1961 West German Bundespost stamp featuring Kant
6,542 words
All essays in this series available here
With this, the tenth essay in this series, we have reached a significant milestone. Our journey has taken us from Plato to Kant, and this is the fourth essay on Heidegger’s Kant interpretation. In the last installment, we saw that Kant is struggling to transcend the representationalist paradigm, but that he is inconsistent in this. (more…)
M. C. Escher, Hand with Reflecting Sphere, 1935.
6,864 words
All essays in this series available here
My two previous essays introduced readers to Kant’s transcendental idealism and discussed the similarities and differences between Kant’s critique of metaphysics and Heidegger’s. It is now time to begin to consider Heidegger’s critique of Kant, and how Heidegger locates him within his history of metaphysics. (more…)
Giacomo Balla, Science Against Obscurantism, 1920
6,034 words
Part 1 here, Part 2 here, Part 3 here, Part 4 here, Part 5 here, Part 6 here, Part 7 here
My last essay ended with the observation that there are clear points of convergence between Kant’s thought and Heidegger’s. (more…)
William Powell Frith (1819-1909), A May Day Celebration (private collection)
6,740 words
Throughout Europe and the United States, the chill mornings and blossoming trees of spring are giving way to summer’s warmth and abundance. As the midway point between spring and summer, the month of May has historically been a season of great importance to the peoples of Europe, a joyful time of sowing, revelry, feasting, and courtship. (more…)
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James J. O’Meara
Passing the Buck: Coleman Francis and Other Cinematic Metaphysicians
Melbourne: Manticore Press, 2021
Imagine going thirty, forty, fifty, or even sixty years of your life without comprehending the dizzying implications of how some movies, typically — and often charitably — understood to be cringingly awful, actually serve as thaumaturgic runes which reveal glimpses of the painful, beautiful Truth behind this swiftly degenerating stage of Kali Yuga. (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…)
Schedel’s Phoenix from the Nuremberg Chronicle, 1493
2,484 words
If I had to recommend one book on politics, it would be James Burnham’s The Machiavellians. If I had to recommend one pamphlet, it would be an overlooked gem of American political discourse, Sam Francis’s The Other Side of Modernism: James Burnham and His Legacy. There is no white identitarian, racially aware conservative, American nationalist, or any other member of the Dissident Right who does not owe a massive debt to this towering genius. (more…)
G. W. Leibniz Memorial in Leipzig
7,567 words
Part 1 here, Part 2 here, Part 3 here, Part 4 here, Part 5 here
1. Introduction: Leibniz and the Completion of Metaphysics
Gottfried Wilhelm, Freiherr von Leibniz (1646–1716) is one of the most extraordinary figures in the history of ideas. A true polymath, he was not only a philosopher but a physicist, historian, jurist, diplomat, inventor, and mathematician. (more…)
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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…)
Edgar Fernhout, Schädel, 1935.
1,937 words
The lexicon of mendacious government platitudes has gained another ignominious entry. “Just three weeks to flatten the curve!” they implored one long year ago. Yet after twelve months of authoritarianism and state-enforced solitude, SWAT teams are swooping in to arrest Miami spring break revelers, and lockdown protests from Amsterdam to Kassel are intensifying across Europe. (more…)
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Nature is a temple, where the living
Columns sometimes breathe of confusing speech;
Man walks within these groves of symbols, each
Of which regards him as a kindred thing.
— Charles Baudelaire, “Correspondence” (more…)
Hieronymus Bosch, Outer Wings of the Garden of Delights, ca. 1510.
4,305 words
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…)
Frans Hals, Portrait of René Descartes, 1649-1700.
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1. To Be Is to Be “Set Before”
In the previous installment of this series, we saw Heidegger contrasting modernity to the Middle Ages in the following terms:
For the Middle Ages . . . the being is the ens creatum, that which is created by the personal creator-God, who is considered to be the highest cause. (more…)
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You may be familiar with Warhammer Forty Thousand — 40K for short. It’s a fantasy universe originally created for tabletop wargaming. It has a large fan base, and like most other European-created alternate worlds, the woke mob has begun to howl for its transformation. Of course, management is happy to acquiesce.
