Posted on 11/24/2002 6:14:42 PM PST by cornelis
LOL
Hitler and Stalin already proved this EVIL lie is EVIL.
Fitche and Hegel were the real progenitors of Nazisim and Totalitarianism. The "I" of Fitche and the "Absoulute" of Hegel. While you can point some fingers at poor Old Kant, you cannot blame him for the basturdisation of his keen insights. Fitche and Hegel followed by crazy Neo Kantians hearlded the dawn of European Nihilism. FOR GOOD MEASURE THROW IN WAGNER, THE ANTI SEMITIC COMPOSER AND HITLERS FAVORITE MUSIC MAKER.
At the University of Berlin during the first half of the 19th century you had in attendence the following:
Fitche ( the "EGO" "I" as inventor of the world)
Hegel( a political hack and avatar? AND WHO WAS STILL TAUGHT IN US ACADEMIA)
Shelling( German Idealism)
Kierkeggard ( fasther of existentialism)
Schopenhauer( the only to condemn Hegel in no uncertain terms)
Marx ( WE ALL KNOW WHAT HAPPENED WHEN LOOKING AT HISTORY AS PROGRESSIVE AND A RESULT OF CLASS WARFARE)
In all a very turbulent period. Fortunately for the US, we were still relatively uncontaminated and retained the Enlightenments high regard for Reason.
Soon came Postmodernism and Nihilism.
What can you blame Kant for? The critique above shows that his fault is the basis for Hegel's subsequent employment.
I'm not sure that all ideas, merely considered as an intellectual exercise, are faultless, least of all the requirement of a good will as touted in Kant's Groundwork as the property of every common man. Moreover, his perfectionism has absolved the need for redemption. Kant's philosohpical anthropology dispenses with the image of God in the human person and in place substitutes the sufficiency of reason. That is one myth that has fertilized the post-modern age. And if there are any problems that we are dealing with on this forum, it is a direct consequence of the failure of rationalism.
Yes, but they are two different animals. Postmodernism is the consequence of a failed rationalism. Postmodernism is picking up the pieces when it dawned on many that the thing went bust.
Thanks cornelis. I noticed your post yesterday but haven't had the chance to read it yet. I scanned it, though, to see if my main man Freddy the Nietz got a mention. I'm kind of surprised to see that Tucker wrote on this topic without dipping in the rich world of the Übermenshen.
Thus the apologia for pride embraces a doctrine of the historical beneficence of moral evil. Moreover, Hegel verges on the complete and explicit "transvaluation of values" that Nietzsche later carried through. He argues that those who would morally condemn the great man's "master-passion" as a vice are mean-minded souls consumed, like Homer's Thersites, with envy and resentment. They are "psychological valets," exponents of "Thersitism." This suggests a morality of pride, which does not simply justify it by its historical fruits but glorifies in it for its intrinsic beauty and goodness. Nietzsche drew this radical conclusion when he propounded his "morality of self-glorification" based on "pride in oneself, a radical enmity and irony toward "selflessness." Out of it emerges the well known Nietzschean antithesis between "master-morality" and "slave-morality." The former is the morality of pride. The latter, which is said to have its source in envy and resentment, is Hegel's servile Thersitism broadened to include the whole of the Hebraic-Christian moral tradition.Perhaps it is worth mentioning that the Ecclesiast (ch. 4) cites both the oppressor and the envious as examples vanity.
Here is an outline of the chapters in Tucker:
I. THE PHILOSOPHICAL BACKGROUND1. The Self as God in German Philosophy
2. History as God's Self-Realization
3. The Dialectic of Aggrandizement
.
II. FROM HEGEL TO MARX
4. Philosophy Revolts against the World
5. Metaphysics as Esoteric Psychology
6. Marx and Feuerbach
7. The Rise of Philosophical Communism
.
III. ORIGINAL MARXISM
8. Working Man as World Creator
9. Alienation and Money-Worship
10. Communism-The Self Regained
.
