Or:
“The existence of Buddhism
should scare the White Nationalists
who can’t think of anything but Jews”
by Cesar Tort
In a previous post I talked about my golden rule: never read those authors or philosophers who write in obscure prose.
I confess that, in the past, when I was researching the pseudoscience called psychiatry, I had to read a book of one of those authors who deliberately and unnecessarily wrote in extremely opaque prose. I refer to Michel Foucault’s analysis of how the “mental health” movement was launched after an edict of Louis XIV that created, under the umbrella name of “General Hospital,” a prison in Paris for people who had not broken any law. While I found historical data in Foucault’s Madness and Civilization germane to my investigation, I also found much tasteless sludge in his text from a strictly literary, didactic viewpoint.
I mention this only to show that I can decipher opaque prose if I wish. But only in an exceptional case, where no other historical works on the same subject were available, I dared to break my rule.
Such was not the case when I tried to read Julius Evola’s Metaphysics of Sex. After a few pages I realized that it was written deliberately in opaque prose and, since I was not researching the subject to write a book (as was the case of my study of psychiatry), my copy of Evola’s book ended in the trash can.
This illustrates my extreme passion for crystal-clear and distinct language, and my loathsome even for the great minds of Western thought that refuse to write in readable prose. In fact, what I liked the most in Leszek Kolakowski’s monumental, three-volume deconstruction of Marxism was the passage where he said that every metaphysical insight of Hegel had already been written before him, and in much clearer language. Kolakowski’s honest sentence contrasted sharply with Hans Küng’s dishonest appraisal of Hegel in a heavy treatise of my library that, to date, has escaped the trash can, The Incarnation of God: An Introduction to Hegel’s Theological Thought as Prolegomena to a Future Christology where Küng dishonestly claims that Hegel wrote his philosophy in pristine prose!
One of my favorite books is Matthew Stewart’s The Truth About Everything: An Irreverent History of Philosophy. Stewart goes as far as trying to debunk almost the entire field of philosophy, partly for the specious use of obscure prose in many of the works of the greatest thinkers. Just for the record, of the Western philosophical canon I only like Augustine’s Confessions and Nietzsche’s Ecce homo in spite of the fact that both autobiographers became mad; Voltaire’s Candide, Schopenhauer’s Essays and Aphorisms and John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty, which I still like because free speech has now been curtailed in Mill’s native country. All of these works were written in clear prose. The Truth About Everything corroborated what I already knew but was afraid to say aloud. I would like to explain this book’s thesis not by quoting Stewart but by pointing out to something that I have figured out by myself.
The accepted view about Kant’s metaphysics is that it’s too complex and profound for the layman to understand. Those who study the snares of language, on the other hand, point out that Confucius detected the trick of using obscure language to pose as a profound metaphysician. Unlike the Chinese, the West hasn’t learned to detect this trick, and even today white nationalist sites such as Counter-Currents have presented obfuscating authors as deep thinkers (Alex Dugin, only the most recent case). A single example will suffice: If the interpretation of the universities is right, that is to say, if philosophers are so profound that only a few can grasp their ideas, how do you explain that Kant, the philosopher who introduced such obscurantism into the modern West, has been interpreted in dramatically different ways by such giants as Schopenhauer and Heidegger?
The answer is obvious. The goal of gratuitously obscuring language is that, by the heaviest and densest imaginable screens of smoke thus lifted, the philosopher’s System becomes impregnable to criticism. For instance, after honest psychologists found fatal flaws in Sigmund Freud’s edifice, the orthodox Freudian Jacques Lacan reacted by translating all of Freud’s claims, written in clear German prose, to an opaque French that only the initiate could understand. But of course: we don’t need to spend precious time trying to decipher the Ecrits of the charlatan Lacan to refute Freud. Just go directly to Freud’s original texts!
Today Counter-Currents published an erudite Evola essay on Buddhism, where Evola tries to spare the founder of Buddhism from any criticism from the Right by claiming that his philosophy was not effeminate like today’s liberals, but virile. But Evola represents exactly what is wrong with complex philosophizing that moved me to put one of his books into the trash can. In his essay published at C-C he even claims that Zen stands for a return to the original Buddhism, something that is patently untrue (see below). If you ask exactly what is Evola leaving out I would say that Buddhism contained the seeds of race treason for the Aryans in India. In a recent comment at this blog, Stubbs said:
Our race has had some really bad ideas over the ages: Alexander the Great telling all his soldiers to miscegenate, the Roman Empire making “citizens” out of aliens, the Aryan prince who founded Buddhism abolishing the caste system, White rulers in Egypt and Persia letting their countries go dark, not to mention the simple infighting and disorganization that would make our race easy prey for Jews or Muslims [and Mongols I would add]. Frankly, the existence of Buddhism should scare the White Nationalists who can’t think of anything but Jews.
Stubbs is right, and to prove it I have no choice but to debunk one of the most venerated religious icons of the West after the 1960s started to replace Christianity with Oriental cults and New Age nonsense.
♣
In my twenties I read The Three Pillars of Zen and was greatly impressed by the enlightenment experience (“satori”) of a Japanese executive in that book of Philip Kapleau. Since there were no Zen schools in the city where I lived it’s no coincidence that the same month that I became interested in Zen I fell, instead, in the Eschatology cult. Infinite soul odysseys I had to cross through before I stopped seeking my salvation in mysticism, cults or the paranormal. In the remainder of this entry I’ll dwell with some of my conclusions about Buddhism after my long, dark night of the soul was finally over.
Pali is an ancient dialect of India, the equivalent for Buddhists of Latin for Roman Catholics. A text called Tripiṭaka, written in Pali, is the oldest about the life of Buddha.
“Tripiṭaka” means three baskets or divisions called the Pali Canon: Digha Nikaya (Dialogues of the Buddha), Majjhima Nikaya (Sayings of average length) and Samyutta Nikaya (Similar sayings). This “Bible” of Buddhism is formidable: a mountain of literature that secular laymen cannot address as easily as the Torah, the New Testament or the Koran. Fortunately, Wisdom Publications sells a splendid English edition with extensive introductions, summaries of the sutras attributed to Buddha, and hundreds of notes and appendices in three volumes which together consist of more than 4,000 pages. Unlike the extensive Talmud the Pali Canon is, as to abstract ideas, very dense. In addition to abstract teachings it contains interpretations and the Order’s rule attributed to Buddha. The recent translation to English is an invaluable collection for those interested in Buddhism who don’t know Pali. However, since I follow my golden rule the dense psycho-metaphysics in The Long Discourses of The Buddha: a translation of the Digha Nikaya by Maurice Walshe (1995), The Middle Length Discourses of The Buddha: a translation of the Majjhima Nikaya by Bhikkhu Nanamoli (1995), and The Connected Discourses of The Buddha: a translation of the Samyutta Nikaya by Bhikkhu Bodhi (2002) might find a place in my personal library, but I’ll never read them from cover to cover. Never.
Evola did not read them either, since this translation is so recent. But whether we like it or not we have to start from the Pali Canon, aided by modern commentators, to speculate about who might have been the historical Buddha, if he was a historical figure at all. For the moment I must rely on other scholars for what I venture to say below.
The Buddha of dogma
Buddha was born between the fifth and sixth centuries B.C. in a border of what is now Nepal and India (incidentally, a border crossed by one of my brothers in one of his searches for the “spiritual”). This seems to be true story. But legend says that Buddha was conceived when his virginal mother dreamed with a white elephant, which of course brings to mind the gospel’s nativity legends.
