[Swedish] Almqvist, Modern konst – befrielse?

Inspirerade av Viveca Wessels på Café Exposé nyligen publicerade text om Kurt Almqvist bjuder vi idag på en av de texter Almqvist (Abd al-Muqsit) skrev i Svenska Dagbladet (630703). Ämnet har, i vanlig ordning, alls icke tappat i aktualitet sedan texten skrevs även om det förefaller som om våra dagars "konstdebatt" föga förvånande befinner sig på än lägre nivå än den Almqvist refererar och deltager i.

I texten drar Almqvist helt korrekt gränsen mellan Tradition och modernitet, snarare än mellan tidigt- och senmodernt. Det senare alltför vanligt förekommande vilket leder till en mängd bisarra fenomen såsom hyllningar av nationalism och punschpatriotism, 1809-års regeringsform och allehanda moderna konstnärer, icke minst Wagner, i tron att dessa skulle vara representera någonting konservativt, ja, kanske rent av ickemodernt. För att inte tala om de som omfamnar 1800-talets profanvetenskap, vilken ju i allmänhet går än längre i sin vulgära materialism än sina samtida motsvarigheter. Men över till Almqvist vars texter vi säkerligen kommer att återkomma till.

Modern konst – befrielse?

Lektor Kurt Almqvist anklagar deltagarna i dagens konstdebatt för att ha alltför snäva perspektiv. Den avgörande fronten går inte mellan den naturalistiska och den efternaturalistiska konstepoken, hävdar dr Almqvist, utan mellan den nya tiden och medeltiden. Endast en inlevelse i medeltidens och Orientens inställning till konsten och den andliga verksamheten över huvud kan ge en fruktbar grund för en fördjupning av konstdiskussionen, anser artikelförfattaren.

Vilken subtil och komplicerad utformning frågeställningarna i våra dagars konstdebatt än får, tycks man ha rätt att förenkla dem genom att beteckna denna debatt som en konfrontation av den naturalistiska och den efter-naturalistiska eller i gängse mening moderna perioden. Detta innebär, att man praktiskt taget begränsar diskussionen till att gälla Europas s. k. nya tid, vilken i stort sett utfylls av de båda nämnda epokerna. Man kan som exempel ta den i höstas i Sverige utkämpade debatten – nyligen samlad i volymen ”Är allting konst?” som recenserades på denna plats av Göran Schildt: om under dess förlopp Europas för-naturalistiska period, medeltiden, någon gång nämndes, så skedde det med schablonartade och intetsägande formuleringar och i en anda av antingen motvilja eller likgiltighet för det som utgör väsenskärnan i dess kultur: den religiösa traditionen och den därur härledda världsbilden. Likgiltighet på denna punkt präglade för övrigt också de enstaka uttalanden som gjordes – de av Rabbe Enckell inbegripna – om forntida eller utomeuropeiska kulturer: dessa bygger ju alla i motsats till Europas nya tid på liknande metafysiska principer som medeltiden.

När deltagarna i dagens konstdiskussion i regel begränsar sitt perspektiv till den lilla ö i tiden och rummet som den nya tidens Europa utgör, dömer de sig själva till att stanna kvar i ytskiktet av vad det rör sig om. För att få ett begrepp om det djupare skeendet är det minsta man kan göra att utan förutfattade meningar studera hela den europeiska konsthistorien och dess andliga bakgrund; och gör man det, begriper man snart att den väsentliga fronten ej går mellan de båda huvudperioderna i den nya tiden utan mellan denna senare is sin helhet och dess föregångare medeltiden. Och det blir också klart, att man utan att se nya tiden mot dess historiska bakgrund omöjligen kan bedöma var och en av dess delperioder eller dess inbördes förhållande; det är ju nämligen en allmän regel, att man blott genom att känna till helheten kan rätt uppfatta delarna och proportionerna dem emellan.

Låt oss först i största allmänhet karakterisera de båda viktigaste av den nya tidens delperioder. Vi kan då säga att den naturalistiska konsten vill återge tingens yttre former och färger så som de ter sig för ögat, medan den efter-naturalistiska epokens många skolor som gemensamt kännemärke har en strävan att ”befria sig” från dessa perceptuella elements herravälde över konstnärens syften: ”Exakthet är icke sanning är hela den moderna konstperiodens tes”, säger Herbert Read i sin Concise History of Modern Painting. Nu finns det ju emellertid för människan utom den kroppsliga, med synen uppfattade formen en subtil eller själslig form, som framför allt präglas av förståndet; och det är bara naturligt att en viss kategori människor i ett visst skede av sin utveckling alltid har en likartad inställning till dessa båda former. Renässansen, som på konstens område trodde sig kunna uttömmande återge motivet med hjälp av den perceptuella, den varsebliva formen och som därmed inledde naturalismen, var sålunda också ingångsporten till den nya tid inom filosofi och vetenskap, som inbillade sig lika uttömmande kunna förklara världen med hjälp av den konceptuella formen, den logiska tanken; det är detta betraktelsesätt som kallas ”rationalism”. (Även under antikens klassiska period gick förövrigt de båda samman.) I båda dessa avseenden bröt renässansen med medeltiden, som ansåg att skapelsens innersta verklighet genom sin över-formella karaktär ej kan inneslutas i några som helst former, vare sig begreppens eller bildernas. Till följd av detta synsätt följde medeltidskonsten Dionysos Areopagitas maning att ”respektera avståndet som skiljer det andliga från det sinnliga” och ville blott, ödmjukt antyda, hur det senare mottas och genomlyses av det förra. Med det ”andliga” avser medeltiden den verklighetssfär, som står över och behärskar både det själsliga och det kroppsliga och som därför kan ge människan sann frihet gentemot båda.

Det innebär då ej heller någon överraskning att se, hur senare 1800-talets reaktion mot naturalismen gick hand i hand med ett uppror även om dess tvillingsyster rationalismen och dennas följdföreteelse, materialismen. Sin logiska, avslöjande slutpunkt nådde denna utveckling i och med den i början av 1900-talet uppkommande surrealismen. Om denna riktning är representativ för all efter-naturalistisk konst, så är det i själva verket därför att där – ohöljt – arten av den anti-rationalism framträder, som varit själen i de sista hundra årens konstnärliga och allmänna utveckling. Denna anti-rationalism är nämligen som bekant i sina mest typiska manifestationer en flykt in i det undermedvetna, detta dittills av mänskligheten ringaktade område, som psykoanalysen i början av vårt århundrade öppnade portarna till. Men den ”frigörelse”, som de flesta konstnärer och kritiker – t. ex. Kandinsky eller den här ovan citerade Read – har velat se i modernismen, är enbart en illusion, därför att det undermedvetna på sätt och vis i ännu högre grad än det rationella medvetandet är vårt ego, nämligen såsom dess grumliga och gyttjiga bottenskikt; och detta ego i sin helhet är det som i verkligheten klavbinder människan. Denna illusion är för övrigt analog med psykoanalysens tro på att kunna läka.

Liksom denna senare framträdde surrealismen genom sina anspråk på att ”befria” människan som en efterträdare till den uppenbarade tron. Denna angav sig uttryckligen som en ”religion”, ”metafysik” eller ”mystik”, som efter naturalismens och materialismens hänvisande till det ”yttre” i människan och naturen, nu äntligen skulle uppenbara och lämna tillgång till båda verkliga, ”inre” djup. Denna vokabulär – liksom också själva termen ”surrealism”, ”över-verklighetskonst” – framstår rentav som en parodi, eftersom det här var fråga om infra-rationella och ej som i den verkliga religionen och dess konst supra-rationella krafters spel och eftersom det i människan blott är dessa senare som kan göra anspråk på epitetet ”inre”. Även om dessa termer numera ej används lika mycket som i surrealismens barndom, kan man tydligen – och betecknande nog – ej helt komma ifrån dem, ej ens i det positivistiska Sverige. Så får vi t. ex. i Ulf Lindes vägledande studie av Marcel Duchamps ”readymades”, som nyligen ställts ut i repliker på Galerie Burén, se hur dessa präktiga föremål sammanställs med ”det man kunde kalla teologierna lärorna om hur det okända är beskaffat”. Och författaren fortsätter: ”Psykoanalysen är en sådan teologi, och den har utbildat sina särskilda riter (!), t. ex. surrealismen”. I själva verket har modernismen i ”action painting” o. dyl. alltmer frenetisk och blint låtit sig inspireras av det undermedvetna, och trots alla ”lekfulla” attityder gör den alltjämt detta med ett patos som väl kan kallas dogmatiserande.

Detta det modernaste konstskapandets blinda karaktär angavs träffande i höstens debatt av Ole Bauman i hans yttrande, att ”slumpen, tillfälligheten och det oavsiktliga i dag är den främsta förutsättningen för bildskapandet”: det som i metafysiskt-mystiska traditioner – medeltidens, orientens, indiankulturernas – är det övermedvetnas för förståndet ofattbara men därför icke mindre verkliga och existentiella normer, det är hos modernisterna undermedvetandets kringtumlande skuggor; och det som i förra fallet är direkt, intuitiv kunskap om de nämnda normerna, motsvarar i det senare skuggornas slumpartade inramlande u medvetandets sfär. Inställningen till det icke-medvetna är alltså verkligen i senare fallet en vrångbild av vad det är i den förra.

