Tag: René Descartes

3,695 words

A young Martin Heidegger.

Part 3 of 15 (Part 1 here. Part 2 here.)

Self-Affirmation as Being

We have seen that Schelling claims “there is no being other than will. Will is primal being [Ursein] to which alone all predicates of being apply: groundlessness, eternality, independence from time, self-affirmation.” We must now look more closely at these “predicates of being.” (more…)

Bertrand Russell

1,927 words

We do not regard any of the senses as wisdom, yet surely these give the most authoritative knowledge of particulars. — Aristotle, Metaphysics

And it’s 1-2-3-4-5
Senses working overtime.
— XTC, “Senses Working Overtime”

The philosopher has a defining trait which, although he shares it with other disciplines, was the first to show the centrality of the self in asking questions of the world. He is thus his own object of study. (more…)

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[M]an has ascribed to all that exists a connection with morality and laid an ethical significance on the world’s back. – Friedrich Nietzsche

Everybody wants to rule the world. — Tears for Fears (more…)

A daguerreotype of F. W. J. Schelling from 1848, the first known photograph of a philosopher.

4,839 words

Part 1 of 2 (Part 2 here)

1. Introduction: A Philosophical Rebel

This essay is a continuation of my series on “Heidegger’s History of Metaphysics.” With Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling (1775-1854) we have reached a significant milestone, in a number of ways. Behind us, in our journey toward Gelassenheit, we have Plato, the philosophers of the Middle Ages, Descartes, Leibniz, Kant, and Fichte. Ahead of Schelling we have only two more philosophers to discuss, Hegel and Nietzsche, before we turn to cover in more detail Heidegger’s response to the metaphysical tradition and to modernity. (more…)

1,700 words

It is the season of giving, and in that spirit I would like to give a Christmas present to the Christians within our ranks as a gesture of good will. Due to the Brandon economy, I do not have any partridges or pear trees, but I do have two arguments that can be used in defense of our politics by Christian Nationalists: Descartes’ cogito ergo sum and the differentiation between the private and public spheres. And what’s more, they are arguments that can operate entirely within the Christian worldview. (more…)

René Descartes

2,176 words

I rooted out of my mind all those errors that had formerly crept in . . . — René Descartes, Discourse on the Method

I know this much is true. — Spandau Ballet, “True”

There are famous concepts in Western philosophy, but it is hard to find any better known than René Descartes’ seemingly indubitable pronouncement that “I think, therefore I am.” (more…)

6,502 words

Part 4 of 4 (Part 1 here, Part 3 here)

5. Critique of Magical Idealism (Continued)

(b) How strong is Evola’s case for idealism?

I noted earlier that Evola sums up his idealism using Berkeley’s famous expression esse est percipi (to be is to be perceived). (more…)

2,491 slov

English original here

Vyzývám k okamžitému zákazu filmu Gravitace – ukazuje totiž „Zemi“ jako objekt kulovitého tvaru, což je proti Koránu a tím pádem urážka muslimů – dr. Zakir Naik.

Robert R. Reilly: The Closing of the Muslim Mind: How intellectual Suicide Created the Modern Islamist Crisis
Wilimington, Del: ISI Books, 2010

Vzpomínám si na úsměv, který mi na tváři vykouzlila výše citovaná slova, když se dotyčný film skoro před deseti lety objevil v kinech. (more…)

2,884 words

Czech version here

I call for an immediate ban on the movie Gravity as it shows “Earth” to be spherical, which is against the Quran, and thus insulting to Muslims. — Dr. Zakir Naik

Robert R. Reilly
The Closing of the Muslim Mind: How intellectual Suicide Created the Modern Islamist Crisis
Wilimington, Del: ISI Books, 2010 (more…)

J. G. Fichte meets Immanuel Kant, 1791

6,194 words

1. “The circumference of my world is equivalent to the limits of my will.”

In my last essay, we established that for Fichte self-consciousness is an ultimate fact. We saw via our own experiments in introspection that the “I” — this “presence” that says, in effect “I am” — is not simply a feature of the self, it is the self. (more…)

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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…)

J. G. Fichte

4,888 words

1. Fichte’s Foundationalism

J. G. Fichte holds that the human self has no intrinsic identity, aside from that which we create for it. He completely rejects the notion that our identity is in any way determined by nature. This is the modern “blank slate” theory pushed to a radical extreme. It is to Fichte that we must look if we wish to find the philosophical origins of current intellectual fashions such as “gender fluidity,” “social construction” of race and gender, and radical egalitarian claims about human perfectibility. (more…)

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Host Greg Johnson was joined by learned Counter-Currents writers Stephen Paul Foster, Mark Gullick, James J. O’Meara, and Kathryn S. on the last installment of Counter-Currents Radio to share their lists of five essential books every educated person needs to read — plus, of course, answer YOUR QUESTIONS — and it is now available for download and online listening.

Topics discussed include:

00:05:00 Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War (more…)