Julius Evola between christianity and neospiritualism
In: Solovʹëvskie issledovanija, Heft 1, S. 164-180
The article is devoted to the problem of the attitude of the Italian traditionalist philosopher Julius Evola to Christianity and neo-spiritualism. This task is solved on the basis of the comparative historical method of studying the works of Evola of different years and their assessment by researchers. Priority attention is paid to the analysis of the work "The Mask and Face of Contemporary Spiritualism" that was first published in Russian in 2020. The present work is considered in the context of all Evola's work, especially the works published in Russia recently. The question is raised about personalism in Evola's metaphysics. The essence of his criticism of psychoanalysis, spiritualism, theosophy, anthroposophy, primitivism, Satanism, some magical organizations and other forms of "new religiosity" is revealed. In the paper the traditional scheme of opposing the early, middle and late periods of Evola's work according to the criterion of his attitude to Christianity is contested. It is shown that from the early 1930s to the early 1970s his assessment of Christianity was invariably ambivalent and contradictory, although the emphasis on the positive aspects had been gradually increased. The problem of dualism in Christianity and the differences between the early Church, medieval Catholicism and the Aggiornamento of the twentieth century are examined in detail. The main conclusion of our investigation is that Evola, in spite of his personal antipathies to the Christian doctrine, was constantly forced to admit the possibility of a full-fledged spiritual realization of a person within the Catholic and Orthodox Churches and to act as an ally of Catholicism against all forms of neo-spiritualism and neo-paganism.