Illustration of a firebird by Kay Nielsen in Hansel and Gretel & Other Stories (1925)
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Yet more and greater ills by land remain.
The coast, so long desir’d . . .
Thy troops shall reach, but, having reach’d, repent.
Wars, horrid wars, I view a field of blood,
And Tiber rolling with a purple flood.
— The Æneid [1]
I hope Counter-Currents readers are enjoying the first flush of spring and continue to find moments of happiness despite all the petty Javerts in our midst. (more…)
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Introduction
In the previous essay (“Heidegger’s History of Metaphysics, Part One: Platonism”) I began to sketch Heidegger’s argument for the claim that Western metaphysics lays the groundwork for the nihilism and decadence of modernity. I framed this account partly as a critique of the Traditionalists Julius Evola and René Guénon, who aimed to combat modernity with a “Traditionalism” grounded in Western metaphysics (more…)
Plato and Aristotle, detail from Raphael’s The School of Athens, 1510-1511.
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1. Introduction
In my essay “Heidegger Against the Traditionalists,” I sketched a critique of Guénon and Evola from a Heideggerian perspective. Although I raised several objections to Traditionalism, the crucial one was this: Guénon and Evola are thoroughly (and uncritically) invested in the Western metaphysical tradition. According to Heidegger, however, it is precisely the Western metaphysical tradition that is responsible for all the modern ills decried by the Traditionalists. (more…)
Norman Rockwell, Study for “Freedom of Speech”
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Populism seeks to rescue popular government from corrupt elites. Naturally, the elites strike back. The most common accusation from elite commentators is that populism is “anti-democratic.” As Yascha Mounk frames it, populism is “the people vs. democracy.” I argue that populism is not anti-democratic, but it is anti-liberal. (See Donald Thoresen’s review of Mounk’s The People vs. Democracy here.)
Many critics of populism accuse it of being a form of white identity politics, (more…)
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“There were many whose hearts told them that they should begin to tell the secret runes.” Thus begins an ancient manuscript written in Old Saxon. It may surprise the reader to learn that these are, in fact, the opening lines of the Christian Gospel in the version known as the Heliand, produced for the Saxons in the early ninth century, after their conquest by Charlemagne. (more…)
Georg Friedrich Kersting, Faust in his Study
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Part 4 of 4 (Part 3 here)
Definition of “Axial thought”
The Axial Age idea is the most concerted effort to retain aspects of the idea of progress while disallowing Western civilization from claiming to be the most progressive in the sciences, technology, cultural creativity, and forms of state organization. This idea has historical merits. (more…)
Socrates
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Author’s Note:
The following text is based on a transcript by Rollo Walker of a 1999 lecture on “Objectivity, Relativism, and Well-Being.” This text only includes the first half of the transcript, and it has been massively condensed and rewritten.
Socrates is famous for arguing that all human beings pursue happiness; (more…)
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As the Chinese “silent invasion” of Australia, New Zealand, and Canada continues, you may want to learn something about the Western academics who lay the intellectual groundwork for this invasion. In a prior article, “The Transcendental Mind of Europeans Stands Above the Embedded Mind of Asians,” we met two influential scholars calling upon whites to abandon their “failed” attempts to formulate transcendental truths for the sake of the more “profound” contextual approach of Chinese philosophers with their demonstration that all thinking is “embedded” to a time and a place. (more…)
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The following review was published in The European, a journal owned and published by Sir Oswald Mosley and his wife, Diana, between 1953 and 1959, in its February 1957 issue. (more…)
Representatives of two stages of mental development: Rembrandt, Aristotle with a Bust of Homer (1653)
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Part 2 of 2 (Part 1 here)
Why did the West rise to become the most powerful civilization, the progenitor of modernity, the culture with the most prodigious creators? The answers are plenty. But it may be that a child psychologist, Jean Piaget, has offered the best theoretical framework to explain the difference between the West and the Rest. (more…)
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Andrew Lynn
Classic Philosophy for the Modern Man
Classic Spirituality for the Modern Man
Howgill House Books, 2017
“In a time of universal triviality, seeking answers to the great questions of existence is . . . a revolutionary course of action. Those who have the humility to ask the question ‘Could it be us who have gone astray?’ are the true radicals.”–Andrew Lynn (more…)
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We are all faced with the challenge of speaking, and living, truths which are felt to be offensive by a great many of our countrymen, not to mention the powers that be. This is not a new problem. By definition, the natural diversity of men means that knowledge of the truth is highly unequally distributed and those who know most about the truth are necessarily a tiny minority. This minority must alone face the prejudices and ignorance of the masses and the violence of the state. (more…)
Siegfried & Mime, Arthur Rackham, 1911
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Part 4 of 4 (Part 1 here; Part 2 here; Part 3 here)
7. Concluding Reflections
I turn now to some thoughts on how the foregoing treatment of the influence of the past on the present ought to affect our own present, when we finish this essay and return to the real world.
It is a well-known fact that our ancestors acted with awareness of membership in the clan: trying to be worthy of their own ancestors, and not to disgrace them. (more…)
The Norns by Johannes Gehrts, 1889
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Part 2 of 4 (Part 1 here; Part 3 here; Part 4 here)
4. Tradition
Having now discussed the clannic being of the individual purely in philosophical terms, I now turn to a consideration of the treatment of this idea in the Germanic tradition.
