5,641 words
Machado de Assis, Joaquim Maria
The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas
Penguin Classics, 2020
“How do you have the nerve to write some of the things you do?” I asked him. “Oh, it’s easy. I just pretend that I’m already dead.” — Michel Houellebecq[1]
Some years ago, in that white-collar internment camp known as graduate school, a classmate pointed out to me a book with a title that, being nominally philosophy students, amused us: Philosopher or Dog? by one Machado de Assis. (more…)
250 words / 2:35:59
Host Greg Johnson was joined by learned Counter-Currents writers Stephen Paul Foster, Mark Gullick, James J. O’Meara, and Kathryn S. on the last installment of Counter-Currents Radio to share their lists of five essential books every educated person needs to read — plus, of course, answer YOUR QUESTIONS — and it is now available for download and online listening.
Topics discussed include:
00:05:00 Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War (more…)
Leopold Ziegler
6,157 words
Leopold Ziegler (1881-1958) was a German philosopher who was steeped in the philosophy of the Will of Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) and in the philosophy of the Unconscious of the Schopenhauerian philosopher, Eduard von Hartmann (1842-1906). Already as a secondary school student at the Technische Hochschule in Karlsruhe, Ziegler was introduced to the doctrines of Hartmann by the philosopher Arthur Drews (1865-1935), and in 1910 he wrote a work on his philosophy entitled Das Weltbild Hartmanns: Eine Beurteilung. He obtained his doctorate in 1905 from the University of Jena, but was unable to take up an academic career on account of his poor health. (more…)
Nietzsche at age 18.
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In the Alps I am unconquerable, that is, when I am alone and have no enemy other than myself. — Nietzsche, letter to Malwida von Meysenburg
Friedrich Nietzsche remains the most enigmatic of philosophers. Claimed by both the political Left and Right over the 121 years since his death (by which time he had been incurably insane for 11 years), the Lutheran pastor’s son left a philosophical legacy which remains mysterious, and yet to the “philosophers of the future” for whom Nietzsche wrote, ultimately uplifting even in its ominous predictions for the Western culture to which he felt he was a physician. (more…)
109 words / 2:11:40
The latest convocation of the Counter-Currents Brain Trust is now available for online listening and downloading. Greg Johnson was joined by two Counter-Currents writers, Mark Gullick and Stephen Paul Foster. Since all three have doctorates in philosophy, it was an opportunity to discuss some really DEEP QUESTIONS. (more…)
4,517 words
Alexander Jacob
Richard Wagner on Tragedy, Christianity, and the State: Three Essays, Second Edition
Melbourne: Manticore, 2020
“I am the most German being. I am the German spirit.” — Richard Wagner[1]
Counter-Currents readers will welcome another contribution from Alexander Jacob.[2] These essays make a useful companion, or counterpoint (sit venia verbo!), to Collin Cleary’s Wagner’s Ring & the Germanic Tradition. (more…)
4,994 words
Of peasant ancestry on his father’s side and boasting aristocratic (boyar) maternal roots, the Romanian poet, prose writer, and editorialist Mihai Eminescu (1850-1889) had not put his modest inherited wealth to waste. Educated in the German language since childhood, Eminescu was culturally — if not always geopolitically — an enthusiastic Germanophile. (more…)
Ludwig Sigismund Ruhl, Arthur Schopenhauer, 1815.
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Whether attending a birthday party or a social event, people have sometimes referred to me as being “the life of the party.” There have also been times where I found myself excluded from my social circle and community. Recently, I found myself not being invited to a birthday party that some of my other friends were invited to. Although I always try to stay positive and optimistic, I couldn’t help but feel ignored and forgotten. (more…)
4,445 words
Why does Scruton not examine the role of Melot in Death-Devoted Heart more closely?
Tristan und Isolde echoes themes from Romeo and Juliet and Othello, so it is unlikely that Wagner did not have both plays in mind when he composed his opera. The Othello theme is especially clear in the regrets expressed by King Marke that he could not clearly see, just as Othello could not clearly see. Melot, like Iago, faces death if he cannot make good the claim of adultery; (more…)
Christopher Ventris as Palestrina in the 2009 Bavarian State Opera production of the opera.
1,693 words
Hans Pfitzner
Palestrina
Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, conducted by Rafael Kubelík
Deutsche Grammophon, 1989
Hans Pfitzner’s Palestrina is one of the unsung masterpieces of twentieth-century opera. (more…)
Arthur Schopenhauer
1,406 words
Part 1 of 2 (Part 2 here)
Why I write is very simple: I believe that, in the final analysis, ideas — not economics, not technology, not brute force — are the decisive factor in history, and I believe that history is going in the wrong direction. (more…)
2,524 words
Marta Petreu
An Infamous Past: E. M. Cioran and the Rise of Fascism in Romania
Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2005
‘The Romanians, what have they ever done for us, eh?’ So might Emil Cioran, himself a Romanian, have wondered when he wrote his third book The Transfiguration of Romania, published in 1936. Bewailing Romania’s insignificant past and culture, he proposed a program that would transform the country in parallel with the contemporary national revivals in Germany and Italy then underway. (more…)