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Part 3 available here.
Another issue which Plato raises in the Timaeus and Critias is the tension between men of thought and men of action. Another way of putting this is the tension between the philosophical life and political life. This is what Leo Strauss claims is the concealed meaning within Xenophon’s dialogue, Hiero, based on his rules for discerning “esoteric writing.” It would make sense for Socrates’ disciples to discuss similar themes. (more…)
Aesop Tells his Fables by Johann Michael Wittmer. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
Aesop Tells his Fables by Johann Michael Wittmer. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
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As discussed in Part 2, the primary issue in Plato’s Atlantis story is the cyclical nature of time. Questions of close secondary importance are what do stories, regardless of their veracity, tell about how people see themselves and others? What are their values? What stories should we tell?
Plato has Critias’ grandfather claim that if Solon hadn’t had to focus on politics and war instead of poetry that he would have surpassed Homer, especially if he had been able to finish the Atlantis story. Thus, the Iliad and Odyssey became the most beloved stories of ancient Greece rather than Atlantis could have been determined by the dimly remembered geopolitics of the Archaic period. (more…)
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Scott Anderson
King of Kings—The Iranian Revolution: A Story of Hubris, Delusion and Catastrophic Miscalculation
New York: Doubleday, 2025
The Iran Hostage Crisis in which Iranian students imprisoned the Americans on the staff of the US Embassy for 444 days after its start date of November 4, 1979 was part of the Iranian Revolution—a political convulsion which overthrew Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Iran’s leader within the Iranian monarchical political order. Pahlavi was the king of Iran and in Iran’s vernacular Persian language “king” is rendered as “shah,” therefore Pahlavi was referred to as “the Shah.” His other titles were King of Kings, Light of the Aryans, and Shadow of God. (more…)
Cornelis Cort-The Battle of Zama. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
Cornelis Cort-The Battle of Zama. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
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In Part 1, I presented a close reading of Critias and Timaeus. I argued that Atlantis did exist and was probably an upper paleolithic settlement in North Africa. In fact, the upper paleolithic was probably busier than commonly thought but is only dimly remembered in myth and legend due to a lack of writing. While fascinating, that’s not the main point. Plato’s discussion of Atlantis is a means to a philosophical end. Plato’s message, moreover, is even more relevant to us today than to the ancient Athenians.
The strongest theme is the cyclical nature of time. Civilization periodically has to restart due to natural disasters and/or human decadence. In Plato’s view these oftentimes go hand in hand, due to the Traditionalist doctrine of as above, so below; as within, so without. (more…)
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Something I have noticed about even the nominally anti-Christian, Pagan, or Satanist radical right is a persistent Messianism, or a belief within these ideologies concerning “the One” who will come to the rescue of Western civilisation and begin a new Golden Age. (more…)
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The Italian thinker Julius Evola’s Revolt Against the Modern World (RMW) was published between the wars, in 1934. What was then the Great War, and obviously was not yet known as World War I, had been the most destructive ever and was supposed to be the end of all war. But another was inevitable as Evola was writing RMW, and the book’s tensions reflect its place in history. (more…)
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Carl Schmitt wrote that “the exception in jurisprudence is analogous to the miracle in theology.” Someone makes a decision, and then usually hands down a new order like a prophet declaring a new religion. In America, this phenomenon is taken to an extreme with the Constitution being revered as a holy document. (more…)
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Western historians and analysts have always failed to comprehend Russia. Among many other things, its imperial nature has been puzzling to Westerners. For obvious reasons, there has been a tendency to compare it to Western colonial empires. (more…)
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Francis Parker Yockey was born 107 years ago today, September 18, in Chicago. He died in San Francisco on June 16, 1960, an apparent suicide. Yockey is one of America’s greatest anti-liberal thinkers and an abiding influence on the North American New Right. In honor of his birthday, I wish to draw the reader’s attention to the following works on this site.
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CHAPTER 6
THE FERN AND THE LATHE
The Technocratic Fallacy
Human nature is not a machine to be built after a model, and set to do exactly the work prescribed for it, but a tree, which requires to grow and develop itself on all sides, according to the tendency of the inward forces which make it a living thing.
John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (more…)
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A short while ago I wrote about the connections between Willis Carto and the Truth Seeker magazine and its owner Charles Smith, who published the original American edition of Imperium. An equally significant connection there is Frederick C. F. Weiss, who was linked to both the Truth Seeker and the National Renaissance Party (NRP) in New York in the 1950s. Weiss was a longtime friend of Francis Parker Yockey, who sometimes stayed at — or hid out at — Weiss’ farm near Middletown New York, about 60 miles northwest of Manhattan. It was through Weiss that the Truth Seeker’s Charles Smith was introduced to Imperium, and probably to Yockey as well. (more…)
From Emerson Artwork
From Emerson Artwork
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On July 4, Americans celebrated their supposed (now former) independence as the land of the free and the home of the brave. The very next day, Trump unequivocally disavowed Project 2025.
So, what is Project 2025, what is the group’s goals, and who is behind it? (more…)
