Friday, January 22, 2010 |
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How Do You Know What You Know? |
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By Greg Perkins @ 5:30 PM   
 How do you know what you know? And why should you care?
Objectivism isn't just a bunch of conclusions to collect and apply -- there's a distinctive methodology that emanates from the very core of the epistemology which shapes the entire philosophy and its ultimate effects in every realm. At the center of it all is the Objectivist account of just what concepts are, and how we properly acquire and use them. This is central because it goes to the essence of how we humans navigate reality: we're the rational animal, i.e., the conceptual animal. Leonard Peikoff explains it nicely:
For man, sensory material is only the first step of knowledge, the basic source of information. Until he has conceptualized this information, man cannot do anything with it cognitively, nor can he act on it. Human knowledge and human action are conceptual phenomena.
Although concepts are built on percepts, they represent a profound development, a new scale of consciousness. An animal knows only a handful of concretes: the relatively few trees, ponds, men, and the like it observes in its lifetime. It has no power to go beyond its observations -- to generalize, to identify natural laws, to hypothesize causal factors, or, therefore, to understand what it observes. A man, by contrast, may observe no more (or even less) than an animal, but he can come to know and understand facts that far outstrip his limited observations. He can know facts pertaining to all trees, every pond and drop of water, the universal nature of man. To man, as a result, the object of knowledge is not a narrow corner of a single planet, but the universe in all its immensity, from the remote past to the distant future, and from the most minuscule (unperceivable) particles of physics to the farthest (unperceivable) galaxies of astronomy.
A similar contrast applies in the realm of action. An animal acts automatically on its perceptual data; it has no power to project alternative courses of behavior or long-range consequences. Man chooses his values and actions by a process of thought, based ultimately on a philosophical view of existence; he needs the guidance of abstract principles both to select his goals and to achieve them. Because of its form of knowledge, an animal can do nothing but adapt itself to nature. Man (if he adheres to the metaphysically given) adapts nature to his own requirements.
A conceptual faculty, therefore, is a powerful attribute. It is an attribute that goes to the essence of a species, determining its method of cognition, of action, of survival. To understand man -- and any human concern -- one must understand concepts. One must discover what they are, how they are formed, and how they are used, and often misused, in the quest for knowledge. This requires that we analyze in slow motion the inmost essence of the processes which make us human, the ones which, in daily life, we perform with lightninglike rapidity and take for granted as unproblematic. [OPAR p.74]
Rand offers just such an analysis in her monograph, Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology. In doing so she better equips us to do business in reality while repelling deadly threats that can sometimes be quite subtle. For, "What is at stake here is the cognitive efficacy of man's mind."
As I [Rand] wrote in For the New Intellectual: "To negate man's mind, it is the conceptual level of his consciousness that has to be invalidated. Under all the tortuous complexities, contradictions, equivocations, rationalizations of the post-Renaissance philosophy -- the one consistent line, the fundamental that explains the rest, is: a concerted attack on man's conceptual faculty. Most philosophers did not intend to invalidate conceptual knowledge, but its defenders did more to destroy it than did its enemies. They were unable to offer a solution to the 'problem of universals,' that is: to define the nature and source of abstractions, to determine the relationship of concepts to perceptual data -- and to prove the validity of scientific induction .... The philosophers were unable to refute the Witch Doctor's claim that their concepts were as arbitrary as his whims and that their scientific knowledge had no greater metaphysical validity than his revelations." [ITOE Forward]
The Objectivism Seminar is about to start its journey through Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology (Expanded Second Edition). We hope to thoroughly digest the main work as well as all of the supplementary material. The meetings will feature several fairly seasoned Objectivists trading off on moderation, and we especially encourage those who are newer to the ideas or maybe a little fuzzy on them to bring their most challenging questions and puzzles! (And for those who are more acquainted with the material, this offers the challenge of grappling with helping others find their way through those questions and puzzles -- as well as the surprisingly common bonus of finding unexpected fuzziness of their own. :^)
We'll be meeting weekly, in a one-hour conference call hosted at TalkShoe.com. You can participate online with just your computer, or via a regular phone (or you can listen in later via the podcast recordings). The series begins on Monday, February 1, 8:00 pm Mountain time.
