/lit/ - Literature

>>16805037
here's the guide
desu you could just read the Orientations essay which is here https://files.catbox.moe/z6uo7g.pdf
and then jump straight into Revolt
the sex thing is a misunderstanding
Evola is not pro-rape or something like the Wikipedia redditor jannies would have you believe

>>16805054
one thing that is missing from this guide is that Evola explicitly condemns his work Pagan Imperialism in his essay Against the Neopagans

http://www.amerika.org/texts/against-the-neo-pagans-julius-evola/

>>16805054
>you have to read hermeticism before reading revolt

Man this list gets dumber every time I see it.

>>16805172
Can you correct it then?

>>16805037
Have you tried getting laid first? Getting laid turned me on to serious philosophers like Quine and Brandon.

>>16805313
>Quine and Brandon.
who?

>>16805313
T. stemcell who never got laid

>>16805413
Quine and Brandom are both philosophers of language. Brandom's more interesting in attempting to reconcile German Idealism with American pragmatism. Read "Making it Was Explicit" and listen to his lecture "The Hermeneutics of Magnanimity". If you want some cultural criticism from the 20th century, read Spengler, Borchardt (schöpferische Restauration) and Mann (Betrachtungen eines Unpolitischen). Evola is a putt-putt golf course, monocle-donning dwarf compared to the latter three.

>>16805037
Fuck everything everyone in this thread has said.

Read the BIG THREE IN ORDER:

1) Revolt Against The Modern world
2) Men Among The Ruins
3) Ride The Tiger

If you're from a /pol/ background you can swap 1 and 2, it might work better because it starts with modern politics and the symptoms of the age post WWII.

Evola DOES NOT NEED supplemental readings, and his own supplements are tedious and highly intellectual. For someone interested starting by learning his philosophy directly the other books obscure the goal and waste lots of time.

>>16805037
Read Guénon first.

>>16805037
men among ruins
Then whatever you want

>>16805218
Will do. I'll upload it to the official /lit/ database from which the /lit/ news network will fatline it to the /lit/ colonies on Armaghast to begin The Evola Process

>>16805054
Don't use this guide, it's bad.
>>16805064
No he doesn't, he never condemned any of his own work. Pagan Imperialism =/= neopaganism. With neopaganism he means wiccans and the sort. He never denounced his own (actual) pagan leanings.
>>16805037
I always recommend to read Metaphysics of War first, it touched upon many of the aspects of Revolt but also of his other writings, but is a lot shorter and is one of his more accessible books.

>>16805037
>Dat cockhungry stare
You just know that evola appreciated the male figure a lot. Literally made for BWC

>>16806881
anon, stop projecting your sex fantasies on Evola, that's not the tiger he wanted to ride.

>>16806903
How can you read some of his works and not come to this conclusion. Dude literally craves white dick

>>16807115
>anon, stop projecting your sex fantasies on Evola, that's not the tiger he wanted to ride.

It really does not matter. I’ve read most of his books, even the more obscure ones that are hard to find copies of or only exist in Italian and the hard bits of information that have been scrounged together about his life and writings. He is definitely one of the most misunderstood authors of the 20th century and he is misunderstood largely because of his political affiliations, or assumed political affiliations, but he’s also misunderstood because his writing spans such a broad array of categories and inspirations. He’s often labeled a “philosopher” and for sure he wrote political philosophy and he also had a phase as a sort of idealist philosopher (Introduction to Magical Idealism and Phenomenology of the Absolute Individual come to mind) in truth he was more “author” or “poet” a la Nietzsche and did a lot of studies in Comparative Mythology and Religion. To make matters worse, this is a guy who didn’t like writing about his own personal background even though it gives tremendous context to the things he’s writing about and a guy who wrote quite a lot of information in his letters, columns, publications, etc. that are also valuable but he deliberately excluded from his books. You can find them if you scour the internet but still, you’ll end up synthesizing a whole lot of stuff from all over the place. My advice is to basically just start with The Path of Cinnabar as a default since it’s the closest thing to a biography he has (even though I still think it’s totally inadequate for the reasons I mentioned) or just pick one of his sort of focuses (politics, idealism, mythology) and just start reading. If you end up interested, that interest will take you where you need to go.

