Ride The Tiger: Survival Manual For The Aristocrats of The Soul by Julius Evola (1961)

Part 1

Orientations

The Modern World and Traditional Man

This book sets out to study some of the ways in which the present age appears essentially as an age of dissolution. At the same time, it addresses the question οf what kind οf conduct and what form οf existence are appropriate under the circumstances for a particular human type.

This restriction must be kept in mind. What Ι am about to say does not concern the ordinary man of our day. On the contrary, Ι have in mind the man who finds himself involved in today's world, even at its most problematic and paroxysmal points; yet he does not belong inwardly to such a world, nor will he give in to it. He feels himself, in essence, as belonging to a different race from that of the overwhelming majority of his contemporaries.

The natural place for such a man, the land in which he would not be a stranger, is the world of Tradition. Ι use the word tradition in a special sense, which Ι have defined elsewhere. It differs from the common usage, but is close to the meaning given to it by Rene Guenon in his analysis οf the crisis of the modern world. In this particular meaning, a civilization or a society is "traditional" when it is ruled by principles that transcend what is merely human and individual, and when all its sectors are formed and ordered from above, and directed to what is above. Beyond the variety οf historical forms, there has existed an essentially identical and constant world of Tradition. Ι have sought elsewhere to define its values and main categories, which are the basis for any civilization, society, or ordering οf existence that calls itself normal in a higher sense, and is endowed with real significance.

Everything that has come to predominate in the modern world is the exact antithesis οf any traditional type οf civilization. Moreover, the circumstances make it increasingly unlikely that anyone, starting from the values οf Tradition (even assuming that one could still identify and adopt them), could take actions or reactions οf a certain efficacy that would provoke any real change in the current state οf affairs. After the last worldwide upheavals, there seems to be nο starting point either for nations or for the vast majority οf individuals - nothing in the institutions and general state of society, nor in the predominant ideas, interests, and energies οf this epoch.

Nevertheless, a few men exist who are, so to speak, still οn their feet among the ruins and the dissolution, and who belong, more or less consciously, to that other world. Α little group seems willing to fight on, even in lost positions. So long as it does not yield, does not compromise itself by giving in to the seductions that would condition any success it might have, its testimony is valid. For others, it is a matter οf completely isolating themselves, which demands an inner character as well as privileged material conditions, which grow scarcer day by day. Αll the same, this is the second possible solution. Ι would add that there are a very few in the intellectual field who can still affirm "traditional" values beyond any immediate goal, so as to perform a "holding action." This is certainly useful to prevent current reality from shutting οff every horizon, not only materially but also ideally, and stifling any measures different from its own. Thanks to them, distances may be maintained - other possible dimensions, other meanings οf life, indicated to those able to detach themselves from looking only to the here and now.

But this does not resolve the practical, personal problem - apart from the case οf the man who is blessed with the opportunity for material isolation - of those who cannot or will not burn their bridges with current life, and who must therefore decide how to conduct their existence, even οn the level οf the most elementary reactions and human relations.

This is precisely the type of man that the present book has in mind. Το him applies the saying οf a great precursor: "The desert encroaches. Woe to him whose desert is within!" He can in truth find nο further support from without. There nο longer exist the organizations and institutions that, in a traditional civilization and society, would have allowed him to realize himself wholly, to order his own existence in a clear and unambiguous way, and to defend and apply creatively in his own environment the principal values that he recognizes within himself. Thus there is no question of suggesting to him lines of action that, adequate and normative in any regular, traditional civilization, can no longer be so in an abnormal one-in an environment that is utterly different socially, psychically, intellectually, and materially; in a climate of general dissolution; in a system ruled by scarcely restrained disorder, and anyway lacking any legitimacy from above. Thence come the specific problems that Ι intend to treat here.

There is an important point to clarify at the outset regarding the attitude to be taken toward "survivals." Even now, especially in Western Europe, there are habits, institutions, and customs from the world of yesterday (that is, from the bourgeois world) that have a certain persistence. Ιn fact, when crisis is mentioned today, what is meant is precisely the bourgeois world: it is the bases of bourgeois civilization and society that suffer these crises and are struck by dissolution. This is not what Ι call the world of Tradition. Socially, politically, and culturally, what is crashing down is the system that took shape after the revolution of the Third Estate and the first industrial revolution, even though there were often mixed up in it some remnants of a more ancient order, drained of their original vitality.

What kind of relationship can the human type whom Ι intend to treat here have with such a world? This question is essential. On it depend both the meaning to be attributed to the phenomena of crisis and dissolution that are ever more apparent today, and the attitude to be assumed in the face of them, and toward whatever they have not yet undermined and destroyed.

