VJMP Reads: Julius Evola’s Ride the Tiger III

The sixth essay in Ride The Tiger is called “Active Nihilism – Nietzsche”, and continues to deal with the problem of the Death of God. Continuing with the esoteric theme of this book, Evola appears to insist that the solution is alchemical. The negative is overwhelming and ascendant; it cannot be resisted. So the question becomes “how far the negative can be transformed into something positive.”

Here we are concerned with “the transition to the postnihilist stage.” Modern man is free, free from the strictures of Abrahamism – but free for what? We have striven against our enslavement for so long that we don’t know what to do with freedom. We invented God to assuage our existential anxiety, and, now that we are “free” from this God, that anxiety has rushed back with a vengeance. Evola cites Sartre here: “We are condemned to be free.”

Evola contends that Nietzsche’s conception of the Superman is not sufficient to avoid this nihilism. His reasoning is that the Superman theory is not sufficiently different from the other eschatologies, such as the Marxist one, and therefore cannot be more than a pseudosolution to the problem of nihilism.

As was true for Marxism, the Superman theory could potentially be used to justify all manner of horrors in the present by promising paradise in the future. However, Nietzsche’s theory of eternal recurrence strikes much closer to what might be described as a perennial philosophy.

The seventh essay is called “Being Oneself.” It seems as if that, once the pseudosolutions and outright false philosophies are abandoned, what one is left with is oneself. This something is beyond morality (indeed, morality is considered something to be liberated from), and internal, instead of imposed from without as if by God or King.

Nietzsche comes in for some criticism here. Evola considers his attitude to the human spirit “materialistic”, but concedes that Nietzsche must have seen beyond because he is capable of distinguishing the “Self” from the “I”. Other thinkers, such as Guyau, are considered, but dismissed for not offering anything truly new, merely “restrictions that more or less return to one οf the systems οf the old morality.”

Evola concludes that the answer, as ever, is to “Know Thyself”. However, there’s a caveat. In the past, it was easier to know thyself because one was defined by strictures of class, religion, nation, caste and many other things. Modern man is free, so he cannot fall back on these now-abandoned strictures.

Modern man is, in fact, so free that it is as if he has been shattered to pieces. His soul “contains multitudes”. This shattering, Evola contends, can be most easily observed in remorse, which is an emotion that mostly affects divided people and which is characteristic of our time.

The eighth essay is called “The Transcendent Dimension – ‘Life’ and ‘More Than Life'”. The man who gets it, Evola contends, is one who possesses a transcendental dimension, a spiritual dimension. Here he distances himself further from Nietzsche, who for Evola was more of a vessel that history acted through than a genuine actor in his own right. Nietzsche’s great error was “confusion of the sacred with the profane”.

Evola, through quoting Nietzsche, gives us a prescription for a man of gold, although without using alchemical terms: a many who has great passions (clay), but who holds them in check (iron), and who hold them in check with apparent ease (silver) and who, last of all, does not draw any particular egoic satisfaction from doing so (gold). Here, the highest sort of man is one who overcomes great dangers, for it is only in doing so that all these qualities can be expressed.

Evola mentions the common interest in Zen philosophy among the Beat Generation that was heavily influenced by the existentialists. Here, religious belief (of any kind) is rejected as a failure of the human spirit, of the sort of person who did not have the character to survive the tension of the Age of Nihilism, and who hence surrendered to easy answers.

Read with me, Sup Forums. Remember that, when it comes to sharpening the intellect, books >>> memes.

Ride the Wheelchair would be more like it. Survive-manual for the aristocrats of disability-checks

He was already wheelchair-bound when he wrote this thesis: with due all respect, why should you listen some neet who spent most of his life confined to wheelchair only theorizing about the world around him

...

I agree. This is the most absurd and ridiculous part of Evola. He was a politician first and only later turned to his tradition and soul-aristocracy. All this time talking about the different types of man and how few the worthy are, how numerous the sheep, and what does he do? Write books only for people like him? Observe the correct detachment from the horrors of the modern material world and then die? Where is family in this? On the other hand it would be better if he was just a traditionalist mythological historian and not a thought-leader like his fans make him into, but then his books kind of invite that.

