"Apoliteia should not be confused with apathy or lack of engagement, however – it is, instead, a special form of engagement with political affairs that does not concern itself with the specific goals of politics, but rather with the impact of such engagement on the individual." - From the introduction to The Metaphysics of War.
To understand why apoliteia is important to Evola, one must first understand how Evola viewed the world of modern politics, which is quickly summarized in Ride the Tiger:
In the present epoch, no nation-states exist that, by their nature, can claim any principle of true, inalienable authority. Furthermore, one cannot even speak of states today in the proper traditional sense.
Evola goes on to say:
For a long time there have been no true sovereigns, monarchs by divine right capable of wielding sword and scepter, and symbols of a higher human ideal
In this degraded world of the Kali Yuga, " the mediocre soul, recognizing itself as mediocre, has the audacity to assert the right of mediocrity and impose it everywhere.”
Therefore, the question becomes one of how the attitude of Evola's differentiated man is with regards to the current state of politics. Evola writes:
After taking stock of the situation, this type can only feel disinterested and detached from everything that is “politics” today. His principle will become apoliteia, as it was called in ancient times.
However, detachment and disinterest does not - for Evola - amount to an excuse for inaction and listlessness. Evola is not promoting the life lived by so many today, in a state of lethargy and disillusionment due to the current state of the world and numbed so deeply that they have ceased to care. This doomer mentality is, in fact, the exact opposite of being disinterested and detached. It represents a deep state of attachment. Evola writes:
apoliteia, detachment, does not necessarily involve specific consequences in the field of pure and simple activity. I have already discussed the capacity to apply oneself to a given task for love of action in itself and in terms of an impersonal perfection. So, in principle, there is no reason to exclude the political realm itself as a particular case among others, since participating in it on these terms requires neither any objective value of a higher order, nor impulses that come from emotional and irrational layers of one’s own being. But if this is how one dedicates oneself to political activity, clearly all that matters is the action and the impersonal perfection in acting for its own sake. Such political activity, for one who desires it, cannot present a higher value and dignity than dedicating oneself, in the same spirit, to quite different activities: absurd colonization projects, speculations on the stock market, science, and even—to give a drastic example—arms traffic or white slavery... The truly detached man is not a professional and polemic outsider, nor conscientious objector, nor anarchist. Once it is established that life with its interactions does not constrain his being, he could even show the qualities of a soldier who, in order to act and accomplish a task, does not request in advance a transcendent justification and a quasi-theological assurance of the goodness of the cause. We can speak, in these cases, of a voluntary obligation that concerns the “persona,” not the being, by which—even while one is involved—one remains isolated.
Thus action is the positive overcoming of nihilism, and it necessitates action on the part of the persona, whilst the inner "Being" is detached and disinterested from both the current state of politics and the outcomes generated by any political action on the part of the persona. Again we see the spiritual tension that Evola employs to "Ride the Tiger".
I wish to end this with a final thought concerning the internal detachment and disinterest juxtaposed against vital and energetic action on the part of the persona that forms apoliteia, coming from the Bhagavad Gita, widely referred to as the handbook for surviving the Kali Yuga:
To understand why apoliteia is important to Evola, one must first understand how Evola viewed the world of modern politics, which is quickly summarized in Ride the Tiger:
In the present epoch, no nation-states exist that, by their nature, can claim any principle of true, inalienable authority. Furthermore, one cannot even speak of states today in the proper traditional sense.
Evola goes on to say:
For a long time there have been no true sovereigns, monarchs by divine right capable of wielding sword and scepter, and symbols of a higher human ideal
In this degraded world of the Kali Yuga, " the mediocre soul, recognizing itself as mediocre, has the audacity to assert the right of mediocrity and impose it everywhere.”
Therefore, the question becomes one of how the attitude of Evola's differentiated man is with regards to the current state of politics. Evola writes:
After taking stock of the situation, this type can only feel disinterested and detached from everything that is “politics” today. His principle will become apoliteia, as it was called in ancient times.
However, detachment and disinterest does not - for Evola - amount to an excuse for inaction and listlessness. Evola is not promoting the life lived by so many today, in a state of lethargy and disillusionment due to the current state of the world and numbed so deeply that they have ceased to care. This doomer mentality is, in fact, the exact opposite of being disinterested and detached. It represents a deep state of attachment. Evola writes:
apoliteia, detachment, does not necessarily involve specific consequences in the field of pure and simple activity. I have already discussed the capacity to apply oneself to a given task for love of action in itself and in terms of an impersonal perfection. So, in principle, there is no reason to exclude the political realm itself as a particular case among others, since participating in it on these terms requires neither any objective value of a higher order, nor impulses that come from emotional and irrational layers of one’s own being. But if this is how one dedicates oneself to political activity, clearly all that matters is the action and the impersonal perfection in acting for its own sake. Such political activity, for one who desires it, cannot present a higher value and dignity than dedicating oneself, in the same spirit, to quite different activities: absurd colonization projects, speculations on the stock market, science, and even—to give a drastic example—arms traffic or white slavery... The truly detached man is not a professional and polemic outsider, nor conscientious objector, nor anarchist. Once it is established that life with its interactions does not constrain his being, he could even show the qualities of a soldier who, in order to act and accomplish a task, does not request in advance a transcendent justification and a quasi-theological assurance of the goodness of the cause. We can speak, in these cases, of a voluntary obligation that concerns the “persona,” not the being, by which—even while one is involved—one remains isolated.
Thus action is the positive overcoming of nihilism, and it necessitates action on the part of the persona, whilst the inner "Being" is detached and disinterested from both the current state of politics and the outcomes generated by any political action on the part of the persona. Again we see the spiritual tension that Evola employs to "Ride the Tiger".
I wish to end this with a final thought concerning the internal detachment and disinterest juxtaposed against vital and energetic action on the part of the persona that forms apoliteia, coming from the Bhagavad Gita, widely referred to as the handbook for surviving the Kali Yuga: