Evan McLaren has drawn my attention to a new article by Leonard Zeskind, chronicler of White Nationalism, in The Huffington Post. In his latest commentary, Zeskind warns Mark Lilla to reconsider his triumphalist narrative about the demise of the conservatism. He gives Paul Gottfried a backhanded compliment as a conservative intellectual whom the Left should take seriously. Gottfried has written a number of neglected books about conservatism (including one about Carl Schmitt) that have fallen on fertile soil outside the intellectual desert that is the mainstream American Right. These are the waters that Zeskind much prefers to traverse. Hence, his learned admonition of Lilla.
Zeskind briefly flirts with the notion that Gottfried’s admiration of Carl Schmitt links him to Nazism, but doesn’t seem to be able to swallow the idea. Schmitt’s work has become fashionable in recent years and a number of books have been written about him: to name a few, David Dyzenhaus (ed.) Law as Politics: Carl Schmitt’s Critique of Liberalism, John P. McCormick’s Carl Schmitt’s Critique of Liberalism: Against Politics as Technology, Jan-Werner Muller’s A Dangerous Mind: Carl Schmitt in Post-War European Thought, Ellen Kennedy’s Constitutional Failure: Carl Schmitt in Weimar, and many more. I read through all of these when I was in college. Several further volumes on Carl Schmitt’s thought have been published since then by critics and admirers. As the most significant anti-liberal legal theorist of the twentieth century, it is only natural that Schmitt has generated so much attention; that Gottfried would write about him doesn’t prove anything.
A more plausible case could be made that the roots of the postmodern intellectual Left trace back to fascism. Richard Wolin made this argument about Heidegger’s admirers in The Seduction of Unreason: The Intellectual Romance with Fascism from Nietzsche to Postmodernism. Personally, I don’t have the patience for this type of Reductio ad Hitlerum. When I read Nietzsche, Schmitt or Heidegger, their links to the NSDAP happens to be of little interest. I care only about the validity of their insights.
Paul Gottfried’s stated position on White Nationalism isn’t hard to track down. Within the past year, he has written about White Nationalism on a number of occasions. Each time it created a tempest in a teapot across our network of websites. He is willing to engage us in debate, treat us with respect, criticize our position, agree with us on some issues, but he is plainly not one of us. As a self-professed expert on White Nationalism, Zeskind has to know this.
It is true that Paleoconservatism and White Nationalism intersect on many points of mutual concern. The two movements overlap in many areas like Socialism and Liberalism on the Left, but they diverge on others, which is always a cause of heated debate between the two factions. This type of nuance on the Right will undoubtedly be lost on the Left Progressives who constitute the majority of Huffington Post readers.
Leonard Zeskind, our professional monitor, should know better.
Gottfried is a Jew married to a Polish woman. Is Zeskind saying that Gottfried is a Nazi-sympathizer?
The Strange Death of Marxism is particularly noteworthy as in it he makes the opposite argument that I’ve seen you make over the years: Europe polluted America and brought it multiculturalism, etc. He says no, the transmission of the bacillus happened the other way around.
“The Strange Death of Marxism” seeks to refute certain misconceptions about the current European Left and its relation to Marxist and Marxist-Leninist parties that existed in the recent past. Among the misconceptions that the book treats critically and in detail is that the post-Marxist Left (a term the book uses to describe this phenomenon) springs from a distinctly Marxist tradition of thought and that it represents an unqualified rejection of American capitalist values and practices. Three distinctive features of the book are the attempts to dissociate the present European Left from Marxism, the presentation of this Left as something that developed independently of the fall of the Soviet empire, and the emphasis on the specifically American roots of the European Left. Gottfried examines the multicultural orientation of this Left and concludes that it has little or nothing to do with Marxism as an economic-historical theory. It does, however, owe a great deal to American social engineering and pluralist ideology and to the spread of American thought and political culture to Europe. American culture and American political reform have foreshadowed related developments in Europe by years or even whole decades. Contrary to the impression that the United States has taken antibourgeois attitudes from Europeans, the author argues exactly the opposite. Since the end of World War II, Europe has lived in the shadow of an American empire that has affected the Old World, including its self-described anti-Americans. Gottfried believes that this influence goes back to who reads or watches whom more than to economic and military disparities. It is the awareness of American cultural as well as material dominance that fuels the anti-Americanism that is particularly strong on the European Left. That part of the European spectrum has, however, reproduced in a more extreme form what began as an American leap into multiculturalism. Hostility toward America, however, can be transformed quickly into extreme affection for the United States, which occurred during the Clinton administration and during the international efforts to bring a multicultural society to the Balkans. Clearly written and well conceived, “The Strange Death of Marxism” will be of special interest to political scientists, historians of contemporary Europe, and those critical of multicultural trends.