Man kunde i våras få en god illustration till detta förhållande på Moderna museet, där i samband med utställningen av Jackson Pollocks action paintings två kortfilmer gavs, varav den ena visade den vite amerikanske målaren och den andra en okänd puebloindiansk sandmålare i verksamhet. Säkert hade denna sammanställning gjorts avsiktligt för att framhäva den likhet som består i att båda fallen den bearbetade ytan sammanfaller med själva marken och målaren tycks liksom infångas av den och bli ett medium för nedifrån jorden uppträngande makter: ”När jag är inne i mon målning, är jag inte alls medveten om vad jag gör”, säger Pollock själv. Men denna likhet är endast skenbar, ty de ”makter” det rör sig om i de två fallen är het olika, och deras olikhet är av just den principiella art som nyss angetts. Man behöver bara jämföra resultaten i de båda fallen för att bli på det klara med detta: å ena sidan färgslingor, som är helt eller nästan helt godtyckliga, d. v. s. meningslösa, och å den andra geometriska symboler i exakt överensstämmelse med ett kulturfolks nedärvda kosmologi – en kosmologi som hos de åkerbrukande puebloindianerna framför allt bygger på jordens sinnebildlighet.

I samband med konstnärer, som är ”inne” i sina verk, ligger det också nära tillhands att tänka på det östasiatiska, av taoism och zenbuddhism inspirerade landskapsmåleriet. Ty här företräde naturen det övermedvetna, som konstnären vill uppgå i; och enligt den taoistiska legenden gick denna absorption i vissa all så långt, at målaren kunde bokstavligen försvinna i en i målningen befintlig grotta. Inom parentes sagt för detta i sin tur tanken till de grottor August Strindberg, ”surrealisten före surrealismen”, målat och som antagligen uttrycker dennes omedvetna och vanmäktiga längtan efter liknande ”inre sortier” ur den plågsamma dagsvärlden. En av dessa grottor tillkom för övrigt samtidigt med Drömspelen, d. v. s. i sluten av ”infernoperioden”. (Dessa och andra Strindbergmålningar visades i våras på Moderna museet jämsidens Pollocks.)

En av de mest framträdande frågorna i höstens konstdebatt var den huruvida – som Ulf Linde först hävdade – ”konstverket ... får verklighet – form och värde – först i en akt av mottagande”. Fullständigad av Lindes därpå följande yttrande, att ”konstnären (själv) är den förste och mest levande mottagaren”, förefaller denna tes ovedersäglig, även om den, som Enckell påpekar, måste kompletteras med det självklara påpekandet att konstnären också är skapare. Frågan är bara, vad konstnären mottar och varifrån, och det är i oförmågan – eller försummelsen – att göra särskillnader på så verkligt avgörande punkter som dessa, som dagens konstdebatt visar sin otillräcklighet. Så talar t. ex. Göran Schildt – i sin ovan nämnda artikel – från synpunkten av just ”mottagarens aktiva medverkan” utan vidare kommentarer om ”beröringspunkter” mellan modernisternas och de gamla kinesernas måleri – något som måste en aning förvåna den som läst samme författarens tidigare artikel ”Konsten som tröst”. Där tillbakavisade nämligen Schildt den esteticism som bl. a. består i att ignorera de religiöst traditionella konstnärerna egen uppfattning om vad som är väsentligt för dem: den mystiska, ”personlighetsomvandlande” kontemplationen. I själva verket måste man beträffande de båda nyssnämnda konstskolorna säga detsamma som i fråga om Pollock och sandmålaren: det som skiljer är ojämförligt mycket viktigare än det som förenar. Den av osynliga normer styrda verkligheten, som landskapsmålaren i Kina eller Japan kunde antyda till följd av andlig samling, denna verklighet aktualiserades såsom följd av en motsvarande samling hos den åskådare som tillhörde samma religiösa tradition. Därmed upplöses dennes ego-gränser, och han införlivades med alltet i en befriande ”samandning” – en verkan som koncentrationen förut haft hos konstnären själv. Inom parentes sagt kan ju även vi, som ej är inlemmade i denna tradition, få åtminstone någon aning om denna verkan, ifall vi utan förutfattade meningar försöker sätta oss in i det främmande kulturmönstret. Hur skall däremot hos en modern människa någon existentiellt omvandlande eller utvidgande process kunna ske, när hon, själv ett barn av normlöshet eller kaos, står inför ett konstverk, som också det har sina rötter i kaos? Hur skall verkan kunna bli annat än andnöd och tryck över bröstet?

[Excerpts] Guénon, The Reign of Quantity & the Signs of the Times

Excerpts from Guénon, René (2004) The Reign of Quantity & the Signs of the Times Sophia Perennis: Hillsdale, New York

Excerpting The Reign of Quantity has by no means been easy. The sentences are often long, sometimes very long, the book constantly refers back to itself, to previous paragraphs and chapters. This, combined with the fact that it is filled with knowledge, insights and timeless wisdoms makes it difficult to exclude anything, or less than everything.

All of the above makes it a book that not only deserves to be read more than once but one that almost needs to be read multiple times. This said, and done, it is more than likely that these excerpts will be updated some time in the future.

The truth is that time is not something that unrolls itself uniformly, so that the practice of representing it geometrically by a straight line, usual among modern mathematicians, conveys an idea of time that is wholly falsified by over-simplification; we shall see later that a tendency toward a pernicious simplification is yet another characteristic of the modern spirit, and also that it inevitably accompanies a tendency to reduce everything to quantity. The correct representation of time is to be found in the traditional conception of cycles, and this conception obviously involves a ’qualified’ time; besides, whenever the question of geometrical representation arises, whether in fact it be set out graphically or only expressed through the use of an appropriate terminology, it is clear that a spatial symbolism is being made use of; all this may suggest that an indication of some kind of correlation may well be discovered between the he qualitative determinations of time and those of space.
p. 40-1

A more or less complete exposition of the doctrine of cycles cannot be entered upon here, although that doctrine is naturally implicit in and fundamental to the whole of this study; if the limits of the available space are not to be overstepped, it must suffice for the present to formulate a few observations more directly connected with the subject of this book taken as a whole, referring wherever necessary in later chapters to relevant matters connected with the doctrine of cycles. The first of these observations is as follows: not only has each phase of a temporal cycle, of whatever kind it may be, its peculiar quality that influences the determination of events, but the speed with which events are unfolded also depends on these phases, and is therefore of a qualitative rather than of a quantitative order. Therefore, in speaking of the speed of events in time, by analogy with the speed of displacement of a body in space, a certain transposition of the notion of speed has to be effected, for speed in time cannot be reduced to quantitative expression, as can be done in mechanics when speed properly so called is in question. What this means is that, according to the different phases of the cycle, sequences of events comparable one to another do not occupy quantitatively equal durations; this is particularly evident in the case of the great cycles, applicable both to the cosmic and to the human orders, the most notable example being furnished by the decreasing lengths of the respective durations of the four Yugas that together make up a Manvantara. For that very reason, events are being unfolded nowadays with a speed unexampled in the earlier ages, and this speed goes on increasing and will continue to increase up to the end of the cycle; there is thus something like a progressive ‘contraction’ of duration, the limit of which corresponds to the ‘stopping-point’ previously alluded to […].
p. 41-2

The conclusion that emerges clearly from all this is that uniformity, in order that it may be possible, presupposes beings deprived of all qualities and reduced to nothing more than simple numerical ‘units’; also that no such uniformity is ever in fact realizable, while the result of all the efforts made to realize it, notably in the human domain, can only be to rob beings more or less completely of their proper qualities, thus turning them into something as nearly as possible like mere machines; and machines, the typical product of the modern world, are the very things that represent, in the highest degree attained up till now, the predominance of quantity over quality. From a social viewpoint, ‘democratic’ and ‘egalitarian’ conceptions tend toward exactly the same end, for according to them all individuals are equivalent one to another. This idea carries with it the absurd supposition that everyone is equally well fitted for anything whatsoever, though nature provides no example of any such ‘equality’, for the reasons already given, since it would imply nothing but a complete similitude between individuals; but it is obvious that, in the name of this assumed ‘equality’, which is one of the topsy-turvy ‘ideals’ most dear to the modern world, individuals are in fact directed toward becoming as nearly alike one to another as nature allows—and this in the first place by the attempt to impose a uniform education on everyone. It is no less obvious that differences of aptitude cannot in spite of everything be entirely suppressed, so that a uniform education will not give exactly the same results for all; but it is all too true that, although it cannot confer on anyone qualities that he does not possess, it is on the contrary very well fitted to suppress in everyone all possibilities above the common level; thus the ‘leveling’ always works downward: indeed, it could not work in any other way, being itself only an expression of the tendency toward the lowest, that is, toward pure quantity, situated as it is at a level lower than that of all corporeal manifestation—not only below the degree occupied by the most rudimentary of living beings, but also below that occupied by what our contemporaries have a habit of calling ‘lifeless matter’, though even this last, since it is manifested to our senses, is still far from being wholly denuded of quality.
p. 51-2

There is a great contrast between what the ancient crafts used to be and what modern industry now is, and it presents in its essentials another particular case and at the same time a practical application of the contrast between the qualitative and quantitative points of view, which predominate in the one and in the other respectively. In order to see why this is so, it is useful to note first of all that the distinction between the arts and the crafts, or between ‘artist’ and ‘artisan’, is itself something specifically modern, as if it had been born of the deviation and degeneration which have led to the replacement in all fields of the traditional conception by the profane conception.
p. 55

