have contempt for her.

What about harems, ten women for one man, doesn't he think this is wrong?-- Well no, not really. If a woman is in a harem, she is learning to overcome her jealousy and sacrifice herself to her man, whether he is good or not. Women are to be totally dedicated as lovers and mothers, and become completely feminine, getting rid of everything masculine within them. Men are to become completely masculine, getting rid of everything feminine. This is how they perfect themselves as feminine and masculine spirits in traditional society.

What about the caste system, doesn't he think this is awful? --Absolutely not. In the traditional society, a person was considered to be born into a certain caste for good reason, the gods had determined it to be so. The birth was their karma. If the father was a barber, then his son would be a barber.

Is the caste system is unjust or oppressive? No, in the golden age, people were in total agreement about being in a certain castes. Only the outcasts or pariahs who had left their castes were totally despised. If the sacred king performed the rites to the gods in a solemn and exacting manner, society kept its connection with the divine, which kept the parts of society in good order with everyone doing their function without complaint. If the king began to regard the sacred rites as mere formality, then society began to lose connection with the divine and rebellion, discontent, and disorder began to occur.

The first to rebel would be the priest who were in the caste just below the king. If the priests rebelled wanting the authority of the king over both temporal and spiritual matters, this would begin the cycle of subversion of the castes beneath. The serfs and merchants would rebel against kings, warriors, and priests and women would rebel against men`s rule. This would start the decline that would bring us down to the iron age.

Do serfs and merchants have any real significance in this life or the hereafter? --Of course not. In the traditional society, the best of this life and the hereafter belonged to higher castes--nobles, heroic warriors, and priests. Only higher castes should own land and have privileges. In the afterlife, if a noble has lived a heroic life, he will go to Valhalla. When people of lower caste die, they merge into the totem or stock of their ancestors; their standardized personalities do not survive.

What are the characteristics of the bronze age moving into the iron age?--These ages are ruled by merchants or serfs, so the emphasis is on the economy or the common people. Society is a formless mass consumer society with hardly any distinctive noble personalities. People are restless, hopping from job to job or looking for the next thing that will thrill their bodies. There is no real transcendence; materialism and production reigns. There is a quantity of overproduced, cheap, and lousy goods. Merchant ethnics such as the Jews have power as a false aristocracy of wealth. A third estate society of merchants is America. A fourth estate society of plebs is the communist Soviet Union. Representative government, constitutionalism, and nationalism will eventually lead to a socialist and then a communist dictatorship. Communism is a wicked inverse of the legitimate rule of the king in the golden age.

What characterizes a Civilization of the Mother or a goddess-worshipping society? In the golden age, people worship a masculine and solar god. Men are from heaven, women are of the earth. The mother society worships the earth and fertility. People are buried, instead of cremated. Promiscuity rises, men are held in contempt, and the brotherhood of man is espoused as dogma. Goddess societies are inferior to God societies. Such societies are in a decadent stage.

Does Evola think Christianity is a good, traditional religion?--Catholicism is certainly superior to Protestantism and it has some good traditional elements in it, but there too much of the mother in that religion. Too much emphasis on the brotherhood of man, too much pleading and praying to God when the ancient sorcerers of the golden age commanded the gods. There is too much emphasis on equality and especially with Calvinism, the prosperity gospel and glorification of lower caste work. It also espouses the strange doctrine of the immortality of the soul. Only heroes and nobles are immortal. The commoners actually have no hope or fear in the afterlife. For them, there is no heaven and no hell, only personal oblivion.

Will decadence ever end? --Yes, according to the Vedas, the golden age shall rise again after the iron age has exhausted itself.

Evola's book is good for studying the mindset of the ancient world and of aristocrats, although egalitarians may say he has a biased interpretation or that the "sacred" texts are not to be revered because they merely justified an unjust order.

