Objectivism, Subjectivism, Relativism and Vico’s place in the turn

Posted by DanielS on Friday, 26 December 2014 08:42.

neopolis
Toward a relative social and less sheerly objective view of our peoples
– i.e., in terms of our interests. 2,450 words

For those intelligent minds inquiring without the better of academia’s time tested structures in the humanities, but only proceeding of their will to make their way through erudition from their standpoint, their penchant in Western advocacy would have us return to modernity (were it possible) and objectivism.

To the academically inexperienced and untrained advocate of Western interests there are two grand disadvantages.

First, he is not appraised of the sublime workings and analyses of these scholarly apparati as they might be applied in our interests; and secondly, what he does know and hear about them tends to be vast perversions of the notions as passed through Jewish academia and media.

The well meaning Westerner thus sets about to cure us of all this hogwash, and would unbeknownst return us to obsolete tenets of modernity and objectivism - precursors to the very afflictions to our homeostasis that he seeks to cure, such as liberalism.

To him, “objectivism” is good. “Relativism” is bad.

He does not sufficiently appreciate that the analytic framework of objectivism, relativism and subjectivism is not inherently antagonistic to Western interests. The same would apply to a myriad of terms and concepts that have been misapplied against European interests and rather stupidly taken by White Nationalists as such - inherently bad or wrong. It is a temptation and an easy mistake, but a bad mistake – as these are deliberate traps set against European interests unbeknownst to those without a privileged vantage on the working of Jewish academics over these scholarly apparati.

Let me address just objectivism and relativism briefly.

Critique of objectivism ranges from what would correctly be seen as the most brazen and vulgar Jewish sophistry to the most sublime calculations of Heisenberg or Gödel.

However, when I critique objectivism it will tend to be heard by those outside of the academic humanities as if I am disposing of the framework which has yielded such fantastic scientific advances in its entirety, as if I am a Jew looking to make rhetorical tropes the king.

The truth is that there are limits and very real problems for us as a people in the pursuit of mere objectivism. It is among the central elements of our problems.

Plato being granted some permission by Christianity, thus having gravity in our traditions, will incline many to see in this argument a stupid straw man that all is relative. That I am promoting sheer sophistry and relativism. Not. In fact, hyper-relativism is an upshot of objectivism.

On the other hand, there is an aspect of rhetoric called casuistry which has also gotten a bad name from Jewish misuse. However, casuistry proper would take into account the sublime limitation of objectivism, taking the facts yielded by its experience and inquiry indeed BUT then making the best argument that it can on the basis of those facts in conjunction with one’s interests inherently social as they are. There is no denial of facts but a prioritizing of them as they accord to human concern. That is right.

Coming back to “scholarly apparatus”, Aristotle did see the limits of objectivism when applied to the social world, which he called praxis. Due to the overwhelming complexity of its interactive and ajentive properties, he saw that one must proceed in praxis not with the epistemic objectivity of theoria, but with phronesis, the practical judgment which is more like a working hypothesis if not an aesthetic judgment.

Vico contra objectivism. As one who was watching the use of scholarly apparatus among academia and its abuse in Jewish machinations, I could not help but see that anti-Cartesianism occupied a crucial move and Vico a seminal place in that regard.

Unlike others in WN however, I do not take it that because Jews have adopted an academic perspective that it is necessarily wrong. On the contrary, Jews are looking to protect their group interests, therefore if they are giving disproportionate attention to an academic perspective, you can be sure that it is because it helps to defend them against perils to their group interests. We too, as Europeans, should be looking to defend ourselves as a group, of course. Therefore, it would be absurd to oppose and not seriously consider a concept or perspective which has utility in defending group interests, just because it has been adopted by Jews or even because it has been exaggerated and abused as a notion by Jews. On the contrary, of course Jews will try to make it didactic and turn us off to it.

That’s how I’ve defiantly looked upon Vico - a pivotal figure in Western philosophy, the first salient critic of Descartes. From there, I inferred his implications as they worked their way through recent academics into social constructionism and heremeneutics.

And how terrible it is that we take an agentive view on the reconstruction of our people and a social view on the systemic, historical whole of our people – horrible.

On the contrary, of course I had respect for Vico for the utility of his perspective and for his place in the history of philosophy; but more for that than from having made a study of him directly.

