Europe and Modernity (1985) by Guillaume Faye

“Europe and Modernity” is one of Guillaume Faye’s least known works. However, it is one of his most dense works. It was a little booklet (62 pages) written in 1985 that had limited printing so it is extremely rare and difficult to find. To give you a brief summary of what “Europe and Modernity” is about, I provided this extract from an earlier translation of mine of a post made by Robert Steuckers about the metapolitical thought of Guilluame Faye:

Faye therefore developed, based on the concepts that Giorgio Locchi had instilled in him, a vision of history (of thoughts), which he would explain in a small work, published in very few copies and in an artisanal mode in Embourg near Liège, entitled “Europe and Modernity.” It is undoubtedly Faye's most difficult text. It was also only a first draft that would have deserved a broader development (we're going to work on it!), accompanied by explanations in a more diluted, more accessible language.

Europe and Modernity (1985)

Faye sees, to put it simply, a pagan heritage (that is to say "Greek" according to him), both Apollonian and Dionysian, which is the surest, most solid foundation of our Europe. This heritage, always present but obliterated and repressed in fall, has been vitiated by Christianization. This Christianization has mutilated the Greek heritage, not the watered-down one, repeated to satiety in educational establishments (Nietzsche) ad usum Delphini but the living one that the Hellenist and mythologist Walter Otto has highlighted. When Faye spoke of Greek heritage or paganism, he spoke as a reader of Walter Otto (who did not prevent him from appreciating libations and goliardic activities).

The trajectory followed by European society will therefore be as follows: it will pursue the Christian or Christianomorphic project (which form derives from a secularization of the Christian message) while maintaining in its interiority, a tacit resistance of its fundamental Hellenicity (a "Walter Ottonian Hellenicity") or of all other forms of cosmic perception of the living world, forms perceptible outside the Hellenic or Hellenized area, in the face of a growing expansion, within it, of a Christian or Christianomorphic vision, non-cosmic and therefore atheistic, which will rationalize itself from the Reformation and especially from the 17th century to lead to the reasoning spirit of the "societies of thought" (Cochin), to Locke's schematism (the Anglo-Saxon vulgate) and to the ideology of human rights (whose potential drifts will be highlighted by Edmund Burke, in view of the odious slippages of the 1789 revolution).

This text, "Europe and Modernity" by Guillaume Faye, discusses the relationship between modernity, European consciousness, and paganism. The author argues that there was a major cultural rupture in Western European consciousness around 1910-1920, leading to a dissociation between two types of consciousness: the old Christian-influenced worldview and a new emerging modern consciousness with pagan elements. The text explores why this new consciousness failed to fully establish itself, suggesting it was too radical a departure from established mental frameworks. Faye proposes that a "second modernity" might emerge through an elite group who could consciously integrate both technical advancement and pre-Christian European values, while maintaining a connection to cultural roots. He suggests this could lead to a new form of consciousness that combines rationality with mythic understanding, though acknowledges this may create a division between those who can adapt to this new consciousness and those who cannot.

With that said, I present to you the text of “Europe and Modernity” in its entirety. Translated by Alexander Raynor. Translator notes appear in the footnotes as “TN.”

about 15,000 words. about 75 minutes reading time.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

I. The Dissociation of Two Consciousnesses

1. The End of Modernity

2. The Hypothesis of the Pre-Neolithic Unconscious

3. The Hypothesis of the Pagan Unconscious

4. The Failure of the New Consciousness and the First Modernity

II. The Second Modernity of the World

1. In Search of the Neo-Human

2. Modernity as a Mobilizing Myth

3. Rootedness and “Disinstallation”

4. Renaissance of the Sorcerers

PART ONE

The Dissociation of Two Consciousnesses

It is evident that the culture of European Western civilization underwent a significant transformation at the beginning of the 20th century, with consequences that are still difficult to measure. Indeed, it was during the years 1910–1920 that a rupture, completely invisible at the time, occurred within Western consciousness. Henri Lefebvre described this rupture as a “silent catastrophe,”¹ a phenomenon of such sociological magnitude that it ceased to be merely a social fact and became a historical event.

This event resembled the slow-motion explosions detected by astronomers, whose effects are felt across space and time, long after their occurrence. We are still living within the shockwave of this “silent catastrophe,” and perhaps we are only now experiencing its beginnings.

At the start of the 20th century, traditional forms of cultural expression, as well as modes of scientific and philosophical thought, underwent a profound revolution and metamorphosis. These changes were not akin to the “transformations” that Western culture has frequently experienced since the 11th century; instead, they represented dramatic and wrenching mutations.

Painting broke away from perspective and representational forms; tonal melodic music ceased to be “possible” and gave way to atonal sounds that disrupted conventional scales. Avant-garde architecture abandoned classical orders and ornamental practices, embracing geometric techniques and the purity of functional design. Poetry discarded ancestral metrics, rhymes, and hemistiches, diving into unconventional linguistic rhythms.

