5,939 words

Thomas Rohkrämer
Martin Heidegger: Eine politische Biographie
Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2020

“Heidegger passes the comeback test with the grade of fully satisfactory on both sides.” 

— Carl Schmitt (1950) [1] (more…)

1,495 words

Seneca and James Romm, ed., trans.
How to Keep Your Cool: An Ancient Guide to Anger Management
Princeton University Press, 2019

Long before self-help books, pop-psychology gurus, TED talks, non-fiction political punditry, and “anger-management” classes, the ancients dispensed wisdom on a variety of topics, personal and societal. (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…)

4,994 words

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…)

1,503 words

For years now, readers have been urging me to review Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange (1971), which adapts Anthony Burgess’ 1962 novel of the same name. I have resisted, because although A Clockwork Orange is often hailed as a classic, I thought it was dumb, distasteful, and highly overrated, so I didn’t want to watch it again. But I had first watched it decades ago. (more…)

2,272 words

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…)

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 Bronco Buster, 1895.

6,316 words

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…)

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…)

Detail, Santi di Tito, Portrait of Niccolò Machiavelli, ca. 1550.

1,379 words

I had been aware for some time of the phrase “the engineer’s fallacy,” but unaware of its provenance and exact definition. I struck lucky on the ‘net, because this gentleman claims to have invented the phrase, and this short piece repays inspection. 

Mr. Kelly’s definition of the Engineer’s Fallacy is pleasingly simple: (more…)

Richard M. Weaver

671 words

America wasn’t always a liberal country. The founders drew more upon classical republicanism than liberalism. In the nineteenth century, the populist movement was decidedly anti-liberal. But the founders and the populists were never consistently anti-liberal, because consistency is the province of intellectuals, not statesmen.

America never had a genuinely anti-liberal intellectual movement until the Southern Agrarians of the 1920s and 1930s. (The North American New Right is America’s second anti-liberal intellectual movement.) (more…)

Frans Hals, Portrait of René Descartes, 1649-1700.

6,518 words

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…)

Ludwig Sigismund Ruhl, Arthur Schopenhauer, 1815.

1,532 words

Whether attending a birthday party or a social event, people have sometimes referred to me as being “the life of the party.” There have also been times where I found myself excluded from my social circle and community. Recently, I found myself not being invited to a birthday party that some of my other friends were invited to. Although I always try to stay positive and optimistic, I couldn’t help but feel ignored and forgotten. (more…)

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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…)

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1. Introduction

For Heidegger, the history of Western metaphysics is characterized by understanding Being narrowly in terms of what satisfies human needs and desires – especially the desire for knowledge, prediction, and control. This “subjective turn” is usually associated with the modern period, but Heidegger locates its inception much earlier, with Plato and some of the Pre-Socratics. (These points are discussed at length in Part One of this series.) (more…)

Ludwig Wittgenstein

1,938 words

Don’t use the rules.
They’re not for you,
They’re for the fools.
And you’re a fool
If you don’t know that.

So, here’s the rules
You stupid fool.

— The Clash, “Cheat” (more…)

You can buy Stephen Paul Foster’s novel Toward the Bad I Kept on Turning here.

3,142 words

Stephen Paul Foster
Toward the Bad I Kept on Turning: A Confessional Novel
Independently published, 2020

“My cynicism I carefully dissembled.”

“The sapience of a post-modern philosopher attached to the commentary of a Chicago mayor, I think, would bring a perfect understanding of where late-20th-century America was headed.” (more…)

6,166 words

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…)

Charles Le Brun, The Suicide of Cato of Utica, 1646.

3,354 words

So, in fact, this is not a humiliating defeat at all, but a rare species of victory. 

— Cato the Younger, blackpiller. 

In this amazing modern world that we’ve built for ourselves, the shower is the only place we’re not surrounded by electronics, at least for now. (more…)

2,166 words

Albert Camus
Trans. Joseph Laredo
The Stranger
London: Penguin, 2000 (1942)

“I love my country too much to be a nationalist.”

— Attributed to Albert Camus  (more…)

Mr. Gurdjieff

7,589 words

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

4,241 words

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…)

458 words

Anthony Mario Ludovici was born on January 8, 1882.

Ludovici was one of the first and most accomplished translators of Nietzsche into English and a leading exponent of Nietzsche’s thought. Ludovici was also an original philosopher in his own right. (more…)

Plato and Aristotle, detail from Raphael’s The School of Athens, 1510-1511.

8,701 words

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…)

Philippe de Champaigne, Saint Augustin, 1645-1650

2,637 words

The key problem of our age is disconnection from truth. This takes several distinct forms. The first, and most obvious, is the prevalence of lies. As everyone knows, modern, Western civilization is founded upon lies about human nature, culture, and history. The most significant of these — underlying, in one form of another, most of the rest — is the equality lie; the myth of human equality, which is the chief myth of our age. (“Myth,” as most of my readers know, can have a positive or a negative connotation, as there are salutary myths; here, obviously, I am using the term in its purely negative sense.) (more…)

3,427 words

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…)

White students pondering over a Herbert Marcuse lecture on the “one-dimensional mind” of the white race.

1,364 words

No one knows Friedrich Julius Stahl (1802-1861). He was a legal philosopher of Jewish parentage who converted to Christianity and became a defender of Prussian Lutheran conservatism against the imposition of Enlightenment values. He rejected Hegel’s argument (more…)

6,918 words

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…)

1,273 words

For the better part of the last 60 years, social engineers have been conducting a rigorous sociopolitical campaign in which they have attempted to merge biology with ideology. More precisely, they’ve conducted a successful experiment that has amalgamated the tangible traits of race with the abstract ideological concepts of –isms. (more…)