/lit/ - Literature

Well Evola talks about a dichotomy of a given country. The dichotomy is matter and form., the people or the masses are the "matter", and the state is the "form" that this matter takes on. This is a way that societies have developed in the past, but not America. America is only "matter", it has no "form". The "american dream" is to be free, in an abstract kind of way, free to consume and pursue a burgeois life.

In traditional societies the nobility was the "form" and the common folk was the "matter". It was certainly possible to travel between these classes ( a commoner could become nobility, this is well attested in many sources). So it is with this explanation that Evola says the american mind "lacks characteristic form".

In Evolas terms (which are traditional terms, commonplace before modernity) the burgeois life is not the ends but a means, and then after burgeois life has been established a given society will set new goals, which will manifest in a class of people (a nobility) which gives this society its "form". This is something America has never had. The closest was probably the plantation owners in the south. But compare with Europe which has a long history of noble rulers. Consider also Americas imitation of the Roman Republic, an imitation in the aesthetic sense only, they failed to imitate the metaphysical origin of the Roman state.

>mfw I found out that the English, whomst I thought were quintessentially Angles, Saxons and Jutes, are actually based on some French family