In every traditional civilization, as there has often been occasion to point out, every human activity of whatever kind is always regarded as derived essentially from principles. This is conspicuously true for the sciences, and it is no less true for the arts and the crafts, and there is in addition a close connection between them all for according to a formula postulated as a fundamental axiom by the builders of the Middle Ages, ars sine scientia nihil; the science in question is of course traditional science, and certainly not modern science, the application of which can give birth to nothing except modern industry. By this attachment to principles human activity could be said to be as it were ‘transformed’, and instead of being limited to what it is in itself, namely, a mere external manifestation (and the profane point of view consists in this and nothing else), it is integrated with the tradition, and constitutes for those who carry it out an effective means of participation in the tradition, and this is as much as to say that it takes on a truly ‘sacred’ and ‘ritual’ character. That is why it can be said that, in any such civilization, ‘every occupation is a priesthood’; but in order to avoid conferring on this last word a more or less unwarrantable extension of meaning, if not a wholly false one, it must be made clear that priesthood is not priesthood unless it possesses something that has been preserved in the sacerdotal functions alone, ever since the time when the previously non-existent distinction between the sacred and the profane arose.
p. 56

There is thus no difficulty in seeing how far removed true craft is from modern industry, so much so that the two are as it were opposites, and how far it is unhappily true that in the ‘reign of quantity’ the craft is, as the partisans of ‘progress’ so readily declare, a ‘thing of the past’. The workman in industry cannot put into his work anything of himself, and a lot of trouble would even be taken to prevent him if he had the least inclination to try to do so; but he cannot even try, because all his activity consists solely in making a machine go, and because in addition he is rendered quite incapable of initiative by the professional ‘formation’—or rather deformation—he has received, which is practically the antithesis of the ancient apprenticeship, and has for its sole object to teach him to execute certain movements ‘mechanically’ and always in the same way, without having at all to understand the reason for them or to trouble himself about the result, for it is not he, but the machine, that will really fabricate the object. Servant of the machine, the man must become a machine himself, and thenceforth his work has nothing really human in it, for it no longer implies the putting to work of any of the qualities that really constitute human nature.* The end of all The end of all this is what is called in present-day jargon ‘mass-production’, the purpose of which is only to produce the greatest possible quantity of objects, and of objects as exactly alike as possible, intended for the use of men who are supposed to be no less alike; that is indeed the triumph of quantity, as was pointed out earlier, and it is by the same token the triumph of uniformity. These men who are reduced to mere numerical ‘units’ are expected to live in what can scarcely be called houses, for that would be to misuse the word, but in ‘hives’ of which the compartments will all be planned on the same model, and furnished with objects made by ‘mass-production’, in such a way as to cause to disappear from the environment in which the people live every qualitative difference; it is enough to examine the projects of some contemporary architects (who themselves describe these dwellings as ‘living-machines’) in order to see that nothing has been exaggerated.
p. 60-1

* It may be remarked that the machine is in a sense the opposite of the tool, and is in no way a ‘perfected tool’ as many imagine, for the tool is in a sense a ‘prolongation’ of the man himself, whereas the machine reduces the man to being no more than its servant; and, if it was true to say that ‘the tool engenders the craft’, it is no less true that the machine kills it; the instinctive reactions of the artisans against the first machines thus explain themselves.
p. 60

In connection with the traditional conception of the crafts, which is but one with that of the arts, there is another important question to which attention must be drawn: the works of traditional art, those of medieval art, for instance, are generally anonymous, and it is only very recently that attempts have been made, as a result of modern ‘individualism’, to attach the few names preserved in history to known masterpieces, even though such ‘attributions’ are often very hypothetical. This anonymity is just the opposite of the constant preoccupation of modern artists to affirm and to make known above all their own individualities; on the other hand, a superficial observer might think that it is comparable to the anonymity of the products of present-day industry, although the latter have no claim whatever to be called ‘works of art’; but the truth is quite otherwise, for although there is indeed anonymity in both cases, it is for exactly contrary reasons. It is the same with anonymity as with many other things which by virtue of the inversion of analogy, can be taken either in a superior or in an in inferior sense: thus, for example, in a traditional social organization, an individual can be outside the castes in two ways, either because he is above them (ativarna) or because he is beneath them (avarna), and it is evident that these cases represent two opposite extremes. In a similar way, those among the moderns who consider themselves to be outside all religion are at the extreme opposite point from those who, having penetrated to the principial unity of all the traditions, are no longer tied to any particular traditional form. In relation to the conditions of the normal humanity, or to what may be called its ‘mean’, one category is below the castes and the other beyond: it could be said that one has fallen to the ‘infra-human’ and the other has risen to the ‘supra-human’. Now, anonymity itself can be characteristic both of the ‘infra-human’ and of the ‘supra-human’: the first case is that of modern anonymity, the anonymity of the crowd or the ‘masses’ as they are called today (and this use of the highly quantitative word ‘mass’ is very significant), and the second case is that of traditional anonymity in its manifold applications, including its application to works of art.
p. 62-3

Returning now to the consideration of the more specifically ‘scientific’ point of view as the modern world understands it, its chief characteristic is obviously that it seeks to bring everything down to quantity, anything that cannot be so treated being left out of account and is regarded as more or less non-existent.
p. 68

The earliest product of rationalism in the so-called ’scientific’ field was Cartesian mechanism; materialism was not due to appear until later, for as explained elsewhere, the word and the thing itself are not actually met with earlier than the eighteenth century; besides, whatever may have been the intentions of Descartes himself (and it is in fact possible, by pursuing to the end the logical are mutually very contradictory), there is nonetheless a direct filiation between mechanism and materialism. In this connection it is useful to recall that, although the ancient atomistic conceptions such as and especially of Epicurus can be qualified as mechanistic, these two being the only ‘precursors’ from the ancient world whom the moderns can with any justification claim as their own in this field, their conceptions are of often wrongly looked upon as the earliest form of materialism: for materialism implies above all the modern physicist’s notion of ‘matter’, and at that time this notion was still a long way from having come to birth. The truth is that materialism merely represents one of the two halves of Cartesian dualism, the half to which its author had applied the mechanistic conception; it was sufficient thereafter to ignore or to deny the remaining half, or what comes to the same thing, to claim to bring the whole of reality into the first half, in order to arrive quite naturally at materialism.
p. 96

Without seeking for the moment to determine more precisely the nature and quality of the supra-sensible, insofar as it is actually involved in this matter, it will be useful to observe how far the very people who still admit it and think that they are aware of its action are in reality permeated by materialistic influence: for even if they do not deny all extra-corporeal reality, like the majority of their contemporaries, it is only because they have formed for themselves an idea of it that enables them in some way to assimilate it to the likeness of sensible things, and to do that is certainly scarcely better than to deny it. There is no reason to be surprised at this, considering the extent to which all the occultist, Theosophist, and other schools of that sort are fond of searching assiduously for points of approach to modern scientific theories, from which indeed they draw their inspiration more directly than they are prepared to admit, and the result is what might logically be expected under such conditions. It may even be observed that, in accordance with the continuous changes in scientific theories, the resemblance between the conceptions of a particular school and a particular scientific theory may make it possible to ‘date’ the school, in default of any more precise information about its history and its origins.
p. 123-4

Even today most magnetizers and spiritualists continue to talk of ’fluids’, and what is more, to believe seriously in them; this ‘anachronism’ is all the more strange in that these people are in general fanatical partisans of ‘progress’; such an attitude fits in badly with a conception that has for a long time been excluded from the scientific domain and so ought in their eyes to appear very ‘backward’. In the present-day mythology, ‘fluids’ have been replaced by ‘waves’ and ‘radiations’, these last in their turn of course effectively playing the part of ‘fluids’ in the theories most recently invented to try to explain the action of certain subtle influences; it should suffice to mention ‘radiaesthesia’ which is as ‘typical’ as possible in this respect.
p. 125

Of course a majority of ’spiritualists’ and even of ’traditionalists’, or of people who call themselves such, are in fact quite as materialistic as other people when matters of this kind are in question, so that the situation is made even more irremediable by the fact that those who most sincerely want to combat the modern spirit are almost all unwittingly affected by it, and all their efforts are therefore condemned to remain without any appreciable result; for these are matters in which goodwill is far from being sufficient; effective knowledge being needed as well, indeed, more needed than anything else. But effective knowledge is the very thing that is made impossible by the influence of the modern spirit with all its limitations, even in the case of those who might have some intellectual capabilities of the required kind if conditions were less abnormal.
p. 175-6

In the first place, yet one more confusion and error of interpretation arising from the modern mentality must be dissipated, and that is the idea that there exist things that are purely ’material’. This conception belongs exclusively to the modern mentality, and when it is disencumbered from all the secondary complications added to it by the special theories of the physicists, it amounts to no more than the idea that there exist beings and things that are solely corporeal, and that their existence and their constitution involve no element that is not corporeal. This idea is directly linked to the profane point of view as expressed, perhaps in its most complete form, in the sciences of today, for these sciences are characterized by the absence of any attachment to principles of a superior order, and thus the things taken as the objects of their study must themselves be thought of as being without any such attachment (whereby the ‘residual’ character of the said sciences is once again made evident); this kind of outlook can be regarded as indispensable in order to enable science to deal with its object, for if a contrary admission were made, science would at once be compelled to recognize that the real nature of its object eludes it. It may perhaps be superfluous to seek elsewhere the reason for the enthusiasm displayed by scientists in discrediting any other conception, by presenting it as a ‘superstition’ arising in the imagination of ‘primitive’ peoples, who, it is suggested, can have been nothing but savages or men of an infantile mentality, as the ‘evolutionist’ theories make them out to have been; but whether the reason be mere incomprehension on their part or a conscious partisanship, the scientists do succeed in producing a caricature of the situation convincing enough to induce a complete acceptance of their interpretation in everyone who believes implicitly in whatever they say, namely, in a large majority of our contemporaries.
p. 178-9