Newtonian physics and Euclidean geometry collapsed, with new sciences such as biology, physics, and chemistry overturning old representations of the world, its time, and its space. Even the First World War symbolically embodied a superposition of traditional pre-technical forms of combat and the first experimentation with “material warfare.”

Diverse examples could be gathered to illustrate how, at the beginning of our century, a dissociation emerged in Western consciousness and culture, a dissociation we inherit to this day.

1. The End of Modernity

However, the “new forms” of art and thought have, to varying degrees, fallen short of their promise. They have remained confined to a specialized elite. Non-representational painting is experiencing a notable regression. Attempts at serial music and fragmented literature, where the old norms of harmony and narrative are abolished, have failed to penetrate the general consciousness.

Modern physics and mathematics, which underpin everyday technology, remain obscure to the public, still influenced by classical representations of time, space, and causality. Contemporary architecture, after seeming to dominate mentalities like modern painting, is now facing rejection and backlash. There is a return to simulations of the old. Modern architectural forms—traditional houses, ornamental decoration, and restoration—have given rise to nostalgia for antiquity, as seen since the 1970s.

The architecture and urban planning of the year 2000 will not see the triumph of futurism envisioned in the 1950s and 60s. Instead, they will represent a “compromise” between rehabilitating traditional forms of cities and housing and the technical and economic imperatives of profitability and mass construction. The futuristic ideology, developed after the Second World War and predicting that technology would usher in a new mentality and civilization in the 20th century, failed to take hold in popular culture.

Technology has transformed culture, but not in the expected direction. It has not “modernized” mentalities but has, paradoxically, reinforced traditionalism. It is the ideal of “convenience” that technology has promoted, rather than the spirit of machinery and dynamism envisioned in the early days of aviation and automobiles. This new ethic could have fused with aesthetics to create lived values, such as speed, but this did not happen.²

Modernity is dying. Our era seems to have abandoned it in favor of a certain quest for classicism. Today’s dominant generation (approximately 25–40 years old), shaped and influenced directly by the events of May 1968, appears obsessed with the sacralization of its values. The early 1980s, then, seem to mark a kind of stuttering, where the same psychodrama is replayed with slightly new disguises, purged a little more each time.

Jean Baudrillard writes:

“Modernity no longer exists: everything is contemporary. And everything is retro. The modern and the traditional, with their clear and intelligible opposition, have been replaced by the contemporary and the retro, whose opposition is no longer even distinctive. (…) The era of ideologies is over, and so is that of modernity. We are now in the age of simulation.”³

The new generation is increasingly distancing itself from the innovative values it once held—creative enthusiasm, revolutionary spirit, love of change—in favor of a humanitarian message. This message contests all forms of power, juxtaposes the worlds of men and morals, and upholds ideologies of human rights. Ironically, this transformation makes the children of May 1968 the spiritual heirs of Christian resistance and the MRP (Mouvement Républicain Populaire). This is not a minor paradox.

This intellectual self-purging tends to present these values as eternal, absolute, and unsurpassable, along with the trends that illustrate them. It seems we are condemned to several decades of hippie-style fashion, sentimental music, and artistic infantilism. The demographic weight of the post-war "baby boom" generation makes its cultural and ideological power (in Dumézil's sense) difficult to overcome.

The older members of this group are beginning to reach positions of power: in politics (the rise of the Socialist Party and the left's victory), in the economy (the "new small business owners" and young individual entrepreneurs, even new technocrats), and in culture (the "media class" as a whole). They will hold the reins for years to come, at least until the demographic strength of subsequent generations becomes significant enough to challenge them.

The situation, therefore, appears locked in for decades, especially since the system's logic further promotes demobilization. The 25-40 age group now seeks refuge in private spheres of action (the ideology of “leisure time” or the individual arrangement of “new spaces of life”) under the pretext of disillusionment with activism.

Modernity requires “futurism,” a historical projection of a civilization into its own future. The current reign of the “contemporary” corresponds not to a rejection of the past but to a rejection of all historicity. Futurism has become the soul supplement and justification for creative activities that are anything but futuristic. The return to crisis periods amplifies this cultural stasis and reinforces the prevailing conformity. After denying itself and undermining the trust it once commanded, cultural creation now hesitates and finds warmth only in old experiments.

The rise to power of François Mitterrand can be interpreted in light of this added value accorded to the past. Notably, media elites—a notable development in recent months within “trendy” circles—now readily “detach” from the avant-garde and go as far as denying the very notion of the avant-garde, which is increasingly seen as fallacious, misleading, and ultimately uninteresting. Soon, we may no longer value “new” trends but instead those that have proven themselves over 15 or 20 years.