It was not until Greg Johnson gave a lecture on Vico to Jez Turner’s group at The London Forum that I had occasion to look more deeply into Vico. GW and I requested an interview with Greg to discuss Vico (we are still on for that, so far as I know) and I had to do some more reading of Vico. Though it is sparkled with gems, I confess that much else of it is long, tedious, antiquated and could seem wholly irrelevant to one not aware of what Vico is doing in broad terms.

What Vico is doing is what WN should be doing and that is taking Aristotle’s theoria into the realm of praxis. There, we do not deny objective facts, but see them as relevant only as they concern us and our social interactive interests somewhere along the line.

To help me make the case as to why WN should accept Vico’s anti-Cartesianism I sought Greg Johnson for an interview. He accepted despite my lack of commensurate status, but I then proceeded to cause him to shy away again by introducing too much of my own subjective concern in my attempt to explain the questions that I have for him.

Nevertheless, I seem to have been able to bring him back to the table by assuring him then, as I reassure him now, that a few questions from me, with him answering on the topic of Vico would suffice. It could not be a forum for me to demonstrate sublime Vico moves, even if I wanted.

However, I will have these questions for Greg as I see their relevance to WN:

1. You have said that Vico could be the Marx of White Nationalism (only better). Why do you rank him as being so significant to WN?

2. What do you say to those who may contend that Vico diverts from the scientific rigor that is the true European way in pursuit of truth and our defense?

3. Can you place Vico historically and his influence in academic history so that those outside of the academic humanities or having been outside of higher academic institutions altogether may have a better appreciation of his significance?

4. Fourth question, if you are up for more of a challenge. I only bring it up because it is important both to Vico and our cause.

Vico apparently believes that a people begin with religion. Etymologically, that makes sense in terms of reining-in would-be liberal straying from the people (re-ligia - to re-bind). And if it is true that people begin with religion as a reconstruction of their interests, Europeans would need some kind of religious consensus. However, there are problems to that: with good reasons, many of us cannot commend Christianity; on the contrary, don’t we desperately need any religion of ours to have Jewish and predominant universalist influences removed from our religious auspices?

Moreover, despite Vico’s assertion that religion is prerequisite, GW has made a fine argument about a problem with that – which is that you don’t just start up and cobble together a new mass religion. Furthermore, both you and GW seem to hold to the Heideggerian (and Vichian as well?) view that the age and the background it provides our consciousness is not subject to agentive transformation - it cannot be deliberately changed. That would seem to leave us fatalistically helpless. Why do anything? But wouldn’t you (as Greg had indicated in his recent discussion of Heidegger), couldn’t you, hold out that some may grasp onto the first rays of the new age, recommending and taking some small steps to solidly ground us in a new direction, toward valuation of our peoplehood? Isn’t the “re” aspect of religion a deliberate act to invoke, in episode perhaps, reconstruction of the auspices of peoplehood? (and is “re” related to the word “king” as it is in Italian, and in the word regal, realm and relatives? etc.)

..........................

Prior to my recent delving, here was my cursory understanding of Vico’s place, some of my view on Vico from where I stood (which did have merit for observation of how Vico was taken and used):

My experience of substantial academics and subsequently, of what I perceive as holes in “WN” theory, has Vico’s philosophy occupying a pivotal turning point for Western philosophy, a crucial turn that WN advocates have generally missed to our detriment.

This is an occasion to illustrate and highlight that significance and to integrate his kind of thinking into our advocacy of European peoples.

GW is concerned with a close reading of our ontology, the reality of our people. That is a fair enough concern. After all, how can we even know, for example, what represents a liberal and pernicious liberal deviation from our people’s authentic nature if we do not have a rigorous grasp of the ontology of who we are? And with so much Jewish muck out there (and Marxist/capitalist liberalism), it is not hard to believe that authenticity could be obfuscated indeed.

GW is also concerned for a careful reading of Heidegger’s philosophy. What academic orientation that I have commends that as well.

Toward both projects, in ontology and in reading Heidegger generally, I see no great consternation in examining Vico.

Precisely because Vico was anti-Cartesian, he would be duty-bound of his own philosophy to maintain an adherence to reality as opposed to sheer imagination.

Nevertheless, he would heed Aristotle’s advice to not try to use theoria to transcend praxis; but in service of its practical negotiation (phronesis), would appreciate the expanse of language to liberate from the arbitrariness of mere facticity (upon reading Vico, he does do that) and facilitate the coherence of protracted historical and systemic conceptualization (which can then be tested, particularly where unhelpful).

