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THE ENLIGHTENMENT: INTERNATIONALISM (7)

noreply@blogger.com (Kassandra Troy) — Tue, 07 Sep 2021 10:01:00 +0000

President Trump's first speech at the UN on Sept. 19, 2017 (video).

The present is a series of essays on the roots of modern European political philosophy. These ideas shaped many states on the continent, determined the nature of their Governments, and defined the role of the people as subjects of the state. The result is a distinct European culture that since the Enlightenment, has been working towards the destruction of its Greco-Roman and Judeo-Christian roots. In this installment, Internationalism.

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Internationalism is a political principle that advocates greater political and economic cooperation among nations and peoples. The root can be reduced to teleological narratives in 18th Century Protestantism (chapters on Kant and Hegel), as well as well as Socialist and Left Liberal doctrines.

Internationalists see humans not as individuals, but as a species in a one-world social construct.
Internationalists implicitly don't distinguish between the metaphysical and the mad-made by denying the existence of free will.
Internationalists do recognize universal human values, but these are not determined voluntarily by individuals, but collectively in the social environment.
Internationalists believe humanity as a species has higher interests (like world peace) that transcend short term group interests. Strife is typically the result of group competition for power and control of resources.
Internationalism is against Nationalism, patriotism and the nation state. This was not always the case. In the early years of the UN the thought was that every people have a right to self determination in a national homeland. But as postmodern ideas took hold, this principle was increasingly seen as inherently racist. By now it has been entirely abandoned in favor of multicultural 'empires'.

Historically proponents of the movement were members of the four Socialist Internationals (source), as well as Liberal Utilitarians and Pragmatists. Presently they are active in supranational institutions like the United Nations and the European Union, in non-governmental organizations, the World Economic Forum in Davos, the Bilderberg Conferences, and the World Federalist Movement (source), to name but a few.

Origin

In nineteenth century Britain a Liberal Internationalist strand of political thought existed that was epitomized by Richard Cobden (wiki) and John Bright (wiki). Cobden and Bright were against the protectionist Corn Laws (source) and in a speech at Covent Garden on September 28, 1843 Cobden outlined his Utopian brand of Internationalism:

Free Trade! What is it? Why, breaking down the barriers that separate nations; those barriers behind which nestle the feelings of pride, revenge, hatred and jealously, which every now and then burst their bounds and deluge whole countries with blood...

Cobden believed free trade would bring peace through mutual dependency. The same doctrine is at the root of the EU. Liberal utilitarian Adam Smith also mentioned world peace through free trade as a social phenomenon in his work, "The Wealth of Nations".

Such conceptions of Internationalism were harshly criticized by Socialists and radicals at the time, who pointed out the links between global economic competition and Imperialism, and would identify this competition as the root cause of world conflict.

The First International or the International Workingmen's Association (wiki) was founded in London in 1864 by Communist and Socialist activists like Karl Marx, dedicated to the advancement of working class political interests across national boundaries, and was in direct ideological opposition to strains of Liberal Internationalism which advocated free trade as means of achieving world peace and interdependence. The era of Utopia had begun. A total of 110 million deaths later many still fail to make the proper analysis.

World Peace

At the time there were other Internationalist organizations, as the Inter-Parliamentary Union (wiki), founded in 1889 by Frenchman Frédéric Passy and William Randal Cremer in the UK. The League of Nations, the precursor of the UN, was founded in the aftermath of the First World War.

J.A. Hobson (wiki) in his book Imperialism (1902) foresaw the establishment of international tribunals in order to settle disputes between countries. The International Court of Justice in The Hague was founded in 1945 as a branch of the UN (wiki).

Sir Norman Angell (wiki) in his work The Great Illusion (1910) claimed that the world was united by trade, finance, industry and communications and that therefore Nationalism was an anachronism and that war would not profit anyone involved but would only result in destruction.

Lord Lothian (wiki) was an Internationalist and an Imperialist who in December 1914 looked forward to "the voluntary federation of the free civilized nations which will eventually exorcise the specter of competitive armaments and give lasting peace to mankind". (Source)

Internationalism is based on the Utopian, Socialist political doctrine that includes the animistic connection between the world's working classes with a goal to eliminate Nationalism, war and of course, Capitalism.

It is also connected to the Christian idea of the Brotherhood of Man and solidarity, which like free trade, is originally supposed to be an individual activity, but has erroneously been transposed to the collective level. At this point the views of Liberal and Socialist Internationalists parted company.

World Government

Internationalism is ostensibly expressed in the appreciation for various cultures, but leads in fact to their destruction. The idea that interdependence will lead to world peace contradicts the notion that war is the effect of competition for resources.

Utopian ideas are not intended to realize anything good in reality, but are a form of virtue signaling. Which is just as well, because when they are tried, the sacrificial corpses are usually stacked up high on the altars of enforced altruism.

Followers of Internationalism do not think of themselves as citizens of their country, but as world citizens. They feel the duty to work for supportive causes and institutions like NGOs, the EU and the UN. Some Internationalists are striving for a world Government. But this postmodern notion is beyond classical Internationalism. Yet, it is its final consequence.

Internationalism aims at promoting mutual interdependence between nations, with supranational powers for international organizations through the application of irrevocable intergovernmental treaties and institutions in direct opposition of democratic principles and right of self-determination. Nevertheless, protests are few and far between.

Fascism

To Internationalists, the compromise is a moral goal in itself, not a means to an end. This principle is insufficient for a comprehensive, universal world view. But many go one step further yet: global 'democratization' under a World Government.

Others are rejecting this idea on the ground that such a body would accumulate too much centralized power. Or because they understand that this in effect constitutes World Fascism. They prefer loose federations with power resting in national Governments. Call it Internationalism Light.

To make intergovernmental and supranational organizations possible, nations and peoples must be made aware of common interests and goals; and they must become convinced that problems are best solved through consensus, diplomacy, the sharing of resources and effective international cooperation.

Unilateralism is rejected by Internationalists on moral grounds, thereby again, violating the role of democracy and self-determination. The principle that national interests should be a guide to foreign policy, is considered entirely evil by the proponents of the movement.

Examples of international organizations and institutions are the UN, NGOs like George Soros' Open Society (article) (tweet) (article), Doctors Without Borders, Amnesty International, Green Peace, the EU, institutions for international law like tribunals as the ICC, the list is endless. Many are funded by national tax payers.

Critique

Because Individualism is an unknown principle in Internationalism, Internationalists reason by implication from a position of Collectivism, or in economic terms, from corporatism (or crony Capitalism, or Neo Liberalism, Fascism, or Globalism). It is every bit as forcefully altruistic as Socialism.

Classical Liberals support free trade and cooperation, but they do so from the position of Individualism, leading to very different conclusions in world view and pertaining to matters of war and peace. According to Socialists, world peace is only possible if economic competition and the interests of social classes are eliminated.

Group subjectivism and social determinism exclude objective morality. This is leading to the position that compromise and consensus is always preferable, necessarily at the expense of Liberty, Rights and the interests of people and the nations that are promoting these values.

The result is the false moral equivalency of free countries versus dictatorships and eventually to the rejection of the former at the benefit of the latter. It is no surprise that the UN is systematically condemning a free country like Israel, while Islamo-Fascist states are heading committees for Human Rights.

From the point of view of Internationalism man is not an individual being who chooses his own values, but a product of his social environment. The leading ethics program is altruism, which demands man to self sacrifice for the collective good. The solutions that this philosophy produces can only be collectivist in nature.

The result of a power equilibrium resulting in a state of peace, is seen as a causeless abstraction, an outcome attainable only by the power of the will. Because the emphasis is on consensus and peace, there's the tendency to subjugate all values to these goals, which is ultimately leading to nihilism.

Just like other Utopians, Internationalists view their ideals as morally superior. They believe this gives them the right to act unilaterally -- if necessary extra-democratically -- to create accomplished facts on the ground.

A recent example of this mentality in which the aim justifies the means, is seen today all over the world when crises like the Covid-19 pandemic serve the purpose of implementing policies that would not have been possible under normal circumstances.