http://www.amazon.com/Strange-Death-Marxism-European-Millennium/dp/0826215971/ref=pd_sim_b_3
This whole circus was born with the world’s loss of Racialist Social Nationalism.
A global economic “socialist” system which relies on the transfer of wealth, for example – “carbon credit” scheme is the most obvious proof of economic Marxism, alive and well! This is a global tax transfer of wealth from supposedly “bourgeoisie” nations, to the “devolving” proletariat nations. It is a lie, as the supposed rich nations wallow in totally unsustainable debt, but Marxism always lies.
The prelude to Marxism is Capitalism. It is free market capitalism that breaks down culture and cultural norms…
And Revolutions never happen without the support of the rich, or in Marxist terms the Bourgeoisie. Historically speaking a serf uprising has never resulted in a surf take over. It is an organic impossibility. But with the aid of the “Bourgeoisie,” Negros can rise in true Marxist fashion and take over. After free market capitalism destroys all culture, all that is left is money which creates all values, the only value being money.. That is the fertile ground Marxists need for victory.
American anti-cultural Marxism was born entirely through Marxist economics.
For Marx class struggles result “..in a revolutionary transformation of the entire society, or in the mutual ruin of contending classes.”
What has happened in America since WWII? Europe embraced Socialism, America embraced International Capitalism and justified wars on its’ behalf. It is only now that Socialism is being left behind and Europe is turning to the American model. America began a radical Marxist pro-Negro revolution as well, totally funded by rich communists. Therefore, it is not rational to suppose America somehow followed the European model and was corrupted by Europe.
FB: “Gottfried examines the multicultural orientation of this Left and concludes that it has little or nothing to do with Marxism as an economic-historical theory. It does, however, owe a great deal to American social engineering and pluralist ideology and …”
The French tradition of social engineering, which dates back at least to 1789, precedes the American one. There never was a French tradition of decentralized democracy as in the USA, and everything was planned from the top down. Even so, mass immigration is more recent in France than in the USA.
There is no pluralist ideology behind the French immigration policy, on the contrary: the race replacement enforcers have always said that they expected African and Arab immigrants to become clones of the French. No Arabic is allowed in French schools and on public television. Using another language than French is seen as an illegitimate privilege that violates the notion of equality.
But things are now changing. Everywhere, mayors have begun actively helping muslims to build mosques.
My point is that the situation is not exactly the same everywhere in Western Europe.
Hostility toward America, however, can be transformed quickly into extreme affection for the United States, which occurred during the Clinton administration and during the international efforts to bring a multicultural society to the Balkans.”
In France, the government and the media opposed the dismemberment of Yugoslavia and the independence of Slovenia and Croatia. It means they opposed both Germany and the USA. They thought of Yugoslavia as a unitary state built on the same model as France, with the Serbs as guarantors of “democracy”. They only changed their minds when it became the turn of Muslim Bosnia, and later, Kosovo.
Thinkers like Gottfried are the same, right or left. They simply can’t grasp white nationalism because it falls outside their mental categories. It has nothing to do with Marxism, conservatism, egalitarianism, national socialism or post this or that. It is tribal.
White nationalism is the awakening of what has been unexpressed and not needing expression until now. Whites today compete with other tribal forces that are inimical to their interests and gaining ascendancy. For the first time in the west and America, whites are forced to assert an ethnic identity in their own homelands to avoid cultural and racial genocide.
Whites create the best societies for whites to live in. The alternative is unhealthy and destructive, as we now see and must experience. Whites have a right to control their own destiny.
