Content area
Full Text
(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)
Focus: Nihilism
Introduction
Baron Giulio Cesare Andrea (Julius) Evola, born in 1898, was a leading intellectual figure in Italy until his death in 1974; his ideas were controversial and fell in and out of favour. Even the bibliography on this author does not always contain balanced analyses of his philosophy.1We can mention at least two opposing evaluations. In the 1980s, the political scientists Franco Ferraresi and Marco Revelli studied Evola's philosophy exclusively in terms of the part it played in inspiring and providing cultural roots for the right-wing Italian terrorism of the 1970s.2On the other hand, the intellectuals Gianfranco de Turris and Adriano Romualdi published works defending Evola; the philosopher was presented as an 'apolitical' writer, committed more to a detached criticism of the contemporary world similar to Nietzsche's critique of nihilism than to political engagement.3When defending Evola as an 'apolitical' writer, reference is often to one of his last works, Cavalcare la tigre (Ride the tiger), published in 1961, where the author declares that, faced with general processes of moral and political dissolution, the only sensible attitude is apolitìa: a total disinterest and detachment 'from everything that is "politics" today'4while remaining faithful exclusively to oneself.
It is my intention here to study the development of Evola's intellectual production from the early 1930s until the late 1950s, paying special attention to his response to the diagnosis of nihilism of the modern world coming from Friedrich Nietzsche. Within the scope of this special Focus, and precisely in order to better enlighten the concept of, and theoretical elaborations around, nihilism, I intend to draw attention to an anti-nihilist author who was most influential in specific political circles in Italy before and after the war. In terms of method and sources, I intend to give emphasis to press items, which have been so long underestimated by Evola scholars, instead of published books, because I consider them more genuine and less influenced by 'marketing' considerations. I will focus on the manner in which Evola's message was metamorphosed in order to fit into the new political situation in Italy after 1945. I intend to show how the inner core of his political philosophy...