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219-602: Evola was born in Rome . He served as an artillery officer in the First World War . He became a Dada artist but gave up painting in his twenties. He said he considered suicide until he had a revelation while reading a Buddhist text . In the 1920s he delved into the occult ; he wrote on Western esotericism and of Eastern mysticism , developing his doctrine of " magical idealism ". His writings blend various ideas of German idealism , Eastern doctrines , traditionalism and

438-460: A civil war against the Senate and Pompey. After his victory, Caesar established himself as dictator for life . His assassination in 44 BC led to a second Triumvirate among Octavian (Caesar's grandnephew and heir), Mark Antony and Lepidus , and to a final civil war between Octavian and Antony. In 27 BC, Octavian was named Augustus and princeps , founding the principate ,

657-523: A diarchy between the princeps and the senate. Over time, the new monarch came to be known as the imperator (hence emperor ), meaning "commander". During the reign of Nero , two thirds of the city was ruined after the Great Fire of Rome , and the persecution of Christians commenced. Rome's empire reached its greatest expansion in the second century under the Emperor Trajan . Rome

876-467: A senatore or patrizio . In the 12th century, this administration, like other European cities, evolved into the commune , a new form of social organisation controlled by the new wealthy classes. Pope Lucius II fought against the Roman commune, and the struggle was continued by his successor Pope Eugenius III : by this stage, the commune, allied with the aristocracy, was supported by Arnaldo da Brescia ,

1095-468: A series of civil wars between rival claimants to power resulted in the unification of the empire under Constantine the Great in 324. Hereditary succession was restored, but the east–west division was maintained. Constantine undertook a major reform of the bureaucracy, not by changing the structure but by rationalising the competencies of the several ministries. The so-called Edict of Milan of 313, actually

1314-467: A "constrictive" grasp with their sexuality. He wrote that "It should not be expected of women that they return to what they really are ... when men themselves retain only the semblance of true virility", and lamented that "men instead of being in control of sex are controlled by it and wander about like drunkards". He believed that in Tantra and sex magic , in which he saw a strategy for aggression, he found

1533-469: A "real renewal ... in those who are still capable of receiving it." The text was "immediately recognized by Mircea Eliade and other intellectuals who allegedly advanced ideas associated with Tradition." Eliade was one of the most influential twentieth-century historians of religion, a fascist sympathiser associated with the Romanian Christian right wing movement Iron Guard . Evola was aware of

1752-543: A 1957 article by Evola about America "leaves no doubt as to his deep prejudice against black people". Evola's racism included racism of the body, soul, and spirit, giving primacy to the latter factor, writing that "races only declined when their spirit failed." For his spiritual interpretation of different racial psychologies, Evola was influenced by the German race theorist Ludwig Ferdinand Clauss. Like Evola, Clauss believed that physical race and spiritual race could diverge as

1971-452: A Babylonian god ), Carlo d'Altavilla, and Arthos (from Arthurian legend). In 1928, Evola wrote an attack on Christianity titled Pagan Imperialism , which proposed transforming fascism into a system consistent with ancient Roman values and Western esotericism . Evola proposed that fascism should be a vehicle for reinstating the caste system and aristocracy of antiquity. Although he invoked the term "fascism" in this text, his diatribe against

2190-496: A bourgeois was a character flaw inherent to the masculine mystique; therefore, the ideology of Italian fascism scornfully defined the bourgeois man as "spiritually castrated". Karl Marx said that the culture of a society is dominated by the mores of the ruling-class , wherein their superimposed value system is abided by each social class (the upper, the middle, the lower) regardless of the socio-economic results it yields to them. In that sense, contemporary societies are bourgeois to

2409-538: A coherent architectural and urban programme over four hundred years, aimed at making the city the artistic and cultural centre of the world. In this way, Rome first became one of the major centres of the Renaissance and then became the birthplace of both the Baroque style and Neoclassicism . Famous artists, painters, sculptors, and architects made Rome the centre of their activity, creating masterpieces throughout

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2628-600: A consequence of miscegenation . Peter Staudenmaier notes that many other racists of the time found Evola's "spiritual racism" perplexing. Like René Guénon , Evola believed that mankind is living in the Kali Yuga of Hinduism —the Dark Age of unleashed materialistic appetites. He argued that both Italian fascism and Nazism represented hope that the "celestial" Aryan race would be reconstituted. He drew on mythological accounts of super-races and their decline, particularly

2847-575: A crusade against the Colonna family and, in 1300, called for the first Jubilee of Christianity , which brought millions of pilgrims to Rome. However, his hopes were crushed by the French king Philip the Fair , who took him prisoner and held him hostage for three days at Anagni . The Pope was able to return to Rome, but died a month later, it was said of shock and grief. Afterwards, a new pope faithful to

3066-719: A doctrine of the "two natures": the natural world and the primordial "world of 'Being'". He believed that these "two natures" impose form and quality on lower matter and create a hierarchical "great chain of Being." He understood "spiritual virility" as signifying orientation towards this postulated transcendent principle. He held that the State should reflect this "ordering from above" and the consequent hierarchical differentiation of individuals according to their "organic preformation". By "organic preformation" he meant that which "gathers, preserves, and refines one's talents and qualifications for determinate functions." Among Evola's chief contacts

3285-419: A fragment of a letter from his co-emperor Licinius to the governors of the eastern provinces, granted freedom of worship to everyone, including Christians, and ordered the restoration of confiscated church properties upon petition to the newly created vicars of dioceses. He funded the building of several churches and allowed clergy to act as arbitrators in civil suits (a measure that did not outlast him but which

3504-420: A fringe hypothesis. Traditional stories handed down by the ancient Romans themselves explain the earliest history of their city in terms of legend and myth . The most familiar of these myths, and perhaps the most famous of all Roman myths , is the story of Romulus and Remus , the twins who were suckled by a she-wolf . They decided to build a city, but after an argument, Romulus killed his brother and

3723-639: A glimpse of an unchanging eternal realm". Ensuring Tradition's triumph of order over chaos, in Evola's view, required an obedience to aristocracy. Rose wrote that Evola "aspired to be the most right-wing thinker possible in the modern world". Evola philosophical work started in the 1920s with The Theory of the Absolute Individual and Phenomenology of the Absolute Individual. Teoria dell'individuo assoluto ( Theory of The Absolute Individual ) and Fenomenologia dell'individuo assoluto ( Phenomenology of

3942-431: A hip-hop group Migos produced a song Bad and Boujee , featuring an intentional misspelling of the word as "boujee" – a term which has particularly been used by African Americans in reference to African Americans. The term refers to a person of lower or middle class doing pretentious activities or virtue signalling as an affectation of the upper-class. The bourgeoisie emerged as a historical and political phenomenon in

4161-469: A journal devoted to Hermetic thought published a section of Evola's book and described it as "Luciferian." Evola later confessed that he was not a Buddhist, and that his text on Buddhism was meant to balance out his earlier work on the Hindu tantras . Evola's interest in tantra was spurred on by correspondence with John Woodroffe . Evola was attracted to the active aspect of tantra, and its claim to provide

4380-520: A large area in Rome, and the city has one of the largest areas of green space among European capitals. The most notable part of this green space is represented by the large number of villas and landscaped gardens created by the Italian aristocracy. While most of the parks surrounding the villas were destroyed during the building boom of the late 19th century, some of them remain. The most notable of these are

4599-413: A love affair with a pretty widow) come to naught because he is existentially afraid. Yet, George F. Babbitt sublimates his desire for self-respect, and encourages his son to rebel against the conformity that results from bourgeois prosperity, by recommending that he be true to himself: Don't be scared of the family. No, nor all of zenith. Nor of yourself, the way I've been. Many of the satirical films by

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4818-467: A misunderstanding which has occurred in other languages as well. The bourgeoisie in France and many French-speaking countries consists of five evolving social layers: petite bourgeoisie , moyenne bourgeoisie , grande bourgeoisie , haute bourgeoisie and ancienne bourgeoisie . The petite bourgeoisie is the equivalent of the modern-day middle class, or refers to "a social class between

5037-598: A mix of Latins , Etruscans , and Sabines . Eventually, the city successively became the capital of the Roman Kingdom , the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire , and is regarded by many as the first-ever Imperial city and metropolis . It was first called The Eternal City ( Latin : Urbs Aeterna ; Italian : La Città Eterna ) by the Roman poet Tibullus in the 1st century BC, and the expression

5256-626: A monk who was a religious and social reformer. After the pope's death, Arnaldo was taken prisoner by Adrianus IV , which marked the end of the commune's autonomy. Under Pope Innocent III , whose reign marked the apogee of the papacy, the commune liquidated the senate, and replaced it with a Senatore , who was subject to the pope. In this period, the papacy played a role of secular importance in Western Europe , often acting as arbitrators between Christian monarchs and exercising additional political powers. In 1266, Charles of Anjou , who

5475-608: A party leader in 1934, "The economic system of our day is the creation of the Jews." Hitler said to Benito Mussolini that capitalism had "run its course". Hitler also said that the business bourgeoisie "know nothing except their profit. 'Fatherland' is only a word for them." Hitler was personally disgusted with the ruling bourgeois elites of Germany during the period of the Weimar Republic, whom he referred to as "cowardly shits". Because of their ascribed cultural excellence as

5694-800: A practical means to spiritual experience, over the more "passive" approaches in other forms of Eastern spirituality. In Tantric Buddhism in East Asia , Richard K. Payne, Dean of the Institute of Buddhist Studies, argued that Evola manipulated Tantra in the service of right wing violence, and that the emphasis on "power" in The Yoga of Power gave insight into his mentality. Evola often relied on European sources about Asian creeds while evoking them for racist ends, Peter Staudenmaier wrote. Rose described Evola as an "unreliable scholar of Eastern religions." Evola advocated that "differentiated individuals" following

5913-528: A pretentious manner; describing his philistinism in Bonifica antiborghese (1939), Roberto Paravese comments on the: Middle class, middle man, incapable of great virtue or great vice: and there would be nothing wrong with that, if only he would be willing to remain as such; but, when his child-like or feminine tendency to camouflage pushes him to dream of grandeur, honours, and thus riches, which he cannot achieve honestly with his own "second-rate" powers, then

