The Imperium

The foundation of every true State is the transcendence of its own principle, namely the principle of sovereignty, authority, and legitimacy.

Through the multifaceted variety of these forms we always find as a "constant" the notion of the State as the intrusion and the manifestation of a higher order, which is then actualized in a power.

Therefore, every true political unity appears as the embodiment of an idea and a power...

In previous eras, it was possible to speak of the sacred character of the principle of sovereignty and power, namely of the State.

For instance, the ancient Roman notion of imperium essentially belonged to the domain of the sacred.

This notion, in its specific meaning, even before expressing a system of territorial, supernational hegemony, designated the pure power of command, the almost mystical power and auctoritas inherent in THE ONE WHO HAD THE FUNCTION AND QUALITY OF LEADER: a leader in the religious and warrior order as well as in the order of the patrician family, the gens, and eminently, of the State, the res-public-a.

In the Roman world, which was intensely realistic, the notion of this power, which is simultaneously auctoritas, always retained its intrinsic character of A BRIGHT FORCE FROM ABOVE.

A power and authority that are not absolute, are not real authority or real power.

What will be paramount is the virile quality of him who, in the case of conflict between opposite needs, knows how to assert the right of given principles and a given law over that which belongs to the naturalistic and material realm, whether in his case or that of others.

The personality is realized and consolidated along the path of the special "asceticism" required by freedom understood in this way - namely by inner freedom and control over oneself as a physical individual; likewise the foundations of the hierarchical connections proper to that which can be rightly called "the natural right of heroic peoples" are not to be sought elsewhere.

1) The first of these foundations is that the measure of what one can demand from others is dictated by the measure of what one can demand from oneself.

2) The second foundation is the idea, previously upheld by Plato, that those who cannot be their own masters should find a master outside of themselves.

Superiority and power need to go hand in hand, as long as we remember that power is based on superiority and not vice-versa, and that superiority is connected with qualities that have always been thought by most people to constitute the true foundation of what others attempt to explain in terms of brutal "natural selection."

Ancient primitive man essentially obeyed not the strongest members of society, but those in whom he perceived a saturation of mana(sacred energy and life force) and who, for this reason, seemed to him best qualified to perform activities usually precluded to others.

An analogous situation occurs where certain men have been followed, obeyed, and venerated for displaying a high degree of endurance, responsibility, lucidity, and a dangerous, open, and heroic life that others could not; it was decisive here to be able to recognize a special right and a special dignity in a free way.

To depend on such leaders constituted not the subjugation, but rather the elevation of the person.

It is the inferior who needs the superior, and not the other way around.

Everything that has an emotional or irrational motivation has and will play a larger role in human conduct than that played by petty utility -

The higher and more genuine legitimization of a true political order, and thus of the State itself, lies in its anagogical function, namely, in arousing and nourishing the individual's disposition to act and think, to live, to struggle, and eventually sacrifice himself for something that goes beyond his mere individuality.

-Julius Evola, from Men Amongst the Ruins