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1. Knowledge of the Right Use of All Things
To explain what philosophy is, we always have to go back to the beginning. Pythagoras (ca. 570-495 BC) is said to have been confronted by Leon, the tyrant of Philius, who demanded to know if he was wise. He responded that he was not a wise man, but merely a φιλόσοφος (philosophos), a “lover of wisdom”; a practitioner of φιλοσοφία (philosophia). Φίλος (philos) means “love,” and σοφῐ́ᾱ (sophia) means “wisdom.” (more…)
7,156 words
1. Introduction
The thesis of this essay is that it is wise to be superstitious. To put it differently, I will argue that my readers should be superstitious — or that they should embrace the superstitious nature they already have (for most of us have it), rather than try to disown superstition. (more…)
4,214 words
Part 2 of 4 (Part 1 here, Part 3 here)
4. The Principles of Magical Idealism
Evola’s critique of transcendental idealism, which we examined in the last installment, is insightful and interesting — though grand choruses of academic voices would be raised against every step of it, insisting that Evola has misunderstood idealism. (more…)
5,254 words
Part 1 of 4 (Part 2 here)
1. Introduction
Early in his career as a writer, Julius Evola published several philosophical works expounding a theory he called “magical idealism.” These include Saggi sull’idealismo magico (Essays on Magical Idealism, 1925), Teoria dell’individuo assoluto (Theory of the Absolute Individual, 1927), (more…)
Zednářský univerzalismus v pojetí Jeana Delvillea
2.261 slov
English original here
Následující esej původně byla závěrečnou částí recenze Collina Clearyho na knihu Ricarda Duchesneho The Uniqueness of Western Civilization. Protože je v ní ale obsaženo příliš velice důležitých postřehů, než aby zůstaly „zastrčené“ na konci velice rozsáhlé knižní recenze, upravil jsem ji tak, aby fungovala i jako samostatný útvar – Greg Johnson.
Dokonce i ve většině moderních Zápaďanů – ano, i u našich politicky dokonale korektních akademiků – se dosud skrývá jakýsi míhavý záblesk starobylé, indoevropské thymotické přirozenosti. (more…)
Jonathan Haidt
4,274 slov
English original here
V první části své eseje jsem se věnoval Haidtovu argumentu, že morálka se vyvinula jako reakce na různé „adaptivní výzvy“. Z těch se etablovalo několik „morálních základů“ spojených s péčí, férovostí, loajalitou, autoritou, posvátností a svobodou. (more…)
3,587 slov
English original here
Bývalý liberál Jonathan Haidt je profesorem etického vedení na Sternově ekonomické fakultě Newyorské univerzity. Nedávno přišel s novou knihou The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas are Setting up a Generation for Failure (Rozmazlená americká dušička aneb jak dobré úmysly a špatné nápady vysílají celou generaci na cestu neúspěchu; spoluautor Greg Lukianoff), (more…)
6,383 words
1. Introduction: Remind me, why Fichte?
Readers have been asking me why I am devoting multiple essays to J. G. Fichte, an exceedingly difficult and seldom-read German Idealist born in 1762. The simple answer is that these essays are a continuation of my series on Heidegger’s “history of metaphysics.” Having devoted several essays to Kant, I am continuing with Fichte, then will move on to Schelling and Hegel, and then, finally, to Nietzsche. (more…)
J. G. Fichte meets Immanuel Kant, 1791
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1. “The circumference of my world is equivalent to the limits of my will.”
In my last essay, we established that for Fichte self-consciousness is an ultimate fact. We saw via our own experiments in introspection that the “I” — this “presence” that says, in effect “I am” — is not simply a feature of the self, it is the self. (more…)
J. G. Fichte
4,888 words
1. Fichte’s Foundationalism
J. G. Fichte holds that the human self has no intrinsic identity, aside from that which we create for it. He completely rejects the notion that our identity is in any way determined by nature. This is the modern “blank slate” theory pushed to a radical extreme. It is to Fichte that we must look if we wish to find the philosophical origins of current intellectual fashions such as “gender fluidity,” “social construction” of race and gender, and radical egalitarian claims about human perfectibility. (more…)