Please visit www.ObjectivismSeminar.com to learn more and join in!Labels: Epistemology, Objectivism Seminar
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Monday, November 30, 2009 |
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The Culture of Hatred |
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By Greg Perkins @ 8:00 AM
 The Objectivism Seminar is working through Dr. Leonard Peikoff's all-too-topical book, The Ominous Parallels. In it, he explores what gave rise to to the fascist, totalitarian regime of Nazi Germany -- and analyzes whether and how a fascist, totalitarian regime could emerge here in America. Our focus this week was Chapter 10, "The Culture of Hatred" -- a reference to the rise of Nihilism in the German culture. Topics we discussed included: - We explored how "the first truly modern culture" in the world emerged, more accepting of contemporary-everything: the "Weimar culture," shaped by the "free spirits" of the German Republic, the the avant garde in the humanities, sciences, commentary, journalism, and so on. A key question to answeris: what is "modernity" is in this sense? What principle unites Kaiser, Kandinsky, Schoenberg, Mann, Barth, Freud, Heisenberg?
- Touring the culture, Peikoff started with literature ("art is the barometer of a culture, and literature is the barometer of art"). The prominent philosophical novel by Thomas Mann (The Magic Mountain) was characterized by a contemporary as the "saga of the Weimar Republic." "To a country and in a decade swept by hysteria, perishing from uncertainty, torn by political crisis, financial collapse, violence in the streets, and terror of the future -- to that country, in that decade, its leading philosophical novelist offered as his contribution to sanity and freedom the smiling assurance that there are no answers, no absolutes, no values, no hope." It was a hit that resonated with the culture.
- Turning to poetry like that of Rainer Maria Rilke, a Christian mystic admired across the board, as well as Kafka, Peikoff finds them offering "nightmare projections of nameless ciphers paralyzed by a sinister, unknowable reality."
- Turning to the philosophy of Existentialism and Martin Heidegger, it underscores existence being unintelligible, reason invalid, man a helpless "Dasein" -- a creature engulfed by "das Nichts" (nothingness), in terror of the supreme fact of his life: death and doomed by nature to "angst," estrangement, futility. Heidegger's works rejected any systematic defense of his ideas and were praised as the "intellectual counterpart of modern painting."
- In contrast to Heidegger's rejection of religion and God, the avant-garde theologians tried to reconceive these in modern terms -- "Avant-garde religion, in short, consists in ditching one's mind, prostrating oneself in the muck, and screaming for mercy."
- Next was the new psychology with the psychoanalysis of Freud. In the name of science it leaves us "Caught in the middle between these forces -- between a psychopathic hippie screaming: satisfaction now! and a jungle chieftain intoning: tribal obedience! -- sentenced by nature to ineradicable conflict, guilt, anxiety, and neurosis is man, i.e., man's mind, his reason or "ego," the faculty which is able to grasp reality, and which exists primarily to mediate between the clashing demands of the psyche's two irrational masters." More generally, the "new science -- like the new philosophy, the new theology, the new art -- becomes instead a vehicle of the willful, the arbitrary, the subjective."
- Finally, touching on sociology, political science, education, art historians, social commentators, philosophers… and even physics and math, we find everywhere that "The notion of 'reason enthroned' disappears into myth, and the rational man collapses…"
- In sum, we find that what is new and distinctive across the board is Nihilism: hatred of values and of their root, reason -- this, Peikoff contends, is the essential that underlies, generates, and defines "Weimar culture."
- How Peikoff traces Nihilism as a cultural force back to Kant's philosophy.
- How this new culture compares and contrasts with other eras of mysticism -- and how Peikoff's framing of it in this book relates to the way he is framing similar phenomena in his new DIM Hypothesis work (forthcoming).