>>16806237
He did. He expressed regret over publishing that book and considered it a folly of youth. Evola’s paganism or affinities with paganism are rather complicated and they wax and wane throughout his life. By the end of his life, he was a Catholic and regretted that book but has certain ideas on paganism that would be difficult to express here. The more you read of him, the more you realize he was always a Catholic actually.

>white dick on medi prostate

>>16805627
>Evola DOES NOT NEED supplemental readings, and his own supplements are tedious and highly intellectual.
The guy really was shockingly well read and studied. Sometimes when I read early 20th century authors there’s a degree of intellectual and literary depth that is just mind blowing but this guy really takes it to another level the more you dig at his work. It’s funny because there’s definitely been an attempt to reduce his writing to sort of meme-tier fantasy but he definitely was anything but.

>>16805313
>serious philosophers like Quine and Brandon
Predictable comment and how quick you are to attack this author is telling.

>>16807557
>He expressed regret over publishing that book and considered it a folly of youth
No, wrong. His regret over publishing the book was in the aggressive style it was written in, and the years of trouble it got him into with the Pope and the church. If you put it next to Revolt, it is essentially no different in its metaphysics.
>By the end of his life, he was a Catholic
Incorrect, this is an urban myth but no proof exists this happened.
>The more you read of him, the more you realize he was always a Catholic actually.
I think that's you projecting your fantasy into his writing. He was always a cultural catholic, but not spiritually. Not even at the end of his life.

>>16807575
When I first read him (for shits and giggles, I thought he was a meme) I was amazed by how well-read and knowledgeable he was, even though I might disagree with some aspects what he wrote about. That was quite the shock actually, he is very misrepresented by his detractors.

>>16807671
I’ve read quite a lot of Evola including his letters, columns, etc. and I’m pretty confident in what I just said. His paganism was philosophical and he was assumed into his Catholicism as he approached the end of his life, especially after his 40s.

>>16807741
It was assumed*

>>16807741
No, you haven't. Start with Ride the Tiger. Ignore those old Ironmarch reading guides, Ride the Tiger is what you want.

>>16807741
I've also read a lot of Evola including lesser know work and I'm also pretty confident in what I just said. So now what? Since you asserted it, it's up to you to provide citations for those claims, I haven't read all of his work of course so I could be wrong but I doubt it. He revised most of his works in the last few years of his life and they are still very much more pagan than christian.

>>16807760
>>16807777

I’ve read almost all of his books in their original Italian even and I’ve read many of his inspirations and citations. I don’t approach him through a political lens and I never have. That is, in my opinion, the single worst way to approach his work. I still stand by what I said. His “paganism” was his philosophy in the sense that he had inclinations for Neoplatonic traditions. He was a Catholic, if an admittedly apprehensive and rather confused one because he felt that Catholicism had essentially killed off those aspects for which he felt to be the most essential and least corrupted. He believed that Catholicism in its essence was borne of the sort of Roman “paganism” that he subscribed to but it went wrong somewhere and this metaphysical view was rooted out or lost. By his late 40s, he was still searching for a “Tradition” meaning he hadn’t sought further initiation into the Catholic tradition up to that point, but his system of belief was very much the sort of Neoplatonic-Roman-Christian tradition that ran through the early Catholic Church and he only became more unwavering in this belief as he approached his old age. After this stage of life, he came around more to the Catholic tradition and whatever remained of that thing with which he was so focused on. To the degree that he was a “pagan” he was simply a pagan philosopher along the lines of Plato or Plotinus and appreciator of Roman metaphysics, which he nonetheless identified in the early Catholic Church and not in much of the pagan world. Whatever affinities he had for “paganism” as we understand it today, he totally rejected and never turned away from that. See, the problem is the tendency to try to ascribe a system of worship to Evola but his thought is fundamentally that of an esoterist, meaning he didn’t subscribe to a system of worship. He subscribed to a set of metaphysical principles. The biggest disservice he ever did to his readers is call himself a “Catholic Pagan”. In truth he is both Catholic and Pagan and neither Catholic or Pagan. What that means exactly is up to reader to discover and not a topic worthy of discussion here but to imply that he was a “pagan” is nothing more than a misunderstanding. You can choose to take my word for it or not or perhaps you could read more yourself and decide yourself.

