To believe in the equality of all men, when we see them all unequal; to believe in liberty, when we see slavery established in all parts; to believe that all men are brothers, when history tells all are enemies; to believe that there is a common mass of misfortunes and of glories for all men born, when I see nothing but individual glories and misfortunes; to believe I am referred to humanity, when I know humanity is referred to me; to believe that humanity is my centre, when I constituted myself the centre of all; and finally, to believe that I should believe these things, when they are proposed to me by those who tell me that I should believe only my own reason, which contradicts all those things they propose to me, is an absurdity so stupendous, an abberation so inconceivable, that I stand mute and astounded in its presence.

My astonishment increases when I observe that those who affirm human solidarity, deny that of the family, which is to affirm that enemies are brothers, and that brothers should not be brothers; that those who affirm human solidarity are the same who a little before denied the political, which is to affirm I have nothing in common with my own, and all in common with strangers; that those who affirm human solidarity deny religion, though the former cannot be explained without the latter; and from all this I deduce in legitimate consequence that the Socialistic schools are at once illogical and absurd— illogical, because after demonstrating against the Liberal school that some solidarities cannot be accepted while others are rejected, they fall into the same error, accepting one amongst all, and rejecting the remainder—absurd, because precisely the one they proposed to me is not a point of reason but of faith, and because this proposal comes to me from those who deny faith and proclaim the imprescriptable right of reason to empire and sovereignty.

Juan Donoso Cortés (marqués de Valdegamas), Essays on Catholicism, Liberalism and Socialism

Copyright © 2009, 2010 Gornahoor Press

The universality of sin necessitates the universality of purification, which in its turn requires pain to be universal, that the whole human race may be purified in its mysterious waters. This explains why all men born suffer from their birth to their death. Pain is the inseparable companion of life in this obscure valley, filled with our sighs, deafened with our lamentations, and moistened with our tears. Every man is a suffering being, and everything not painful is strange to him. If he fixes his eyes on the past, he grieves to see it vanished; if on the present, he bewails the past as bitter; if on the future, he feels perturbation, because the future is full of shadows and mysteries. How little soever he considers, he discovers that the past and present and future are all, and all is nothing—the past is gone, the present is rapidly going, and the future has not come. The poor are loaded with fatigue, the rich with indigestion, the powerful with pride, the lazy with weariness, the lowly with envy, and the mighty with disdain. The conquerors who drive the nations, are themselves driven by furies, and only stumble on others because they are flying from themselves. Lust consumes the flesh of the youth with its impure flames; ambition takes the youth, made man, from the hands of lust, and burns him in other flames, and drives him into other conflagrations; avarice seizes him when lust rejects and ambition abandons him; she gives him an artificial life called sleepless; old misers only live because they do not sleep—their life is nothing but the absence of sleep.

Juan Donoso Cortés (marqués de Valdegamas), Essays on Catholicism, Liberalism and Socialism

Copyright © 2009, 2010 Gornahoor Press

Edred.net is now offering an English translation of Julius Evola’s “The Individual and the Becoming of the World”.

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“The Individual and the Becoming of the World”, originally published as “L’Individuo e il divenire del mondo” in 1925, was based on two lectures presented to the Independent Theosophical League of Rome, and subsequently updated by the author in 1973. Evola considered this work to be a synthesis of his system which is fully developed in these works: Essays on Magical Idealism, The Theory of the Absolute Individual, and The Yoga of Power. Now, the first work is an introduction, the second is a rigorous and exhaustive exposition, and the third is its development as praxis. Evola thus connects his critical and theoretical philosophy with doctrines and techniques belonging to traditional wisdom, particularly in this case, Tantra.

It is important to note that, as Evola wrote in his autobiography, it was not philosophy that led him to seek out Traditional wisdom, but rather the opposite. It was his spiritual practice that led him to elaborate a suitable philosophical system. So, he asserts, metanoia – or “change in polarity” – does not come from thought, but rather from the deed, which then becomes a philosophic principle and not its conclusion.

The first lecture describes the growth of consciousness through three stages: from naive realism, to the quest for certainty in science and religion, finally to self-realisation through magical idealism. The world, then, is my Will. The second lecture makes a clear distinction between knowledge which leads to the surpassing of philosophy through the path of the absolute Individual – that is the knowledge of the mystery schools, in particular, the Dionysian initiation – and the knowledge of religions, as exemplified in Christianity. The former is the way of the warrior, the latter of mystical asceticism.

Copyright © 2009, 2010 Gornahoor Press

In The Individual and the Becoming of the World, Evola devotes himself to the question of the Will. While acknowledging the influence of Nietzsche on his thought, Evola nevertheless rejects Nietzsche’s naturalism and reintroduces the supernatural element. He does this by bringing back Schopenhauer’s second foundation of the world, the "Idea", which Evola calls "essence" in line with Traditional thought.

Evola rejects, however, Schopenhauer’s view that consciousness is the passive observer of phenomena, which is a creation of the Will. In place of this dualistic view, Evola identifies the center of consciousness, the "I", with the Will. Thus the individual is both the creator and the observer of the World. For the undeveloped man, this will is "spontaneous", that is, it is unconscious, undirected, and predestined, rather like Schopenhauer’s Will. (See the chapter "Privation".)