(Birthplace of Siddhatta in Lumbini)
Very few know that the narrative of the gospels of Matthew and Luke about the virginal conception of Jesus is not original. The Tripiṭaka also mentions a sage and a king worshiping the baby Buddha, which appears centuries after in the gospel narrative of the Magi. Moreover, the texts say that when Buddha was about thirty he suffered temptations by a devil (like Jesus in the desert at the same age) that wanted to prevent his enlightenment. And like the famous Sermon on the Mount of Jesus, Buddha is credited with the famous Sermon of Fire in which he speaks of the passions and human deceit (“Everything is on fire …”).
Like Jesus, Buddha is regarded by tradition as a man of extraordinary compassion for the downcast, and believers also attribute to him diverse miracles, like the Enlightened One having walked on the sea and calmed storms; stopped a plague in a village; more spectacular levitations than the ones attributed to Catholic saints, and even bilocations of his body. Like the Christian gospel, when Buddha died tradition says that the earth trembled and that the light of heaven was darkened. New Testament scholar Randel Helms suspects that the narrative of Jesus walking on the sea was modeled on Buddhist legends.
The Pali Canon claims that at thirty-five Buddha attained enlightenment; that the man reached the level of awakening from a world of illusion and thus became a “buddha” (legend speaks of previous Buddhas, like the Buddha Amida or the Buddha Kakusandha, but according to scholarship they are not historical figures). It is fascinating to compare the oldest and concise narrative of Buddha’s enlightenment with the legends about the same event, developed in much more recent types of Buddhism, like the Japanese Zen. But before doing it let’s think of the development of the Easter story in the New Testament.
The earliest New Testament writing, the epistles of Paul, do not talk of empty tombs, appearances of the risen Jesus, or the Ascension: they are only tortuous proclamations of faith without colorful resurrection narratives.
The Gospel of Mark, the earliest of the canonical gospels, speaks for the first time of the empty tomb but no Ascension or postmortem appearances of the risen Jesus to his disciples.
Matthew and Luke do talk about the apparitions, but Matthew omits Jesus’ Ascension into heaven.
Luke’s Acts mention the ascension but the theological type of Christology like “In the beginning was the Word…” was not yet developed.
Only in the last of the gospels to be written, the gospel of John, appears a developed Christology interwoven with other narratives about Jesus.
For the critical reader it is obvious that the writers of the New Testament added layer after layer of inspiring legends to a more primordial tale. And if the resurrection is the top event in Christianity, the Buddha’s enlightenment after his last meditation under the Bo tree is the maximum event for Buddhism. The story that conquered my imagination about the Buddha when I just left behind my teens was precisely the experience of the satori, or enlightenment, when he saw the planet Venus in the morning after his final session under the tree. “Wonder of wonders!” the Buddha said aloud. “Intrinsically all living beings are buddhas, endowed with wisdom and virtue, but because men’s minds have become inverted through delusive thinking they fail to perceive this.”
The mistake I made at twenty was taking for real the late and extremely elaborated narratives about the Buddha’s enlightenment: the story told by Yasutani-roshi in The Three Pillars of Zen. At that time I could not think as modern historians do: study the oldest texts if you want to speculate about what might have happened in history. However, had I read the new, most scholarly edition of the Tripiṭaka instead of The Three Pillars of Zen, no numinous spirit would have awakened in my mind, a spirit sparked by my reading the words of the roshi.
Once “enlightened,” the official story goes, Buddha’s mission was to teach the dharma to mankind and he delivered his first sermon. Rewording some later texts, the starting point of his teaching seems to be something like this: “Here is the sacred truth of suffering. Birth is suffering, aging is suffering… Here is the truth about the origin of suffering: desire.” And the way to suppress human suffering involves an austere life, a happy golden mean between the ruthless asceticism that the saint practiced and the worldly life. The eightfold path or “path to liberation” leads to nirvana.
The Siddhatta of history?
This eightfold path suggests that Buddha taught a kind of what Scientologists call “OT levels.” We could see the arhats or “perfected ones” as the “clears” or “liberated” in Ronald Hubbard’s psycho-babble cult. The Tripiṭaka also says that the five ascetics who had departed him then recognized the Buddha, underwent their “path to liberation” and reached the level of arhats. Buddha would be the leader of a sect with half hundred arhats or perfected men.
My comparison to modern, destructive cults may sound pretty irreverent, but that’s precisely what the irreverent history of Western philosophy by Matthew Stewart taught me. If we can mock the Wisdom of the West, why aren’t we allowed to mock the Wisdom of the East too?
White nationalist circles are fond of saying that Buddha was ethnically Aryan. But “The Buddha” is a title similar to “The Christ” of Christians to designate the man Jesus, or “The Prophet” of Muslims to refer to Mohammed. Unlike Jesus or Mohammed, the stories about Buddha were written several centuries after his death. If we want to speculate from such late legends, we must start with the name itself. As I never call “Christ” the human Jesus because I’m not Christian, from this line on I won’t call “Buddha” the human Siddhatta because I’m not Buddhist.
Sidhartha Gautama is Sanskrit for Siddhattha Gotama in Pali, the language that perhaps the founder of the religion spoke. If he existed he would have been called “Siddhatta” (Gotama was the name of his father). A person who has reached the “buddha” level simply means that he is an “enlightened one,” as the word Christ means “anointed one” in Greek (i.e., the messiah).
Like the charlatan Hubbard, who obscured his message with a mountain of unnecessary neologisms for terms already known in previous esoteric movements, Siddhatta was not original. Alara Kalama, his first teacher, had told Siddhatta that he, Siddhatta’s master, had reached “the sphere of nothing,” and his second teacher taught him to achieve “the sphere without perception and without no perception.” Whatever they told him in real life, these cryptic thoughts would inspire Siddhatta about his idea of the nirvana. Like Hubbard, all he did was to change the names and claim that “nirvana” was a plane superior to our own plane of existence.
After dropping his first teachers, and like the sanctimonious Christians of later centuries, it seems that Siddhatta practiced severe asceticism, increasingly eating less rice. Later artistic representations depict the anorexic Siddhatta with the skin of his stomach appearing almost next to his spine. The ancient text Majjhima Nikaya puts in Siddhatta’s mouth these words: “My buttocks seem wild ox hoof.” Siddhatta felt the danger of dying and accepted milk and rice offered by a peasant girl. He recovered gradually and his first disciples abandoned him after he quitted ascetics. Legend tells us that after surpassing the temptations of the devil, in his meditation sessions Siddhatta retrieved the memories of his past existences. (The founder of another religion, Hubbard, also claimed having remembered his past lives.)
Whether these stories were historical or not, may I remind my readers the most elementary rules of logic. Clearly, if reincarnation does not exist, both Hinduism and Buddhism are based on deception. Similarly, if Yahweh didn’t speak to Moses at Sinai, Judaism is based on a lie. If Jesus was not resurrected, Christianity is based on a lie. And if the angel did not speak to Muhammad, Islam is based on a lie. The only difference with the doctrine of reincarnation is that it was not original of Siddhatta: it preceded him within the metaphysical tradition of his homeland. But the postmodern psyche is shaped so that the mere fact that such an ancient doctrine enjoys wide acceptance makes it respectable.
Siddhatta visited the house of his father. Legend tells us that Yasodhara, the wife Siddhatta had abandoned, fell under his feet. Siddhatta’s father asked his son to establish the rule that no child could be ordered monk of the new religion, unless he obtained permission of his father. Siddhatta nodded. If the anecdote is historical it proves that the now “enlightened” man allowed himself to be treated like a child, again.
(Dhâmek Stûpa in Sârnâth, India, site of the first teaching of Siddhatta)
In Jetavana Siddhatta founded a famous monastery which became his headquarters and where he gave his sermons. The movement grew and soon many monasteries were founded in the major towns of the valley of Ganges. The Hindus believed that Siddhatta had a special trick for galvanic attraction. As Mother Teresa would later do also in India, Siddhatta visited the patients: a PR trick we see even in the careers of politicians during election campaigns.
