25 Principles of Morality

by Alain de Benoist

Aug 17, 2026

I do not have much taste for “morality.” I know its genealogy too well (which Nietzsche seems to me to have clarified rather well). I have a tendency, moreover, to consider that there are as many “moralities” as there are possible levels of humanity — which makes for quite a number. On the other hand, I believe strongly in principles, which can also be rules of life. (Every historical becoming goes from myth to principle by way of an idea). On the off chance, here are mine; I hope not to fail them too often.

Man is God’s partner, His associate for better or for worse. Both create in common. God is not above, nor outside of us. He is not beyond our sensations either. What matters is not to believe in God. What matters is to act in such a way that He can believe in us. To find and identify Him in us, to reveal ourselves as Him. Body and soul are one and the same thing. To reduce one to the other, to oppose these notions to each other: this stems from the same sickness of the spirit. A God who does not behave as one has the right to expect of Him deserves to be repudiated — provided that he who repudiates Him has given the best of himself.

It is not enough to be born, one must still be “created.” Creation is posterior to birth; one can only be “created” by oneself. This is how one gives oneself a soul. Meister Eckhart speaks of “self-creation” (Selbstschöpfung): “I was the cause of myself, there where I willed myself, and I was nothing else. I was what I willed, and what I willed was me.” In the Edda (Hávamál), there is the image of Odin sacrificed by himself to himself. A people founds a culture when it becomes cause of itself — when it finds in itself alone (in its tradition) the source of perpetual novelty. The same for man: to find in oneself the causes of self and the means of self-transcendence. (A decadent head of state is he who derives his authority from an other-than-self, from something other than the transcendence of his own principle).

Virtue is not a means relating to some ultimate end. It is its own end — its own reward. The interior reconquest or reconquest of self: the starting point of every quest as of every conquest. And first the mutual recognition and rediscovery of animus and anima. To establish over oneself a sovereign empire. To be to oneself one’s own object. To obey the Master who is in us, at the very instant we command the Slave who is in us. Search for the just mean.

To be oneself is not a sufficient watchword. One must still become what one can be — one must build oneself according to the idea one has of oneself. One must never be satisfied with oneself. One must want to change oneself before wanting to change the world. To accept the world as it is rather than accept ourselves as we are. To develop in ourselves those among our potentialities that make us specifically human; and among these, those that make us specifically ourselves. A strong will allows one to be what one wants — no matter what one was. Will takes precedence over all determinisms, even that of birth, provided that one can will. First cultivate interior energy, that energy of which “the ant can give proof as much as the elephant” (Stendhal), and which allows one to be in winter that through which spring returns.

Fix one’s own norm — and stick to it. Take the law in oneself, with the condition that it is not to be changed. (Which does not forbid giving new dimensions to the chosen perspective). Do not yield. Do not bend. Continue without reasons to continue. Be faithful to betrayed causes, be faithful for those who have not been. Be faithful also to those who are no longer. Defend against all and against oneself the idea one has of things and that one would like to be able to have of oneself.

Take “possession” of others only when one has taken “possession” of oneself: constraint upon oneself is the first condition of the right to constrain others. Likewise, tolerate one’s contemporaries after having tolerated oneself. The man of quality has demands first toward himself, the common man has them only toward others (Confucius). Power must be founded on superiority, not superiority on power. Those who direct have the right to possess, but those who possess do not necessarily have the right to direct. The man of quality is beyond despotisms: he dominates the dominators by ways that are his own. “A new nobility is necessarily opposed to everything that is rabble and despot” (Nietzsche).

The higher one climbs, the more one walks alone: the more one must count on oneself. Those who are above are responsible for those who are below: they must respond to their expectation; they have “privileges” only insofar as one can really unload onto them — otherwise, all revolts are just. Freely follow those who are superior to us: have pride in having found a Master (Stefan George). The counterpart of submission is not domination, but protection. One has the right to obey and the duty to command (oneself) — not the inverse. Proclaim the duty to have rights, and the fine right to have duties.

