I fell for the meme and bought this a long time ago. I looked through it a bit today and it is filled with spiritual nonsense.
I dont have the patience for shit like this anymore. If this guy was a slave or poor he wouldnt have any of these beliefs.
Is there anything redeeming about this stuff? I feel like reading anyone other than analytics may have been a horrific mistake
no my man, now you realise all far east spirituality is shit
philosophy is western for a reason
>Is there anything redeeming about this stuff?
What's the very first baby step to determine if some theory or thought is total irredeemable horseshit? It is old, but was never applied IRL.
If it was applied IRL - you need to check the scale, and if is applied currently (or evolved into something applied currently) - it is, of course, more arbitrary at this stage.
It is, too, you need to check how well it is applied. At this point, it is very arbitrary.
>it is filled with spiritual nonsense
That's the point, OP.
In virtually every part of the world for all of history prior to the industrial revolution, the default perspective of people was that religion was true and the spiritual world impacted the material world in real and meaningful ways. Ritual was central to the lives of people in classical antiquity and dismissing this aspect of life as a mere anthropological curiosity with a "lol they were primitive dumbfucks" attitude is not very useful.
If you want to properly understand the mindset of traditional society, you can't approach history and sociology from a purely atheistic rationalist perspective. Whether magic/god/etc. are real is beside the point.
>If this guy was a slave or poor he wouldnt have any of these beliefs
Genetic fallacy.
Also, you can't start from Revolt, that's just stupid.
The rest of your post is just "waaaaaah it doesn't satisfy my materialistic tendencies". No shit it doesn't, it's not supposed to.
But by the same token, prophets were judged by the accuracy of their predictions, people who made bad predictions were shamed out of a job (if not killed for spreading falsehoods) and even as far back as Ancient Greece the educated elite held views which we would consider deist or secular.
Results matter, nobody wants to throw their life away chasing something which doesn’t exist.
>Poor people aren't religious
>Slaves aren't religious
Do you even think before you post bullshit?
>nobody wants to throw their life away chasing something which doesn’t exist.
Don't go into Philosophy then. You will never find the last word on anything.
>the educated elite held views which we would consider deist or secular.
bullshit fedora propaganda. Ancient Greeks of every class were religious, atheism was a capital offense and “seperation of church and state” secular bullshit didn’t even exist as a mental concept.
start where?
You probably would find Ride The Tiger more down-to-earth and practical. Regardless, you can't open Revolt in the middle and expect to understand it. Read the first division of the book very attentively. The first part is one of the best introductions to Traditionalist thought period. The only meme is that the alt-right have incorrigibly misappropriated Evola's views when his and the majority of the Traditionalists views do not reflect white nationalist populism.
I would actually suggest leaving the thought behind and reading something like Alasdair MacIntyre's After Virtue. You won't find any rhetoric in the Traditionalist thought digestible for political conversations with the boys as it were. I will try to lay out a bird's eye view in another post that may provide you some support.
The foundation of the Traditionalist mindset is that it is synthetic and not analytical. Evola names his method of inquiry in the beginning of his work (Evola, Revolt p. xxxv) In brief, the qualities of the world, as reflected in particulars, though not congenial, are nevertheless consubstantial (taken here to mean essence). The "material" or "potential" side of a being is its capacity for change. It is the generating/productive principle and therefore the feminine principle. This sounds very Aristotelian because it is. The material side of a being is also the individuating principle. Essences are entirely transcendent and are only realized through the material side of a being (it is also the impassive, masculine side of a being). In other words, as in Plotinus, the gods come to us, not us to them. This is the foundation of all magical attitudes and religious rites.
To see how this critiques democracy: a being has no personality until civilization provides him one. This was the foundation of the caste system. The mere instance of a being isn't enough to provide him qualities. The purpose of traditional forms is to provide a channel for beings to realize their natures according to the possibilities attributed to them in a given society (see page 163). See the chapters on professional associations, the doctrine of the castes, man and woman, and the last four chapters of the book.
Evola seeks in Revolt to lay out the possible categories of civilizations in total. He draws on historical circumstances to, as he calls a method of parallaxes, give an obscure notion of these qualities of civilization. The work focuses entirely on civilizations and their possibly attitudes. Thus, in the second division, he lays out a broad critique of history by examining the various transformations and personalities of civilizations. Mythology and religion are the obvious cradles of these attitudes because of their personal and subjective qualities. His method allows him to critique societies on the basis of their attitudes and social norms. The social order now is still entirely dominated by mythology and subjectivism. Social facts are quixotic and we believe we can manage and predict behavior much better than we really can. The MacIntyre work I suggested will shed light on this criticism more so. As far as rites are concerned, if ritual behavior is an artifice of humanity then habit is the proto-artifice of nature.
Lastly, do not let Evola's sometimes reaching historical claims eclipse his critiques. Remember, his method is to perceive the categories of all social organization away from historical circumstances. His reflections on Hyperborea, Atlantis, Lemuria, etc. are merely the consequences of his method, that is wholly non-empirical. In other words, the Golden Age is, in principle, attainable now, if not always in effect; and the empirical evidence of the mythological civilizations are extraneous to his modus operandi.
Also race-mixing in Evola's view is the inherently mixed forms of civilizational attitudes that are never found in perfect condition. Race and personality go hand-in-hand, in fact they are the same; and inasmuch we are impure races, it is tantamount to having conflicting tendencies within us.
t. someone who *really* fell for the meme
As someone with a mild interest in Evola [read a shit ton of Doctrine of Awakening and a bit of Ride the Tiger and Revolt], this sounds like a load of nonsense. Mainly because "essence" is a ridiculous concept. The more existentialist/buddhist/language-based notion of universals AND particulars as constructs of language is more reasonable.
