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Revolt Against the Modern World

Julius Evola,

Guido Stucco (Translator)

4.10 · Rating details · 1,126 ratings · 70 reviews

In what many consider to be his masterwork, Evola contrasts the characteristics of the modern world with those of traditional societies, from politics and institutions to views on life and death.
"No idea is as absurd as the idea of progress, which together with its corollary notion of the superiority of modern civilization, has created its own "positive" alibis by falsifyi In what many consider to be his masterwork, Evola contrasts the characteristics of the modern world with those of traditional societies, from politics and institutions to views on life and death.
"No idea is as absurd as the idea of progress, which together with its corollary notion of the superiority of modern civilization, has created its own "positive" alibis by falsifying history, by insinuating harmful myths in people's minds, and by proclaiming itself sovereign at the crossroads of the plebeian ideology from which it originated. In order to understand both the spirit of Tradition and its antithesis, modern civilization, it is necessary to begin with the fundamental doctrine of the two natures. According to this doctrine there is a physical order of things and a metaphysical one; there is a mortal nature and an immortal one; there is the superior realm of "being" and the inferior realm of "becoming." Generally speaking, there is a visible and tangible dimension and, prior to and beyond it, an invisible and intangible dimension that is the support, the source, and the true life of the former." -- from chapter one.
With unflinching gaze and uncompromising intensity Julius Evola analyzes the spiritual and cultural malaise at the heart of Western civilization and all that passes for progress in the modern world. As a gadfly, Evola spares no one and nothing in his survey of what we have lost and where we are headed. At turns prophetic and provocative, Revolt against the Modern World outlines a profound metaphysics of history and demonstrates how and why we have lost contact with the transcendent dimension of being. The revolt advocated by Evola does not resemble the familiar protests of either liberals or conservatives. His criticisms are not limited to exposing the mindless nature of consumerism, the march of progress, the rise of technocracy, or the dominance of unalloyed individualism, although these and other subjects come under his scrutiny. Rather, he attempts to trace in space and time the remote causes and processes that have exercised corrosive influence on what he considers to be the higher values, ideals, beliefs, and codes of conduct--the world of Tradition--that are at the foundation of Western civilization and described in the myths and sacred literature of the Indo-Europeans. Agreeing with the Hindu philosophers that history is the movement of huge cycles and that we are now in the Kali Yuga, the age of dissolution and decadence, Evola finds revolt to be the only logical response for those who oppose the materialism and ritualized meaninglessness of life in the twentieth century. Through a sweeping study of the structures, myths, beliefs, and spiritual traditions of the major Western civilizations, the author compares the characteristics of the modern world with those of traditional societies. The domains explored include politics, law, the rise and fall of empires, the history of the Church, the doctrine of the two natures, life and death, social institutions and the caste system, the limits of racial theories, capitalism and communism, relations between the sexes, and the meaning of warriorhood. At every turn Evola challenges the reader's most cherished assumptions about fundamental aspects of modern life. ...more

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Hardcover, 375 pages

Published October 1st 1995 by Inner Traditions (first published 1934)

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May 08, 2011 Chris Moran rated it it was amazing

Revolt Against the Modern World by Julius Evola is a book so breathtaking, so fresh and magisterial that I may be incapable of reading anything for the remainder of the year. I found it rich. Every word Evola writes here speaks to something that goes beyond ordinary life, something more than a condition of life that is conditioned by superficial routine or pedestrian thoughts and actions. He writes with nostalgia for Hyperuranium, for transcendence. Evola writes of the generative principles of s Revolt Against the Modern World by Julius Evola is a book so breathtaking, so fresh and magisterial that I may be incapable of reading anything for the remainder of the year. I found it rich. Every word Evola writes here speaks to something that goes beyond ordinary life, something more than a condition of life that is conditioned by superficial routine or pedestrian thoughts and actions. He writes with nostalgia for Hyperuranium, for transcendence. Evola writes of the generative principles of spiritual regality that come from a metaphysical plane where they exist in a pure state. Notions of majesty, regality and nobility have resonance here. These are the ancient rhythms that overlap the symmetry of space and override the black spans of an abyss.

Evola is a man who yearns for infinity. What he longs for is the glory of triumph. Evola is in tune with the cosmic waste of the world and wrote about civilization falling through infinity toward dissolute darkness. The book is essentially “a metaphysics of history,” specifically in relation to the downfall of civilization. Evola wrote of the effect that invisible dimensions have on our world, specifically, Evola wrote about what happens when an abyss turns itself inside out.

“Once more, we should not forget the truth that permeated the traditional world: nothing happens on this earth that is not the symbol and the parallel effect of spiritual events, since between spirit and reality (hence, power too) allegedly there was an intimate relationship.”

Evola frequently uses the word “Uranian,” specifically something he terms “the Uranian chrism” which is like a heroic solar force akin to the Paraclete or the Holy Spirit of Christianity. It is a vital force that transcends worlds, or a frequency one can embody.

“There are two elements within the traditions of those civilizations or of those castes characterized by a Uranian chrism. The first element is a materialistic and a naturalistic one; it consists of the transmission of something related to blood and race, namely, a vital force that originates in the subterranean world together with the elementary, collective, and ancestral influences. The second element is “from above,” and it is conditioned by the transmission and by the uninterrupted performance of rites that contain the secret of a certain transformation and domination realized within the abovementioned vital substratum.”

