Product Description

Julius Evola’s final major work, which examines the prototype of the human being who can give absolute meaning to his or her life in a world of dissolution

• Presents a powerful criticism of the idols, structures, theories, and illusions of our modern age

• Reveals how to transform destructive processes into inner liberation

The organizations and institutions that, in a traditional civilization and society, would have allowed an individual to realize himself completely, to defend the principal values he recognizes as his own, and to structure his life in a clear and unambiguous way, no longer exist in the contemporary world. Everything that has come to predominate in the modern world is the direct antithesis of the world of Tradition, in which a society is ruled by principles that transcend the merely human and transitory.

Ride the Tiger presents an implacable criticism of the idols, structures, theories, and illusions of our dissolute age examined in the light of the inner teachings of indestructible Tradition. Evola identifies the type of human capable of “riding the tiger,” who may transform destructive processes into inner liberation. He offers hope for those who wish to reembrace Tradition.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #531718 in Books
• Published on: 2003-09-15
• Released on: 2003-09-08
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 256 pages

Mircea Eliade, author of The Sacred and the Profane
Evola is one of the most interesting minds of the [world] war generation.

Review
“Evola is one of the most interesting minds of the [world] war generation.”
(Mircea Eliade, author of The Sacred and the Profane )

"One of the most difficult and ambiguous figures in modern esotericism."
(

Richard Smoley, in Parabola

)

"Evola looks beyond man-made systems to the eternal principles in creation and human society. The truth, as he sees it, is so totally at odds with the present way of thinking that is shocks the modern mind."
( John Mitchell, author of The New View Over Atlantis )

"It is one of Evola's greatest merits that he combines a prodigious wealth of erudite detail with the gift of isolating from their local conditioning ideas or disciplines that are of value to us."
(Marguerite Yourcenar, author of Memoirs of Hadrian )

"Evola rises above the usual dichotomies of left and right, liberal and conservative, challenging us to reconnect our lives and our institutions to the timeless spiritual standard that guided our ancestors."
(Glenn A. Magee, author of Hegel and the Hermetic Tradition )

"Ride the Tiger offers a practical view of how to be truly awakened in a dark age."
(Robert Burns, New Dawn, Sept-Oct 2005 )

". . . this is an important work for an intellectual history of the twentieth century. . ." (The Journal of Esoterica, July 2006 )

“A dazzling and interesting, but very dangerous author . . .”
(Hermann Hesse, author of Siddhartha )

From the Back Cover
WESTERN SPIRITUALITY / HERMETICISM

"It is one of Evola's greatest merits that he combines a prodigious wealth of erudite detail with the gift of isolating from their local conditioning ideas or disciplines that are of value to us."
--Marguerite Yourcenar, author of Memoirs of Hadrian

"Evola rises above the usual dichotomies of left and right, liberal and conservative, challenging us to reconnect our lives and our institutions to the timeless spiritual standard that guided our ancestors."
--Glenn A. Magee, author of Hegel and the Hermetic Tradition

The organizations and institutions that, in a traditional civilization and society, would have allowed an individual to realize himself completely, to defend the principal values he recognizes as his own, and to structure his life in a clear and unambiguous way, no longer exist in the contemporary world. Everything that has come to predominate in the modern world is the direct antithesis of the world of Tradition, in which a society is ruled by principles that transcend the merely human and transitory.

Ride the Tiger presents an implacable criticism of the idols, structures, theories, and illusions of our dissolute age examined in the light of the inner teachings of indestructible Tradition. Evola identifies the type of human capable of “riding the tiger”--an individual who may transform destructive processes into inner liberation--and, in so doing, offers hope for those who wish to reembrace Tradition.

JULIUS EVOLA (1898-1974) was one of the leading authorities on the world’s esoteric traditions and wrote extensively on ancient traditions and hermeticism. Among his other works published by Inner Traditions are Men Among the Ruins, Introduction to Magic, The Mystery of the Grail, The Hermetic Tradition, and Eros and the Mysteries of Love.

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Customer Reviews

Nice translation. Great ideas, but superficial argumentation.
Evola's "Ride the Tiger" is fairly light reading for someone versed in philosophy. I laugh every time I see the comment on the back of the book that says "One of the most difficult and ambiguous figures in modern esotericism". If anything, the book is somewhat superficial and hardly esoteric at all. However, it has a rather interesting thesis that sets its author's way of thinking at odds with both capitalism and marxism. In presenting a third way in personal life, it is rather interesting. Unfortunately, it has some problems.

Evola's argumentation is often bad i.e.: his rampant Kali Yuga "The end is near!" eschatological stance and he often misinterprets texts or takes commnents by German philosophers i.e.: Nietszche out of context to suit his general argument. He often tables difficult arguments until later in the book and never sufficiently addresses them. To his credit, he does tend to use Hegel in a relevant way, though.

Thankfully, unlike other traditionalists, his arguments tend to be straight forward and seldom resort to religious/occultic or other nonsensical explanations. He has a somewhat diletante-ish (he tends to drop a lot of german and french literary references) though highly engaging style.

Recommended for those with an historical or philosophical interest in philosophical pessism in the 20th century, radical traditionalism, italian fascism, radical populism, third way thinking, or people of a philosophical or theological bent interested in occultic underpinnings of WW2 and how they developed after it. A german philosophical or literary background will be helpful.

If you're interested in other 3rd way ideologies, though, I'd also recommend Chesterton and his texts (and fiction) that deal with distributivism. If you're interested in Pessimism, I'd recommend Spengler's "Decline of the West" and of course, if you haven't read him already, Schopenhauer.

If you're not familiar with prussian/german literature and philosophy and have a mild classical background, you'll probably get lost, very quickly.

The Tiger is Dissolution
Evola's almost reckless advice is for very wise people who have a strong sense of proportion; it is not for weak minded people who want to exhibit power or force. In a nutshell, we are born in modernity, crouched on the back of the Tiger. For Evola modernity is decadence, atomism, mass beliefs, urban myths, propaganda topics, consumerism, social conformity and social fear, essentially fear. This reality faces us with a dilema: or we choose with gallantry individual self-realization and personal growth through Perennial Tradition disciplines made available to us through modern media ( a paradox of our times ) or we dissolve ourselves in an illusory World whose lack of substance and cinicism we wilfully choose not to bother ourselves with.

who is this book for?
I wouldn't exactly call this book a manual. There is no how-to. It's more like a summary of a non-political philosophy of life. If you don't already know something about European philosophy and essentially agree with Evola's worldview, you probably won't get anything out of this book. And even if you can follow parts of it, you may not be able to follow all of it. For example, I agree with Evola's conclusions on music, but I don't understand the rationale for his criticism of jazz--that it relies in the silences (or up-beat, I don't remember exactly). I suspect this has some metaphysical meaning related to his esotericism.

Evola and the translator are talented enough that the book is interesting to read even when it is useless. I agree with Evola on enough points that I intend to keep reading more of his works, looking for some way to adapt his worldview without embracing the occult, in which I have no interest. As Buddhism is becoming "psychologized" through neuroscience, I suspect much of Evola's work can be of interest to post-modern Americans who would have been interested in Albert Jay Nock or Henry Adams in another time. In some ways this is unfortunate because Evola could be a gateway to foolish, dead-end political philosophies like anarchism or neo-fascism.

Who is this book good for? As you can guess from the other reviews, it will appeal to people who see themselves as above the middling crowd, although these are not the right people for the book. The book is meant for people who have a strong intuition that something is wrong with the world that can't be fixed by giving people more money, passing more laws, or voting out our current political regime.