Opposed to the Evola’s view is philosophical realism, which Evola next tries to refute. Things have two aspects in regard to the individual, and these can be verified in one’s own consciousness:

1. A thing is represented in consciousness
2. The I is impotent in the face of these representations

Up to here, the magical idealist and the realist agree; they disagree about the nature of the impotency.

• Evola asserts that things represent an imperfect or self-limiting activity. Again, this is privation, a quality the “I” should have by nature, but lacks, either because of an imperfection or a self-limitation. So, in conformity with Aristotle and Aquinas, this privation is non-being.
• The realist cannot accept an imperfect or self-limiting activity; instead, he assumes a “real” cause, external to the I, to account for this impotency.

• Evola asserts that the universal or absolute is what comes first.
• The realist believes that the particular things are what comes first.

• Evola claims that imperfection can be overcome by a strengthening of the Will.
• The realist believes that that imperfection can be overcome by some process of evolution or development.

In refuting realism, Evola will hold that

• The I can be directly experienced as energy
• There is no need to postulate something other than the I to account for limitations

Bear in mind that Evola is here concerned with the problem of certainty: that is, how do I know — that is directly — with certainty. For this, Evola only allows in evidence what happens in consciousness, my self-awareness or sense of “I”, and, derivatively, what I have power over and can control.

Therefore, a “thing” is whatever appears in my consciousness as “representation”. The realist, on the other hand, speculates that there is something that accounts for that appearance and thus causes it in my consciousness. Since what I can know with certainty is whatever is in my own consciousness, the theory of the realist must necessarily be speculative.

The objection of the realist is that you have no experience of directly causing or bringing about the appearances of the world. To counter this, Evola returns to the distinction between spontaneity and will that was made in the discussion of the stages. The appearance of the world is “spontaneous”, in the sense that it arises of necessity without the full consent of my will. So whatever resists my will is not something that has an independent existence — as the realist would claim — but rather it represents a “privation”, something that lacks being, and merely indicates an insufficiency on my part.

In Evola’s own words:

The realist, referring exactly to the point of real individuality, thus puts forward an appeal that is entirely legitimate. He puts us in front of a common occurrence of experience, a storm for example, and asks us if we can say that is was we who “posited it”. While here the idealist would respond in the affirmative — because as was said, for him “to posit” means simply to represent with “free necessity”. We instead, referring to a positing that the principle of control and unconditioned freedom requires, would respond: “That, actually, is not posited by the I.” Then the realist immediately says: “Since that is not posited by the I, there must be ‘something else’ that posits it” — and infers a real or existent cause in itself of the representations, such as God, matter, the noumenon, etc. Instead, here lies the error and the point on which we are permitted to demand the full attention of the reader.

To say that I, as I, that is, as sufficient and free principle, cannot recognize myself as unconditioned cause of the representations, does not at all mean say that these representations are caused by “something else” and have some real or existent things in themselves as substrate, but means simply that I am insufficient for a part of my activity, which is still spontaneity, that such a part is not yet MORALIZED, that the I as freedom suffers a PRIVATION in it.

Everything I cannot act on, everything that resists my will, is only a privation of this very will, something negative, not a being, but a non-being. Hence the realist must be rejected out of hand: he in his reference to “something else” — God, noumenon, substance, etc. — makes a being out of non-being, calls real something that, being only a privation of my power, being nothing other than a negation and a void in the unmultipliable body of my activity, should instead, by right, be called unreal. Thus he confirms this very privation — as he eschews it: instead of the act that, by controlling and possessing them, annuls things and redeems the privation, he substitutes the act that recognizes them and superstitiously gives them being and an autonomous reality. To the former act, he instead applies the criterion of certainty of the third stage: that is, he demands that the free and naked I of the individual can genuinely assert the principle of absolute idealism, and however say: “In truth, I myself am the cause and the Lord of this world, in which I live”. But when will it be possible to assert that? Obviously when the individual has redeemed the dark passion of the world in a body of freedom, when the form according to which he lives has let the representative activity (that is, that activity through which the spectacle of the universe is formed in him) pass from spontaneity — from the harmony of the possible and real – to bare, unconditioned causality, that is to: potent will.

Evola concluded his response to the realist with this claim:

Obviously when the individual has redeemed the dark passion of the world in a body of freedom, when the form according to which he lives has let the representative activity (that is, that activity through which the spectacle of the universe is formed in him) pass from spontaneity — from the harmony of the possible and real — to bare, unconditioned causality, that is to: powerful Will.

At this point, philosophical arguments fall short and ultimately proof can only come from the development of one’s will. Specifically, the appearances, representations, or “things” in the world do not arise spontaneously, but rather arise in conformity to one’s will. In the text, Evola adds the following footnote describing the transformation from philosophical discussion to self-realization. I think it safe to conclude that this is not merely an abstract claim but rather represents Evola’s actual experience.

As this transformation, which we claim is not a myth but a real possibility, can then practically be completed, is a problem we treated — at least within the limits in which it is possible to treat it publicly and generally — elsewhere [see Doctrine of Awakening, Yoga of Power], and so it is not found here. We can only say that it is a task which neither culture, nor devotion, nor philosophy, nor art, nor morality, nor anything other than what men call “spirituality”, can make the least contribution. As to philosophy, its limit is magical idealism, in which it ends up by recognizing its own insufficiency and postulating the realization of power as that by which most problems can find their only absolute solution.