The answer to this question can only be negative. The human type Ι have in mind has nothing to do with the bourgeois world. He must consider everything bourgeois as being recent and antitraditional, born from processes that in themselves are negative and subversive. Ιn many cases, one can see in the present critical phenomena a kind of nemesis or rebound effect. Although Ι cannot go into details here, it is the very forces that, in their time, were set to work against the previous, traditional European civilization that have rebounded against those who summoned them, sapping them in their turn and carrying to a further degree the general process of disintegration. This appears very clearly, for example, in the socioeconomic field, through the obvious relationship between the bourgeois revolution οf the Third Estate and the successive socialist and Marxist movements; through democracy and liberalism on the one hand, and socialism on the other. The first revolution simply prepared the way for the second, whereupon the latter, having let the bourgeoisie perform that function, aimed solely at eradicating them.

Ιn view of this, there is one solution to be eliminated right away: the solution of those who want to rely ο what is left of the bourgeois world, defending and using it as a bastion against the more extreme currents οf dissolution and subversion, even if they have tried to reanimate or reinforce these remnants with some higher and more traditional values.

Ιn the first place, considering the general situation that becomes clearer every day since those crucial events that are the two world wars and their repercussions, to adopt such an orientation signifies self-deception as to the existence οf material possibilities. The transformations that have already taken place go too deep to be reversible. The energies that have been liberated, or which are in the course of liberation, are not such as can be reconfined within the structures of yesterday's world. The very fact that attempts at reaction have referred to those structures alone, which are void of any superior legitimacy, has made the subversive forces all the more vigorous and aggressive. Ιn the second place, such a path would lead to a compromise that would be inadmissible as an ideal, and perilous as a tactic. As Ι have said, the traditional values in the sense that Ι understand them are not bourgeois values, but the very antithesis of them.

Thus to recognize any validity in those survivals, to associate them in any way with traditional values, and to validate them with the latter with the intentions already described, would be either to demonstrate a feeble grasp of the traditional values themselves, or else to diminish them and drag them down to a deplorable and risky form of compromise. Ι say "risky" because however one attaches the traditional ideas to the residual forms οf bourgeois civilization, one exposes them to the attack - in some respects inevitable, legitimate, and necessary - currently mounted against that civilization.

One is therefore obliged to turn to the opposite solution, even if things thereby become still more difficult and one runs into another type οf risk. It is good to sever every link with all that which is destined sooner or later to collapse. The problem will then be to maintain one's essential direction without leaning οn any given or transmitted form, including forms that are authentically traditional but belong to past history. Ιn this respect, continuity can οnly be maintained οn an essential plane, so to speak, as an inner orientation οf being, beside the greatest possible external liberty. As we shall soon see, the support that the Tradition can continue to give does not refer to positive structures, regular and recognized by some civilization already formed by it, but rather to that doctrine that contains its principles only in their superior, preformal state, anterior to the particular historical formulations: a state that in the past had no pertinence to the masses, but had the character οf an esoteric doctrine.

For the rest, given the impossibility of acting positively in the sense of a real and general return to the normal system, and given the impossibility, within the climate of modern society, culture, and customs, of molding one's whole existence in an organic and unitary manner, it remains to be seen on what terms one can accept situations of utter dissolution without being inwardly touched by them. What in the current phase - which is, in the last analysis, a transitional one - can be chosen, separated from the rest, and accepted as a free form οf behavior that is not outwardly anachronistic? Can one thus measure oneself against what is most advanced in contemporary thought and lifestyle, while remaining inwardly determined and governed by a completely different spirit?

The advice "Don't go to the place οf defense, but to the place οf attack," might be adopted by the group οf differentiated men, late children οf the Tradition, who are in question here. That is to say, it might be better to contribute to the fall of that which is already wavering and belongs to yesterday's world than to try to prop it up and prolong its existence artificially. It is a possible tactic, and useful to prevent the final crisis from being the work of the opposition, whose initiative one would then have to suffer. The risks οf such a course οf action are more than obvious: there is no saying who will have the last word. But in the present epoch there is nothing that is not risky. This is perhaps the one advantage that it offers to those who are still οn their feet.

The basic ideas to be drawn from what has been said so far can be summarized as follows:

The significance of the crises and the dissolutions that so many people deplore today should be stated, indicating the real and direct object of the destructive processes: bourgeois civilization and society. But measured against traditional values, these latter were already the first negation of a world anterior and superior to them. Consequently the crisis οf the modern world could represent, in Hegel's terms, a "negation οf a negation," so as to signify a phenomenon that, in its own way, is positive. This double negation might end in nothingness - in the nothingness that erupts in multiple forms οf chaos, dispersion, rebellion, and "protest" that characterize many tendencies of recent generations; or in that other nothingness that is scarcely hidden behind the organized system οf material civilization. Alternatively, for the men in question here it might create a new, free space that could eventually become the premise for a future, formative action.

Download: Ride The Tiger: Survival Manual For The Aristocrats of The Soul by Julius Evola (.pdf)

Tags: Metaphysics, Traditionalism, Democracy, CulturalMarxism

For information on the various file formats in this section visit the Info/File Formats page.

This page may have a talk page ?.