Gentilhommes,
“Whites have a right to control their own destiny.” (rick)
To whom do we appeal for the enforcement of that right and by whom was it conferred?
NN
“To whom do we appeal for the enforcement of that right…” (NeoNietzsche)
Messrs. Heckler & Koch.
I just can’t find it within myself to say much positive about Takimag or Gottfried. Maybe I’m just petty.
It would have been better for Europe and the US if the Jew-promoted cultural Marxism which poisoned these areas had been, instead economic Marxism, the latter being the lesser of two evils.
I say this because the example of China illustrates how easy it is to shuck off Marxist economics and revert quickly to free enterprise. Sadly, it is not nearly so easy to flush the pollution of cultural Marxism which has embedded itself in all of our institutions.
Zeskind is Jewish
“Zeskind is Jewish”
Dear me, you don’t say.
Gentilhommes,
“Messrs. Heckler & Koch.” (The Admiral)
A fine pair of legal positivists. Useful in a context where the laws and rights are simply those conferred by authority and where no such right as that of Whites to control their own destiny has been conferred.
NN
” Europe polluted America and brought it multiculturalism, etc. ”
This is a complex issue (similar to Proziums take on the ‘single Jewish cause’) but in my mind it is clear that America polluted Europe:
1.) Jewish Bankers (Max Warburg, Jacob Schiff) in New York funded Lenins trip back to Russia.
2.) America became a friendly base of operations for the Frankfurt School (well-spring of Critical Theory) after they fled National Socialist Germany in the mid-1930s.
” Europe polluted America and brought it multiculturalism, etc. ”
This is a complex issue (similar to Proziums take on the ‘single Jewish cause’) but in my mind it is clear that America polluted Europe:
1.) Jewish Bankers (Max Warburg, Jacob Schiff) in New York funded Lenins trip back to Russia.
2.) America became a friendly base of operations for the Frankfurt School (well-spring of Critical Theory) after they fled National Socialist Germany in the mid-1930s.
BTW I love your blog!
I agree it’s America that’s polluting Europe, not the reverse.
@Farley. Warburg fled to America fully realized in his Marxism and activism; Schiff was German-born and educated, arriving here as a young man; the Frankfurt School was a European-Marxist-Jewish enterprise, transplanted to America. Had we stricter immigration policies, none of this “pollution” would have even been here in the first place.
@NeoNietzsche. No one confers natural rights. Read your Nietzsche.
Ah but America proved to be a fertile ground for such noxious ideologies to grow.
The Frankfurt School wasn’t going to be get very far in Europe as there were counter-movements there, as even Paleo-cons point out:
“Adolf Hitler ascended to power in Berlin, and as the leading lights of the Frankfurt School were Jewish and Marxist, they were not a good fit for the Third Reich.” — Pat Buchanan, ‘Death of the West’ pg. 79
http://books.google.com/books?id=MTrg__Jyf0kC&printsec=frontcover&dq=death+of+the+west+buchanan#v=onepage&q=marxist%20and%20jewish&f=false
Bottomline: It took two World Wars launched by Jews and Americans to get Europa to submit.
Gentilhommes,
“@NeoNietzsche. No one confers natural rights. Read your Nietzsche.” (rick)
@rick: In reading Nietzsche, we understand that, indeed, no one *confers* natural rights upon others – rather because the supposed self-conferred natural rights, to which you would appeal, *do not exist*. Thank you for offering the pretext for emphasizing this important point.
“With the PARABLE OF THE MADMAN, Nietzsche has established that Christian morality is dead and we ourselves are responsible. There are no higher worlds, no morality derived from God or Nature because “God is dead.” *There are no natural rights* and the idea of progress is a sham.” [Emphasis mine, NN]
NN
“In reading Nietzsche, we understand that, indeed, no one *confers* natural rights upon others – rather because the supposed self-conferred natural rights, to which you would appeal, *do not exist*.” – NeoNietzsche
I have to agree with this statement. We can pretend as if there are natural rights, but they exist in our minds only.
They don’t exist in the phenomenal world.
Uh oh. Some bot must have put that in Post #14. That wasn’t me!
