Virtus Heroica

The Superlative Excellence of Gods and Heroes

I ended my exploration of Julius Evola’s thought with the following conclusions:

• The culture war cannot be won on a purely secular level. Spiritual forces are at work. Whether one wishes to interpret those spiritual forces as symbolic expressions of ideas with mythic subconscious influence or as actual evil entities, that will depend on one’s own religious perspective. But ignoring these forces seems to be a recipe for defeat.

• Whatever spiritual or religious tradition the Right looks to for its support, that tradition must offer warriors a place within the sacred. Contemporary Christianity, even in its Benedict option, will not be enough. Something like “muscular” Christianity, reimbued with the old virtues of chivalry, will be required.

• American greatness cannot be restored just by passing the right set of rules or laws. Restoration will require great leadership from men of great character, a “virtuous elite,” possessed of what the Greeks dubbed arete and the Romans virtus.

I think it would be worthwhile to explore those conclusions a bit more, illuminating them with some interesting analysis drawn from philosophy, revelation, and theory. We’ll start with the last bullet point, the requisite of great leaders possessed of arete, and we’ll look to Aristotle.

Aristotle is a writer whose work rewards repeated and deep reading. On a recent review of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, I stumbled upon a brief passage whose implications I had previously not considered. In Book VII, Chapter 1, Aristotle writes:

The undesirable forms of moral character are three in number: vice, incontinence, and brutality. In the case of two of these it is plain what the opposite is: virtue is the name we give to the opposite of vice, and continence to the opposite of incontinence; but for the opposite of the brutal character it would be most appropriate to take that excellence which is beyond us, the excellence of a hero or a god - as Homer makes Priam say of Hector that he was surpassingly good, “nor seemed the child of any mortal man, but of god.”

If, then, superlative excellence raises men into gods, as the stories tell us, it is evident that the opposite of the brutal character would be some such superlative excellence. For just as neither virtue nor vice belongs to a brute, does neither belong to a god; to the latter belongs something higher than virtue…

But as it is rare to find a godlike man (to employ the phrase in use among the Spartans, or when they admire a man exceedingly they call him godlike).

Aristotle discusses virtue and vice throughout the Nicomachean Ethics, and he delves deeply into continence, incontinence, and beastliness in the course of Book VII. But of superlative excellence, of heroic and godlike men, he says nothing further in that work. As a result, most commentators on Book VII believe that Aristotle theorized the existence of heroic virtue simply to maintain the parallel structure between bad and good: vice/virtue, incontinence/continence, beastliness/heroism; the concept has largely been judged unimportant by contemporary Aristotelian commentators.

I myself had never paid any attention to Book VII Chapter 1. But, with Julius Evola fresh in my mind, I re-read it as if for the first time, and began to seek clues elsewhere in his writings.

Towards the end of the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle declared his intent to complete his exploration of human nature with an analysis of the different categories of political regimes. This exploration has come down to us as Aristotle’s Politics. In Book III, Chapter 13 of Politics, Aristotle says the following:

[I]f there is any one man so greatly distinguished in outstanding virtue, or more than one but not enough to be able to make up a complete state, so that the virtue of all the rest and their political ability is not comparable with that of the men mentioned, it is no longer proper to count these exceptional men a part of the state; for they will be treated unjustly if deemed worthy of equal status, being so widely unequal in virtue and in their political ability: since such a man will naturally be as a god among men…

[T]here can be no law dealing with such men as those described, for they are themselves a law; indeed a man would be ridiculous if he tried to legislate for them, for probably they would say what in the story of Antisthenes the lions said when the hares made speeches in the assembly and demanded that all should have equality…

[I]n the case of the best constitution there is much doubt as to what ought to be done, not as regards superiority in the other things of value, such as strength and wealth and popularity, but in the case of a person becoming exceptionally distinguished for virtue. It certainly would not be said that such a man must be banished and got out of the way; yet nevertheless no doubt men would not think that they ought to rule over such a man, for that would be the same as if they claimed to rule over Zeus, dividing up his spheres of government. It remains therefore, and this seems to be the natural course, for all to obey such a man gladly, so that men of this sort may be kings in the cities for all time. (emphasis added)

A few paragraphs later, in Chapter 14 of Book III, Aristotle differentiates a type of kingly rule that is superior to the hereditary monarchies and elected tyrannies found in his day:

There is a fourth species of kingly rule- that of the heroic times- which was hereditary and legal, and was exercised over willing subjects. For the first chiefs were benefactors of the people in arts or arms; they either gathered them into a community, or procured land for them; and thus they became kings of voluntary subjects, and their power was inherited by their descendants. They took the command in war and presided over the sacrifices, except those which required a priest. They also decided causes either with or without an oath; and when they swore, the form of the oath was the stretching out of their scepter. In ancient times their power extended continuously to all things whatsoever, in city and country, as well as in foreign parts…

Let us theorize that the “outstanding virtue” discussed in III.13 of Politics is the same as the “superlative excellence” discussed in VII.1 of the Nicomachean Ethics, and that the “fourth species of kingly rule,” the system used in “heroic times,” is how this rule manifests — a kingship of “benefactors” “exercised over willing subjects” and “extended continuously to all things whatsoever.”

If this thesis is correct, then Aristotle’s ideal political system is not the polity or mixed constitution. It is a monarchy in which the polis is governed by a godlike hero-king, a law unto himself who is by nature both an autarch and autocrat. Aristotle is revealed as an Evolan, or perhaps Evola revealed as an Aristotelian.