Peikoff summarized the results, social and political:
In the orgy which was the cultural atmosphere of the Weimar Republic, the Germans could not work to resolve their differences. Disintegrated by factionalism, traumatized by crisis, and pumped full of the defiant rejection of reason, in every form and from all sides, the Germans felt not calm, but hysteria; not confidence in regard to others, but the inability to communicate with them; not hope, but despair; not the desire for solutions to their problems, but the need for scapegoats; and, as a result, not goodwill, but fury, blind fury at their enemies, real or imagined.
Nihilism in Germany worked to exacerbate economic and political resentments by undermining the only weapon that could have dealt with them. The intellectuals wanted to destroy values; the public shaped by this trend ended up wanting to destroy men.
The social corollary of "Weimar culture" was a country animated, and torn apart, by hatred, seething in groups trained to be impervious to reason.
The political corollary was the same country put back together by Hitler.
If this sounds interesting, you can listen in on the podcast -- just download the session's MP3 directly, or listen to it with the little player on the right, or subscribe to the podcast series over on the Seminar's TalkShoe page. And if you have something to ask or add, please do pick up the book and join the discussion! We meet at 8:00pm Mountain on Mondays, for about an hour. Labels: History, Objectivism Seminar, Philosophy, Politics
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Friday, November 13, 2009 |
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The Nazi Synthesis |
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By Greg Perkins @ 5:00 PM
The Objectivism Seminar is working through Dr. Leonard Peikoff's all-too-topical book, The Ominous Parallels. In it, he explores what gave rise to to the fascist, totalitarian regime of Nazi Germany -- and analyzes whether and how a fascist, totalitarian regime could emerge here in America. Our focus this week was Chapter 9, "The Nazi Synthesis" -- a reference to what gave the Nazis the ability to seemingly offer everything to everyone. Topics we discussed included: - How "The nationalists, at heart, were socialists. The socialists, at heart were nationalists. The Nazis took over the essence of each side in the German debate and proudly offered the synthesis as one unified viewpoint. The syntheses is: national socialism."
- This synthesis stressed the basic principles common to all groups and served as an opening to every major segment of the population, reactionary and radical alike. At the same time, the non-Nazi parties limited themselves to a narrower, more specific consituency while alienating the rest of the country.
- The "Twenty-Five Points" document outlining the Nazi agenda: how it demanded special state action on behalf of virtually every group, with the middle class as its most obvious target of appeal. These are the white-collar workers, small tradesmen, bureaucrats, academics -- those ravaged by the war and hit hardest by the hyperinfltion, and who felt pinned between government-protected cartels above and government-supported unions below.
- How the Nazis offered private deals and/or public promises to virtually every significant group in Germany to broaden their support -- all the way down to the spinsters. What enabled the Nazis to offer conflicting messages tailored to appeal to each audience, flattering everyone as uniquely important, soothing concerns about their interests, promising punishment of those they felt pitted against.
- The one real consistency the Nazis offered was that of supporting and sacrificing to the "public interest" -- rejecting the Weimarian mixed economy with its partial freedoms for utter totalitarianism.
- And much more...
The chapter closes by saying: The poor hated the rich, the rich hated "the rabble," the left hated the "bourgeoisie," the right hated the foreigners, the traditionalists hated the new, and the young hated everything, the adults, the Allies, the West, the Jews, the cities, the "system."
