In this episode, we discuss the life and career of Julius Evola, the Italian Dadaist painter, philosopher, writer, and philosopher-in-chief of the occultist movement known as The Path of Cinnabar.
00:04:52.240Interesting. Well, let's I do want to talk about what tradition and traditionalism.
00:04:58.160But before that, William, would you have anything to add in terms of some of these basic facts of his life and some of the basic things that motivated Evola?
00:05:08.840Sure. Yeah. I mean, John outlined it pretty well.
00:05:11.520Yeah, it's interesting. Evola proceeds from, you know, one phase to the other of his career, in a sense, leaving the previous phase behind, like Dadaism or philosophy, saying that he's pretty much exhausted it.
00:05:25.540That's what he said with philosophy and occultism as well, to a certain extent.
00:05:32.360He pretty much knew it. He was in it's how he always has interesting kind of seeming contradictions.
00:05:39.280He talks with all these Freemasons and, you know, anthroposophists and stuff like this.
00:05:48.220But then ultimately, he'll, like, disavow their entire worldview and say that they're kind of grasping at a piece of the truth, but they don't really have it.
00:05:56.360And their whole system is, you know, petty and kind of diluted.
00:05:59.440And that's, you know, his system of the absolute individual and magical idealism is the real one.
00:06:04.480But, yeah, his, when he discovers Guinnon, yeah, there are a couple of influences.
00:06:14.400So Guinnon's basic historical worldview is that, you know, there are, you know, four ages, the Golden Age, the Silver Age, is Bronze Age, the Iron Age, similar to Hesiod or the Norse tradition and the Hindu tradition have this as well.
00:06:30.840But this sort of dialectic, not even dialectic, this sort of contrast between traditional civilization and modern civilization really informs his whole worldview.
00:06:40.580But there are some other influences besides Guinnon.
00:06:45.140Bakofen, if you're familiar with him, is a kind of morphologist of history who talks about sort of two different types of civilization, solar, which is patriarchal, and a lunar type of civilization, which is matriarchal.
00:07:01.720It also has a huge effect on the sort of morphology of civilization that he gives in Revolt Against the Modern World.
00:07:08.060So Revolt Against the Modern World is almost like a fusion of Guinnon's view with Bakofen's view.
00:07:15.800But, yeah, I think John covered it pretty well.
00:07:19.220So why don't we talk a little bit about this?
00:07:23.440And, John, I'll throw it over to you again.
00:07:26.940How would you describe this kind of tradition?
00:07:29.880I think, obviously, the word tradition is used in all sorts of manner, whether we're talking about a Christmas tree or traditional Christianity in America or things like that.
00:07:40.040But what specifically is the tradition that Evola and Guinnon are a part of?
00:07:49.580And I actually think the fact that the word has so many meanings generates a lot of confusion.
00:07:55.600When people say they're a traditionalist on the right today, some of them think that they're using it in the sense that Guinnon and Evola did, but they're not really.
00:08:05.740We support gay marriage as a traditionalist, not polymorphous homosexuality.
00:08:21.220Well, that's the other tradition is subject to modification, depending on the polls.
00:08:26.680But, well, the idea that Guinnon and Evola have of tradition is that, you know, behind reality, there's this, you know, metaphysical source that lies, you know, at the heart of everything.
00:08:41.660You know, Plato had this idea of, you know, the realm of ideas, pure ideas that lies behind reality.
00:08:48.400And that's essentially what Evel and Guinnon believed.
00:08:51.760But they thought that this metaphysical essence manifests itself in the material world through the various spiritual traditions.
00:09:01.780Not just any spiritual traditions, but ones that came from legitimately revealed sources, you know, like the Vedic texts in India or, you know, the texts that came, that formed the Bible and so forth.
00:09:18.420And that this tradition, even though it itself is one, manifests differently depending on the cultural contexts in which it manifests.
