René Descartes
2,176 words
I rooted out of my mind all those errors that had formerly crept in . . . — René Descartes, Discourse on the Method
I know this much is true. — Spandau Ballet, “True”
There are famous concepts in Western philosophy, but it is hard to find any better known than René Descartes’ seemingly indubitable pronouncement that “I think, therefore I am.” (more…)
Gustave Doré, The Destruction of Leviathan, 1865.
1,963 words
But yet they that have no science are in better and nobler condition with their natural prudence than men, that by mis-reasoning, or by trusting them that reason wrong, fall upon false and absurd general rules.
— Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan
“Go in fear of abstractions.” So admonished Ezra Pound aspiring poets. (more…)
Frederic Remington, The Lookout, 1887.
6,044 words
One of the more common tropes found in Dissident Right discourse concerns the relationship between the Left and “reality.” This discourse articulates a belief held by Right-wingers that the Left lives in denial of reality, and that this leads to deleterious outcomes for peoples of European descent. However, in another sense, Right-wing discourses concerning the Left-wing relationship with reality focuses on how particular personalities common on the Left cause them to relate to present and future realities differently than those on the Right. (more…)
3,341 words
To be sure, [Heidegger’s] empty formula of “thoughtful remembrance” can also be filled in with a different attitudinal syndrome, for example with the anarchist demand for a subversive stance of refusal, which corresponds more to present moods than does blind submission to something superior. But the arbitrariness with which the same thought-figure can be given contemporary actualization remains irritating. (more…)
4,585 words
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…)
5,724 words
Perhaps the best way to think about “postmodernism” from the Right is not as a problematic philosophical tradition, but as a philosophical tradition with a problem. On the one hand, “postmodernism” may be loosely defined as a philosophical turn that delegitimized traditional aesthetic and moral standards, and “deconstructed” seemingly self-evident categories like ethnicity and culture. On the other hand, it could also be defined as a school of thought which delegitimized the scientific, materialist, (more…)
The Norns by Johannes Gehrts, 1889
4,547 words
Part 2 of 4 (Part 1 here; Part 3 here; Part 4 here)
4. Tradition
Having now discussed the clannic being of the individual purely in philosophical terms, I now turn to a consideration of the treatment of this idea in the Germanic tradition.
The first thing we must note is what can be called the “primacy of the past” in that tradition. (more…)
4,538 words
Part 1 of 4 (Part 2 here; Part 3 here; Part 4 here)
1. Introduction
This essay presents an “ontology of the individual.” The theory is new, though it has very old roots. “Ontology” is the branch of philosophy that studies being-as-such, or “being as being,” as Aristotle expressed it.[1] My argument is that the being of an individual person is bound up with that individual’s relation to his family or clan. (more…)