The Nazis promised every group annihilation, the annihilation of that which it hated. Just as Hitler offered Germany a synthesis of ideas, so, appealing to the nationwide, classwide spasm of seething fury, he offered the voters a synthesis of hatreds. In the end, this combination was what the voters wanted, and chose. If this sounds interesting, you can listen in on the podcast -- just download the session's MP3 directly, or listen to it with the little player on the right, or subscribe to the podcast series over on the Seminar's TalkShoe page. And if you have something to ask or add, please do pick up the book and join the discussion! We meet at 8:00pm Mountain on Mondays, for about an hour. Labels: History, Objectivism Seminar, Philosophy, Politics
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Monday, November 09, 2009 |
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The Emotionalist Republic |
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By Greg Perkins @ 2:00 PM
The Objectivism Seminar is working through Dr. Leonard Peikoff's all-too-topical book, The Ominous Parallels. In it, he explores what gave rise to to the fascist, totalitarian regime of Nazi Germany -- and analyzes whether and how a fascist, totalitarian regime could emerge here in America. Our focus this week was Chapter 8, "The Emotionalist Republic" -- a reference to how there was one fundamental principle "everywhere in the ascendancy -- among artists and educators, radicals and traditionalists, young and old alike": the wholesale rejection of rationality for emotionalism. Topics we discussed included: - Why Peikoff characterized art as "the barometer that lays bare a period's view of reality, of life, of man."
- The rise of the Expressionism movement in art with its open break with the intellect, with material reality, with all 'middle class' values such as work and personal success, industrial civilization, money, business, section standards, law and order, etc. The spread of these values into everything from cartoons in the newspapers, architecture, films, poetry, music.
- The Conservative reaction to this, which they regarded as a product of "reason": turning to their traditional values of intuition and feeling with artists who portrayed an irrational, heroic, mystic world "beset by treachery, overwhelmed by violence, drowned in blood, and culminating in … an orgy of self-willed annihilation".
- How the "same epistemological cause leads ultimately to the same social effect (whatever the form). The left culturati called their political ideal "socialism." the right culturati called theirs "Prussianism." But, as Spengler pointed out in an influential work entitled Prussianism and Socialism, there is no essential difference between these two concepts. Under both approaches, he noted, "Power belongs to the whole. The individual serves it. The whole is sovereign… Everyone is given his place. There are commands and obedience."
- The spread of these values via the efforts of both the left and the right into the youth movements and the educational institutions.
- The effects of such emotionalism in economics: the failure in hyperinflation they would suffer as their mixed, Bismarckian-style economy drove individuals to join into pressure-group warfare.
- How this all combines into a miserable, volatile circumstance ripe for someone to deliver change and hope...
If this sounds interesting, you can listen in on the podcast -- just download the session's MP3 directly, or listen to it with the little player on the right, or subscribe to the podcast series over on the Seminar's TalkShoe page. And if you have something to ask or add, please do pick up the book and join the discussion! We meet at 8:00pm Mountain on Mondays, for about an hour. Labels: History, Objectivism Seminar, Philosophy, Politics
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Thursday, October 29, 2009 |
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United They Fell |
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By Greg Perkins @ 5:00 AM
The Objectivism Seminar is working through Dr. Leonard Peikoff's all-too-topical book, The Ominous Parallels. In it, he explores what gave rise to to the fascist, totalitarian regime of Nazi Germany -- and analyzes whether and how a fascist, totalitarian regime could emerge here in America. Our focus this week was Chapter 7, "United They Fell" -- a reference to Germans' widespread agreement on important fundamentals despite often fierce political differences that were evident as they strove to create a new, constitutional republic. Topics we discussed included: - A tour of the political diversity in both means and ends that was present as Germans drew up their nations new, republican constitution: the four major groups forming two broad coalitions in the Wiemar Assembly -- and the two paralleling major groups in the "street".
- How despite the seeming ideological diversity, all of the major groups battling to shape Germany's new government nonetheless shared the same essential ideas in epistemology (anti-reason, mysticism), ethics (sacrificial, altruistic), and politics (anti-capitalist, collectivist). They argued fiercely, even violently, over more derivative matters: In the formal discussions of the Wiemar Assembly, in the end the marxist Social Democrats and their allies sought state control of the economy for the benefit of the lower classes -- versus the conservative/monarchical Nationalists who sought state control of the economy for the benefit of the upper classes. And at the same time the major parties active in the "street" were more pure in their desired ends, and more direct in their means to achieving them: the Communists fought for an all-powerful state to determine the fate of individuals' lives, versus the Free Corps who fought for an all-powerful ruler who would determine the fate of individuals' lives.
