This dense informative review of those two monographs are most
welcome. Since you don't refer to the views of its author on Evola,
we take it that you also consider them as "blank".
In his critical writings on psychoanalysis, Evola never misses an
opportunity to point out that, if the conclusions of psychoanalysis
are absurd with respect to a traditional man whose centre didn't lie
in his subconscious, they are valid when it comes to the modern man,
whose centre lies exactly there. Likewise, the assumption
that "'knowledge' is not true or false per se, but is emblematic of a
certain social status, to which it acts as passport" is not untrue in
modern society, in which 'social status' is all, is all individuals
have left to feel they are different from each another. Basically,
the notion of 'social status' can only arise on the ruins of a
society of orders or of castes, in which social relations of
competition and imitation did not exist and could not exist, as
showed by René Girard - whose theory of nimesis has unfortunately
been hijacked by Marxist economists and sociologists.
--- In evola_as_he_is@yahoogroups.com, "Rowan Berkeley"
<rowan_berkeley@y...> wrote:
>
> I've read those two monographs by Hugh Urban now, and I find it
interesting that he is so dependent on his
> sociology-of-knowledge intellectual starting point that he has to
distance himself from marxism to avoid being
> identified with it. The tell-tale sign of the sociological base is
the concern with social status as the litmus
> test fior the nature of 'knowledge', i.e., 'knowledge' is not true
or false per se, but is emblematic of a
> certain social status, to which it acts as passport.
>
> Of course, this is not untrue, but by itself it is misleading -
consider his treatment of Willermoz, which
> manages to state that W's Masonic 'knowledge' simultaneously:
> (1) connected him to the aristocratic pre-revolutionary elite
> (2) was nearly destroyed by the revolution
> (3) provided a vehicle for aristocrats to perpetuate their social
status in the post-revolutionary world
> (4) raised W himself to an anomalously high status given his social
origins
> (5) was emblematic of the actually reactionary nature of French
Freemasonry
>
> but rejects the Catholic view that
> (a) Freemasonry was a vehicle for the rising bourgeoisie and the
Jews to network AGAINST feudalism
> (b) Freemasonry systematically attacked religious education
> (c) Freemasonry networked internationally to reduce one feudal or
imperial state after another
> (d) the actual content of Freemasonic teaching was anti-Christian
> (e) those aristocrats who did support Freemasonry in their OWN
countries (as opposed to those who used it as a
> subversive stalking-horse in OTHER countries) were either junior
scions without power in the status quo, or were
> self-deluded eccentrics (like 'Philippe Egalite') and were usually
destroyed by the later stages of the
> revolution anyway.
>
> In the same way that he one-sidedly, or indeed wrongly, presents
Freemasonry in France as a prop of the
> post-revolution aristocacy, he also presents Bangali Tantra as a
prop for the post-classical Brahman elite, but
> I cannot evaluate his accuracy here.
>
>
>
>
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