Another example is the current migrant crisis. As hundreds of thousands of refugees are storming Western frontiers, populations as well as local authorities are presented with accomplished facts. Criticism is met with increasingly fascistic means of the will. Protests are morally condemned. Who dares to resist is isolated, scapegoated, personally attacked and socially ostracized as a racist (or whatever demon-word happens to be applicable).

Trade between individuals (and their companies) leads to peace and understanding, which is not the same as reasoning from the fallacy that countries trade with each other. It is also debatable, to say the least, if interdependence leads to peace. The various wars of independence throughout history lead us to believe otherwise. So what about the right of self determination?

Context

The Counter Enlightenment has been negatively influencing Western culture for over 250 years. Ideologically the philosophic-cultural-political movement can be reduced to the German Idealist philosophers, Kant and Hegel.

It was a reaction to the great changes of the Enlightenment -- particularly the French Revolution -- that destroyed the old, feudal order. To this day new movements have been springing up sharing the same goals, even though they may not know it consciously. Many will never identify as such, their agenda is usually well hidden.

These movements are morally motivated by a number of self declared causes that include vague abstractions as 'world peace' and 'social justice', the use of authoritative, supranational institutions to regulate people's behavior and make societies better. Well respected foundations and associations have sprung up to improve the quality of man top down, either genetically, socially, psychologically, mentally or morally.

Counter Enlightenment movements, being usually atheist or even anti theist in nature, reason from the idea of man as an animal species. They divide humanity into groups that vie with each other for interests, power, resources or some other material profit motive. Activists are morally driven by world equality. Where equally as a amoral standard leads to, is explained in You Didn't Build That!.

These movements are Utopian by nature and as such, share a claim on ethical superiority that propagates a mentality in which the aim justifies the means; they are strictly collectivist, anti individual, anti self interest and seek to destroy Capitalism; humans are entirely socially determined. Reality and morality are group subjective.

The abortion cult and the right to die as values are typical standard points, that eventually lead to a culture of death and finally to nihilism. Despite all talk about humanity and ethics, on closer examination it transpires that humanity is seen as a plague, man as a predatory animal. Ecology is their new religion: the climate is used as a weapon for regulation and control.

Multiculturalism is where this movement is coming home. The average citizen is unaware of the true nature of this philosophy. Outside the intellectual realm this is never explained. Politicians imply that the meaning of Multiculturalism is, a country that is home to multiple cultures. But what it really means is, that all cultures are deemed equally valid, which implies that there is no leading culture or universal philosophy to guide the culture.

If you've been in this war for over 270 years, giving it up at this point is not likely. In other words, it is up to the people of light to defend their values and historical achievements.

Many feel instinctively that all is not well, though they can't precisely pinpoint the root cause. This is because the powers of the Counter Enlightenment are often working underground. But sometimes they are hiding in plain sight, for example in the key domains of education, information and communication.

As long as the economy is in good shape, the people put up with a lot. But when economies collapse dissatisfaction sets in. Labor parties have torn up the social contract unilaterally and made another pact with new protegés, whose culture and beliefs are alien and mutually exclusive to Western values.

To reduce Counter Enlightenment movements to the political Left, is far too simplistic. The entire political establishment has been mentally affected at this point, including the cadres, followers and front groups, of which the Left has numerous branches.

Counter Enlightenment thinkers can be found in the intellectual and upper middle classes. These self appointed philanthropic altruists suffer from severe guilt complexes. Acting from the ethical program of altruism, material profit is not what drives them; on the contrary. These people are looking for absolution. A typical example would be Bill Gates.

Their operative units are humanity as a whole, and the entire planet. Counter Enlightenment movers and shakers happily sacrifice their brothers and sisters to their hand picked, ethically, superior causes. This being its own, built-in moral justification makes Utopian Internationalism such a very dangerous world view.

Internationalism cannot work in the context of free societies, because it negates the individual. In a national democracy the individual voters choose their representatives and their Government. When they don't like them, they are replaced in fresh elections.

But when these Governments have created a supranational power structure on top of the democratic national state, with powers reaching far into the national state but out of bounds of the voter, you have in fact created a super tyranny. This is what the EU presently is.

Eugenics
Internationalism is based on economics. But historically there have been far more sinister plans for European integration rooted in social engineering and even eugenics, which we today would simply call evil. Eugenics rests on the idea that knowledge and morality are innate, and that man is therefore determined by his ethnic group.

This Platonic notion has long been debunked philosophically as well as scientifically. But the idea that humanity consists of various breeds of cattle is still very wide spread. In the realm of conspiracy theories a number of plans are circulating. But it cannot be excluded that some Internationalists are still secretly accepting these evil theories.

First posted on Nov. 8, 2015 and subsequently posted on PomoNews.com

In this series

Part 1: Introduction
Part 2: Rousseau's Ravages
Part 3: Countering Kant
Part 4: Heckling Hegel
Part 5: Fluncking Fichte
Part 6: Secular Law, Common Culture and Personal Liberty
Part 7: Internationalism

Nederlandse bewerking: De Contra-Verlichting

Deel 1: Inleiding
Deel 2: De Ravage van Rousseau
Deel 3: Contra Kant
Deel 4: Hegel Gehekeld
Deel 5: Foeteren op Fichte
Deel 6: Wetgeving, cultuur en persoonlijke vrijheid
Deel 7: Internationalisme

THE ENLIGHTENMENT: SECULAR LAW, COMMON CULTURE AND PERSONAL LIBERTY (6)

noreply@blogger.com (Kassandra Troy) — Mon, 06 Sep 2021 11:29:00 +0000

Continued from The Counter-Enlightenment: FLUNCKING FICHTE (5)

***

The actions of man are guided by three separate 'authorities': secular law, cultural traditions (which includes religion, philosophy, ideologies, tradition, etc.) and moral choices based on personal values. It is very important to be aware of this distinction: in the philosophy of Liberty the law can't be allowed to trespass on the second and the third domains. Yet it happns every day.

The concept of a right pertains only to action—specifically, the freedom of action. It means freedom from physical compulsion, coercion or interference by other men. Thus, for every individual, a right is the moral sanction of a positive—of his freedom to act on his own judgment, for his own goals, by his own voluntary, uncoerced choice. (Ayn Rand Lexicon)

Secular versus Sacred Authority: introduction

Historically the distinction between Secular Authority and Sacred Authority largely followed the separation of Church and State, but the distinct 'authorities' that rule our lives mean much more than that. It is very important to know the history that led to this separation, so that we can determine which aspects can be controlled by secular law (and by extension, by democratic principles) (secular authority), what part of our lives is ruled by culture and tradition (here referred to as 'ethos') and what part is exclusively personal consideration (here referred to as morality).

In other words, what is the proper field for the law, which part may be ruled by society and what is our personal domain? The secular must be practical and universal (for example the traffic code); ethos pertains to culture, traditions, and national identity; morality is personal choice based on voluntary values. In psychological terms, the secular and the ethos are external loci of control, while morality is the inner locus of control.

Continuity and culture

Classical Greek thinkers, like Thucydides, Plato and Aristotle were the first to ponder how to constitute a State. They distinguished two separate domains that control the actions of citizens: the Sacred Authority and the Secular Authority. The two are quite distinct.

Secular authority is expressed in structures, institutions, processes, rules and laws and governance. Sacred authority is self control exerted through traditions, civic virtues based on common religious and ethnic practices.

Historically personal morality was understood as the domain of the Sacred Authority, the Church. But we must understand that for the inner locus of control a process of individualization is required that only developed fully under the influence of Judeo-Christianity, based on its personal relationship with God and its idea of individual salvation.

The whole body of knowledge, practices and heritage is passed on to the next generations, ensuring continuation. In the course of time a community, a town, a nation, a culture or an entire civilization develops. Such a society thrives when it is based on Secular as well as Sacred Authority. The two mutually support each other.