00:09:31.220So, you know, the Nordic tradition, when it was still living, you know, the manifestation of this metaphysical essence within Nordic culture, just as the Christian and Islamic one is in the Semitic culture and Vedic in Indian culture and so on and so forth.
00:09:52.440And this might sound suspiciously new age, but where the traditionalists really part is that they don't believe that traditions should be mixed.
00:10:03.000I mean, Evel and Guinnon were certainly interested in all of the world's major traditions, but they thought that syncretism, which is, you know, the mixing of several traditions, was very harmful and was actually counter-traditional.
00:10:20.220And it was something peculiarly modern, you know, where people want to, and we see this a lot in America today, where people want to, you know, they take a little bit of Buddhism and they mix it with a little bit of Christianity.
00:10:30.300And, you know, you know, sort of, you know, designer religions, they rejected that notion because Ganon taught that tradition is manifested as a metaphysical whole.
00:10:45.940So, and he also drew a distinction between the esoteric and the exoteric.
00:10:52.360You know, the esoteric is what we would call, you know, the more mystical elements of a religion that, like, you know, monks and other mystics are more involved with, whereas there's the exoteric part that's sort of like for the masses, which is like, you know, the external rituals, the hierarchy and so forth.
00:11:12.900The two are linked, and one important way in which Ganon and Abel had differed from New Agers is that they thought you can't have one without the other.
00:11:23.000You know, you can't take esotericism and neglect its outer forms entirely, you know, that both have to be linked.
00:11:30.780So this kind of abrogates the idea that, you know, like people would say, well, I'm spiritual but not religious.
00:11:35.780Like, that distinction Ganon and Abel would have denied that there is one.
00:11:40.660Right. We Episcopalians are religious but not spiritual.
00:11:48.020But, no, I would also mention that, you know, I think there's a lot about New Age stuff that we've, over the past 20 years or so, that I think is not very admirable.
00:12:04.420But that being said, I think even those people who might be pursuing these things in maybe the wrong way or maybe in a kind of goofy way, nevertheless, I think those people who are attracted to that or are attracted to the truth, and they're attracted to something beyond material consumerism and Americanism.
00:12:26.420I think the people who are attracted to New Age philosophy, I think it says something about them, that they might be kind of on the wrong path, but maybe they're headed in the right direction.
00:12:34.560Well, they're on the wrong path for the right reasons.
00:12:37.120Yeah, that's a better way of articulating it, yeah.
00:12:39.700But, yeah, William, why don't you talk a little bit about tradition and Evola's, specifically Evola's relationship with tradition.
00:12:47.500Sure. So, yeah, like John said, John kind of outlined the overall kind of perennialist view of tradition and of history.
00:12:59.320Where Evola kind of gets his uniqueness from is that he does start out in philosophy and this idea of magical idealism, which has the whole absolute individual concept at the center of it.
00:13:12.480And the absolute individual is similar to what would be described in Hinduism as Atma or what we describe in other circles as the real I, a kind of transcendent identity beyond your material body or even your material personality, which, of course, changes and is in constant chaos and dies with the body.
00:13:33.600But this sort of transcendent I, which, and the whole goal of magical idealism is to discover this I and identify with it.
00:13:43.580And that's sort of what leads him away from his philosophical phase.
00:13:50.600Because for Evola and as well for Grenon, the only purpose of knowledge is basically only good if it leads to a change in existential condition.
00:14:01.820And, again, it's, again, it's similar to Plato.
00:14:05.300Plato, you know, true knowledge for Plato is, you know, the universe, the outer universe and your inner world are kind of analogs of one another.
00:14:16.000And when you truly know something, you almost, might be too strong to say that you become it, but it's sort of internalized within you.
00:14:23.580So when you grasp these higher things, the real true knowledge of it changes your whole existential condition and state of being.
00:14:31.360So for Evola, the most important thing with knowledge is this sort of real supernatural knowledge, which is why he finds really all profane philosophy, which is, you know, basically all philosophy for the last few hundred years.