Siddhatta died of old age, and it is instructive to know that before dying he became seriously ill. Similar to what the leader of the Church of Scientology, David Miscavige, said after his guru died in 1986—that Hubbard voluntarily got rid of his body—, Siddhatta’s followers believe that he passed away voluntarily. He was cremated; his relics divided to the satisfaction of the various groups.
♣
The central Buddhist doctrine, that suffering is caused by attachment to life, is a typical oriental escape from Life. After the magnificent sculptures in classical times of young Aryan bodies, the Eastern spirit of apathy and resignation (see my recent quote of Will Durant at Occidental Dissent) was reflected in Greek art through sculptures of sick old men. What a difference with the self-image of the Hellenes when Athens was at its height!
The other Siddhatta doctrine, that overcoming worldly attachment overcomes suffering, is the perfect corollary of such a pessimistic worldview. It is surprising that the religions that arose on dry soil, like Judaism and Christianity, have fantasized about a utopian future while moist religions, such as Buddhism and other Indian cults, preach the annihilation of the desire: one of the oldest definitions of nirvana. The central belief of Buddhism is that, if we get rid of attachment, we free ourselves from suffering. From this standpoint you will understand why devout Buddhists meditate hour after hour. The object is, to put it in contemporary terms, to turn the ego faculty off, an ego from which all suffering is derived.
Anyone who believes that we must cast out our desires would do well to shoot himself: the most direct way to destroy the ego, and forever. Siddhatta’s followers would object because of their sacred belief in the reincarnation chain, which condemns the suicidal individual to another, and probably worse, life. I remember how I was disappointed by the author of The Three Pillars of Zen while reading another of his books in a bookstore. The now “roshi-Kapleau” condemned both suicide and euthanasia. But the concept of nirvana is much like what we may experience after death: going nowhere, as we were before birth.
The painful way that the historical Siddhatta died contrasts with the serene depictions in Buddhist art. This is why in this post I did not reproduce any artistic iconography of India’s saint. They are all flawed and depict the Buddha of dogma, not the Siddhatta of history. More fundamental is the fact that the doctrine of reincarnation, as understood by Hinduists, Buddhists, Scientologists and many New Agers, is cowardly and un-Aryan.
Pace Evola I see no Übermensch in Siddhatta or in early Buddhism.
68 replies on “On Buddha & Evola”
I once heard a guy say that if he was a Christian, he would go around killing young children. His rationale was that if they were allowed to live they might sin or reject Jesus and suffer for eternity in hell, but if he killed them before they had the chance to sin they would automatically go to heaven.
He acknowledged that he would certainly be sent to hell for killing a bunch of children, but in that case he would suffer eternally to save everyone he could, whereas Jesus only suffered temporarily to save some of those he could, making himself both more merciful and more self-sacrificing than Jesus.
I guess that’s what happens when you start thinking about these things too hard.
In the same vein, Muslims should be glad if “Islamophobia” ends with a Holocaust. After all, supposedly they love death and the virgins of the Hereafter.
Chechar, you say at the end of your article that belief in reincarnation is “coward[ly] and un-Aryan”.
You give no reasons for this claim of “coward[ly] and un-Aryan”. What, if any, is your reasoning for your claim?
Because the world, the only world is here.
Chechar, regarding my question as to your reasons for condemning a belief in reincarnation, you replied “Because the world, the only world is here.”
Okay, that makes your position very clear: In other words, you believe that our existence ends with the death of our physical body, and that any belief in any kind of afterlife existence, including a belief in reincarnation, is “coward[ly] and un-Aryan”. Cowardly because one refuses to admit to oneself that there is no afterlife of any kind. And un-Aryan because you presume that an Aryan should be brave enough to face what you believe is the certainty of no afterlife. Okay, that’s very clear.
I guess that makes me a coward and un-Aryan, as per your judgement.
Well, I do believe that our conscious beliefs about the afterlife make no substantial difference as to what our afterlife experiences will be, so I don’t see any need to “convert” you so as to “save” you. I appreciate your website for other reasons, including your exposure of Christianity as one of the foundations of the ongoing destruction of our race.
If something of our personal identity survives after death, my guess is that that would be something different from what (to my mind) is the naïve believe in reincarnation: what many Hindus believe. The ultimate nature of the universe (and therefore the Self) is unknown. But I hate to speculate on these matters when the house burns. That’s why I said in another comment of this thread that such speculation is “historically premature”. Putting the cart before the horse means forgetting all metaphysics until the race has been saved from extinction. Otherwise we are wasting our neurons in stuff that is far beyond our present mental capabilities.
Because the world, the only world is here.
Similar to reincarnation but totally different is Eternal Recurrence or Eternal Return in which you have to live the same life again and again exactly as it is and was forever. This was Nietzsche’s philosophy. It may not be true but to live a life as if it were true is a core Aryan principle. Everything you do really matters as you have to repeat it again for eternity. Faith and action become incredibly important as this is your one and only shot – make every day one you would gladly live again!
But that version of personal immortality is not Nietzsche’s original; he stole that page from Heraclitus. A real nightmare: think of those babies who right after being born were ritually sacrificed by their own parents. They never got a chance in life and you want that for all eternity…??
It’s not what I want but what may be true. I’d rather live different permutations of a life or experience different ones but then that wouldn’t actually be me, I’d be someone else.
In any case it’s not a bad idea to live life as if it were true. I think this is how Nietzsche regarded it and how he thought the Superman should live.
I believe that was part of Nietzsche’s psychic suicide. Never forget that when he started to harbor these thoughts of eternal recurrence he was already on the slippery slope to the abyss. I have read a few biographies about Nietzsche and his internal life and I am tempted to write my own essay on why he became mad from 1889 to 1900.
Maybe only the Superman can cope and exalt in that reality. All others go mad!
It does seem to me that the moment that has just passed is eternal and unchanging. You cannot undo it.
No, AngloAmerikan. That was Nietzsche’s psychotic defense mechanism. Remember that after his breakdown he even ate some of his faces. You play with fire when you say a vehement “Yes!” to even the cruelest aspects of life. It’s the opposite extreme (both pathological) of what the so-called “Buddha” did: a vehement “No!” to life.
I can’t get over the notion that the moment in the past bears an uncanny resemblance to the eternal recurrence. It’s like locked in time and space.
As for saying “yes!” to cruelty, don’t we do that all the time? We think it’s fine that we grow old and die so that the race can improve or that an unfit baby self aborted (it was for the best they will say), nature being cruel to be kind and so on and so forth.
Also, are you saying you are playing with fire when you say a vehement “Yes!” to even the finest aspects of life? Surely not! The good outweighs the bad and a life without struggle may hardly be worth living. What does not kill me makes me stronger – isn’t that a central tenet of the cause?
But we are talking of two different things. Since I am an autobiographer first and philosopher second, I pay more attention to why Nietzsche got mad. All of my POV about that crazy ring of the eternal return of the identical has to do with the fact that he spent almost twelve years mad after believing it, under the care of his mother and sister, and, according with my analysis (which I’ve yet to publish), the Heraclitus doctrine is related to Nietzsche’s psychic fall: a failed defense mechanism for biographical issues previous to his fall.
Cannot explain in mere short comments. For the moment have you read Stefan Zweig’s bio of Nietzsche, The Struggle with the Daimon?
