Tag: the Self

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…)

J. G. Fichte

6,359 words

Part 1 of 3 (Part 2 here)

1. “I am what I freely make myself to be”

This is the sixth essay I have written for Counter-Currents on the German idealist J. G. Fichte (see the introductory essay here), and it is effectively a continuation of my series on “Heidegger’s History of Metaphysics.” However, the reader need not be familiar with any of the earlier entries in order to understand this one. (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…)

3,808 words

Translated by F. Roger Devlin

Communities, whether old or recent, whether ethno-cultural, linguistic, religious, sexual, or something else, are natural dimensions of belonging. No individual can exist without belonging, even if only to distance himself from it. (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…)

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…)

11,114 words

Mr. Reagan is not going to make it to the year 1987, I can tell you that much. Now you mark that down.

— Brother Stair, 1987

We don’t reckon time the same way, do we, Clarice?

— Silence of the Lambs

(more…)

Otto von Bismarck memorial in Berlin

5,924 words

Part I here, Part II here, Part III here, Part IV here, Part V here

The average European is not yet very concerned that his country is slowly sinking in the quicksand of the globalist system. Demographic collapse and deindustrialization are truly deadly threats, but their effects manifest themselves gradually. One can make adjustments and ignore impending danger, much like the proverbial frog being slowly boiled alive.  (more…)

Jozef Brandt, Return from Vienna, 1883.

3,350 words

I’m a pretty cold-hearted realist, but after such a buildup of how the Right has been losing again and again for over a century, I expected something perhaps a bit more stirring. Some call to arms, or flowering prose. Instead, you essentially offer “Who knows? Our luck may change; stranger things have happened.” (more…)

“Death found an author writing his life. . .” from Edward Hull’s Danse Macabre, 1827.

1,180 words

It always sounds silly to me when people tell the dead to “rest in peace.”

Practically speaking, don’t you have to disturb their rest to tell them that? It makes about as much sense as nudging someone who’s snoring to say, “Hey — HEY! Wake up and go to sleep.” (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…)

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…)