IV. MATURE MARXISM
11. Two Marxisms or One?
12. The New Materialism
13. Division of Labor and Communism
14. The World as Labor and Capital
15. The Myth and the Problem of Conduct
.
Conclusion: Marx and the Present Age
In the Preface Tucker gives a brief interpretation of Marxism: "here [is] the economic interpretation of history and the conception of communism have as their setting a comprehensive scheme of thought that is philosophical in character. Its subject is man and the world--self-estranged man in an "alienated world" as Marx called it. The world revolution is conceived as the act by which estranged man changes himself by changing the world. Instead of being divided against himself as always in the past, man is to be restored to his human nature--and this is what Marx means by "communism."
I highly recommend the book.
Englishmen had fought for and substantially won the right to govern themselves and this was reflected in their thought. Because royal power had been limited. Englishmen and Scots didn't have to choose between bowing down and rebelling as Frenchmen or Germans did, whether in politics or religion or philosophy.
A French moralist might have been every bit as moral as Johnson and more subtle, but lack his toughness and independence because court manners dominated society, and the power of the crown stifled individual initiative. A French economist or political scientist might be as committed to freedom as Smith, but never have risen above subservience and servility in his manner because society hadn't freed itself from such qualities either. A French politician might love liberty as much as Burke, but have no tradition of freedom on which to build.
Of course, there's a "Which came first the chicken or the egg?" aspect to such questions, because the ideas that the English had also influenced the political actions they took.
While I do agree that there was the Mixed Government issues, long established in Britian, that underlaid the evolutionary (as opposed to metaphysical) view of government and politics, I do think that at the end of the 18th century they were about to be swept up by the enlightenment metaphysics. Hence the break of the New Whigs from Burke's self styled Old Whigs.
I guess my point might still stand if it is judged that the anchoring influence of those three large minds and their adherents and lesser allies were the "if-but-for" influence that kept Fox and the others enamoured with metaphysical constructs of government at bay.
The unwritten constitution may have been abandoned at that point, if-but-for the strong buttressing that was done in the face of the Enlightenment....will you buy that much?
I still return to my reading last year of chapter four in Hayek's Constitution of Liberty and his differentiations between the Evolutionary Constitutional Democracies (Rule of Law) and the Totalitarian Rationalistic Democracies. Here was the point in time when that was averted in our heritage, although, we have continued to fight it off every year since.
The Germans did not have that heritage, or those anchors and started down the path to excess despite the example of the French--hence the article.
Camus wasn't. He just didn't get a chance to keep going, that's all.
(Don't bother disagreeing with me ... I've always been partial to Camus and that won't change. As far as I'm concerned, he is to the existentialists what Reagan is to post-war Republican Presidents.)
Eventually it might have dawned on him that labor was made for man, not man for labor, and that sometimes it's the most repetive and laborious sorts of jobs which lend real satisfaction, allow time for contemplation and engender real human regard ... not only for the humans with whom you "sling hash" but also for beauty and order. The garden you tend, the bread you bake, the animals you feed, the wood you sand, the iron you forge, the children you rear.
I can't think of any more (and less) Sisyphean task than rearing a family. Paradoxical, that.
You've obviously read The Myth of Sisyphus. Because that's exactly the conclusion he DID come to: the paradoxical liberation of drudgery.
I've always loved poor Camus. Got his "The First Man" at City Lights one trip. Saved it for about half a year (I ration the dead ones whose pages are finite).
Turned out to be a really good thing since his images of Algeria were enough to keep me warm in a cold, wet New Orleans January.
I wouldn't even think of opening the book during August.
He's one of those who epitomizes the unfinished symphony for me. Like Ionesco, in a way, the movement toward an objective, the constancy of the pull is fascinating despite how beautiful (and horrible) is the long way out of the way to go a short distance correctly.
The Catholics generally have it worst.
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