Evola champions a life of action and views cowardice and dishonor as greater personal evils than sin, which the ancient Egyptians and other early cultures had no concept of. Action includes adventure, heroism, rites of passage and vision quests but also the spiritual activity of contemplation, “which in the classical idea was often regarded as the most pure form of activity; it had its object and goal in itself and did not need “anything else” in order to be implemented.” Wasting away in the dizzying vertical nature of poetry has a basic similarity to how I view a vision quest, or Castaneda’s initiation. I loved this book. ...more

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Apr 23, 2009 Peter rated it did not like it

Shelves: 1914-1945, 20th-century, race, broad-right, 1930s, italian-writers, conservatism, nebcat1, originally-in-italian, political-theory

Crazy, stupid. Kind of interesting, like a crazy (and overeducated) guy on the subway putting his rants on paper, but this dude might very well have been the worst guy around in Fascist Italy.

EDIT- further thoughts on Evola and the “traditionalism” revival of the early 21st century internet: https://toomuchberard.wordpress.com/2... ...more

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Mar 28, 2014 Victor Finn rated it really liked it

Shelves: philosophical, nonfiction, political, favourite

When Julius Evola is right on the money, he is RIIIGHT on the money. And when he's wrong he is extremely wrong. This book oscillates between those two extremes all throughout. But even when's wrong his opinion is still interesting.

By the way, this book should be really be called "A Metaphysics of History", because that's ultimately what it is. Though "Revolt Against the Modern World" is definitely a more striking title.

The best parts of this book are when he critiques technology and modern ideo ...more

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Jul 31, 2017 Sacha Bruÿn rated it did not like it

read this if you want to elevate your pain to a state of divinity and dissociate, like a child, into an unrecognizable reality, filled with spectacular arcane blood rites that evoke numen. Your hunger for meaning is something we're all dealing with in this corporatist society that needs to quantify being. This is the same old self-deluded ideological shit rushing to fill the void, and romantic rhetoric levels are tite. With such an incredible negation of communication, it comes as no surprise th ...more

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Apr 24, 2016 Jacob Aitken rated it really liked it

Shelves: dialectic, fighting-the-new-world-order, ethics, occult, intellectual-strongholds

The best way to describe this book is as a “Pagan Systematic Theology.” That’s not entirely accurate, though. Julius Evola, though an enemy of Christianity, isn’t so stupid to think that the pagan gods actually exist. In fact, Evola is quite clear that the “God-principle” is at best removed, if non-existent.

Rather, paganism–or better, the ancient tradition–is an instantiation of the realm of the Forms. And as long as Evola sticks with quasi-Platonic concepts, he’s okay. In fact, he is quite insi ...more

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Mar 25, 2011 TR rated it it was amazing

Shelves: spirituality, the-ancient-world, rr, sophia, comparative-religion, favorites, thick, philosophy, history

A truly monumental work that alters the perception of history and reality. It defines the more spiritual nature of ancient societies and explains the significance of many words whose meanings have been distorted, like tradition, initiation, knowledge, and royalty.

Even if you completely reject Evola's view (in other words, if you are purely rationalist) then this book would still be a valuable insight into the mindset similar to that of the ancient peoples like the Greeks or Persians at their hig ...more

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Jul 25, 2019 P.D. Maior rated it it was amazing

Shelves: gurdjieff-post-mod-western-occult, zz-for-a-bug-out-bag-at-resets, tolkien-northern-medieval-lore, a2-1801-1964-contra-reducio-gencds, a6-prophecies-on-or-futurism, works-mentioning-maí-or-atalas, greco-roman-lore

This work shows how to be as salmon swimming counterstream the steeply descending and culturally dissolutive flow this Kali Yuga age - we are now five thousand years into - has tempestuously created (times of incarnations it has allowed in who are violent, treacherous, undisciplined, cold and greedy). At every steppe in it, all that is noble, good, innocent, harmonious, wise and growing - all flowing from the primordial and perennial center of esoteric man - has been dismantled systematically in ...more

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Oct 01, 2009 Matthew W rated it it was amazing

A masterwork that I will no doubt have to go back to at various points during the rest of my life. Many people have said that if you're attempting to get into Evola, to read "Revolt Against the Modern World" first. I believe this work should be read AFTER Evola's intellectual autobiography "The Path of Cinnabar." Evola autobiography makes it much easier to understand where he is coming from with each of his works. "Revolt Against the Modern World" is obviously his greatest, but all of Evola's wo ...more

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Sep 30, 2019 Sami Eerola rated it did not like it

Shelves: read-in-2019

What a waste of time! This is a book based in a literal interpretation of ancient myths mixed with Jungian archetypes and extreme right wing ideology that tries to argue that humans came from a ancient Arctic super-race that descended to barbarism by mixing with inferior races. The world is descending to communism and only the very phew people with a "ancient warrior spirit" can survive and maybe build a new high civilization based in "spiritual aristocracy"

The book is incredible repetitive and ...more

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Oct 10, 2012 Friedrich Mencken rated it did not like it

Recommends it for: No-one of right mind

Recommended to Friedrich by: Everyone on the new/alternative right

Shelves: beyond-the-realms-of-sanity

Sort of like the David Icke of the new/alternative right. I think the nicest thing I can say is to quote the nationalsocialists assessment of him in their recommendation to have him expelled from Germany in August 1938 that "his learnedness tends toward the dilettante and pseudoscientific". ...more

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Jul 06, 2020 Brett Childs rated it liked it

This is more a general review of the author and his followers, rather than this work in particular.

In summary, I personally haven’t found Evola very helpful or enlightening. He takes a very long time to say things that can be put far simpler, and he makes his writing unnecessarily complicated - much like a university professor who decides to write a bunch of nonsensical jargon that others won’t understand but will at least seem intelligent, the longer, the more bizarre words and the more vague t This is more a general review of the author and his followers, rather than this work in particular.

