Sousarion Reacts #2
Reactions to books by Aristotle, Yanis Varoufakis, and Julius Evola
Philosophy
Aristotle, Prior Analytics (ca. 330 B.C.E.), Book II, Chapters 1-27.
As I outlined in my first Sousarion Reacts, Prior Analytics lays the foundation of logic: defining the structure of a logical argument, the construction of a syllogism, the principles of consistency and validity, and the analytical tools needed to break down claims and evaluate their soundness. While highly technical, the text is relatively straightforward and intelligible – especially for Aristotle. In sum, Book I establishes the theoretical groundwork.
With Book II, Aristotle shifts from theory to application, testing the strength of his logical framework. Calling it “applied” is a bit misleading; he’s not taking these models into a courtroom or laboratory. Rather, he applies syllogistic reasoning to other theoretical problems. Among the many topics he investigates are necessity (e.g., given objects A, B, and C, does B necessarily follow from A?), possibility, hypothetical reasoning (e.g., if we assume X, does Y follow?), direct and indirect proofs, and the distinction between induction and deduction as methods of acquiring knowledge.
From the first word to the last, it’s dense, technical, and difficult. And yet, it’s also undeniably nerdy. I can picture Aristotle standing before his students at the Lyceum, grinning as he lectures – famous lisp and all – on whether the major premise of a perfect syllogism can be converted into a negative syllogism while remaining perfect. That’s the flavor of Prior Analytics. It’s a nerd’s paradise. (Pushes glasses up nose ridge.)
Does any of this sound fun? Probably not – I’ll grant that. But there’s something remarkable about this book, something more fundamental than its logical precision. Here’s what I mean:
Take the classic syllogism:
All men are mortal. Socrates is a man. Therefore, Socrates is mortal.
Reading it doesn’t make you feel more logical. You don’t need to reflect on it. Why? Because the answer is intuitive. You already know Socrates is mortal before you even finish reading the syllogism. Aristotle presents numerous such examples, and in many cases, the conclusion is so obvious that analysis seems unnecessary. But this is where his genius lies – he walks you through the reasoning step by step, proving why your intuition is correct. He provides the proof for why we rely on intuition in the first place.
Think of learning to ride a bicycle. At first, you have to focus on each element: balancing as you push forward, gripping the handlebars correctly, sitting in position, pedaling at the right pace. But once you master it, you no longer need to think about every step. It becomes intuitive. You simply ride. It would be exhausting (to say the least) to stop and relearn the mechanics each time you got on a bike.
Aristotle does this exhaustive work for logic. He shows you why you intuit what you know, revealing the underlying structure behind what feels immediate and natural. And, of course, he doesn’t stop there: he sprinkles in logical puzzles, lacunae, and paradoxes to challenge you, to captivate and frustrate you, and to test your own ability as a logician.
That’s what makes Prior Analytics – even in its most tedious moments – ingenious and special.
Keep Your Friends Close
Yanis Varoufakis, Another Now (2020).
Yanis Varoufakis’ Another Now is an enjoyable read. I now better understand why he chose to present his ideas in the form of a novel rather than a formal political economy treatise. Fiction makes his vision more immediate, more accessible – closer to the level of the everyday. More importantly, it allows him to sidestep the rhetorical and structural constraints of academic argumentation and instead illustrate his ideas through a world that, while speculative, feels plausible. This is the book’s core conceit: Another Now isn’t just an imagined alternative – it’s an adjacent one. A version of the present that, given a different set of historical choices, could very well have been or could still become our own.
The novel follows three main characters, each brilliant in their own way, each shaped – if not outright defeated – by the political economy of neoliberalism. One of them, a tech genius, inadvertently develops a machine that opens a wormhole between parallel realities. Through this device, they communicate Q&A messages with their existential doubles in an alternate timeline – one where the 2008 financial crash set history on a radically different course. Instead of reinforcing the structures of global finance as it did in our world, the crash in the Other Now became a catalyst for systemic reform, upending corporate dominance and reshaping economic and political life in ways our protagonists can scarcely imagine. Through their conversations, we, as readers, are given a window into this alternate reality – one that Yanis suggests is not just different, but achievable.