00:14:48.140And even science, he says, you know, science can achieve these great things in the external world.
00:14:53.760But, you know, if you can go to the moon and do all these things, but you're still kind of a pathetic, cowardly, fearful individual, you know, what good was it all?
00:15:03.440If you haven't changed your existential condition for him, it's all useless unless you yourself become better, become more of a master of yourself and more of a master of the universe even.
00:15:16.760So that's sort of his perspective that really, and Evola, another difference between Evola and Ganon is that, and most people who follow Ganon, is that Evola sort of thinks of himself as a spiritual member of the warrior caste.
00:15:30.820So, and he thinks the whole West is sort of oriented more in this direction of being warriors rather than contemplatives and ascetics.
00:15:38.240So we're kind of more driven to action and, you know, trying to change the world and impose our will on things.
00:15:45.460And this has, this is really what kind of differentiates him from Ganon, because Ganon is content to expound metaphysical doctrine.
00:15:56.040He studies various tradition and expounds the metaphysical doctrine and sort of explores the higher unity behind different traditions.
00:16:03.000But Evola is much more concerned with the goings-on of the world, what can be done to manifest tradition in the world, at least until he reaches the last phase of his career, when he kind of, you know, after World War II, he gets a little bit hopeless about this.
00:16:17.440But, you know, Evola is engaged with existentialist thought, so he engages a lot with Heidegger and Nietzsche, Ride the Tiger, discusses these philosophers at length.
00:16:31.100He was very much, I mean, he's engaged with all these idealist philosophers who were, you know, at the top levels of the fascist regime, like Giovanni Gentili and others.
00:16:40.480So he engages with the mainstream philosophy of the day.
00:16:45.440He, you know, he had a, he was on personal basis with Mussolini.
00:16:50.920Mussolini, for example, really liked his doctrine about race.
00:16:54.980So he was very much involved in the world and in the politics of the world until maybe the last phase of his career, which is, which is mainly the, probably the biggest thing that would differentiate him from Ganon and Chuan and other perennialists.
00:17:10.480Well, John, before, before we talk more about fascism and, and also Evola's concept of race, which William also touched on, I'm interested in, in, in thinking a little bit more about religion, particularly Christianity.
00:17:26.700I mean, it's, it's, with Ganon, he, he, he, he ended up converting to Islam and, and, and, and in this traditionalist conception of religion, Christianity is, I would say, deeply a Semitic religion or at least derived from a Semitic religion.
00:17:42.160Um, so what was, what was, what were Evola's thoughts on Christianity in, in Europe?
00:17:49.940I mean, he is, he is a Roman after all, that's a, it's a, it's a, obviously a deeply Christian city and a deeply Catholic country.
00:17:56.660Uh, what, what were his thoughts on this paradox of Christianity and Europe?
00:18:02.400Well, Evola had deep respect for Ganon.
00:18:06.800Uh, I mean, they corresponded, I think, for about a quarter of a century until Ganon's death.
00:18:13.560Um, but he, he did have some differences of views.
00:18:17.360I, I mean, you know, Ganon was raised a Catholic, uh, and he always considered it to be a, a valid tradition, but he thought in the modern world, it had lost its way.
00:18:29.340He thought it, it had become too corrupted by modernity.
00:18:33.300Uh, so it, it's, it's a bit of a mistake to say that he converted to Islam.
00:18:38.700There, there's actually a letter that survives where somebody asked Ganon about this.
00:18:44.140And he said, well, the important conversion isn't, you know, from Christianity to Islam or to any other religion.
00:18:52.020He said, the important conversion is from modernism to the point of view of tradition.
00:18:58.400Uh, so he didn't really, I, if you look at even Ganon's work, there's very little about Islam in it.
00:19:05.300Uh, and I, I think it's a mistake to kind of read his decision with the kind of political valence that we would tend to look at it with today.
