Revolt Against the Modern World by Julius Evola

In what many consider to be his masterwork, Evola contrasts the characteristics of the modern world with those of traditional societies, from politics and institutions to views on life and death.

With unflinching gaze and uncompromising intensity Julius Evola analyzes the spiritual and cultural malaise at the heart of Western civilization and all that passes for progress in the modern world. As a gadfly, Evola spares no one and nothing in his survey of what we have lost and where we are headed. At turns prophetic and provocative, Revolt against the Modern World outlines a profound metaphysics of history and demonstrates how and why we have lost contact with the transcendent dimension of being.

The revolt advocated by Evola does not resemble the familiar protests of either liberals or conservatives. His criticisms are not limited to exposing the mindless nature of consumerism, the march of progress, the rise of technocracy, or the dominance of unalloyed individualism, although these and other subjects come under his scrutiny. Rather, he attempts to trace in space and time the remote causes and processes that have exercised corrosive influence on what he considers to be the higher values, ideals, beliefs, and codes of conduct-the world of Tradition-that are at the foundation of Western civilization and described in the myths and sacred literature of the Indo‑Europeans. Agreeing with the Hindu philosophers that history is the movement of huge cycles and that we are now in the Kali Yuga, the age of dissolution and decadence, Evola finds revolt to be the only logical response for those who oppose the materialism and ritualized meaninglessness of life in the twentieth century.

Through a sweeping study of the structures, myths, beliefs, and spiritual traditions of the major Western civilizations, the author compares the characteristics of the modern world with those of traditional societies. The domains explored include politics, law, the rise and fall of empires, the history of the Church, the doctrine of the two natures, life and death, social institutions and the caste system, the limits of racial theories, capitalism and communism, relations between the sexes, and the meaning of warrior-hood. At every turn Evola challenges the reader’s most cherished assumptions about fundamental aspects of modern life.

Table of Contents:

Translator's Preface
Foreword
Part One - The World of Tradition
1. The Beginning
2. Regality
3. Polar Symbolism; the Lord of Peace and Justice
4. The Law, the State, the Empire
5. The Mystery of the Rite
6. On the Primordial Nature of the Patriciate
7. Spiritual Virility
8. The Two Paths in the Afterlife
9. Life and Death of Civilizations
10. Initiation and Consecration
11. On the Hierarchical Relationship Between Royalty and Priesthood
12. Universality and Centralism
13. The Soul of Chivalry
14. The Doctrine of the Castes
15. Professional Associations and the Arts; Slavery
16. Bipartition of the Traditional Spirit; Asceticism
17. The Greater and the Lesser Holy War
18. Games and Victory
19. Space, Time, the Earth
20. Man and Woman
21. The Decline of Superior Races
Part Two - Genesis and Face of the Modern World
Introduction
22. The Doctrine of the Four Ages
23. The Golden Age
24. The Pole and the Hyperborean Region
25. The Northern-Atlantic Cycle
26. North and South
27. The Civilization of the Mother
28. The Cycles of Decadence and the Heroic Cycle
29. Tradition and Antitradition
30. The Heroic-Uranian Western Cycle
31. Syncope of the Western Tradition
32. The Revival of the Empire and the Ghibelline Middle Ages
33. Decline of the Medieval World and the birth of Nations
34. Unrealism and Individualism
35. The Regression of the Castes
36. Nationalism and Collectivism
37. The End of the Cycle
Conclusion
Appendix: On The Dark Age
Index

Julius Evola (1898-1974), was one of the leading authorities on the world's esoteric traditions, and has only recently become known to more than a handful of English-speaking readers. He was a controversial philosopher and critic of modern Western civilization, and wrote widely on Eastern religions, alchemy, hermeticism, sexuality, politics, ancient traditions, and mythology.