(dang are bots starting to infest blogs now?)
Gentilhommes,
“They [natural rights] don’t exist in the phenomenal world.” (Mark Ijsseldijk)
And Nietzsche would say that the noumenal world in which they might allegedly reside is merely a fictional and wishful “Real World”.
Fortunately, however, we have *The Admiral* to unsentimentally set us straight as to might making (White) right(s) and power coming out of the barrel of an (H&K) gun.
NN
@Neoneitzsche: You’re making my point. You’re the one who asked, “To whom do we appeal for the enforcement of that right [to self-determination] and by whom was it conferred?” If the word “rights” bothers you — such as in “I have a right to free speech, liberty, life, ethnic self-determination,” or whatever — and you only think, like the people Neitzsche was criticizing, that rights must be conferred by some higher power or they don’t exist and the term is thus meaningless, then change the word to something more suitable, like “I have a figment of my imagination which exists in my mind only that I should be able to speak freely…” Yeh, that’s much better.
@Farley: “It took two World Wars launched by Jews and Americans to get Europa to submit.” So the Europeans were just our innocent victims? Who knew…
rick,
I see your point, but you could easily say “I’m willing to fight and die for freedom of speech, liberty, life, ethnic self-determination.” My take on this matter is that moralizing is useless but force (in a variety of forms, not just brutality) can achieve those things for us.
“My take on this matter is that moralizing is useless but force (in a variety of forms, not just brutality) can achieve those things for us.”
But can moralizing be a force for the mobilization of the use of force? Ask the Jews.
“But can moralizing be a force for the mobilization of the use of force? Ask the Jews.”
No doubt. Morality has always been a very useful tool. If there is some morality which will work to aid the folk, I’m not opposed to it. Though I do not believe in harboring delusions, I am primarily a servant of life, not truth. And without the life of our people, what good is truth anyway?
Gentilhommes,
“But can moralizing be a force for the mobilization of the use of force? Ask the Jews.” (Captainchaos)
The more forthright of them, having studied Nietzsche, would answer: yes, moralizing *is* a force – a force for mobilizing slaves to slavish purposes.
NN
@rick:
*If the word “rights” bothers you — such as in “I have a right to free speech, liberty, life, ethnic self-determination,” or whatever — *
It does. If it has any meaning, it implies something that is not the case.
*…and you only think, like the people Neitzsche was criticizing, that rights must be conferred by some higher power or they don’t exist and the term is thus meaningless,…*
I think that you are reversing the case. As was stated in the quotation, *Nietzsche* rejected the notion of Natural Right, as do I.
*,,,then change the word to something more suitable, like “I have a figment of my imagination which exists in my mind only that I should be able to speak freely…” Yeh, that’s much better*
Not really. If your use of the word “should” instead of “right” is not likewise meaningless, you are involved in a(n imaginative) claim, as to the actions and attitudes of others toward yourself, that is contradicted by fact.
And since you have revised your contention from “I have a right” to “I have a figment,” one wonders what remains of its value.
NN
To clarify:
“Rights” is a term that has other than merely emotive or documentary meaning only in regard to that which is conferred by an effective enforcement apparatus.
Otherwise, the appeal to “rights” is properly and traditionally a Leftist/Liberal tactic, relying upon lies, illusions, and cant (bullshit) as a technique of governance.
NN
To further clarify:
In Nietzsche’s thought:
1) Rights are the product of human governance.
2) A non-existent deity cannot confer god-given rights.
3) No presumably extant deity has conferred god-given rights.
4) Natural Rights do not inhere in Nature, thus they cannot be conferred thereby.
The implication is legal positivism. Rights other than merely nominal are those that political authority enforces on your behalf.
NN
Finally,
To declare that “I/We have a right, usw. is emotive nonsense, unless correct reference is had to the policy/legislation of an enforcement authority.
One should, in order to be meaningful and without mistake, declare that “I/WE *should* have the right…” for reasons that are persuasive of the enforcement authority.
Thus, the statement that White’s do (or should) have a right to control their own destiny is mistaken on either account.
But – pedantries aside – I’m objecting to attempts thus at morale-building with self-deceptive bullshit. We have no moral claims on
our enemies that they recognize as applicable to *our* instance of complaint.