Will disregard theory of time, cosmology using general theory of relativity and quantum mechanics.

Thanks for your deep thought, Finnanon.

>some NEET
What's wrong, Sami? Did Mummo threaten to change her will again?

Do you want to comment on the actual text, in particular the three essays under consideration here?

Let's read books by closet case adult virgin nazis. That will fix our income as well as dating life.

I own several books by Evola. As someone correctly observed here I like Evola when he is "traditionalist mythological historian" like in his books "Yoga Of Power" that observes the Eastern tantric traditions.

Evola offers you no solutions, no system, no code. He leaves you on the edge of some cliff of nihilism, just like Nietzsche.

Like his mentor Guénon, he might be correctly observing the degeneration in Kali-Yuga, but unlike Guénon, who converted to living tradition (Islam&Sufism) and went to live with Sufi mystics to practice Islam in Egypt, Evola only offers you speculation.

I respect Guénon much more than Evola, he after all, seemed to find answers to his almost nihilistic world-views in living tradition that at least fulfilled his needs and concerns.

...you think that's a lot? Well, what's your opinion of Diogenes?

I e always wondered, did Ronnie James
Dio read Evola? That line in holy diver:
>ride the tiger, you can see his stripes but you know he's clean

If you had to explain the "ride the tiger" concept in simple terms, what would you say?

Live danerously: to the extreme while maintaining your balance: if you fall of the tiger, it will stomp and eat you. What else there is to explain?

Not maybe live dangerously, but the world outside you should be viewed as something chaotic, untamed element and you are to master it to some degree that you could be said to "Ride the Tiger"

I think one essential part to add is the "time is a flat circle" idea of the tiger going where it wants, no matter what you do. To evola, society and time are cyclical and chaotic, and your mastery of yourself and adherence to tradition is for your own salvation, not for the world or tiger. Although maybe he would say that tradition IS the way to survive the cycles, but that might leave one wondering if free will exists anywhere in the cycle at all or if the (human) nature of sheep is just there to be endured by the aristocrat. Or something.

lmao nice pasta

>To evola, society and time are cyclical and chaotic, and your mastery of yourself and adherence to tradition is for your own salvation, not for the world or tiger.

The problem is that there are no (living) traditions almost present. At least here in Europe. Guénon and Evola both argued that traditions like Catholicism are perverted and empty ritualism without substance these days, Guénon especially viewed that all real christianity or real gnosis was destroyed among with Templars with the Inquisition etc.

It is the Age of Dissolution and if those guys were right about Kali-Yuga, no new cycle can begin without all the traces of previous traditions/ages are wiped off from the face of earth.

I personally year by year am only witnessing extreme dissolution of culture, morals, religion and the very substance of life.

There is no meaning left and it is hard to become some "Aristocratic Philosopher-King" in some urban settlement when you are confined to a life of meaningless consumerism. We are not even in some conflict like grandfathers had to face the Great War, this is like Mr. Softee -version of the aftmath of WWI&WWII - the soy generation

These guys are self important, narcissistic, nearsighted morons. The very definition of pseudo intellectuals. Pay attention to their asinine theories at your own retrograded risk.

PUJ33 here, I just wanted to let you fine gentlemen know that I'm currently streaming on twitch xD Come and hang out!!!

twitch tv/puj33

Oh yes goyim listen to real Philosophers of our age like Jordan Peterson

>We invented God

Big-brained 20th century philosophers are all going to burn in hell

Why is every big-brain fascist some "2smart4religion" weirdo? Evola would have benefited from being a christian, maybe he would have had some kids and not burnt in hell for eternity.

Our current nihilistic state is not because we have "progressed past religion" or some shit. We have always had skeptics of religion as well as religious zealots in the past.

Today we're seeing nihilism due to economic decadence and the subversion of Christianity by marxists/zionists between 1900-1960.

People don't even know what the bible says anymore. Pastors don't even preach it. You go sit in a sermon and the pastor just says "Jesus loves you" and then everybody goes home.