Now, I am not the first to see a connection between Book III of the Politics and Book VII of Nicomachean Ethics. As is often the case when I think I’ve discovered some new insight, earlier thinkers got there first. A 2015 study of this topic, Shaping Heroic Virtue: Studies in the Art and Politics of Supereminence in Europe and Scandinavia, explores the concept of heroic virtue in Aristotle and his commentators, showing that heroic virtue was elaborated into complex theories of secular and sacred authority. In the book’s introductory chapter, scholars Andreas Hellerstedt and Stefano Fogelberg Rota explain:

The term virtus heroica was introduced into medieval Latin through the first complete translation of the Nichomachean Ethics, attributed to Robert Grosseteste (c. 1175-1253)… Heroic virtue found a place in scholastic terminology and became a technical term in its own right, which philosophers and theologians started to feel a need to explain and comment upon.

In the chapter “Aristotle’s Heroic Virtue and Medieval Theories of Monarchy,” Biörn Tjällén traces a path from Aristotle to St. Thomas Aquinas to Aquinas’s student Peter of Auvergne, a path through which heroic virtue came to be seen in the Middle Ages as both a necessity for, and justification of, kingship. Tjällén writes:

How did Peter of Auvergne react to Aristotle’s notion in the Politics that a man of superlative virtue ought to rule? The answer is that he read it in the light of the totality of both Politics and Ethics, and hence understood this supereminent ruler to be synonymous with the man of heroic virtue described in the Ethics, and to correspond to Aristotle’s idea about the kings of the long-gone heroic era…

With the commentary of Peter of Auvergne, those who read or heard Politics at the arts faculties of the medieval universities encountered heroic virtue not simply as a part of Aristotle’s account of different moral states; with Peter’s reading it was also a political concept charged with associations to monarchy.

Perhaps the most influential of Peter’s readers was Giles of Rome, the 14th century author of the widely read treatise De regimine principum (“The Rule of Princes”). Tjällén explains that:

Regimine principum is in fact a primer in virtue ethics applied to the person of the prince. Following Aristotle’s lead, Giles accounts not only for the virtues but also for lesser qualities of the soul that were nevertheless desirable, such as self-restraint or perseverance. And above the regular virtues, heroic virtue has its pride of place in Giles’s account, as a moral attribute particularly fitting for the ruler.

In De regimine principum, Giles himself writes:

[I]f all citizens should be virtuous, as maintained by the Philosopher in Politics, someone who surpasses others in power and dignity should also surpass them in goodness and virtue. It is fitting that nobles and freeborn are more good and virtuous than other citizens. Hence, it is fitting that the king himself is better than the best and like a demigod.

Just as some people are bestial and bad beyond the measure of man, so some are like divine and they are good beyond the measure of man. This is why the Philosopher in the beginning of Ethics VII relates what Homer told of Hector, that King Priam, his father, said about him that he was exceedingly good, so that he did not seem to be a child of mortal men but of gods. For that virtue by which someone should be good beyond the measure of man the Philosopher calls heroic, that is ruling and governing.

And from this it is clear that if kings and princes wish to rule rightly it is not enough that they avoid every degree of that which is bad, that they are not soft, not unrestrained, not intemperate or bestial, but they ought to be in the highest degree of goodness. For they who wish to rule and govern others must have that virtue which rules and governs others and be good in a measure beyond that of others and be like divine men. (emphasis added)

And so in one of the exemplary products of the “mirrors for princes” genre we find a truly Evolan justification for kingship; or, perhaps, we find that Evola’s political thought is truly traditional in the literal sense, traceable back through the finest scholastic minds of the Middle Ages to Aristotle himself.

Apart from occasional scholarship, the ideal of governance by a virtuous king largely vanished from Western discourse after Evola, until it was resuscitated by Curtis Yarvin (writing as Mencius Moldbug) in his book Unqualified Reservations. When, in Chapter 10, Yarvin writes “to attain power, become worthy to rule,” he is expressing a sentiment with which Julius Evola Giles of Rome, Peter of Auvergne, and Aristotle could agree.

More recently Yarvin has been writing a mirror for princes, titled Gray Mirror of the Nihilist Prince, designed to teach our future leader how to govern. He has, in a sense, positioned himself as a 21st century Giles of Rome. We can thus see Yarvin’s neo-reactionary project as a current within the river of tradition, whose waters are kingship by men of heroic virtue.

Of course, Yarvin’s maxim that “power flows towards the worthy” stands in stark contrast to Lord Acton’s maxim that “power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” The American system of government, and indeed the whole liberal edifice of mixed constitutions, separation of powers, and multi-party democracy, are based on the latter maxim, which is much better known to we moderns.

Our form of government originated with the thoroughly Puritan presupposition that all men are innately depraved and that government must be designed, first and foremost, to constrain the depraved from the abuse of power. But the political conditions of the United States today suggest this effort has failed: The depraved have taken power and are unafraid to abuse it. They have used the very systems designed to control bad actors in furtherance of bad actions, creating what Sam Francis called an “anarcho-tyranny” absent rule of law.

What remains unclear is whether this sorry state of affairs represents an aberration — or an inevitability. Perhaps the problems today are merely a passing phrase, a tribulation that will be overcome by our great system.

But perhaps not.

Perhaps, in focusing its governance systems to disempower the worst, America focused on the wrong thing. Perhaps it should have focused on empowering the best, on the men of heroic virtue who have, from time to time, arisen in our land. Perhaps George Washington should have been, not America’s first president, but its first king. Perhaps an American monarchy might not have devolved into the anarcho-tyranny we have today, where nuclear officials steal luxury luggage and corrupt politicians self-enrich on insider trading and money printing. That is, at least, what Aristotle, Peter of Auvergne, Giles of Rome, and Julius Evola, would want us to consider.

We will contemplate this on the tree of woe.