NN
P.S.,
There is, in addition to the notion of the “rights” of Whites, the difficulty with putative White “racial superiority”.
For those who govern are, eo ipso and ipso facto, “superior”.
This means that the Jews – and derivatively, the Negroes – are our betters, in the present instance.
As the *Roman’s* understood, one’s superiority in the real world is the collective product of victory on the battlefield and is the literal holding of the whip during labor performed by the vanquished. It is so much more comfortable and convenient, however, in modern bourgeois occupation with individual pursuits, to account one’s superiority visceral, personal, and thus without need for realization by collective mastery of the bodies of others.
So one understands why the Romans were the last White men to durably govern themselves, for a few centuries at least, without interference and ultimate mastery by the alien props and pillars of state, the Universal Church and International Jewry.
NN
Certainly, ‘rights’ do not exist in Nature and I suspect that “we have no rights except those we take, (and I take plenty)” to quote from a favourite novel’.
The notion of human rights seems to be a popular meme of today’s believers in airborne Hebrew spooks as well as those ‘atheists’ who have jettisoned the supernatural portion of such beliefs while retaining the essential religious ‘veneration of the underdog’ message.
Great comments by NeoNietzsche @ 27-32 above.
The Germans governed themselves longer than the Romans. The Eastern Bona Dea made an appearance before Ceasar saw the light of day. Slave and master? Whipcrack time? Stamp that as alien. Some sort of Leviticus thing.
As for superiority the Greeks and Easterners, took over Rome culturally. I remember that Greek philosopher who was sold as a slave and when some Roman asked what he was good for, being so old, he replied “to be your master” and was duely purchased to teach the Roman’s children.
Yockey discussed this in terms of cultural development. Like way it would have been better for Russia to overrun Europe rather than America.
Anyway this is all useless because the ‘master’ is a fictive. In reality things are different from the abstract.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cincinnatus
The legionare (before Marius allowed in foreigners) was a Roman who before and after battle worked himself, clearing and erecting the camp, building bridges and so on. The large slave owners, the rich, had slaves to crack the whip, while they were busy depilating their legs with hot walnut shells, having a professional pervert fuck their wife so they might have an heir, and gorging on turbot and fine Falernian until they vomited, and rolled their obese, yet well manicured, bodies to bed where their slave boy would tickle their fancy. Meanwhile the wife was busy having some slave girl beaten to death for her amusment while she read the Roman equivalent of People magazine.
Unfortunately for every 1 Cincinnatus there’s at least 99 sociopaths obsessed with power and dominating others.
@Anthony:
Thanks for the smile you’ve brought to my face this morning.
Such innocent and earnest virtue!
*”The Germans governed themselves longer than the Romans.”*
Which is to compare the governance of a child’s backyard sandbox (tribal democracy) to the administration of a Byzantine bureaucracy (imperial autocracy). You speak ill of the Germans in that it took them so long to evolve. The Romans looked at Germans in somewhat the way we regard niggers, but for aspects of their corporal aesthetic.
*”The Eastern Bona Dea made an appearance before Ceasar saw the light of day.”*
So what? You seem to have no sense of Spenglerian principles. My father was an adult before I was. Does that imply some sort of cultural priority/superiority, simply because he got there first?
*”Slave and master? Whipcrack time? Stamp that as alien. Some sort of Leviticus thing.”*
Think of it as your own future – thanks to cultural evolution and declension. Even now, wage slavery barely removed from whip-cracking is performed on your behalf (out of sight, of course) in Southeast Asia, South America, and China. And it would take little in the way of global recession to bring out the leather laid on actual backs.
BTW, this arrangement is the product of the Faustian Pact, to which I recently referred, wherein the class conflict of a century ago was displaced to the global arena, out of sight and mind, such that stupid Greater Judean goyim, Weenies and ‘tards alike, can now live, temporarily, in a Fool’s Paradise of self-satisfaction with their own supposed superior wisdom and virtue in matters political, arranged for them by Jewry in consequence of the War to Save Communism of the early 40’s.