In a society in decline either of the authorities has lost its capacity to control the behavior of society. The two domains can be separate or integrated. But to be effective a society must be supported by both. In some systems both authorities were united in a God-King, but in others they were separated—but still mutually supporting.

Out of the collapse of the feudal order of the Middle Ages rose the idea of equal, sovereign states (Wiki Peace of Westphalia). In order to defend the monarchy against the authority of the universal Roman Church John of Paris (1235-1306) developed the concept of the sovereign State. He distinguished the Secular Authority of the State from the Sacred Authority of the Church; he claimed that coercion should belong to the State, while the Church ought to determine morality and ethics.

Modernism

The Revolutions of the Enlightenment between 1640 and 1848 were an attack on the sacred sovereignty of the Monarchy. In the United States sovereignty transferred to the individual citizen, while in France sovereignty rested on the People collectively. This paradigm shift required the invention of some abstraction to signify The People. A number of concepts were developed, of which Rousseau's the 'social contract' and 'the Will of the People' survive to this day.

The practical realization of the Secular Authority was solved easily enough by the creation of the nation state, but the concept of the Sacred Authority was much more complex. In most cases a State Church was instituted.

The German philosopher Hegel (1770-1831) proposed a non religious solution: ethos and morality were be to be determined primarily by the customs and traditions of those with a common identity. According to Hegel a nation integrated within the State is the best way to create progress.

This concentrated the power of Sacred and Secular Authority invested the State with totalitarian power over the individual as well as over society as a whole. The end result was a virulent form of animistic Nationalism, an intolerant, ethnocentric Nation State invested with absolute, almost divine powers. (Source)

This indicates the danger a free society is in when the Secular Authority trespasses on the province of the Sacred Authority: in a free country personal morality must always be the final authority in any personal decision. When common ethos and personal morality are subjugated to State coercion, the moral stops being the moral. Morality is voluntary by definition!

The Founding Fathers of the United States had another solution, which provided for the separation of Church and State in such a way that power would not be concentrated in a single institution. This also allowed governmental structures and processes to be subject to the moral and ethical constraints of Sacred Authority, yet not to be controlled by any Church or the State to control any Church. This also allowed both Secular Authority and Sacred Authority to influence the behavior of citizens, Government remained efficient, united, and successful while individual morality remained supreme.

Progressivism

With the loss of Christianity and without a clear concept of civic virtue, European countries continued to integrate both authorities in semi totalitarian States in the name of equality. Many intellectuals accepted the ideas of Hegel, Marx and Nietzsche; the concept of the separation of Church and State was put on its head. Intellectuals and elites declared God Is Dead while they themselves annexed Sacred Authority to their domain of operation

In liberal democracy belief and conviction became a matter of personal opinion, but not always by definition under the philosophy of Liberty, the integrated system of the three authorities. Yet this is a prime requirement, because only then individual Liberty can be assured. As a result of secularism encroaching further and further on the domains of the individual and society, the freedom of thought and conscience are now in serious danger.

Many believe that the separation of Church and State requires that all aspects of religion are cleansed from the public domain. This is a French model called laïcité that requires a strong, centralized Government that is contrary to the philosophy of Liberty. Moreover, it is not even required for the separation of Church and State.

In the progressive, liberal democratic State Secular Authority (the law) has become the dominating authority while politicians, political parties and the ruling classes seek to bring the common ethos and personal morality also under its control, either by the social pressure tool of political correctness or by straight up legislation. They purposely conflated and equivocated secular law and the philosophy of Liberty. This in essence is the main fallacy of progressivism (if a mistake on purpose can be called that).

The present cultural decay and decline is caused primarily by the domination of secular law justified by democratic majority rule; by the weakening of the common ethos by postmodernism, relativism and multiculturalism; plus the failure of the three authorities to mutually support each other.

Solution

Is there a solution to the current problem? Yes, there is. But only if we can raise awareness of the existence of the three 'authorities' and if the three domains can be made to support each other, and personal judgement can have the final say on all matters of personal choice. Which means that secular law must become secondary, not primary when it comes to matter pertaining to morality.

Since the process of individualization has been completed for most people in the developed world, the Church is no longer the final moral authority. The State on the other hand, must be discouraged from encroaching on issues beyond their proper domain. Every coup by secular law against personal liberty represents a further step towards tyranny.

This problem is bigger than just the law. Other weapons are used against society and the individual. Think about positive discrimination, political correctness, subjective group 'rights' based on irrelevant physical characteristics (gays, women's, children's, animal 'rights'), the rule of emotions over reason.

The decay and decline can only be stopped if ethical matters are decided where they belong -- with the Sacred Authority in society and with the individual citizen -- and when politicians and the ruling class limit themselves to practical issues. The distinction between the three authorities is so easy to make, that a code could be devised without too many difficulties.

Dedicated to Sam Holliday who first raised this all important issue in his essay, "Secular and Sacred Authority: Why We Need It". (Source)

Note: This item was written long before the outbreak of Covid-19. The pandemic has put the concept of the three separate authorities on its head as Governments around the world usurped powers that do not belong to their domain. The context of infectious decease is an ideal environment for trespassing on the private domain of the citizen and it is morally justified by claiming that all rules and regulations -- however ridiculous or irrational -- are for our own good. Societies for their part are violating individual rights by claiming this is a collective effort and those refusing to vaccinate on personal grounds, or the passport as a matter of principle, are selfish and anti social.

UPDATE:

Sep. 24, 2021 Dr Jordan Peterson explains what happens when the Sacred collapses into the Profane.

Up Next, Internationalism: The First International or the International Workingmen's Association was founded in London in 1864 by Communist and Socialist activists like Karl Marx (...) The era of Utopia had begun. A total of 110 million deaths later many still fail to make the proper analysis.

Free Download of Stephen Hicks primer on Postmodernism (PDF)

First posted on Politeia on March 3, 2008 and subsequently on PomoNews.

In this series of the Counter-Enlightenment

Part 1: Introduction

Part 2: Rousseau's Ravages
Part 3: Countering Kant
Part 4: Heckling Hegel
Part 5: Fluncking Fichte
Part 6: Secular Law, Common Culture and personal Liberty

Part 7: Internationalism

Nederlandse bewerking

Deel 1: Inleiding

Deel 2: De Ravage van Rousseau

Deel 3: Contra Kant

Deel 4: Hegel Gehekeld

Deel 5: Foeteren op Fichte
Deel 6: Wetgeving, cultuur en persoonlijke vrijheid
Deel 7: Internationalisme

THE ENLIGHTENMENT: FLUNCKING FICHTE (5)

noreply@blogger.com (Kassandra Troy) — Sun, 11 Oct 2020 18:01:00 +0000

Continued from The Counter-Enlightenment: Heckling Hegel (4)

***

"Education should aim at destroying free will so that after pupils are thus schooled they will be incapable throughout the rest of their lives of thinking or acting otherwise than as their school masters would have wished."

Meet the Professor from hell, Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762-1814), Head of the Philosophy and Psychology Dept. of the Prussian University of Berlin, in 1810.

He blamed all but God for the German defeat against Napoleon Bonaparte: corrupt royals, the nobility, the decadent influence of reason, and a succession of weak governments that undermined religion as a moral force.

Fichte wanted the German losers to emulate the burghers of the Middle Ages, who made the Holy Roman Empire great because they weren't individuals, but sacrificed to the common good.

The emphasis in Fichte's educational system was on compulsion. With Kant he was pushing duty for its own sake and worked tirelessly for the elimination of self-interest; obedience, the crush of free will, prohibition, fear for punishment, religious immersion -- pupils must become 'fixed and unchangeable machines' and 'links in the eternal chain of spiritual life in a higher social order.'

Fichte is Kant applied to education

Fichte applied Kant to education. Generations of kids grew up in this oppressive educational system that in the German cultural sphere of influence lasted well into the 20th century.

The following quotation reveals how deeply Kant's Platonic roots were woven into continental thinking:

"Under proper guidance, the student will find at the end that nothing really exists but life, the spiritual life which lives in thought, and that everything else does not really exist, but only appears to exist."