And the notion that the personality, being a collection of aggregates, has no identity outside of civilization is manifest nonsense.
You're right, a person's birth is not accidental in tradition. Hence, the importance of the caste system. As to essence being ridiculous, you're simply wrong and haven't read the thought carefully. Essence is purely the qualitative side of a being. Maybe if you took the time to read Rene Guenon and the others who Evola admired and drew from, you would have a much easier time understanding it. As to personality, Evola even relates those ideas in Ride the Tiger. So, you've failed to even understand the material you *have* read.
>a being has no personality until civilization provides him one
*until CIRCUMSTANCE provides him one, and you can never PREDICT what that personality will be. Some will accept and adapt the state of their caste perfectly any live a happy contented life in their hole, some will not fit at ALL. Role assignment from birth is a fucking meme, our brains aren't even finished developing until we're almost 20.
>talking about insane shit like Lemuria is OK because empiricism doesn't not real bro
Rejecting Empiricism is drug huffing degenerate nonsense. Het! Empiricism forms the foundation of what we perceive to be reality, you can't just toss out a millennia of philosophical pursuit just because it doesn't line up with your feelings. People died in the pursuit of "what is truth", and it turns out the answer is "What we can prove"
Explain your concept of Essence and then justify it. If you're advocating for any concept of universals having real existence outside of particulars, you're wrong. Full stop.
Oh, as to universals and particulars as constructs: nope. You may believe that. Certain schools of thought may believe that. The Traditionalists do not and cannot. It is the only foundation for their systems, including magic. In The Hermetic Tradition, the doctrine is extremely well laid out. It explains why in Traditional societies, there is a focus on identification and the "cosmicization" of the human body. Such as Taoist internal alchemy, where the organs are spirits that are invoked by ritual formulations of the hand (the three sets of four grooves on the fingers being identified with the fixed stars). Formations of the hand are also called "mudras" in Hinduism and Tantric Buddhism. Mudra also means "seal," as in a symbol, and Tantric Buddhists see mudra and sakti as synonymous. Sakti is the name for the feminine side of a being in Samkhya dualism! In fact, it is nearly equivalent to the Aristotelian notion of matter. Essence is 'realized' through substance.
I should clarify I'm not saying you've misunderstood Evola, I'm criticizing the concept itself.
Ah, I see. I suppose the foundation of it in those societies is wrought out in practice. The traditional rituals are inherently speculative, in the sense of intense contemplation on the spec-ies or eidos (form, essence) to achieve a state similar to that of the dream state. This is involved in Buddhist practices as well and is in Evola's book on Buddhism. You may find the parts about kasina fascinating (just check the index for the pages). The contemporary meaning of speculation can perhaps display the disdain for those types of methods.
I'm just going to say I don't have the philosophical acumen to argue for universals. Even if I could, they certainly aren't "existent" as accidental properties are. I could vomit some rehashed Heideggarian/Husserlian stuff about the intended object of perception, which bares a lot of similarity with Aristotle aside from the idealism, but I can't do it as well as they do and won't even bother. All I know is what I've read about societies and the identification with gods and principles is a fact about their practices, whether or not they were deluded idiots. The essence is entirely a semantic experience in those societies, so they couldn't be pointed to as if they were a material object anyhow e.g. the crocodile is like the hidden god because it can see without being seen, the ibis is like Thoth, because its positioning of its beak and feet make an equilateral triangle and therefore teaches geometry, etc.
I'd say if you want to be convinced of it philosophically, the phenomenologists are probably the place to look. Regardless, the essence is in effect the totality of qualities and thus is intimate with the notion of definition. Aristotle regarded it, although forms were merely immanent for him, the forms/essence are intended in scientific analysis and thus offered the 'totalization' of the qualities in any method of inquiry.
and funny thing about the phenomenologists is that Evola regarded Husserl's method as being a parody or possibly 'plagiarization' of ancient forms of contemplation. See the chapter about covering up nature in Ride the Tiger
>If this guy was a slave or poor he wouldnt have any of these beliefs.
I haven't read any of his stuff but his whole point is being radically in favour if inequality.
What where you expecting to get out of it OP?
>Empiricism forms the foundation of what we perceive to be reality
Empiricism is a philosophical notion and conceptual net. "Perception" is not inherently "empiricist." What is "empiricist" is the denial of any perception other than sensible particulars. If you haven't realized by now, I will break it to you: we cannot perceive most of the things we regard as absolute fact. You cannot "see" an atom or an electron. They are mathematical approximations that are valid for experiments. In other words, the experiments are empirical and the description of the reality is entirely mythological and prejudicial. That doesn't invalidate the notions as conceptual tools or meaningful hypotheses, but the reality displayed is increasingly discarded as approximations occur, whereas the reality symbolized could be radically different from the representation itself. In other words, we deal with entirely mediated knowledge in all of our endeavors.
And the empirical tools that tell us about historical changes of the earth suppose that the mechanics and physical laws of the earth have been consistent with our examination now. In other words, it is a valid hypothesis that only is meaningful if it "empirically" aids us in manipulating reality in-the-now. Empirical tools are therefore inherently limited.
>turns out the answer is "What we can prove"
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA