Tag: Immanuel Kant

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Whatever happened to morality? This is not a lament over declining moral standards, or dismay at a rise in immoral behavior. These things are certainly happening, but they are the registration and confirmation of an individual moral standard, usually of a nation, a gauge which changes between cultures, civilizations, and epochs. (more…)

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Evening: Landscape with an Aqueduct – Théodore Géricault, 1818

The case has been made to the point of exhaustion that the neo-liberal, progressivist, “woke” ideology that has clawed its way to cultural and political hegemony across the West displays all the attributes of religion. It has its scriptures, its martyrs, its own separate language (an equivalent to High Church Latin), its high priests and its heretics, and although to rail against it in the public square is no longer to risk your life, it is to risk your livelihood. (more…)

Portrait of Arthur Schopenhauer – Ludwig Sigismund Ruhl, 1815

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Part 1

What “Will” Is

In our last installment we began to discuss Schopenhauer’s magnum opus, The World as Will and Representation, and we covered, in essence, the “first half” of the case he makes: we discussed why the world is “representation.” (more…)

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Schopenhauer as Lebensphilosoph

This introduction to the thought of Arthur Schopenhauer is not, strictly speaking, a part of the series on “Heidegger’s history of metaphysics” that I have been writing now for almost five years. The reason is that Heidegger had little use for Schopenhauer, and not a lot to say about him. To my knowledge, he never taught a course on any of Schopenhauer’s works. (more…)

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Carl R. Trueman
To Change All Worlds: Critical Theory from Marx to Marcuse
Brentwood, Tennessee: B&H Academic, 2024

The philosophy which provided metapolitical cover for the violence of the George Floyd Riots in 2020 is called critical race theory. Carl R. Trueman, a theologian and professor at Grove City College in Pennsylvania, has published a book about the body of thought from which critical race theory sprang – critical theory.  Critical theory’s origins lie in Marxism. (more…)

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The struggle against every form of anti-Semitism — from the Left and Islamically motivated — it is our governmental and civic obligation . . . Der Kampf gegen jede Form von Judenfeindlichkeit — von rechts, von links und islamistisch motiviert — ist unsere staatliche und bürgerschaftliche Pflicht . . . (more…)

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Part 3 of 3 (Part 1 here, Part 2 here)

1. Fichte on the Nature of the State

We began to explore Fichte’s political philosophy in the last installment, as expounded primarily in his 1796 work Foundations of Natural Right. It is a basic principle of Fichte’s philosophy that subjectivity, what he calls the “I,” must bring nature under the control of reason. (more…)

A French Jacobin

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Part 2 of 3 (Part 1 here, Part 3 here)

1. Introduction: Transcendental Idealism as Political Radicalism

In part one of this essay, I covered J. G. Fichte’s moral philosophy, as set out in his 1798 work The System of Ethics. In the present installment, which is largely self-contained, I shall cover his social and political philosophy, chiefly as expounded in The Foundations of Natural Right. Here we will find many ways in which Fichte lays the groundwork for contemporary Leftism, including a surprising anticipation of what Gen Z calls “real Communism.” (more…)

J. G. Fichte

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Part 1 of 3 (Part 2 here)

1. “I am what I freely make myself to be”

This is the sixth essay I have written for Counter-Currents on the German idealist J. G. Fichte (see the introductory essay here), and it is effectively a continuation of my series on “Heidegger’s History of Metaphysics.” However, the reader need not be familiar with any of the earlier entries in order to understand this one. (more…)

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The following is the video and transcript of F. Roger Devlin speaking during the “Battle of Ideas” panel discussion at this year’s Counter-Currents retreat. His subject is the problem of winning ordinary conservatives over to the cause of White Nationalism. The title is editorial. (more…)

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Introduction here, Chapter 5 Part 2 here, Chapter 7 here

Translated by F. Roger Devlin

In the eighteenth century, in order to put a definitive end to the wars of religion, liberalism attempted to “pacify” society politically and ideologically. (more…)

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We are a small group of highly committed people with ambitious aims whose achievement will require the mobilization of great masses of our people. For this reason, the first thing to say about our battle of ideas is that it will have to be fought on more than one level. We have distinct audiences to reach. (more…)

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“Have you accepted Jesus, Agent Starling? Do you have faith?”
“I was raised Lutheran.”
“That’s not what I asked.” — Thomas Harris, Hannibal

I am a sick man. I am an angry man. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground

“I am one thing,” wrote Friedrich Nietzsche, “my writings another.” Although a few decades after his death this aphorism would chime with the Derridean, post-structuralist dictum that there is “nothing outside the text,” a hermeneutic approach to philosophy excludes the philosopher’s life to its detriment. (more…)