“First published in Italy, [Nietzsche, The Aristocratic Rebel] has finally been translated into English by Gregor Benton and released as part of the Historical Materialism Book Series with Haymarket Books.”
“If the woke activists who are willing to wake up at 5:00 am to march for racial justice are nihilistic, they sure seem to find nihilism plenty meaningful and inspiring.”
“However, its veneration of far-right thinking (sometimes qualified but always in the most intellectualized vein) undermines its claims to genuine seriousness.”
“Given this, we can recognize that Nietzsche would have seen layers of irony in these contemporary conservative figures appealing to his ideas to critique contemporary socialists…while simultaneously expressing concern about declining Christian values.”
“So what, then, makes someone a liberal? In this piece, I am going to argue that the philosophy of Immanuel Kant provides some clues.”
“When it comes to theorizing about cosmopolitan socialism, Michael, unfortunately, passed on before he could spell out the details. However, we can infer much from his criticisms of conservative histories.”
“At his best, Scruton was a panoramic thinker of formidable intellect who puts to shame many of the lesser polemicists who have followed in his giant footsteps.”
“Struck by this realization, Wittgenstein insisted that the best thing now was simply to stop doing philosophy and to try and find in life what could not be said with certainty.”
“This is one of the reasons for the remarkable loneliness and alienation from others many have detected in the post-modern landscape.”
“In this brief article, my final for the year, I will discuss four different ways freedom has been conceived of in the European philosophical tradition.”
“However, Žižek’s entire point is that the dialectical method reveals a shocking truth about the world: that certain limitations cannot be overcome because they are built into the structure of reality itself.”
“My new book, A Critical Legal Examination of Liberalism and Liberal Rights, holds that liberalism is best understood as a political and moral doctrine committed to two fundamental principles.”
“However, the purpose of this reading is to stress—contra more conservative interpreters like Milbank—that the disordered post-modern world that we inhabit is not a firm break with Christianity.”
“Throughout my writings on post-modern conservatism, I have generally avoided discussing President Donald Trump’s personality.”
“One question I am often asked by engaged leftists is what texts are most helpful for understanding the political right.”
“Now, in what is sure to be a more controversial move, Burgis is turning his analytical skills towards criticizing the political left.”
“While we may be cursed to live in interesting times, this presents an opportunity to rethink some of our basic assumptions about the democratic politics of liberal states…”
“In this respect, it is not a defense of Christianity but its final undoing: the subordination of eternal God to the human, all too human need for reactionary political order and tribalistic identity.”
“The result is a thoughtful and nuanced book that testifies to both his theoretical and exegetical talents, solidifying Scruton’s legacy as the most talented conservative writer of his generation.”
“Without some clarification on this point, calling for unity looks less like an appeal to historical precedent and more like the nostalgic projection of order and stability onto time periods that were anything but.”
“The irony is that this is in stark contrast to how our rivals on the political right often portray the Left.”
“Locke’s theoretical arguments prefigured another thinker who had a lot to say about labor and property: Karl Marx.”
“It is truly hard to believe that he is gone and that this burgeoning collaboration and friendship will never get the chance to grow.”
“During the past few years before, I had struggled with—and then firmly said goodbye to—the Catholicism of my upbringing, and I was searching for a new philosophy of meaning that did not seem to depend on so many leaps of faith.”
“The respective propriety of each strand of said activism must be engaged with on a case-by-case basis, rather than be lumped together with all other causes before being explained away with references to academic trends.”
“The reactionary outlook is, consequently, hostile to the commitment to moral equality that authentic conservatives, liberals, and progressives share.”
“One of the defining features of the reactionary outlook is how thin its conception of life’s meaning is, and this, in turn, explains why reactionaries tend to be so anxious about it all falling apart…”
“When asked to describe Chigurh, the few people lucky enough to have encountered him and survived claimed he that ‘looked like anybody.’”
“Brown makes the bold choice of echoing conservative critics in scrutinizing left-wing variants of identity politics from a Nietzschean perspective; however, she takes a far more nuanced and less polemical approach.”
“What has become ‘millennial socialism’ arguably got its start in 2011, with the founding of Jacobin, a proudly left-wing magazine that was trendy, readable, and erudite.”
“By contrast, those on the Left tend to prefer more transparently social determinants, such as ethnic or economic background and push against anything which seems to ‘naturalize’ inequality by explaining it biologically.”