The world is immeasurable tragedy. All existence is tragic, all affirmation is tragic. The world is chaos — but one can give it form. What we do has no other meaning than that which we give it. Counterpart: everything resonates on everything. Our most minute gestures have a consequence in the most remote parts of the universe. Evil has no positive existence. It is only a simple limitation of what becomes — a limitation of the form that beings give to the world. A pure, eternal negation.

We deserve everything that happens to us — individually and collectively. Past a certain threshold, there is neither luck nor chance: our adversaries, in the final analysis, are never strong except through our own weaknesses. Consequently, do not merely accept, but will what happens. Will what happens once we have not been able to prevent it from occurring. No resignation, but the maintenance of our own freedom. Amor fati: the only means of acting when one can no longer act. Stoicism: the only possible conduct when others are no longer. Make it so that what we can do nothing about can also do nothing to us (Evola).

In the beginning was action. Great and strong things have no raison d’être; that is why they must be done. (But everything that is unmotivated is not necessarily great and strong). Action is the most important thing, not he who undertakes it; the mission, not he who fulfills it. Against individualism— for an active impersonality. What one must do cannot be explained in terms of motives. Nobility keeps silent.

Honor: never fail the norms one has set for oneself. The image one has of oneself becomes true — this is evident — from the instant one conforms to it. From then on, whether it be an “image” or a “reality” matters little; the two terms are merged. The idea becomes flesh: this is the true incarnation of the Logos. Every promise commits, no circumstance releases. To be able to be proud of oneself is the best means of not having to be ashamed of others.

Style is the man. Liturgy counts more than dogma. The beautiful is never wrong. It is better to do mediocre things well than to do excellent things badly. The way one does things is worth more than the things themselves. The way one lives one’s ideas is worth more than these ideas. The way one lives is worth more than what one lives — and sometimes more than life. More simplicity than manners, one is a boor; more manners than simplicity, one is a pedant; as much manners as simplicity, such is the man of quality (Confucius).

Nietzsche: “What is noble? To seek situations where one needs attitudes. To abandon happiness to the great number, that happiness which is peace of soul, virtue, comfort, Anglo-Saxon commercialism. To instinctively seek heavy responsibilities. To know how to make enemies everywhere, at worst to make one of oneself.”

This is an excerpt from Ideas in the Right Place by Alain de Benoist, hot off the press from Arktos.

The context:

In the summer of 1979, a media campaign was unleashed in France, and soon spread internationally, with the aim of discrediting and ostracizing a young movement that the press dubbed the Nouvelle Droite, or “New Right.”

Rather than submit to misinterpretations, caricatures, and outright lies, Alain de Benoist and the thinkers around GRECE (the Research and Study Group for European Civilization) accepted the challenge and leapt into the battle of ideas. In newspapers and journals, on television and radio, at conferences and round tables, the “New Right” demonstrated its vibrancy and prowess as a metapolitical force that saw its mission as laying the intellectual groundwork for a new European Renaissance.

Taking up the gauntlet as GRECE’s leading philosopher, Alain de Benoist selected 25 essays that he considered the most exemplary of the New Right’s principles and perspectives on questions that are at once timeless, contemporary, and beyond the modern divisions of left and right. The result was Ideas in the Right Place, a work that has endured as a source of penetrating reflections on the fundamental questions of culture, history, and politics.

Put one’s duty before one’s passions, and one’s passions before one’s interests. To accomplish “good actions” to earn one’s salvation, go to paradise, etc., is still to serve one’s interests. Do what one must, not what one loves. But this requires apprenticeship: man needs rules to build himself, because he is infinitely malleable. Work as service, duty as destiny.

Realize and ceaselessly remake the lived harmony of contingencies and principles. Make it so that acts conform to words. The man whose words exceed his acts is no more master of himself than the man whose acts exceed his words. To be sincere is not to tell the truth. It is to adhere entirely, without second thoughts, to everything one undertakes.