6132-511: A psychologically constricted worldview , regarding the rearing of children, contemporary sociologists claim to have identified "progressive" middle-class values, such as respect for non-conformity, self-direction, autonomy , gender equality , and the encouragement of innovation; as in the Victorian Era, the transposition to the US of the bourgeois system of social values has been identified as

6351-508: A publisher for his Theory and Phenomenology of Absolute Individual, this work which started in 1924 but were only published in final form in 1927 and 1930, though it is not certain to which extent Croce helped Evola. Evola wrote prodigiously on mysticism , Tantra , Hermeticism , the myth of the Holy Grail and Western esotericism . German Egyptologist and scholar of esotericism Florian Ebeling noted that Evola's The Hermetic Tradition

6570-412: A reality independent of it is nothing but an illusion, caused by its own deficiency." For Evola, this ever-increasing unity with the "absolute individual" was consistent with unconstrained liberty, and therefore unconditional power. In his 1925 work Essays on Magical Idealism , Evola declared that "God does not exist. The Ego must create him by making itself divine." According to Sheehan, Evola discovered

6789-631: A regime pillar. Evola's lack of party membership was later emphasized by admirers to distance him from the regime. Rome Rome ( Italian and Latin : Roma , pronounced [ˈroːma] ) is the capital city of Italy . It is also the capital of the Lazio region , the centre of the Metropolitan City of Rome Capital , and a special comune (municipality) named Comune di Roma Capitale . With 2,860,009 residents in 1,285 km (496.1 sq mi), Rome

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7008-557: A requisite for employment success in the professions. Bourgeois values are dependent on rationalism , which began with the economic sphere and moves into every sphere of life which is formulated by Max Weber. The beginning of rationalism is commonly called the Age of Reason . Much like the Marxist critics of that period, Weber was concerned with the growing ability of large corporations and nations to increase their power and reach throughout

7227-438: A revelation he had while reading an early Buddhist text that dealt with shedding all forms of identity other than absolute transcendence. Evola would later publish the text The Doctrine of Awakening , which he regarded as a repayment of his debt to Buddhism. By this time his interests led him into spiritual , transcendental , and "supra-rational" studies. He began reading various esoteric texts and gradually delved deeper into

7446-587: A small town in the Province of Palermo on the north-western coast of Sicily , and married there on 25 November 1892. The paternal grandparents of Evola were Giuseppe Evola, a joiner by trade, and Maria Cusumano. Evola's maternal grandparents were Cesare Mangiapane, reported as being a shopkeeper , and his wife Caterina Munacó. Giulio Cesare Evola had an elder brother, Giuseppe Gaspare Dinamo Evola, born in 1895 in Rome. His family were devout Roman Catholics. Evola considered details about his early life irrelevant, and

7665-410: A social class oriented to economic materialism and hedonism , and to upholding the political and economic interests of the capitalist ruling-class . Historically, the medieval French word bourgeois denoted the inhabitants of the bourgs (walled market-towns), the craftsmen , artisans , merchants , and others, who constituted "the bourgeoisie". They were the socio-economic class between

7884-546: A social class, the Italian fascist régime (1922–45) of Prime Minister Benito Mussolini regarded the bourgeoisie as an obstacle to modernism . Nonetheless, the Fascist State ideologically exploited the Italian bourgeoisie and their materialistic, middle-class spirit, for the more efficient cultural manipulation of the upper (aristocratic) and the lower (working) classes of Italy. In 1938, Prime Minister Mussolini gave

8103-579: A social identity famously mocked in Molière 's comedy Le Bourgeois gentilhomme (1670), which satirizes buying the trappings of a noble-birth identity as the means of climbing the social ladder. The 18th century saw a partial rehabilitation of bourgeois values in genres such as the drame bourgeois (bourgeois drama) and " bourgeois tragedy ". Emerging in the 1970s, the shortened term "bougie" became slang , referring to things or attitudes which are middle class, pretentious and suburban . In 2016,

8322-491: A source of revelatory spiritual experience. Evola purportedly went through a "spiritual crisis" through the intolerance of civilian life and his need to "transcend the emptiness" of normal human activity. He experimented with hallucinogenics and magic, which, he wrote, almost brought him to madness. In 1922, at 23 years old, he considered suicide, he wrote in The Cinnabar Path . He said he avoided suicide thanks to

8541-402: A speech wherein he established a clear ideological distinction between capitalism (the social function of the bourgeoisie) and the bourgeoisie (as a social class), whom he dehumanized by reducing them into high-level abstractions: a moral category and a state of mind. Culturally and philosophically, Mussolini isolated the bourgeoisie from Italian society by portraying them as social parasites upon

8760-645: A strong appeal to the middle class . The financial collapse of the white collar middle-class of the 1920s figures much in their strong support of Nazism. In the poor country that was the Weimar Republic of the early 1930s, the Nazi Party realised their social policies with food and shelter for the unemployed and the homeless—who were later recruited into the Brownshirt Sturmabteilung (SA – Storm Detachments). Adolf Hitler

8979-540: A very rare occurrence (the most recent ones were in 2018, 2012 and 1986). Bourgeois The bourgeoisie ( / ˌ b ʊər ʒ w ɑː ˈ z iː / BOOR -zhwah- ZEE , French: [buʁʒwazi] ) are a class of business owners , merchants and wealthy people, in general, which emerged in the Late Middle Ages , originally as a " middle class " between peasantry and aristocracy . They are traditionally contrasted with

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9198-554: A warrior pope, to Alexander VI , immoral and nepotist , from Julius II , soldier and patron, to Leo X , who gave his name to this period ("the century of Leo X"), all devoted their energy to the greatness and the beauty of the Eternal City and to the patronage of the arts. During those years, the centre of the Italian Renaissance moved to Rome from Florence. Majestic works, as the new Saint Peter's Basilica ,

9417-410: A world in which God was dead, and rejected the possibility of any political or collective revival of Tradition due to his belief that the modern world had fallen too far into the Kali Yuga for any such thing to be possible. Instead of this and rather than advocating a return to religion as Rene Guénon had, he conceptualised what he considered an apolitical manual for surviving and ultimately transcending

9636-461: Is a comedy-ballet that satirises Monsieur Jourdain, the prototypical nouveau riche man who buys his way up the social-class scale, to realise his aspirations of becoming a gentleman, to which end he studies dancing, fencing, and philosophy, the trappings and accomplishments of a gentleman, to be able to pose as a man of noble birth , someone who, in 17th-century France, was a man to the manor born; Jourdain's self-transformation also requires managing

9855-402: Is a reasonable man of solid character. Yet, in the children of Buddenbrook Jr., the materially comfortable style of life provided by the dedication to solid, middle-class values elicits decadence: The fickle daughter, Toni, lacks and does not seek a purpose in life; son Christian is honestly decadent, and lives the life of a ne'er-do-well; and the businessman son, Thomas, who assumes command of

10074-463: Is a wide consensus that the city developed gradually through the aggregation (" synoecism ") of several villages around the largest one, placed above the Palatine. This aggregation was facilitated by the increase of agricultural productivity above the subsistence level , which also allowed the establishment of secondary and tertiary activities . These, in turn, boosted the development of trade with

10293-405: Is above 21 °C (70 °F) during the day and 9 °C (48 °F) at night. In the coldest month, January, the average temperature is 12.6 °C (54.7 °F) during the day and 2.1 °C (35.8 °F) at night. In the warmest month, August, the average temperature is 31.7 °C (89.1 °F) during the day and 17.3 °C (63.1 °F) at night. December, January and February are

10512-585: Is also a notable pine wood at Castelfusano , near Ostia. Rome also has a number of regional parks of much more recent origin, including the Pineto Regional Park and the Appian Way Regional Park. There are also nature reserves at Marcigliana and at Tenuta di Castelporziano. Rome has a Mediterranean climate ( Köppen climate classification : Csa ), with hot, dry summers and mild, humid winters. Its average annual temperature

10731-1008: Is also the seat of several specialised agencies of the United Nations , such as the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the World Food Programme (WFP), the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and the UN System Network on Rural Development and Food Security . The city also hosts the European Union (EU) Delegation to the United Nations (UN) and the Secretariat of the Parliamentary Assembly of

10950-622: Is another large green space: it has few trees but is overlooked by the Palatine and the Rose Garden ('roseto comunale'). Nearby is the lush Villa Celimontana , close to the gardens surrounding the Baths of Caracalla. The Villa Borghese garden is the best known large green space in Rome, with famous art galleries among its shaded walks. Overlooking Piazza del Popolo and the Spanish Steps are the gardens of Pincio and Villa Medici . There

11169-562: Is based on the amount of pork, 3,629,000 lbs. distributed to poorer Romans during five winter months at the rate of five Roman lbs per person per month, enough for 145,000 persons or 1/4 or 1/3 of the total population. Grain distribution to 80,000 ticket holders at the same time suggests 400,000 (Augustus set the number at 200,000 or one-fifth of the population). After the fall of the Western Roman Empire in AD ;476, Rome

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11388-591: Is generally considered to be the cradle of Western civilization and Western Christian culture , and the centre of the Catholic Church . Rome's history spans 28 centuries. While Roman mythology dates the founding of Rome at around 753 BC, the site has been inhabited for much longer, making it a major human settlement for over three millennia and one of the oldest continuously occupied cities in Europe. The city's early population originated from

11607-559: Is generally thought the population of the city until AD 300 was 1 million (estimates range from 2 million to 750,000) declining to 750–800,000 in AD 400, then 450–500,000 in AD 450 and down to 80–100,000 in AD 500 (though it may have been twice this). The Bishop of Rome, called the Pope , was important since the early days of Christianity because of the martyrdom of both the apostles Peter and Paul there. The Bishops of Rome were also seen (and still are seen by Catholics) as

11826-426: Is labor; and the bourgeois control of the means of coercion suppressed the sociopolitical challenges by the lower classes, and so preserved the economic status quo; workers remained workers, and employers remained employers. In the 19th century, Marx distinguished two types of bourgeois capitalist: In the course of economic relations, the working class and the bourgeoisie continually engage in class struggle , where

12045-532: Is noted for hiding some details of his personal life. He is sometimes described as a baron , probably in reference to a purported distant relationship with a minor aristocratic family, the Evoli, who were the barons of Castropignano in the Kingdom of Sicily in the late Middle Ages. He adopted the name Julius as a connection to ancient Rome. Evola rebelled against his Catholic upbringing. He studied engineering at