The suprahumanist conception of history is no longer linear, but rather three-dimensional: inextricably linked to that unidimensional space which is the consciousness of every human being. Every human consciousness is the room occupied by a present. This present is three-dimensional, and the three dimensions – bestowed at the same time as the three dimensions of physical space – are actuality, past and future.
Concepts such as ‘regress’, ‘conservation’ or ‘progress’ lose their meaning in the suprahumanist discourse and are sometimes confused with one another. In the one-dimensionality in which we project the historical sphere, this one forms a circle – an eternal recurrence – where every ‘progress’ is also a ‘regress’. Here lies the enigma proposed by Nietzsche with the mythemes of the Eternal Return and the High Noontide. The identical that returns is of a biological order, and the same only from a material – not an historical – point of view; historic is, on the other hand, the diversity – the appearance of new forms which may provoke the rupture of time – Zeitumbruch – and regenerate history.
And here lies the pointless of all such metaphysical digressions in times when Whites and the West are in grave danger of extinction—that’s why I reproduced today the painting of de Chirico about “the great metaphysician”!
“But that version of personal immortality is not Nietzsche’s original; he stole that page from Heraclitus. A real nightmare: think of those babies who right after being born were ritually sacrificed by their own parents. They never got a chance in life and you want that for all eternity”
I saw that in a book uhmm “The Unbearable Lightness of Being” by a communist jew (¿?)
Sorry but that was what I thought back in 1976, when I didn’t read English at all.
SO TRUE!! I certainly learned a lot from this detailed report, Chechar. Thanks.
I really appreciate this site in general but as a long time reader of Evola’s work I must point out your criticism is a bit rushed.
I would like you to take your time to visit this site that has its focus on true metaphysics and not moralistic religions:
http://aryan-buddhism.blogspot.it/
Thank you
I second that. Excellent PDF files.
That website is fantastic!
But what on earth is “true metaphysics”? Couldn’t metaphysics per se be the escape from reality that Nietzsche and others so harshly criticized? What if you reject all metaphysics (Eastern and Western) at this stage of history as “premature speculation”?
Do you know that, like me, Nietzsche didn’t waste his time in reading the so-called metaphysical “giants” of his nation, Kant and Hegel? Aren’t we allowed to despise all metaphysics that forget, and actually betray, the real world (like an Arian abolishing the India case systems in his very cult)? Why should I consider seriously such a dense psycho-philosophical System when the most important thing was betrayed? Why?
Below, my quote at Occidental Dissent that I linked in the above article:
Although the well-known American historian Will Durant was almost the opposite of a racialist historian, what he says at the beginning of the chapter “From Aristotle to the Renaissance” in his bestselling history of philosophy is germane to understand why the cultural miscegenation that Alexander promoted was poisonous for the still adolescent Greek psyche (no ellipsis added between unquoted paragraphs):
Quote:
When, in 399 b. c, Socrates was put to death, the soul of Athens died with him, lingering only in his proud pupil, Plato. And when Philip of Macedon defeated the Athenians at Chaeronea in 338 b. c, and Alexander burned the great city of Thebes to the ground three years later, even the ostentatious sparing of Pindar’s home could not cover up the fact that Athenian independence, in government and in thought, was irrevocably destroyed.
The domination of Greek philosophy by the Macedonian Aristotle mirrored the political subjection of Greece by the virile and younger peoples of the north. The death of Alexander (323 b. c.) quickened this process of decay. The boy-emperor, barbarian though he remained after all of Aristotle’s tutoring, had yet learned to revere the rich culture of Greece, and had dreamed of spreading that culture through the Orient in the wake of his victorious armies. The development of Greek commerce, and the multiplication of Greek trading posts throughout Asia Minor, had provided an economic basis for the unification of this region as part of an Hellenic empire; and Alexander hoped that from these busy stations Greek thought, as well as Greek goods, would radiate and conquer.
But he had underrated the inertia and resistance of the Oriental mind, and the mass and depth of Oriental culture. It was only a youthful fancy, after all, to suppose that so immature and unstable a civilization as that of Greece could be imposed upon a civilization immeasurably more widespread, and rooted in the most venerable traditions.
The quantity of Asia proved too much for the quality of Greece. Alexander himself, in the hour of his triumph, was conquered by the soul of the East; he married (among several ladies) the daughter of Darius; he adopted the Persian diadem and robe of state; he introduced into Europe the Oriental notion of the divine right of kings; and at last he astonished a sceptic Greece by announcing, in magnificent Eastern style, that he was a god. Greece laughed; and Alexander drank himself to death.
This subtle infusion of an Asiatic soul into the wearied body of the master Greek was followed rapidly by the pouring of Oriental cults and faiths into Greece along those very lines of communication which the young conqueror had opened up; the broken dykes let in the ocean of Eastern thought upon the lowlands of the still adolescent European mind. The mystic and superstitious faiths which had taken root among the poorer people of Hellas were reinforced and spread about; and the Oriental spirit of apathy and resignation found a ready soil in decadent and despondent Greece.
/ end quote
Julian, Socrates, Plato, Plutarch, Seneca, and Hypatia all practiced metaphysics in the Traditional sense and maintained a healthy dualism (unlike Nietzsche).
Kant and Hegel were not metaphysicians in the Traditional sense; they were abstract systemizers (I agree, a waste of time to read). Schelling and Fichte were the only German thinkers of that time period who were real metaphysicians.
N’s refutation of Platonism/Xtianity was very limited; he presupposed that any system of thought which posited another world was doing so out of weakness, fear, or escapism.
If I manage to post all remaining excerpts of Vidal’s novel, you’ll see that precisely because of Julian’s mysticism he screwed up. More to the point, see what Martínez says in this thread, that I’ll post again as an entire entry at midnight.
You have an excellent mind and you seem to have a spiritual inclination; I think you are really missing out if you reject metaphysics. You seem like the perfect candidate to become a Traditionalist.
But I was a metaphysician. Only one who believes in metaphysics would embark on such a task of reading the thick book by Küng I mentioned above (before I elaborated my golden rule about the proper use of language).
I’ve read about half of this (it’s long and I need to get my car to the mechanic) but it’s good. I was recently involved in a discussion on a forum about Mencius Moldbug. One of the forum admins was insisting that Moldbug blaming 18th and 19th century Yankees for liberal ideas was wrong, it was all the Jews; I’ve been pointing out that Moldbug, in spite of his flowery and convoluted prose, does in the end present simple and verifiable facts from which one can draw direct conclusions. The monocausalist never provides a counterargument to this point, instead resorting to precisely the sort of abstruse obfuscating vagueness you’re talking about here.
Reblogged this on oogenhand and commented:
When I was a teenager I found both Buddhism and Taoism to be compelling, and still do — as an alternative to the frenetic existence of consumerist culture. I saw how much it sucks to be a slave to desires for the next shiny piece of junk, the next going out to a restaurant, the next ball game.
I don’t think there is anything essentially universalist or miscegenist about Buddhism or Taoism. Is a religion no good if many races practice it separated from one another?
Here’s my interpretation of Buddism/Taoism:
I see your point, but that sort of ethos or mindset doesn’t seem dependent on the metaphysics of Buddhism. After all I don’t think Taoism uses them, it’s more poetry.
Christianity has some great artistic and meditative merit, especially the older more spiritual forms of it. It sustained the Pilgrims who helped settle our country, and the Knights Templar of the Middle Ages, and Michelangelo during all that painting.
The metaphysics are still a problem though, and we haven’t been able to ignore that kind of thing recently. I think Zen Buddhism is probably superior to the orthodox type, since it’s closer to a pure poetic way of thinking (like Taoism) than a world-explaining cosmology (which it doesn’t do as well).