00:19:14.140Uh, but when it comes to Evola, uh, you know, Evola was, was very much a Nietzschean in his younger days.
00:19:23.600And even though he kind of became critical of Nietzsche after his turn to tradition, because of, uh, what he saw as Nietzsche's, uh, materialism, uh, and lack of a transcendent perspective.
00:19:35.140Uh, he's, he, I think Nietzsche always exerted kind of an influence over him and his understanding of Christianity was that, uh, you know, it was something that, uh, had sort of imposed itself on Europe and that Europe was still inherently pagan.
00:19:54.300I mean, Evola loved, uh, uh, the pagan religions of Rome.
00:20:00.420Uh, he was very interested in the other pagan religions of Europe, although he agreed with Ganon that, uh, uh, one of the important things about a tradition for it to remain living is that there has to be an unbroken chain of initiations in the priesthood.
00:20:15.900Uh, so even though Evola had a great amount of respect for all of these European pagan traditions, he didn't think they could be revived in the modern world because, you know, this chain of initiations had been broken and, you know, there's not really any way of getting it back.
00:20:32.160Um, he did write a book, uh, in the late twenties when, uh, around the time that Mussolini signed an agreement with the Vatican, uh, because there were, there were a lot of fears in, uh, in the Vatican in the twenties that, uh, you know, this crazy fascist movement was going to turn against them somehow.
00:20:51.960Uh, and Evola was actually, uh, in his, his younger days, he was very much hopeful that, that Mussolini would do this, uh, would sort of reestablish Rome as a pagan society.
00:21:03.120And he wrote this book, uh, which is called, uh, it's been translated as either pagan imperialism or heathen imperialism.
00:21:10.940Uh, a lot of people like it because it's, it's an extremely anti-Christian work.
00:21:17.360Uh, but he actually in later life kind of retracted it and said, well, I was,
00:21:21.960I was young and kind of naive and I, you know, I was a little bit too harsh.
00:21:26.580Uh, I, he, he always had respect for Christianity and you can see this in Cinnabar where he writes about it, at least, uh, not so much for Protestant, Protestantism, but, you know, at least for Catholicism.
00:21:38.820Uh, even though he agreed with Ganon that, uh, it had become very corrupted by modernity.
00:21:44.460Uh, but where he disagrees with, uh, Ganon is that, you know, he, he didn't think that this was really an appropriate religion.
00:21:54.520And, uh, you know, he really thought that, uh, you know, for European man to really rediscover his true identity, he was eventually going to have to sort of overcome Christianity.
00:22:06.200But, you know, he still acknowledged that, uh, you know, there was a great deal that was good in, you know, at least traditional Christianity.
00:22:12.600Uh, I mean, his political ideal was always the Holy Roman empire because he thought it had the perfect balance between the political authorities and the, uh, the sacred authorities in the church.
00:22:25.800Uh, but, uh, there's, there's, there's also a great quote in Cinnabar where he says, uh, I would rather spend an afternoon chatting with, uh, the lowliest country pastor than with the, uh, loftiest literary celebrity of our time.
00:22:43.020Uh, so he, he, he did have a respect for, for Christianity, but, uh, you know, he, he did think that there was something inherently un-European about it.
00:22:53.620And, uh, uh, you know, he definitely thought that, uh, for Europe to rediscover itself, it was going to have to overcome it.
00:23:03.660I mean, I, one thing that, uh, a number of people have talked about is, in a way, discovering the, the pagan aspects of European Christianity.
00:23:13.500Um, and, and, and, and that doesn't really include the, uh, so much of the Christianity that we see in America, which, when you look back to, or, you know, early, uh, early pilgrims and so on and so forth, there, there was a very, uh, very strong kind of Judaic element to,
00:23:30.800uh, American Christianity, a, a desire to get rid of the traditions, like, celebrating Christmas, most obviously, but, but all sorts of things.