12264-555: Is of a race': the people are only people, mass," Evola wrote in 1969. In Synthesis of the Doctrine of Race (1941) (Italian: Sintesi di Dottrina della Razza ), Evola provides an overview of his ideas concerning race and eugenics , introducing the concept of "spiritual racism", and "esoteric-traditionalist racism". The book was endorsed by Benito Mussolini . Prior to the end of the Second World War, Evola frequently used

12483-667: Is the country's most populated comune and the third most populous city in the European Union by population within city limits. The Metropolitan City of Rome, with a population of 4,355,725 residents, is the most populous metropolitan city in Italy. Its metropolitan area is the third-most populous within Italy. Rome is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula , within Lazio ( Latium ), along

12702-402: Is thought to be opposed to substantive forms of freedom; "bourgeois independence"; "bourgeois personal individuality"; the "bourgeois family"; et cetera, all derived from owning capital and property (see The Communist Manifesto , 1848). In English, the term bourgeoisie is often used to denote the middle classes. In fact, the French term encompasses both the upper and middle economic classes,

12921-459: Is unclear whether this meant that Evola was placing himself above or beyond Fascism". Evola has been called the "chief ideologue" of Italy's radical right after World War II , and his philosophy has been characterized as one of the most consistently " antiegalitarian , antiliberal , antidemocratic , and antipopular systems in the twentieth century". Writings by Evola contain misogyny , racism , antisemitism , and attacks on Christianity and

13140-432: Is viewed as an "extremely important work" on Hermeticism for esotericists. Evola gave particular focus to Cesare della Riviera's text Il Mondo Magico degli Heroi , which he later republished in modern Italian. He held that Riviera's text was consonant with the goals of "high magic" – the reshaping of the earthly human into a transcendental 'god man'. According to Evola, the alleged "timeless" Traditional science

13359-407: The haute bourgeoisie (bankers and industrialists) and the petite bourgeoisie ( tradesmen and white-collar workers ). Moreover, by the end of the 19th century, the capitalists (the original bourgeoisie) had ascended to the upper class, while the developments of technology and technical occupations allowed the rise of working-class men and women to the lower strata of the bourgeoisie; yet

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13578-840: The Sicherheitsdienst , or SD, the intelligence agency of the SS and the Nazi Party . He fled to Nazi Germany in 1943 when the Italian Fascist regime fell, but returned to Rome under the puppet Salò government to organize a radical-right group. In 1945 in Vienna , a Soviet shell fragment paralysed him from the waist down. On trial in 1951, Evola denied being a fascist and instead referred to himself as " superfascista " ( lit.   ' superfascist ' ). Concerning this statement, historian Elisabetta Cassina Wolff wrote that "It

13797-604: The Age of Enlightenment , new ideas reached the Eternal City, where the papacy supported archaeological studies and improved the people's welfare. But not everything went well for the Church during the Counter-Reformation. There were setbacks in the attempts to assert the Church's power, a notable example being in 1773 when Pope Clement XIV was forced by secular powers to have the Jesuit order suppressed . The rule of

14016-543: The Catholic Church . He continues to influence contemporary traditionalist and neo-fascist movements . Giulio Cesare Evola was born in Rome on 19 May 1898, the second son of Vincenzo Evola (born 1854), a telegraphic mechanic chief , and Concetta Mangiapane (born 1865), a landowner. As per the Sicilian naming convention of the era, Evola was partly named after his maternal grandfather. Both his parents were born in Cinisi ,

14235-797: The Cinecittà Studios have been the set of many Academy Award –winning movies. According to the Ancient Romans' founding myth , the name Roma came from the city's founder and first king , Romulus . However, it is possible that the name Romulus was actually derived from Rome itself. As early as the 4th century, there have been alternative theories proposed on the origin of the name Roma . Several hypotheses have been advanced focusing on its linguistic roots which however remain uncertain: Rome has also been called in ancient times simply "Urbs" (central city), from urbs roma , or identified with its ancient Roman initialism of SPQR ,

14454-477: The Dominate , derived from his title of dominus ("lord"). His most marked feature was the unprecedented intervention of the State down to the city level: whereas the State had submitted a tax demand to a city and allowed it to allocate the charges, from his reign the State did this down to the village level. In a vain attempt to control inflation, he imposed price controls which did not last. Diocletian divided

14673-640: The First World War , Evola served as an artillery officer on the Asiago plateau. Despite reservations that Italy was fighting on the wrong side (against Germany , which Evola admired for its discipline and hierarchy), Evola volunteered in 1917 and briefly saw frontline service the following year. Evola returned to civilian life after the war and became a painter in Italy's Dadaist movement; he described his paintings as "inner landscapes". He wrote his poetry in French and recited it in cabarets accompanied by classical music. Through his painting and poetry, and work on

14892-625: The Gauls , Osci - Samnites and the Greek colony of Taranto , allied with Pyrrhus , king of Epirus ) whose result was the conquest of the Italian peninsula , from the central area up to Magna Graecia . The 3rd and 4th century BC saw the establishment of Roman hegemony over the Mediterranean and the Balkans through the three Punic Wars (264–146 BC) fought against Carthage and

15111-822: The Hyperboreans , and maintained that traces of Hyperborean influence could be felt in Aryan men. He felt that Aryan men had devolved from these higher mythological races. Gregor noted that several contemporary criticisms of Evola's theory were published: "In one of Fascism's most important theoretical journals, Evola's critic pointed out that many Nordic-Aryans, not to speak of Mediterranean Aryans, fail to demonstrate any Hyperborean properties. Instead, they make obvious their materialism, their sensuality, their indifference to loyalty and sacrifice, together with their consuming greed. How do they differ from 'inferior' races, and why should anyone wish, in any way, to favor them?" Concerning

15330-405: The Old French borgeis or borjois ('town dweller'), which derived from bourg (' market town '), from the Old Frankish burg ('town'); in other European languages, the etymologic derivations include the Middle English burgeis , the Middle Dutch burgher , the German Bürger , the Modern English burgess , the Spanish burgués , the Portuguese burguês , and

15549-505: The Pāli Canon could be held to represent true Buddhism . His interpretation of Buddhism is intended to be anti-democratic. He believed that Buddhism revealed the essence of an "Aryan" tradition that had become corrupted and lost in the West. He believed it could be interpreted to reveal the superiority of a warrior caste. Harry Oldmeadow described Evola's work on Buddhism as exhibiting a Nietzschean influence, but Evola criticised Nietzsche's purported anti-ascetic prejudice. Evola claimed that

15768-605: The San Lorenzo district was subject to Allied bombing raids , resulting in about 3,000 fatalities and 11,000 injuries, of whom another 1,500 died. Mussolini was arrested on 25 July 1943 . On the date of the Italian Armistice 8 September 1943 the city was occupied by the Germans. Allied bombing raids continued throughout 1943 and extended into 1944. Rome was liberated on 4 June 1944. Rome developed greatly after

15987-653: The Sistine Chapel and Ponte Sisto (the first bridge to be built across the Tiber since antiquity, although on Roman foundations) were created. To accomplish that, the Popes engaged the best artists of the time, including Michelangelo , Perugino , Raphael , Ghirlandaio , Luca Signorelli , Botticelli , and Cosimo Rosselli . The period was also infamous for papal corruption, with many Popes fathering children, and engaging in nepotism and simony . The corruption of

16206-624: The Union for the Mediterranean (UfM) as well as the headquarters of several Italian multinational companies, such as Eni , Enel , TIM , Leonardo , and banks such as BNL . Numerous companies are based within Rome's EUR business district, such as the luxury fashion house Fendi located in the Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana . The presence of renowned international brands in the city has made Rome an important centre of fashion and design, and

16425-590: The Villa Borghese , Villa Ada , and Villa Doria Pamphili . Villa Doria Pamphili is west of the Gianicolo hill, comprising some 1.8 km (0.7  sq mi ). The Villa Sciarra is on the hill, with playgrounds for children and shaded walking areas. In the nearby area of Trastevere, the Orto Botanico (Botanical Garden) is a cool and shady green space. The old Roman hippodrome (Circus Maximus)

16644-544: The absolute monarchy of the Bourbon King Louis XVI (r. 1774–1791), his clergy, and his aristocrats in the French Revolution of 1789–1799. Hence, since the 19th century, the term "bourgeoisie" usually is politically and sociologically synonymous with the ruling upper class of a capitalist society. In English, the word "bourgeoisie", as a term referring to French history, refers to

16863-461: The left nor the right , but preserved "pure" elements from both "camps", stating: "From the camp of bourgeois tradition, it takes national resolve, and from the materialism of the Marxist dogma, living, creative Socialism." Hitler distrusted capitalism for being unreliable due to its egotism , and he preferred a state-directed economy that is subordinated to the interests of the Volk . Hitler told

17082-479: The left-hand path use dark violent sexual powers against the modern world. For Evola, these "virile heroes" are both generous and cruel, possess the ability to rule, and commit "Dionysian" acts that might be seen as conventionally immoral. For Evola, the left-hand path embraces violence as a means of transgression. According to A. James Gregor , Evola's definition of spirituality can be found in Meditations on

17301-417: The proletariat by their wealth, political power, and education, as well as their access to and control of cultural , social , and financial capital . The bourgeoisie in its original sense is intimately linked to the political ideology of liberalism and its existence within cities, recognised as such by their urban charters (e.g., municipal charters , town privileges , German town law ), so there

17520-599: The western and eastern empires respectively. The seat of government in the Western Roman Empire was transferred to Ravenna in 408, but from 450 the emperors mostly resided in Rome. Rome, which had lost its central role in the administration of the empire, was sacked in 410 by the Visigoths led by Alaric I , but very little physical damage was done, most of which was repaired. What could not be so easily replaced were portable items such as artwork in precious metals and items for domestic use (loot). The popes embellished

17739-458: The 11th century when the bourgs of Central and Western Europe developed into cities dedicated to commerce and crafts. This urban expansion was possible thanks to economic concentration due to the appearance of protective self-organization into guilds . Guilds arose when individual businessmen (such as craftsmen, artisans and merchants) conflicted with their rent-seeking feudal landlords who demanded greater rents than previously agreed. In