‘Shamanism’ will also be found to include rites comparable to some that belong to traditions of the highest order: some of them, for example, recall in a striking way the Vedic rites, and particularly those that are most clearly derived from the primordial tradition, such as those in which the symbols of the tree and of the swan predominate.
p. 182

The people just referred to are such as can properly be described as ‘traditionalists’, meaning people who only have a sort of tendency or aspiration toward tradition without really knowing anything at all about it; this is the measure of the distance dividing the ‘traditionalist’ spirit from the truly traditional spirit, for the latter implies a real knowledge, being indeed in a sense the same as that knowledge. In short, the ‘traditionalist’ is and can be no more than a mere ‘seeker’, and that is why he is always in danger of going astray, not being in possession of the principles that alone could provide him with infallible guidance; and his danger is all the greater because he will find in his path, like so many ambushes, all the false ideas set on foot by the power of illusion, which has a keen interest in preventing him from reaching the true goal of his search. It is indeed evident that this power can only maintain itself and continue to exercise its action on condition that all restoration of the traditional idea is made impossible, and more than ever so when it is preparing to take a further step in the direction of subversion, subversion being, as explained, the second phase of its action.
p. 210

All misuses of the word ‘tradition’ can serve this same purpose in one way or another, beginning with the most popular of all, whereby it is made synonymous with ‘custom’ or ‘usage’, thus bringing about a confusion of tradition with things that are on the lower human level and are completely lacking in profound significance.
p. 211

Granted that nothing that is of a purely human order can for that very reason legitimately be called ‘traditional’, there cannot possibly be, for instance, a ‘philosophical tradition’ or a ‘scientific tradition’ in the modern and profane sense of the words, any more, of course, than there can be a ‘political tradition’, at least where all traditional social organization is lacking, as is the case in the modern Western world.
p. 212

Indeed it sometimes happens that people go so far as to apply the word ‘tradition’ to things that by their very nature are as directly anti-traditional as possible: thus they talk about a ‘humanist tradition’, and a ‘national tradition’, despite the fact that humanism is nothing if not an explicit denial of the supra-human, and the formation of ’nationalities’ was the means employed for the destruction of the traditional civilization of the Middle Ages.
p. 212

It should be noted that the expression ‘counter-initiation’ has been used here, and not ‘pseudo-initiation’, for the two are quite different, and it is important moreover not to confuse the counterfeiter with the counterfeit. ‘Pseudo-initiation’ as it exists today in numerous organizations, many of them an attached to some form of ‘neo-spiritualism’, is but one of many examples of counterfeit […]. It is really only one of the products of the state of disorder and confusion brought about in the modern period by the ‘satanic’ activity that has its conscious starting-point in the ‘counter-initiation’ […]
p. 241

As for the ‘counter-initiation’, it is certainly not a mere illusory counterfeit, but on the contrary something very real in its own order, as the effectiveness of its action shows only too well; at least, it is not a counterfeit except in the sense that it necessarily imitates initiation like an inverted shadow, although its real intention is not to imitate but to oppose.
p. 242

One of the simplest means at the disposal of ‘pseudo-initiatic’ organizations for the fabrication of a false tradition for the use of their adherents is undoubtedly ‘syncretism’, which consists in assembling m an a more or less convincing manner elements borrowed from almost anywhere, and in putting them together as it were ‘from the outside’, without any genuine understanding of what they really represent in the various traditions to which they properly belong.
p. 245

The truth is that there has never existed anything that could rightly be called either an ‘Oriental tradition’ or a ‘Western tradition’, any such denomination being obviously much too vague to be applied to a defined traditional form, since, unless one goes back to the primordial tradition, which is here not in question for very easily understandable reasons, and which is anyhow neither Eastern nor Western, there are and there always have been diverse and multiple traditional forms both in the East and in the West. Others have thought to do better and to inspire confidence more easily by appropriating to themselves the name of some tradition that really existed at some more or less distant date, and using it as a label for a structure that is no less incongruous than the others, for although they naturally make some use of what they can manage to find out about the tradition on which they have staked their claim, they are forced to reinforce their few facts, always very fragmentary and often even partly hypothetical, by recourse to other elements either borrowed from a different source or wholly imaginary.
p. 248-9

Others do not hesitate to claim to be attached to some tradition that has entirely disappeared and has been extinct for centuries, even for thousands of years. However, unless they are bold enough to assert that their chosen tradition has been perpetuated for that length of time in a manner so secret and so well concealed that nobody but themselves has been able to discover the smallest trace of it, they are admittedly deprived of the appreciable advantage of being able to claim a direct and continuous filiation, for in their case the claim cannot even present an appearance of plausibility such as it can still present when of a fairly recent form such as that of the Rosicrucian tradition is chosen; but this defect does not seem to have much importance in their eyes, for they are so ignorant of the true conditions of initiation that they readily imagine that a mere ‘ideal’ attachment, without any regular transmission, can take the place of an effective attachment.
p. 250

Here this already long discussion must be brought to a close; it has amply sufficed to indicate in a general way the nature of the many ‘pseudo-initiatic’ counterfeits of the traditional idea that are so characteristic of our times: a mixture, more or less coherent but rather less than more so, of elements partly borrowed and partly invented, the whole dominated by anti-traditional conceptions such as are peculiar to the modern spirit, and for this reason serving no purpose other than the further spread of these same conceptions by making them pass with some people as traditional, not to mention the manifest deceit that consists in giving, in place of ‘initiation’, not only something purely profane in itself, but also something that makes for ‘profanation’. Should anyone now put forward the suggestion, as a sort of extenuating circumstance, that there are always in these affairs, despite all their faults, some elements derived from genuinely traditional sources, the answer would be this: in order to get itself accepted, every imitation must take on at least some of the features of the thing imitated, but that is just what makes it so dangerous; is not the cleverest lie, as well as the most deadly, precisely the lie that mixes most inextricably the true and the false, thus contriving to press the true into service in order to promote the triumph of the false?
p. 251

The previous chapter was concerned with matters that, like everything else belonging essentially to the modern world, are radically anti-traditional; but in a sense they go even further than ‘anti-tradition’, understood as being pure negation and nothing more, appropriately be called a ‘counter-tradition’. The distinction between the two is similar to that made earlier between deviation and subversion, and it corresponds to the same two phases of anti-traditional action considered as a whole. ‘Anti-tradition’ found its most complete expression in the kind of materialism that could be called ‘integral’, such as that which prevailed toward the end of the last century; as for the ‘counter-tradition’, we can still only see the preliminary signs of it, in the form of all the things that are striving to become counterfeits in one way or another of the traditional idea itself.
p. 260

In Islamic esoterism it is said that one who presents himself at a certain ‘gate’, without having reached it by a normal and legitimate way, sees it shut in his face and is obliged to turn back, but not as a mere profane person, for he can never be such again, but as a sāher (a sorcerer or a magician working in the domain of subtle possibilities of an inferior (order).
p. 263

The various matters dealt with in the course of this study together constitute what may, in a general way, be called the ‘signs of the times’ in the Gospel sense, in other words, the precursory signs of the ‘end of a world’ or of a cycle. This end only appears to b« be the ‘end of the world’, without any reservation or specification of any kind, to those who see nothing beyond the limits of this particular cycle; a very excusable error of perspective it is true, but one that has nonetheless some regrettable consequences in the excessive and unjustified terrors to which it gives rise in those who are not sufficiently detached from terrestrial existence; and naturally they are the very people who form this erroneous conception most easily, just because of the narrowness of their point of view. In truth there can be many ‘ends of the world’, because there are cycles of very varied duration, contained as it were one within another, and also because this same notion can always be applied analogically at all degrees and at all levels; but it is obvious that these ‘ends’ are of very unequal importance, as are the cycles themselves to which they belong; and in this connection it must be acknowledged that the end now under consideration is undeniably of considerably greater importance than many others, for it is the end of a whole Manvantara, and so of the temporal existence of what may rightly be called a humanity, but this, it must be said once more, in no way implies that it is the end of the terrestrial world itself, because, through the ‘rectification’ that takes place at the final Instant, this end will itself immediately become the beginning of another Manvantara.
p. 275

[Excerpts] Guénon, The Crisis of the Modern World

Excerpts from Guénon, René (2001) The Crisis of the Modern World Sophia Perennis: Hillsdale, New York

René Guénon, Abd al-Wahid Yahya after his acceptance of Islam, was undoubtedly one of the, if not the, most important exponents of perennialism of the last century. As is pointed out in a very good introduction (in Swedish) to the book on Café Exposé it’s topicality has in no way decreased since it was first published in 1927.

Theosophy and 'Celtism' may no longer be the pseudo-initiatic flavour of the day. Instead we have other types of self-proclaimed "traditionalists" who, with their attempts to fuse the most revolting modern identities with since long dead traditions, make wiccans and anthroposophists look like remnants of the Golden Age.

The next set of excerpts from Guénon will be from The Reign of Quantity and the Signs of the Times. Before that there will however most likely be some new excerpts from one or two works of Evola. This even though it must be noted that the realization of Evolas inferiority to Guénon in almost every relevant instance only grows with time and increased knowledge of the two.

