In the Forward to Revolt Against the Modern World, Evola characterizes the “Traditional Method” with two principles, which I schematize below:
| Perspective | Principle | |
|---|---|---|
| Ontology | Objective | Correspondence |
| Epistemology | Subjective | Induction |
Ontology
The Principle of Correspondence “ensures an essential and functional correlation between analogous elements, presenting them as simple homologous forms of the appearance of a central and unitary meaning.”
This makes two claims:
- There is a central and unitary meaning
- This meaning may appear differently in different circumstances and different times
That this is true can be seen in the use of languages. For example, “dog” and “perro” look different and sound different. Nevertheless, they both “mean” the same thing. However, for someone who doesn’t know English and Spanish, the two words (“appearances”) appear unrelated. So the denial of this principle implies the absurd conclusion that languages are mutually unintelligible.
In practice, this means that the source of events in the world must be traced back to its corresponding idea. Thus different myths, legends, and symbolic forms from disparate cultures can be shown to be expressions of the same idea. But just as I cannot “prove” that dog=perro to someone ignorant of those languages, neither can Tradition be proven to someone ignorant of spiritual reality.
Epistemology
Principle of Induction is a “discursive approximation of a spiritual intuition, in which what is realized is the integration and the homologous unification of the diverse elements encountered in the same one meaning and in the same one principle.”
Again, this contains two elements:
- Discursive approximation
- Spiritual intuition
Although a metaphysician may express himself in speech or writing, this can never be more than a discursive approximation, since spiritual reality is ultimately ineffable and irreducible to objective language. However, what the metaphysician knows, he knows by direct intuition. So, in the case of myths, legends and other symbolic forms, one “realizes” that they encompass a unitary meaning by a sort of clairvoyance or spiritual “seeing”.
Revolt of the Spirit
Via this “traditional method”, Evola will portray the world of Tradition as a unity and a universal type. Specifically, this means that the world of Tradition has manifested in various forms and can still manifest in a different form. The man of Tradition does not blindly desire to repeat the past — which “past”, since the universal type has manifested in different forms in the past.
Furthermore, Evola will show that the idea or type of Tradition is “capable of creating points of reference and of evaluation different from the ones to which the majority of the people in the West have passively and semiconsciously become accustomed”. Specifically, this the idea that everything is “text”, can be written down and debated endlessly — a process that does not result in understanding but only aporia. This is the viewpoint of the modernists and those who think like them.
Only by understanding the sense of the world of Tradition, only by intuiting the spiritual reality behind the world of appearances, then
this sense can also lead to the establishment of the foundations for an eventual revolt (not a polemical, but real and positive one) of the spirit against the modern world.
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This is another one of your excellent and helpful explications. If I may make a contribution: a couple years ago I found a passage in one of the few books on Spengler in English, by H. Stuart Hughes, where it seemed like he was actually giving a good explication of Guenon’s metaphysical [vs. systematic philosophy] method. I think it could apply to Evola’s method as well:
QUOTE:
Spengler rejected the whole idea of logical analysis. Such “systematic” practices apply only in the natural sciences. To penetrate below the surface of history, to understand at least partially the mysterious substructure of the past, a new method — that of “physiognomic tact” — is required.
This new method, “which few people can really master,” means “instinctively to see through the movement of events. It is what unites the born statesman and the true historian, despite all opposition between theory and practice.” [It takes from Goethe and Nietzsche] the injunction to “sense” the reality of human events rather than dissect them. In this new orientation, the historian ceases to be a scientist and becomes a poet. He gives up the fruitless quest for systematic understanding. … “The more historically men tried to think, the more they forgot that in this domain they ought not to think.” They failed to observe the most elementary rule of historical investigation : respect for the mystery of human destiny UNQUOTE
So causality/science, destiny/history. Rather than chains of reasoning and “facts” the historian employs his “tact” [really, a kind of Paterian “taste”] to “see” the big picture: how facts are composed into a destiny. Rather than compelling assent, the historian’s words are used to bring about a shared intuition.
I suppose Guenon and Co. would bristle at being lumped in with “poets” but I think the general point is helpful in understanding the “epistemology” of what Guenon is doing: not objective [but empty] fact-gathering but not merely aesthetic and “subjective” either, since metaphysically “seeing” the deeper connection can be “induced” by words and thus “shared”.
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