00:23:39.840Going back to a kind of Hebraic model, uh, pure, it's a kind of a hyper-Protestantism, um, that, that would have been a bit much for someone like Luther.
00:23:49.900But, but how, how could, and how, how could Europeans rediscover the pagan?
00:23:56.060Uh, William, maybe, maybe you should pick that up so we can.
00:23:59.320So, yeah, I mean, Evola's view about the Middle Ages in particular, um, and specifically, like John said, the Holy Roman Empire, is that it was this ideal synthesis, um, between Europe's old pagan heritage and, um, Christianity, which, in other works, he says, actually, you know, despite his kind of negative assessment of Christianity's general effect on Europe and the character of the religion and all of this, um, he does say that, you know, the Nordic tradition,
00:24:27.400and all these pagan currents had kind of lost their, their awareness of the transcendent dimension of life and that these things had kind of just become, like, nature worship at that point.
00:24:40.320And that the contact with Christianity actually had sort of, uh, uh, conditionally positive effect for both sides, resulting in this kind of ideal synthesis of the Holy Roman Empire and the tradition of, um, chivalry and the myth of the Holy Grail and all this kind of virile warrior spirituality that he approved of.
00:24:58.920Um, yeah, Evola's view on these traditions is not so much, um, like, the Semitic versus not-Semitic, um, dichotomy, but more of this kind of idea that goes back to Bakoven, which is, you know, the idea of solar versus lunar civilizations.
00:25:14.920Civilizations, civilizations that are fundamentally feminine and matriarchal and civilizations that are fundamentally masculine and solar.
00:25:22.300And he takes this to very extreme levels, but, um, and so that's really the, his issue with Christianity is mostly in that, uh, it requires, it, most of its manifestations, aside from what I'm talking about in the Ghibli Middle Ages and certain mystics, um, have, you know, a devotional, passive, um, relationship with the divine.
00:25:42.920Divine. Whereas Evola, you know, highly admires pagan Rome, which kind of had a more active, um, masculine relationship with spirituality.
00:25:53.840And, um, and it's part of his idea about, uh, we can get into it later about spiritual race is, uh, defined by what kind of relationship you're inclined to have with the supernatural.
00:26:05.360Um, yeah, but yeah, like, uh, John was saying, he does have a very complicated relationship with Christianity.
00:26:11.340You know, he thinks the lowliest priest is of more interest to him than the most haughty philosopher, but, um.
00:26:19.000How would he describe a kind of theology of modernity in the sense of, uh, you know, I, I, uh, thinking about the, a solar situation, civilization, which we might associate with say the Roman Republic or the Roman Empire, um, versus the more matriarchal lunar civilization.
00:26:36.520In a way, modernity might have a little bit of both.
00:26:40.620I mean, there's a, there's one aspect of the modern age that, that includes things like futurism, certainly includes things like fascism, um, of, uh, you know, let's, let's harness technology for the, for our, for our will and, you know, kind of, this kind of aspect of it.
00:26:56.500But, but it's almost like the world we live in, I think it's, it's remarkable the degree, the degree to which it's becoming very matriarchal.
00:27:04.280Uh, it's becoming a, a world based on comfort and protection and security.
00:27:09.980And it really isn't a, that kind of masculine Faustian world of going off to the stars.
00:27:16.500It's, uh, so how would, how would, uh, and either of you could pick this up, uh, but how, how would Evola, how did Evola think about modernity and those, using those terminology?
00:27:25.900Sure, I'll pick this up briefly and then I'll hand it over to John.
00:27:28.680Um, so Evola's idea about this sort of Faustianism, this modern drive to, you know, conquer the material world, says essentially, um, Titanic.
00:27:38.320And what he means by Titanic is, um, this myth of the Titans that were these huge beings that revolted against the Olympian gods and failed.
00:27:47.420Um, it's this idea that, um, yes, they have this sort of masculine drive, but it has no reference to the transcendent.
00:27:54.840And so it's kind of futile and, um, destructive.