In summary, I personally haven’t found Evola very helpful or enlightening. He takes a very long time to say things that can be put far simpler, and he makes his writing unnecessarily complicated - much like a university professor who decides to write a bunch of nonsensical jargon that others won’t understand but will at least seem intelligent, the longer, the more bizarre words and the more vague the better. Intellectual elitism at its finest.
Whenever he does have or makes a good point it’s after trudging through 5 or 10 chapters of practically nothing or just nothing new, and they’re usually things you could find far easier and simpler in other authors or even just reading the source material instead of this pedantic medium.
You’re also likely to end up running into pretty shaky grounds and claims made by him, some that he and the founder of the Traditionalist School disagree on and others that he takes great lengths and mental gymnastics to justify but to little success. Hence, I suppose, trying to lose the reader in his over complication of a topic; in true intellectual fashion.

I give Revolt here a 3 (I gave it 4 before my review but changed my mind) because despite the fact that I personally severely disliked reading it, I’d like to remain dispassionate about it and at least give it a mid-tier rating. I can appreciate the work in it and the validity of the truer statements within though buried underneath so much filler, and despite the things I and Tradition would disagree on or find just unnecessary and off-topic.
I wouldn’t recommend Evola to anybody, there’s far better out there.

Part II here refers in general to observations about his followers:

I decided to pick Evola up after a long time of neglect because I didn’t expect much from him and found his fans weren’t my kind of people, “you’ll know him by his fruits”. I finally did get around to reading a handful of his work and essays of his online just to say “I did” and to give it a fair chance, I’ve been reading books from other Traditionalist writers anyways, especially Guénon who I do enjoy; unfortunately my experience with Evola just proved my initial feelings justified, more certain and left me more averse.

I believe the reason Evola is so popular with the far-right and the like is because of his associations with Fascism even though he was never a fascist anyways and has his own criticisms of Italian Fascism and more so the NSDAP. This along with the fact he’s rather ‘edgy’, likes to talk about war, warriors, kings, sex, Left-Hand topics, etc.
Further, #RevoltAgainstTheModernWorld is a very simple and vague phrase that nearly anybody can use, I’d wager over half of the trad fads who use it haven’t actually read the namesake book, or if they have, observation and context shows they very often have no idea what it means - but it’s just easy to see how and why it’s popular. Another easy to grab statement is his call to “be radical, be absolute”, whatever his fans decide to define what that means.
Lastly I think it has to do with the pedantic nature of his writing itself, it’s easy to gloat, consciously or unconsciously, over reading Evola and feeling clever and superior for it - over “understanding” what he has said beneath clusters of mental gymnastics and unnecessary complication. Funnily enough this still counts even if what he said flies right over the readers head; Evola simply fulfils a role of pseudo-elitism. If you say you’ve read him, can quote him or just reference him, then the only explanation is you must be quite red pilled, learned and just plain based - you’re in the club.

This also just goes hand in hand with the general trend of why people even get into “traditional” values, and it’s worth noting people mix the definitions of whatever they define “traditionalism” as and the capital T philosophy of the “Traditionalist School” extremely often - again going to show that people either don’t read authors like Evola and other Traditionalists or they do and it goes over their heads.
For example, it’s noticeable in men that quite a lot of them get into these things for either bizarre desires and fetishisms or insecurities and they will call on the vague definitions and cherry picking of “tradition” and on biology to make it all work out (the “Traditions” of the contents in Evola and others are in fact separated from what they call the “profane” things of biology, time and place).
It’s easy to get into a trend that calls for masculine superiority when the man himself is an Üntermensch, spiritually and mentally speaking. It’s easy to get off at the thought of “authoritarian” and “warrior” aesthetics and the ‘no homo’ in ogling body builders, it’s easy to make the sexual metaphysical in an attempt to rationalize human lust, it’s easy to find ‘traditional’ backing and approval to justify the search for a trad wife.
And at the end of the day I think we have to admit that much of this hype over finding traditional waifus is because a lot of guys are lazy children who want to marry their mothers and have a fetish for blonde hair.
I’m picking on the men here because Evola has a “masculine” appeal in particular. ...more

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Dec 02, 2017 Isen rated it did not like it

I like to start a review with a brief statement of what the book is, but in the case of A Revolt Against the Modern World I have no idea. Having read the book cover to cover, I still have no idea what Evola was trying to say, or even what genre to place the book in. It would be a stretch to class this as philosophy. Evola explicitly rejects rational discourse and debate. In his own words, "I will have a minimal concern for debating and 'demonstrating.' The truths that may reveal the world of Tra I like to start a review with a brief statement of what the book is, but in the case of A Revolt Against the Modern World I have no idea. Having read the book cover to cover, I still have no idea what Evola was trying to say, or even what genre to place the book in. It would be a stretch to class this as philosophy. Evola explicitly rejects rational discourse and debate. In his own words, "I will have a minimal concern for debating and 'demonstrating.' The truths that may reveal the world of Tradition are not those that can be 'learned' or 'discussed'; either they are or they are not." It's not a political or an ethical manifesto -- apart from a few chapters near the end, there is very little that is normative in the book. Evola is just stating the "facts" as they are, without dwelling on their consequences. The closest thing I can think of is comparative mythology, although Evola explicitly rejects that connection in the introduction too. The "traditional method" espoused by Evola seems to consist of taking fragments of myth that fit some intuitive hypothesis, rejecting those that don't, and keeping terms sufficiently vague that any rebuttal is bound to get tangled up in an ontological morass.

