"The Race of the Fleeing Man"
Julius Evola on modern man's flight from tradition, his embrace of the material, and the need for an aristocratic value system to arrest this cultural decay.
It will no doubt surprise, if not outright scandalize, many of my long-term readers to learn that, until recently, I was both shamefully and inexplicably under-acquainted with the works of Julius Evola. Yes, I’d read (or rather, attempted to read) his oft-quoted masterwork Revolt Against the Modern World, drawn as much to the apocalyptic flair of its title as H.T. Hansen’s commendably even-handed foreword, and yet wading through its dense, frequently archaic prose, I could find little to account for the author’s sudden resurgence among much of the contemporary dissident right.
Vaguely disappointed, more in myself than the book, I set it aside, vowing a more committed attempt at some indeterminate point in the future. Predictably, that point is still yet to arrive. Indeed, I would likely remain uninitiated in Evola’s philosophy, an atavistic synthesis of Eastern-inspired mysticism and radical traditionalism, had I not noticed, upon my latest visit to my local bookstore, a copy of one of his lesser-known publications, The Bow and the Club, filed questionably away in the Religion and Spirituality section. Intrigued by its elegant-yet-severe cover (and still humbled by my previous abandonment) I had already resolved to see this one through to the glossary by the time I handed it to the pointedly lesbianic clerk—a resolve only strengthened by her look of ill-concealed condemnation as she returned my change alongside a complimentary bookmark.
This, mercifully, was to prove a far more digestible affair. A collection of short, impactful essays written toward the end of the author’s life, The Bow and the Club is, if not exactly accessible, then certainly conducive to being picked up and leafed through at random, with a helpful glossary for those unfamiliar with Evolian terminology. One piece in particular has stuck with me. A withering rebuke of both democracies and their inhabitants, The Race of the Fleeing Man sees the Italian thinker trace a grim continuum between the collapse of the State’s spiritual authority and the moral disintegration of society at large. This, he contends, has spawned a new breed of human, one characterized by cowardice, volatility, and the abject inability to pursue, much less embody, the aristocratic virtues of what he called L’Uomo Differenziato—The Differentiated Man.
As seems almost superfluous to say, this is far from philosophical abstraction. As the West sinks further into its own enslavement, lacking, it would appear, the requisite conviction to claw its way out, Evola’s diagnosis feels less like doom-laden theorizing and more like an eloquent but unvarnished articulation of the age we are now enduring. What follows is his essay printed in full (albeit an earlier translation to avoid copyright entanglements). Written over half a century ago, it reads today as neither paranoia nor prophecy, but as a mirror held up to our own crumbling civilization, reflecting with cold lucidity the spiritual erosion and moral malaise seeping through the cracks in our recently erected facade of “progress.”
—Carson McAuley
Begin:
Since ancient times, an analogy has been recognized between the human being and that greater organism that is the State. The traditional conception of the State—an organic and articulated conception—has always reflected the same natural hierarchy of faculties proper to a complete human being, in whom the purely physical and somatic elements are governed by vital forces; these, in turn, obey the life of the soul and of character, while at the summit stands the spiritual and intellectual principle, what the Stoics called the inner sovereign, the hegemonikon.1
If one keeps these ideas in mind, democracy clearly presents itself as a regressive phenomenon, as a system in which every normal relationship is inverted. The hegemonikon is nonexistent. Determination emerges from below. A true center is lacking. This revocable pseudo-authority, at the service of all that is base—that is to say, the purely material, “social,” economic, and quantitative aspect of a people—corresponds, according to the given analogy, to a situation which, in the case of an individual being, would be that of a mind and a spiritual principle existing, and having their reason for being solely to satiate the appetites of the body, to be subordinate to them.
Therefore, the advent of democracy represents something far more serious than what it might seem from a merely political point of view—that is, as the error and foolish infatuation of a society that is digging its own grave. Indeed, it is not too bold to affirm that the “democratic” climate is such that, in the long run, it cannot fail to exert a regressive influence on man’s very personality, and even in “existential” terms—precisely due to the correspondences mentioned earlier between the self as a small organism and the State as a large organism.
Such an idea can be confirmed if one examines various aspects of modern life. Plato said that those who do not have a master within themselves ought at least to have one outside themselves. Well, what has been heralded as the “liberation” of one people or another—brought into line, sometimes even with violence (as after the World War2), with “democratic progress” by eliminating every principle of sovereignty and true authority and every order from above—corresponds today, in a considerable segment of society, to a “liberation” which constitutes the elimination of every internal “form,” of every nobility, of every kind of uprightness: in other words, the decline or absence of that central power which I have already referred to by the evocative classical term hegemonikon. This applies not only in purely ethical terms, but also in the sphere of the most common behaviors, of personal psychology, and of existential structure. The consequence is an ever-growing population of unstable, unmoored individuals—what may aptly be called the race of the fleeing man.3 It is a race that deserves to be more precisely studied than is here possible, even by resorting to scientific and experimental methods.
The man belonging to such a race is not only intolerant of every internal discipline, not only abhors facing himself, but is also incapable of any serious commitment, of following a precise line, of demonstrating integrity. In part, he does not want to; in part, he cannot. In fact, it is interesting to note that such instability does not always derive from unscrupulous self-interest, nor does it necessarily emanate from someone who says: “These are not times in which one can afford the luxury of having a character.” No. Often, such behavior is most detrimental to those concerned. It is also significant that the disordered type we speak of is increasingly emerging from countries where race and tradition offer the least suitable ground for it (we are chiefly referring to Central Europe and the Nordic countries, and to a certain extent to England itself), as well as among classes such as the aristocracy and artisans, whose members, until recently, still retained a certain inner form.
