Men Among the Ruins: Postwar Reflections of a Radical Traditionalist

Evola's Postwar Political Vision

Julius Evola published Men Among the Ruins in Italian in 1953. The book is his attempt to articulate what a traditionalist political stance looks like after 1945, when the old European order has been destroyed and the choices on offer are liberal democracy and Soviet communism. Evola rejects both. He argues for an organic state rooted in hierarchy, spiritual authority, and the differentiation of human types, drawing on pre-modern European political forms as models for what might be rebuilt from the wreckage.

Core Arguments

The book covers the nature of the state, the distinction between an organic and a totalitarian conception of authority, the role of economics (which Evola considers subordinate to politics and culture), the question of race understood as a spiritual rather than purely biological category, and the problem of what he calls the "men among the ruins," those individuals who refuse to accept the postwar settlement as final. Evola writes for a specific reader: the man who woke up in 1945, surveyed the destruction, and decided that the collapse of the old forms was not the end but the precondition for something new. The Inner Traditions edition features Joscelyn Godwin's translation and H. T. Hansen's substantial introduction.

About This Edition

Author: Julius Evola
Translator: Joscelyn Godwin
Publisher: Inner Traditions International
Format: Paperback