The Hindu doctrine teaches that a human cycle, to which it gives the name Manvantara, is divided into four periods marking so many stages during which the primordial spirituality becomes gradually more and more obscured; these are the same periods that the ancient traditions of the West called the Golden, Silver, Bronze, and Iron Ages. We are now in the fourth age, the Kali-Yuga or ‘dark age’, and have been so already, it is said, for more than six thousand years, that is to say since a time far earlier than any known to ‘classical’ history. Since that time, the truths which were formerly within reach of all have become more and more hidden and inaccessible; those who possess them grow fewer and fewer, and although the treasure of ‘nonhuman’ (that is, supra-human) wisdom that was prior to all the ages can never be lost, it nevertheless becomes enveloped in more and more impenetrable veils, which hide it from men’s sight and make e it extremely difficult to discover.
p. 7

However, we have for the moment no intention of going back to the origin of the present cycle, or even to the beginning of the Kali-Yuga; we shall only be concerned, directly at least, with a far more limited field, namely with the last phases of the Kali-Yuga.
p. 9

For us, the real Middle Ages extend from the reign of Charlemagne to the opening of the fourteenth century, at which date a new decadence set in that has continued, through various phases and with gathering impetus, up to the present time. This date is the real starting-point of the modern crisis: it is the beginning of the disruption of Christendom, with which the Western civilization of the Middle Ages was essentially identified: at the same time, it marks the origin of the formation of ’nations’ and the end of the feudal system, which was very closely linked with the existence of Christendom. The origin of the modern period must therefore be placed almost two centuries further back than is usual with historians; the Renaissance and Reformation were primarily results, made possible only by the preceding decadence; but, far from being a readjustment, they marked an even deeper falling off, consummating, as they did the definitive rupture with the traditional spirit, the former in the domain of the arts and sciences, and the latter in that of religion itself, although this was the domain in which it might have seemed the most difficult to conceive of such a rupture.
p. 15

Humanism was the first form of what has subsequently become contemporary secularism; and, owing to its desire to reduce everything to the measure of man as an end in himself, modern civilization has sunk stage by stage until it has reached the level of the lowest elements in man and aims at little more than satisfying the needs inherent in the material side of his nature, an aim that is in any case quite illusory since it constantly creates more artificial needs than it can satisfy.
p. 17

It would seem that a halt midway is no longer possible since, according to all the indications furnished by the traditional doctrines, we have in fact entered upon the last phase of the Kali-Yuga, the darkest period of this ‘dark age’, the state of dissolution from which it is impossible to emerge otherwise than by a cataclysm, since it is not a mere readjustment that is necessary at such a stage, but a complete renovation.
p. 17

In this connection, it might be said that what according to tradition, characterizes the ultimate phase of a cycle is the realization of all that has been neglected or rejected during the preceding phases; and indeed, this is exactly the case with modern civilization, which lives as it were only by that for which previous civilizations had no use.
p. 19

An inevitable ill is nonetheless an ill, and even if good is to come out of evil, this does not change the evil character of the evil itself: we use the words ‘good’ and ‘evil’ here only to make ourselves clear and without any specifically ‘moral’ intention.
p. 19

It is true that there have always been many and varied civilizations, […] but distinction does not mean opposition, and there can be equivalence of a sort between civilizations with very long as they are all based on the same fundamental principles—of which they only represent applications varying in accordance with varied circumstances. This is the case with all civilizations that can be called normal or traditional, which comes to the same thing; there is no essential opposition between them, and such divergences as may exist are merely outward and superficial. On the other hand, a civilization that recognizes no higher principle, but is in reality based only on a negation of principles, is by this very fact ruled out from all mutual understanding with other civilizations, for if such understanding is to be profound and effective it can only come from above, that is to say from the very factor that this abnormal and perverted civilization lacks.
p. 21-2

[T]here was no reason for opposition between East and West as long as there were traditional civilizations in the West as well as in the East; the opposition has meaning only as far as the modern West is concerned, for it is far more an opposition between two mentalities than between two more or less clearly defined geographical entities.
p. 23

When, therefore, in speaking of the world of today, we use the expression ‘Western mentality’, this means the same as the modern mentality; and since the other mentality has continued to exist only in the East, we can, also with reference to the present state of things, call it the Eastern mentality. These two terms, then, express nothing more than an actual fact; and, whereas one of the two mentalities has come into being during recent history and is in fact quite clearly Western, we do not wish to imply anything as to the source of the other, which was formerly common to East and West, for its origin must, if truth be told, merge with that of mankind itself, being the mentality that can be described as normal, if only for the reason that it has inspired more or less completely all the civilizations we know, with the exception of one only, that is to say, once again, the modern Western civilization.
p. 23

[T]he explicit assertion is to be found everywhere that the primordial tradition of the present cycle comes from the hyperborean region; at a later time there were several secondary currents corresponding to different periods, and one of the most important of these, at least among those whose traces are still discernible, undoubtedly flowed from West to East. All this, however, refers to very far off times—such as are commonly called ‘prehistoric’—with which we are not concerned here; what we do say is this: in the first place, the home of the primordial tradition has for a very long time now been in the East and it is there that the doctrinal forms that have issued most directly from it are to be found; secondly, in the present state of things, the true traditional spirit, with all that it implies, no longer has any authentic representatives except in the East.
p. 23-4

This explanation would be incomplete without a reference, however brief, to certain proposals that have seen the light in various contemporary circles for restoring a ‘Western tradition’. […] Unfortunately, such ‘traditionalism’ is not the same as the real traditional outlook, for it may be no more than a tendency, a more or less vague aspiration presupposing no real knowledge; and it is unfortunately true that, in the mental confusion of our times, this aspiration usually gives rise to fantastic and imaginary conceptions devoid of any serious foundation.
p. 24

There are others who wish to attach themselves to Celtism, and, since the model they take is less remote from our time, their purpose may seem less impracticable. But where can one find ‘Celtism’ today in a pure state and with sufficient vitality to be able to serve as a basis? […] It is true that clearly recognizable and still usable elements of Celtism’ have come down to us through various intermediaries, but these elements are very far from constituting a complete tradition; moreover, strange to say, even in the countries where it formerly existed, this tradition is now more completely forgotten than those of many other civilizations that never had a home there.
p. 25-6

It is only by establishing contact with still living traditions that what is capable of being revived can be made to live again; and this, as we have so often pointed out, is one of the greatest services that the East can render the West.
p. 26

[I]f the Eastern traditions in their own special forms can certainly be assimilated by an elite—which by its very definition must be beyond all forms—they certainly cannot be so by the mass of Western people, for whom they were not made, unless some unforeseen transformation takes place.
p. 27

There are those today who speak of a ‘defense’ of the West, which is odd, to say the least, considering that it is the West, as we shall see later on, that is threatening to submerge the whole of mankind in the whirlpool of its own confused activity; odd, we say, and completely unjustified if they mean, as they seem to (despite certain reservations), that this defense is to be against the East, for the true East has no thought of attacking or dominating anybody, and asks no more than to be left in independence and tranquillity—surely a not unreasonable demand.
p. 31

The Eastern doctrines are unanimous, as also were the ancient doctrines of the West, in asserting that contemplation is superior to action, just as the unchanging is superior to change.
p. 36

Aristotle asserted that there must be a ‘unmoved mover’ of all things. It is knowledge that serves as the ‘unmoved mover of action; it is clear that action belongs entirely to the world of change and ‘becoming’; knowledge alone gives the possibility of leaving this world and the limitations that are inherent in it, and when it attains to the unchanging —as does principial or metaphysical knowledge, that is to say knowledge in its essence—it becomes itself possessed of immutability, for all true knowledge essentially consists in identification with its object.
p. 37-8

What is most remarkable is that movement and change are actually prized for their own sake, and not in view of any end to which they may lead; this is a direct result of the absorption of all human faculties in outward action whose necessarily fleeting character has just been demonstrated.
p. 38

This leads us to repeat an essential point on which not the slightest ambiguity must be allowed to persist: intellectual intuition, by which alone metaphysical knowledge is to be obtained, has absolutely nothing in common with this other ‘intuition’ of which certain contemporary philosophers speak: the latter pertains to the sensible realm and in fact is sub-rational, whereas the former, which is pure intelligence, is on the contrary supra-rational.
p. 41

As long as Westerners persist in ignoring or denying intellectual intuition, they can have no tradition in the true sense of the word, nor can they reach any understanding with the authentic representatives of the Eastern civilizations, in which everything, so to speak derives from this intuition, which is immutable and infallible in itself, and the only starting-point for any development in conformity with traditional norms.
p. 41

We have just seen that in civilizations of a traditional nature, intellectual intuition lies at the root of everything; in other words, it is the pure metaphysical doctrine that constitutes the essential, everything else being linked to it, either in the form of consequences or applications to the various orders of contingent reality. Not only is this true of social institutions, but also of the sciences, that is, branches of knowledge bearing on the domain of the relative, which in such civilizations are only regarded as dependencies, prolongations, or reflections of absolute or principial knowledge.
p. 42

By individualism we mean the negation of any principle higher than individuality, and the consequent reduction of civilization, in all its branches, to purely human elements; fundamentally, therefore, individualism amounts to the same thing as what, at the time of the Renaissance, was called ‘humanism’; it is also the characteristic feature of the ‘profane point of view’ as we have described it above.
p. 55

That is not to say, of course, that this outlook is entirely new; it had already appeared in a more or less pronounced form in other periods, but its manifestations were always limited in scope and apart from the main trend, and they never went so far as to overrun the whole of a civilization, as has happened during recent centuries in the West. What has never been seen before is the erection of an entire civilization on something purely negative, on what indeed could be called the absence of principle; and it is this that gives the modern world its abnormal character and makes of it a sort of monstrosity, only to be understood if one thinks of it as corresponding to the end of a cyclical period, as we have already said.
p. 55

[A] philosopher’s renown is increased more by inventing a new error than by repeating a truth that has already been expressed by others.
p. 56