17958-576: The Absolute Individual) originally constituted a single work which only for editorial reasons ended up being divided into two separate volumes, published a few years apart from each other, one in 1927 and the other in 1930, published in Turin at the publisher called Bocca. This work was different and even attack on the dominant Hegelian thought in Italy, prevailed by the works of Croce . Interesting, however, Benedetto Croce helped Evola find

18177-536: The Balkans made serious uncoordinated incursions that were more like giant raiding parties rather than attempts to settle. The Persian Empire invaded from the east several times during the 230s to 260s but were eventually defeated. The civil wars ended in 285 with the final victory of Diocletian , who undertook the restoration of the State. He ended the Principate and introduced a new authoritarian model known as

18396-526: The Buddenbrook family fortune, occasionally falters from middle-class solidity by being interested in art and philosophy, the impractical life of the mind , which, to the bourgeoisie, is the epitome of social, moral, and material decadence. Babbitt (1922), by Sinclair Lewis (1885–1951), satirizes the American bourgeois George Follansbee Babbitt, a middle-aged realtor , booster , and joiner in

18615-645: The Catholic Church was criticised by both Benito Mussolini 's fascist regime and the Vatican itself. A. James Gregor argued that the text was an attack on fascism as it stood at the time of writing, but noted that Mussolini made use of it to threaten the Vatican with the possibility of an "anti-clerical fascism". Richard Drake wrote that Evola "rarely missed an opportunity to attack the Catholic Church". On account of Evola's anti-Christian proposals, in April 1928

18834-568: The Church. Under the popes from Pius IV to Sixtus V , Rome became the centre of a reformed Catholicism and saw the building of new monuments which celebrated the papacy. The popes and cardinals of the 17th and early 18th centuries continued the movement by having the city's landscape enriched with baroque buildings. This was another nepotistic age; the new aristocratic families ( Barberini , Pamphili , Chigi , Rospigliosi , Altieri , Odescalchi ) were protected by their respective popes, who built huge baroque buildings for their relatives. During

19053-473: The French was elected, and the papacy was briefly relocated to Avignon (1309–1377). During this period Rome was neglected, until a plebeian man, Cola di Rienzo , came to power. An idealist and a lover of ancient Rome, Cola dreamed about a rebirth of the Roman Empire: after assuming power with the title of Tribuno , his reforms were rejected by the populace. Forced to flee, Cola returned as part of

19272-567: The Gothic siege of 537, the population dropped to 30,000 but had risen to 90,000 by the papacy of Gregory the Great . The population decline coincided with the general collapse of urban life in the West in the fifth and sixth centuries, with few exceptions. Subsidized state grain distributions to the poorer members of society continued right through the sixth century and probably prevented the population from falling further. The figure of 450,000–500,000

19491-628: The Grail is a mystery of a warrior initiation." He held that the Ghibellines , who had fought the Guelph for control of Northern and Central Italy in the thirteenth century, had within them the residual influences of pre-Christian Celtic and Nordic traditions that represented his conception of the Grail myth. He also held that the Guelph victory against the Ghibellines represented a regression of

19710-698: The Great (which by then was in a dilapidated state) was demolished and a new one begun. The city hosted artists like Ghirlandaio , Perugino , Botticelli and Bramante , who built the temple of San Pietro in Montorio and planned a great project to renovate the Vatican . Raphael, who in Rome became one of the most famous painters of Italy, created frescoes in the Villa Farnesina , the Raphael's Rooms , plus many other famous paintings. Michelangelo started

19929-399: The Greek colonies of southern Italy (mainly Ischia and Cumae ). These developments, which according to archaeological evidence took place during the mid-eighth century BC, can be considered as the "birth" of the city. Despite recent excavations at the Palatine hill, the view that Rome was founded deliberately in the middle of the eighth century BC, as the legend of Romulus suggests, remains

20148-480: The Istituto Tecnico Leonardo da Vinci in Rome, but did not complete his course, later claiming this was because he did not want to be associated with " bourgeois academic recognition" and titles such as "doctor and engineer". In his teenage years, Evola immersed himself in painting—which he considered one of his natural talents—and literature, including Oscar Wilde and Gabriele d'Annunzio . He

20367-706: The Kali Yuga. This idea was summarised in the title of the book, the Tantric metaphor of "Riding the Tiger" which in general practice, consisted of turning things that were considered inhibitory to spiritual progress by mainstream Brahmanical society (for example, meat, alcohol and in very rare circumstances, sex, were all employed by Tantric practitioners) into a means of spiritual transcendence. The process that Evola described involved potentially making use of everything from modern music, hallucinogenic drugs, relationships with

20586-1080: The Kings was built on seven hills: the Aventine Hill , the Caelian Hill , the Capitoline Hill , the Esquiline Hill , the Palatine Hill , the Quirinal Hill , and the Viminal Hill . Modern Rome is also crossed by another river, the Aniene , which flows into the Tiber north of the historic centre. Although the city centre is about 24 km (15 mi) inland from the Tyrrhenian Sea , the city territory extends to

20805-497: The Marxist use of the term "bourgeois" also describes the consumerist style of life derived from the ownership of capital and real property . Marx acknowledged the bourgeois industriousness that created wealth, but criticised the moral hypocrisy of the bourgeoisie when they ignored the alleged origins of their wealth: the exploitation of the proletariat, the urban and rural workers. Further sense denotations of "bourgeois" describe ideological concepts such as "bourgeois freedom", which

21024-517: The Midwestern city of Zenith, who – despite being unimaginative, self-important, and hopelessly conformist and middle-class – is aware that there must be more to life than money and the consumption of the best things that money can buy. Nevertheless, he fears being excluded from the mainstream of society more than he does living for himself, by being true to himself – his heart-felt flirtations with independence (dabbling in liberal politics and

21243-591: The Modern World , though he diverged from Guénon by valuing action over contemplation, and the empire over the church. Evola held that "just relations between the sexes" involved women acknowledging their "inequality" with men. He quoted Joseph de Maistre 's statement that "Woman cannot be superior except as woman, but from the moment in which she desires to emulate man she is nothing but a monkey." Coogan wrote, "It goes almost without saying that Evola's views on women were saturated with misogyny." Evola believed that

21462-534: The Mussolini fascist régime transcended ideology to merge the political and financial interests of Prime Minister Benito Mussolini with the political and financial interests of the bourgeoisie, the Catholic social circles who constituted the ruling class of Italy. Philosophically, as a materialist creature, the bourgeois man was stereotyped as irreligious; thus, to establish an existential distinction between

21681-469: The Nazi conception of Jews as "representatives of a biological race", but rather as "the carriers of a world view, a way of being and thinking—simply put, a spirit—that corresponded to the 'worst' and 'most decadent' features of modernity: democracy, egalitarianism and materialism", Wolff writes. According to Wolff, "Evola's 'totalitarian' or 'spiritual' racism was no milder than Nazi biological racism", and Evola

21900-529: The Papal States were reconstituted by a decision of the Congress of Vienna of 1814. In 1849, a second Roman Republic was proclaimed during a year of revolutions in 1848 . Two of the most influential figures of the Italian unification , Giuseppe Mazzini and Giuseppe Garibaldi , fought for the short-lived republic. Rome then became the focus of hopes of Italian reunification after the rest of Italy

22119-456: The Peaks : "what has been successfully actualized and translated into a sense of superiority which is experienced inside by the soul, and a noble demeanor, which is expressed in the body." Evola attempted to construct, Ferraresi wrote, "a model of man striving to reach the 'absolute' within his inner self". For Evola, Furlong wrote, transcendence "rested on the freeing of one's spiritual self through

22338-550: The Polish burżuazja , which occasionally is synonymous with the intelligentsia . In the 18th century, before the French Revolution (1789–1799), in the French Ancien Régime , the masculine and feminine terms bourgeois and bourgeoise identified the relatively rich men and women who were members of the urban and rural Third Estate – the common people of the French realm , who violently deposed

22557-564: The Popes and the huge expenses for their building projects led, in part, to the Reformation and, in turn, the Counter-Reformation . Under extravagant and rich popes, Rome was transformed into a centre of art, poetry, music, literature, education and culture. Rome became able to compete with other major European cities of the time in terms of wealth, grandeur, the arts, learning and architecture. The Renaissance period changed

22776-512: The Popes was interrupted by the short-lived Roman Republic (1798–1800), which was established under the influence of the French Revolution . The Papal States were restored in June 1800, but during Napoleon 's reign Rome was annexed as a Département of the French Empire : first as Département du Tibre (1808–1810) and then as Département Rome (1810–1814). After the fall of Napoleon,

22995-500: The Romans expelled the last king from their city and established an oligarchic republic led by two annually-elected consuls . Rome then began a period characterised by internal struggles between patricians (aristocrats) and plebeians (small landowners), and by constant warfare against the populations of central Italy: Etruscans, Latins, Volsci , Aequi , and Marsi . After becoming master of Latium , Rome led several wars (against

23214-584: The Third Century , during which numerous generals fought for power and the central authority in Rome weakened dramatically. Around the same time, the Plague of Cyprian ( c. 250–270) afflicted the Mediterranean. Instability caused economic deterioration, and there was a rapid rise in inflation as the government debased the currency in order to meet expenses. The Germanic tribes along the Rhine and north of

23433-403: The U.S. "mechanistic and rational philosophy of progress combined with a mundane horizon of prosperity to transform the world into an enormous suburban shopping mall." In the posthumously published collection of writings, Metaphysics of War , Evola, in line with the conservative revolutionary Ernst Jünger , explored the viewpoint that war could be a spiritually fulfilling experience. He proposed

23652-539: The Ur Group were later published in Introduction to Magic . Reghini's support of Freemasonry would however prove contentious for Evola; accordingly, Reghini broke himself from Evola and left the Ur Group in 1928. Reghini accused him of plagiarising his thoughts in the book Pagan Imperialism ; Evola, in turn, blamed him for its premature publication. Evola's later work owed a considerable debt to Guénon's Crisis of

23871-497: The Vatican-backed right wing Catholic journal Revue Internationale des Sociétés Secrètes published an article entitled "Un Sataniste Italien: Julius Evola", accusing him of satanism . In his The Mystery of the Grail (1937), Evola discarded Christian interpretations of the Holy Grail and wrote that it "symbolizes the principle of an immortalizing and transcendent force connected to the primordial state ... The mystery of

