ABSTRACT
The intellectual climate in today’s academy takes for granted that esotericism should at best be taken as a product of its own time when the light of modern science did not yet shine on us. As shown by currently relatively popular German idealist F.W.J. Schelling, however, the basic commitments of modern mainstream philosophy rest on highly problematic ungrounded dualism between thinking active human subject and perceived passive material objects. By arguing that Schelling’s essential insights in this respect largely stem from dismissed esoteric traditions Wouter Hanegraaff has shown to operate as “the Other of science and rationality” since the formation of the spirit of Enlightenment, I address the possibility that open-minded philosophical research on esotericism could open up in a completely fresh way the fundamental problems of modern philosophy. In particular, I argue that esoteric ideas on the nature of evil could help us out of the difficult situation where the existence of evil is often denied by appealing to modern naturalism, but at the same time Christian demonology still largely dominates the collective subconscious of Western culture.