00:27:58.640He, um, so he diverges, he specifically calls out Spengler and diverges with him on this point along with some others.
00:28:06.200But, um, he also, his views are similar to Ernst JĂĽnger's in this respect.
00:28:11.960Ernst JĂĽnger writes a lot about, um, Titans versus Olympians, which is a subject Evola is very focused on.
00:28:18.640Um, so yeah, John, whatever you had to add to that.
00:28:21.980Well, uh, you know, this, this doctrine of the cycle of ages, uh, was very important to Evola.
00:28:28.680And, uh, you know, the traditionalists typically use the Vedic understanding of the cycle of ages.
00:28:35.100So, uh, they believe like Hindus themselves, uh, you know, that we're currently in the Kali Yuga, which is the last and, and most degenerate of the ages.
00:28:47.980No, we're heading towards greater and greater progress.
00:28:51.440But that, that, that was, that was one of the things that really blew my mind when I first started to read Evola and Ganon was like, you know, I'd always grown up with this idea that, you know, progress was infinite.
00:29:02.340And things were getting better and better and, you know, we were advancing.
00:29:05.400And to really understand the traditionalists, you have to completely reverse that and say, you know, the, the, the golden age was in the past.
00:29:14.080And at least as far as the outer world is concerned, you know, things are, are only going to get worse.
00:29:19.400And even, even when it seems that we're making progress, uh, because it lacks this transcendent aspect, uh, you know, it's, it's really not achieving anything that's genuinely transcendent.
00:29:31.420Uh, and because of, you know, this idea that we're in the Kali Yuga, uh, everything, you know, even the universe itself is sort of beginning to fall apart over the course of many centuries.
00:29:43.380Uh, so for Evola and also Ganon, I mean, modernity, uh, is sort of the quintessence of this spirit of degeneration.
00:29:52.080Hmm. Uh, and there, you know, I, there's a lot of things we, we could say about this.
00:29:58.800I mean, Evola thought the best thing for an individual who is interested in tradition to do at this time was to just withdraw from the world as much as possible, uh, to try to, uh, you know, escape the degenerative effects as much as possible and, and stick to the, the worldview of tradition.
00:30:18.020And, you know, he said, you know, if, if you're forced to engage with things in the outer world, and I think he understood his relationship with fascism this way too.
00:30:26.460Uh, he said, you can do it if it has some benefit for you spiritually, but you should remain detached from any result.
00:30:34.260So, you know, there, there are ways in which you can engage with the modern world, like including politically.
00:30:40.400But, uh, you know, since everything is degenerating, you shouldn't actually expect that you can actually make anything better.
00:30:46.760You should only engage with it in terms of how it helps you, uh, as an individual spiritually.
00:30:53.680Interesting. I, I think this is a, also a good transition to Evola and fascism.
00:30:59.340Uh, so what did they, what did Evola and, and people like him see in fascism?
00:31:04.240Did, did, did they actually see it as, as maybe something that, that, that, that wasn't just Titanic and wasn't just modernist or authoritarian, but actually could reawaken the, the spiritual realm within us?
00:31:18.460I mean, is, is that, is, and, and, and maybe that led them to disappointment.
00:31:22.720Why don't you, John, why don't you just pick that up first?
00:31:25.900It's just what, what, what is Evola's relationship to fascism and, and what, and what it could accomplish in the modern world?
00:31:33.380Well, Evola was never a member of the fascist party, actually.
00:31:38.160Uh, I mean, he, he was on, uh, personal terms with Mussolini and some of the other fascist leadership, but his involvement was sort of restricted to these essays that he wrote.
00:31:48.980Uh, some of which were actually, uh, published in the, uh, you know, official fascist newspapers.
00:31:56.220Uh, we published a collection of them in English in Arctos called Metaphysics of War.
00:32:19.900He, uh, uh, he basically says that it had the potential to transcend its sort of, you know, bourgeois, you know, mass movement origins.
