Ride the Tiger: A Survival Manual for the Aristocrats of the Soul

A Manual for the Ruins

Ride the Tiger, published in 1961, is Julius Evola's book for the man who has accepted that the traditional world is gone and is not coming back in his lifetime. Where Revolt Against the Modern World diagnosed the disease, Ride the Tiger asks: given that the modern world is what it is, how does the individual who rejects its premises actually live? The answer Evola proposes is not political activism or nostalgic retreat. It is a kind of inner sovereignty maintained within, and against, the conditions of dissolution.

The Approach

Evola surveys modern philosophy (Nietzsche, existentialism, the dissolution of reason), modern art, modern sexuality, drugs, and the collapse of bourgeois morality. In each case, he asks whether the "differentiated man" can use these developments rather than be destroyed by them. The title comes from a Chinese proverb: "Ride the tiger, and when it is exhausted, you can dismount." The strategy is not to fight modernity head-on but to pass through it, using its own nihilism as a vehicle for inner liberation.

More Austere Than Revolt

This is a harder book than Revolt Against the Modern World, not because the writing is more difficult but because the conclusion is more demanding. Evola offers no comfort, no community, no political program. He addresses the individual alone. Readers who come to Evola looking for a political movement will be disappointed. Readers looking for a philosophy of personal conduct in an age of decline will find this indispensable.

About This Edition

Author: Julius Evola (translated by Joscelyn Godwin and Constance Fontana)
Publisher: Inner Traditions International
Format: Hardcover
ISBN: 9780892811250