On the other hand, the developed man has True Will and is the unconditioned cause of his world. As Evola puts it:

This principle is: THE POWER OF CONTROL. The "I", in fact, is not a thing, a "given", a "fact", but, essentially, a deep centre of will and power. As "I", Fichte says, it is, only insofar as it posits itself – and only a pure self-positing is, to tell the truth, its "being".

Note, in particular, that the "I" is not a fact, i.e., an object in the world, but is transcendent to the world.

As for the "essence" or "concept", Evola points out that concepts are sufficient for rational explanations; that is, the essence tells us "what" something is. However, the brute fact of existence – "that" something is – is not, and remains beyond rational explanation. Yet the fact of existence does become comprehensible when we realize that it is the creation of our Will. Hence, the measure of one’s will power is the ability to actualize what was only there in potential.

So, Evola’s supernaturalism is world-affirming, not world-denying. He does not advocate a passive escape to the pure world of ideas, but rather the active bringing the ideas into reality. Thusly does Evola succeed in explaining Nietzsche’s Will to Power, while retaining the transcendent supernaturalism of Traditionalist metaphysics.

Copyright © 2009, 2010 Gornahoor Press

Death is certain, the time and manner is not.

~ Buddha

In Twilight of the Idols, Nietzsche wrote:

The invalid is a parasite on society. In a certain state it is indecent to go on living….The highest interest of life, of ascending life, demands the most ruthless suppression and sequestration of degenerating life — for example in determining the right to reproduce, the right to be born, the right to live…. To die proudly when it is no longer possible to live proudly. Death of one’s own free choice, death at the proper time, with a clear head and with joyfulness, consummated in the midst of children and witnesses.

Nietzsche himself died totally insane, staring out the window in his sister’s flat.

Copyright © 2009, 2010 Gornahoor Press

Nietzsche, who early on regarded Schopenhauer as one of his educators, came to reject his doctrine. The first step was to reject Schopenhauer’s implicit supernaturalism, so for Nietzsche, the “Will” is part of the natural world and therefore has to be knowable, viz., a will is known by its purpose and Schopenhauer’s Will is purposeless and therefore unintelligible. As a psychologist, Nietzsche looked within and recognized the Will as the “Will to Power”, as the propensity to growth, creativity, expansion, strength, and so on as described in his analysis.

Since the Will to Power is the ultimate reality, it cannot be dependent on anything else. In particular, it cannot be dependent on Reason; quite to the contrary, Reason is a manifestation of the Will to Power and is of value only insofar as it enhances the Will. This means – and I am speaking of the intellectual realm – that there is no ultimate criterion of Truth to which the Will to Power must submit. Instead, there are competing perspectives, each vying for influence but none of them ultimately convincing.

There is a further step. The Will to Power is originally a positive concept, that is, it is descriptive of the actual state of affairs in the world. However, it becomes a normative, or moral, concept: what is stronger, that is, what has more power, becomes the Good. Nietzsche explains in The Antichrist:

What is good? — All that heightens the feeling of power, the will to power, power itself in man. What is happiness? —The feeling that power increases.

Note, however, that for Nietzsche the opposite of the Good is not Evil, but rather what is “bad”, that is, the opposite of the “feeling of power”. In particular, we can identify the Good with what is noble or strong or higher, generally what is more difficult and rare. The “bad”, then, is whatever glorifies weakness.

In the battle of ideas, although there is neither ultimate truth nor a God to guarantee it, we can still measure strength in the force of an idea. We reject ideas that rely on blind belief, ignorance, or stupidity. Instead, we may choose to embrace ideas that are rational, factual, intricate, and uplifting. That is why Nietzsche seldom argues as a philosopher might, but rather relies on oracular pronouncements and insightful observations on individual and society.

Psychologically, we may question the reliance on the mere “feeling” of power. It is not uncommon to observe “Nietzscheans” puff themselves up to achieve that feeling, yet without being particularly powerful themselves. It seems there should be an objective standard to measure power, but then the Will to Power cannot be dependent on such a standard (or else the standard itself would be the ultimate reality.) There is also the problem that oftentimes Nietzscheans argue as if they were discerning ultimate truth and opposing “Evil” rather than the bad.

Metaphysically, we have to reject Nietzsche’s naturalism and see the Will to Power as arising from something transcendent.

Copyright © 2009, 2010 Gornahoor Press

Schopenhauer recognized that space, time, and causality are required for any experience and understanding of the natural world, or the world of phenomena. Knowledge, then, consists in understanding the sufficient reason for things, that is, the causal relationships between them. He also recognized, following Kant, that the phenomenal world is not self-explanatory or self-sufficient: there must be something beyond the natural, phenomenal world. Thus, he claimed, there is the noumenal, which he named the “Will”.

However, as a rationalist and philosopher, this Will is beyond knowledge, in the sense defined above. As unknowable, it can only be described as blind, purposeless, and unpredictable. Otherwise, we would know its sufficient reason, and it would be just another thing among other things in the natural world, and no longer the one ultimate reality and cause.