This is your best piece of writing in TWDH up to now, Chechar — at least that I’m aware of. I don’t think this is the sort of article that will have much appeal to average White Nationalists, obsessed as they are with the Joooos, Niggers and other perceived threats, but until Whites grasp the deep mental roots of the their present malaise (specially as far as Christianity and its secular offshoot, Liberalism, are concerned) they will be like a man being attacked by a swarm of bees in the middle of a pitch-black night.
A couple of points.
First, you are right to be suspicious about “Philosophy” — have you ever considered how presumptuous (“love for wisdom”) the very name of this discipline is? I have my qualms about it too.
In another post you mentioned the fact that not a single one of the supposedly greatest philosophers ever said something about the importance of race to the establishment of a great civilization like ours. That is to say, these guys have devoted millions of man-hours to discussing every single subject under the sun — except for what is perhaps the most important of them all, from the point of view of our civilization: the fact that it is a White civilization and that these discussions are not taking place in Africa, Asia or what have you.
I have long thought about this glaring gap in their discussions too and it has made me conclude that by and large the field of the so called “Philosophy” is a Sahara of barren discussions — Steve Sailer apparently agrees with me (link) — and the very fact that after thousands of years of endless discussions, unlike other hard fields like Physics of Chemistry, these guys have not reached any generally accepted conclusions at all is a testimony to the frivolity of their activity. It is true that fields like Literary Criticism, for example, are not “hard sciences” either, but even here, unlike the case of Philosophy, you have a number of generally accepted judgments — the centrality of Dante and Shakespeare in Western poetry and the aesthetic preeminence of Tolstoy and Proust in the Western prose fiction, for example, among many other generally accepted opinions — whereas you cannot find a single philosophic view that will be shared by all of the myriad philosophical schools and fashions that have sprouted in the past 2 500 years.
For my part, what I can say is that any occasional powerful insights I have seen coming from professional philosophers never are the results of any elaborate philosophical systems, but are instead simple products of common sense, and might very well have been uttered by any regular, intelligent people. So, why bother? You can learn much more about the human nature and the real world by reading the great classics of the Western Literature than by wading through infinitely boring volumes of pseudo “lovers of Wisdom”, as these guys pompously call themselves.
Second, what’s the point of leaving one superstition just to embrace another? Unfortunately, that’s what people normally do. Atheists normally leave Christianity just to immediately convert to Liberalism and vice versa, for example. What’s the point of looking skeptically at the Western spirituality and revering its Eastern counterpart at the same time? That’s a non sequitur. I don’t buy Buddhism, Hinduism or what have you for the same reasons that I don’t take the Abrahamic doctrines seriously: for all their bombastic claims, their allegations are not empirically verifiable, period. If I am to embrace their patent absurdities in particular, why not embracing any other absurdities in general?
Third, what you said concerning the intrinsic despair and pessimism of Buddhism is also true, and again I had also noticed it. The reason why the doctrine of reincarnation is so fundamental to Buddhism is because if you were to embrace the horrifying view this religion has of life without any faith in a life after death, you would logically feel the urge to commit suicide. People who convert to Buddhism have to be convinced to stay alive by means of inculcating in them a belief in reincarnation and in the hope of not reincarnating by means of following the eightfold path in order to reach Nirvana and not to reincarnate anymore.
Well, any non mentally deranged person can see the madness of such a set of ideas. But unfortunately, all religious systems are ultimately as crazy as Buddhism. All you have to do is to boil their pompous, self-righteous talk down to its bottom lines and you’ll see what their proponents are REALLY talking about. Christians, for example, love to say that “God has a plan for your life”. It seems all very fine, until you realize that this plan is that you worship the Jew Jesus. By doing so, you’ll be awarded the opportunity to worship him forever in an afterlife, in a place called Heaven (apparently, a supernatural version of North Korea, with the Christian God in the place of Kim Jong Il), whereas, by refusing to do it, will you’ll be tortured forever, being burned in a superheated chamber called Hell. It doesn’t matter how convoluted their talk, how straight their faces while they preach their ideas, or under how many pages of supposedly profound wisdom the Christians try to bury this horrific picture, the fact of the matter is that their core beliefs are as stupid as any savage’s from the bronze age — and arguably more wicked at that.
IMHO, Whites should flush such nonsenses down the toilet and follow the example of healthier races like the Japanese, the Chinese and the kikes — pace the wickedness of the latter. Shintoism, Confucianism and Judaism are simple pseudo-religious casuisms aiming at preserving the temporal social order of their respective civilizations. To put it bluntly, the ultimate goal of these doctrines is the physical preservation and prosperity of their respective peoples, so much so that they don’t even waste time elaborating on a supposed afterlife, preferring instead to concentrate on the cult of the ancestors and on practical rules of public morality. In other words, we’re talking about racial-preservation cults here. Christianity, Islam and Buddhism, on the other hand, are universalistic ideologies that see this world as a distraction from transcendental truths around which we should build all whole lives.
I’m not suggesting that Whites should create a new religion in which they worship themselves instead of the Christian God or any other non White deity or spiritual leader for that matter (Ben Klassen, for one, was of this persuasion (link). WN’lists are an intellectual vanguard of the White race and they are simply too smart to start following a new religion. It takes idiots to found a new religion (illiterate fishermen in the case of Christianity, illiterate caravan robbers in the case of Islam) and I honestly don’t think we have enough of them in this movement — at least not in numbers big enough to reach a critical mass.
Unlike a number of “philosophers” (link), I do think we don’t need a supernatural worldview in order to establish and maintain a stable, healthy social order. I can envision the Chinese, the Japanese and the Jewish races living far away into the future under the auspices of down-to-earth, metaphysically unambitious doctrines such as Shintoism, Confucianism and Judaism. But can you picture racial stability for the populations leaving under universalistic creeds like Christianity, Islam or Buddhism, which only acknowledge the physical world in order to repudiate it to a bigger or lesser degree in exchange for an alleged post-mortem reward of some kind? To ask this question is to answer it.
So true.
The fact that I lost decades of my life in what Alice Miller would call “struggling with your dad’s religious introjects” has given me the wisdom, after that long night of the soul barely I mentioned, to see that not only traditional religion and new age cults are destructive, but most of what in the academia is taught as “philosophy”.
Of course, that long night I crossed means that I could write more volumes of autobiographical stuff of what I’ve already written in my native language. But the final point is, as you say, the revelation of an absolutely horrendous waste of time, and I am referring also to what is taught at the universities, and in all seriousness.
Tonight I’ll add your above post as a separate entry. Any title/subtitle for it?
Cheers 🙂
How about “On Philosophical and Religious Quackery and Its Dismal Implications for the White Race”?
By the way, I’ve just noticed a few misspellings and other little syntactic mistakes in my comment. Would you make a clean copy of the text, by correcting them? I would really appreciate it.
Thanks for your attention, Chechar.
I thought Alice Miller was Jewish. Was I wrong?
Not wrong. See my blogsite on her here:
http://tort-miller.blogspot.mx/
The Great Classics would have been impossible without philosophy and prior texts purporting to directly relate to the supernatural. These books are not mere poetry.
If you disbelieve in traditional spiritual practice for yourself, personally, that’s one thing, but just realize that highest quality literature and art has been produced by initiates and students of the Eastern and Western occult (Dante and Shakespeare as mentioned in your post). Milton, Blake, Chaucer, Homer, and Virgil all wrote in gnostic-esoteric [for lack of better words] terminology which shows that they were strongly influence by the Perennialism of their time.
But these people you mention wrote in clear prose. What I am against is the deliberate obfuscation of thought thru arcane and obscure metaphysics (in the West this started since Heraclitus). See the distinction of “base rhetorician” and “noble rhetorician” in my previous post. The distinction goes to the core of what I’m trying to say.