But let us return to your brief contra Roma:
*”As for superiority, the Greeks and Easterners took over Rome culturally.”*
And the Greeks (“Greeklings”) and Easterners surpassed the Romans in effeminacy. I was under the impression that our concern, rather, was with *political* supremacy/superiority arising from racial characteristics.
*”Yockey discussed this in terms of cultural development. Like [the] way it would have been better for Russia to overrun Europe rather than America.”*
That’s debatable and not forthrightly pertinent to your point.
*”Anyway this is all useless because the ‘master’ is a fictive. In reality things are different from the abstract.”*
But “slavish” moralizing is here ubiquitous in its inversion of our estate – such as to constantly remind us of the contrast with the masterful alternative that is the normal and healthy arrangement of culture and polity.
NN
@Anthony:
*”The legionare (before Marius allowed in foreigners) was a Roman who before and after battle worked himself, clearing and erecting the camp, building bridges and so on. The large slave owners, the rich, had slaves to crack the whip, while they were busy depilating their legs with hot walnut shells, having a professional pervert fuck their wife so they might have an heir, and gorging on turbot and fine Falernian until they vomited, and rolled their obese, yet well manicured, bodies to bed where their slave boy would tickle their fancy. Meanwhile the wife was busy having some slave girl beaten to death for her amusment while she read the Roman equivalent of People magazine.”*
And, had the *slaves* in this stereotypical propaganda piece won the battle that reduced them to this estate, it would have been *they* who indulged themselves thus at the expense of the conquered and enslaved Romans. You protest in vain at cultural evolution and maturity.
And – much as I prefer the Spartan model of responsible martial aristocracy – I would nevertheless choose to be the master of the depicted vignette rather than the slave therein, realizing that the virtuous model of bygone days, with which you contrast it, was “fictive”.
NN
“But ‘slavish’ moralizing is here ubiquitous in its inversion of our estate – such as to constantly remind us of the contrast with the masterful alternative that is the normal and healthy arrangement of [advanced and mature] culture and polity.”
“Kooky,” sadomasochist, perverted fantasies are hardly a sign of cultural evolution. This is a repulsive world view that frankly gives me the creeps. Never mind that it is an abuse and mis-reading of Nietzsche, that would be beyond the level of understanding, but Nietzsche was about being hard on the self.
Yeah, some OverMan! A sadistic pervert whipping and beating people, GREAT.
“And, had the *slaves* in this stereotypical propaganda piece won the battle that reduced them to this estate, it would have been *they* who indulged themselves thus at the expense of the conquered and enslaved Romans. You protest in vain at cultural evolution and maturity.”
Have to talk to the Celts who over ran Rome about that.
Your lack of historical knowledge is pathetic, and I’m not going to go point on point about some “Faustian pact” or some other fibbity-gibbet with an ignoramus who already has me in chains feeling the lash. Take your crystal ball by which you scry your fantasies and head to the library.
Dear Lena,
Thank you for your expression of sentiment.
Beyond that you offered the following substantive claim:
“Never mind that it is an abuse and mis-reading of Nietzsche, that would be beyond the level of understanding, but Nietzsche was about being hard on the self.”
I think it would put you to some considerable, even insurmountable, trouble to credibly deny the coherence and implication of Nietzsche’s political philosophy as quoted and examined in the first three posts at my blog (which implication could be reinforced, for resistant readers, with further quotation from his mature work).
Were you to conscientiously commit yourself to that undertaking, I believe that you would consequently find your characterization of my “understanding” not an occasion for self-congratulation.
NN
Dear Anthony,
*”Have to talk to the Celts who over ran Rome about that.”*
The conceptual framework and historical context of my remark directs the student of the subsequent Roman period to thoughts, rather, of the civilized Carthaginians, Macedonians, Egyptians, and Persians/Parthians.
*”Your lack of historical knowledge is pathetic,..”*
Somehow I find that claim unpersuasive.
*”…and I’m not going to go point on point about some “Faustian pact” or some other fibbity-gibbet with an ignoramus who already has me in chains feeling the lash.”*
Perhaps that exercise would liberate you.
*”Take your crystal ball by which you scry [?] your fantasies and head to the library.”*
Sorry, but your remarks have yet to suggest the merit of any such recommendation or your credentials for making it.