A belated reaction to Fichte's will-crushing -- but in full accordance with the extremes of the Hegel dialectic -- was uttered by Frankfurt School inspired, anti-authoritarian education of the 1970s. The Head Master from hell had become the guidance counsellor on slippers called Bill.

As National Socialism differed from Marxism in national versus international application, intellectuals of the Counter-Enlightenment movement exerted German, ethnic nativism. In Fichte's case, on education:

"Only the Germans, the salvation of Europe from the Napoleontic Enlightenment, are capable of true education."

In Fichte we have a good example of Left and Right Socialism as mirroring ideologies, instead of opposing social systems. Like so many of the anti-modernist movement, Fichte was undoubtedly a man of the Right, but pursuing what would today be seen as a liberal tenet: egalitarian public education.

State conditioning

The first elected President of the Weimar Republic, the Social Democrat Friedrich Ebert in his inaugural speech in 1919 stressed the relevance of the Right-wing Socialist, Fichte:

“In this way we will set to work, our great aim before us: to maintain the right of the German nation, to lay the foundation in Germany for a strong democracy, and to bring it to achievement with the true social spirit and in the Socialistic way. Thus shall we realize that which Fichte has given to the German nation as its task.”

The Head Master from hell may well have inspired Marx to view school as a microcosm of Utopian society.

Related: Fichte and education: Dr Sanity

Free Download of Stephen Hicks primer on Postmodernism (PDF)

First posted on Politeia on March 3, 2008 and subsequently on PomoNews.

In this series of the Counter-Enlightenment

Part 1: Introduction

Part 2: Rousseau's Ravages
Part 3: Countering Kant
Part 4: Heckling Hegel
Part 5: Fluncking Fichte
Part 6: Secular Law, Common Culture and Personal Liberty

Part 7: Internationalism

Nederlandse bewerking

Deel 1: Inleiding

Deel 2: De Ravage van Rousseau

Deel 3: Contra Kant

Deel 4: Hegel Gehekeld

Deel 5: Foeteren op Fichte
Deel 6: Wetgeving, cultuur en persoonlijke vrijheid
Deel 7: Internationalisme

THE ENLIGHTENMENT: HECKLING HEGEL (4)

noreply@blogger.com (Kassandra Troy) — Tue, 06 Oct 2020 22:18:00 +0000

Continued from The Counter-Enlightenment: Countering Kant (3)

***

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831) was, like Immanuel Kant (Part 3), a great admirer of Jean Jacques Rousseau (part 2). Like today's cosmologists are warping reason for their holy grail, the 'theory of everything', these anti philosophers of the Counter-Enlightenment did the same in their efforts to unify heaven and earth, in the sense of an effort to build paradise on earth. But two and a half centuries of building Utopia has learnt that their creations usually turn into dystopia.

Hegel feverishly sought to square faith with reason for which he dipped deep into Kabbalism. In his efforts he made an irrational decision: he allowed Kant's dialectics to reflect contradiction. To mention just one example, this is the reason why postmodernists today can be full blown racists in the name of fighting racism. A thing can be black and white in the same way at the same time; because truth is in the eye of the beholder.

Hegel's follower, Karl Marx claiming to be on the side of science, did not entirely underwrite Hegel's anti reason theory on contradictions, but used it whenever expedient. Building on Hegel's Slave-Master theory, Marx devised his own version, which is with us until this day as a divisive mechanism for progress through social struggle.

We came to know it later as Scientific Marxism-Leninism, the idea that victory of the international workers class over Capitalism was historically inevitable.

With the workers failing the intellectual and ruling elites in bringing down capitalism, the dualism of oppressors versus the oppressed is played out in our own time in the form of minorities versus the white patriarchate.

And then there is Hegel's dialectic of 'progress' in society through social strife, an mechanism today taken for granted as a means of public debate. With the regularity of a human ratwheel, groups in society are pitted against each other, veering from one extreem to the next, laid down in Hegel's formula, thesis -> anti thesis -> synthesis.

Reality or truth does not come into the argument. If group A claims truth is A, group B comes out in favor of the opposite. Common sense and contextual thought are the sacrificial victims of this insanity.

Cosmologic fantasy

Hegel's philosophy is conceptually a secular fantasy based on Judeo-Christian cosmology: God's projection, a spirit called the Absolute, represents creation which is seeking reunification with God. Its development through struggle and conflict by means of which it gets to know itself, is the story of the history of the world. The story ends when the Absolute - reunited with God - is achieving full self-consciousness.

In other words, God reveals his grand plan progressively in the course of history. We today, understand God better than Saint Paul did, two thousand years ago. This of course is rather illustrative of where the idea of progressivism is coming from, as well as the sheer arrogance of modern man.

Hegel's theme was the National state. As Rousseau is the father of the totalitarian state, Hegel is the founder of the National state. The Orwellian term, 'freedom through the state' describes well where Hegel is coming from.

According to Hegel freedom is not a God-given right, inherent in man and therefore inalienable as the fathers of the Enlightenment held, but temporary and conditional, a social contract (Rousseau) granted or to be dissolved by law as the State sees fit.

Aministic Nationalism

Acting under the Platonic dualism of 'as above, so below' the National State became a placeholder of God, until the State replaced God entirely under a virulent form of Nationalism and Communism. In the terms of Hegel it is the 'ethical whole', the 'actualization of freedom', and the self-consciousness of the Absolute.

As a mere sacrificial animal of the by now animistic State, the individual has the duty to submit to its needs, and worship it as a terrestrial divinity. Consider the following quote as illustrative of the idea:

''Otto Braun, age 19, a volunteer who died in World War I, wrote in a letter to his parents: "My inmost yearning, my purest, though most secret flame, my deepest faith and my highest hope - they are still the same as ever, and they all bear one name: the State.

One day to build the State like a temple, rising up pure and strong, resting in its own weight, severe and sublime, but also serene like the gods and with bright halls glistening in the dancing brilliance of the sun - this, at bottom, is the end and goal of my aspirations.''

In Hegel we see how human free will, the essence of morality in individual man, has shifted to the collective State. The process has continued to this day. We see it clearly in aid and other social programs. Originally a Biblical commandment to the individual to help the poor, these good works have now been outsourced to the state, expenditures covered from the treasury through taxation.

Today's politicians love to see themselves as Hegel's 'World historical figures,' agents of God's Plan. They may be exacting high cost in terms of human misery, but collective historical development is of a higher order than mere morality.

The ethics of the duty to sacrifice to the collective common good, and the ease with which others are sacrifized to a perceived higher cause, provides moral cover to the idea that the end justifies any means.

The European Union Versus the United States

The suspicion may be justified that the rift between the Enlightenment and the Counter-Enlightenment, the American-Continental fault-line, Locke versus Rousseau, is still visible today in the geopolitical differences between the United States and the European Union.

Americans have taken up ownership of their politeia, safeguarded by the Constitution and the Second Amendment, ensuring that the rule of law will be defended with something more impressive than corroded pitchforks and burning barricades.

Europeans on the other hand are still stuck in the mind-set of subjects. They have not given up being the pawns of Hegel's 'world historical figures', the new agents doing 'God's work' happen to be carving out a heroic role for themselves as unelected road-builders to the Kantian \World Government by the New World Order.

Hegel's Legacy

Expert on anti reason Counter Enlightenment thinkers, Stephen Hicks, lists four of Hegel's contributions to Postmodernism:

1. Reality is an entirely subjective construct: 'thought creates reality' (or, reality for its existence is dependent upon the subjective mind). Is was a reversal of reason resting on Kant, who enclosed the mind inside the skull, rendering knowledge of the external world impossible.

2. Ignoring at their peril the Law of Identity -- A=A -- contradictions were built into reality which made them a natural part of reason, or more precise, anti reason. From here onwards anything goes.

3. As reality evolves contradictorily, truth is no longer an absolute, but is relative to time, place and the will of the subject (the immediate victim of this illogic is morality, the knowledge of good and evil).