In a traditional civilization it is almost inconceivable that a man should claim an idea as his own; and in any case, were he to do so, he would thereby deprive it of all credit and authority, reducing it to the level of a meaningless fantasy: if an idea is true, it belongs equally to all who are capable of understanding it; if it is false, there is no credit in having invented it. A true idea cannot be ‘new’, for truth is not a product of the human mind; it exists independently of us, and all we have to do is to take cognisance of it; outside this knowledge there can be nothing but error: but do the moderns on the whole care much about truth, or do they even know what it is?
p. 56-7

In the same way the Renaissance and the Reformation, which are usually considered to be the first great manifestations of the modern mentality, completed the breach with tradition rather than provoked it; for us, the beginning of this breach is to be found in the fourteenth century, and it is at this date, and not a century or two later, that the beginning of modern times should be fixed.
p. 59

Individualism necessarily implies the refusal to accept any authority higher than the individual, as well as any means of knowledge higher than individual reason; these two attitudes are inseparable.
p. 60

Actually, religion being essentially a form of tradition, the anti-traditional outlook cannot help being anti-religious; it begins by denaturing religion and, when it can, ends by suppressing it entirely.
p. 62

Modern man, instead of attempting to raise himself to truth, seeks to drag truth down to his own level, which is doubtless the reason why there are so many who imagine, when one speaks to them of ‘traditional sciences’, or even of pure metaphysics, that one is speaking only of ‘profane science’ and of ‘philosophy’.
p. 66

Sometimes individualism, in the lowest and most vulgar sense of the word, is manifested in a still more obvious way, as in the desire that is frequently shown to judge a man’s work by what is known of his private life, as though there could be any sort of connection between the two.
p. 66

Nothing and nobody is any longer in the right place; men no longer recognize any effective authority in the spiritual order or any legitimate power in the temporal; the ‘profane’ presume to discuss what is sacred, and to contest its character and even its existence; the inferior judges the superior, ignorance sets bounds to wisdom, error prevails over truth, the human is substituted for the Divine, earth has priority over Heaven, the individual sets the measure for all things and claims to dictate to the universe laws drawn entirely from his own relative and fallible reason.
p. 67-8

The most decisive argument against de democracy can be summed up in a few words: the higher cannot proceed from the lower, because the greater cannot proceed from the lesser; this is an absolute mathematical certainty that nothing can gainsay.
p. 73

It is abundantly clear that the people cannot confer a power that they do not themselves possess; true power can only come from above, and this is why—be it said in passing—it can be legitimised only by the sanction of something standing above the social order, that is to say by a spiritual authority, for otherwise it is a mere counterfeit of power, unjustifiable through lack of any principle, and in which I there can be nothing but disorder and confusion.
p. 73

[T]he French monarchy was itself working unconsciously, from the fourteenth century onward, to prepare the Revolution that was to overthrow it […]
p. 73-4

Indeed, if one takes the word ‘individualism’ in its narrowest sense, one could be tempted to oppose the collectivity to the individual, and to think that facts such as the increasingly invasive role of the State and the growing complexity of social institutions indicate a tendency contrary to individualism. In reality however it is not so, because the collectivity, being nothing other than the sum of the individuals within it, , cannot be opposed to them, any more than can the State itself, conceived in the modern fashion, and viewed as a simple representation of the masses—in which no higher principle is reflected; and it will be recalled that individualism, as we have defined it, consists precisely in the negation of every supra-individual principle.
p. 77

From all that has been said above, it seems sufficiently clear that Easterners are justified in reproaching modern Western civilization for being exclusively material: it has developed along purely material lines only, and from whatever point of view it is considered, one is faced with the more or less direct results of this materialization.
p. 81

A little later the same word [materialism] took on a narrower meaning, the one in fact that it still retains: it came to denote a conception according to which nothing else exists but matter and its derivatives.
p. 81

But we intend at present to speak of materialism mainly in another, much wider, and yet very definite sense: in this sense, materialism stands for a complete state of mind, of which the conception that we have just described is only one manifestation among many others, and which, in itself, is independent of any philosophical theory. This state of mind is one that consists in more or less consciously putting material things, and the preoccupations arising out of them, in the first place, whether these preoccupations claim to be speculative or purely practical; and it cannot be seriously disputed that this is the mentality of the immense majority of our contemporaries.
p. 82

It seems that nothing exists for modern men beyond what can be seen and touched; or at least, even if they admit theoretically that something more may exist, they immediately declare it not merely unknown but unknowable, which absolves them from having to think about it.
p. 83

Let it be added that these generalized wars have only been made possible by another specifically modern phenomenon, that is, by the formation of ‘nations’—a consequence on the one hand of the destruction of the feudal system, and on the other of the disruption of the higher unity of medieval Christendom […].
p. 90

For that is what is taking place: the modern West cannot tolerate that men should prefer to work less and be content to live on little; as it is only quantity that counts, and as everything that escapes the senses is held to be nonexistent, it is taken for granted that anyone who is not in a state of agitation and who does not produce much in a material way must be ‘lazy’. In evidence of this and without speaking of the opinions commonly expressed about Eastern peoples, it is enough to note how the contemplative orders are viewed, even in circles that consider themselves religious. In such a world, there is no longer any place for intelligence, or anything else that is purely inward, for these are things that can neither be seen nor touched, that can neither be counted nor weighed; there is a place only for outward action in all its forms, even those that are the most completely meaningless.
p. 92

However, let us consider things for a moment from the standpoint of those whose ideal is material ‘welfare’, and who therefore rejoice at all the improvements to life furnished by modern ‘progress’; are they quite sure they are not being duped? Is it true that, because they dispose of swifter means of communication and other things of the kind, and because of their more agitated and complicated manner of life, men are happier today than they were formerly? The very opposite seems to us to be true: disequilibrium ca cannot be a condition of real happiness. Moreover, the more needs a man has, the greater the likelihood that he will lack something, and thereby be unhappy; modern civilization aims at creating more and more artificial needs, and as we have already said, it will always create more needs than it can satisfy, for once one has started on this path, it is very hard to stop, and, indeed, there is no reason for stopping at any particular point.
p. 93

The modern West is said to be Christian, but this is untrue: the modern outlook is anti-Christian, because it is essentially anti-religious; and it is anti-religious because, still more generally, it is anti-traditional; this is its distinguishing characteristic and this is what makes it what it is. […] More than this: we even assert that everything of value that there may be in the modern world has come to it from Christianity, or at any rate through Christianity, for Christianity has brought with it the whole heritage of former traditions, has kept this heritage alive so far as the state of things in the West made it possible, and still contains its latent possibilities.
p. 95

The modern confusion had its origin in the West, as we have already said, and until the last few years remained in the West. But now a process is taking place, the gravity of which should not be overlooked: the confusion is spreading everywhere, and even the East seems to be succumbing to it.
p. 97

Let it be stated quite clearly: the modern outlook is purely Western, and those who are affected by it should be classed as Westerners mentally, even though they may be Easterners by birth; all Eastern ideas are completely alien to them, and their ignorance of the traditional doctrines is the only excuse for their hostility toward them. What may seem remarkable, and even contradictory, is that these same individuals who become the auxiliaries of ‘Westernism’ from an intellectual point of view—or, more exactly, in opposition to all real intellectuality—sometimes come to the fore as the opponents of the West in the field of politics. But there is nothing surprising in this, for it is they who strive to introduce the idea of ‘nation’ in the East, and all nationalism is essentially opposed to the traditional outlook; they may wish to resist foreign domination, but in order to do so they make use of Western methods, such as are used by the various Western peoples when fighting among themselves; and it may be that in this fact lies the justification for their existence.
p. 98

The traditional spirit cannot die, being in its essence above death and change; but it can withdraw completely from the outward world, and then there would really be the ‘end of a world’.
p. 99

It is true that, when certain passions come into play, the same things can be appreciated in a very different, and even quite contrary, sense according to the circumstances: so, for instance, when a Western people resists a foreign invasion, this is called ‘patriotism’ and merits the highest praise, but when an Eastern people does so it is called ‘fanaticism’ or ‘xenophobia’, and merits hatred and contempt. Moreover, is it not in the name of ‘Right’, and ‘Liberty’, of ’justice’ and ‘Civilization’, that the Europeans claim to impose their dominion over all others, and to forbid anyone to live and think otherwise than they do themselves?
p. 100

[Excerpts] Evola, Men Among the Ruins

Excerpts from Evola, Julius (2002) Men Among the Ruins Inner Traditions: Rochester, Vermont

The reason the first excerpt is from page 112 is because most of the previous pages is taken up by an introduction to Evola written by Dr. H. T. Hansen.

Recently, various forces have attempted to set up a defense and a resistance in the sociopolitical domain against the extreme forms in which the disorder of our age manifests itself. It is necessary to realize that this is a useless effort, even for the sake of merely demonstrative purposes, unless the disease is dealt with at its very roots. These roots, as far as the historical dimension is concerned, are to be found in the subversion introduced in Europe by the revolutions of 1789 and 1848. The disease must be recognized in all of its forms and degrees; thus, the main task is to establish if there are still men willing to reject all the ideologies, political movements, and parties that, directly or indirectly, derive from those revolutionary ideas (i.e., everything ranging from liberalism and democracy to Marxism and communism). As a positive counterpart, these men should be given an orientation and a solid foundation consisting of a broad view of life and a stern doctrine of the State.
p. 112

It is curious how words evolve: after all, revolution, according to its original Latin meaning (re-volvere), referred to a notion that led again to the starting point, to the origins. Therefore, the “revolutionary” force of renewal that needs to be employed against the existing situation should be derived from the origins.
p. 113-114

However, if one wants to embrace the idea of “conservatism” (i.e., a “conservative revolution”), it is necessary to proceed with caution. […] Obviously, it is necessary to first establish as exactly as possible what needs to be preserved, especially as far as social structures and political institutions are concerned.
p. 114

What needs to be “preserved” and defended in a “revolutionary fashion” is the general view of life and of the State that, being based if higher values and interests, definitely transcends the economic plane, and thus everything that can be defined in terms of economic classes.
p. 114-115

For the authentic revolutionary conservative, what really counts is to be faithful not to past forms and institutions, but rather to the principles of which such forms and institutions have been particular expressions, adequate for a specific period of time and in a specific geographical area.
p. 115

Tradition, in its essence, is something simultaneously meta-historical and dynamic: it is an overall ordering force, in the service of principles that have the chrism of a superior legitimacy (we may even call them, “principles from above”).
p. 115

[E]very true political unity appears as the embodiment of an idea and a power, thus distinguishing itself from every naturalistic association or “natural right,” and also from every societal aggregation determined by mere social, economic biological, utilitarian, or eudemonistic factors.

