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…)
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
6,194 words
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…)
6,227 words
1. Martin Heidegger Reads Fichte
On June 25, 1929, Heidegger wrote to Karl Jaspers, “At the present moment I am lecturing on Fichte, Hegel, and Schelling for the first time — and once more a new world opens up before me. (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…)
Mark Baumer
1,534 words
So much of what passes for journalism these days is reductionist. What is worse is that there is an ideological underpinning that once would have been considered unacceptable in filing news stories. The tragic death of Ashli Babbitt and the way it’s been covered in the days following her being shot by a member of DC’s Capitol police illustrates the Left-leaning bent of today’s media establishment. Then, of course, there is the garbage excusing a black cop shooting a white woman because. . . he was scared and his superiors weren’t supportive. Bullshit! (more…)
5,026 words
Known mostly as a novelist, memoirist, and historian, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn had actually completed four plays before his first novel, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, was published in 1962. He composed his first two, Victory Celebrations and Prisoners, while a zek in the Soviet Gulag (more…)
145 words / 60:58