24090-508: The West" and thereby "re-establish genuine contact between man and a transcendent, supersensible reality". Evola wrote the foreword and an essay in the second Italian edition of the infamous antisemitic fabrication The Protocols of the Elders of Zion published in 1938 by the Catholic fascist Giovanni Preziosi . In it, Evola argued that the Protocols —whether or not a forgery—"contain

24309-564: The ages. Evola considered human history to be, in general, decadent ; he viewed modernity as the temporary success of the forces of disorder over tradition. Tradition, in Evola's definition, was an eternal supernatural knowledge, with absolute values of authority, hierarchy, order, discipline and obedience. Matthew Rose wrote that "Evola claimed to show how basic human activities—from eating and sex, commerce and games, to war and social intercourse—were elevated by Tradition into something ritualistic, becoming activities whose very repetitiveness offered

24528-431: The alleged higher qualities expected of a man of a particular race were not those expected of a woman of the same race. Evola believed that women's liberation was "the renunciation by woman of her right to be a woman". A woman, Evola wrote, "could traditionally participate in the sacred hierarchical order only in a mediated fashion through her relationship with a man." He held, as a feature of his idealised gender relations,

24747-431: The archaic Hindu sati (suicide), which for him was a form of sacrifice indicating women's respect for patriarchal traditions. For the "pure, feminine" woman, "man is not perceived by her as a mere husband or lover, but as her lord." Women would find their true identity in total subjugation to men. Evola regarded matriarchy and goddess religions as a symptom of decadence, and preferred a hyper-masculine, warrior ethos. He

24966-414: The average man compensates with cunning, schemes, and mischief; he kicks out ethics, and becomes a bourgeois. The bourgeois is the average man who does not accept to remain such, and who, lacking the strength sufficient for the conquest of essential values—those of the spirit—opts for material ones, for appearances. The economic security, financial freedom , and social mobility of the bourgeoisie threatened

25185-403: The birth of the conclave . In this period the city was also shattered by continuous fights between the aristocratic families: Annibaldi , Caetani , Colonna , Orsini , Conti , nested in their fortresses built above ancient Roman edifices, fought each other to control the papacy. Pope Boniface VIII , born Caetani, was the last pope to fight for the church's universal domain ; he proclaimed

25404-649: The book "received the official approbation of the Pāli [Text] Society", and was published by a reputable Orientalist publisher. Evola's interpretation of Buddhism, as put forth in his article "Spiritual Virility in Buddhism", is in conflict with the post-World War II scholarship of the Orientalist Giuseppe Tucci , who argues that the viewpoint that Buddhism advocates universal benevolence is legitimate. Arthur Versluis stated that Evola's writing on Buddhism

25623-519: The bourgeois mentality by the German intellectual Walter Benjamin (1892–1940) indicated that the shop culture of the petite bourgeoisie established the sitting room as the center of personal and family life; as such, the English bourgeois culture is, he alleges, a sitting-room culture of prestige through conspicuous consumption . The material culture of the bourgeoisie concentrated on mass-produced luxury goods of high quality; between generations,

25842-533: The bourgeois mentality: (i) the shop-window display, and (ii) the sitting room. In English, the term "sitting-room culture" is synonymous for "bourgeois mentality", a " philistine " cultural perspective from the Victorian Era (1837–1901), especially characterized by the repression of emotion and of sexual desire; and by the construction of a regulated social-space where " propriety " is the key personality trait desired in men and women. Nonetheless, from such

26061-411: The bourgeoisie had become the economic ruling class who owned the means of production (capital and land), and who controlled the means of coercion (armed forces and legal system, police forces and prison system). In such a society, the bourgeoisie's ownership of the means of production allowed them to employ and exploit the wage-earning working class (urban and rural), people whose only economic means

26280-402: The capitalists exploit the workers, while the workers resist their economic exploitation, which occurs because the worker owns no means of production, and, to earn a living, seeks employment from the bourgeois capitalist; the worker produces goods and services that are property of the employer, who sells them for a price. Besides describing the social class who owns the means of production ,

26499-416: The castes, since the merchant caste took over from the warrior caste. In the epilogue to the book, Evola argued that the fictitious The Protocols of the Elders of Zion , regardless of whether it was authentic or not, was a cogent representation of modernity. The historian Richard Barber said, "Evola mixes rhetoric, prejudice, scholarship, and politics into a strange version of the present and future, but in

26718-460: The city centre in order to build wide avenues and squares which were supposed to celebrate the fascist regime and the resurgence and glorification of classical Rome. The interwar period saw a rapid growth in the city's population which surpassed one million inhabitants soon after 1930. During World War II, due to the art treasuries and the presence of the Vatican, Rome largely escaped the tragic destiny of other European cities. However, on 19 July 1943,

26937-568: The city took his name. According to the Roman annalists , this happened on 21 April 753 BC. This legend had to be reconciled with a dual tradition, set earlier in time, that had the Trojan refugee Aeneas escape to Italy and found the line of Romans through his son Iulus , the namesake of the Julio-Claudian dynasty . This was accomplished by the Roman poet Virgil in the first century BC. In addition, Strabo mentions an older story, that

27156-624: The city was affected by the divisions which rocked the Church. In 1418, the Council of Constance settled the Western Schism , and a Roman pope, Martin V , was elected. This brought to Rome a century of internal peace, which marked the beginning of the Renaissance . The ruling popes until the first half of the 16th century, from Nicholas V , founder of the Vatican Library , to Pius II , humanist and literate, from Sixtus IV ,

27375-554: The city was an Arcadian colony founded by Evander . Strabo also writes that Lucius Coelius Antipater believed that Rome was founded by Greeks. After the foundation by Romulus according to a legend, Rome was ruled for a period of 244 years by a monarchical system , initially with sovereigns of Latin and Sabine origin, later by Etruscan kings. The tradition handed down seven kings: Romulus , Numa Pompilius , Tullus Hostilius , Ancus Marcius , Tarquinius Priscus , Servius Tullius and Lucius Tarquinius Superbus . In 509 BC,

27594-471: The city with large basilicas, such as Santa Maria Maggiore (with the collaboration of the emperors). The population of the city had fallen from 800,000 to 450–500,000 by the time the city was sacked in 455 by Genseric , king of the Vandals . The weak emperors of the fifth century could not stop the decay, leading to the deposition of Romulus Augustus , who resided on Ravenna, on 4 September 476. This marked

27813-494: The city. In 1871, Rome became the capital of the Kingdom of Italy , which, in 1946, became the Italian Republic. In 2019, Rome was the 14th most visited city in the world, with 8.6 million tourists, the third most visited city in the European Union, and the most popular tourist destination in Italy. Its historic centre is listed by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site . The host city for the 1960 Summer Olympics , Rome

28032-468: The claims of rule by divine right that the nobles and prelates had autonomously exercised during the feudal order. The English Civil War (1642–1651), the American War of Independence (1775–1783), and French Revolution (1789–1799) were partly motivated by the desire of the bourgeoisie to rid themselves of the feudal and royal encroachments on their personal liberty, commercial prospects, and

28251-455: The coldest months, with a daily mean temperature of approximately 8 °C (46 °F). Temperatures during these months generally vary between 10 and 15 °C (50 and 59 °F) during the day and between 3 and 5 °C (37 and 41 °F) at night, with colder or warmer spells occurring frequently. Snowfall is rare but not unheard of, with light snow or flurries occurring on some winters, generally without accumulation, and major snowfalls on

28470-546: The continual striving for prestige . This being the case, the cultures of the world describe the philistinism of the middle-class personality, produced by the excessively rich life of the bourgeoisie, is examined and analyzed in comedic and dramatic plays, novels, and films (see Authenticity ). The term bourgeoisie has been used as a pejorative and a term of abuse since the 19th century, particularly by intellectuals and artists. Le Bourgeois gentilhomme (The Would-be Gentleman, 1670) by Molière (Jean-Baptiste Poquelin),

28689-584: The decoration of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel and executed the famous statue of the Moses for the tomb of Julius II. Its economy was rich, with the presence of several Tuscan bankers, including Agostino Chigi , who was a friend of Raphael and a patron of arts. Before his early death, Raphael also promoted for the first time the preservation of the ancient ruins. The War of the League of Cognac caused

28908-432: The degree that they practice the mores of the small-business "shop culture" of early modern France; which the writer Émile Zola (1840–1902) naturalistically presented, analyzed, and ridiculed in the twenty-two-novel series (1871–1893) about Les Rougon-Macquart family; the thematic thrust is the necessity for social progress, by subordinating the economic sphere to the social sphere of life. The critical analyses of

29127-467: The development of the bourgs into cities. Contemporarily, the terms "bourgeoisie" and "bourgeois" (noun) identify the "ruling class" in capitalist societies, as a social stratum; while "bourgeois" (adjective / noun modifier) describes the Weltanschauung ( worldview ) of men and women whose way of thinking is socially and culturally determined by their economic materialism and philistinism ,

29346-493: The effects of this action, and indeed offers through heredity, a matter that is already refined and pre-formed ..." Writings by Evola in the late 1930s contributed arguments for Fascist Italy's repression of its Jews. Evola encouraged and applauded Mussolini's antisemitic racial laws in 1938, and called for a "supreme Aryan elite" to oppose the Jews. In some writings, Evola called Jews a virus. He said Fascism and Nazism's final victory over Jews would end "the spiritual decadence of

29565-546: The empire in 286, ruling over the eastern half from Nicomedia , while his co-emperor Maximian ruled the western half from Mediolanum (when not on the move). The empire was further divided in 293, when Diocletian named two caesar , one for each augustus (emperor). Diocletian tried to turn into a system of non-dynastic succession, similar to the Antonine dynasty. Upon abdication in 305, both caesars succeeded and they, in turn, appointed two colleagues for themselves. However,

29784-536: The end of the Western Roman Empire and, for many historians, the beginning of the Middle Ages . The decline of the city's population was caused by the loss of grain shipments from North Africa, from 440 onward, and the unwillingness of the senatorial class to maintain donations to support a population that was too large for the resources available. Even so, strenuous efforts were made to maintain

30003-400: The entourage of Cardinal Albornoz , who was charged with restoring the Church's power in Italy. Back in power for a short time, Cola was soon lynched by the populace, and Albornoz took possession of the city. In 1377, Rome became the seat of the papacy again under Gregory XI . The return of the pope to Rome in that year unleashed the Western Schism (1377–1418), and for the next forty years,