00:32:30.140And he thought it, you know, it could become something more like the Holy Roman Empire.
00:32:35.060Uh, I mean, he thought it, it ultimately failed in that, but I mean, he did see the seeds of many good things in it.
00:32:42.080He actually does say in fascism viewed from the right that, uh, you know, the fact that fascism was defeated in war,
00:32:48.640war, you know, that had bad fortunes in war shouldn't lead us to just dismiss it out of turn because he actually thought there were many positive aspects to Italian fascism.
00:32:58.560He didn't actually think very highly of German national socialism.
00:33:02.640Uh, but Italian fascism in many ways was actually more interesting from a, from a traditional standpoint because they still had a monarch.
00:33:09.700Uh, it wasn't quite as totalitarian, uh, you know, it, it wasn't, uh, as obsessed with this biological view of race that the Nazis were.
00:33:19.920Uh, so yeah, I, he, he saw that it had potential and there were actually some people who listened to him.
00:33:25.860I, I don't think ever had any significant impact, uh, on Italian fascist policy other than maybe a little bit in their, their racial policies.
00:33:35.940Uh, but apart from that, I mean, he was really, you know, kind of on the fringe, uh, and after the war, you know, of course he, he kind of, uh, uh, stopped being involved with politics altogether.
00:34:15.520He, uh, his work never really got too much traction in Italy.
00:34:19.320Actually, uh, despite his disapproval of, um, national socialism, it did get a lot of traction in, um, Germany.
00:34:27.220And the official, um, yeah, national socialist, uh, government was always a little bit, um, suspicious of him because his school of thought is basically, um, most congenial to the, um, conservative revolution in Germany, which includes JĂĽnger, Carl Schmitt, and plenty of others.
00:34:44.400But it was in these circles where he really became, um, fairly widely read.
00:34:50.380And, of course, they tried to do the assassination attempt on Hitler.
00:34:53.260But then after, after the war, all of this conservatism in Germany kind of, um, dries up and you don't really hear very much more about it.
00:35:01.660But, um, yeah, he was actually more popular, um, in Germany and Austria at a certain point, um, than he was in Italy.
00:35:09.160But, um, yeah, he did have hope for fascism that was ultimately, um, disappointed.
00:35:18.100He said that basically the, the point of the state is in its transcendental function, basically enabling men to act in the name of something supernatural.
00:35:28.240Um, and interestingly enough, it's basically something that transcends their own individual, individuality.
00:35:33.160And Avila was always careful to, um, distinguish between two different types of, quote-unquote, transcending individuality.
00:35:40.760He, um, on the one hand, he noted the, you know, the kind of state he advocates that enables, um, man to once again be in contact in the name, with the divine and act in the name of divine things.
00:35:53.940But on the other hand, he noted, and so an example of that would be, you know, the kamikaze or something like this, the Japanese warrior spirituality that he admired during the time of the war.
00:36:04.600But then his, um, kind of polar opposite of that, which is also sort of, quote, transcending individuality, but in kind of a subhuman direction, was the collectivism of, you know, communism in the Soviet Union, where, um, instead of being in touch with transcendent forces, you're in touch with, you know, kind of demonic collective, you know, subconscious.
00:36:34.940No, I mean, in some ways, what we've seen in the post-war world has been this, uh, you know, until 89, 91, has been this battle between two big ideological empires that had very similar presumptions, in a way, um, that was, uh, you know, we can provide comfort, basically, better and more efficiently than you can.
00:36:59.560Uh, it was, it was, it was kind of a, a battle of the last man, uh, at some level.
00:37:04.200Uh, let me go, let, let's move to, um, the, this concept of, of race and the spirit, because I found this very fascinating.
00:37:12.200I think one, while I was doing just some, um, some light research before we began talking, uh, one quote from Evola that stuck out is he said that the idea is our fatherland.
