Tag: nature

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In the late 19th century, there was a debate raging in the salons across Europe over what is the proper aim of art. You had the modernists who believed that art should try to reflect reality and then you had the aesthetes who believed that the purest art was art that was entirely the product of the imagination. There are legends about how Vincent van Gogh lost his ear, and one of them is that van Gogh lost his ear after an “Aestheticism versus Realism” debate with another artist escalated into violence. (more…)

Socrates: a good 5 cent cigar

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Part 12 of 14

(Part 1 here, Part 2 here, Part 3 here, Part 4 here, Part 5 here, Part 6 here, Part 7 here, Part 8 here, Part 9 here, Part 10 here, Part 11 here, Part 13 here)

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The Apollo 11 liftoff.

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This is the second part of the notes for a lecture entitled “The Conquest of Nature: Ayn Rand,” from October 1999. This was the seventh lecture of an eight-lecture course called “The Pursuit of Happiness,” delivered to my adult education group, The Invisible College, in Atlanta.

Ayn Rand wasn’t always an advocate of laissez-faire capitalism. Indeed, the early Ayn Rand was a Nietzschean with an aristocratic disdain for commercial society. (more…)

1,377 words

Part 2 of 2 (Part 1 here)

After the climactic gunfight between Frank and Harmonica, the latter and Cheyenne say goodbye to Jill. But just outside of the McBain property, Cheyenne falters. Harmonica stops and turns with concern. It turns out that Cheyenne was mortally wounded by Morton. Like Jesus, he has a bleeding wound in his side. This comes as some surprise. He must have been putting up a brave front with Jill. But the surprise comes off as a rather contrived plot twist; one of many. (more…)

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Deep ecology represents a significant shift in the way humans understand and interact with the environment. This movement is rooted in the belief that our current models of human engagement with nature are unsustainable and destructive. Arne Naess, a Norwegian philosopher, first developed the concept of deep ecology in the 1970s, and it has since grown into a powerful environmental and philosophical movement that has inspired many to adopt a more holistic and sustainable approach to environmental issues. (more…)

You can buy the Imperium Press edition of Knut Hamsun’s novel Growth of the Soil here.

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If there is a novelist whose work needs a revival, it’s Norwegian author Knut Hamsun. And if there is any novel of his which deserves being revived, it’s Hamsun’s 1917 classic Growth of the Soil.

Since the Second World War, culture leaders in the West have deliberately neglected works of literature deemed politically inconvenient while promoting those that accord more or less with their globalist, Left-wing agenda. This is why stateless iconoclasts such as Franz Kafka are so celebrated these days while reactionary nationalists such as Hamsun are largely forgotten. (more…)

Ted Kaczynski outside his Montana cabin in 1972.

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Part 2 of 2 (Part 1 here)

Rich Houck: There’s also other parts I find a small problem with. Ted Kaczynski seems to think that without these modern technologies, people cannot be controlled or subverted or treated poorly, but it seems to me that throughout history that’s not been the case. He talked about some of these movements. He mentioned Communism and Nazism in in the same line, as mass movements, but it seems to me that even if we can imagine a society where there’s no modern technology, you could still have a group of people come that is hostile to your interests for various reasons. (more…)

Ted Kaczynski teapot by Charles Krafft

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Part 1 of 2 (Part 2 here)

The following is an edited transcript of the conversation between Greg Johnson and Richard Houck on the subject of Ted Kaczynski’s manifesto, Industrial Society and Its Future, that was broadcast on Counter-Currents Radio in April 2021. You can listen to the recording here.

Greg Johnson: I’m Greg Johnson. Welcome to Ted Talk. I am joined here today by Rich Houck, and we’re going to be talking about Ted Kaczynski’s Industrial Society and Its Future. Rich, welcome to the show. (more…)

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I usually adhere to the Roman custom of only speaking well of the dead, but I will make an exception for Stockton Rush, the CEO of OceanGate and designer of the ill-fated Titan. As the Joker would say, “We live in a society.” OceanGate says a lot about that society, and I can’t help but see the funny side of the Titan’s catastrophic implosion. (more…)

Edmund Husserl

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Leo Strauss credited Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology as a critical resource for his project of overthrowing modern political thought and vindicating the ancients. Strauss’s late essay, “Philosophy as Rigorous Science and Political Philosophy”[1] as well as posthumously published lectures and correspondence reveal significant debts to Husserl. Husserl was not, moreover, a mere “negative influence” — i.e., someone whose ideas Strauss rejected. Husserl was a “positive influence,” meaning that Strauss accepted and incorporated some of his ideas. (more…)

Aristophanes

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Part 2 of 2 (Part 1 here)

Strepsiades Flunks Out

It hasn’t gone well. First Socrates bursts out of the Thinkery swearing an oath: “By Respiration, by Chaos, by the Air.” The usual places of gods in his oath are occupied by three natural forces. Socrates then rants about a particularly bad student who is “rustic . . . resourceless . . . dull . . . and forgetful.” Then he calls this student to come out. And out comes Strepsiades.

Socrates then quizzes Strepsiades on what he has learned. (more…)

A sixteenth-century engraving of Strepsiades, his son, and Socrates in Clouds.

7,651 words

Part 1 of 2 (Part 2 here)

“The Thinkery, a likeness of death, teaching Whirligig and Bamboozle, ‘back to nature’ without families, without the old paternal gods, and without nomoi (not paying back money owed and using unusual forms of words) . . .” — Thomas Prufer (more…)

Portrait of Schelling by Karl Joseph Stieler

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Part 2 of 2 (Part 1 here)

In the first part of this essay I introduced readers to Schelling, who is one of the first philosophers to react against what Heideggereans have called “the metaphysics of presence”: the hidden will in Western metaphysics that gives primacy to human subjectivity, adjusting our understanding of the Being of beings to the human desire that beings should be completely transparent to us, hiding nothing, and readily available for our manipulation. In response to this, Schelling argues that it is nature, not human subjectivity, that should be the starting point of philosophy. (more…)