In previous eras it was possible to speak of the sacral character of the principle of sovereignty and power, namely of the State. For instance, the ancient Roman notion of imperium essentially belonged to the domain of the sacred. This notion, in its specific meaning, even before expressing a system of territorial, supernational hegemony, designated the pure power of command, the almost mystical power and auctoritas inherent in the one who had the function and quality of Leader: a leader in the religious and warrior order as well as in the order of the patrician family, the gens, and, eminently, of the State, the res publica. In the Roman world, which was intensely realistic (or, I should say, precisely because it was intensely realistic), the notion of this power, which is simultaneously auctoritas, always retained its intrinsic character of bright force from above and of sacred power, beyond the various and often spurious techniques that conditioned its access in different periods.
p. 122

A power and authority that are not absolute, are not real authority or real power […]
p. 123

In particular, the positive essence of the principle of sovereignty has rightfully been recognized in the power of making absolute decisions, in exceptional or emergency situations, beyond any duties and discussions, whenever the existing right and laws are suspended or their suspension is required.
p. 123

In the best period of the Roman civilization, the dictatorship was conceived and allowed as a temporary remedy; far from replacing the existing order, it was its reintegration. In every other regard, dictatorship equals usurpation.
p. 124

The state is under the masculine aegis, while “society” and, by extension, the people, or demos, are under the feminine aegis.
p. 126

Thus, even in the ancient Roman world, the idea of State and imperium (i.e., of the sacred authority) was strictly connected to the symbolic cult of virile deities of heaven, of light and of the super-world in opposition to the dark region of the Mothers and the chthonic deities.
p. 126

The notions of nation, fatherland, and people, despite their romantic and idealistic halo, essentially belong to the naturalistic and biological plane and not the political one; they lead back to the “maternal” and physical dimension of a given collectivity.
p. 127

“[M]en” uphold the idea of State, while feminine natures, which are spiritually matriarchical, side instead with “fatherland,” “nation,” and “people.”
p. 129

In reference to this, we could say that a nation exists and overcomes geographical and even ethical boundaries wherever we find the reproduction of the same “inner form,” namely the consecration or the imprint bestowed by the higher political force and its representatives. Thus it would be absurd, for instance, to call ancient Rome a “nation” in the modern sense of the word: one could refer to it as a “spiritual nation” or as a unity defined by the “Roman man.” The same applies to the creations of the Franks and the Germans, as well as the Arabs who spread Islam, just to cite a few examples. Maybe the most significant case is the Prussian State, which originated from a knightly Order (a classic example of a Männerbund), namely the order of Teutonic Knights, which later became the structure and the “form” of the German Reich,
p. 129-131

[T]he demos, which is feminine by nature, will never have its own, clear will.
p. 130

The Idea, only the Idea, must be the true fatherland for these men: what unites them and sets them apart should consist in adherence to the same idea, rather than to the same land, language, or blood.
p. 131

Just as communists and socialists find it useful and agreeable to brad anybody and anything it does not agree with the label of “fascism,” likewise the confusion about totalitarianism is employed in a tactical fashion by various parties in democratic regimes, and is exploited in order to try to discredit and portray the traditional view of the true State in a heinous way.
p. 148

A State is organic when it has a center, and this center is an idea that shapes the various domains of life in an efficacious way; it is organic when it ignores the division and autonomization of the particular and when, by virtue of a system of hierarchical participation, every part within its relative autonomy performs its own function and enjoys an intimate connection with the whole. In an organic State we can speak of a “whole” – namely, something integral and spiritually unitary that articulates and unfolds itself – rather than a sum of elements within an aggregate, characterized by a disorderly clash of interests. The Stats that developed in the geographical areas of the great civilizations (whether they were empires, monarchies, aristocratic republics, or city-states) at their peak was almost without exception of this type.
p. 149

[O]rganic and traditional are more or less synonymous.
p. 149

However, totalitarianism merely represents the counterfeited image of the organic ideal. It is a system in which the unity is imposed from the outside, not on the basis of the intrinsic force of an common idea and an authority that is naturally acknowledged, but rather through direct forms of intervention and control, exercised by a power that is exclusively and material political, imposing itself as the ultimate reason for the system.
p. 150

Totalitarianism, though it reacts against individualism and social atomism, brings a final end to the devastation of what may still survive in a society from the previous “organic” phase: quality, articulated forms, castes and classes, the values of personality, true freedom, daring and responsible initiative, and heroic feats. An organism of superior type includes multiple functions retaining their specific character and a relative autonomy, all the while mutually coordinating and integrating each other, converging into a superior unity that never ceases to be ideally presupposed. Thus in an organic State we find both unity and multiplicity, gradation and hierarchy; we do not find the dualism of center and formless mass typical of a totalitarian regime. Totalitarianism, in order to assert itself, imposes uniformity. In the final analysis, totalitarianism rests and relies on the inorganic world of quantity to which individualistic disintegration has led, and not on the world of quality and of personality.
p. 151-152

Last but not least I wish to make a few comments about a formula that is often associated with totalitarianism in the polemics of a democracy: the one-party system. Fascism claimed that the State was the only party “governing the country in a totalitarian fashion.” This is an unhappy and hybrid formula, to say the least, and it is a residue of the partisan-parliamentary view, though an instance of a higher order is also present within it.

Strictly speaking, party means faction. In that case, “one party” is either a contradictory or an aberrant notion, almost as if a faction wished to be the whole or dominate the entire system. Practically speaking, the notion of “party” belongs to parliamentary democracies, and it signifies an organization that defends a given ideology against other ideologies upheld by other groups, to which the system recognizes the same right and the same legitimacy. In these terms, the “one-party system” is that which, in one way or another, whether “democratically” or through the use of violence, succeeds in gaining control of the State and, once in a position of power, no longer tolerates other parties, using the State as a tool and imposing its particular ideology on the nation.
p. 155

So we must say that a party that becomes the “one and only party” should cease to be a “party” de facto. Then its representatives, or at least its most qualified ones, should present themselves and the rule as some sort of Order, or as a specifically political class, not creating a State within the State, but rather protecting and strengthening the State’s key positions; not defending their particular ideology but rather embodying in an impersonal manner the very pure idea of the State.
p. 155

Nowadays it is possible to speak of a demonic nature of the economy, because in both individual and collective life the economic factor is the most important, real, and decisive one. Moreover, the tendency to converge every value and interest on the economic and productive plane is not perceived by Western man as an unprecedented aberration, but instead as something normal and natural, and not as an eventual necessity, but as something that must be accepted, willed, developed, and praised.
p. 165

As I have said before, when the right and primacy of interests higher than those of the socioeconomic plane are not upheld, there is no hierarchy, and even if there is one, it is only a counterfeit; this is also true when a higher authority is not accorded to those men, groups and bodies representing and defending these values and interests. In this case, an economic era is already by definition a fundamentally anarchical and antihierarchical era; it represents a subversion of the normal order. The materialization and the soullessness of all the domains of life that characterize it divest of any higher meaning all those problems and conflicts that are regarded as important within it.
p. 166

And as long as we only talk about economic classes, profit, salaries, and production, as long as we believe that real human progress is determined by a particular system of distribution of wealth and goods, and that, generally speaking, human progress is measured by the degree of wealth or indigence – then we are not even close to what is essential, even though new theories, beyond Marxism and capitalism, might be formulated.
p. 166

What must be questioned is not the value of this or that economic system, but the value of the economy itself.
p. 167

It is not entirely correct to say that Marxism arose and took hold because there was a real social question that needed to be addressed (at best this may have been the case during the early stages of the industrial revolution); the opposite is true – to wit, that for the most part the social question gains precedence in today’s world only as a result of the presence of Marxism.
p. 169

In both Marxism and free-market economies we find the same materialistic, antipolitical, and social view detaching the social order and people from any higher order and higher goal, positing what it is “useful” as the only purpose (understood in a physical, vegetative, and earthly sense); by turning the “useful” into a criterion of progress, the values proper to every traditional structure are inverted.
p. 170

The term work has always designated the lowest forms of human activity, those that are merely exclusively conditioned by the economic factor. It is illegitimate to label as “work” anything that is not reduced to these forms; rather, the word to be used is action: action, not work, is what is performed by the leader, the explorer, the ascetic, the pure scientist, the warrior, the artist, the diplomat, the theologian, the one who makes or breaks a law, the one who is motivated by an elementary passion or guided by a principle.
p. 174

After acknowledging the fundamental principle of the primacy and sovereignty of State over economy, the State can then produce an action of limiting and ordering the economic domain; this action will be able to facilitate what derives from the essential and unavoidable factor, that of detoxification, the change of mentality, and the return to normalcy for people who have learned anew what is sensible activity, right effort, values to be upheld, and loyalty to oneself.
p. 176