4. The collective, not the individual, is the operative unit.

All this unfixed relativism and subjectivism may be astounding, but compared to the Counter-Enlightenment movement's later religious as well as atheist philosophers known as the Irrationalists, Kant and Hegel are the essence of reason.

Education

NASA psychiatrist and blogger Dr Sanity has written extensively about the Counter Enlightenment and Hegel in relation to schooling and education, early victims of the 'new logic'. Here's a self-explanatory example:

"....in this new century, both utopian systems (right wing Nationalism and left wing Hegelians) have been given new life by recruiting a potent new ally in their attempts to control the minds of men. That ally is postmodern philosophy and rhetoric. This 18th century philosophical rise of collectivism is still playing itself out several hundred years later in the competing ideologies of our own time.

The most important battlefield in this war in our time is the educational system, from kindergarden through college, where strenuous efforts are being made by the remnants of both types of collectivists to claim the minds of the next generation. (...)."

Free Download of Stephen Hicks primer on Postmodernism (PDF)

Coming up next: "Flunking Fichte": "Education should aim at destroying free will so that after pupils are thus schooled they will be incapable throughout the rest of their lives of thinking or acting otherwise than as their school masters would have wished."

First posted on Politeia on March 3, 2008 and subsequently on PomoNews.

Marx's Left Hegelianism

The Fourth Political Theory, upon recognising its preliminarily outlined structures, could become more systematic and detailed by examining some fundamentally important doctrines, schools, and figures for political philosophy. For instance, let us… pic.twitter.com/ifKhiqwmKO
— Alexander Dugin (@Agdchan) January 3, 2024

In this series of the Counter Enlightenment

Part 1: Introduction

Part 2: Rousseau's Ravages
Part 3: Countering Kant
Part 4: Heckling Hegel
Part 5: Fluncking Fichte

Part 6: Secular Law, Common Culture, Personal Liberty

Part 7: Internationalism

Nederlandse bewerking

Deel 1: Inleiding

Deel 2: De Ravage van Rousseau

Deel 3: Contra Kant

Deel 4: Hegel Gehekeld

Deel 5: Foeteren op Fichte
Deel 6: Wetgeving, cultuur en persoonlijke vrijheid
Deel 7: Internationalisme

THE ENLIGHTENMENT: COUNTERING KANT (3)

noreply@blogger.com (Kassandra Troy) — Sun, 04 Oct 2020 17:30:00 +0000

Continued from The Counter-Enlightenment: Rousseau's Ravages (2)

***

Often erroneously classified as a hero of the Enlightenment, Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) in his mindset is entirely antithetical to the values of the era that preceded him: he is the archetypal protagonist of the reactionary, feudal Teutonic order. Kant's Platonist subjectivist view on reality opened the door to the acceptance of contradiction in logic, that only came to full fruition under his follower, G.W.F. Hegel (more in the next episode) and his student, Karl Marx.

But Kant laid the groundwork for the full blown subjectivism in epistemology we see today displayed in popular culture to the point that the very existence of objectivity itself is under attack. The media's disdain for objectivity goes so far, they do not even make the effort anymore.

Kant was also the father of the theme that is well developed in our era: the concept of the whole of mankind as one universal order under a One World Government. We could say Kant was the founder of internationalism (multi-lateralism, or globalism). This baton taken up by G.W.F. Hegel and Karl Marx after him, as well as the founding fathers of the League of Nations, the United Nations and the European Union.

Kant's ethics program is a corrosive form of morality that demands self denial to the point of self immolation. There is nothing scientific about Kant; his perceived logic is a parlor trick that nevertheless to this day is very influencial in academia and (pseudo) intellectual circles.

The revered Kant's hidden agenda is revealed by the fundamental intellectual dishonesty by which he legitimized his sophistry, declaring that it was "necessary to deny knowledge in order to make room for faith". The end justifies the means!

His 'trick' was to stretch reason beyond the limits of common sense and context. He then used the absurd result to discredit reason. It's a classic strawman. It culminated in his magnum opus, "Critique of Pure Reason". The Postmodernists have made it their own, applying it in the present discourse to their heart's content.

Kant was an austere Lutheran Pietist in the Protestant tradition of Plato and St. Augustine's Just War Theory. Nevertheless, he was great admirer of the fundamental secularist, Jean Jacques Rousseau.

The individual to him represented little more than a miserable sinner in need of a strong master, only good as cannon fodder in the wars of his age, so that hopefully the wretch might emerge as a higher moral being. Needless to say the chances of that were very slim indeed.

The Hidden Plan

Kant foresaw a teleological progress towards an end-game by means of strife, war and discord culminating in world peace under a global Government, an international and cosmopolitan federation of states, awaiting the Day of Judgment. According to Kant this brings mankind as a species collectively to an ethically evolved order. This is the Hidden Plan of Nature, according to Kant. He was however more honest then today's postmodernists, admitting that his vision might in the end lead to the greatest tyranny imaginable.

While the thinkers of the Enlightenment expanded on the idea as laid out in the Treaties of Westphalia (1648) of free peoples in independent, sovereign national states, the philosophers based on Rousseau, Hegel and Marx propagated 'ideal societies', replacing God in the center of the Universe with the state, now synonymous with totalitarian dystopias.

In the course of this reactionary period the tenets of the Enlightenment were abandoned and replaced with philosophical principles reflecting anti reason: Realism made way for Idea-lism; collectivism replaced individualism; intuition and passions were adopted as sources of knowledge, rather than reason and experience; social theories replaced the Classical Liberal theories. This marks the shift from the Aristotelian principles of the Renaissance, to the Platonic world view, a development that had already set in with Protestantism.

The Incarcerated Mind

While today's postmodernists are mostly virulent atheists, they are at root adept followers of Rousseau, Kant and Hegel, faithfully subscribing to their most irrational tenets. Plato's mind versus body dualism, reflecting the macro and microcosm of heaven and earth tends to identify the mind with the soul, giving rise to visualizing the mind as non-physical pure substance, distinct from the physical organs and brain. Rather then thinking of them as tools to knowledge, this led to a view that the senses and the brain are obstacles to knowledge rather than tools to it, obstructing the mind from external reality.

Moreover, some sensorial imperfections (color blindness, for example) in some people, induced Kant to declare the senses entirely unsound tools to acquire knowledge. To clarify the Kantian position on the separation of the mind from reality Objectivist philosopher Stephen Hicks in "Explaining Postmodernism" makes a feminist analogy: "to support Kant is to say that women are absolutely autonomous and free to do as they please, as long as it is within the confines of the kitchen"; Kant imprisons the mind in the skull and isolates it from reality.

Thought creates reality

It is ironic that the thinkers of the Counter-Enlightenment, who sought to prevent the Godless, spiritless and amoral future that was supposed to be the result of reason and individualism, have brought about precisely that by Kant's subjectivism and his imprisonment of the mind. The Universe becomes unknowable. Radical Skepticism with as final outcome, rationalism as the result. Hicks:

"Once reason is in principle severed from reality, one enters a different philosophical universe altogether."

Present day postmodernists repeat after Kant that 'the' truth as an objective thing in itself, does not exist. This statement's first victim is morality itself. This conclusion is supported by Classical Liberalism, that rested on embedding itself within Protestant Christianity, and did not formulate an objective grounding of morality itself. Later Skeptics drove a stake through the heart of an objective moral program and a knowable Universe.

Kant also held that reality conforms to reason, not vice versa: as by magic, thought has become the source of reality, instead of reality providing the mind with information. This marks the infamous shift from objectivism to subjectivism culminating in the madness we see today in intellectual circles.

It begs the question, if I die overnight, will the sun rise tomorrow? It sparked Einstein asking the question: "Do you really believe that the universe does not exist when you are not watching it?

Idea-lism

Thomist (referring to St. Thomas of Aquinas, who put the Roman Catholic Church on Aristotelian footing in the 13th Century) physicist Anthony Rizzi in "Science before Science: a Guide to Thinking in the 21st Century" laments Kant's now codified Idea-lism. It is...