The 40K universe is one of futuristic, grim, eternal war. The principal conflict in this dystopian universe is between the forces of Chaos and the Imperium of Man. (more…)
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Introduction
In the previous essay (“Heidegger’s History of Metaphysics, Part One: Platonism”) I began to sketch Heidegger’s argument for the claim that Western metaphysics lays the groundwork for the nihilism and decadence of modernity. I framed this account partly as a critique of the Traditionalists Julius Evola and René Guénon, who aimed to combat modernity with a “Traditionalism” grounded in Western metaphysics (more…)
Mr. Gurdjieff
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George Ivanovich Gurdjieff was born on this day in 1866, 1872, or 1877 — depending on whom you ask. [1] Much else about his biography is equally uncertain. We do know that his father was Greek, his mother Armenian, and that he was born in Alexandropol which was then part of the Russian Empire (it is now in Armenia and is called Gyumri). (more…)
Frank Herbert
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Frank Herbert’s Dune (1965) is one of the masterpieces of science fiction, far eclipsing its five sequels in readership and reputation. But I wish to argue that the third and fourth Dune books, Children of Dune (1976) and God Emperor of Dune (1981), are equally audacious works of the imagination. [1] Both volumes tend to be underrated, partly due to the long shadow of Dune, partly because the sheer scope of Herbert’s vision boggles the mind, (more…)
Plato and Aristotle, detail from Raphael’s The School of Athens, 1510-1511.
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1. Introduction
In my essay “Heidegger Against the Traditionalists,” I sketched a critique of Guénon and Evola from a Heideggerian perspective. Although I raised several objections to Traditionalism, the crucial one was this: Guénon and Evola are thoroughly (and uncritically) invested in the Western metaphysical tradition. According to Heidegger, however, it is precisely the Western metaphysical tradition that is responsible for all the modern ills decried by the Traditionalists. (more…)
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Yule is the midwinter festival celebrated by my ancestors and by Germanic neo-pagans today. Midwinter is a time when much of nature seems to die or to depart. The trees are stripped of their leaves. The birds abandon us, flying off to warmer climes. Bears, badgers, chipmunks, and squirrels hibernate. Water freezes over. The earth is covered in ice and snow, so that nothing can grow. The air is so chilled that when we are out in it for too long, death becomes something tangible, and we rush inside. (more…)
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1. Introduction
Those on the New Right are bound together partly by shared intellectual interests. Ranking very high indeed on any list of those interests would be the works of Martin Heidegger and those of the Traditionalist [1] school, especially René Guénon and Julius Evola. My own work has been heavily influenced by both Heidegger and Traditionalism. (more…)
Greg Johnson
Graduate School with Heidegger
San Francisco: Counter-Currents Publishing, 2020
220 pages
There are three formats for Graduate School with Heidegger:
Caspar David Friedrich, Landscape with Mountain Lake in the Morning, 1823.
3,918 words
Among those on the Right who address man’s relationship to the rest of the natural world, one finds a variety of approaches. There are the anthropocentric conservationists, who promote the “wise use” or prudent management of natural resources for future generations. There are the Social Darwinist varieties, (more…)
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An important question for those on the Dissident Right to ask is how humans ought to relate to nature; both their own “human nature” as well as the “outside” world. Depending on one’s religious beliefs, this might be the most important question there is. History seems to indicate two conventional approaches to this question. (more…)
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There are great thinkers, and then there are great thinkers whose prescience is so acute that they seem to operate on a precognitive, almost prophetic level. Included among the latter category is Richard M. Weaver (1910-1963). Weaver was a professor of English at the University of Chicago when the humanities were taken seriously, and nowhere were they taken more seriously than at UC in the two decades following the end of the Second World War. (more…)
1,705 words
Versão em inglês aqui, versão em espanhol aqui
Recentemente, surgiram evidências que provam que Martin Heidegger leu Evola.
Em um artigo intitulado “Ein spirituelles Umsturzprogramm” (“Um programa de revolução espiritual”), publicado no Frankfurter allgemeine Zeitung, em 30 de dezembro de 2015, Tomás Vasek comenta o importante documento descoberto.
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In my essay “What is the Metaphysics of the Left?” I identified the fundamental presuppositions underlying the Leftist worldview. In the present essay, I intend to build on that analysis by showing how it can enable us, with relative ease, to identify our own metaphysics, the metaphysics of the Right. In short, my approach is indirect: I intend to arrive at our own most fundamental presuppositions by, in essence, negating the metaphysics we reject and revile. (more…)
The face of today’s Left
4,645 words
Part 2 of 2 (Part 1 here)
2. A Will to Nothingness: The Essence of Leftist Metaphysics
We are now in a position to step back from these observations and draw some general conclusions about the metaphysics of Leftist ideology. I trust the reader understands, however, that I am identifying the metaphysics that underlies Leftist ideology. (more…)
3,629 words
Part 1 of 2 (Part 2 here)
Metaphysics is the science of what is real. It is the most fundamental branch of philosophy; other philosophical ideas are derived from or based upon metaphysical convictions. For example, the Epicurean principle that pleasure is the highest good follows from its materialism and rejection of belief in an afterlife. However, it is also possible to speak of metaphysics outside of the context of philosophical systems. (more…)