This phenomenon is particularly evident in the music industry, which generally reacts most quickly to this type of evolution. New bands, already struggling to innovate enough to be noticed, are systematically criticized in favor of the “good old” reliable values. The “retro” phenomenon is a kind of trap set before us. Nostalgia may even lead us to rehabilitate recent historical periods; when neutralized, they could serve the system by feeding on their revolutionary farce.

One might even speculate that these recent historical periods—essentially totalitarianisms—remain the only untapped territories of the recent past, the only ones left to reuse. When will we see the rise of national-socialist or Stalinist fashion?

Indeed, for reasons outlined earlier, we observe an eternal stammering in the development of new art forms. Modern art can only advance by negating itself, as the new dominant norms prevent any real progress. Let us not forget that these values were long considered new in themselves. The generation of 25–40-year-olds has always seen itself as the youth and hope of the world (a myth of youth from the 1960s).

This generation is therefore reluctant to allow new forms of art or artistic expression to emerge that are outside its own criteria. The non-modernity of today’s culture seems to have quasi-biological reasons more than strictly intellectual ones. Not wanting to lose its grip, this generation turns to simulacra: the eternally new is the art that exploded in the 1920s and 30s, and after the freeze of totalitarianism and the war, truly triumphed only in the 1950s and 60s.

Since then, we no longer create, but neither do we destroy: art has become stagnant, and everything past is overvalued. Antiquities now begin in 1970.

Yet European civilization has long been marked by a “dialectical progression of forms.” In art, science, and ideology, the “past” existed to be surpassed. A form could not return, whether political, social, or aesthetic. This “logic of the modern,” established during the Renaissance, corresponded to both the rediscovery of pagan Antiquity and the dynamic construction of a new civilization (a contestation of Christian dogma, technological advancement, the rebirth of the state, major discoveries, etc.) founded on the will to power—true “humanism.”

This logic is now deteriorating. Today, all forms can coexist simultaneously. Innovation has ceased to be a value in itself; only originality of subject matters, even if it relies on plagiarized aesthetic elements from the past, is celebrated. This reign of contemporaneity also marks the peak of individualism.

The “why” of this inability of culture and general consciousness to admit and internalize the new aesthetic, scientific, and mental norms that emerged at the beginning of the 20th century remains perplexing. The explanatory hypothesis we might propose must begin with an analysis of this dissociation in the realm of ideologies. Perhaps here lies the key to the dissociation found in all other cultural domains.

At the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, systems of thought emerged that no longer relied on the old worldview inherited from the Enlightenment’s egalitarianism, rationalism, Euclidean geometry, Newtonian physics, and the humanist tradition. Organicist, irrationalist, and superhumanist ideologies broke with several foundational schemas of thought characteristic of tradition, which remained present in liberalism and socialist currents. Thinkers such as Pareto, Max Weber, Nietzsche, Sorel, Darwin, and many others belonged to this attempt to create new ideologies.

The traditional assumptions with which they broke were as follows: the unitary vision of man, conceived as a “species paradigm” intrinsic to Christianity, Platonism, and the entire Western tradition up to the mid-19th century; the social mechanism that viewed society as a quasi-machine, explainable and transparent—a concept shared by Marxism and liberalism, perfectly aligned with Newtonian physics; rational causality, on which liberal and socialist economic starting points rested, as well as their political theories; and, finally, individualistic humanism, whose philosophy was rejected in favor of what can be broadly termed the “ethics of the will to power.”

The new sciences—biology, physics, psychology, and others—provided the foundations for these unprecedented worldviews. The most diverse traditional categories, from philosophy to sociology, were abandoned: reason, causality, and ethical dualism were left behind in favor of organicism, social biologism, collective psychology, and dozens of other “ideologemes” familiar to those who study Nietzsche, Jung, Darwin, etc.

The common thread among these new schools of thought is that they reconnect, to varying degrees, with certain assumptions of the pre-Socratic era, long abandoned in Western consciousness since Platonism. Yet, like literature or music, these new ideologies, so lively between the wars, failed to take root.

All Western societies, as if they had suddenly closed a parenthesis or refused to embark on a newly glimpsed path, massively returned, after the Second World War, to traditional political and social institutions: parliamentary democracy, social liberalism, or internationalist socialism. The concepts of political ideology, briefly renewed by new schools of thought, reverted to the grammar established by Montesquieu, Rousseau, Locke, Thomas Paine, Adam Smith, Karl Marx, and a few others.

Thus, we indeed encounter this "dissociation": the social and cultural masses readopted old ideologies, while new ways of thinking retreated into elite ghettos. However, unlike in the field of aesthetics, the dissociation here can be described in terms of values, as we are dealing with fully articulated ideologies. It becomes evident that what has been rejected, what could not be translated into general culture, what constitutes a "repressed modernity," are ideologies in rupture with the assumptions of Christian humanism.

The systems of thought that were not accepted and could not translate politically were those that inscribed within modernity the return of “pagan” mental categories—but a non-dualist paganism, more Heraclitean than Socratic or Stoic.