The self-righteous comments of some previous reviewers aside, this is a good, but not a great book. Julius Evola was an Italian philosopher and esotericist who had a mild dalliance with the Fascist regime in Italy for some years. His support for Fascism was partial and conditional. It was Evola's conviction that the social order, as it exists in the modern West, was degenerate and dangerous because it militated against the values and practtices needed to transcend the mundane conditions of human life and live a more profound and exalted existence. That none of this is exclusively Fascist is obvious - it echoes current critiques of 'consumerism' that can be found from all parts of the political spectrum in the West. Evola ran for a while with the Duce because he felt that that regime was a relatively better servant of the kind of culture he felt was necessary - one geared to transcendent realities. If you actually buy this book, and read his words, or even the introductiry essay, which is a balanced examination of Evola in the light of our own times, you will see that he is much more akin to the arch-conservative opponents of the French revolution, like Joseph de Maistre, in his ideas about how a society should be ordered, than any totalitarian ideology, Right or Left. This should not be surprising, since Evola was claiming to be in accord with a Tradition that undergirded all premodern civilizations. He has much to say that might appeal to an orthodox Hindu, for example, or to a traditionalist Roman Catholic; he was not an intellectual pimp for Mussolini. If you want to see what an alternative to modernity and its discontents looks like, read this book. These things being said, the book is not without it's flaws, some of them really quite bad. He offers no concrete and coherent program for the regeneration of society, instead settling for an esoteric exegesis of things past. The society he seems to favor is probably unrealizable at present, which renders him something of a voice crying in the wilderness. What Evola advocates is really not viable except for a small minority of people, who have the time, money, and inclination to follow him. He himself is not all that bothered by this, but those who agree with his critique may not be content to sit in ascetic isolation, like some coven of Traditionalist Essenes, while civilization disintegrates around us find. A far worse problem is the fact that Evola makes use of blatantly racist stereotypes in his setting out of a typology of civilizations, in the book's second half. He himself seems to vacillate between taking the sort of mythical stories about a Hyperborean golden age, an Artic paradise of light, a race of heroes emigrating to Europe from an island in the West, the Aryans invading Europe thousands of years later, etc., seriously, or as symbols. The fact that he can interpret these ideas symbolically does not exculpate him from the fact that he is trafficking in bigoted myths that are in need of purification from the stained past they have experienced if they are to be used in serious discussion. A more 'Jungian' approach, in which these could be taken as archetypes of truths applicable to the whole of the human race, might be useful here, but I know of no one who has undertaken to do this. Therefore, while I can recommend "Revolt against the Modern World" as a powerful diagnosis of our society's woes, I cannot say that it offers anything like a viable cure.

This book is considered by many the masterpiece of Baron Julius Evola. Evola, A man living in the wrong time, in the wrong place, and letting the world know exactly what he thinks of it.
Evola writes about what is called the "Tradition", a concept that will take people unfamiliar with traditionalism a while to comprehend. The "Tradition" in this sense should not be taken literally; it should not be equated to the meaning of the word "custom". It is actually an abstract ideal, and ideal that Evola finds back in ancient civilisations. This is what the first part of his book ("The Wolrd of Tradition") is all about. He shows the reader the characteristics of the "Tradition". This "ideal" is a world where all aspects of civilisation are aimed at the transcendent, aimed at the spiritual development of man..
While pointing this out, Evola thorougly rips the "modern" world to shreds. This "modern" world is characterized by a set of values that according to Evola, stand in the way of spiritual ascent of man. He describes the gradual degeneration of the ideal values, refering to the division in "Yugas", clearly influenced by writers along the likes of Blavatsky.
Many write Evola off as an extreme right-winger, and a flavour of fascism can be found in this work also. But do not let this stop you from reading this book! Evola's work is very sophisticated, and one sees the reasons for his sympathy for fascism quite quickly. His sympathy for fascism is a result of the direction of his spiritual compass, making his political thoughts strictly secondary.
A book that shall change your view of the "modern" world for sure!

Revolt Against the Modern World is Julius Evola's masterwork and "must reading" for anybody interested in his ideas. Very difficult to give a "synopsis" of this book as it is deep with wisdom regarding what passes as "history". It's not often one reads a book that seriously challenges one's assumptions regarding civilized society.
I would highly recommend this book. One of the ten most well thought-out books I have read.

Given the extraordinary nature of this book, a review inevitably does more to inform you about the reviewer than the book.

Given the shrill and dishonest polemical rantings against Evola by the usual suspects, one would think this book was essentially political--it isn't. Evola is first and foremost a metaphysician. But unlike his mentor, Rene Guenon, he has the knack of making his metaphysics very real and very practical.

This book has forever changed the way I look at the world. Yet, it is a book that few will have interest in or be able to grasp. And that alone is sufficient proof to justify Evola's heroic pessimism. If you are of the tiny minority capable of genuine independent thought, then you may wish to risk encountering this work--it will be quite an adventure.

Julius Evola has written an outstanding book, far more shocking than anything written by his more fortunate contemporary C.G. Jung. If you have enjoyed Ortega y Gasset's "The Revolt of the Masses", you will love this book. A must if you are disenchanted with the modern world, modernism, and silly existentialism.

Evola manages, within the confines of this book, to challenge every single (false) notion of cultural superiority held by the leaders and masses of the "modern" West. In 'Revolt Against the Modern world' a picture emerges, not of a civilization and culture on the cusp of Utopia, but one senile and on the brink of spiritual exhaustion.

This work triumphs where others falter. Evola makes the work of modern day social historians seem near-sighted and frail in comparison to his robust critiques.

Only Spengler came so close...