And that, folks, is the plot – if you can really call it that. I'm going to be blunt: it’s silly. Hollow. The premise is contrived, and it begs the question – did we need 50 pages or so of setup for this? Probably not. But if you read it with an open mind, you can let yourself be carried along. These pages serve a purpose: they create a conceptual space where Yanis can introduce his economic vision without immediately bogging the reader down in dense theoretical arguments. By constructing a world identical to ours up until 2008, he makes his alternative feel tangible. This isn’t utopia in the abstract – it’s a version of reality that could have existed and, by implication, still could. That’s certainly Yanis’ hope (though, of course, he’d likely call it a thought experiment, hedging his bets).
I’m stepping into hot-take territory here, but I have a strong suspicion about the ideal reader and ideal reading environment for this book: it’s adult bedtime reading. Hear me out. Picture yourself at the end of a long day. Your boss has been on your ass over something utterly mundane, which somehow escalated to a crisis. After putting out the fire, you trudge home, eat something simple, zone out for an hour in front of Netflix, then wash up and slide into bed. You grab Another Now, lean against the headboard, and Yango Varo (Yanis’ narrative stand-in) spins up an alternate timeline where neoliberalism is no longer king, and your boss no longer wields the pettiest of all petty power over you. It’s a sweet idea, coated in just enough sugar to go down smoothly – but it’s also a tactical decision. Another Now isn’t meant to be dense, academic, or footnote-heavy. It’s designed to be palatable.
And I think this approach is smart. It allows him to reach the widest possible audience. Rather than exhaustively arguing for his utopian model over 700 pages, he meets the reader at a minimum viable product level from a storytelling perspective: a novel structured as a Q&A. And Yanis is a generous conversationalist – he articulates his ideas with enough clarity and internal logic that they pass the plausibility test, not just within the Other Now but in our world as well. The book is also digestible, such that, as you sit against the headboard, you can actually picture yourself in a world that has stamped out the techno-feudal enslavement we currently endure.
In Another Now, institutions exist to maximize freedom, ensuring that people can follow their passions without fear of financial ruin. The state isn’t just a safety net; it’s an active force enabling human flourishing. Institutions work for everyone, not the monopolists. The market remains, but it operates in the service of every individual, investing in every person rather than tilting the scales toward those who already control capital. There’s still failure – business ventures crash and burn – but failure is never synonymous with ruin.
I won’t go into further details here, in part because I think Another Now is worth reading for yourself, and in part because I’m studying Yanis’ economic works more deeply for future writing projects. But for now, I’ll just say this: the book is engaging, imaginative, and – if you let it – deeply thought-provoking.
Keep Your Enemies Closer
Julius Evola – Ride the Tiger (1961), Chapters 16 – 30.
Ride the Tiger is a dangerous book. Here’s why: it is ruthlessly insightful about aspects of modern life, its style is compelling (at times intoxicatingly so), and its critiques, though often severe, are laid out with such clarity that it’s easy to find yourself nodding along.
To be fair, there are areas of agreement. Evola critiques the dissolution of personhood, the widespread disbelief in the soul, the universalization of modern science as the sole arbiter of truth, the reduction of art to commercial trends, and the increasing reliance on recreational “drugs” as an escape from the meaninglessness of modern existence. Many of his conclusions falter under scrutiny, but his diagnosis of contemporary spiritual malaise – both individual and collective – rings true.
It is certainly the case that many today are less equipped to cope with modernity, despite the material improvements of the last two centuries. Few of us will starve to death. Few of us will spend our lives in a desperate struggle for physical survival. But with these fundamental threats removed, we are left with more time – to think, to dwell, to fixate on what unsettles us. We are atomized, lonely, raised in broken homes and leading broken lives, often carrying a quiet disappointment in ourselves, an unease we struggle to name.
We seek solace in consumerism, entertainment, curated distraction. But these, too, have been commodified, hollowed out, stripped of the meaning they once held. Even our artistic passions – music, film, painting, poetry – are no longer refuges; they are market-tested products, reflections of a past we never lived, designed to provoke nostalgia rather than renewal. Simply log onto Instagram or TikTok. The result is not only dissociation but a growing bitterness: toward others, who appear absorbed in their own curated illusions, and toward ourselves, as passive spectators in lives we no longer truly live.
Evola, writing long before social media, nonetheless exposes the same forces of decay. His descriptions of a society strangled by its own rottenness remain unnervingly relevant.