With that out of the way, the book consists of two parts. In the first Evola explains certain aspects of the world of "Tradition", in the second he offers a "historical" analysis of the decline of the current civilisations from their roots in Hyperborea to the terrible state they find themselves in today.

The main problem with the first part is the lack of structure or purpose. Evola talks about individual aspects of Tradition such as priest-kings, rites and initiation, sacred games, bringing up interesting cross-cultural (cross-mythological) examples, but ultimately nothing fits together or develops into any overarching theme. On a very basic level, Evola never explains what exactly Tradition is. Is it meant to capture how historical people (which ones?) actually lived? That seems doubtful, given statements like "the eventual lack of correspondence of the historical element with a myth demonstrates the untruth of history rather than that of the myth". Is it meant to describe a joint mythos or set of cultural values that people once had? This seems closer to the case, but still not quite there since Evola is more than happy to reject elements of myth that do not fit his theses as confused, mistaken, or corruptions from aboriginal cultural strata (e.g. the Greeks, as did most people, conceived the Golden Age as a time of peace and harmony, whereas Evola is convinced it consisted of holy war). Did Tradition have a physical, or purely a metaphysical reality? Does it matter for Evola's argument? There is a lot of talk about the supernatural, about the priest-kings being sanctioned from above, and mediating magical or whatever forces for the good of all. Does this supernatural aspect have a "physical", or purely a symbolic reality? And again, does it matter? At the end of this part the only message I seem to have taken away is that men of yore were more religious than men of now. Sure, I can agree with that, but it seems like Evola was trying to say a lot more than that. Unfortunately, it turns out that rational discourse is not merely a malevolent invention designed to keep the Man of Tradition down, but an extremely useful tool for getting your arguments across. This book could use some of that.

The second part, as far as I can see, takes a different course in that it very much does profess to deal with actual historic events. Such as the origin of Indo-Aryan civilisation in Hyperborea, the founding of Atlantis, and things like that. Well, sure, why not. Let's go with that. After these lofty beginnings, Evola describes the Hyperborean civilisation coming into contact with the chtonic southern cultures, getting corrupted by them, and leading to a slow, bumpy decline that lead to the modern world. The tone of the book suggests that this was very much a bad thing, but Evola never explains why. According to him the European civilisations suffered a cultural shock in the 7th-5th centuries BC from which they've never recovered. But what is this reflected in? Certainly not in artistic output, as this is when the Golden Age of Athens is just getting started. Evola does claim that Greek art from this period was shit, but I'm not about to pretend to dislike Sophocles just because a moody Italian told me to. Certainly not in terms of knowledge and learning, as this is when we got Plato, Euclid and Thucydides, among many many others, but Evola seems to have a low opinion of philosophy. After all, "Modern man may be unaware of it, but the preeminence of 'thought' is only a marginal and recent phenomenon in history". Well said, Julius. What kind of a loser has time to think these days. A Man of Tradition knows the truth by sheer intuition alone. But perhaps most damning of all, in spite of Evola's talk of the "virility" and strength of the traditional warrior aristocracies, this is also when the era of Graeco-Roman military triumph began. I'm aware Evola tries to claim the Romans as the last vestige of Tradition to sidestep this thorny issue, but I'm sorry, I just don't see how an army that was initially composed of Plebeian yeomen and later even lower scum of the earth can possibly count as the glorious Kshatriya warrior caste. Filthy, disgusting plebs trampled on the warrior aristocracies of Hispania, Gaul, and the Near East for a thousand years. What exactly was the Man of Tradition doing in this epoch, other than losing wars to inferior races? By what metric is the civilisation of Tradition superior? I'm willing to be open minded, and leave my preconceptions on what constitutes a successful society aside, but Evola never tells me what the correct measure is. Perhaps the very concept of measurement is anti-Tradition, an artefact of the "science that degraded and democratized the very notion of knowledge by establishing the uniform criterion of truth and certainty based on the soulless world of numbers". How terrible. I guess I never can understand, being "intoxicated with the products of an art, erudition, and speculation that lacked any transcendent and metaphysical element", whatever that means.

In the conclusion Evola levels some rather sensible criticisms against modern, industrial society, but it's hard to see how they follow from the rest of the book. Sure, working eight hours a day for something you don't care about sucks, but is it really worse than slaving away in the manor of some warrior aristocrat who, paradoxically, is terrible at winning battles? Well, I don't know. Maybe there's a transcendent reality to be had in dying of malnutrition while the Baron Evola puts another boar on the spit and locks himself in his harem.

As a post scriptum, I never understood how the Hyperborean-Atlantis thing took root and achieved the currency that it did. And it's not just a vague idea, like "there was an ancient civilisation but it's gone now", but a fairly detailed description of how civilisation started on the North Pole, went down to an island in the middle of the Atlantic, and then spread to America and the Mediterranean. Based on nothing but a *very* selective reading of Greek myth. Seems like an incredible amount of mental gymnastics to go through just to deny kinship with the chimpanzee. Is that all it was? Then why not just Creationism? "God did it" is somehow more believable than this crock of shit. ...more

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May 16, 2020 Bryce rated it did not like it

Julius Evola is just Joseph Campbell for racists. "The moon is female, the sun is male, and white people came from Atlantis." That's basically it. Somehow this monocled little creep managed to stretch it out over like 400 pages. ...more

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Oct 06, 2017 Greg rated it it was ok

In turning to Julius Evola’s book, Revolt Against the Modern World, it is clear that he, also, believes that history has repeating cycles and, moreover, that we are in, or are approaching, an extremely critical period. But Evola assigns to these cycles ingredients significant echoes of ancient myth and magic that are wholly absent from The Fourth Turning.