Do not repent, but draw lessons. Put everything into action. Not to do harm, but if one has done so, do not seek to justify oneself. The justifications one gives oneself are so many flights from oneself. Repentance does not aim to erase the fault, but to give oneself good conscience. Render good for good, justice for evil. (If one rendered good for evil, what would one render for good — and what value would it have?)

Never forgive; forget much. Never hate; despise often. Plebeian sentiments: hatred, rancor, susceptibility, vanity, avarice. Hatred, which is the contrary of contempt; rancor, which is the contrary of forgetting; susceptibility and vanity, which are the contrary of pride; avarice, which is the contrary of wealth. Of all these sentiments, ressentiment is the most despicable. Nietzsche: “Near is the time of the most despicable of men, he who is no longer even capable of despising himself.”

Against utilitarianism. As with men, as with armies. Troops that need to know why they are fighting in order to fight well are already mediocre troops. There is lower: troops that need to be convinced that their cause is the good one. And lower still: those that only fight when they have chances of prevailing. When one must undertake something, concern oneself only secondarily with knowing whether the enterprise can or cannot be crowned with success. The maxim of the Silent One remains the key to Dürer’s engraving, Knight, Death and the Devil. But it is not enough to undertake without being assured of victory, for one must still undertake even when one is sure to fail — because one is sure to fail: because remaining faithful to the norms one has given oneself is then the only honorable way to get through it. Think of the “soldier of Pompeii” (Spengler). And also of the example of Regulus. To want to do like the adversary under the pretext that it succeeded for him, is to become that adversary — not to be different from him. There is baseness as soon as one asks (oneself) “what is it for,” “what does it bring,” “what obliges us to do it.” To try to preserve at all costs a life that we will lose anyway — an apologue of living dogs and dead lions — there’s a fine absurdity.

Virtue, like vice, can only be the prerogative of an elite. They require the same capacity for self-mastery; they pertain less to “morality” than to pure will. The freedom to do something always goes hand in hand with a freedom with respect to that something. In other words, one must will only the things to which one also feels capable of renouncing. Julius Evola: “You are permitted to do something only insofar as you are also capable of abstaining from doing it. You are permitted to want something — and to obtain it — only insofar as you are also capable of abstaining from wanting it and giving it up.”

Do not seek to convince, seek rather to awaken. Life finds meaning in what is more than life — but not beyond life. What is more than life is not expressed in (and by) words, but is sometimes felt. Give precedence to soul over mind, to life over reason, to image over concept.

Lyricism can serve as a “moral” rule, provided that one has posited as the essential relation of existence not the relation of man to man, but that of man to the universe. (The only way there is to adhere to the world above is to build oneself by analogy with it). Great heads of state are those thanks to whom peoples can think of themselves lyrically.

The present actualizes all pasts, potentializes all futures. To accept the present, through jubilatory assumption of the instant, is to be able to enjoy at the same time all instants. Past, present, and future are the three perspectives, equally actual, given at every moment of historical becoming. Break definitively with the linear conception of history. Everything we do engages what has already come as much as what will (re)come.

The goal of life: to put something important between oneself and death. The epoch, like society, can prevent us from doing so. Two ways for society to drive one mad: demand too much, not propose enough. This can be, according to men, exactly the same thing.

Solitude. Know how to be of the party of the polar star: the one that stays in place when the others continue to turn. Peace is at the center of movement (Jünger) — in the axis of the wheel. Cultivate in oneself what the man of quality conserves, immutable, in all situations: Confucian jen, purusha of the Aryas, the humanitas of the Romans — the interior core of being.

There is no true piety but filial piety, extended to ancestors, to lineage and to people. Jesus affirming that Joseph is not his true father — that he is the son of a single God, the brother of all men — begins the process of disavowal of paternity. Our vanished ancestors are neither spiritually dead nor passed into another world. They are at our sides, in an invisible and rustling crowd. They surround us as long as their memory is perpetuated by their descendants. Thus is justified the cult of ancestors — and the duty to have their name respected.

All men of quality are brothers, no matter the race, country, and time.

— Alain de Benoist,

July 1977