Vico’s influence on Heidegger is evident in these concerns: anti-Caresianism, being against the misapplication of theoria to praxis, and very explicitly in Heidegger’s appreciation of the wisdom of the language.

An analytic philosopher might view Vico as tangential but I believe that in the end, it is the singularly analytic philosopher who would be off the mark.

...
As Vico is a bit foreign to GW, here is the first presentation I made to him as to the potential significance of Vico to us:

It’s safe to say that Vico has a pivotal place in philosophical history, certainly as one looks for key points from the Greeks to Descartes to Nietzsche, Heidegger and beyond.

Heidegger’s appreciation for the wisdom of the language for example, seems to come almost directly from Vico. There is perhaps not so much mediation between his anti-Cartesian, post-modern, hermeneutic turn and Vico either.

Some influence is also perceptible on Nietzsche, and is not incoherent with Heidegger.

I have mainly used Vico as a historical signpost as to where the significant challenge to Cartesianism began and conceived remedies, such as social constructionism and hermeneutic process, were initiated.

I have also held fast to the fact that Vico’s central point was anti- Cartesianism. One cannot be against Cartesianism and believe all is an illusionary word game detached from facts. That means, these ideas do not have to fly in the face of concern for ontology, reality, rigor, science - what I might call a more careful reading say, of what it means to be an Englishman, a European, a nation, etc. However, it allows for these facts to be gauged against and placed into their historical context.

That is surely significant.

Looking more carefully at Vico’s work, he is a bit better than one might have thought.

Again, as the first notable opponent to Cartesianism he should be harmless for the fact that his project is duty bound to deal with the truth of facts. However, his project is liberated from the myopia of scientism - which is probably a major source of European man’s illness - the imperviousness, liberalism, the arbitrariness, the mere facticity.
........
While we pursue and appreciate originality of thinking at MR, particularly in departure from those hide-bound to the F’s strictures, the charge of not pursuing originality per se may not be the greatest sin.

Think of the sacred, how it has been trampled by the scientism/liberalism continuum, linearity of modernity, reckless experimentalism in pursuit of endless progress. How by contrast the sacred can ensconce those patterns safely which are beyond empirical purview or too precious for the efficiency of empirical, scientific testing.

Again, the postmodern turn sees the wreckage of modernity and allows for the reconstruction of traditional practices ...and the sacral rite, the episode…all of course revisable and modified by new understandings..we can take the best of both traditional reconstruction and modernist pursuit of innovation…. but we CAN take the best of tradition and sacral rite. ..and history….we are not duty bound by a pledge to be original ex nihilo and to endlessly pursue novelty and new invention, trasformation without pause and elaboration.

The sacred..going back to the wisdom of the language that Heidegger and Vico valued.. sa – cred.. ..cred.. crede…sounds like something to go by..something in fact, cyclical, involving time and cycles, which if properly observed correspond with credibility.. the ability to establish historical continuity, coherence in protracted warrant… in a way that empirical myopia, focused on arbitrary presentation of the happenstance episode of circumstances does not afford. ..by contrast, the sacral episode re enacted does begin to build that social capital and with that the sacredness of the realm -sac-re-ment (kingdom minding).. sacral episode of re-ligion (reconnecting the realm, the kingdom).

Looking through Vico, one can see him talking about people beginning in religion; and in the etymological sense of religion you can see that having truth, as you know, religion - re -ligion, a re attachment to practices, to a realm of people, particularly featured in the sacred episode, which ensconces the essence (as opposed to the arbitrary) presented by the cycles of time..reconstructing..re..the king (Ital), the relatives, the realm.

DanielS

Perhaps the sacral episode facilitates culture, the cultivated turn, turning back to the systemic essence and homeostasis of peoplehood..

Tags: Activism, Anthropology, History, Political Philosophy, Social Sciences

Comments:

Posted by Guessedworker on Fri, 26 Dec 2014 13:47 | #

I am never sure, as a self-educated person, whether I have all the knowledge and connective patterns ready to hand to enter philosophical discussions such as this. But ...

Does not an anti-Cartesian approach to intellectual history take us into an academic contest rather than practik? How, for example, do we command the European Mind to be self-remembering and expressive on the basis of reaction? What reactionary philosophy of self-remembering and expression has ever existed, within or without nationalism?

In any case, is not Descartes just one strand in the search for firm, universal truths and an objective reality? Yes, OK, Cartesian objectivity is ultimately beyond Mind as such, hence the turn to empiricism. But is not that search a most European characteristic that pre-dates Descartes (ie, Thales, Pythagoras, Archimedes, Galen, Copernicus, Leonardo, Galileo, etc) and arguably constitutes not an unwelcome development in intellectual history ... a journey into self-estrangement ... but an imperfectly expressed yet inchoate and inescapable, northern hemisphere evolutionary strategy?

I prefer to undercut this whole question by looking at the qualities of thinking and consciousness which are available, hence:

Martin Heidegger spoke of two particular qualities of thinking which he perceived. These are calculative thinking and essential thinking. Calculative thinking is the kind of thinking we ordinarily employ as we seek to negotiate life and its challenges. It is particularly given to assessment, dissection, analysis, logic, etc. Its method is to unitise everything in its purview and then draw up an account of value for the purpose of comparison and decision. But its defining feature is not that but the clean disassociation of the object of thought from the thinker. The one becomes lost to the other.

Calculative thinking is not simply representational thinking. It is the way the mentational system functions when it is actively, rather than passively, operating as the seat of ordinary waking consciousness. But ordinary waking consciousness is a condition in which the subject has become unknowable to itself through the processes at hand ...

... and so on.

Daniel, you wrote:

... how can we even know, for example, what represents a liberal and pernicious liberal deviation from our people’s authentic nature if we do not have a rigorous grasp of the ontology of who we are? And with so much Jewish muck out there (and Marxist/capitalist liberalism), it is not hard to believe that authenticity could be obfuscated indeed.

I am not proposing a system for merely thinking about what is truly of us and what is not, or for the rejection of anything arrived at by thought (and certainly not rejection of calculative thinking and ordinary waking consciousness, which is plainly impossible). I am proposing the only true model of the “turn”, the only one without prescription, the only one based in the natural bi-form of the consciousness, and the one to which, if good is to be forthcoming at all, all other applied philosophies must adhere, notwithstanding its obscuration to them. I am proposing the one perfect philosophy of emergent authenticity (if I can ever get it out of my head, that is).

Posted by DanielS on Fri, 26 Dec 2014 14:47 | #

Posted by Guessedworker on December 26, 2014, 08:47 AM | #
I am never sure, as a self-educated person, whether I have all the knowledge and connective patterns ready to hand to enter philosophical discussions such as this. But ...

Does not an anti-Cartesian approach to intellectual history take us into an academic contest rather than practik?

No. In fact, engagement with praxis, phronesis and the philosophy of pragmatism are responses to the the impervious destruction of Cartesianism.

How, for example, do we command the European Mind to be self-remembering and expressive on the basis of reaction?

It isn’t really a reaction any more than recognition of the fact that we are bound to biological patterns and socially, interactively engaged.

What reactionary philosophy of self-remembering and expression has ever existed, within or without nationalism?

Probably none, but my reading of Vico reveals that nationalism was central and essential to his thinking, nationalism is of the people from their beginning.

In any case, is not Descartes just one strand in the search for firm, universal truths and an objective reality?

He is recognized as the salient point of philosophy’s objective, foundational quest, normally criticized as having gone beyond concern for natural interactive patterns and social concern.

Yes, OK, Cartesian objectivity is ultimately beyond Mind as such, hence the turn to empiricism.

Taken philosophically, empiricism here means the philosophy of Locke, Berkely and Hume and it is still Cartesian – the other end.

But is not that search a most European characteristic that pre-dates Descartes (ie, Thales, Pythagoras, Archimedes, Galen, Copernicus, Leonardo, Galileo, etc) and arguably constitutes not an unwelcome development in intellectual history ... a journey into self-estrangement ... but an imperfectly expressed yet inchoate and inescapable, northern hemisphere evolutionary strategy?

It is a quest – called modernity - that is a part of our European character, has yielded not only fantastic advances but some catastrophic results as well. That is why the post modern turn is proffered, to take advantage of the changes, advances and innovations of modernist pursuit where beneficial while having the sense and judgement to guide ourselves by our time immemorial forms, traditions and customs where there is nothing wrong with them – they only need reconstructing. When that is done deliberately and knowingly of alternatives, it is not reactionary.

I prefer to undercut this whole question by looking at the qualities of thinking and consciousness which are available, hence…

I don’t know why you want to undercut the question, that seems rather like a reductionism characteristic of modernity, of Cartesianism. I don’t know what chaff is here. The discussion is pretty meaty. What seems “Cartesian” about the approach you recommend is the traditionally psychological unit of analysis – the individual absent social interaction. Whereas sociology has the group as its unit of analysis and communicology has interaction as its unit of analysis. These are both probably better units of analysis through which to examine our cause.

