Ride the Tiger

Ride the Tiger: A Survival Manual for the Aristocrats of the Soul (Italian: Cavalcare la Tigre) is a 1961 book by Italian Traditionalist philosopher Julius Evola. The first English translation (translated by Joscelyn Godwin and Constance Fontana) was published by Inner Traditions in 2003 (ISBN 0-89281-125-0).

In Ride the Tiger, Evola argues that the modern world has become totally corrupt and that the institutions and traditions of the ancient world that once allowed a person to fully realize his being have been lost. The work expands upon the Radical Traditionalist ideas which Evola developed in Revolt Against the Modern World and offers a solution to the problem of living in the modern world different from the reactionary revolution he argued for in Men Among the Ruins. The principal metaphor of the book is its title. Evola argues that in order to survive in the modern world an enlightened or "differentiated man" should "ride the tiger". As a man, by holding onto the tiger's back may survive the confrontation, so too might a man, by letting the world take him on its inexorable path be able to turn the destructive forces around him into a kind of inner liberation. While the traditional world described in Revolt Against the Modern World would allow a man to fully realize his being in a united society, the world Evola describes in Ride the Tiger is much lonelier and even more pessimistic. Despite its pessimism, it is a testament to his belief that no matter how lost civilization may be, there always exists the ability for the individual person to live his life always looking "above" himself and thus achieving enlightenment.

Contents

Part 1: Orientations

1. The Modern World and Traditional Man
2. The End of a Cycle—"Ride the Tiger"

Part 2: In the World Where God Is Dead

3. European Nihilism—The Dissolution of Morals

4. from the Precursors of Nihilism to the "Lost Youth" and the Protest Movement

5. Disguises of European Nihilism—The Socioeconomic Myth and the Protest Movement

6. Active Nihilism—Nietzsche

7. "Being Oneself"

8. The Transcendent Dimension—"Life" and "More Than Life"

9. Beyond Theism and Atheism

10. Invulnerability—Apollo and Dionysus

11. Acting without Desire—The Causal Law

Part 3: The Dead End of Existentialism

12. Being and Inauthentic Existence

13. Sartre: Prisoner without Walls

14. Existence, "A Project Flung into the World'

15. Heidegger: "Retreating Forwards" and "Being-for-Death"—Collapse of Existentialism

Part 4: Dissolution of the Individual

16. The Dual Aspect of Anonymity

17. Destructions and Liberations in the New Realism

18. The "Animal Ideal"—The Sentiment of Nature

Part 5: Dissolution of Consciousness and Relativism

19. The Procedures of Modern Science

20. Covering up Nature—Phenomenology

Part 6:The Realm of Art—From "Physical" Music to the Drug Regime

21. The Sickness of European Culture

22. Dissolution in Modern Art

23. Modern Music and Jazz

24. Excursus on Drugs

Part 7: Dissolution in the Social Realm

25. States and Parties—Apoliteia

26. Society—The Crisis of Patriotic Feeling

27. Marriage and the Family

28. Relation between the Sexes

Part 8: The Spiritual Problem

29. The "Second Religiosity"

30. Death—The Right over Life

• Notes
• Index

Quotations

From the Book

"This restriction must be kept in mind. What I am about to say does not concern the ordinary man of our day. On the contrary, I have in mind the man who finds himself involved in today's world, even at its most problematic and paroxysimal points; yet he does not belong inwardly to such a world, nor will he give in to it. He feels himself, in essence, as belonging to a different race from that of the overwhelming majority of his contemporaries."

External links

• Reader reviews at the Wayback Machine (archived September 28, 2007)