The aesthetic value of the works of Dante, Shakespeare, Milton, Blake, Chaucer, Homer, and Virgil (to quote from your comment) do not depend in the least on the truthfulness of the ideas they spoused. On the other hand, if a certain religion, philosopher or philosophical school is proved to be false (and the overwhelming of them must of necessity be false since they make contradictory claims and, therefore, cannot all be true at the same time) they have no value — except, of course, if a great poet or writer uses their fake ideas as a basis for their work.
Therefore, be of good cheer, mate. Long after ragheaded Muslims and Commies have destroyed Catholicism in Europe, this spurious doctrine (which by its turn destroyed the indigenous European religions during its expansion) will always live in Dante’s great poem (http://www.mediasoft.it/dante/).
🙂
Just one more observation: Greg Johnson once noted (link) a propos of a James O’Meara book he reviewed (link): “I look at Christian art as merely the ideological channel through which white genius was forced for a long time to flow” and Johnson is right—as usual.
Look, philosophies and religions come and go. But the great White art, for example, (like Literature, that I mentioned above) is here to stay. And above all, the race that made the articulation of the three phenomena possible is what really matters.
At the end of the day, it is for the White race that one should fight for instead of religions or philosophies “A” or “B” or “Z”—specially when these philosophies and religions are not only dubious (to say the least) but were inflicted (or at least heavily influenced) upon Whites by folks who hate them and want to destroy them.
PS: Mabe you could add this comment to the end of the entry you will make of my longer comment above, Chechar, as a fitting conclusion.
🙂
“But these people you mention wrote in clear prose.”
As does Evola; Coomaraswamy and Pallis (the two greatest Buddhist scholars I know of in the last century) concurred with Evola’s interpretation of Buddhism entirely.
*These three authors studied Pali in order to read the texts in their original language, something that most of the other authors who talk abour ‘reincarnation’ and ‘universal love’ have not.
I recommend Revolt Against the Modern World by Evola; I see no rhetoric in that text … if read closely I think it gives a perfect overview of the world of Tradition.
Wait a minute! Are you saying that according to these scholars the historical Siddhatta did not teach the doctrine of reincarnation?
@Chechar
Evola, Pallis, and Coomaraswamy deny reincarnation, unlike the pretenders who haven’t read the Canon in the original Pali.
I think those who can read Pali should be taken in higher esteem than those who cannot (including the overwhelming majority of Buddhists in the east).
@Chechar
The greatest expert (to write for a Western audience) of the 20th century of Vedanta-Buddhism-Hindu metaphysics:
“Need I say that no doctrine of reincarnation, according to which the very being and person of a man who has once lived on earth and is now deceased will be reborn of another terrestrial mother, has ever been taught in India, even in Buddhism—or for that matter in the Neoplatonic or any other orthodox tradition?
… We die and are reborn daily and hourly, and death ‘when
the time comes’ is only a special case. I do not say that a belief in
reincarnation has never been entertained in India. I do say that such a belief can only have resulted from a popular misinterpretation of the symbolic language of the texts …”
-A. Coomaraswamy
Reincarnation is a total farce.
But that was not my question. My question was if these guys said that the historical Siddhatta did not believe in reincarnation.
Yes, these three scholars all said that Lord Siddhartha never believed in or taught personal reincarnation. [If you so desire I will hunt for direct references in their works.]
And according to these three scholars, Lord Gautama never rejected the caste system (this claim is another misinterpretation), nor was he an idiotic nihilist like modern Buddhists.
Lord Gautama was a warrior, an aristocrat, and an affirmer of life.
Thanks for clarifying that.
Since I have not read the Pali Canon, I cannot offer an educated opinion. However, what these scholars you mention say strike me as analogous to Christian Identity. Just see Brandon’s recent comment in the other thread (“‘worship the jew Jesus’ [quoting Martínez]. Still believing the jew lies I see”).
These people claim that Jesus was an Aryan and that his message was not addressed to non-whites; that Jesus was not an out-group altruist but an Aryan who directed his gospel to other whites.
Strains credulity a little, no? Re Siddhatta (your “Lord Gautama” is Sanskrit, not Pali), rewriting history in such dimension (similar to what Christian identitarians do) will take a lot more than one or two Evolas to convince me.
And even if that’s true (which I doubt) the fact is that the Aryans in India ultimately betrayed their race, with or without the help of the historical Siddhatta (whoever this guy was).
By their fruits ye shall know them…
I dont think this is entirely correct. A philosopher like Kant has been heavily criticized. Among other things for his analytic/synthetic distinction. While he can be a tough read, primarily because of the many distinctions he uses, I dont find him to be deliberately obscure.
A philosopher like Heidegger or the postmodern french philosophers are somewhat obscure, but this is another matter.
If you wish to describe some ideology/creed/philosophy based on race, its practically impossible to entirely dispense with metaphysics in some sort of form. Even Hitler dabbled with philosophical speculations when framing his world view.
Whether you or Martinez like it or not, greek philosophy was an aryan invention very different from the life denying mystery cults of the east. It laid the foundations of modern science, which would have been totally unthinkable without the greek/roman legacy.
Martinez is also wrong when he claims that philosophers did not speculate about race and its importance. Kant actually wrote about race in as early as the 1770ties, laying the groundwork for a physical anthropology. Platos Republic can even be described as a sort of forerunner, containing alot of speculation on eugenics.
The whole stance of “metaphysics is a waste of time” strikes me as a somewhat superficial sweeping statement.
And this goes especially for Steve Sailers caricature of the philosophy of history. Many philosophers have also been scientists so his claim that they in general are not accustomed to statistical reasoning is just ignorant.
Over 2 000 years of uninterrupted reasoning and this is all you can come up with in terms of a racialist thinking from these guys? I’m not impressed.
Well who are you actually blaming? Modern science is only a very few hundred years old, so naturally progress would have been very slow before the enlightenment. And why are you blaming a generic group whom you call “philosophers”, when the distinction between philosophy and science would have been very blurred before modern times?
Your whole reasoning just comes across as anachronistic.
I find it somewhat weird that you blame a thinker like Kant, who actually heavily contributed to the development of the scientific concept of race, for his predecessors collective shortcomings.
And the “2000 years of uninterrupted reasoning” statement is not accurate. The thinking was at times definitely interrupted by historical developments.
Your whole reasoning just comes across as very strange, when you on the one hand strive to describe the spirit of the european race, but on the other hand vehemently deny that european philosophy is one of the hallmarks of the aryan spirit.
You address this to John but let me say something. I do not reject all of Kant. Only his obscure writings (his trilogy, especially the first Critique). He was smart, yes, and I read that CC piece about Kant’s anthropology and agree with you on this point. But if you compare Kant with Schopenhauer you will see my point.
In his thirties Schopen finished his magnum opus that Stewart mocked as “the truth about everything”. During his lifespan people didn’t read his World as Will and Representation precisely because the 200-page barrier at the beginning of his book, a barrier plagued with dense Kantian metaphysics. But then Schopen got older and wiser and his juvenile hubris waned. He was still a superb thinker and he wrote the Essays & Aphorisms I mentioned above.
That later book is a real treat! It is not that I am dumb for not reading his two-volume World as Will…. Rather it’s that like other pretentious metaphysicians he overstated his case to the point of taking Kant’s obscurantism seriously. He wanted to become a guru as Hegel was, to the point of teaching at the same hours that George Wilhelm taught at the university…
It took many years of my life to understand that a philosopher’s so-called central opus was not necessarily his best work. Lots of metaphysical edifices have been built on sand. Presently my golden rule of crystal-clear thinking prevents me from falling to these intellectual snares.