Martin Heidegger spoke of two particular qualities of thinking which he perceived. These are calculative thinking and essential thinking. Calculative thinking is the kind of thinking we ordinarily employ as we seek to negotiate life and its challenges. It is particularly given to assessment, dissection, analysis, logic, etc. Its method is to unitise everything in its purview and then draw up an account of value for the purpose of comparison and decision. But its defining feature is not that but the clean disassociation of the object of thought from the thinker. The one becomes lost to the other.

Calculative thinking is not simply representational thinking. It is the way the mentational system functions when it is actively, rather than passively, operating as the seat of ordinary waking consciousness. But ordinary waking consciousness is a condition in which the subject has become unknowable to itself through the processes at hand ...
... and so on.

Well that is a way of describing objectivity and its ultimate attempt to separate knower from known within the psychological unit of analysis.

Daniel, you wrote:
... how can we even know, for example, what represents a liberal and pernicious liberal deviation from our people’s authentic nature if we do not have a rigorous grasp of the ontology of who we are? And with so much Jewish muck out there (and Marxist/capitalist liberalism), it is not hard to believe that authenticity could be obfuscated indeed.

I am not proposing a system for merely thinking about what is truly of us and what is not, or for the rejection of anything arrived at by thought (and certainly not rejection of calculative thinking and ordinary waking consciousness, which is plainly impossible). I am proposing the only true model of the “turn”, the only one without prescription, the only one based in the natural bi-form of the consciousness, and the one to which, if good is to be forthcoming at all, all other applied philosophies must adhere, notwithstanding its obscuration to them. I am proposing the one perfect philosophy of emergent authenticity (if I can ever get it out of my head, that is).

That sounds exciting and emergentism does seem to hold both interesting prospects and the possibility of corresponding quite well with the best of other extant philosophy.

On the other hand, the grail that you have against prescription is something that I don’t totally relate to, at least not yet. I would suspect and hope in the name of agency and alternative range of functional autonomy [to some non-toxic extent], that our better philosopher’s would prescribe that one act in accordance, naturally, with one’s and one’s peoples best interests.

Though perhaps I should shut up as it is I, as much as anyone, who yearns for a situation where our people simply find it so unnatural as to be impossible to act against our interests. Thus, I should perhaps commend that aspect of your project as well.

Posted by Guessedworker on Fri, 26 Dec 2014 23:48 | #

Daniel, a quote for a quote. You wrote:

That is why the post modern turn is proffered, to take advantage of the changes, advances and innovations of modernist pursuit where beneficial while having the sense and judgement to guide ourselves by our time immemorial forms, traditions and customs where there is nothing wrong with them – they only need reconstructing. When that is done deliberately and knowingly of alternatives, it is not reactionary.

... which is a point I believe I “answered” back in November last year:

http://majorityrights.com/weblog/comments/a_note_to_james_and_graham

There is permanence of a kind to be got from dipping our hands in the cool water, the endless baptismal moment, of presence to being.

Of course, for the most part we don’t know how or, if we know, we forget for great stretches of time, since our ordinary, tragic condition is precisely one of self-forgetting. So powerful is the mechanism of the personality (the “I” of our ordinary life), so all-consuming is the life of the world, so undirected and dream-like is our consciousness, so given is it to immersion in the phenomena we perceive within and without us, our experience quite excludes the hard, bright authenticity of real Identity. But there are happy accidents: rare neurological events when personality’s fractured world falls away, the mists part and Identity, the whole self, the sovereign process, unconceals itself to be known unto itself.

We must be clear that there is nothing essentialist or vitalist or pretentiously sacred in this moment, no res cogitans, nothing manufactured or imposed, nothing illusory in any way, nothing negative, nothing held back, nothing which can be added. What “is there” is not reducible or divisible. Because it has singularity it has unity, and because it has unity it has will. But it has it not as a subject but as a process of consciousness. Because it has consciousness it cannot blindly self-harm. It cannot be other than it is, and it is, and always was, the same - that which abides in light and nature.