"... the default declared position in academia and in nearly all other environments. Kant's success is partly explained by his tying his philosophical system to Newtonian physics [which he wanted to] have a certainty that it did not have. However, Kant thought that one could not know the thing itself."

(...) Kant and Kantians múst say, "Kant doesn't know anything about anything." Such is always the end of the matter when one forgets that all knowledge in man comes through the senses. We non-Kantians can be simultaneously more accurate and kinder; we can say, "The foundational principles of Kant's philosophical system were wrong, but still he knew a lot of other things."

This enthusiasm is at once tempered by a footnote:

"Many attribute to Kant a developed skill in physics. Physisist and renowned philosopher and historian of science, Fr. Stanley Jaki has shown that Kant's knowledge and ability in physics was minimal (though Kant considered himself another Newton) (...) the book [Universal Natural History] is a storehouse of inaccuracies, contradictions and amateurism and plain fancy."

Rizzi nails the central mistake perpetrated by Kant and other rationalists: immaterial Beings of Reason (for example negative numbers, zero) are tools by which we know things; they are not what we know!

Free Download of Stephen Hicks primer on Postmodernism (PDF)

Up next: in Part 4: "Heckling Hegel": "Hegel's theme was the state. Freedom is not God-given as the followers of the Enlightenment held, but a privilege granted by the state".

First posted on Politeia on March 3, 2008 and subsequently on PomoNews.

In this series of the Counter Enlightenment

Part 1: Introduction

Part 2: Rousseau's Ravages
Part 3: Countering Kant
Part 4: Heckling Hegel
Part 5: Fluncking Fichte
Part 6: Secular Law, Common Culture and personal Liberty

Part 7: Internationalism

Nederlandse bewerking

Deel 1: Inleiding

Deel 2: De Ravage van Rousseau

Deel 3: Contra Kant

Deel 4: Hegel Gehekeld

Deel 5: Foeteren op Fichte
Deel 6: Wetgeving, cultuur en persoonlijke vrijheid
Deel 7: Internationalisme

THE ENLIGHTENMENT: ROUSSEAU'S RAVAGES (2)

noreply@blogger.com (Kassandra Troy) — Fri, 02 Oct 2020 16:34:00 +0000

Continued from The Counter-Enlightenment: Introduction (1)

***

Swiss-French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau's (1712-1778) personal life is marked by traits sounding awkwardly contemporary. Self-pity and paranoia play see-saw with bad decisions and external blaming. In Rousseau's world view man is by nature good, but it is society that is the cause of corruption and vice. Iconic for Rousseauian thought is the image of the noble savage, man in his natural state before the Fall from Paradise (or at least, how Rousseau interpreted it).

There is nothing ambiguous about his ethics however: he believed his 'doctrine of two substances' to be the key to the absolute quality of good and evil [Jonathan I. Israel, Radical Enlightenment, 2001, p. 719]. In an example set in the Classics he saw in Athenian decadence the degrading influence of reason. He saw in the cruder, militaristic Spartans an unspoiled and nobler race. Their callous practice of exposing babies to nature (now in dispute) may well have inspired Rousseau to expose his own five illegitimate children to the hardships of the Paris orphanage.

Although Rousseau died in 1778 before the French Revolution, his justification of violence to power was a source of inspiration for the Reign of Terror that the Jacobins unleashed during the latter part of the rebellion. Revolutionairies the world over since have acted under the moral guidance of, our noble aim justifies any means.

In 1792 the French Citizen Army faced the Prussian forces at Valmy. In a psychological victory they prevented them from marching on to Paris to restore the monarchy. Earlier in the capital a mob had stormed the Tuilleries Palace.

In the massacres over a thousand political prisoners were brutally hacked to death. Fabre d'Eglantine declared: "In the towns, let the blood of traitors be the first Holocaust to Liberty, so that in advancing to meet the common enemy, we leave nothing behind to disquiet us!"

Rousseau's killing fields

After "the first Holocaust to Liberty" many more would follow. Its specific features are typical of Rousseau's constellation of ideas. The chief ingredients as expressed in "Profession de Foi" are a sweeping rejection of tradition, [social] revelation, and all institutionalized authority. [Radical Enlightenment, p. 718] In Roussea's ideas we find the source of every anti-Liberal, violent revolution ever since the French Revolution went off the Lockean track.

Rousseau is ultimately the father of many obnoxious and lethal, collectivist traditions besides: Romanticism, redistributive Socialism, philosophical agrarianism, conservative Communitarianism, Nazism, and more to the point, the Counter-Enlightenment and Postmodernism (including ecology and environmentalism that favors inanimate objects over human beings). Cultures, adopting Rousseauian ideas found in them a mirror of some aspect of their own identity.

Many have descended into the abyss of collectivist hell invented by Rousseau. In France his radical egalitarianism led to The Reign of Terror, in Germany to Left and Right Socialism with known result (read here about the German Revolution), in Russia and the Far East to Communism, mass starvation and slaughter on grandiose scales.

In China Mao Tse Tung's Cultural Revolution and Great Leap Forward resulted in the greatest mass murder in human history and in Cambodia the Khmer Rouge's extermination campaign to establish Rousseauian agrarianism, resulted in the deaths of well over twenty percent of the population. In the 20th Century alone over 110 million people were sacrifized on the altar of Rousseau's common will and social contract.

Why Rousseau is different

Rousseau stands apart in many respects. He represents the fault-line in Western tradition between Anglo-American and Continental lines of thought, and marks the point of departure from the Enlightenment. Rousseau is essentially an anti-modernist.

While loosely following the traditional path of Enlightenment thought, his radical stance differs notably on the crucial issues of anti-individualism [Isaiah Berlin, "Against the Current", 2001], anti-capitalism and against private property [Radical Enlightenment, p. 273], anti science and technology, his radical egalitarianism, and the inherent mindset in which the means are justified by the perceived noble end.

Rousseau is often quoted as the iconic philosopher of the Enlightenment, but it is quite clear he fiercely rejected all its tenets and values. No doubt, here we have the ground zero of the Counter-Enlightenment.

Rousseau was certainly no believer in voluntary interaction, or in the beneficial effects on society of self-interest (Bernard Mandeville (1670-1733), "The Fable of the Bees"), asserting that "society hardly needs to feed man's love for himself and his desire to be first among men." [Radical Enlightenment, p. 273]. Rousseau embodies the political Narcissist of the second variety: a maniac who gladly sacrifices his brothers to his "ideals".

Rousseau's radical egalitianism is echoed in the notion that "rational and industrious man with dehumanizing machines would replace absolute monarchy as an enslaver of the common man, being better and more ruthless on the aggregation of material goods". He argued that the separation of the progress and dissemination of science and art from political and religious control are hazardous for society and a danger for the virtue of the people [Bloom, 1990]. But it gets worse.

'Common will' instead of Liberty

In Rousseau we see the first social contract at the price of freedom and the birth of a notion called the "common will". The latter is a concept that in Rousseau's approach requires state intervention. This should not be confused with the 'common good' or 'the will of the people'. It is a far more developed concept which, and unlike the former, can only be realized in the context of a collective society under state control [Radical Enlightenment, p. 720).

For the creation of a society of common will which the philosopher called "freedom of all the people" (sounds familiar?), they need only accept the dictates of the state. This was Rousseau's essence of "true civilization." The struggle between rich and poor would then rise to a moral experience of self-restraint.

With the faculty of moral choice thus abdicated and forfeited to the state, people would be free from 'lowly, earthly desires' and reach full, ideal potential. Man is thus divorced from the social and economic context in which he lives and interacts with others. Paradise, the Ideal State, separated from earthly considerations.

This totalitarian approach to freedom under state control was later further developed by Marx, who wrote that "capitalist, individual liberty is the most complete suppression of all individual liberty and total subjugation of individuality to social conditions". [Marx, "Grundnisse", pp. 131].