The first thing we must note is what can be called the “primacy of the past” in that tradition. (more…)
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Part 1 of 4 (Part 2 here; Part 3 here; Part 4 here)
1. Introduction
This essay presents an “ontology of the individual.” The theory is new, though it has very old roots. “Ontology” is the branch of philosophy that studies being-as-such, or “being as being,” as Aristotle expressed it.[1] My argument is that the being of an individual person is bound up with that individual’s relation to his family or clan. (more…)
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
626 words
Spanish translation here
Paternalism means treating people like children. Children lack the maturity and wisdom to make their own decisions. Thus they need parents — or people playing the paternal role — to tell them what to do and, on occasion, to force them to do it.
Most people have no problem with paternalism when dealing with actual children, as well as the retarded, the senile, and the insane. (more…)
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The following review was published in The European, a journal owned and published by Sir Oswald Mosley and his wife, Diana, between 1953 and 1959, in its February 1957 issue. (more…)
James Henry Beard, North Carolina Emigrants: Poor White Folks (1845)
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As of late, a great deal of debate has occurred on the Right concerning whether certain aspects of white-European history possess any relevance to the contemporary white racialist movement or not. For example, many have questioned the merits of the perpetuation of National Socialist ideology in the postmodern “West.” (more…)
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Today, Western liberals are ambivalent about Plato. On the one hand, liberals claim they are the heirs of Greco-Roman civilization and philosophy (more…)
Francisco Suárez.
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Translated by Guillaume Durocher
Translator’s Note: The following is an extract from Pierre Hadot’s excellent Qu’est-ce que la philosophie antique? (Paris: Gallimard, 1995, available in English as What is Ancient Philosophy?, pp. 381-84, under the heading “Philosophy as Servant of Theology.” The title is editorial.
Writing his Disputationes Metaphysicae in the last years of the sixteenth century, a work which would exert a considerable influence on many philosophers from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries, the scholastic author Francisco Suárez affirms:
Merry-Joseph Blondel, 1781–1853, “Solon, Legislator of Athens”
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Audio version: To listen in a player, click here; to download the mp3, right-click here and choose “save link as”; to subscribe to our podcasts, click here.
French translation here
In Ancient Athens, debtors who were unable to pay their creditors lost their land and were reduced to serfs who had to give their landlords one sixth of their produce in perpetuity. (more…)
Demosthenes
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English original here
Czy demokracja jest dobrym systemem z perspektywy rasowo świadomych białych ludzi?
1. Jeśli zarówno Stany Zjednoczone i Korea Północna określają się mianem demokracji, można bezpiecznie stwierdzić, że „demokracja” oznacza prawie wszystko i praktycznie nic. (more…)
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English original here
Tytuł tego eseju jest poniekąd mylący, ponieważ zamierzam dowodzić, że filozofia ma znaczenie dla wszelkiej ludzkiej aktywności, nie tylko dla polityki. Filozofia jest nie tylko metapolityczna, ale „meta-wszystko”[1]. Ale wiem, że moi czytelnicy zainteresowani są zmianą polityczną, zatem był to mój wybieg, aby zachęcić Was do lektury. Co więcej, twierdzę, że filozofia nie jedynie znacząca dla życia, ale jest sprawą najwyższej wagi. (more…)
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English original here
Paternalismo significa tratar a la gente como niños. Los niños carecen de madurez y sabiduría para tomar sus propias decisiones. Por lo tanto necesitan padres – o gente que ejerza el rol paternal – que les diga que hacer y, en ocasiones, forzarlos a hacerlo.
La mayoría de la gente no tiene problema con el paternalismo cuando trata con niños, tanto como con retardados, seniles o insanos. (more…)
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
626 words
Spanish translation here
Paternalism means treating people like children. Children lack the maturity and wisdom to make their own decisions. Thus they need parents — or people playing the paternal role — to tell them what to do and, on occasion, to force them to do it.
Most people have no problem with paternalism when dealing with actual children, as well as the retarded, the senile, and the insane. (more…)
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English original here
Recientemente he tenido una epifanía de cómo los Nacionalistas Blancos podrían hacer un mejor trabajo creando un movimiento vanguardista genuino. El Vanguardismo, al cual nunca me canso de señalar, es y siempre debe ser una estrategia elitista. La historia está hecha por las elites. Los blancos, sin embargo, son dominados por una elite judía y plutocrática que, a lo mejor, es indiferente al futuro de nuestra raza (more…)
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I recently had an epiphany about how White Nationalists might do a better job of creating a genuine vanguardist movement. Vanguardism, as I never tire of pointing out, is and must always be an elitist strategy. History is made by elites. Whites, however, are ruled by a Jewish and plutocratic elite that is at best indifferent to the future of our race and is at worst intentionally supporting policies that are leading to our simple biological extinction. (more…)
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English original here
Le titre de cet essai est quelque peu trompeur, puisque je vais arguer que la philosophie est pertinente pour tous les efforts humains, pas seulement la politique [1]. La philosophie n’est pas seulement métapolitique, mais méta-tout [2]. Mais je sais que vous vous intéressez au changement politique, donc c’était mon hameçon pour vous faire lire. (more…)
Heidegger modeling his Hobbit hat
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I talk to Guessed Worker and Daniel Sienkiewicz at Majority Rights Radio about Heidegger and the politics of identity here.
Topics include: modern politics and the abolition of limits, the necessity of a return to limits, the classical notion of nature, the notion of weighty historical contingency, Heidegger and the Conservative Revolution, Heidegger in relation to National Socialism and the New Right, Heidegger and authenticity, race and historical identity, Heidegger and Darwinism, and science in relation to philosophy and common sense. (more…)