The terms of this most human settlement do not change very much at the level of population. They simply collect. We can speak in the same way of permanence and impermanence, self-forgetting, unconcealment, nature, authenticity, unity, will, consciousness, and the good. And this is not merely a framework derived intellectually for the purpose of constructing an identitarianism of the kind that we are seeing today from the European New Right. Nothing can be constructed, nothing prescribed here and still be true. No traditionalism however ancient, no cultural or historical focus however well-grounded, no Frankenstinian neo-paganism, no artful reproduction of the European character will lead to that truth. For however much these things endear themselves to the aesthetic sensibility and the eye, yet they are never more than beautiful objects. And beauty leads only to beauty, and does not escape the trap. Beauty is finite. But the human creativity which interests us, and which inhabits this process of unconcealment, is infinite.

Perhaps the difficulty with approaching this estate is that in the Heideggerian model unconcealment is an epistemological process, but here it is used of identity, ie, in a metaphysical sense.

Posted by sacrament on Sun, 28 Dec 2014 23:55 | #

by contrast, the sacral episode re enacted does begin to build that social capital and with that the sacredness of the realm - sac-re-ment (kingdom minding).

Posted by JayDyerAtRI on Tue, 30 Dec 2014 09:58 | #

Jay Dyer describes the empirical end of the Cartesian duality as one which holds that all we can know comes through the senses; as opposed to our inborn, inherited traits (which he calls our “soul”); which has been, for example, evinced by DNA research.

http://www.redicecreations.com/radio/2014/12/RIR-141229.php

GW, for now at least, I will only comment that I believe that I understand what you have posted here:

Daniel, a quote for a quote. You wrote:

That is why the post modern turn is proffered, to take advantage of the changes, advances and innovations of modernist pursuit where beneficial while having the sense and judgement to guide ourselves by our time immemorial forms, traditions and customs where there is nothing wrong with them – they only need reconstructing. When that is done deliberately and knowingly of alternatives, it is not reactionary.

... which is a point I believe I “answered” back in November last year:

http://majorityrights.com/weblog/comments/a_note_to_james_and_graham

There is permanence of a kind to be got from dipping our hands in the cool water, the endless baptismal moment, of presence to being.

Of course, for the most part we don’t know how or, if we know, we forget for great stretches of time, since our ordinary, tragic condition is precisely one of self-forgetting. So powerful is the mechanism of the personality (the “I” of our ordinary life), so all-consuming is the life of the world, so undirected and dream-like is our consciousness, so given is it to immersion in the phenomena we perceive within and without us, our experience quite excludes the hard, bright authenticity of real Identity. But there are happy accidents: rare neurological events when personality’s fractured world falls away, the mists part and Identity, the whole self, the sovereign process, unconceals itself to be known unto itself.

We must be clear that there is nothing essentialist or vitalist or pretentiously sacred in this moment, no res cogitans, nothing manufactured or imposed, nothing illusory in any way, nothing negative, nothing held back, nothing which can be added. What “is there” is not reducible or divisible. Because it has singularity it has unity, and because it has unity it has will. But it has it not as a subject but as a process of consciousness. Because it has consciousness it cannot blindly self-harm. It cannot be other than it is, and it is, and always was, the same - that which abides in light and nature.

The terms of this most human settlement do not change very much at the level of population. They simply collect. We can speak in the same way of permanence and impermanence, self-forgetting, unconcealment, nature, authenticity, unity, will, consciousness, and the good. And this is not merely a framework derived intellectually for the purpose of constructing an identitarianism of the kind that we are seeing today from the European New Right. Nothing can be constructed, nothing prescribed here and still be true. No traditionalism however ancient, no cultural or historical focus however well-grounded, no Frankenstinian neo-paganism, no artful reproduction of the European character will lead to that truth. For however much these things endear themselves to the aesthetic sensibility and the eye, yet they are never more than beautiful objects. And beauty leads only to beauty, and does not escape the trap. Beauty is finite. But the human creativity which interests us, and which inhabits this process of unconcealment, is infinite.

Perhaps the difficulty with approaching this estate is that in the Heideggerian model unconcealment is an epistemological process, but here it is used of identity, ie, in a metaphysical sense.

Posted by DeWitt on Tue, 30 Dec 2014 10:19 | #

Brian DeWitt, What do Identitarians Want? Part 2

http://www.counter-currents.com/2014/12/what-do-identitarians-want-part-2/#more-52105

We contest utterly the decision made by the society itself to have no goal, and to frustrate the efforts of those who want to restore the majority to precedence over the individual. It is not possible to guarantee people absolute “human rights” and “freedom,” for example, because this is not an assessment of values, but a consensus to have no consensus of values. Without a social standard of what is valuable, society cannot function because it is directionless. Traditional identities then become meaningless as the ethnocultural group dissolves into an assortment of narcissistically self-defined individuals, all with their own causes..