From a psychological point of view, the Will manifests as our drives, instincts, desires, and so on. Since it is purposeless, so, too, are our drives, instincts, and desires. This is the cause of pain and suffering, so his solution lies in the rejection of the Will. The negative consequence is that it leads to a life of quietism and resignation.

From a metaphysical point of view, we would say he recognizes the faculty of reason, but rejects the higher form of knowledge called “intellect”, which knows transphenomenal reality directly and intuitively.

Copyright © 2009, 2010 Gornahoor Press

What is required is not the courage of one’s convictions, but rather the courage for an attack upon one’s convictions.

~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Although discussions of deep and compicated issues are difficult in person, they are especially problematic on the Internet. There is the tendency to excessive polemics, which manifests as the prepensity to defend a particular opinion rather than to be challenged to reconsider one’s own opinion. This often results in the magnification of rather small differences.

As Evola points out in The Individual and the Becoming of the World, growth in cosciousness requires a self-emptying of all our opinions, whether from everyday life, religion, or science.

If anyone in a discussion with us is not concerned with adjusting himself to truth, if he has no wish to find the truth, he is intellectually a barbarian. That, in fact, is the position of the mass-man when he speaks, lectures or writes.

~ José Ortega y Gasset

Clearly the intent to find the truth must be there. Then it is possible to advance. The mass-man seems to think that is sufficient to say “I believe this” or “I think that” without any warrant. Oddly enough, this is usually the position of those who ostensibly reject “egalitarianism” as such, yet remain staunchly egalitarian in the intellectual realm.

In the following selection from The Art of Controversy, Schopenhauer proposes some guidelines for discussion. A small group of philosophical friends can engage in worthwhile discussions, with those ahead leading those behind. This would be the seed for the formation of an elite given the right circumstances and right motivation. For the rest, I wish you peace, the peace to go to sleep every night secure in your beliefs.

As a sharpening of wits, controversy is often, indeed, of mutual advantage, in order to correct one’s thoughts and awaken new views. But in learning and in mental power both disputants must be tolerably equal: If one of them lacks learning, he will fail to understand the other, as he is not on the same level with his antagonist. If he lacks mental power, he will be embittered, and led into dishonest tricks, and end by being rude.

The only safe rule, therefore, is that which Aristotle mentions in the last chapter of his Topica: not to dispute with the first person you meet, but only with those of your acquaintance of whom you know that they possess sufficient intelligence and self-respect not to advance absurdities; to appeal to reason and not to authority, and to listen to reason and yield to it; and, finally, to cherish truth, to be willing to accept reason even from an opponent, and to be just enough to bear being proved to be in the wrong, should truth lie with him. From this it follows that scarcely one man in a hundred is worth your disputing with him. You may let the remainder say what they please, for every one is at liberty to be a fool — desipere est jus gentium. Remember what Voltaire says: La paix vaut encore mieux que la verite ["Peace is worth more than the truth"]. Remember also an Arabian proverb which tells us that on the tree of silence there hangs its fruit, which is peace.

~ Arthur Schopenhauer

Copyright © 2009, 2010 Gornahoor Press

My formula for the greatness of man is amor fati — to change nothing, neither before nor after, throughout all eternity. Not only to bear Necessity, and still less to hide it — all idealism is a lie in the face of Necessity — but to love it.

Friedrich Nietzsche

A happy life is impossible; the highest to which man can attain is an heroic course of life.

Arthur Schopenhauer

Copyright © 2009, 2010 Gornahoor Press

The myth of the Fall of man is the only thing in the Old Testament to which I can concede a metaphysical, although only allegorical, truth: indeed it is this alone that reconciles me to the Old Testament. Thus our existence resembles noting but the consequence of a false step and a guilty desire. New Testament Christianity, the ethical spirit of which is that of Brahmanism and Buddhism, and which is therefore very foreign to the otherwise optimistic spirit of the O.T., has also, extremely wisely, started from that very myth …

The innermost kernel and spirit of Christianity is identical with that of Brahmanism and Buddhism.

The spirit and ethical tendency, however, are the essentials of a religion, not the myths in which it clothes them.

Therefore, I do not abandon the belief that the teachings of Christianity are to be derived in some way from those first and original religions [i.e., Brahmanism and Buddhism]. … But in virtue of this origin, Christianity belongs to the ancient, true, and sublime faith of mankind. This faith stands in contrast to the false, shallow, and pernicious optimism that manifests itself in Greek paganism, Judaism, and Islam.

Arthur Schopenhauer

Schopenhauer was a student of the Upanishads, since he found those works — along with those of Buddhism — to be compatible with his philosophical outlook. What may be less known, is that he put Christian mysticism, at least that based on a Neoplatonic outlook which was very influential in the early church, in the same class. Unlike the many cultured despisers of religion, Schopenhauer looked passed the dogmas, and instead focused on the mental and spiritual attitides engendered by a religious system. In this regard, he is closer to the viewpoint of Traditionalists.

Copyright © 2009, 2010 Gornahoor Press