A crucial argument of Rivolto contro il mondo moderno

[samiaseo222]

Along with René Guénon and Leopold Ziegler, Julius Evola belongs to a school of thought which, in the twenties and thirties, subjected Western Enlightment (historically speaking understood by these thinkers as an agent of modernism), to a fundamental critique. The difficulty of Evola's approach lies in the fact that a comparison between European-American modern society on one hand, and the Mediaeval or Indo-Aryan feudal one on the other, is impossible within a universal historical perspective, they are too far apart.

Is that the modern world has in any case broken away from all historical awareness whereas "Traditional" structures, for exemple the Greco-Roman or the Irano-Indian, were organized on the basis of their phone number list awareness of their own belonging, belonging that is, to the "eternal" unchanging cycles of human history. The Ancient World at the time of Plato were aware of everything recurring in history; the worst Age, the Age of Iron would necessarily be followed by a new Golden Age. The social structure of traditional societies is hierarchical because they are a reflection of the hierarchy of the cosmos, timeless realitiy: "above" are the Priests, Kings, Knights; "Beneath" are the folk, lay persons, dependents, farmers. Evola called this the "solar order".

The modern world has put an end to all that and has replaced it with its own concept of (dis)order. The individualism of modern societies, which are without Tradition, accepts neither that people are unequal nor that Authority and Hierarchy as such defy analysis. the characteristic of the modern Age, which Evola equates with the "Age of Iron", outlines and forseen in nearly all pre-modern societies, is the loss of identity and the rise of collectivism, a characteristic of Bolshevist and Western societies alike. But Evola could also not identify entirely with the fascist model and he distanced himself from the Third Reich.