30222-461: The event, by the end of the Middle Ages ( c.  AD 1500 ), under regimes of the early national monarchies of Western Europe, the bourgeoisie acted in self-interest, and politically supported the king or queen against legal and financial disorder caused by the greed of the feudal lords. In the late-16th and early 17th centuries, the bourgeoisies of England and the Netherlands had become

30441-600: The face of Rome dramatically, with works like the Pietà by Michelangelo and the frescoes of the Borgia Apartments . Rome reached the highest point of splendour under Pope Julius II (1503–1513) and his successors Leo X and Clement VII , both members of the Medici family . In this twenty-year period, Rome became one of the greatest centres of art in the world. The old St. Peter's Basilica built by Emperor Constantine

30660-423: The failed attempt of social reform of the populares Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus , and the war against Jugurtha , there was a civil war from which the general Sulla emerged victorious. A major slave revolt under Spartacus followed, and then the establishment of the first Triumvirate with Caesar , Pompey and Crassus . The conquest of Gaul made Caesar immensely powerful and popular, which led to

30879-478: The fascist Italian state and "The People"; as a social class who drained the human potential of Italian society, in general, and of the working class, in particular; as exploiters who victimized the Italian nation with an approach to life characterized by hedonism and materialism . Nevertheless, despite the slogan The Fascist Man Disdains the "Comfortable" Life , which epitomized the anti-bourgeois principle, in its final years of power, for mutual benefit and profit,

31098-714: The features of his idealised traditional society in which religious and temporal power were created and united not by priests, but by warriors expressing spiritual power. In mythology, he saw evidence of the West's superiority over the East. Moreover, he claimed that the traditional elite had the ability to access power and knowledge through a hierarchical magic which differed from the lower "superstitious and fraudulent" forms of magic. He asserted that history's intellectuals starting as early as ancient Greece had undermined traditional values through their questioning. He insisted that only "nonmodern forms, institutions, and knowledge" could produce

31317-407: The financial – thus political – forces that deposed the feudal order; economic power had vanquished military power in the realm of politics. According to the Marxist view of history, during the 17th and 18th centuries, the bourgeoisie were the politically progressive social class who supported the principles of constitutional government and of natural right , against the Law of Privilege and

31536-399: The first half of the first century (under Tiberius ) and popularised by his apostles through the empire and beyond. The Antonine age is considered the zenith of the Empire, whose territory ranged from the Atlantic Ocean to the Euphrates and from Britain to Egypt . After the end of the Severan dynasty in AD 235, the Empire entered into a 50-year period known as the Crisis of

31755-512: The first plunder of the city in more than five hundred years since the previous sack ; in 1527, the Landsknechts of Emperor Charles V sacked the city , bringing an abrupt end to the golden age of the Renaissance in Rome. Beginning with the Council of Trent in 1545, the Church began the Counter-Reformation in response to the Reformation, a large-scale questioning of the Church's authority on spiritual matters and governmental affairs. This loss of confidence led to major shifts of power away from

31974-471: The help of the plebs (urban lower class) to gain power. In the same period, the bankruptcy of the small farmers and the establishment of large slave estates caused large-scale migration to the city. The continuous warfare led to the establishment of a professional army, which turned out to be more loyal to its generals than to the republic. Because of this, in the late 2nd and early 1st century BC there were several conflicts both abroad and internally: after

32193-415: The higher castes, which expressed themselves in physical as well as in cultural features, but were not determined by them. The law of the regression of castes places racism at the core of Evola's philosophy, since he sees an increasing predominance of lower races as directly expressed through modern mass democracies." Evola used "a man of race" to mean "a man of breeding". "Only of an elite may one say that 'it

32412-481: The importance of myth from his readings of Georges Sorel , one of the key intellectual influences on fascism. Hermann Hesse described Revolt Against the Modern World as "really dangerous." Richard Drake wrote that the book was not widely influential in the 1930s but eventually received a cult following on the extreme right and is now considered Evola's most important work. Ride the Tiger (1961), Evola's last major work, saw him examining dissolution and subversion in

32631-595: The intellectual themes of Evola's writings were otherwise unchanged. Evola continued to write about elitism and his contempt for the weak. His "doctrine of the Aryan-Roman super-race was simply restated as a doctrine of the 'leaders of men' ... no longer with reference to the SS, but to the mediaeval Teutonic knights or the Knights Templar, already mentioned in [his book] Rivolta." Evola wrote of "inferior, non-European races". He believed that military aggressions such as Fascist Italy's 1935 invasion of Ethiopia were justified by Italy's dominance, outweighing concerns he had about

32850-439: The interwar Conservative Revolution , "with which Evola had a deep personal involvement". He viewed himself as part of an aristocratic caste that had been dominant in an ancient Golden Age, as opposed to the contemporary Dark Age (the Kali Yuga ). In his writing, Evola addressed others in that caste whom he called l'uomo differenziato —"the man who has become different"—who through heredity and initiation were able to transcend

33069-600: The interwar Conservative Revolution . Evola believed that mankind is living in the Kali Yuga , a Dark Age of unleashed materialistic appetites. To counter this and call in a primordial rebirth , Evola presented a "world of Tradition". Tradition for Evola was not Christian—he did not believe in God—but rather an eternal supernatural knowledge with values of authority, hierarchy, order, discipline and obedience. Evola advocated for Fascist Italy's racial laws , and eventually became Italy's leading "racial philosopher". Autobiographical remarks by Evola allude to his having worked for

33288-533: The latter category. In 1970, Evola described Adolf Hitler 's antisemitism as a paranoid idée fixe that damaged the reputation of the Third Reich . But Evola never clearly acknowledged the Holocaust committed by the regimes he associated with, perpetrated in the name of racism—Furlong called this a "fatal lapse that by itself ought to be enough to destroy his authority". Evola wrote more than 36 books and 1,100 articles. In some of his 1930s writings, and in works about magic, Evola used pseudonyms, including Ea ( after

33507-464: The latter part of the 19th century, the bourgeois house contained a home that had been remodeled by conspicuous consumption. Here, Benjamin argues, the goods were bought to display wealth ( discretionary income ), rather than for their practical utility. The bourgeoisie had transposed the wares of the shop window to the sitting room, where the clutter of display signaled bourgeois success (see Culture and Anarchy , 1869). Two spatial constructs manifest

33726-403: The means to counter the "emasculated" West. Evola also said that the "ritual violation of virgins", and "whipping women" were a means of "consciousness raising", so long as these practices were done to the intensity required to produce the proper "liminal psychic climate". Evola translated Weininger's Sex and Character into Italian. Dissatisfied with simply translating Weininger's work, he wrote

33945-445: The members' individual identities into such a superhuman state of power and awareness that they would be able to exert a magical influence on the world. The group employed techniques from Buddhist, Tantric, and rare Hermetic texts. They aimed to provide a "soul" to the burgeoning Fascist movement of the time through the revival of ancient Roman religion , and to influence the fascist regime through esotericism. Articles on occultism from

34164-405: The mid-1980s when the comune had more than 2.8 million residents. After this, the population declined slowly as people began to move to nearby suburbs. Rome is in the Lazio region of central Italy on the Tiber ( Italian : Tevere ) river. The original settlement developed on hills that faced onto a ford beside the Tiber Island , the only natural ford of the river in this area. The Rome of

34383-436: The middle class and the lower class: the lower middle class". Nazism rejected the Marxist concept of proletarian internationalism and class struggle , and supported the "class struggle between nations", and sought to resolve internal class struggle in the nation while it identified Germany as a proletariat nation fighting against plutocratic nations. The Nazi Party had many working-class supporters and members, and

34602-513: The monumental centre, the palatine, and the largest baths, which continued to function until the Gothic siege of 537. The large baths of Constantine on the Quirinale were even repaired in 443, and the extent of the damage exaggerated and dramatised. However, the city gave an appearance overall of shabbiness and decay because of the large abandoned areas due to population decline. The population declined to 500,000 by 452 and 100,000 by 500 AD (perhaps larger, though no certain figure can be known). After

34821-415: The necessity of a transcendental orientation in a warrior. Evola translated some works of Oswald Spengler and Ortega y Gasset to Italian. In Evola's view, a state ruled by a spiritual elite must reign with unquestionable supremacy over its populace. He cited two models of such an elite as the Nazi SS and Romanian Iron Guard , known for their violence. Evola's philosophy, over his long career, adapted

35040-409: The north Latium town of Sutri to the Church, starting its temporal power. In 756, Pepin the Short , after having defeated the Lombards, gave the Pope temporal jurisdiction over the Roman Duchy and the Exarchate of Ravenna , thus creating the Papal States . Since this period, three powers tried to rule the city: the pope, the nobility (together with the chiefs of militias, the judges, the Senate and

35259-435: The occult, alchemy , magic , and Oriental studies , particularly Tibetan Tantric yoga . Historian Richard H. Drake wrote that Evola's alienation from contemporary values resembled that of other Lost Generation intellectuals who came of age in World War I, but took an uncompromising, eccentric and reactionary form. Evola's writings blended ideas from German idealism , Eastern doctrines , traditionalism , and especially

35478-404: The occult. Guénon's 1927 text Crisis of the Modern World inspired Evola to organise his thoughts around the critique of modernity, and Guénon, whom Evola called his "master", would be one of the few writers Evola found worthy to debate with. In 1927, Reghini and Evola, along with other Italian esotericists, founded the Gruppo di Ur ("Ur Group"). The purpose of this group was to attempt to bring

35697-408: The only variance was the materials with which the goods were manufactured. In the early part of the 19th century, the bourgeois house contained a home that first was stocked and decorated with hand-painted porcelain , machine-printed cotton fabrics, machine-printed wallpaper , and Sheffield steel ( crucible and stainless ). The utility of these things was inherent in their practical functions. By

35916-422: The opposite sex and even substituting the atmosphere of an urban existence for the Theophany that Traditionalists had identified in virgin nature. During the 1960s Evola thought right-wing entities could no longer reverse the corruption of modern civilisation. E. C. Wolff noted that this is why Evola wrote Ride the Tiger, choosing to distance himself completely from active political engagement, without excluding

36135-405: The outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War . Italian troops were able to capture Rome entering the city through a breach near Porta Pia . Pope Pius IX declared himself a prisoner in the Vatican . In 1871 the capital of Italy was moved from Florence to Rome. In 1870 the population of the city was 212,000, all of whom lived with the area circumscribed by the ancient city, and in 1920, the population