- And much more...
The chapter closes: Wherever the German turned -- to the left, to the right, to the center; to the decorous voices in parliament or to the gutters running with blood -- he heard the same fundamental ideas. They were the same in politics, the same in ethics, the same in epistemology.
This is how philosophy shapes the destiny of nations. If there is no dissent in regard to basic principles among a country's leading philosophic minds, theirs are the principles that come in time to govern every social and political group in the land. Owing to other factors, the groups may proliferate and may contend fiercely over variants, applications, strategy; but they do not contend over essentials. In such a case, the country is offered an abundance of choices -- among equivalents competing to push it to the same final outcome.
It is common for observers to criticize the "disunity" of Weimar Germany, which, it is said, prevented the anti-Nazi groups from dealing effectively with the threat posed by Hitler. In fact, the Germans were united, and this precisely was their curse: their kind of unity, their unity on all the things that count in history, i.e., on all the ideas. If this sounds interesting, you can listen in on the podcast -- just download the session's MP3 directly, or listen to it with the little player on the right, or subscribe to the podcast series over on the Seminar's TalkShoe page. And if you have something to ask or add, please do pick up the book and join the discussion! We meet at 8:00pm Mountain on Mondays, for about an hour. Labels: History, Objectivism Seminar, Philosophy, Politics
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Friday, October 23, 2009 |
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Kant Versus America |
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By Greg Perkins @ 5:00 AM
The Objectivism Seminar is working through Dr. Leonard Peikoff's all-too-topical book, The Ominous Parallels. In it, he explores what gave rise to to the fascist, totalitarian regime of Nazi Germany -- and analyzes whether and how a fascist, totalitarian regime could emerge here in America. Our focus this week was Chapter 6, "Kant Versus America" -- a reference to the fundamental opposition between core American ideals and German ideological imports. Topics we discussed included: - German metaphysical idealism coming to America via the transcendentalism of Ralph Waldo Emerson et. al -- an eclectic "literary" version of German romanticism. Then decades of Hegel's purified Kantianism dominating American philosophy departments.
- How some advocates of these ideas were open and clear about their rejection of reason for emotion/intuition/will, while others took the tack of presenting themselves as champions of rationality even while undercutting every essential element of it.
- How advocates of the American system of rights and capitalism tried to find ideological support in classical economics and evolutionary biology -- and how this was ultimately a doomed effort because these are not philosophically fundamental. Mill, Smith, Say, and the rest of the classical economists tried to defend an individualist system while accepting the fundamental moral ideas of its opponents (altruism, collectivism). And on the biological evolution front, Herbert Spencer tried and failed to defend capitalism while adhering to more fundamental ideas which clash with it (advocating a species-based collectivist approach that would be inspiration for Eugenicists, and thinking evolution would eventually eliminate egoism in favor of altruism in humans).
- What Pragmatism is and how it became the main American manifestation of the Kantian trend.
- Why Pragmatists adopt codes of values and political ideas designed by others (non-pragmatists), usually without consciously acknowledging this, through cultural osmosis.
- How Pragmatism was the only 20th century philosophy to gain broad, national acceptance in America (and how this happened through Orwellian twists of meaning and language to sell it to an audience who would otherwise recoil). How it enjoyed a disastrous acceleration by taking over the educational system (Dewey), its prevalence in politics, etc.
- How academic philosophy then all but disappeared in America -- as the "dead end" of the Kantian dichotomy between thought and reality, with the public rightly rejecting the field of philosophy as worthless (even though they nonetheless remained powerfully influenced by philosophy).
- And a lot more...