Given these precedents, we cannot ignore the meaning that fascism had: a break with the past, a different and bold choice of traditions, and the will to undertake a new direction, solely upon which the reference to Rome as a political symbol could be legitimized (“We dream of a Roman Italy,” Mussolini once said).
p. 191

During the first half of this century, so-called Prussian militarism has been a thorn in the side of democracies, since the perceived it as the prototype of the phenomenon they deprecated. What we have here is a characteristic antithesis that does not refer to the relationships between groups of rival nations, but rather two general views of life and of the State, and even to two distinct, irreconcilable forms of civilization and society. Historically speaking, such an antithesis is reflected in the opposition between the view of the Germanic-Prussian tradition and the view that first emerged in England and America, and later in all democratic nations; the latter view is characterized by the predominance of economic and mercantile values and by their development in the context of capitalism. The origins of the former view can be traced to an ascetic warrior organization, the ancient Order of Teutonic Knights.
p. 193

The view of modern democracies that first emerged in England, under the aegis of mercantilism, is that in society the primary element is the bourgeois type and the bourgeois life during times of peace; such a life is dominated by the physical concern for safety, well-being, and material wealth, with the cultivation of letters and the arts serving as a decorative frame. Thus, according to this view, the “civilian” or “bourgeois” element is usually, and as a matter of principle, entrusted with running the State. It is this human type that engages in politics; when politics – that is, international politics – must be continued with other means, to use the famous expression of Clausewitz, the armed forces are then employed. In this view the military and warrior element has the subordinated meaning of mere instrument: it should have no particular influence or exercise any interference whatsoever in daily social life. Even if it is acknowledged that the military element has its own code of ethics, it is not desirable that this code be applied to the normal, overall life of a nation.
p. 193-194

According to the most recent formulation of the corresponding ideology, armies should be used only as an international police force to maintain the “peace”; in most cases, this amounts to allowing wealthy nations to live undisturbed. Otherwise, aside from any pretense, what is repeated is the example of the East India Company and similar enterprises: the armed forces are used by modern democracies to impose or retain an economic hegemony; to gain new markets and to acquire aw materials; and to create new space for capital seeking investment and profit.
p. 194-195

Love for hierarchy; relationships of obedience and command; courage; feelings of honor and loyalty; specific forms of active impersonality capable of producing anonymous sacrifice; frank and open relationships from man to man, from one comrade to another, from leader to follower – all these are the characteristic, living values that are predominant in the afore mentioned view, These are the values found in what I have called the Männerbund.
p. 195-196

There is no antithesis, but rather identity between spirit and superior civilization on the one hand and the world of war and warriors on the other, according to the general sense I have pointed out.
p. 196

Contrary to what the bourgeois and liberal polemics claim, the warrior idea may not be reduced to materialism, nor is it synonymous with the exaltation of the brutal use of strength and destructive violence. Rather, the calm, conscious, and planned development of the inner being and a code of ethics; love of distance; hierarchy; order; the faculty of subordinating the emotional and individualistic element of one’s self to higher goals and principles, especially in the name of honor and duty – these are the elements of the warrior idea, and they act as the foundations of a specific “style” that has largely been lost.
p. 196-197

The Prussian style did not apply only to the military: by defining itself as “Fredrickianism,” it shaped one of the most austere and aristocratic European military traditions, but also manifested its influence in everything that is service to the State, loyalty, and anti-individualism. This style educated a class of government officials according to principles very different from mere bureaucracy, petty clerical spirit, and the irresponsible and lazy administration of the affairs of the state.
p. 197-198

A warrior tradition and a pure military tradition do not have hatred as the basis of war. The need to fight and even to exterminate another people may be acknowledged, but this does not entail hatred, anger, animosity, and contempt for the enemy. All these feelings, for a true soldier, are degrading; in order to fight he need not be motivated by such lowly feelings, nor be energized by propaganda, smoky rhetoric, and lies. All these things have come into play with the plebeianization of war, since men who were shaped by an aristocratic warrior tradition have been collectively replaced by the “nation in arms,” that is, the masses recruited indiscriminately through a mandatory draft. This happened right at the time when the traditional State began to decline and the national State arose, the latter animated by passions, hatred, and pride. In order to mobilize the masses, it is necessary to intoxicate or deceive them, with the consequence of introducing emotional, ideological, and propaganda factors into the war that have conferred and continue to confer on it a most heinous and deprecable character. Traditional States did not need all this. They did not create a chauvinist pathos and near psychosis in order to mobilize their troops and boost their morale. This was obtained by the pure principle of the imperium and by the reference to principles of loyalty and honor. Clearly defined goals were established for a necessary war, which was waged in a detached manner, hence without any room for hatred and contempt among the combatants.
p. 202-203

First of all, the true traditional spirit acknowledges a superior, metaphysical unity beyond the individual religious traditions, a unity of which they represent various historically conditioned expressions, more or less complete and “orthodox” (hence, a higher standard for “orthodoxy”). Despite the fact that every religious form has the right to claim a certain exclusivity in the area of its pertinence, the idea of this higher unity (although it is an “esoteric” truth – that is, not reserved for the ordinary people, to whom it may be confusing) should be acknowledged by its most qualified representatives.
p. 204-205

The occult war is a battle waged imperceptibly by the forces of global subversion, with means and in circumstances ignored by the current historiography. The notion of occult war belongs to a three-dimensional view of history: this view does not regard as essential the two superficial dimension of time and space (which includes causes, facts, and visible leaders) but rather emphasizes the dimension of depth, or the “subterranean” dimension in which the forces and influences often act in a decisive manner, and which, more often not than not, cannot be reduced to what is merely human, whether at an individual or collective level.
p. 235

To the former [the forces of cosmos] corresponds everything that is form, order, law, spiritual hierarchy, and tradition in the higher sense of the word; to the latter [the forces of chaos] correspond every influence that disintegrates, subverts, degrades, and promotes the predominance of the inferior over the superior, matter over spirit, quantity over quality.
p. 236

It would be a real abandonment to fantasy to suppose that the leaders of the great conflicting powers – the United States, the USSR, and the Red China – receive orders from an international center of Jews and Masons (almost nonexistent in China), and act accordingly in view of the same goal.
p. 243

There are actually no civilized peoples or nations composed of pure individuals belonging to the same single race. All peoples are composed of more or less stable racial mixtures. We go from the theoretical domain to the practical one, or to “active racism,” whenever we take a position before the racial components of a given nation, refusing to acknowledge to all of them the same value, the same dignity, and the same right to impart the tone and form to the whole. At that point a choice, an election, and a decision are necessary. One of the components must be given preeminence, by referring to the typical values and the human ideals that correspond to it.
p. 257

In the political domain we need to take a stand against the myth expressed in the formula: “There is power in numbers.” Attempting to base an imperialistic policy on a demographic campaign was one of the serious mistakes of the Fascist ideology that must be denounced without hesitation. The power of numbers is the power of the mere brute masses; this power is in itself very relative, because even herds need to be guided. Every true empire is born from a race of conquerors who conquered lands and peoples, not because they suffered from overpopulation or did not have “a place in the sun,” but on the basis of a higher calling and qualification, which allowed them to rule as a minority in foreign lands.
p. 267-268

The fact is that the inferior races and the lower social strata are the most prolific ones. Thus, we can say that while the number of superior, more differentiated elements grows in arithmetic proportion, the number of inferior elements grows in geometric proportion, the result being a fatal involution of the human race.
p. 268

As far as a revolutionary-conservative movement is concerned, there is a need for men who are free from these bourgeois feelings. These men, by adopting an attitude of militant and absolute commitment, should be ready for anything and almost feel that creating a family is a “betrayal”; these men should live sine impedimentis, without any ties or limits to their freedom.
p. 271

When talking about the great majority of our contemporaries, it is absolutely irresponsible, considering the collective consequences that result from it, to beget other beings who will repeat the same inconsistency, the same vacuity of a life lacking any real meaning; in other words, it is absolutely irresponsible to feed the threatening avalanche of the formless world of quantity only because one is passive toward the natural part of himself and toward the most primitive sexual urge, or because one is enslaved to prejudice.
p. 272

In order to head toward a united Europe, the first step should consist of a concerted exit of all European nations from the United Nations, which is an illegitimate, promiscuous, and hypocritical association. Another obvious imperative should be to become emancipated in every aspect and in equal measure from both the United States and the USSR. However, this would require a very subtle and prudent political art, for which today’s politicians are hardly qualified.
p. 275

In a united Europe, fatherlands and nations may exist (ethnic communities have been partially respected even in the totalitarian Soviet Union). What should be excluded is nationalism (with its monstrous appendix, namely imperialism) and chauvinism – in other words, every fanatical absolutization of a particular unit.
p. 276

The scheme of an empire in a true and organic sense (which must clearly be distinguished from every imperialism, a phenomenon that should be regarded as a deplorable extension of nationalism) was previously displayed in the European medieval world, which safeguarded the principles of both unity and multiplicity.
p. 277

It is possible to enclose that which is “modern” in a well-controlled material and “physical” domain, on the plane of mere means, and to superimpose upon it a higher order adequately upheld, in which revolutionary-conservative values are given unconditional acknowledgement.
p. 282

[F]ascism and National Socialism were movements and regimes in which different and even contrasting tendencies coexisted; their development in the right, positive, conservative-revolutionary sense could have occurred only if circumstances had allowed for an adequate, further development, which was stricken down by the war they ignited and by their ensuing defeat.
p. 283