What remains when the forms that once gave spiritual life its structure have exhausted themselves? Through Julius Evola’s confrontation with nihilism, this essay considers whether dissolution can become the occasion for a more radical form of liberation.
Julius Evola has been described as a man under a curse: one he had deliberately and voluntarily brought upon himself. His vocation was that of the people of blame and shame, the path of those who enter deliberately into dangerous territory without allowing themselves to be inwardly overcome by it.
The central problem of Ride the Tiger is not how the modern world might be repaired. Evola begins from the recognition that the civilisation surrounding him has passed beyond the point at which restoration remains possible. Its political, religious and social forms continue to exist, but the principles that once animated them have withdrawn.
Beyond Nihilism
What then remains beyond the nihilistic test? For Evola, nihilism is not answered by returning to inherited beliefs simply because their disappearance has become unbearable. Such a return would amount only to the preservation of forms whose inner necessity has already vanished.
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Julius Evola, Ride the Tiger
The collapse of these supports can instead disclose whether anything exists within the individual that does not depend upon them.
Riding the Tiger
To ride the tiger is neither to flee dissolution nor simply to submit to it. It is to remain present within destructive conditions, using their force without becoming identified with the movement that carries everything around it towards collapse.
Turning Poison into Medicine
The negative conditions of the age may therefore acquire a positive use. What destroys those who remain dependent upon external forms can become a test for someone capable of maintaining an inward orientation without them.
The Freedom of the Differentiated Man
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Notes
- Julius Evola, Ride the Tiger, publication information and page number. ↩