Evola in the philosophical mainstream

Grant Havers, a professor of philosophy at Trinity Western University in British Columbia, has brought Julius Evola into the mainstream of political philosophy with a chapter on “Evola’s Critique of Machiavellianism” in a 2025 volume in the American series “Political Theory for Today.” 

Havers draws mostly on Men Among the Ruins, briefly presenting Evola’s perspectives on “the meaning of the aristocratic mindset” before proceeding to his critiques of Machiavelli and of Machiavellian Bonapartism, the core of the article, and ending with a short section on the possibility of “a return to aristocratic politics amid the ruins of modernity.” Regarding Machiavelli he brings Evola into conversation with the German-American political philosopher Leo Strauss (1899-1973), regarding Bonapartism with the American philosopher James Burnham (1905-1987), and regarding a return to aristocratic politics, briefly, with the English politician Winston Churchill (1874-1965). Strauss, Burnham, and Churchill are all mainstream figures, though certainly on the political right. Evola is not normally found in such company.

Havers introduces Evola as an “Italian neo-pagan mystic” and notes that there was a “sympathy with certain features of Italian Fascism and German National Socialism.” Despite this, he proposes, Evola “articulates important and original insights into the self-destructive nature of modern democracy.” As he goes on to demonstrate, avoiding any reference to the esoteric, though he does use the terms “spirituality” and even “metaphysically.”

The chapter appears in a volume on Aristocratic Voices: Forgotten Arguments about Virtue, Authority, and Inequality (Lexington Books, 2025) edited by Richard Avramenko (University of Wisconsin, Madison) and Ethan Alexander-Davey (Campbell University, NC), a follow-up on their earlier volume on Aristocratic Souls in Democratic Times (Lexington Books, 2018). As they write, “In the 21st century, political debates appear to center on fundamental conflicts between ‘the people’ and ‘elites.’ Most of these discussions emphasize strategies to protect and empower the oppressed masses against a predatory ruling class. Much of classical political thought, however, was written from an aristocratic point of view: that is, it ascribed paramount importance to the question of elite formation.” Hence their two volumes, which look at figures from Tacitus, Hobbes, Burke, and Tocqueville, to Konstantin Leontiev, José Ortega y Gasset, Henry Adams, and Oswald Spengler. And now also Evola. A wider focus than his critique of Machiavellian Bonapartism might have been in order.