If this sounds interesting, you can listen in on the podcast -- just download the session's MP3 directly, or listen to it with the little player on the right, or subscribe to the podcast series over on the Seminar's TalkShoe page. And if you have something to ask or add, please do pick up the book and join the discussion! We meet at 8:00pm Mountain on Mondays, for about an hour. Labels: History, Objectivism Seminar, Philosophy, Politics
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Thursday, October 15, 2009 |
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The Nation of the Enlightenment |
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By Greg Perkins @ 5:00 AM
The Objectivism Seminar is working through Dr. Leonard Peikoff's all-too-topical book, The Ominous Parallels. In it, he explores what gave rise to to the fascist, totalitarian regime of Nazi Germany -- and analyzes whether and how a fascist, totalitarian regime could emerge here in America. Our focus this past two weeks (due to technical difficulties) was Chapter 5, "The Nation of the Enlightenment" -- a reference to the central influence of the ideas and spirit of the Enlightenment in America's founding. Topics we discussed included: - The eras of reason in Western philosophy, and how this relates to Peikoff's characterization of the US as the Nation of the Enlightenment. Whether the US is indeed unique in being a "nation of ideas".
- How achievements in science and philosophy basically proclaimed the world open to reason -- with reason becoming a virtue, the norm and expected.
- The difference between early America and the America that the Founders built. How the American Enlightenment is a 'profound reversal' of the Puritans' philosophic priorities. What brought about the dislodging of Puritanism, and the religious outlook of the founding leaders.
- Why Aristotle is the first father of this new world. And Locke's contribution to that legacy.
- How the founders integrated their considerable knowledge of history to devise a brilliant, practical implementation of these abstract ideas with checks and balances, trying to isolate the operation of the state as much as possible from the moral character of any of its temporary officials, as well as subversion by an aspiring dictator or temporary sentiment.
- How this rising nation of ideas then fell prey to bad ideas in Europe: There was no American attempt to give systematic statement to and defense of the American approach to liberty -- we had no major philosophical innovators and relied on Europe to provide this (e.g., Locke). Unfortunately, there were gaps and problems, leading to the "American conflict" between the implicitly egoistic upholding of rights vs. the explicitly altruistic morality of the culture.
- And a lot more...
If this sounds interesting, you can listen in on the podcast -- just download the session's MP3 directly, or listen to it with the little player on the right, or subscribe to the podcast series over on the Seminar's TalkShoe page. And if you have something to ask or add, please do pick up the book and join the discussion! We meet at 8:00pm Mountain on Mondays, for about an hour. Labels: History, Objectivism Seminar, Philosophy, Politics
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Wednesday, September 30, 2009 |
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The Ethics of Evil |
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By Greg Perkins @ 5:00 AM
The Objectivism Seminar is working through Dr. Leonard Peikoff's all-too-topical book, The Ominous Parallels. In it, he explores what gave rise to to the fascist, totalitarian regime of Nazi Germany -- and analyzes whether and how a fascist, totalitarian regime could emerge here in America. Our focus this week was Chapter 4, "The Ethics of Evil" -- a reference to the implications for peoples' lives that flow from the ideas they accept about values. Topics we discussed included: - How Obama matches and doesn't match fascists in history -- an important distinction to observe.
- The two fundamentally opposed approaches to morality.
- How Kant carried Christianity's ethics to its climax -- and how Christianity "prepared the ground" for modern totalitarianism by entrenching three fundamental ideas in the Western mind.
- Christianity's non-sacrificial ethical nod to Pagan egoism -- and how Kant expunged this.
- How Kant felt he wasn't an innovator in the realm of morality, but yet he was an innovator in in an important respect: actually divorcing morality from values, with moral perfection being uninterested action devoid of any love or desire.
- What evil consists in, for Kant: not self-love per-se, but giving self-love priority over morality in one's heart. Kant's version of Original Sin.
- How for Kant, "It is the lot of the moral man to burn with desire and then, on principle -- the principle of duty -- to thwart it. The hallmark of the moral man is to suffer. … It is sacrifice -- sacrifice as against apathy or indifference, sacrifice continual and searing -- which is the essence of Kant's moral counsel to living men." [p.80]
- How Kant did not preach Nazism (he likely would have frowned on the Nazis) -- yet he established a necessary precondition for their development.