00:37:23.660Um, and, and that is, in a way, a, uh, uh, something directed at, um, the, the racialism and nationalism of, say, the Nazis, um, who thought that, you know, obviously that your ethnos, your people, your race is, is the fatherland.
00:37:42.480Um, and, uh, that he was, he was looking towards this platonic ideal, something higher than a mere human being or, or a race or something like that.
00:37:50.940Um, and, and, and also his, he, he did have a very strong concept of race, but it was one that wasn't biological or genetic.
00:37:59.100It was one that was really primarily spiritual.
00:38:02.520Um, so why don't you, why don't, uh, John, I guess you can start with this one.
00:38:06.000Um, maybe talk a little bit about Evola's concept of race.
00:38:10.120Uh, what, what was it and how does it actually differ from both, uh, say the National Socialist conception and, and also from the conception of race that, um,
00:38:20.940many people in our movement have, which is a kind of HBD genetic conception of race?
00:38:26.900Well, I actually think, uh, I'll say a few words, but I actually think, uh, from what he said before we started recording, uh, William seems to know more about Evola's racial beliefs than myself.
00:38:38.320But, uh, I, uh, he did, he didn't discount the, the biological.
00:38:45.760I mean, it would be a mistake to say that he thought that race is purely a spiritual thing.
00:38:50.920It was related to the biological, biological, but, uh, I mean, he actually was famously said that, uh, uh, somebody who is Aryan or European can possess a Judaic soul.
00:39:04.000Just as, uh, you know, somebody of Jewish background, he thought could have an Aryan soul.
00:39:08.800Like, uh, if you look at the thinkers who influenced Avola, uh, there were several Jews who, who had, uh, uh, big influence on him.
00:39:17.060Like, uh, Otto Weininger would be, uh, a prominent one.
00:39:20.700Uh, and he, and he sort of, uh, you know, explained this by saying, well, yeah, they, they have very much an, an Aryan, uh, soul.
00:39:27.100Uh, so his, he, uh, I think as, as William was saying before we started recording, he thought that when one's, uh, spiritual nature, one's character was in line with one's biological nature, that that was the ideal, but that, you know, that's not always the case.
00:39:47.240And in this, he was kind of similar to Spengler, uh, Spengler didn't really have much time for people who were purely biological racists.
00:39:56.660In fact, I think it's in the hour of decision.
00:39:59.200He says, uh, those who talk too much about race no longer have it in them.
00:40:04.300Uh, and his point was that, you know, we shouldn't just talk about, you know, racial purity, but, you know, characters should play into that as well.
00:40:11.680And, you know, his, his argument was sort of, you know, and I think Avola would have agreed with this.
00:40:16.140If somebody, even if they're of pure European descent, but they act like a complete degenerate in the way they live their lives, can we still really call that person Aryan?
00:40:27.520Uh, because certainly, you know, in, in India and the Vedic tradition, where the word Aryan comes from, uh, it's actually, you know, has much more to do with character than with, uh, uh, you know, racial, uh, or ethnic concerns.
00:40:41.900So, you know, I, I think that's an important thing for the right to inculcate because I, you know, I don't think we don't want just a society where everybody is European.
00:40:51.600I mean, we want people, a society of people who act like, uh, you know, in accordance with the greatest ideals of Europe.
00:40:59.220Oh, yeah. And we don't want to define, you know, being, being white or being Aryan or being European, whatever, what have you, as being, oh, see, we're more economically efficient units and we commit lower crime than other races.
00:41:13.480Like that, that might very well be true. Uh, but that's really not a basis for anything, uh, of spiritual or noble.
00:41:23.200Um, but William, what do you have to say about all this?
00:41:27.460Sure. So, yeah, I mean, Evelyn's main problem with biological racism, as he puts it, is that it's this idea that the superior is determined by the inferior.
00:41:36.320Like the, it's the character and the intellect and the spirit are all determined by biological heritage in a completely mechanistic way,