Audiobook: Revolt Against the Modern World by Julius Evola, Part One, Chapter 15

Chapter 15: Professional Associations and the Arts; Slavery

In this chapter, Evola examines the relationship between professional associations, the arts, and slavery within traditional societies. He explores how the sacred permeated all aspects of life, including sciences, arts, and trades. Traditional societies viewed various professions as symbolic actions with transcendent meanings, and artisanship was often considered a sacred calling. The chapter discusses the initiation into trades, the symbolic significance of ancient arts, and the hierarchical organization of professional guilds. Evola also contrasts the traditional view of labor with modern perceptions, highlighting how ancient societies saw labor as a defining characteristic of slavery. He critiques modern slavery imposed by economic systems and emphasizes the qualitative value and spiritual significance of traditional craftsmanship.

Footnotes:

1. R. Guinon, La Crise du monde moderne, 108-15.

2. Very appropriately O. Spann defines modern knowledge as “the knowledge of what is not worthy of being known." Religionsphilosophie (Vienna, 1948), 44.

3. Concerning the illusions nourished by some in regard to modern science, see my Ca valcare la tigre (Milan,
1962).

4. Lucian of Samosata, On Dance, 59. The "dance of the seven veils,” which are removed one at a time until the dancer is totally nude, repeats on its own plane a precise initiatory schema.

5. Li Chi, 4.1.13; 17.3.20.

6. J. Evola, The Hermetic Tradition, chap. 22.

7. In the language of the campagnonagge, in which these traditions were preserved, the word vocation was always synonymous with occupation: instead of asking a person what his occupation was, he was asked what was his “vocation."

8. The medieval “manuals" that have been preserved often mention mysterious practices that were associ-ated with the process of construction itself; they also relate legends according to which masters of the art were killed because they betrayed the oath of secrecy.

9. Herodotus, The Histories, 6.60.

10. According to a tradition, Numa, by instituting the collegia, intended for “every profession to celebrate its own cull” (Plutarch, Numa, 17). In India too each profession pursued by the inferior castes often corre-sponded to a special cult of divine or legendary patrons; this practice is also found in Greece, among Nordic people and the Aztecs, in Islam, and so on.

11. 11. In Rome the professional guilds became hereditary during the third century A.D. From that time on, every member of a corporation passed on to his heirs not only a biological legacy, but his profession and his prop¬erty as well, provided that they too followed in his footsteps. This succession was enforced by the state, however, and thus we can no longer speak of an authentic conformity of the castes to the traditional spirit.

12. [The translator of this work has come across a passage that he regards worth quoting in this context: “Around 1820 an astrologer says to the young hero of Stendhal’s Charterhouse of Parma: Tn a century perhaps nobody will want idlers any more.’ He was right. It ill becomes anyone today to admit that he lives without working. Since Marx and Proudhon, labor has been universally accepted as a positive social value and a philosophical concept. As a result, the ancients’ contempt for labor, their undisguised scorn for those who work with their hands, their exaltation of leisure as the sine qua non of a ‘liberal’ life, the only life worthy of a man, shocks us deeply. Not only was the worker regarded as a social inferior, he was base, ignoble. It has often been held, therefore, that asociety like the Roman, so mistaken about what wr regard as proper values, must have been a deformed society, which inevitably paid the price of its de¬formity. ... And yet, if we are honest, we must admit that the key to this enigma lies within ourselves. True, we believe that work is respectable and would not dare to admit to idleness. Nevertheless, we are sensitive to class distinction and, admit or not, regard workers and shopkeepers as people of relatively little importance. We would not want ourselves or our children to sink to their station, even if we are a little ashamed of harboring such sentiments. Therein lies the first of six keys to ancient attitudes toward labor: contempt for labor equals social contempt for laborers.” Paul Veyne, ed., A History of Private Life, vol. \,From Pagan Rome to Byzantium, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Cambridge, Mass., 1987), 118-19.)

13. Aristotle (Politics, 1.4) based slavery on the presupposition that there are men who are only fit for physi¬cal labor, who therefore must be dominated and directed by others. According to this order of ideas, a distinction was made between “barbarians" and “Hellenes." Likewise, the Hindu caste of the fodras originally corresponded to the stratum of the black aboriginal race, the "enemy race" dominated by the Aryans, which had no other choice but to serve those who were “twice-born."

14. See the introduction of my Hermetic Tradition.

15. G. Villa, La filosofia del mito secondo G. B. Vico (Milan, 1949), 98-99.

16. Ibid., 102.

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