36354-505: The ownership of property . In the 19th century, the bourgeoisie propounded liberalism , and gained political rights, religious rights, and civil liberties for themselves and the lower social classes; thus the bourgeoisie was a progressive philosophic and political force in Western societies. After the Industrial Revolution (1750–1850), by the mid-19th century the great expansion of the bourgeoisie social class caused its stratification – by business activity and by economic function – into

36573-424: The peasants and the landlords, between the workers and the owners of the means of production , the feudal nobility . As the economic managers of the (raw) materials, the goods, and the services, and thus the capital (money) produced by the feudal economy, the term "bourgeoisie" evolved to also denote the middle class – the businessmen who accumulated, administered, and controlled the capital that made possible

36792-402: The philosophic integrity of Italian fascism, the ideological monolith that was the régime of Prime Minister Benito Mussolini. Any assumption of legitimate political power (government and rule) by the bourgeoisie represented a fascist loss of totalitarian state power for social control through political unity—one people, one nation, and one leader. Sociologically, to the fascist man, to become

37011-526: The plan for an occult war, whose objective is the utter destruction, in the non-Jewish peoples, of all tradition, class, aristocracy, and hierarchy, and of all moral, religious, and spiritual values." He was an admirer of Corneliu Zelea Codreanu , the antisemitic leader of the fascist Romanian Iron Guard . After Codreanu was assassinated in 1938 on orders from King Carol II , Evola railed against "the Judaic horde" that he accused of planning "Talmudic, Israelite tyranny." Evola's antisemitism did not emphasise

37230-445: The pope, the emperor, and each other. These were the times of Theodora and her daughter Marozia , concubines and mothers of several popes, and of Crescentius , a powerful feudal lord, who fought against the Emperors Otto II and Otto III . The scandals of this period forced the papacy to reform itself: the election of the pope was reserved to the cardinals, and reform of the clergy was attempted. The driving force behind this renewal

37449-402: The populace), and the Frankish king, as king of the Lombards, patricius, and Emperor. These three parties (theocratic, republican, and imperial) were a characteristic of Roman life during the entire Middle Ages. On Christmas night of 800, Charlemagne was crowned in Rome as Emperor by Pope Leo III : on that occasion, the city hosted for the first time the two powers whose struggle for control

37668-428: The possibility of race-mixing . Richard H. Drake wrote, "Evola was never prepared to discount the value of blood altogether". Evola wrote: "a certain balanced consciousness and dignity of race can be considered healthy" in a time where "the exaltation of the negro and all the rest, anticolonialist psychosis and integrationist fanaticism [are] all parallel phenomena in the decline of Europe and the West." Furlong wrote that

37887-403: The possibility of action in the future. He argued that one should stay firm and ready to intervene when the tiger of modernity "is tired of running." Goodrick-Clarke notes that, "Evola sets up the ideal of the 'active nihilist' who is prepared to act with violence against modern decadence." Evola contributed to Giuseppe Bottai 's magazine Critica Fascista for a time . From 1934 to 1943 Evola

38106-473: The power of metaphysical mythology while developing his theories. This led to his advocacy of supra-rational intellectual intuition over discursive knowledge. In Evola's view, discursive knowledge separates man from Being. Sheehan stated that this position is a theme in certain interpretations of Western philosophers such as Plato , Thomas Aquinas , and Martin Heidegger that was exaggerated by Evola. Evola would later write: "The truths that allow us to understand

38325-451: The private life of his daughter, so that her marriage can also assist his social ascent. Buddenbrooks (1901), by Thomas Mann (1875–1955), chronicles the moral , intellectual, and physical decay of a rich family through its declines, material and spiritual, in the course of four generations, beginning with the patriarch Johann Buddenbrook Sr. and his son, Johann Buddenbrook Jr., who are typically successful German businessmen; each

38544-466: The process he brings together for the first time interest in the esoteric and in conspiracy theory which characterize much of the later Grail literature." Goodrick-Clarke wrote that Evola "regarded the advent of Christianity as an era of unprecedented decline", because Christianity's egalitarianism and accessibility undermined the Roman ideals of "duty, honor and command" that Evola believed in. In his The Doctrine of Awakening (1943), Evola argued that

38763-403: The purity of physical and mental discipline." Evola wrote that the tension between a detached "impulse toward transcendence" and an engaged "warrior spirit" defined his life and work. Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke wrote that Evola's "rigorous New Age spirituality speaks directly to those who reject absolutely the leveling world of democracy, capitalism, multi-racialism and technology at the outset of

38982-405: The regression of castes" in Revolt Against the Modern World and other writings on racism from the 1930s and World War II period. In Evola's view "power and civilization have progressed from one to another of the four castes—sacred leaders, warrior nobility, bourgeoisie (economy, 'merchants') and slaves". Furlong explains: "for Evola, the core of racial superiority lay in the spiritual qualities of

39201-402: The relationship between "spiritual racism" and biological racism, Evola put forth the following viewpoint, which Furlong described as pseudo-scientific: "The factor of 'blood' or 'race' has its importance, because it is not psychologically—in the brain or the opinions of the individual—but in the very deepest forces of life that traditions live and act as typical formative energies. Blood registers

39420-437: The same period he contributed to the antisemite Giovanni Preziosi 's magazine La vita italiana. Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke has written that Evola's 1945 essay "American 'Civilization'" described the United States as "the final stage of European decline into the 'interior formlessness' of vacuous individualism, conformity and vulgarity under the universal aegis of money-making." According to Goodrick-Clarke, Evola argued that

39639-428: The shore, where the south-western district of Ostia is located. The altitude of the central part of Rome ranges from 13 m (43 ft) above sea level (at the base of the Pantheon ) to 139 m (456 ft) above sea level (the peak of Monte Mario ). The Comune of Rome covers an overall area of about 1,285 km (496 sq mi), including many green areas. Public parks and nature reserves cover

39858-416: The shores of the Tiber Valley . Vatican City (the smallest country in the world and headquarters of the worldwide Catholic Church under the governance of the Holy See ) is an independent country inside the city boundaries of Rome, the only existing example of a country within a city. Rome is often referred to as the City of Seven Hills due to its geographic location, and also as the "Eternal City". Rome

40077-400: The short-lived journal Revue Bleue , he became a prominent representative of Dadaism in Italy. (In his autobiography, Evola described his Dadaism as an attack on rationalist cultural values.) In 1922, after concluding that avant-garde art was becoming commercialised and stiffened by academic conventions, he gave up painting and renounced poetry. Evola was a keen mountaineer , describing it as

40296-414: The sidelines of officialty, as some sort of eccentric". Evola was in charge of the cultural page of the influential fascist newspaper Il Regime Fascista for the regime's last decade. Evola declined to join Italy's National Fascist Party or any other party of the time; Ferraresi wrote that Evola's "lofty nonconformism" and "imperial paganism" did not fit well in a party that would make the Catholic Church

40515-455: The social progress was incidental. According to Karl Marx , the bourgeois during the Middle Ages usually was a self-employed businessman – such as a merchant, banker, or entrepreneur – whose economic role in society was being the financial intermediary to the feudal landlord and the peasant who worked the fief , the land of the lord. Yet, by the 18th century, the time of the Industrial Revolution (1750–1850) and of industrial capitalism,

40734-500: The spiritual orientation of Traditionalist writers such as René Guénon and the political concerns of the European authoritarian right, Furlong wrote. Sheehan described Evola as "perhaps the most original and creative — and, intellectually, the most nonconformist, of the Italian Fascist philosophers". Evola had access to Benito Mussolini in the last years of the Fascist regime, and advised him on racial policies, but "without much effect", Ferraresi wrote; Evola "was kept (or stayed) on

40953-425: The strangest intellectual figures of his century". Thomas Sheehan wrote that "Evola's first philosophical works from the 'twenties were dedicated to reshaping neo-idealism from a philosophy of Absolute Spirit and Mind into a philosophy of the "absolute individual" and action." Accordingly, Evola developed his doctrine of " magical idealism ", which held that "the Ego must understand that everything that seems to have

41172-408: The successors of Peter, who is considered the first Bishop of Rome. The city thus became of increasing importance as the centre of the Catholic Church . After the Lombard invasion of Italy (569–572), the city remained nominally Byzantine, but in reality, the popes pursued a policy of equilibrium between the Byzantines , the Franks , and the Lombards . In 729, the Lombard king Liutprand donated

41391-429: The supernatural faith of the Roman Catholic Church and the materialist faith of temporal religion; in The Autarchy of Culture: Intellectuals and Fascism in the 1930s , the priest Giuseppe Marino said that: Christianity is essentially anti-bourgeois. ... A Christian, a true Christian, and thus a Catholic, is the opposite of a bourgeois. Culturally, the bourgeois man may be considered effeminate, infantile, or acting in

41610-430: The support system from its control. Christianity in the form of the Nicene Creed became the official religion of the empire in 380, via the Edict of Thessalonica issued in the name of three emperors – Gratian, Valentinian II, and Theodosius I – with Theodosius clearly the driving force behind it. He was the last emperor of a unified empire: after his death in 395, his young children, Honorius and Arcadius , inherited

41829-569: The symbol of Rome's constituted republican government . Furthermore, Rome has been called Urbs Aeterna (The Eternal City), Caput Mundi (The Capital of the world ), Throne of St. Peter and Roma Capitale. While there have been discoveries of archaeological evidence of human occupation of the Rome area from approximately 14,000 years ago, the dense layer of much younger debris obscures Palaeolithic and Neolithic sites. Evidence of stone tools, pottery, and stone weapons attest to about 10,000 years of human presence. Several excavations support

42048-450: The term "Aryan" to refer to the nobility, who in his view were imbued with traditional spirituality. Feinstein writes that this interpretation made the term "Aryan" more plausible in an Italian context and thereby furthered antisemitism in Fascist Italy. Evola's interpretation was adopted by Mussolini, who declared in 1938 that "Italy's civilization is Aryan". Wolff notes that Evola seems to have stopped writing about race in 1945, but adds that