- The rise of the formal doctrine of Altruism, giving a target to sacrifice… Then Hegel's development bringing 'social relativism' to ethics -- and how the Nazis' pragmatism dovetails with it to strengthen their sacrificial, collectivist program.
- Why physical coercion and persuasion are the only two methods for people to deal with one another -- and how altruism gives the use of force a moral sanction, making it not just a practical recourse, but a positive virtue (in both secular and religious forms).
- How the many "mindless activists and nonideological brawlers" were nonetheless in the grip of a particular philosophy, morphing and rewriting their program, yet never altering the three fundamental ideas that their program rested on from start to end.
- That the world has not learned its lesson from history, with these three fundamental ideas still spreading throughout the Western world and increasing in their potency (and damage).
- And a lot more...
If this sounds interesting, you can listen in on the podcast (just download the session's MP3 directly, or listen to it with the little player on the right, or subscribe to the podcast series over on the Seminar's TalkShoe page). And if you have something to ask or add, please do pick up the book and join the discussion! We meet at 8:00pm Mountain on Mondays, for about an hour. Labels: History, Objectivism Seminar, Philosophy, Politics
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Wednesday, September 23, 2009 |
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Hitler's War Against Reason |
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By Greg Perkins @ 9:00 AM
The Objectivism Seminar is working through Dr. Leonard Peikoff's all-too-topical book, The Ominous Parallels. In it, he explores what gave rise to to the fascist, totalitarian regime of Nazi Germany -- and analyzes whether and how a fascist, totalitarian regime could emerge here in America. Our focus this week was Chapter 3, "Hitler's War Against Reason" -- a reference to the implications for peoples' lives that flow from the ideas they accept about knowledge and its acquisition and use. Topics we discussed included: - The connection between the rejection of reason and the use of force.
- the Nazi "epistemology": the wholesale undercutting and replacement of reason as a source of knowledge and guide to action -- in favor of feelings, instincts, "will" or (as Hitler was so surprisingly breezy in putting it) whatever you want to call such things.
- Irrationalism as the rejection of reason, Mysticism as the supplementing or replacement of reason, and [non-esthetic] Romanticism's existing strength in the German culture being necessary for Hitler and the Nazis to accomplish their aims.
- The timeline and major philosophical players in the transition from the Enlightenment reliance on reason to its rejection for romanticism and voluntarism.
- Hitler and the Nazi's profound, central reliance on and promotion of two forms of anti-reason: dogmatism and pragmatism.
- How this mixture of dogmatism and pragmatism brought something new (and seemingly paradoxical) to the world: "the absolute of the moment, or the immutable which never stands still, issued by an omniscience that ceaselessly changes its mind."
- A more general exploration of the subjectivism that underlies the above, how despite being present systematically since Greek times, it was able to take off and dominate a culture at this time and in this place.
- The naked use of force that subjectivism/primacy-of-consciousness has always brought -- even necessitated -- in politics.
- How the Nazis were utterly dependent on the groundwork laid by philosophers, merely "cashing in" on what was already in place.
- And a lot more...
If this sounds interesting, you can listen in on the podcast (just download the session's MP3 directly, or listen to it with the little player on the right, or subscribe to the podcast series over on the Seminar's TalkShoe page). And if you have something to ask or add, please do pick up the book and join the discussion! We meet at 8:00pm Mountain on Mondays, for about an hour. Labels: History, Objectivism Seminar, Philosophy, Politics
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Wednesday, September 16, 2009 |
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The Totalitarian Universe |
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By Greg Perkins @ 4:00 PM
The Objectivism Seminar is working through Dr. Leonard Peikoff's all-too-topical book, The Ominous Parallels. In it, he explores what gave rise to to the fascist, totalitarian regime of Nazi Germany -- and analyzes whether and how a fascist, totalitarian regime could emerge here in America. Our focus this week was Chapter 2, "The Totalitarian Universe" -- a reference to the implications for peoples' lives that flow from the metaphysical ideas they accept about the nature of reality. Topics we discussed included: - The complex, centuries-long development in the history of philosophy involving dozens of figures that brought about modern German culture and its Nazi climax -- boiled down to the the essential turning points found in three major philosophors: Plato, Kant, and Hegel.
