Tag: epistemology

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In early March of this year, I wrote “Ukraine and Epistemic Failure Analysis” as a response to the Right’s collective failure to predict that Russia would invade Ukraine and initiate what has become the largest European war since that bit of unpleasantness with the Germans in the 1940s. That essay concerned itself with that very narrow failure of the nationalist Right to accurately predict the onset of war. Since then, that conflict has developed and expanded, and so have the Right’s reactions to it and its predictions as to its ongoing course. (more…)

René Descartes

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I rooted out of my mind all those errors that had formerly crept in . . . — René Descartes, Discourse on the Method

I know this much is true. — Spandau Ballet, “True”

There are famous concepts in Western philosophy, but it is hard to find any better known than René Descartes’ seemingly indubitable pronouncement that “I think, therefore I am.” (more…)

Caspar David Friedrich, Paysage avec un lac de montagne au matin, 1823.

4,095 words

English original here

Parmi les gens de droite qui s’occupent de la relation de l’homme avec le reste du monde naturel, on trouve un certain nombre d’approches. Il y a les conservatistes anthropocentriques, qui promeuvent l’« utilisation sage » ou la gestion prudente des ressources naturelles pour les générations futures. (more…)

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[L]ike the great majority of mankind the savage is above being hidebound by the trammels of a pedantic logic.

— James George Frazer, The Golden Bough (more…)

Janice Dyson and John McAfee

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In case you haven’t heard the news, John McAfee has reportedly committed suicide in his cell in a Barcelona jail on June 23, 2021. He had been imprisoned there since October of 2020. His imprisonment sadly prevented him from fulfilling his pledge to “eat his own dick” if Bitcoin didn’t hit $1 million before the end of 2020. He had claimed repeatedly on Twitter that he was happy and wasn’t entertaining thoughts of killing himself. And nobody believes he killed himself.  (more…)

Allan Ramsey, David Hume, 1766.

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A Very Bad Year

2020 was a bad year for David Hume (1711-1776). Leftists in the United Kingdom, eager to get in on the feast of outrage that followed the drug overdose of George Floyd, complained that David Hume was a racist and should therefore not be revered. And then things went more or less as you would expect. (more…)

Gorgias

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Nothing exists; Even if something exists, nothing can be known about it; and. Even if something can be known about it, knowledge about it can’t be communicated to others. Even if it can be communicated, it cannot be understood.

— Gorgias of Leontinoi, circa 427 BC (more…)

Giacomo Balla, Science Against Obscurantism, 1920

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Part 1 here, Part 2 here, Part 3 here, Part 4 here, Part 5 here, Part 6 here, Part 7 here

1. Metaphysics, Natural Science, and Nihilism

My last essay ended with the observation that there are clear points of convergence between Kant’s thought and Heidegger’s. (more…)

1974 West German Bundespost stamp, commemorating Kant’s 250th birthday

5,568 words

Part 1 here, Part 2 here, Part 3 here, Part 4 here, Part 5 here, Part 6 here

1. Introduction

In the previous essay in this series, we saw Heidegger claiming that Leibniz “prepares” the completion of the metaphysical tradition, but that it is Nietzsche who actually brings it about. I will devote a future essay to Heidegger’s interpretation of Nietzsche, but we may note here that the completion of metaphysics would have been impossible without Kant, who answers Leibniz and inadvertently prepares the way for Nietzsche. (more…)

Hieronymus Bosch, Outer Wings of the Garden of Delights, ca. 1510.

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1. Introduction: From Objectivism to Subjectivism

In the previous two installments (Part Three here, Part Four here) we have discussed at length Heidegger’s treatment of the “objectification of beings” in early modernity: how beings come to be seen as “objects” related to a “subject” that confronts them (indirectly) from within an interior space that is called “mind,” “awareness,” or even “self.” This objectification is essentially identical with the representationalist theory of knowledge, which holds that we are only indirectly aware of the “external world,” via internal images which “represent” external objects. So far, however, this may not be the account of modernity that my readers were expecting. (more…)

Frederic Remington, The Bronco Buster, 1895.

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Gen. Turgidson: Now, wouldn’t that necessitate the abandonment of the so-called monogamous sexual relationship, I mean, as far as men were concerned?

Dr. Strangelove: Regrettably, yes. But it is, you know, a sacrifice required for the future of the human race.

“Is ‘Short Time Preference’ Really Such a Problem?” by Eumaios, apart from its own considerable merits, was particularly interesting for me — and I suppose some of my Constant Readers — due to his reduplication of a number of the most characteristic formulations of the midcentury Barbadian mystic Neville. [1]  (more…)

Charles Le Brun, The Suicide of Cato of Utica, 1646.

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So, in fact, this is not a humiliating defeat at all, but a rare species of victory. 

— Cato the Younger, blackpiller. 

In this amazing modern world that we’ve built for ourselves, the shower is the only place we’re not surrounded by electronics, at least for now. (more…)