"Freedom can only consist in socialized man, the associated producers, rationally regulating their interchange with Nature, bringing it under their common control, instead of being ruled by it as by the blind forces of Nature; and achieving this with the least expenditure of energy and under conditions most favorable to, and worthy of their human nature." [Marx: "Selected Writings", pp. 496].

In this way man's separation from his nature and his moral values began. Never in human history were there any worse judges of human character than Rousseau and his followers: all seek to some degree formal control over individual freedom for the purpose of creating material conditions deemed necessary for "true freedom", moral-ectomy in precise equal measure. Rousseau's concept of 'common will' became the most savage, bloody instrument of social engineering in the history of mankind.

The Atlantic Ridge

In the United States Thomas Jefferson was the most prominent supporter of the French revolutionary achievements. Nevertheless in the US, property rights and Enlightenment liberties were set in stone in the spirit of Locke, Montesquieu and Adam Smith. The present Democratic Party is being diverted further and further away from that tradition as the sway of the Postmodernists intensifies. Rhetorical style, political correctness, academic attacks on language and style betray the influence of European Counter Enlightenment philosophy.

While National Socialist and Communist ideas have swept America to some extent in their haydays -- notwithstanding the counter culture, a product of the Frankfurt School -- these Rousseauian inspired ideologies remained by and large a marginal affair in the USA. Rousseau entering Locke's territory by the back door may come as a surprise to some Americans, the wrong brand of revolution is encroaching on its most basic principles.

In Europe the situation was markedly different. Locke's influence remained on the whole limited to the British Isles. France and Germany have both Rousseau traditions -- each in their own way -- not Lockean. Today of great long-term concern is a possible return to some form of Rousseau inspired extreme ideology. It is chilling to see the rise of an unelected governming body on the European continent that is increasingly closer to authoritarian, top-down rule. The post-democratic elitism, combined with Postmodern Nihilism is an even more disquieting prospect.

Psychological projection and Postmodern tactics are on the order of the day. Rousseau's brand of puristic, radical ideas, combined with the notion that civilization is so corrupt that it must be considered beyond salvation, makes him the father of all violent struggle in the last two and a half centuries.

The zero-sum game approach to economics also originates with Rousseau, giving recently rise to Piketty type narratives and corrupt economic, fiscal and monetary theories. The message that "the rich are getting richer, and the poor are getting poorer" despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, requires constant public re-affirmation, for that reason alone.

Rousseau and religion

The great minds of the Enlightenment proper (Spinozists excluded) never saw Christianity as their mortal enemy. To them the Church and the Enlightenment were natural allies. Rousseau was no exception, but he had only a passing acquaintance with the Christian political tradition. He dismissed the role of Christianity as a moderating force in society. He saw faith as entirely a spiritual undertaking that should occupy itself only with "heavenly things." Plato's dialectic world view is showing once more.

Rousseau's Christians are so detached from reality that they're hardly recognizable: a people so spiritualized that they display a profound disinterest if their earthly pursuits are successful or not. Rousseau's call for transcendent values to harness the energies of men towards the 'common will', coupled with the rejection of Christianity as a engine of these values, made it a central tenet of all the Rousseauian ideologies. Nevertheless, to Rousseau religion was an imperative.

"... the state cannot ... pursue a policy of toleration for disbelievers, or view religion as a matter of individual conscience. It absolutely must, therefore, reject dangerous notions of toleration and the separation of church and state"

and

"so fundamentally important is religion that the ultimate penalty is appropriate for disbelievers ...".

Despite being so enamored with force-feeding religion, after the publication of his work "Emile" he was driven into temporary exile in Bern after a warrant for his arrest was issued. "Emile" was widely denounced as irreligious and seditious.

The legacy

The loather of civilization, Rousseau was however greatly admired by the early Counter-Enlighteners, as he is by today's liberals. His followers mostly selected from his work what they could use to prop up their ideologies. Marx accepted Rousseau's critique of Locke's economic man but stood solidly by the Enlightenment in his appreciation for science and technology. Marx even went so far as to describe his ideology as Scientific Marxism, basically a pseudo scientific rationalization of his aggregate of ideas.

Hegel as well as Rousseau inspired Marx' theory of dialectic materialism, in which the theme is the dichotomy of the Oppressor versus the Oppressed. Now clearly a Postmodern tactic, Rousseau's hatred of man's self interest and a primordial world destroyed by man's egoism, has no doubt contributed to the emotional blackmail of a public raised on the morality of St. Augustine (an addition on his subject will follow) that confuses personal philanthropy with altruism through the State.

Irony

Ironically, while Rousseau was convinced that civilization was the cause of moral degradation, little did he know that his followers, by rejecting objective reality, would drop morality along with it. Despite two and a half centuries of genocidal legacy in pursuit of Rousseauian ideal society, it enjoys considerable support among the Western intelligentsia, specifically in the humanities departments of academe, the media, all levels of education, contemporary arts, the political elite, advisory boards, government ministries and departments and what is loosely described as 'the corridors of power.'

The Postmodern heirs remain committed to undermining free-market democracy, casting misty eyes upon the Rousseauean atrocities. Considering that totalitarian societies are today's version of the tribal community he so admired, the Rousseau ideal society could well be described as an agrarian based, totalitarian theocracy.

In France, Rousseau's ideal of small, intimate villages and a peaceful, agricultural society built on the consent of the common will has resulted in France becoming a by-word for centralized statism. Rousseau's tenet that reason caused man's Fall from Paradise may well be the basis of the later Counter-Enlightenment's political ideals, modelled on the re-creation of 'paradise on earth', Utopias which invariably turn out to be dystopias instead.

Postmodernism or Rousseauism?

Rousseau can certainly be traced back as the source of all members of the Postmodern coalition: environmentalists, third-worldists (Baran-Wallerstein), feminists, anarchists, gender, identity and sexual orientation theorists (now known as the LGBTQ movement), traditional Socialists of various plumage, as well as 'classical' Postmodernists. It is a true gathering of Rousseauians that has largely remained uninvestigated, underreported and certainly undeclared.

In the chaos of Postmodern disintegration in the wake of mayhem, moralectomy and grandiose failure, there is but one purpose left. A resolve that brings these ideologies together with a theocratic tradition with which it has so much in common: Islamism.

It is truly remarkable that every prior held conviction and allegiance has by now been jilted in favor of furthering the causes of the intolerant: it's back to basic Rousseau. The grant plan: a strategy to deconstruct Western, democratic, liberal capitalism by means relentless Critical Race/Women/Gender theory, and 'irrational means of the will.'

Here a live tweet suggestion how Postmodern Romantics' antics may be handled:

Hola, the unroll you asked for: @Ayaan: The Woke hate liberalism as a philosophy and as an organizing principle for institutional order. One way they… https://t.co/N0Ne9cmG52 Enjoy :) 🤖
— Thread Reader App (@threadreaderapp) October 2, 2020

Free Dowload of Stephen Hicks primer on Postmodernism (PDF).

Up next: Emmanuel Kant: "I found it necessary to deny knowledge in order to make room for faith."

First posted on Politeia on March 3, 2008 and subsequently on PomoNews.

In this series of the Counter Enlightenment

Part 1: Introduction

Part 2: Rousseau's Ravages
Part 3: Countering Kant
Part 4: Heckling Hegel
Part 5: Fluncking Fichte
Part 6: Secular Law, Common Culture and personal Liberty

Part 7: Internationalism

Nederlandse bewerking

Deel 1: Inleiding

Deel 2: De Ravage van Rousseau

Deel 3: Contra Kant

Deel 4: Hegel Gehekeld

Deel 5: Foeteren op Fichte
Deel 6: Wetgeving, cultuur en persoonlijke vrijheid
Deel 7: Internationalisme

THE ENLIGHTENMENT: INTRODUCTION (1) (revision)

noreply@blogger.com (Kassandra Troy) — Thu, 01 Oct 2020 18:36:00 +0000

REVISION: The goal of present series is to map the timeline of postmodern philosophical ideas, from its source to the present day. It was first drafted as a manuscript for an unpublished book, entitled "The Dystopia of Paradise." The title reflects the fundamental error in the Left's moral approach to reality, known as Hume's Law: not looking at the world as it Is, but as it Ought to be.