- Plato's metaphysics and what it says about men, ethics, and politics -- how the implications in politics mean some men must rule others.
- The fundamental contrast Aristotle offered.
- The points at when Plato's and Aristotle's contrasting outlooks alternately dominated cultures, and how Kant's innovations drove the most recent transition to an essentially Platonic outlook.
- The difference between Plato and Kant -- how Kant "purified" Plato epistemologically and ethically.
- How Kant and Aristotle are similar in their professed political ideas not expressing the implications of their metaphysics/epistemology (and how later thinkers in their lines went on to develop those implications).
- The role of Hegel as a post-Kantian Platonist; how he "purified" the Kant and made Plato's totalitarian blueprint pale by comparison.
- The forms in which Hegel's ideas propagated -- Fascist Italy vs. Nazi Germany -- as well as the ways in which Hegel's ideas were secularized and made more materialistic and seemingly scientific. (Social Darwinism with Hitler, and class/economic determinism with Marx).
- And a lot more...
If this sounds interesting, you can listen in on the podcast (just download the session's MP3 directly, or listen to it with the little player on the right, or subscribe to the podcast series over on the Seminar's TalkShoe page). And if you have something to ask or add, please do pick up the book and join the discussion! We meet at 8:00pm Mountain on Mondays, for about an hour. Labels: History, Objectivism Seminar, Philosophy, Politics
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Thursday, September 10, 2009 |
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The Cause of Nazism |
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By Greg Perkins @ 5:00 AM
The Objectivism Seminar just started going through Dr. Leonard Peikoff's all-too-topical book, The Ominous Parallels. In it, he explores what gave rise to to the fascist, totalitarian regime of Nazi Germany -- and analyzes whether and how a fascist, totalitarian regime could emerge here in America. Our focus this week was Chapter 1, "The Cause of Nazism." Topics we discussed included: - Hitler's explanation of the moral philosophy of Nazism, which underlies "the individual's capacity to make sacrifices for the community, for his fellow men." He contrasted this with egoism/selfishness (which we only found surprising for its forthrightness).
- The degree to which the German people were aware of the political aims of the Nazi party (the "total state", a totalitarian regime) when they freely voted the Nazis into power.
- Terminology: statism, totalitarianism, individualism vs. collectivism, socialism and its relationship to communism and fascism, etc. For the Nazis, socialism was much broader than economics.
- How property and economic action fare under Marxist/communist treatment vs. fascist/Nazi treatment.
- Peikoff's argument that "An evil of such magnitude cannot be a product of superficial factors" (a good number of which he names and dispenses with). And why there is no direct or even approximate causal relationship between any "specific practical crises and the development of Nazism." (Like losing WWI or a nasty economic depression.)
- What it means to understand things in terms of fundamentals, and why the tools for doing so are necessarily philosophical.
- Peikoff's basic argument that philosophy is the fundamental factor behind the destiny of nations and the course of history.
- Peikoff's statement that the science of philosophy had to be destroyed for the horrors of the 20th century to come about.
- And a lot more...
If this sounds interesting, you can listen in on the podcast (just download the session's MP3 directly, or listen to it with the little player on the right, or subscribe to the podcast series over on the Seminar's TalkShoe page). And if you have something to ask or add, please do pick up the book and join the discussion! We meet at 8:00pm Mountain on Mondays for an hour or hour and a half. Labels: History, Objectivism Seminar, Philosophy, Politics
| | | E-mail Greg Perkins PermaLink () Comments (New Page) |
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| |
Subscribe to NoodleFood Blog Posts via Feed Reader via E-mail
Subscribe to NoodleCast Podcasts M4A via iTunes (MP3) via Feed Reader via E-mail
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