Category: Magical Idealism
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Nature’s Lessons on Interior Friction
Cologero has beautifully highlighted the central paradox of “he who wishes to rise” or “the aspirant”: It is clear in fact that if persuasion sharpens itself to a pure, unrelated sufficiencyy—i.e., to a statey—rather than to sufficiency as denial of an insufficiency—i.e. to an act, to a relationy—the antithesis certainly has a value and is…
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Hermann Keyserling – Part 2
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 power.” ⇐ Part 1 Some of…
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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.
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Magical Idealism in a Larger Whole
The keenest sorrow is to recognize ourselves as the sole cause of all our adversities. ~ Sophocles Since one aspect of building a system is to integrate a lesser one into a larger whole, what follows are some possible wholes that will accept what is profitable in magical idealism, while accounting for its defects. Solipsism…
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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 the choice. A spontaneous act…
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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 as the irrational. Certain philosophers,…
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Giovanni Gentile — Part 1
Next: Giovanni Gentile Part 2 ⇒ This is Part 1 of probably four parts of Julius Evola‘s commentary on Giovanni Gentile in Saggi sull’Idealismo Magico (Essays in Magical Idealism). It has been difficult to translate, not just because of the difficulty of the subject matter, but more because there is no corresponding philosophical tradition in…
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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…