Aesthetic and Moral Appropriations of the Transition from Darkness to Light on Mount Athos. Three questions over the Nature of Evil in the Self, the Community, and theWorld from the perspective of Monastic Practice.

This paper follows three ethical dilemmas regarding the conception and uses of“evil” transcribed on the Body, in the Community, and against the World. Thepaper compares three ethnographic chunks taken from the circular life of two rivalmonasteries of Mount Athos, in order to sketch their respective perspectivesand compare how each community appropriates darkness within its cathartic “logic”. Indoing so, the paper investigates the mechanisms that contribute to the naturalizationand moralization of the cosmos in ideological terms via the simulated world ofsocial media. Ironically, in becoming relevant to the world, the monks use the same"evil" technologies they ideologically reject. The paper positions this paradox back to itsphilosophical base, that is, the gap and contradictions between “natural” and “moral”understandings of “evil” in European philosophy. In doing so, each ethnographic chunkis accompanied by its respective ethical dilemma, which is then unfolded in relation tothe philosophical concept of Natural Religion. This path follows the writings of CarlJung on Antichrist as the Shadow of the Self, David Hume on the evil of theinstitutionalization of dogmatic Christianity, and Jean Baudrillard on the question ofReality and Simulation. In this context, the paper enlarges the ethnographic scope ofthe material from the microcosm of Athos to the greater picture of the world society asthe emerging arena of "True Faith" in which fears and anxieties about the future find avoice, thus, becoming relevant to the changes taking place following world events -such as the pandemic of Covid-19. What is the “nature” of evil today; and does ithave one in the first place? What does this concept tell us about the world we areliving in, from the ascetic perspective of those who consciously rejected it, in order tofind contemplation on Athos?