A general strike of whites would be met with blithe indifference as all economic and cultural leverage is relocated to China & Hollywood, or diffused into individuals in the rarefied network of global trade. This globalization, sooner than pulling Western citizens into a “global village,” has simply shattered Western society from a functioning whole into competing sectors and individuals. The false, token morality of assisting “developing” countries through international capitalism comes at the cost of the development lost at home, and ultimately, economic independence.

Posted by Pierre de Craon on Tue, 30 Dec 2014 16:26 | #

Counter Currents is peasant fodder and not worth the effort.

The vocal functional illterates in our midst (the David Dukes, Greg Johnsons, Whitakers, Matt Parrots, Ramzipauls, Don Blacks et al) do our cause much harm.

They play into the enemy narrative of uncouth, angry gun-totting hillbillies.

Posted by Johnson Interview on Fri, 02 Jan 2015 06:33 | #

Greg Johnson interview on tap:

When I am settled down later in January, I promise we will finish this.

GJ

Posted by GW-Estrangement on Sun, 04 Jan 2015 15:52 | #

GW said:

Interesting that Richard Williamson calls subjectivism what you call objectivism. Pretty much. Of course, his focus is his own and not yours - he is seeing an atomising, individualising tendency where you see a focus on the object that excludes the self. Put these together and out pops the self-estranging, individualising relationship of “false Dasein” to the external world we are, as evolving organisms, bound to process.

Beautifully said. That GW is one heck of an articulate man.

Posted by Guessedworker on Sun, 04 Jan 2015 17:01 | #

Thanks for putting the typo right. Something more could be said about that, including the fact that Heidegger’s false Dasien is, of course, a state of witness in Time and Place rather than in Truth (ie, a bit like being socially constructed, but only a bit). So it will operate within negative qualitative parameters, ie, more badly, or maladaptively, at some times than others, and never at the optimum. Modernism, then, is a grand historical process of turning to the bad. For you, postmodernism is the process of turning away from the worst of that and towards a more vivifying collective life, while for Williamson sedevacantism and Catholic traditionalism constitute the process of rejecting modernist Rome’s false witness to God and accepting His true church.

There the similarity ends, because you believe that reason, as a trait of the mind, has its place in a true European life, while Williamson insists that only faith and God’s grace can give eternal life. You are right.

Here is Williamson’s original missive:

http://stmarcelinitiative.com/email/en-eleison-comments-by-mgr-williamson-issue-cccxc-390.html

Posted by DanielS on Mon, 05 Jan 2015 11:23 | #

To me, your presentation of Modernity and Post Modernity here, is very keenly said and takes it to a new level, a refined understanding.

Posted by DanielS on Thu, 08 Jan 2015 06:34 | #

To say that race is not a social construct is an attempt to escape language, communication and social interaction more broadly….it is to deny accountability, agency and warrant to assert how the facts of our race count.

Once cannot disengage from interaction. One cannot not communicate.

Even a scientific demonstration is a form of communication.

While it is true that verbal language provides a means of vast distortion, it is necessary to allow for its disengaging capacities in order to gauge the relevance and importance of a momentary act against the broad pattern.

To reject language for its capacity to distort is also to deny oneself girding of coherence through transcendence of the arbitrary, momentary view and to go beyond it to reconstruct patterns (e.g., of our people); which can otherwise be re-directed by imposed or arbitrary happenstance of empirical fact (rather than availing ourselves of the facts as correctly serving, in recognition if not determination of how the facts count); and it is to deny ourselves the capacity to correct with historical, spatial, linguistic breadth the misrepresentation and distortion of facts, the imposition of minor, less important facts (less relevant to the well being of our people and with that, our individuals in the long run) through language games adopted by the naive or promoted by antagonists.

In quest of uncontaminated certainty and foundational grounding, there is a kind of physics envy and quest for digital thinking (I guess it could be called) that leaves practitioners prone to false either/or thinking and with that, sweeping aside many useful and important ideas - in effect, throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

Posted by Liberal Hegemony on Mon, 19 Jan 2015 08:15 | #

Well said article by Michael Parish

alternative-right.blogspot.com/2015/01/liberal-hegemony.html#more

I have been trying to disabuse listeners of Duke’s theories with arguments similar as this:

LIBERAL HEGEMONY

When an ideology gains control of the institutions that shape opinion, it is said to have gained hegemony. At this point, something happens to public discourse. As the tenets of the ideology are considered objective and not subjective, all contenders must embrace them to keep their corner of the ring. Its ends cannot be contested, only their means. One cannot propose an altogether different value system, but only critique ways of realizing it.