In the same disintegrative vein is the decline of every “professional honor,” an honor that represented a precious expression, in the practical realm, of moral conscience and even a certain nobility. The pleasure of producing according to one’s art, giving the best of oneself with commitment and honesty, gives way to the lowest self-interest that does not shrink from adulteration and deception. A particularly telling example is food fraud, now more blatant and widespread than ever, in which one finds not only often criminal irresponsibility but also moral obliquity, an internal decline, the disappearance of that sense of honor that in other times was exhibited by even the humblest guilds. (In a given sector, parallel to industrialization, we witness the proletarianization and the social blackmail of the so-called “working class,” of those who are no more than simple “sellers of labor.”4)
We have said that the phenomenon does not concern only the moral field. Volatility, evasiveness, cheerful irresponsibility, and casual dishonesty are evident even in the banalities of everyday life. One promises to do something—to write, to call, to take an interest in this or that—and does not do it. One is not punctual. In more serious cases, even memory is not spared: people forget, are distracted, have difficulty concentrating. Specialists have observed, moreover, the diminished memory of new generations, a phenomenon that has been explained with various far-fetched and secondary reasons, whereas the true cause lies in the aforementioned change in the general climate, which seems to lead to a real structural psychic alteration. And if one recalls what Weininger5 insightfully wrote about the relationships between ethics, logic, and memory, about the significance of memory on a higher, not merely psychological level (memory is closely related to the unity of personality, to its resistance to dispersion in time, to the flow of duration; it therefore also has an ethical and ontological value: not for nothing was a particular strengthening of memory part of high ascetic disciplines, such as in Buddhism, for instance), one can grasp the deeper implications of such a phenomenon.
Moreover, lying is inherently part of the style of the fleeing man—often lying gratuitously, without even a real aim, and thus, a specifically “feminine” trait. And if one reproaches a representative of that race for such behavior, he either is surprised, finding it second nature, or feels irked and offended, reacting in a defensive and almost hysterical fashion. Such a man does not want to be “bothered.” In one’s circle of relationships, it is easy to observe this kind of neurosis, if only a bit of attention is paid. One may also note how many people who yesterday were regarded as friends and as men of a certain inner firmness, today, in the aftermath of the war, are wholly unrecognizable.
Of the world of politicians, with all its schemes and corruptions which have always characterized parliamentary democracies, but which today appear in a particularly shameless form, it is not necessary to speak, so obviously has the race of the fleeing man, identical beyond all differences of labels and parties, found his home. One should note, however, that those who profess “right-wing” ideas very often make no exception, because in them such ideas are confined to a separate compartment, lacking any direct contact with or any real consequences upon their existential reality. Rather, let us refer to a particular variety of corruption, specifically within the sexual domain, among the “emancipated” youth, which is more or less in the spirit of the la dolce vita.6 This, too, is traceable to the same root cause: feebleness and inconsistency. It does not correspond to something positively nonconformist, to the affirmation of a higher freedom or a more pronounced personality, but is instead the effect of mere abandonment, fundamental passivity, and a banal lowering of standards. The place where the “inner sovereign” ought to be found—perhaps to oppose the pure law of one’s being against any external law, to any hypocrisy or lie (Stirner, Nietzsche, Ibsen7)—is empty. Life is lived day by day, foolishly. Hence, in some rare moments of self-awareness, disgust and boredom arise.
The lack of authority, of true leaders, on the outside, in the organism of the State—and the lack of an inner framework within the individual: the one thing supports the other, reinforces the other, so much so that perhaps these comprise two distinct aspects of a single phenomenon of our evolved and democratic times.
— Julius Evola
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, who, being a translator himself (and evidently a far more knowledgeable student of its author than I), has compiled several other pieces of his work, all of which are assuredly worthy of your time.The Greek term ἡγεμονικόν (hegemonikon) was used by the Stoics to denote the "ruling faculty" of the soul—the inner principle of reason, will, and judgment. It was believed to reside in the heart and to govern the other parts of the soul and body, analogous to a sovereign in a well-ordered state.
Evola is here referring to the imposition of democratic regimes in the wake of World War II, specifically within Germany and Italy, where Allied authorities dismantled existing power structures in order to establish their own institutions.
“The race of the fleeing man” (la razza dell’uomo che fugge) is Evola’s metaphor for a type of modern man characterized by psychological instability, moral passivity, and the absence of an inner spiritual center. It implies not a biological race, but a degenerative spiritual condition.
The phrase “sellers of labor” echoes Marxist terminology describing the proletariat—those who possess no means of production and thus must sell their labor to survive. Evola uses it pejoratively to critique the commodification of man and the dissolution of traditional vocations rooted in honor and craft.
Otto Weininger (1880–1903), an Austrian philosopher and significant influence on Evola, explored the ethical and metaphysical dimensions of memory, most notably in his 1903 publication, Sex and Character. He posited that memory was essential to the unity of personality and linked it to logic, ethics, and ontological coherence.
“La dolce vita” (Italian for “the sweet life”) became synonymous with a culture of indulgent leisure and moral decadence, particularly in postwar Italy.
These three figures exemplify different visions of personal sovereignty. Max Stirner championed the absolute individual ego, Friedrich Nietzsche the will to power, while Henrik Ibsen dramatized the conflict between self-realization and societal conformity.