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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
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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…)
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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
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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
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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…)
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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…)
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Protesters march on Avenue Habib Bourguiba in downtown Tunis, 14 Jan 2011
One spark can ignite the whole world, or at least one part of it. It was December 17, 2010, when a young man named Mohamed Bouazizi pushed his handcart down to the market in Sidi Bouzid, Tunisia. Police approached him and accused him of violating regulations he hadn’t. They demanded money, and when he had none, they humiliated him and took his vegetable scales. Bouazizi went to the town office to complain, but was refused. (more…)
Franz von Stuck, “The Spirit of Victory”
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Author’s Note:
This text is based on a talk I gave at the Victoria Forum on July 28th. I want to thank my hosts and everyone who attended for a wonderful weekend.
The White Nationalist movement is more like a subculture than a political party. (more…)
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“The conflict which is going on regarding the true view of man and the world will be brought to an issue rather by men of the prophetic type than by dogmatists and philosophers.”
–Heinrich Weinel, 1903[1]
Throughout Mein Kampf, Hitler describes what he calls a world-concept, or Weltanschauung. In its usual sense, the word basically means worldview, but when Hitler uses the term it means an all-encompassing social, philosophical, and political idea that has become politically organized. (more…)
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Translated by G. A. Malvicini
A frequently discussed issue among Right-wing circles is the new generation and its relations with the previous one; “revolutionary” youth in relation to the men and ideas of the Fascist period. Some, in this regard, believe that the same phenomenon is met with here that can be observed more generally: the new generation no longer understands the generation that preceded it, the accelerated pace of events having interposed between the one and the other a mental distance much larger than that which in other times normally would have separated them. (more…)
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