Rather than clashing ideologies, we have clashing methods. The result is the assimilation of all competition into the dominant ideology and their reduction to a shadow of it. There are thus no options beyond minor variations in the same type of thought. In Western democracies, this is the current condition in regards to Liberalism.

One cannot reject the goals of Liberalism, only the methods used to achieve them. The shift in the debate surrounding “affirmative action” exemplifies this perfectly. It was only 15-20 years ago that Conservatives rejected the policy on conservative grounds: namely that it undermined both the interests of White Americans (the country’s historic majority) and the principle of meritocracy, compromising the function of institutions required to hire and promote unqualified individuals.

This argument, however, no longer functions with a Left for which neither White interests nor individual merits are a concern. They are, however, committed to the advancement of Blacks, causing Conservatives to modify their opposition:

Affirmative action is now to be opposed, not because it is detrimental to Whites, but because it is a form of hidden “racism” toward Blacks, as it is founded on the assumption that they are incapable of succeeding on their own without government assistance. In this sense it taints their “genuine accomplishments” and serves only to exacerbate White resentments. It is therefore the Democrats who are the real racists.

In following this logic, so called “Conservatives” are effectively abdicating their own values and becoming merely adjunct of the Lefts, undoing the conditions necessary for their own success and instead furthering Liberal hegemony.

What are the dynamics underlying this situation? Possible explanations include either Jewish cultural subversion or the classical liberal roots of American Conservatism. I find both explanations unsatisfying.

In their quest to uncover the origin of our problems in metaphysics, rightists have lost sight of the phenomena’s psychological dimension and the essence of society, which has an inbuilt bias towards inclusiveness.

Liberalism appeals to what are basic social values: the avoidance of exclusion and insult, and the providing of fair treatment to the individual. It is difficult to argue against these, and in criticizing Liberalism one appears to be doing just that. This is the key to Liberalism’s power, to why it can appear as reality and not ideology. The logic underlying liberal positions and arguments realizes this in a very linear way:

It is unkind, prima facie, to exclude people from society, because the essence of society is inclusion. This gives Liberalism an inbuilt advantage.

For example, if a case for borders cannot be immediately and clearly made, then the idea or abolishing them or simply ignoring them becomes privileged. Conservatives find that they have to make a case for defending something that already exists in law, while Liberals assume a position of status quo dominance for something that is actually outside the law, effectively reversing the legal-illegal polarity.

Not actually a contradiction.
Liberalism’s hegemony over the social narrative also allows it to impose the idea that it is unkind to allow immigrants, once in the country, to subsist without healthcare and housing, so the state has to provide these as well. A list of similar examples could proceed into eternity.

Conservatism has never enjoyed this natural advantage. It is based on the principle of the particular above the universal and the concrete above the abstract; it emphasizes differences rather than similarities. Its worth is that it critiques society, but by critiquing society it also places itself in a position where society critiques it.

It starts out one remove or more from the level of meaningless feelgood rhetoric that people feel comfortable agreeing on. This is its inbuilt handicap vis-à-vis Liberalism. Conservatism is always in need of a case being made for it. In this sense Liberalism always has a head start on it.

Conservatism is innately discriminatory, which is its virtue and functionality, but because of this, on the surface, it appears unjust. It is unkind to exclude people from our society, yes; but if we don’t, we risk bastardizing it and fostering yet more social conflicts than we already have. This type of thinking is more difficult for the average person to access or agree to, which, in a world of tweets, texting, and online pizza orders, marginalizes those who think like this.

Mass democracy is by nature driven by individual self-interest; it transforms society into a marketplace in which nearly everything can be understood in commercial jargon. This explains the emergence, exacerbated by the mass media, of the split between image and reality, one that echoes the world of advertising.

This of course is something that has always existed, but is magnified when everyone is advertising and marketing themselves – as an employee, as a friend, as a romantic partner – to others who are doing the same.

Mutual satisfaction through cooperation requires that an image be presented in a fashion that is as easily understood by as many as possible. Applied to politics you have Liberalism in its current and hopefully final incarnation. It should come as no surprise that those carrying the “Conservative” tag, like everyone else, are just following trends, and falling in with the dominant hegemony.

Published at Alternative Right’s old site in January 2013.

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