As ably expounded by Professor Teofilo Ruiz, in the Great Courses presentation The Terror of History, the conviction (or hope) that “our time” ...more

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Jan 21, 2015 Scriptor Ignotus rated it really liked it

Shelves: philosophy, esotericism, far-right, postliberalism

Julius Evola's Revolt Against the Modern World is the manifesto of traditionalism, and one of the most popular texts among today's "alternative right". Evola was an esotericist; his spiritual proclivities were toward a path of inner transformation and self-mastery. Everything flows from this internal spiritual endeavor, and the ultimate ideal towards which all spiritual life is to be oriented is the form of transcendence. The transcendence Evola envisions is one over the state of "becoming"; the Julius Evola's Revolt Against the Modern World is the manifesto of traditionalism, and one of the most popular texts among today's "alternative right". Evola was an esotericist; his spiritual proclivities were toward a path of inner transformation and self-mastery. Everything flows from this internal spiritual endeavor, and the ultimate ideal towards which all spiritual life is to be oriented is the form of transcendence. The transcendence Evola envisions is one over the state of "becoming"; the ever-moving, ever-changing, illusory finitude of the physical world.

His interest in classical mythology should not cause one to mistake him for one of the "new-age" or "neo-pagan" aesthetes that have emerged since the 1960s. Evola is decidedly opposed to the "earth-based" religions. They are manifestations of the archetypal mother goddess who claims stewardship over the Earth, because the Earth is feminine; it is a womb that is continuously fertilized by the sun and the rain. The earthly feminine represents the illusory state of becoming, while the highest spirituality, for Evola, is a masculine, "uranian" state of transcendence; a state of "being" rather than "becoming", self-sustaining and autotelic. I suspect Evola would have nothing but scorn for Aleister Crowley's commandment, "Do what thou wilt." This sort of "freedom" is merely a posture of confusion and disharmony, in which one is merely the slave of the baser passions which lead him around by the nose in any given direction.

Evola holds that in premodern times, all great civilizations conceived of their social orders as spiritual communities that were oriented towards this ultimate transcendence. Rulers were mediators between the divine and the mundane realms, and held the social-religious order in place. The warrior aristocracy (and the aristocrats were always warriors in addition to being spiritual leaders) practiced a brand of warrior asceticism, in which the mastery of the battlefield was bound up with the internal pathway toward the transcendent. Evola interprets the hadith in which Muhammad tells his followers, upon returning from a battle, that they are returning from the "lesser jihad" to the "greater jihad" in this light. The inner transformation, in which one lets go of the things "of this world", is the ultimate one; and yet it is only made possible in the process of an external endeavor of holy war - the "lesser jihad". Interestingly enough, Evola even thinks of Buddhism as a manifestation of the warrior-aristocratic spirituality.

Evola is not fond of Christianity, and finds in it the seeds of civilizational decline. According to him, God shouldn't come to Earth; for the transcendent to move toward the temporal is merely a corruption of the transcendent ideal. That said, he has some positive things to say about the warrior spirit of the knightly orders of the crusades, like the Templars; but he sees this as evidence that the archetypal warrior-aristocratic ethos is one that transcends religious, ideological, or national fault lines. Saladin and Richard the Lionheart were really kindred spirits, it seems.

This is a somewhat significant departure from Nietzsche's conception of the oppositional Priestly and Knightly-aristocratic classes. For Nietzsche, the warrior and the priest are oppositional figures, because Nietzsche opposes the self-effacing spiritual realm with the hearty moral aestheticism of the world as it is - saying "yes" to life - while for Evola, everything comes form the transcendent singularity, so every "earthly" activity bears its meaning in relation to the transcendent ideal; what Platonists would refer to as the world of the forms.

Consequently, Evola thinks that the pre-moderns had it right when they conceived of civilization as a synergetic relationship between spiritual castes. Even the lower castes, like the guild craftsmen of the middle ages, viewed membership in their trade communities as a spiritual vocation, a position allotted to them in a divine order; and so even the crafting of tables or the laying of bricks took on a sacred dimension and was thus a source of great inner satisfaction for the craftsman. Evola suggests that nowhere has "slavery" been a more pervasive or a more pitiable status than in the modern age, where the lower strata are regulated to the role of mere automata in a great machine of production that is not grounded in any transcendent order.

With the seemingly inevitable triumph of democracy, capitalism, and the ideology of "progress", Evola doesn't see much hope for the modern world. According to him, we are currently living through what the Hindu texts refer to as the "Kali-Yuga", Hesiod referred to as the "Iron Age", and what Nordic folklore referred to as the "Age of the Wolf". Yet he closes the book with the suggestion that those "aristocrats of the spirit" who can whether the civilizational collapse of modernity will reap ever-greater spiritual rewards in the world to come.

...more

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Oct 28, 2014 Brett Green rated it really liked it

Shelves: history, philosophy

This one was fun. Quite challenging in parts, and you'll get a nice little survey of your ancient comparative mythology coming out of this (well, nothing coming out of those children of Lemuria, but anyway).

It would seem to me that Evola was one of those idealists who took what Stirner was saying about the self being a "creative nothing" entirely seriously. He denies evolution. It's an ideological necessity to go along with modern materialism, etc. Myth is ultimate reference point, Nietzsche le ...more

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Sep 02, 2015 Rui Coelho rated it liked it

Recommended to Rui by: C

The first volume is an exciting journey throught the fantasies of a reactionary and romantic dissident. By presenting his ideal type of "traditional society" (inspired by the empires like Egypt, Babylon and Rome), Evola reveals (by exageration) the core of traditionalist conservatism (the Westboro Baptist/ Ted Cruz types). What I mean is that he articulates how bad politics like social organicism and iusnaturalism are connected with racism, slavery, mysoginy and authoritarianism. For now on I wi ...more

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Jul 01, 2020 Bastard Travel rated it did not like it

Incomprehensible dogwhistle-Catholic gibberish. Wholehearted defense of eugenics while fervently trying to discard the genetic component because he doesn't consider it relevant.

