We, on the contrary—basing ourselves on a tradition much more ancient and real than the one which can be claimed by the “faith” of Western man, on a tradition which is not proved by doctrines, but by deeds and acts of power and clairvoyance—affirm instead the possibility and the concrete reality of what we have called “Wisdom”. We thus assert the possibility of a positive, direct, methodical, empirical knowledge in the “metaphysical” field, just as science strives to gain in the physical field, and, just like science, it remains above any moral or philosophical belief of men.
~ Julius Evola, Those Who Know and Those Who Believe in Pagan Imperialism
In the aftermath of the destruction of the Traditional world order resulting from the French Revolution, the philosopher Auguste Comte sought to re-establish it on a positive basis. Thus, Positivism would accept as “real” only what can be experienced and the laws that are discovered in that experience. It would supersede the theological and ideological speculations of earlier stages of humanity. (Note: We use the word “ideological” where Comte uses “metaphysical”, since it more accurately reflects his intention. We therefore reserve “metaphysics” as the science of the suprasensible.)
Now, Evola emphasizes that what he means by “metaphysics” is just as exact, methodical and based on the experience of the real, as any empirical science. And just like Positivism, it is independent of any theological or ideological speculations. However, unlike Positivism, it is not the result of a progression or evolution of humanity, but rather a recovery of the most ancient or Primordial Tradition. Yet this is not the accumulation over the centuries of a set of doctrines that can be learned and memorized, but rather something that must be recovered anew by each man through his own efforts and vision. As such it is neither transcendent faith nor physical science, but
necessarily a surpassing of both religious unrealism and materialised realism by a transcendent, virile, Olympian positivism.
Evola describes this more specifically:
we maintain the possibility of forms of experience different from the sensory forms of the common man, not “given”, not “normal”, which can be reached by means of certain active processes of inner transformation. The peculiarity of such transcendent experiences … is to be direct, concrete, and individual, as much as sensory experience itself, and yet to see reality, beyond the contingent, spatio-temporal aspect characteristic of everything that is sensory.
~ Julius Evola, Science vs Wisdom in Pagan Imperialism
As we pointed out, this involves transcending consensus reality, as described by Josephin Peladan. Evola puts it this way:
the whole so-called “problem of knowledge” is enclosed within the interiority of every being, and does not depend on “culture”, but on his capacity for freeing himself from the human, i.e., from the sensory, the rational, and the emotional, and of identifying himself with one or another form of “metaphysical” experience.
This is the critical, yet difficult, point to accept: viz., the metaphysical principle that “to know is to be”. Unless and until a man has regenerated his consciousness to the Primordial State, he does not and cannot know anything about it. Unless and until he becomes a True Man, he can only speculate about it.
To know, according to Wisdom, does not mean “to think”, but to be the thing known: to live it, to realise it inwardly. One does not really know a thing unless one can actively transform one’s consciousness into it. Therefore, only what ensues from direct individual experience will count as knowledge. And, this is just the opposite of the modern mentality, for which, whatever appears immediately to the individual is called “phenomenon”, or “subjective”, and so it posits some other thing behind it as “true reality”, which is simply imagined or presumed (the “thing in itself” of the philosophers, the “Absolute” of vulgar religion, “matter”, “ether”, or “energy” of science). Wisdom is an absolute positivism which regards only what can be grasped by direct experience as real, and everything else as unreal, abstract, and illusory.
~ Julius Evola, Science vs Wisdom in Pagan Imperialism
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