NN
NN-
It would not put me to any trouble to defend Nietzsche from stagnating in disgust.
You seem to twist Nietzsche into a “political philosopher” and abuse him to your own perverse ends. He was not even a political philosopher. And if you consider yourself to be -you are the most perverse one to arrive on this blog.
You consider the Overman to be nothing but a lying slave driver with neither beauty of presence, physical strength, creative intellect, or nobility of character. Hallelujah! How deep.
It really takes a lot of intellectual fortitude to perpetuate the idea that masses of people deserve to suffer and be poor.
I would be more then happy to respond on your blog but I am not an e blog member so perhaps we can add here to the forum on Nietzsche? I would be up for a discussion, and I think others may enjoy reading it, and contributing their 2c in as well.
Dear NeoNietzsche,
Nietzsche was not a systematic philosopher, and as Spengler noted Schopenhauer, Nietzsche’s ‘master’ was the culmination of Western Philosophy, after him all the possibilities of Western thought had been ‘exhausted’. While I prefer to see him as the Plato of the future, Spengler’s opinion will do.
Nietzsche had little to do with NS thought, excepting his embrace of the Will rather than its denial. That done Nietzsche was exhausted regardless of his futile attempts to claim what was not his.
Read Schopenhauer’s Eudaemonology and its practicality sings out, its clearness, and that is what practical, pragmatic people require. What masters require. Consider the pregnant phrase, “As Reason is to an individual so culture is to a nation.” Ahh, how fresh and clear, like a crystal stream.
It is a necessary thing that Nietzschian neo-phytes in general ignore there master’s master. But what is worse, even if necessary, when confronted with a thought outside of master-slave morality try and slam that square peg into their round hole anyway, with a cry of “slave morality” or such like.
I’ve seen it done by many neo-phytes and it is tiresome. Most are in their late teens, early twenties, so I’m guessing some sort of feeling of powerlessness has to do with it.
Schopenhauer was correct on the essential Jewishness of Christianity and its alienness to Northern Aryan sentiment. As much as we go Jewish we loose what is important in ourselves. If nothing but to try and break free of his master’s intellectual fetters, Nietzsche extolled the Jewish world as an example of bring culture to the West. Nietzsche was not a trained philosopher and it shows. Schopenhauer correctly surmised the jewish sentiment as detrimental to our sentiment and to follow the jewish lead would result in a crass world of materialism.
Nietzsche tried to have it both ways. Regardless, in terms of practically and living in the world while overcoming it Schopenhauer was the philosopher of the hour.
It is interesting to note that the thing which finally broke Nietzsche, the beating of the horese, was an example directly from Schopenhauer. Life imitates philosophy?
Dear Lena,
*”It would not put me to any trouble to defend Nietzsche from stagnating in disgust.”*
Then the presently absent evidence of your conscientious and comprehensive reading of Nietzsche should appear here shortly.
*”You seem to twist Nietzsche into a “political philosopher” and abuse him to your own perverse ends. He was not even a political philosopher.”*
Exhibit “A” for said absence. I’m embarrassed for you. Have you read *Genealogy*, First Essay? *BGE*? *Ecce Homo*? *Antichrist*? Are you aware that books are written with “Nietzsche’s Political Philosophy” as part of the title and as the subject of the text? I restrain myself from commenting further on how ridiculous your statement is.
*”And if you consider yourself to be – you are the most perverse one to arrive on this blog.”*
A perspective symptomatic of a widely-shared lack of education in the logic and history of political economy. I’m here to assist in the rectification of that oversight.
*”You consider the Overman to be nothing but a lying slave driver with neither beauty of presence, physical strength, creative intellect, or nobility of character.”*
That claim would be more persuasive if you would quote me to that effect.
*”It really takes a lot of intellectual fortitude to perpetuate the idea that masses of people deserve to suffer and be poor.”*
And it takes a bit of restraint to respond to such mis-characterizations with a respectfully minimal amount of sarcasm.
*”I would be more then happy to respond on your blog but I am not an e blog member so perhaps we can add here to the forum on Nietzsche? I would be up for a discussion, and I think others may enjoy reading it, and contributing their 2c in as well.”*
I welcome your opening of such a discussion with your “response”.