>>16805054
What was used to make this?

>>16807830
I agree with some points of your more nuanced exposition here, such as that
>he is both Catholic and Pagan and neither Catholic or Pagan
But I disagree that he grew closer to catholicism toward the end of his life, again, I would love for you to provide citations of that, since the final revisions of his major works do not seem to indicate that.
I also do not think his paganism was purely philosophic since he clearly, at the end of his life, still ascribed to the cyclical pagan metaphysical worldview which is essentially incompatible with catholicism. I'm not saying he was a neo-pagan, which he himself wrote against. But he was, spiritually, a Roman. I think he found some form of comfort in catholicism since it was his cultural tradition, and he admired aspects of catholicism, those which are part of the perennial tradition, but to say he became a catholic or was always a catholic is stretching it by miles.

>>16807906
>I would love for you to provide citations of that, since the final revisions of his major works do not seem to indicate that.
I don’t have them on-hand but his letters, specifically Guenon, are telling. You can potentially find them online.

It’s hard to even engage with the rest of what you wrote here because it’s missing layers of context that I just can’t even add here because there’s so much depth and nuance. He was not a pagan. He was a Catholic. He was never not a Catholic. Yet, he never wholeheartedly embraced Catholicism and was always, at best, apprehensive. The more you read of his writings, all of his writings, that only becomes clearer provided you have an adequate understanding of philosophy, Catholic theology, church history, philosophical history, and history at large. This is another problem with his writing is that it relies on such an in-depth background of information to be complete in its context that people who approach just a few of his books but don’t have the requisite background don’t get the full picture. His “paganism” is probably the single biggest example of this. Moreover, this board, frankly, is just not the appropriate place to discuss such things. There are letters, columns (he wrote many for Italian theological societies) which exist out there in the world that give context to this but unfortunately, he never really provided the full context himself. He didn’t even like talking about himself but if you know about his experiences in the Alps and the spiritual culture of that area at that time, even that is very important in some respects. I just can’t give you the sort of depth of information it seems like you would need here, but you don’t have to take my word for it. If he interests you, you should just read as much as you can and try to synthesize whatever you can from what’s available scattered online and form your own opinion. It would help if you know Italian. As for me, I really reject the sort of paganism that a lot of people ascribe to him and I’m pretty resolute in that. I can’t offer you much else.

This boards obsession with guides/charts and reading orders/required reading before xy is really fucking crazy.

>>16808011
While I agree with many of your reservations and the fact that one needs to be very broadly read in order to understand Evola to the fullest, and I appreciate your views which are more well-thought out than those of many here, I still strongly disagree with your conclusion, after having read the vast majority of his works and many writings about him. He had obvious sympathies for aspects of catholicism, but he never stopped being a pagan, and yes he was one in the true sense, even if many people misinterpret what he meant and want to think he is an occultist or neo-pagan. If you're not going to offer more than "just trust me, bro", I can't do much with that I'm afraid.

>>16808159
>If you're not going to offer more than "just trust me, bro", I can't do much with that I'm afraid.
It’s not that I’m not going to. I simply can’t nor is this the right place for it. What you’re asking for is a depth and breadth of knowledge that I just simply can’t convey well enough here lol. If you want a good blog which has collected a lot of his writings from sources other his books and translated them into English - https://www.gornahoor.net/.. Otherwise, I would recommend delving into early Christian apologetics and church history. In the immediate, we’ll have to agree to disagree.

>>16805506
Agree on Evola but Brandom sounds like a snorefest

>>16805037
La parole obscure du paysage intérieur
Arte astratta
Saggi sull'idealismo magico
Teoria del individuo assoluta

>>16808470
Ah, yes I'm familiar with that website and disagree heartily with some of their interpretations of Evola, although I appreciate their making more of his work available. Now that I understand your background, let's agree to disagree indeed.

>>16808600
That’s not my background. I have no affiliation with that site. I just see that they have some of his letters and journals translated to English. Just FYI.

>>16805054
Found this guide in my chart files