In the past two posts we looked at how Hans-Georg Gadamer and Alasdair MacIntyre understood tradition. Gadamer was a philosophical child of Heidegger and one of the leading lights of the hermeneutic school of philosophy, MacIntyre is a Thomist and has been responsible for a revival of virtue ethics in academic philosophy. We are looking to answer the question “what is tradition?”, so to clarify what is meant by the phrases “traditional values”, “traditional society” and the call, now a meme, “return to tradition.” To further ask this question, let us now turn to Julius Evola.
Like Gadamer, Evola does not give a definition of tradition. Rather, Evola describes traditional institutions, attitudes and practices. His magnum opus, Revolt Against the Modern World, begins with the doctrine of two natures1 and is followed by chapters on regality, symbolism, law, the state, the empire, rites of initiation and other institutions, attitudes and practices. Why is there not a chapter titled Tradition, which gives a neat and tidy definition? Gadamer did not give a definition of tradition because one of the central themes in Truth and Method is that understanding is, at its core, conversational. Socrates never gives definitions; he engages in question and answer with his interlocutor so to lead his interlocutor to understanding. Gadamer, and the hermeneutic school as a whole, continues the Socratic tradition and this is why he does not give a definition of tradition. Evola was not part of the hermeneutic school, and thus his reasons for not giving a definition will be different from Gadamer. A possible reason why Evola does not give a definition can be found in Men Among the Ruins,
“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…This force acts through the generations, in continuity of spirit and inspiration, through institutions, laws and social orders that may even display a remarkable variety and diversity.”2
What tradition, if we can say what it is, is a force from above and of a different kind than any force in this realm of becoming. There is thus a type of apophaticism about tradition, where we can speak of the traditional but not of tradition, as certain theologians say that we can speak of God’s power, goodness and providence, but not His essence. Like the sun, we cannot look directly at it but can know it from its rays and heat, and so it is with the essence of God and tradition. For this reason, Evola spends his time describing traditional institutions, attitudes and practices, among these are “the true State, the imperium, the auctoritas, hierarchy, justice, functional classes and the primacy of the political element over the social and economic elements.”3 An analysis of any of the institutions or attitudes just mentioned would stray from the purpose here, so we shall content ourselves with merely listing them.
Notice how different Evola’s conception of tradition is from both Gadamer and MacInyre’s. The first difference is that tradition, for Evola, is something otherworldly and, presumably, eternal, while Gadamer and (especially) MacIntyre both take tradition to be something historical. A second difference is that when Evola speaks of tradition, he is not talking about something common to all traditions, as is the case with Gadamer and MacIntyre, but something rather specific; Gadamer and MacIntyre would refer to what Evola is describing as a tradition, which very well might be true but is, nonetheless, one tradition among many. The Evolian use of the word “tradition” is, from what I can see, the predominate usage in the dissident right.
It would be fruitful to look at one aspect of tradition, as Evola conceives it, to get some understanding of what he means. In the opening of Revolt Against the Modern World, Evola lays out the key distinction between traditional man and modern man:
“As difficult as it may be for our contemporaries to understand this, we must start from the idea that the man of Tradition was aware of the existence of a dimension of being much wider than what our contemporaries experience and call ‘reality’…the worst type of materialism, therefore, is not a matter of opinion or of a ‘theory’, but it consists in the fact that man’s experience no longer extends to nonphysical realities.”4
Traditional man, unlike modern man, does not merely believe that there is a non-physical reality but experiences this reality and upon this reality his life is based. A traditional society, by extension, is one in which the non-physical realities are at the center, again, not merely in belief or in rhetoric, but in experience. That which is traditional is shot through, as it were, with the non-physical, ex. a traditional state is one in which the sovereign is appointed by God and a traditional economy would be one whose principal aim is working out salvation. Thus, to call for “a return to tradition” can only mean a rediscovery of the Divine and a daily experience thereof.
We have looked at three different thinkers and have listened to what they have said about tradition. It is my hope that this exercise has clarified, even if only slightly, what tradition is. Let Gadamer, MacIntyre and Evola be conversation partners with one another, and with you, for in their conversation much is to be gleamed about the nature of tradition.
"According to this doctrine there is a physical order of things and a metaphysical one; there is a mortal nature and an immortal one; there is the superior realm of being and the inferior realm of becoming.” Evola, Julius. Translated by Guido Stucco. Revolt Against the Modern World. Inner Traditions International. Rochester, Vermont. 3
Evola, Julius. Translated by Guido Stucco. Men Among the Ruins. Inner Traditions International. Rocherster, Vermont. 2002. 115
Evola, Julius. Men Among the Ruins. Inner Traditions. 116
Evola, Julius. Revolt Against the Modern World. Inner Traditions. 3-4