NN
Okay, NN-
We can begin our discussion when the forum is up with this question, “is Nietzsche a political philosopher.” I would challenge you to provide his systematic political theory? Of coarse it can not be provided because there is not one, and it certainly does exist with sadomasochism or slavery as you are perversely suggesting here!
Really, you do not need to be embarrassed for me. I have read Nietzsche and I have not at arrived at the conclusion that he is sadist or a political theorist.
Dear Anthony,
*”Nietzsche was not a systematic philosopher, and as Spengler noted Schopenhauer, Nietzsche’s ‘master’ was the culmination of Western Philosophy, after him all the possibilities of Western thought had been ‘exhausted’. While I prefer to see him as the Plato of the future, Spengler’s opinion will do.”*
I think it will not.
Nietzsche rejected Schopenauer’s pessimism and sought to implore Western man to “overcome” himself and to “become who you are” in a confrontation, finally, with the truth of the human political circumstance and a view, finally, to the imperial maturation of European culture. *After* which the old men of Europe could reflect upon the Schopenhauerian pointlessness – the unsatisfying-ness, if you will – of life in the shadow of impending death and its cyclicality. Thus Schopenhauer was not mistaken – he was premature in his resignation – from Nietzsche’s perspective on the remaining possibilities for the West. But you would now like to avoid the substantive discussion by resorting to an oblique argument from authority that dismisses Nietzsche as merely epiphenominal – so much smoke after the philosophical fire.
But this will not do.
And it *is* the case that Nietzsche was self-admittedly not systematic, but a thread of political philosophy runs through his mature thought that is coherent and relevant and has yet to be satisfactorily controverted.
*”Nietzsche had little to do with NS thought, excepting his embrace of the Will rather than its denial. That done Nietzsche was exhausted regardless of his futile attempts to claim what was not his.”*
Our concern is not with Nietzsche’s originality of thought but rather with its validity. You again attempt a tangent from a discussion of substance.
*”It is a necessary thing that Nietzschian neo-phytes in general ignore the[ir] master’s master. But what is worse, even if necessary, when confronted with a thought outside of master-slave morality try and slam that square peg into their round hole anyway, with a cry of “slave morality” or such like.”*
And you will, of course, quote me to this effect in order to avoid a charge of snide but foundationless insinuation.
*”I’ve seen it done by many neo-phytes and it is tiresome. Most are in their late teens, early twenties, so I’m guessing some sort of feeling of powerlessness has to do with it.”*
My own preference is for a pop-psych analysis with a little more depth to it. Let’s try that again with less of the “Crayola Creations” smell of grease to it.
*”If nothing but to try and break free of his master’s intellectual fetters, Nietzsche extolled the Jewish world as an example of bring[ing] culture to the West. Nietzsche was not a trained philosopher and it shows. Schopenhauer correctly surmised the jewish sentiment as detrimental to our sentiment and to follow the jewish lead would result in a crass world of materialism.”*
Where did you dig up this bizarre misrepresentation?
*”Nietzsche tried to have it both ways. Regardless, in terms of practical[it]y and living in the world while overcoming it Schopenhauer was the philosopher of the hour.”*
Which is to say what of substance – finally – with regard to the present issue?
NN
Well, I suppose what you think is besides the point as you only seem to be vomiting the same inane crap every other rubbish can does. Garbage in, garbage out.
No bizarre representation. I have something over and above you having deeply read both philosophers. Consider that when Nietzche uses terms like “Understanding” he is speaking of it in the Schopenhauerian sense. Unless you understand Shopenhauer’s definitions you miss a lot in Nietzsche. You also miss how much Nietzsche was in debt to Schopenhauer and how also he misunderstood him.
It maybe an historical-irony that the slavish tend to congregate around Nietzsche, but maybe not since Nietzsche to a large extent was nothing more than a reaction to Schopenhauer, a foot-note if you will.
When one reads Nietzsche writing how he had just ‘discovered’ Spinoza after he had already written a library’s worth of plagarism what can one do but roll one’s eyes?