Since then investigations have not stopped of course. This revised introduction is but the latest addition to the quest for the cradle of postmodernism, the Romantic Period. Romanticism was in fact a reaction to the 'rigidity' of reason that marked the Enlightenment proper. Confusingly, historians often consider the Romantic Period the Enlightenment, which is philosophically speaking, a mistake because it is in fact a reaction, as this series will testify.

More additions are in the pipeline. Although not directly related to Postmodernism as such, enquiries into much older history going back to early Christianity reveal that the seeds of Nihilism have been sown in the Western world, much, much earlier than Romanticism. But let's not get ahead of ourselves.

As a recent BBC documentary presented by arch Postmodernist Philip Schama on "The Romantics and Us" shows, the present Cancel Culture that is at this moment laying siege to entire US cities by violent groups as Antifa and Black Live Matter, are as much the children of the French Revolution as the protest generation on 1968 was, if not even more so.

The bottom line, perhaps to the surprise of many in the West: there is a natural continuation in the history of ideas. Many upheaveals and culture wars can ultimately be reduced to the era of Classical Greece, the opposing philosophies of Plato and his student Aristotle, the tutor of Alexander the Great.

* * *

First posted on Politeia on March 3, 2008 and subsequently on PomoNews.

The idea of creation of a subjective universe, or rather a personal version of the universe originates with Protagoras (490-420 BC), who said "man is the measure of all things". The sophists of the rough, second generation, notably Trasymachus, a character in Plato's Republic, put that notion of subjectivism pragmatically to good use. In classical Greece the sophists used language, not in the service of truth or the transfer of information, but as a strategy for political point-scoring. Does this begin to ring a bell?

The sophists held that justice is in the interest of the stronger, that might makes right. Present day Postmodernists maintain the direct opposite: might makes indeed right, therefore we must redistribute power from the powerful to the powerless.

Objectivist philosopher Stephen Hicks in his primer "Explaining Postmodernism" holds that contemporary Postmodernists have harnessed this form of political correctness to today's version of the social struggle, a weapon to perpetuate into eternity the strife of oppressed minorities against the 'fake tolerance' of the white, male 'power structure' known as the patriarchate. The latter should not be understood as 'whoever is in power', but rather 'whoever is in power, other than us'.

Free Download of Stephen Hicks primer on Postmodernism (PDF).

Although we have not always seen it for what it was, during the last two and a half centuries or so, the fruits of reason have been pitted in an existential dog fight with the reactionary forces of anti-realism. The movement is more generally termed 'the Counter-Enlightenment', to underscore the culture's fundamental rejection of the values of the Enlightenment rooted in reason.

The origin of postmodernism

In his ground-breaking book Hicks posits two theses:

that the failure of epistemology (philosophy's study of human knowledge) made Postmodernism possible;
that the failure of Socialism made Postmodernism necessary.

What Rousseau, Kant and Hegel were to church authority, the Postmodernistss are to collectivism: their raison d'être. As a result the true agenda is not to destroy the old order, but to use it as a perpetual grievance to fight against. If the old order would truly be destroyed, they would not even know what to do with themselves!

The emergence of the Counter-Enlightenment represents the turning point of the age of reason. The era between 1780 and 1815 was a defining period in Modernism, as Anglo-American and German culture split into respectively the Enlightenment and Counter-Enlightenment.

The former began in England, and was picked up by the French. But Roussseau's followers wrested the Enlightenment inspired revolution away from John Locke's (1632 -1704) followers. This quote is from Locke's 2nd Treatise §3:

"In order to preserve the public good, the central function of government must be the protection of private property ..."

... compare that to Rousseau:

"For the creation of a society of 'common will', the people need only accept the dictates of the state" ...

The German reactionaries

The French Revolution turned into the Jacobin Reign of Terror, the particularly bloody, third and final episode. The old German States thereafter, already suspicious of the new order, began a counter movement in an effort to rescue religion from what they saw as the onslaught of reason.

When the Enlightened French despot, Napoleon Bonaparte jumped into the vacuum left by the Reign of Terror and conquered Europe, the still largely feudal German states knew for sure what chaos the age of reason had wrought. It came from the anti rational Romantic movement, but they blamed reason for the mayhem.

The reaction to reason was a counter movement by a brand of collectivist philosophers and intellectuals - politically on the Left as well as on the Right, some religious, later on also atheists - with a number of themes in common: Jean-Jacques Rousseau inspired "anti-individualism, the need for strong government, the view that religion is a matter of the state (whether to promote or suppress it), the view that education is a process of socialization, ambivalence about science and technology, and strong themes of group conflict, violence and war.

Hicks:

"Left and Right have often divided bitterly over which themes have priority and over how they should be applied. Yet, for all of their differences, both have consistently recognized a common enemy: Liberal capitalism, with its individualism, its limited government, its separation of church and state, its fairly constant view that education is not primarily a matter of political socialization, and its persistent Whiggish optimism about prospects for peaceful trade and cooperation between members of all nations and groups."

"By the early twentieth century (...) the dominant issues for most continental political thinkers were not whether liberal capitalism was a viable option - but rather exactly when it would collapse - and whether Left or Right collectivism had the best claim to being the Socialism of the future. The defeat of the collectivist Right in World War II then meant that the Left was on its own to carry the Socialist mantle forward."

"Accordingly, when the Left ran into its major disasters as the twentieth century progressed, understanding its fundamental commonality with the collectivist Right helps to explain why in its desperation the Left has often adopted ''fascistic'' tactics."

The merging of law and morality

Another fateful innovation was conceived by the Counter Enlightenment movement. As had been the paradigm during the long period of Church authority over morality, arts and science, all modern mainstream Enlightenment thinkers had embedded the new advances in science and mathematics into Christian belief. A deterministic God had replaced the concept of God as a distant Creator (Deism), making space for human free will as the Aristotelian world view requires.

Defying Aristotle, human nature, as well as Hume's Law -- the confusion of 'Is' with 'Ought' -- the Counter-Enlightenment philosophers following Rousseau, Kant and Hegel -- even the atheists among them -- reversed this orthodoxy. The state wrested the authority over moral issues, civil registry, the arts and sciences and eventually social services from the Church, subjecting these fields to secular law.

Arts and sciences were eventually reluctantly privatized (although not its funding), the realm of morality was never really released to the individual. Instead statists developed political models, that reflected religious ideals, the re-creation of paradises on earth through social 'rights', with Government in the role as God. The new Utopia was born.

The tenets of the holistic Aristotlean Enlightenment were abandoned and replaced by opposing Platonic dialectics: realism made way for idea-lism, and individualism for collectivism; subjective, internal emotions, intuition, the sub-conscience and passions were adopted as sources of knowledge rather than reason and sense experience that is looking outward for external objective facts; collectivist social theories replaced liberal economic theories based on individual reason.

Universal Enlightenment values were still nominally held, but became limited to specific themes. In these themes God was replaced by whatever fitted the theme: nationalists replaced God with the nation, state adolators deified the state, Socialists turned society into God and Communists the working class with the State as arbiter of truth and as redistributive agent.

We'll return to that subject after having a look up close at the main, early Romantic protagonists of the Counter-Enlightenment drama.

Up next: ... Swiss-French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau's (1712-1778) personal life is marked by traits sounding awkwardly contemporary ...

In this series of the Counter Enlightenment

Part 1: Introduction
Part 2: Rousseau's Ravages
Part 3: Countering Kant
Part 4: Heckling Hegel
Part 5: Fluncking Fichte
Part 6: Secular Law, Common Culture and personal Liberty
Part 7: Internationalism

Nederlandse bewerking

Deel 1: Inleiding
Deel 2: De Ravage van Rousseau
Deel 3: Contra Kant
Deel 4: Hegel Gehekeld
Deel 5: Foeteren op Fichte
Deel 6: Wetgeving, cultuur en persoonlijke vrijheid
Deel 7: Internationalisme

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