The Bible is a complex book and it used to be something to die for in the past because people actually knew what was in that book so it meant something to them. I started reading through the whole King James Bible two years ago, completely blew my mind. I can't believe the stuff that's in there that pastors never preach, there's a literal guide on what to do and what not to do to create a civilization, but nobody ever even cites it.

MUH NIETZSCHE

wasn't evola a massive Codreanuboo

Um no... why not observe, collect your own information, and come up with your own ideas for once?

This is true but the question is if traditions are somehow timeless and eternal, and can be revived as such with proper commitment over a long period of time, or if they can not. How can some godless cretin from the kali yuga recognize that the kali yuga has come? He can't, only the evolas of the world can. So since the cretins are numerous nothing can be done, and thus evola implicitly claims that no tradition can be revived, only respected by aristocrats for their own little island of sanity. Otherwise one might have expected him to go out and exholt the masses that they should return to tradition, but since this seems impossible to him the kali yuga must have come. Anyway yeah my point of that post was to emphasize that there are no living traditions except what you might be able to scrap together as a soul-aristocrat. He says ride the tiger not so that traditions may survive, but to "ride it out" until apocalypse comes. Hmm.

Also did I read right that you're a fan of gnostic gnosis? Do you share evola's hate for the catholic church? Because that's actually what I consider the second most absurd thing about him (after 'just ride it out mang'), and I'm not even a Christian.

>tfw everyone criticizing evola is attacking the nan, not what he actually said

>Otherwise one might have expected him to go out and exholt the masses that they should return to tradition

The thing with Evola´s mentor René Guénon was the argument: you cannot revive something which is dead. Period.

For example this Asatru larping or Varg Vikernes "Ye Olde Times Odin" type of thing is ridiculous, for it does not represent LIVING tradition, something that is continuous from the founders of the religion themselves. At best you have to GUESS how old rites to worship Odin, Thor were carried out, but we do not have strict Tradition, or some old family tribe that would have carried out the torch all up the way to modern times.

This is not true of some Islamic Sufi traditions that can be traced to Prophet Muhammed himself. The argument is that: There are living and dead traditions. Once the tradition dies out it is impossible to revive it. It is dead and done: finished.

give a nigger an ax and he will use it to kill senslessly. give a hwite man an ax and he will chop trees for a cabin, use it as a weapon for defense, crack nuts for food with it, etc.

look at what hitler did with nietzsche. he was a total fanboy. dont project ur shortcomings on intellectual elites. no one says u cant have kids. the world is too big to be watered down into simple meme dichotomies like red vs. blue pills

Yes I know, that's why i emphasized that everything hinges on the cyclical argument and the supposed recognition that this is the kali yuga. These people are not prophets even if they know a lot about tradition and mythology. Maybe guenon was more consistent by joining islam than evola, but both say that 'ordinary' people are doomed. What is soul-aristocracy without a tradition? Deep deep meditations on the end of the world? Anyway I think we are mostly in agreement at least as far as evola goes.

I'm reading Revolt Against the Modern World now; interesting read, though there's one aspect of his argument I find confusing:

One of his arguments is that since transferring political power from the spiritually aware (basically demigods) to mere humans, mankind's connection with the spiritual world has all but disappeared. Modern man is therefore immoral and stunted spiritually.

My problem with this is that he, thus far, has not committed to any actual definition of morality or described how a "spiritually aware" person would behave in the world. On the contrary, he describes at length how human sacrifices were central to the ancient civilizations he idolizes, and seems to be an apologist for such rituals.

If ritual killings are OK morally, exactly what kind of morality is he mourning the loss of?

Anyone want to offer ideas?

I think evola might say that he's not really in the business of preaching, or at least prefers not to be, and instead is more of a historian writing down his observations of the modern world. He might also say that morality reduced to a list of taboos is only a small imitation of genuine spirituality. He is not mourning spirituality only because it makes people immoral, though it's certainly not a good thing. An obsession over what is 'moral' is a philosopher's game, and a relatively recent one at that. I guess you could nevertheless say he thinks people without any kind of spirituality are pretty much mindless beasts.