Jannik,
But those first steps in Greek philosophy are a real treat to read: no heavy, ultra-pretentious treatises but thinkers who wanted to ponder about what the universe was. I am not against that. But even in those times at least some linguistic obscurantism had started in Heraclitus and later in Aristotle’s Metaphysics. But Kant was the real perp here: the one who carried those primordial missteps into a totally deranged degree.
Plato’s metaphysics at least is readable. He’s not an author I would reject under my “golden rule” of clear, beautiful prose. But besides Kant and Hegel presently I cannot tolerate Husserl, Heidegger’s rotten language at some places, Derrida and the already mentioned Foucault and Lacan, among many others. I don’t even tolerate Spinoza or Wittgenstein. Lots of charlatanry in such apparently impressive philosophical edifices.
These guys obscured language unnecessarily, and I suspect precisely because, like Siddhatta or Hubbard, they had traits of base rhetoricians. They wanted to become philosophical gurus instead of using language “to wean men away from their inclination to depend on authority”.
@Chechar
Look, I wont defend philosophy or philosophy collectively. I think some of the people you mentioned are in fact obscure. Although I dont agree with your assesment of Kant at all. In fact his anthropological writings come across as very clearheaded in my opinion. At least what I have read.
One can always argue that Heraclitus or Parmenides are not really philosophers at all but actually religious mystics functioning as transitional figures. But Aristotle and Plato are simply masters who have left a huge intellectual legacy to the european civilizations, and this goes especially for scientific reasoning.
Without philosophy Europe would have been stuck with practical skills, like base engineering and religious quacks to fill the cosmological and existential void. Remember that it was semitic christianity that hijacked hellenic philosophy, not the other way around.
I am also very critical of the modern continental philosophy tradition(phenomenology and poststructuralism), but this does not make me throw the baby out with the bathwater. Things are offcourse far more complicated.
But when it comes to serious thinking about worldviews and the historical development of ideas, reading Dante or Shakespeare(and yes I like these authors on their own merit) is no substitute for serious philosophizing about these issues.
“Lots of charlatanry in such apparently impressive philosophical edifices.”
Well sure there is. But this is in no way confined to philosophy. In fact I would postulate that a field like economics is filled with far more mathematical charlatanry. Some people actually read the philosophical classics(yes even your average Joe occasionally), but very few outsiders understand whats going on the economics profession, precisely because its formulated in obtuse mathematical jargon. This is in my opinion taking charlatanry to a whole new level.
Then we seem to agree, insofar as I don’t reject all of western philosophical heritage. But I would argue that the fact that Plato and Aristotle became so influential is largely a medieval legacy. Hadn’t they destroyed, say, Democritus’ writing, in an imaginary parallel world perhaps Democritus would be considered the giant and Plato a pigmy? Who knows?
There are at least two issues that must be parsed. The first is that of style, and the second turns on conceptual difficulties inherent in certain philosophical topics. We are beings in a world of becoming, and any philosophy that attempts to uncover the nature of both is bound to require a certain degree of abstruse discourse, due in part to the limitations of language used as a tool for uncovering a sometimes non-linguistic process. Perhaps, then, to ask that it be done with style is asking too much.
Style in exposition is always an exception inasmuch as it is akin to artistic talent. Conversely, style does not always imply clear thinking. Friedrich Nietzsche had style, but was not always a clear writer or thinker, throwing out as he often did vague aphorisms without much in the way of prior (or subsequent) explanation. But he is fun to read, and because of it everyone can have an opinion. In fact, today, he has almost become “everyman’s” philosopher. An ironic legacy, but one that is to a large degree his own fault. I do not mean to imply that FN didn’t have something important to say, or that we cannot learn from him. He was an exemplar of our current problem, unworthy of the small minds that would follow in his name, and to go beyond Nietzsche is in many ways the task for modern man.
We must always keep in mind that the development of philosophical thought is typically a reaction to previous thinking, so if whatever went before is unclear, then resulting problems can likewise be magnified over time—problems that perhaps could have been avoided had clear thinking been the order of the day.
I cannot speak to Evola, since I have not read this particular book, and am in any case not well versed in Buddhist thought. His more or less trilogy Men Among the Ruins, Revolt Against the Modern World, and Ride the Tiger are worthwhile.
Turning to Kant, we ask whether he was a clear thinker and writer? Certainly he was not an easy writer. But whatever our answer be, we remember that Kant did not write in a vacuum, and we view his thought as a reaction to (and an attempt to solve) Hume’s empiricist quandaries. As unusual as Kant’s system may seem, he was arguing in favor of certain common sense views (albeit in an uncommon-sense way), views that had been slowly abandoned resulting in contradictions that had come to a head within a strain of British philosophy. David Hume’s metaphysic [in the word’s technical meaning–his underlying assumptions that grounded his analysis of being] was based upon a strict empiricism. His logical conclusion from principles was that causation is not known in any real sense because, strictly speaking, we only experience a succession of temporally ordered events, but not their “necessary connection.” To take Hume seriously meant that important areas of our knowledge could not be taken seriously as knowledge. Kant attempted to recover it all by way of reasoned argument. Strange though his prose, it is far from impossible. Thinking Hume as discussed above, we can read in Critique of Pure Reason : Ch. 2 Sect 1: Principles of the Transcendental Deduction [A91–92/B123–123–Kemp-Smith, italics in original] :
“Appearances do indeed present cases from which a rule can be obtained according to which something usually happens, but they never prove the sequence to be necessary. To the synthesis of cause and effect there belongs a dignity which cannot be empirically expressed, namely, that it is posited through it and arises out of it. This strict universality is never a characteristic of empirical rules; they can acquire through induction only comparative universality, that is, extensive applicability.”
Is this obfuscation, or is it even poor style? Or rather, is it a precise way of stating that if you accept Hume’s problem of induction, causation cannot be necessary, but is only an appearance suggested by history, or the conjunction of unrelated events?
Now, it would be easy to state that the abandonment of rich Aristotelian derived notions of causation along with the rise of an anti-essentialist nominalism in the 14th Century “caused” all of this Humian nonsense, and if that had never happened then Kant would not have had to muck it up more by trying to fix what Hume had mangled up in the first place. But these are questions that had to be addressed within the history of thought, and unfortunately still have to be confronted (to use Heideggerian language). From history we know that before it is possible to recover clear thinking we must first struggle with unclear thought. The point, of course, is to be able to discriminate, and to determine whether someone has something important to say in spite of their language and style. That is why it is important to be familiar with all the arguments—otherwise sound judgment may be lacking whenever one confronts new nonsense posing as profundity. Kolakowski spent time with three volumes of Capital so we did not have to. Surely, as an historian, he did not think it a waste of his time. But at the end of the day there has to be some benefit, and some sense has to be shown. Sometimes you just have to know when it is all blather. Once, the Oxford University administration decided to issue an honorary doctorate to Jacques Derrida. In response Willard van Orman Quine et. al., wrote to them:
“Derrida describes himself as a philosopher, and his writings do indeed bear some of the marks of writings in that discipline. [His] influence, however, has been to a striking degree almost entirely in fields outside philosophy – in departments of film studies, for example, or of French and English literature. When the effort is made to penetrate [his ideas], however, it becomes clear, to us at least, that, where coherent assertions are being made at all, these are either false or trivial. Academic status based on what seems to us to be little more than semi-intelligible attacks upon the values of reason, truth, and scholarship is not, we submit, sufficient grounds for the awarding of an honorary degree in a distinguished university.”
I think this is a great and balanced reply. You obviously studied philosophy yourself.
I agree that style can be a problem, especially when reading philosophical tracts that are written in another age. Difficult prose is not the same as obscure prose either. This is important to bear in mind.