“Piketty wants to re-orient the political left away from cultural and educational issues, which dominate the mindset of the elitist ‘Brahmin left’ in his telling, and back to the economic concerns that were once the Left’s bread and butter”
“The problem here is that one man’s stable hierarchy and proud tradition is another’s tyrannical oppression and ideology.”
“But good or bad, the extent of discourse around Myth and Mayhem at Merion West would have been edifying for any author, and we are very pleased the book has generated such interest and strong feelings, even before its release.”
“The decision to break time into past, present, and future reflects a tendency to see time as more or less analogous to space.“
“It is long past time that we abandon the transcendent appeal to rights as ways to settle more arguments, in part because—following Derek Parfit—it is far more constructive to ask why and which rights matter.”
“Peterson comes across no better in Brooks’ telling. He acknowledges that much of the Canadian psychologist’s self-help is quite useful, and he even jokingly admits that many leftists could do with some tough love about cleaning their room.”
“The irony of this exchange is it has only reinforced my opinion that Peterson’s political rhetoric often has a stultifying impact on sincere intellectual debates.“
“All of this culminated in the works of Nietzsche, who rejected the ontological and moral truths of monotheism, while retaining their stress on individualism.”
“Impotent bigness uses empty violence to lash out against the vulnerable to compensate for its own utter inability to change the world in any meaningful way. “
“Millennials occupy the rather strange position of being both an angry and apathetic generation.”
“This does seem to be occurring in the academy, as the contemporary academic stars of critical theory such as Alain Badious and Slavoj Žižek tend to be hostile to the extreme skepticism of post-modern theory.”
“Peterson himself described some of its symptomatic features in Maps of Meaning when he discusses how the breakdown of traditional mythopoetic traditions generated a sense of nihilistic uncertainty…”
“This explains the turn to nostalgic and resentment-driven politics to seek to elevate authority figures who will not only halt the flow of time but turn back the clock.”
“I will begin with the pros of Murray’s book before outlining my disagreements. First, it is well-written and well-organized. His prose crackles with wit and salt, with pointed examples often blending seamlessly with political commentary.”
“In the current Canadian context, I think the protestors are justified in blocking railway tracks and highways to make their point.”
“Veterans of the entertainment industry like Steve Bannon and the reality television star Donald Trump instinctively understood how to cater to the resentment of those who felt left behind by neoliberalism but were unwilling or unaware of left-wing alternatives.”
“What makes Hochman’s essay far more interesting than the usual screed against academics and critical theory is his effort to locate the cause in the history of Western rationalism and ultimately nihilism.”
“It is hard for even those of us who disagree profoundly with Peterson’s diagnoses of society to fail to empathize with his common struggle to get through being human.”
“As just another political theology—albeit an especially vulgar one—liberalism would, paradoxically, be put into contexts where it abandoned a commitment to rights for the sake of protecting itself.”
“So while I think it is important that the impeachment trial proceed, it is far more key for progressives to vest in political and social movements that target the underlying problems.”
“For the many activists and intellectuals on the Right, who identify with the ambiguously defined “Western civilization,” a nostalgic and selective association with Western civilization’s philosophical grandeur can be extremely appealing.”
“And that is why I will miss Roger Scruton, enemy of my beliefs that he was.”
“Despite this, Thomas has also long acknowledged the history of racial discrimination in the United States and has never accepted the popular conservative trope that the impact of racism is merely a historical issue in the present day.“
“Such specious reasoning is so problematic that it may well produce more of the existential instability Ahmari is keen to reject, rather than placate it.”
“…if one truly believes that the better argument can and should win the day, more formidable ammunition will be needed on the part of the Intellectual Dark Web.”
“In this spirit I would like to thank all the many individuals who have written or commented on my writing the last year, especially those who have offered sincere and interesting criticisms that have helped me develop my understanding of the world.”
“Rapid innovations in communications technology and new media have made it so that any individual can access more knowledge at their fingertips than prior generations could have by traveling to the world’s most esteemed centers of learning.”
“What it means is that when we begin to coordinate our lives according to an ideological worldview, it begins to generate a social world that can look a lot like the image presented by the ideology.”
“Finally, even a thinker as cynical and sharp as Michel Foucault invoked the language of rights to discuss the ‘right to intervene’ to liberate suffering individuals from the imposition of tyrannical sovereignty.”
“Peterson consistently invokes the Schopenhauerian-Nietzschean trope that the most important thing is to strengthen the self against the suffering of the world. The stronger one becomes, the greater and more worthy of respect and emulation by those around him.”
