1,632 words
The man . . . has equipped himself with many things for his journey. — Franz Kafka, “Before the Law”
While I have life and strength I shall never cease from the teaching and practice of philosophy. — Socrates, Plato’s Apology (more…)
8,770 words
The following essay on Plato’s Theages is based on a transcript of a taped lecture, which I revised based on notes for two later lectures on the same dialogue that offered a more complete interpretation. I want to thank V.S. for the original transcript.
The Theages is a short Platonic dialogue that can be read as a response to Aristophanes’ Clouds. In both texts, Socrates is approached by a country gentleman to educate his son. In the Clouds, the father is insistent, the son reluctant. (more…)
7,590 words
1. Knowledge of the Right Use of All Things
To explain what philosophy is, we always have to go back to the beginning. Pythagoras (ca. 570-495 BC) is said to have been confronted by Leon, the tyrant of Philius, who demanded to know if he was wise. He responded that he was not a wise man, but merely a φιλόσοφος (philosophos), a “lover of wisdom”; a practitioner of φιλοσοφία (philosophia). Φίλος (philos) means “love,” and σοφῐ́ᾱ (sophia) means “wisdom.” (more…)
2,127 words
There is a time for us to wander.
When time is young and so are we.
The woods are greener over yonder.
The path is new, the world is free.
There is a time when leaves are fallin’.
The woods are gray, the paths are old.
The snow will come when geese are callin.’
You need a fire against the cold.
— The Dillards, “There is a Time,” 1963 (more…)
5,781 words
Guillaume Durocher
The Ancient Ethnostate: Biopolitical Thought in Classical Greece
Self-published, 2021
It almost goes without saying that any book written today by someone from the Dissident Right on the subject of Classical Greece will be more accurate to the spirit of antiquity and more honest about the racial realities that underlie it than anything that could be published in contemporary academia. This book gives a good survey of the history, culture, and ideas of key writers of various sorts in Ancient Greece. (more…)
Renaud Camus
3,354 words
Renaud Camus
Le Grand Remplacement, 5th edition
Plieux: Chez l’auteur, 2019
Renaud Camus (b. 1946) is the French author of over 160 books, but only one of these is currently in print in English: an anthology of excerpts from his works, You Will Not Replace Us!, which was self-published in 2018. (more…)
1,705 words
It was said by sages of old that matter is an illusion — not because it “isn’t real,” whatever that means, but rather because it is always in motion and always changing. Therefore, as soon as one perceives and understands its state it has already changed, and the idea one has about it is no longer true. At best, one perceives what it was, but never what it is. (more…)
6,383 words
1. Introduction: Remind me, why Fichte?
Readers have been asking me why I am devoting multiple essays to J. G. Fichte, an exceedingly difficult and seldom-read German Idealist born in 1762. The simple answer is that these essays are a continuation of my series on Heidegger’s “history of metaphysics.” Having devoted several essays to Kant, I am continuing with Fichte, then will move on to Schelling and Hegel, and then, finally, to Nietzsche. (more…)
New American citizens on their way to becoming like us.
3,161 words
In a series of articles that will follow I will examine the defining issue of our cause, which is essentialism, and in particular, essentialist identities. In this first instalment, I will consider how Modernity substitutes genuine essences with counterfeit ones and examine how this relates to Plato’s theory of forms. (more…)
1,457 words
Larry and Andy Wachowski’s The Matrix (1999) is a science fiction classic. The setting is a devastated Earth in the far future. The premise is that humanity has been enslaved by artificial intelligences. Human beings spend our lives in what are essentially coffins while mechanical vampires drain our energy. We don’t know it, because we are asleep, dreaming that we are in a radically different world. This is the Matrix. Today we would call it a multiplayer online game.
Like many dystopias, The Matrix is actually too optimistic. The Wachowski brothers thought the human race would have to be forced into the pods. (more…)
