2,340 words
[A] uniformly valid and binding designation is invented for things, and this legislation of language likewise establishes the first laws of truth.
-Friedrich Nietzsche, On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense (more…)
Titian, Allegory of Time Governed by Prudence, c. 1550–1565
Titian, Allegory of Time Governed by Prudence, c. 1550–1565
3,298 words
(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 12 here, Part 13 here, Part 14 here, Part 15 here, Part 16 here.)
The Refutation of Licentiousness (499c–508c)
Once Socrates has refuted Callicles’ hedonism, he turns his attention to refuting his defense of self-indulgence and licentiousness (akolasia) and upholding its opposite, moderation (sophrosyne). (more…)
Karl von Blaas, Allegory of Self-Control, 1859
Karl von Blaas, Allegory of Self-Control, 1859
2,703 words
(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 12 here, Part 13 here, Part 14 here)
Thus far, Callicles has maintained that it is right and just by nature for the strong to rule the weak and have more than their inferiors. Socrates has badgered Callicles to be specific about what, exactly, the “strength” of the natural ruler is. (more…)
5,521 words
Parts 1-4 here
Absolute Knowing and History
In our last installment, we completed our brief overview of The Phenomenology of Spirit, and we are now ready to turn to Hegel’s philosophical system proper, for which the Phenomenology provides a kind of introduction. First, however, we must consider some crucial points of interpretation, which have vexed many readers of Hegel. (more…)
Portrait of the German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
4,859 words
Portrait of the German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Parts 1-3 here
Alpha and Omega
In the last installment, I introduced readers to Hegelian dialectic, to Hegel’s “objective idealism,” and to the major dialectical transitions in The Phenomenology of Spirit. The text consists of three principal divisions, which form a dialectical triad: “Consciousness,” “Self-Consciousness,” and “Reason.” (more…)
2,296 words
John Langham Austin was an English philosopher of language, an Oxford Don, and (like Alan Turing) a Military Intelligence Officer, who worked on the D-Day landings. Born in 1911, Austin died relatively young, at the age of 48, and his three books were all published posthumously. (more…)
6,024 words
Author’s Note: This is essay reworks and extends a couple of essays published back in 2023 (here and here)
“All that is solid melts into air . . .”
The chief values of modern capitalist society are long life, freedom of choice, and the pursuit of comfort and security. But capitalist society is also characterized by technological and economic dynamism, which makes all social institutions, roles, and statuses fluid and fleeting. This leads to a pervasive and gnawing insecurity, both economic and social. (more…)
389 words
René Guénon was born on November 15, 1886. Along with Julius Evola, Guénon was one of the leading figures in the Traditionalist school, which has deeply influenced my own outlook and the metapolitical mission and editorial agenda of Counter-Currents Publishing and North American New Right. (For a sense of my differences with Guénon, see my lecture on “Vico and the New Right.”)
Myra Hindley
3,856 words
Myra Hindley
Part 8 of 15 (Read the whole series here.)
The Spiritedness of Evil
Schelling writes, “As disease is admittedly nothing having essential being [nichts Wesenhaftes], really only an apparent picture of life and merely a meteoric appearance of it – an oscillation between being and non-being – yet announces itself nevertheless as something very real to feeling, so it is with evil.”[1] (more…)
4,280 words
Part 7 of 15 (Part 1 begins here. Part 6 here.)
The Deepest Abyss and the Loftiest Sky
We are now on the threshold of Schelling’s account of the nature of evil. He argues that in God the two wills – of the ground and of understanding/existence – are conjoined and that the dark will is subordinated to the light will. (more…)
A young Martin Heidegger.
4,125 words
A young Martin Heidegger.
Part 6 of 15 (Part 1 begins here)
Creation is the Transfiguration of the Dark
Love, according to Schelling, is a principle of wholeness or harmony, drawing all things together. Out of many, it produces a one, a whole. Here, in the first primal stirrings of divine being, love draws together understanding with the will of the ground (the “yearning,” Sehnsucht). A new will is now coming into being. (more…)
Phil Eiger Newmann, Friedrich Nietzsche, 2020.
Phil Eiger Newmann, Friedrich Nietzsche, 2020.
846 words
Friedrich Nietzsche was born this day in 1844 in the small town of Röcken, near Leipzig, Saxony, in the Kingdom of Prussia. He died in August 25, 1900, in Weimar, Saxony, in the Second German Reich. The outlines of Nietzsche’s life are readily available online.
Nietzsche is one of the most important philosophers of the North American New Right because of his contributions to the philosophy of history, culture, and religion.
