Activity

Cultivating Your Ethos

“The Iliadic school emphatically affirms the spiritual continuity of European civilization, from the ancient Greeks through the Romans and medieval Europeans right up to the moderns. One can rightly ask: Is there really such a Tradition – and not a fundamental instability – in European history? And anyway what of this survives among the rapidly declining, sad, and squishy Europeans of today? What commonality is there between the Greek explorer-pirate and citizen-soldier, the Roman farmer-legionnaire, the Christian knight or monk, the early-modern scientific and world-conquerors and . . . the European of today – the less said about which the better? What is really left of the mos maiorum, the ancestral traditions that sustained our societies?

Iliade does not propose a return to any particular tradition – Stoic, Christian, or other – but a kind of general elevated ethos drawing from Europe’s varied spiritual roots. One may deem it post-Nietzschean or neoclassical. At bottom, it is an elitist, aristocratic ethos challenging us to achieve individual excellence within an organic community, guided by the Hellenic trifecta of Nature, Excellence, and Beauty.”

https://www.unz.com/gdurocher/cultivating-your-ethos/