Don't ask me, dude. ...more

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Jul 02, 2020 Minäpäminä rated it liked it

First off, I didn't give this the sustained attention it needed, so possible misunderstandings are probably my own fault. And it's not a good way to read any book, in small pieces over a long period of time.

I also don't know how I should relate to this, since Evola denies rational argument but goes on and on about history. Why - if there is no rational argument to be had on these things? Just tell us what you think, then, instead of acting like an ought might be inferred from a was. He also deni ...more

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Aug 08, 2018 J.W.D. Nicolello rated it liked it

There are without questions some things here which are irrefutably prescient. Alas, subjectivity is a contagious disease. My reading of Evola suffered from the same symptom as Marx and his religious followers through the ages: the end game is terrible. What kind of psychopath works tirelessly to give up his private property and arms? The suicidal and the duped. What kind of person would set out in this brief life to condemn every last element of modernity as nothingness whence compared to the Br ...more

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Mar 27, 2020 Ned rated it it was ok

Shelves: military, philosophy, political

90% is incomprehensible nonsense, Evola spends a vast majority of the time writing as if he's being paid by the word. And when his does make sense, it's only for the briefest moment. ...more

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Jan 01, 2021 Hans rated it did not like it

Shelves: skip

Too supernatural. I am more down to earth.

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Nov 14, 2020 cool breeze rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Recommends it for: no one

Shelves: ebook, non-fiction

"Revolt Against the Modern World" is a great book title, but that is the best part of the book. As another reviewer suggested, "A Metaphysics of History" would be a lot more accurate, though less engaging.

I anticipated that this book might have a lot with which I would disagree, but sometimes this can still be thought-provoking. I approached this book from a conservative/libertarian perspective, not a hostile one, and on open mind. I was very disappointed. It is nonsense. It has the lowest signa "Revolt Against the Modern World" is a great book title, but that is the best part of the book. As another reviewer suggested, "A Metaphysics of History" would be a lot more accurate, though less engaging.

I anticipated that this book might have a lot with which I would disagree, but sometimes this can still be thought-provoking. I approached this book from a conservative/libertarian perspective, not a hostile one, and on open mind. I was very disappointed. It is nonsense. It has the lowest signal to noise ratio of any book that I can recall (Shoshana Zuboff and Michael Walsh are distant runners up).

There is almost nothing that is practical or relevant in 2020. It is an absurd smorgasbord of monarchism, elitism, esotericism and a dozen other isms. Evola makes his equally eclectic and seriously crazy buddy Corneliu Codreanu seem comparatively pragmatic and grounded. It is almost entirely ridiculous, dated or metaphysical noise. The few things I got out of the book, I got from looking up his more obscure references, like the Albigensians. Seriously, how much relevance do the Cathars or the Ghibellines have in the present day? Not much, I think, and Evola didn’t come close to persuading me otherwise.

As an example, Evola correctly notes that "What upsets modern sensitivity the most about the caste system is the law of heredity and preclusion". Having correctly noted the strongest objection, he devotes the rest of the chapter to an outrageous and inane defense of caste systems that assumes the conclusion and does not address the strongest objection at all.

Evola’s defense of aristocracy, monarchism and elitism is even more laughable. The modern day "elites", from the British royals to the Soviet nomenklatura to the Davos crowd, have utterly discredited themselves. This should have been sufficiently evident to Evola in 1934 from the Hapsburg and Ottoman empires, the rest of the hopelessly inbred and decrepit European aristocracy, Hirohito, Mussolini, Hitler and Stalin.

This book has little or nothing to offer a contemporary reader, no practical solutions. Evola reportedly conceded that it was overtaken by events in his subsequent Ride the Tiger: A Survival Manual for the Aristocrats of the Soul, which I haven’t read. The author himself was largely irrelevant in his own time and largely forgotten thereafter, notwithstanding a recent flicker of revived interest from neo-Traditionalists. Even they would be well advised to look elsewhere. For instance, Chesterton’s Fence seems far more relevant. Revolt Against the Modern World is a naïve and narcissistic fantasy that was curb stomped by reality long before it was written. For better or worse, the ship sailed long ago. Evola is left alone on the dock, loudly conversing with himself about Frederick II like a crazy person, simply an anachronism. ...more

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Nov 26, 2020 Varapanyo Bhikkhu rated it really liked it

Evola – Revolt Against the Modern World: Politics, Religion, and Social Order in the Kali Yuga

H. T. Hansen:

Rivolta contro il mondo moderno was first published in 1934, and followed by later editions in 1951 and in 1970. Two works with similar themes that influenced Evola were Oswald Spengler's Decline of the West (1918) and René Guénon's The Crisis of the Modern World (1927), both of which Evola translated into Italian.

Evola agreed with Spengler's criticism of the progressive and evolutionist my Evola – Revolt Against the Modern World: Politics, Religion, and Social Order in the Kali Yuga

H. T. Hansen:

Rivolta contro il mondo moderno was first published in 1934, and followed by later editions in 1951 and in 1970. Two works with similar themes that influenced Evola were Oswald Spengler's Decline of the West (1918) and René Guénon's The Crisis of the Modern World (1927), both of which Evola translated into Italian.

Evola agreed with Spengler's criticism of the progressive and evolutionist myth and with his rejection of the modern "linear" understanding of history. Spengler argued that there is no such thing as one global civilization, but rather a plurality of civilizations, following one another according to the cyclical pattern of birth-growth-decline. Spengler often spoke of the aging of cultures in terms of the succession of the four seasons; the winter of our contemporary Western world is characterized by "pure intellectuality," by the advent of machinery, the power of money, the government of the masses, growing skepticism and materialism. Evola, who had adopted the cyclical view of history proper to Tradition, agreed with Spengler's assessment of our times but criticized him for failing to recognize the metaphysical nature of the cyclical laws and for lacking, like Nietzsche, any transcendent and traditional reference points. Evola also did not deem satisfactory Spengler's distinction between culture and civilization, the former being the early stage, the latter being the crepuscular phase of a historical cycle; in Revolt Against the Modern World Evola emphasized the irreconciliable antithesis, or rather the dualism between the two terms.

René Guénon's The Crisis of the Modern World was a very important influence on Evola's Revolt. In his work, Guénon discussed the relationship between action and contemplation, criticized democracy and individualism, and argued that we are living in the "Dark Age" (Kali Yuga). Evola picked up these themes and developed them further, supplying several historical examples to back up his thesis. While Evola is undoubtedly indebted to Guénon for several seminal ideas, it would be wrong to assume that he is just the Italian epigone of Guénon, with whom he disagreed on matters such as the correct relationship between action and contemplation, the role of Catholicism as a future catalyst of traditionalist forces, and the hierarchical relationship between priesthood and regality in traditional civilizations.

In Revolt Against the Modern World Evola intended to offer some guidelines 1 for a morphology of civilizations and for a philosophy of history, as well as to advocate a psychologically and intellectually detached stance toward the modern world, which he regarded as decadent. In Revolt the reader will find strong criticism of the notions of equality and democracy, which in turn led Evola to praise the role that the caste system, feudalism, monarchy, and aristocracy have played in history. Regardless of whether one agrees with these views or not, the fact remains that a mere sociopolitical assessment of Revolt would totally miss the essence and the scope of Evola's thought. (...)

I think that the peculiarity of Revolt lies in three features: rejection of dialogue; affirmation of traditional (not in the usual, conservative sense of the word) and absolute values; and bi-polar thinking (not dualism).

First, by rejecting dialogue with modernity and with fellow human beings, and by denying that dialogue is a means to arrive at the truth (the opposite spirit from that which animated Lacordaire, a follower of Voltaire who eventually became a Dominican friar and who said: "What really matters to me is not to prove my opponent wrong, but to join him in a higher, encompassing truth"), Evola shifts the focus from sociopolitical affairs and interpersonal relationships back to self-questioning ("The unexamined life is not worth living") and to the cultivation of the inner life, away from life's busy and noisy crossroads. This shift is likely to produce an indignant chorus of protests from the ranks of liberal and humanist thinkers in the theological, political, and social arenas: "Immoral!" "Selfish!" "Irresponsible individualism!" In accordance with Socrates' implication that the cultivation of one's soul (ἐπɩμέλεɩα ψυχης) is man's chief duty, Evola's entire literary production may be regarded as a quest for, and as an exposition of , the means employed in Western and Eastern traditions to accomplish such a noble task.

Secondly, it is refreshing to hear in our day and age somebody saying apertis verbis, "This is the truth," or "These are absolute values," when cultural and ethical relativism, as well as philosophical and religious pluralism, have become the untouchable dogmas and the hermeneutical a priori in contemporary academic discourse. Evola's critics may well disagree, but today there is much hunger for solid, unshakable beliefs, for "objectivity" (to use a word that is much discounted today), and for foundationalist thinking, whether the "high priests" of progress and of dialogue like it or not. Evola's Revolt may be food for such hungry souls.

Finally, Evola's metaphysics, which was greatly influenced by German Idealism (which Evola claimed to have successfully overcome), is based on the notion of "immanent transcendence." This view is opposed to any kind of religious dualism such as that of transcendence vs. immanence, heaven vs. hell, good vs. evil. Instead, Evola espouses a phenomenological dualism that could be characterized as "bipolarism" and in which Tradition is contrasted with modernity, solar civilizations and spirituality with lunar civilization and spirituality, the aristocratic world and values with the plebeian world and values, the caste system with the democratic system, masculine spirituality with feminine spirituality, and enlightenment and liberation with rebirth and permanence in saṁsāra.The reader of Revolt may or may not agree with the theses contained in this book, but one thing must be acknowledged: Evola's weltanschauung is coherent and holistic. Though it may not be "prophetic," it is an act of remembrance: "Remember that I have remembered / and pass on the tradition."
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May 03, 2020 Volbet rated it it was ok

There's something tragically funny in the introductions to the book trying to establish Evola as a non-racist, while entire text is drenched in racial ideas. It is true that the racism isn't so much i the modern sense, but praising a cast system, where aryans just so happen to be on top, is still racist non the less.