42267-477: The text Eros and the Mysteries of Love: The Metaphysics of Sex (1958), where his views on sexuality were dealt with at length. Arthur Versluis described this text as Evola's "most interesting" work aside from Revolt Against the Modern World (1934). This book remains popular among many 'New Age' adherents. Evola's views on race had roots in his aristocratic elitism. According to European studies professor Paul Furlong, Evola developed what he called "the law of

42486-419: The three Macedonian Wars (212–168 BC) against Macedonia . The first Roman provinces were established at this time: Sicily , Sardinia and Corsica , Hispania , Macedonia , Achaea and Africa . From the beginning of the 2nd century BC, power was contested between two groups of aristocrats: the optimates , representing the conservative part of the Senate , and the populares , which relied on

42705-612: The twenty-first century. Their acute sense of cultural chaos can find powerful relief in his ideal of total renewal." Stephen Atkins summarized Evola's philosophy as "a complete rejection of modern society and its mores". Evola loathed liberalism , because, as Rose wrote, "Everything he revered—social castes, natural inequalities, and sacred privileges—was targeted by liberalism for reform or abolition." Goodrick-Clarke wrote that Evola invoked Indo-Aryan tradition to advance "a radical doctrine of anti-egalitarianism, anti-democracy, anti-liberalism and anti-Semitism". Rose described Evola as "one of

42924-418: The view that Rome grew from pastoral settlements on the Palatine Hill built above the area of the future Roman Forum . Between the end of the Bronze Age and the beginning of the Iron Age , each hill between the sea and the Capitoline Hill was topped by a village (on the Capitoline, a village is attested since the end of the 14th century BC). However, none of them yet had an urban quality. Nowadays, there

43143-433: The war as part of the " Italian economic miracle " of post-war reconstruction and modernisation in the 1950s and early 1960s. During this period, the years of la dolce vita ("the sweet life"), Rome became a fashionable city, with popular classic films such as Ben Hur , Quo Vadis , Roman Holiday and La Dolce Vita filmed in the city's iconic Cinecittà Studios . The rising trend in population growth continued until

43362-519: The world of Tradition are not those that can be "learned" or "discussed." They either are or are not. We can only remember them, and that happens when we are freed from the obstacles represented by various human constructions (chief among these are the results and methods of the authorized "researchers") and have awakened the capacity to see from the nonhuman viewpoint, which is the same as the Traditional viewpoint ... Traditional truths have always been held to be essentially non-human ." Evola developed

43581-479: The world. Beyond the intellectual realms of political economy , history, and political science that discuss, describe, and analyze the bourgeoisie as a social class, the colloquial usage of the sociological terms bourgeois and bourgeoise describe the social stereotypes of the old money and of the nouveau riche , who is a politically timid conformist satisfied with a wealthy, consumerist style of life characterized by conspicuous consumption and

43800-405: Was Arturo Reghini , a critic of Christianity and democracy and advocate for the ancient Roman aristocracy . Reghini welcomed the rise of Fascist Italy and sought to return to pre-Christian spirituality through the promotion of a "cultured magic". Through Reghini, Evola was introduced to the French Orientalist René Guénon , a leading figure of traditionalism at the time who shared an interest in

44019-424: Was 660,000. A significant portion lived outside the walls in the north and across the Tiber in the Vatican area. Soon after World War I in late 1922 Rome witnessed the rise of Italian Fascism led by Benito Mussolini , who led a march on the city . He did away with democracy by 1926, eventually declaring a new Italian Empire and allying Italy with Nazi Germany in 1938. Mussolini demolished fairly large parts of

44238-499: Was a vehicle for his own theories, but was a far from accurate rendition of the subject, and he held that much the same could be said of Evola's writings on Hermeticism. Ñāṇavīra Thera was inspired to become a bhikkhu from reading Evola's text The Doctrine of Awakening in 1945 while hospitalised in Sorrento . Evola's Revolt Against the Modern World (1934) promotes the mythology of an ancient Golden Age which gradually declined into modern decadence. In this work, Evola described

44457-436: Was able to come to lucid expression through this text, in spite of the "coverings" added to it to prevent accusations from the church. Though Evola rejected Carl Jung 's interpretation of alchemy, Jung described Evola's The Hermetic Tradition as a "magisterial account of Hermetic philosophy". In Hegel and the Hermetic Tradition , the philosopher Glenn Alexander Magee favoured Evola's interpretation over that of Jung's. In 1988,

44676-456: Was also taken up by Ovid , Virgil , and Livy . Rome is also called Caput Mundi (Capital of the World). After the fall of the Empire in the west , which marked the beginning of the Middle Ages , Rome slowly fell under the political control of the Papacy , and in the 8th century, it became the capital of the Papal States , which lasted until 1870. Beginning with the Renaissance , almost all popes since Nicholas V (1447–1455) pursued

44895-483: Was first under the control of Odoacer and then became part of the Ostrogothic Kingdom before returning to East Roman control after the Gothic War , which devastated the city in 546 and 550 . Its population declined from more than a million in AD 210 to 500,000 in AD 273 to 35,000 after the Gothic War (535–554), reducing the sprawling city to groups of inhabited buildings interspersed among large areas of ruins, vegetation, vineyards and market gardens. It

45114-443: Was governed by creating regional dioceses. The existence of regional fiscal units from 286 served as the model for this unprecedented innovation. The emperor quickened the process of removing military command from governors. Henceforth, civilian administration and military command would be separate. He gave governors more fiscal duties and placed them in charge of the army logistical support system as an attempt to control it by removing

45333-408: Was heading south to fight the Hohenstaufen on behalf of the pope, was appointed Senator. Charles founded the Sapienza , the university of Rome. In that period the pope died, and the cardinals, summoned in Viterbo , could not agree on his successor. This angered the people of the city, who then unroofed the building where they met and imprisoned them until they had nominated the new pope; this marked

45552-411: Was impressed by the populist antisemitism and the anti-liberal bourgeois agitation of Karl Lueger , who as the mayor of Vienna during Hitler's time in the city, used a rabble-rousing style of oratory that appealed to the wider masses. When asked whether he supported the "bourgeois right-wing", Hitler claimed that Nazism was not exclusively for any class , and he also indicated that it favored neither

45771-407: Was influenced by Hans Blüher , a proponent of the Männerbund ('alliance of men') concept as a model for his "warrior-band" or "warrior-society". Goodrick-Clarke noted the fundamental influence of Otto Weininger 's book Sex and Character on Evola's dualism of male-female spirituality. According to Goodrick-Clarke, "Evola's celebration of virile spirituality was rooted in Weininger's work, which

45990-485: Was introduced to philosophers such as Friedrich Nietzsche and Otto Weininger . Other early philosophical influences included Italian man of letters Carlo Michelstaedter and German post-Hegelian thinker Max Stirner . He was attracted to the avant-garde , and briefly associated with Filippo Tommaso Marinetti 's Futurist movement during his time at university. He broke with Marinetti in 1916 as Evola disagreed with his extreme nationalism and advocacy of industry. In

46209-444: Was known as the caput Mundi , i.e. the capital of the known world, an expression which had already been used in the Republican period. During its first two centuries, the empire was ruled by emperors of the Julio-Claudian , Flavian (who built an eponymous amphitheatre known as the Colosseum ), and Antonine dynasties. This time was also characterised by the spread of the Christian religion, preached by Jesus Christ in Judea in

46428-647: Was no bourgeoisie apart from the citizenry of the cities. Rural peasants came under a different legal system. In communist philosophy , the bourgeoisie is the social class that came to own the means of production during modern industrialisation and whose societal concerns are the value of private property and the preservation of capital to ensure the perpetuation of their economic dominance in society. The Modern French word bourgeois ( / ˈ b ʊər ʒ w ɑː / BOORZH -wah or / b ʊər ˈ ʒ w ɑː / boorzh- WAH , French: [buʁʒwa] ) derived from

46647-413: Was responsible for 'Diorama Filosofico', the cultural page of Il Regime Fascista , an influential radical fascist daily newspaper owned by Roberto Farinacci , the pro-Nazi mayor of Cremona . Evola used the page to publish international right-wing thinkers. Evola's writings on the page argued for imperialism ; leading up to Mussolini's invasion of Ethiopia , Evola praised "the sacred valor of war". During

46866-405: Was restored in part much later). In 330, he transformed Byzantium into Constantinople , which became his new capital. However, it was not officially anything more than an imperial residence like Milan , Trier or Nicomedia until given a city prefect in 359 by Constantius II . Constantine, following Diocletian's reforms. regionalised the administration, which fundamentally changed the way it

47085-399: Was the monk Ildebrando da Soana , who once elected pope under the name of Gregory VII became involved into the Investiture Controversy against Emperor Henry IV . Subsequently, Rome was sacked and burned by the Normans under Robert Guiscard who had entered the city in support of the Pope, then besieged in Castel Sant'Angelo . During this period, the city was autonomously ruled by

47304-409: Was to be a constant of the Middle Ages. This event marks the beginning of the Carolingian Empire , the first phase of the Holy Roman Empire . In 846, Muslim Arabs unsuccessfully stormed the city's walls , but managed to loot St. Peter 's and St. Paul's basilica, both outside the city wall. After the decay of Carolingian power , Rome fell prey to feudal chaos: several noble families fought against

47523-520: Was trying to promote an "Italian version of racism and antisemitism, one that could be integrated into the Fascist project to create a New Man". Evola dismissed the biological racism of chief Nazi theorist Alfred Rosenberg and others as reductionist and materialistic. He also argued that one could be "Aryan" but have a "Jewish" soul, and could be "Jewish" but have an "Aryan" soul. In Evola's view, Otto Weininger and Carlo Michelstaedter were Jews of "sufficiently heroic, ascetic, and sacral" character to fit

47742-431: Was united as the Kingdom of Italy in 1861 with the temporary capital in Florence . That year Rome was declared the capital of Italy even though it was still under the Pope's control. During the 1860s, the last vestiges of the Papal States were under French protection thanks to the foreign policy of Napoleon III . French troops were stationed in the region under Papal control. In 1870 the French troops were withdrawn due to

47961-484: Was widely translated by the end of the First World War." Evola denounced homosexuality as "useless" for his purposes. He did not neglect sadomasochism , so long as sadism and masochism "are magnifications of an element potentially present in the deepest essence of eros ." Then, it would be possible to "extend, in a transcendental and perhaps ecstatic way, the possibilities of sex." Evola held that women "played" with men, threatened their masculinity, and lured them into

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