His solution, however, is both limited and inhumane. He rejects what we would today call humanism, or even basic compassion for one’s fellow man. Humanity, in his view, is a lost cause. With the death of God, the abyss opened, and humankind fell in.
As the slow or swift collapse of civilization unfolds (Evola, no doubt, would have seen AI as an ominous catalyst), Ride the Tiger offers no promises of salvation – only survival. And not for all. In Evola’s view, physical existence is irrelevant; true survival is spiritual, and it is reserved for the rare “traditional” man. While his broader commentary places this figure within a social context, his explicit recommendations are solitary. The traditional man does not rebuild the world. He does not thrive. He merely endures.
One of the keys to the traditional man’s survival, according to Evola, is through his intrinsic separation from the decay of society. This does not necessarily require retreating into the desert, the rainforest, or a Buddhist monastery. He may reside anywhere – a city, a town, a farm – because his separation is spiritual rather than physical. He maintains a “traditional” outlook, privately preserving the belief systems of the ancient past. To “ride the tiger” is to live within society without being consumed by it. This teaching bears a striking resemblance to certain Christian and Buddhist principles: to be in the world but not of it, or to exist within impermanence while freeing the spirit in pursuit of enlightenment.
On its own, this notion of spiritual resilience is neither particularly controversial nor harmful. But Evola does not stop there. His traditional man is not simply detached from modernity; he is defined by his rejection – and at times, outright contempt – for modern values. Racial and gender equality, cultural pluralism, and social progress are not mere aberrations in his view but evidence of civilization’s decline. As anticipated, Evola’s traditional man is a racist, a misogynist, and an opponent of universal dignity beyond his own nation or people (e.g., Italians for Italians, Germans for Germans, Japanese for Japanese). He rejects modern music – jazz, for instance, he decries as primitive and animalistic, an art form unworthy of tradition because of its Black, i.e., African, origins. He likewise dismisses sexual liberation, arguing that it has stripped women of their natural essence, leaving them hollowed-out shells of their former selves.
Evola’s view of women is particularly revealing. For him, female liberation is not an expansion of agency but a corruption of femininity. In stepping outside the confines of the demure, subordinate homemaker, he argues, women have been forced to model themselves after men, erasing the very qualities that once defined womanhood. Unlike his broader critiques of cultural decay, Evola’s perspective on sexuality cuts to the heart of both the physical and the spiritual. Here, in the most intimate of human connections, he sees modernity’s corrosion at its most acute. In his view, the modern woman must confront the hollow, purposeless existence that modern men already endure. Thus, she comes to hate herself even more than her male counterparts – who, in turn, have become weak and undesirable. This collapse of identity, he claims, has stripped women of their very essence, leaving them as soulless vessels. And the implication is clear: to restore the feminine, women must return to the traditional order, with all that entails.
Evola’s critique of modernity is both piercing and deeply troubling. He accurately diagnoses many of the spiritual and societal ailments that plague us – alienation, atomization, the loss of cultural meaning – yet his “solutions” are not only inhumane but fundamentally regressive. And yet, his analysis of rootlessness, disenchantment, and cultural decline remains unsettlingly relevant. The challenge, then, is to extract the useful critiques without succumbing to the allure of reactionary despair.
That, in the end, is why Evola is worth reading: not to adopt his worldview but to sharpen one’s own against it. Ride the Tiger is not a guide to retreating from the world but a study in how to exist within it – without surrendering to either decay or hatred.
Conclusion
Aristotle teaches us how to think. His logical analysis shaped intellectual history for 1,600 years, laying the foundation for the Enlightenment – and even today, his influence endures.
Yanis, another Greek, challenges us to imagine an alternative to the techno-feudal dystopia in which we find ourselves. He not only critiques the present hellscape but dares to chart a way out, one that promotes both freedom and equity.
Evola presents a third category: the cautionary thinker. His critique of modern decay is incisive, yet his solutions collapse into the very nihilism he claims to resist – only dressed in the language of tradition. Ride the Tiger is a case study in the dangers of extreme reactionary thought, a lesson in how valid critiques can curdle into destructive ideology.
To ride the tiger, in my view, is not to retreat into an imagined past but to stand firmly in the present – without surrendering to either despair or domination. Meaning, connection, and the refusal to become either predator or prey: these are what matter.