Tag: reason

Joos van Craesbeeck, The Temptation of St. Anthony (1650)

3,082 words

The New York Times quoted French social critic Jacques Barzun when they defined decadence as the “economic stagnation, institutional decay and cultural and intellectual exhaustion at a high level of material prosperity and technological development,” in a 2020 article entitled “The Age of Decadence.” (more…)

Aristophanes

6,912 words

Part 2 of 2 (Part 1 here)

Strepsiades Flunks Out

It hasn’t gone well. First Socrates bursts out of the Thinkery swearing an oath: “By Respiration, by Chaos, by the Air.” The usual places of gods in his oath are occupied by three natural forces. Socrates then rants about a particularly bad student who is “rustic . . . resourceless . . . dull . . . and forgetful.” Then he calls this student to come out. And out comes Strepsiades.

Socrates then quizzes Strepsiades on what he has learned. (more…)

Portrait of Schelling by Karl Joseph Stieler

5,320 words

Part 2 of 2 (Part 1 here)

In the first part of this essay I introduced readers to Schelling, who is one of the first philosophers to react against what Heideggereans have called “the metaphysics of presence”: the hidden will in Western metaphysics that gives primacy to human subjectivity, adjusting our understanding of the Being of beings to the human desire that beings should be completely transparent to us, hiding nothing, and readily available for our manipulation. In response to this, Schelling argues that it is nature, not human subjectivity, that should be the starting point of philosophy. (more…)

6,341 words

Part 3 of 3 (Part 1 here, Part 2 here)

1. Fichte on the Nature of the State

We began to explore Fichte’s political philosophy in the last installment, as expounded primarily in his 1796 work Foundations of Natural Right. It is a basic principle of Fichte’s philosophy that subjectivity, what he calls the “I,” must bring nature under the control of reason. (more…)

Paul Popenoe

3,778 words

Foreword
James Dunphy

Paul Popenoe (1888-1979) was a leading figure in the American eugenics movement, publishing his book Applied Eugenics in 1918. The following chapter, “Religion and Eugenics,” is taken from it.

After writing Applied Eugenics, Popenoe noticed the rising divorce rates in his time and decided to work as a marriage counselor. (more…)

2,359 words

In the distant and ancient era we now call the “mid-2000s,” there arose a phenomenon we now call New Atheism. New Atheism was militant; its adherents not only rejected religion, but actively sought to expurgate it from society, usually by haranguing the religious online. The idea was for humanity to reject all irrationality, delusion, and superstition and bring about an era of enlightenment and progress through reason and evidence. (more…)

7,156 words

1. Introduction

The thesis of this essay is that it is wise to be superstitious. To put it differently, I will argue that my readers should be superstitious — or that they should embrace the superstitious nature they already have (for most of us have it), rather than try to disown superstition. (more…)

Derek Black, a rare example of a former White Nationalist who “unlearned” his views.

1,247 words

A common sentiment one encounters among Leftists is that their opponents have a moral obligation to “unlearn” their views (see this post). Leftists from conservative backgrounds insist that they changed their minds because they “thought for themselves,” and order all Right-wingers to do the same — or else.

The claim that they “thought for themselves” is easily disproven. Truly thinking for oneself is difficult. (more…)

2,839 words

English original here

Partie 1, Partie 2

“C’est ce que nous sommes” est l’argument final de la politique identitaire. “Qui nous sommes” est un composé de parenté et de culture. Mais l’identité est politiquement impuissante si un peuple n’est pas prêt à s’affirmer, à prendre parti pour son propre camp dans un combat. (more…)

Philosophy Consoling Boethius and Fortune Turning the Wheel, 15th-century France

1,569 words

As part of an effort to better understand, and if possible, return to tradition, I’ve been plumbing the depths of folk tales, reading accounts of oral traditions, stories, legends, myths, sayings, epic songs, and other linguistic cultural artifacts of times past. One significant understanding I reached in my explorations is that pre-modern man placed a great value on luck as a factor in success or failure. Contrasting that is the modern view that chance plays a lesser role in the world. But what if the old folks had it right? (more…)

Allan Ramsey, David Hume, 1766.

5,513 words

A Very Bad Year

2020 was a bad year for David Hume (1711-1776). Leftists in the United Kingdom, eager to get in on the feast of outrage that followed the drug overdose of George Floyd, complained that David Hume was a racist and should therefore not be revered. And then things went more or less as you would expect. (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…)

Caspar David Friedrich, Greifswald in Moonlight, 1817.

9,130 words

As men and women of the Right, we are searchers for Truth. We believe that by finding Truth and living by Truth, we might know Beauty, and we might know ourselves. Essence is our mission and with it, survival. And so this essay will try to surface and then sketch three fundamental “lifeways,” (more…)