But not all the ideas here is to do with race, after all. It's all about Tradition and anti-modernism. There certainly is something to be said about the modern condition and humaniti ...more

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Jun 04, 2019 Shawn rated it it was amazing

This book is wildly entertaining and I really had a good time reading through it in general. At its best it challenged my beliefs, otherwise it's a very in depth study of various mythologies (which was still very informative). However, due to the extreme political and spiritual nature of this book I will not say anything more about it for fear of painting myself into a corner. ...more

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Apr 20, 2012 A marked it as to-read

Shelves: gnosticism-mysticism-esotericism

Putting this one on indefinite hold. While the breadth of focus is nice, and it serves as a decent comparative study, I just can't get behind Evola's whole POV and felt I pretty much understood where he was going with it. Not really my cup of tea. ...more

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May 09, 2011 hay man rated it liked it

i found this in the 'new age' section of a half priced books. hail the unconquered sun! ...more

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May 25, 2020 Thrax rated it did not like it

Shelves: political, 2020-books

not even good enough to read as a meme

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Mar 21, 2021 Daniel rated it did not like it

I was originally going to write a more detailed review, but the umpteenth time Evola ranted about the Uranian quality of the solar masculinity or whatever was one too many. I began skipping paragraphs and even whole chapters when I was 3/4 of the way through.

This is probably the worst book I've read in my life. Not just because of how abhorrent I find the ideas contained within, but also how boring and aimless it all is. I am amazed that someone can read through this and come out thinking he has I was originally going to write a more detailed review, but the umpteenth time Evola ranted about the Uranian quality of the solar masculinity or whatever was one too many. I began skipping paragraphs and even whole chapters when I was 3/4 of the way through.

This is probably the worst book I've read in my life. Not just because of how abhorrent I find the ideas contained within, but also how boring and aimless it all is. I am amazed that someone can read through this and come out thinking he has been enlightened, particularly in our time. Revolt Against The Modern World is the 20th century equivalent of the Illuminati conspiracy theorists showing you a triangle in one of Lady Gaga's videos and going "really makes you think, don't it?".

One really only needs to read the preface to get the gist of Evola's anti-humanist, anti-rational ideas. The rest of the book consists of repetitive, biased 'analysis' of myths (which Evola convinced me he thinks are real) and historical factoids, with abortive flailings at 'modernity' interspersed between. Of course, Evola says these myths are conclusive proof of the mess he's trying to push, which should raise one's eyebrows considering he was the one to eschew rational debate in the first place (literally: 《The truths that may reveal the world of Tradition are not those
that can be "learned" or "discussed"; either they are or they are not》). In the end, he makes good on his word: there is no underlying logic to this maddening tirade of a text; either you accept the borderline psychotic ramblings or you do not.

I'll leave some quotes here so you can judge for yourself. Yes, Evola is saying that Atlantis/Thule is a real place.
《[...] this knowledge (not just a mere "theory") has always been present as an unshakable axis around which everything revolved. Let me emphasize the fact that it was knowledge and not "theory." As difficult as it may be for our contemporaries to understand this, we must start from the idea that the man of Tradition was aware of the existence of a dimension of being much wider than what our contemporaries experience and call "reality."》
《Every traditional civilization is characterized by the presence of beings who, by virtue of their innate or acquired superiority over the human condition, embody within the temporal order the living and efficacious presence of a power that comes from above.》
《Once in a while it is possible to detect in certain historical institutions (such as monarchies and empires) an esoteric and universal core that transcends the specific geographical and historical dimensions of said institutions, thus culminating in a unity of a higher kind; such are the imperial peaks of the world of Tradition》
《The ancient German peasant, for instance, experienced his cultivating the land as a title of nobility, even though he was not able to see in this work, unlike his Persian counterpart, a symbol and an episode of the struggle between the god of light and the god of darkness.》
《The periods in which women have reached autonomy and preeminence almost always have coincided with epochs marked by manifest decadence in ancient civilization》
《Not to mention all the other degenerative factors connected to a mechanized and urbanized social life and especially to a civilization that no longer respects the healthy and creative limitations constituted by the castes and by the traditions of blood lineage》
《I agree wholeheartedly with the idea expressed by Coulanges according to which the apparition of the "will," in the sense of an individualistic freedom, of those who own the land to divide their property, break it up, and separate it from the legacy of blood and the rigorous norms of the paternal right and primogeniture, truly represents one of the characteristic manifestations of the degeneration of the traditional spirit》
《[...] in the beginning there were no animal-like cavemen, but rather "more-than-human" beings, and that in ancient prehistory there was no "civilization" but an "era of the gods"; 5 this to many people—who in one way or another believe in the gospel of Darwinism—amounts to pure and simple "mythology》
《Evolutionists believe they are "positively" sticking to the facts. They ignore that the facts per se are silent, and that if interpreted in different ways they can lend support to the most incredible hypotheses. It has happened, however, that someone, though fully informed of all the data that are adduced to prove the theory of evolution, has shown these data to support the opposite thesis, which in more than one respect corresponds to the traditional teaching.》
《Historically and geographically, Atlantis does not correspond to the South, but to the West. The South corresponds to Lemuria, which I mentioned in passing, and some Negroid and Southern populations may be considered the last crepuscular remnants of this continent.》 ...more

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About Julius Evola

Julius Evola

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Julius Evola, also known as Baron Giulio Cesare Andrea Evola (even if he actually wasn't an aristocrat), was an Italian philosopher, poet, painter, antisemitic conspiracy theorist, esotericist and occultist. During his trial in 1951, Evola denied being a Fascist and instead referred to himself as a "superfascist".

Evola after the World War II claimed to be admired by the Italian Fascist leader Ben ...more

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“The blood of the heroes is closer to God than the ink of the philosophers and the prayers of the faithful.” — 81 likes

“Being and stability are regarded by our contemporaries as akin to death; they cannot live unless they act, fret, or distract themselves with this or that. Their spirit (provided we can still talk about a spirit in their case) feeds only on sensations and on dynamism, thus becoming the vehicle for the incarnation of darker forces.” — 34 likes

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