It is an important point that philosophers do not necessarily choose the conteptual problems they are left to struggle with. And the exact same goes for science for that matter.
Thanks for your input.
Not necessarily because…
I agree with you on Kolakowski because exposing Marxism was all too important after what happened in the last century. Kolakowski read all the way since the origins of dialectics thru Hegel and the first socialists to Marx’s epigones.
But the big difference with Kant’s little “response” to Hume is that you can preside over such epistemologies in the late 18th century and better start studying Jewish influence on the West, race studies, differential IQ, history from the ethno viewpoint, etc. Don’t waste your time with angels and pinheads. Look what happened to Constantinople! They miscegenated to the point of becoming too weak before the Muslims precisely because of such metaphysical nonsense.
Well ofcourse if your priority is (meta)political then race and IQ are important topics. As well as a bunch load of history. But this includes a history of philosophy for the lay reader.
It is very difficult to say, understand the origins of the Frankfurt school without having some prime grounding in philosophy or related subjects. Marxism hinges on Hegelianism which hinges on romantic philosophy and dialectics, and so on.
I feel that you are somewhat underestimating the value of philosophical schooling. I for one would have had very great trouble understanding the current malaise of the west, and the commenting litterature scattered out on the internet, had I not had this schooling.
The other subjects I have studied would have been of limited value in this regard. Economics for instance would only have been useful for very narrow topics, but would not have aided me in seeing the broader picture.
Kevin McDonald took his first degree in philosophy as I recall, and I am pretty sure that it was important for developing his train of thought. Who knows, without this schooling he might have remained a jazz musician or done something else.
Still the ultimate fact is that the highest IQ whites spent their thinking careers as Martínez says: in subjects unrelated to racial preservation. Just compare this to the Jews’ scholastic writings which were constructed over the underlying basis of a group’s evolutionary strategy, and you will see why we have been putting the cart before the horse since those colorful philosophers flourished in the Ionian islands.
@Chechar
Perhaps you are right about Plato and Aristotles legacy being a remnant of the middleages. And modern science definitely owes Democritus alot.
On the issue of Magnum Opus, Kant used a similar strategy to Schopenhauer. Kant actually wrote shorter versions of his critiques of practical and theoretical reasoning. And yes, even though I studied philosophy, I only read the shorter versions.
Or maybe he wanted to reach a broader audience. Which is the exact same strategy that modern science writers use today when they want the average Joe to buy their books. Nothing has really changed.
Books written by scientists for scientists ,are probably plagued with the same sort of problems. Only a very select few will read long tracts of obscure jargon, and actually understand it.
I will be frank with you on a more general level, I am now in my mid thirties and in the last 5 or so years I have tired from reading most philosophy. I can today only stomach a very few philosophers in larger doses. Time is very precious.
I find reading history more rewarding nowadays, but this includes history of ideas, so the philosophy has survived in some sense i guess.
“extremely opaque prose. I refer to Michel Foucault” (—Chechar)
By the way, Foucault owed his career to his Jewish friends. He was up to his neck in Jewish circles. He even died of AIDS like the typical Jewish intellectual. And before that, he took part in Jewish petitions to abolish French laws against pedophilia.
On the subject, does anyone have an executive summary for Heidegger? On Being and Time is not too fun to read. I’ve looked through the Counter-Currents archive, but I’m wondering if anyone has any other sources.
I don’t know how well I am going to received at this site as I am most assuredly non-white.. but I do have a question which I believe Mr. Tort and fellow WNs can answer:
Why precisely are WNs so pathologically obsessed with Hindu mythology and eschatology?
Your description of Buddha as an “Aryan prince” and previous association of Aryan-ness with the Nordic phenotype, implies that Gautama Buddha must have been some kinda proto-Swede, right?
Is there ANY genetic/historical basis to your claim?
I have heard Black Nationalists made a similarly absurd claim that Buddha must have been sub-Saharan African as his statues have broad noses and thick lips…
This type of brazen-nosed cultural appropriation is, I believe, some sort of Coué method, if you will, to turn feelings of inferiority complex into feelings superiority complex.
Is this the reason why WNs kidnap the (Sanskrit, not Greek or Latin or Old Norse) word “Aryan”? Is this the reason why that creep Alex Kurtajic refers to Kaliyuga? Is this the reason why pseudonyms such as Law of “Manu” are popular? Is this the reason why Himmler read the Bhagavad Gita? Is this the reason why you use the Swastika?
If Europeans are really the “Master Race”, why must you STEAL OUR INHERITANCE instead of using your own???
Don’t worry: My best friend in Latin-America has black blood.
I am not a WN but a NS—ask them.
Not that I am aware. I don’t make such claims.
Alex likes degenerate music too—I don’t read his columns.
No. Scroll down the sidebar and find the articles by Manu Rodríguez for an answer.
It is our inheritance too. Read this book:
http://cienciologia.wordpress.com/category/march-of-the-titans/
Our dispute, then, is not factual but only semantic. Let me replace WN with NS and re-ask the question. Why were NSs like Hitler/Himmler/Rosenberg/Chamberlain/Savitri Devi obsessed with Hindu mythology and eschatology? Why do their fans show the same obsession?
The link you provided below professes the same basic premise, however.
Good for you!
I do appreciate your sense of sarcasm. But I find it hard to believe that given the culture of cultural appropriation among NSs, Mr. Rodríguez chose the name “Law of Manu” (i.e. Manusmriti) merely as an accident.
More importantly, my suspicion and your sarcasm helped you avoid answering the bigger question. Congratulations!
No it is NOT, and these are the REASONS why:
[long paragraphs removed by admin – see below]
Satyameva ,
I don’t have the time to respond to all of your points. It was not sarcasm what I said about Manu Rodríguez. You really have to read his articles to see that it’s our inheritance, not yours.
I a nutshell, we are talking of Aryan Indo-Europeans who conquered parts of India before they miscegenated with the native Indians. The following sentences of March of the Titans: The Complete History of the White Race by Arthur Kemp explain something about it:
The last genetic residues of India’s Aryans can be found in your country’s film industry. The features of the actress Pooja Bhatt contrast with those of more typical Indian females. But she’s not an Aryan by any stretch of the imagination if you see her latest photos (mongrelization is more visible in later age).
This blog is based upon the premise “Your race is your nation,” which means that even if a tiny population of Scandinavians migrated to the New World before Columbus, they are still our nation even though they were exterminated by the Amerindians. The symbols that these true Aryans left in the American continent are our symbols, in spite of the fact that the land was later re-conquered by the brown people. It is in that sense that we claim that the swastika is our symbol, not yours. Sorry.
By the way, it looks that you did not even read the above entry on Buddha and Evola, because here I dismiss the silly infatuation of sophisticated white nationalists with Evola’s claims about an Aryan Buddhism. In my humble opinion, no true Aryan would develop a religion of personal salvation. That’s an un-Aryan, Asiatic religion to the core.
What is an Aryan Religion? Hinduism is an Aryan Religion as well as Dharma religions… Christianity is a semitic-abrahamic religion like Islam.
Race is spirit….body is nothing without spirit.. Evola saw this very well. Even Evola was Sicilian, darker skin, dark hair, black eyes…. but his soul was of a true Aryan…. Many blue eyes blond hairs americans are pig-niggers in their souls… Evola said that many white americans are niggers with a white skin
“Buddhist escapism was another doctrine for the Untermenschen.”
“Untermenschen” who loved self-control and difficulty, and hated the pleasures of this world. Good for them. Apparently they are worse than the life-affirming negroid apes, though. Alas, not everyone can find personal satisfaction in the absurdities of an ideology which denies Transcendence.