This is the second and final installment of Julius Evola‘s commentary on Hermann Keyserling from Saggi sull’Idealismo Magico. Evola refers to Keyserling’s “brilliant interpretation of the function of meaning, according to which understanding is removed from the rational and peripheral plane and compenetrated with the principle of deep self-realization and … Continue reading
Tag Archives: Essays on Magical Idealism
Hermann Keyserling – Part 1
The key to Keyserling’s views is the phenomenon of understanding. It is essentially a point of spontaneity, freedom, and interiority. Continue reading
Giovanni Gentile — Part 3
Next: Hermann Keyserling ⇒ This is the third and final installment of Julius Evola‘s commentary on Giovanni Gentile from Essays on Magical Idealism. Although it is highly technical, we can cut to the main point. First, there is the distinction between spontaneity and freedom. In a free act, “I” make … Continue reading
Giovanni Gentile — Part 2
Next: Giovanni Gentile Part 3 ⇒ In this section, Julius Evola deals with the nature of thought itself. Thought cannot be the object of thinking, since it would then be just another thought. Rather, there must be something that transcends thinking, the “non-rational”. Nevertheless, the non-rational is not the same … Continue reading
Michelstaedter, Part 2
Previous: ⇐ Carlo Michelstaedter Part 1 Next: Giovanni Gentile ⇒ The is the second of two parts, in which Julius Evola details his intellectual debt to Carlo Michelstaedter. From Saggi sull’Idealismo Magico. In order to illuminate Michelstaedter’s central problem, it may be useful to connect the concept of insufficiency or … Continue reading
Carlo Michelstaedter, Part 1
There is a man in whom the demand of the real individual toward absolute value, toward conviction, has been confirmed in the modern epoch, like a lightning flash and in a reality intense with life; this man, who in the clearest way, by shattering all compromises by which the I has been able to take life to its goal. Continue reading
Contemporary Requirements for Magical Idealism
The past remains simply a mark with which I identify a part of my current experience, since a past in itself, i.e., a past that falls outside my real experience, which is not an object, is gnoseologically an absurdity and non-being. From that, it follows that history is nothing other than a mode according to which the I projects onto the canvas of time, I would say almost as in a mythical figuration, that it is to will interiorly and intemporally. As creator of history in the current historical moment, the individual experiences in this way only the limit-point of his own affirmation. Continue reading
The Three Trials
The truth or falsity of idealism—and that means if man can or can’t give certainty and sense to his life and his experience—cannot be demonstrated theoretically: it can be decided not through an intellectual act, but through a concrete realization. Continue reading