“But the more interesting argument Nietzsche puts forward is that resentment was at the base of many of the West’s egalitarian philosophies.”
“In this short essay, I will argue that there were three factors, which contributed to the emergence of post-modern culture.”
“By contrast, Kirk insists that progressives are the real fools in thinking that unbridled reason alone can provide us with an adequate sense of meaning in the world.”
“We should be aspiring to establish a far more egalitarian society in accordance with principles of fairness. But this cannot come at the expense of respecting alternative doctrines which have a right to political expression.”
“While this may be a fair criticism of socialist intellectuals, it isn’t obvious to me that all socialists were as myopically economistic as Honneth suggests.”
“In his book, Žižek analyzes why Kant and his progeny have been struggling philosophically in recent years, while offering a partial defense of their views.”
“There have been several assaults on this conceit before in the Western world; the philosopher Slavoj Žižek directs our attention to three in particular.”
“Lendvai believes that we should never underestimate the role that ‘personalities’ play in politics.”
“The paradox of believing in conspiracy theories is that—despite the distrust and paranoia reflected in them—adherents often deeply desire a sense of order in the world.“
“The totalitarian movements offered the promise of not just belonging, but total belonging. The individual would be swallowed into the movement, becoming a single homogenous mass with one’s fellows.”
“In the case of our current crisis of meaning, it was only in the 19th century that sensitive figures truly began to grasp the profound changes which had transformed societies.”
“Unfortunately, the Liberal party in power turned out to be as much a political creature as ever.”
“So confident were many in the apparent neutrality and sensibility of the third way approach that the difference between Conservatives and Labor, much like the Republicans and the Democrats, started to look merely cosmetic.”
“In many ways, it was far better to see Christendom shrunk down to a few genuine believers than to see it ballooned and enforced into a parody of itself”
“I wanted to take this opportunity to consider some of the ways philosophy has been used and misused in contemporary political debates to justify a broad range of positions.”
“The state must respect the freedom and autonomy of those fleeing violence by accepting them within its boundaries and offering them hospitality, which makes for a precursor to modern refugee law.”
“Even those who agree that rights exist struggle to locate where they come from, what counts as a genuine right, and how to realize them.”
“Many critics point out that this one dimensional approach to education helps produce citizens who are selfish, disinterested in politics, and unprepared for dealing with moral complexities, which are not reducible to cost-benefit analysis.”
“Today, it is science fiction that often carried the torch of the utopian aspiration.”
“The typical socialist often had very little concrete experience with the actual conditions facing those they purported to care about. They were often middle class, well educated, and highly resentful of the rich.”
“Tolstoy was not naïve in thinking that social and political reform would end all forms of evil in human life. Like Dostoevsky, he was very well aware that much wickedness flowed from the pride and vanity of men like Napoleon or the Russian tsars.”
“People do not truly want an end to suffering in all cases…They need challenges in order to feel the thrill of victory, guilt over their actions to have a chance at redemption, and the possibility of rejection and hatred to feel any deep form of love.”
“Given Pinder’s distaste for academia, I don’t imagine he would be fond of this kind of Platonic utopia.”
“Edmund Burke’s arguments against the French Revolutionaries resonate because he understood the revolutionaries’ position quite well.”
“If individuals are able to become authors of their lives in a substantive way, we can say they have lived a dignified life.”
“If capitalism doesn’t work for us all, it doesn’t work at all.”
“Importantly, he notes that it was initially the Conservative party that embraced European integration and the Labour Party which vehemently opposed it.”
“Perhaps it would be a great Christmas present for the depressed Leftist in one’s life?”
“Democratic legitimacy should not be a partisan issue; we, as Canadians, should all be taking this opportunity to discern how to make the country a more inclusive and participatory place.”
“What constitutes a sufficiently high level of education and intelligence to participate in politics is unclear, and advocates of these elitist positions are suspiciously prone to announcing the cut-off point lies with individuals roughly as capable and qualified as themselves.”
“It is not hard to infer that Locke may have been concerned that universal suffrage would result in concerted efforts to establish a more egalitarian society.”
“Once one actually delves into the positions put forward by many of members of the Intellectual Dark Web, it becomes clear they are just as fallible as their intellectual opponents.”
“While I do not always agree with Harvey’s appraisals of Marx’s arguments, there is no better secondary source to learn what that argument happens to be.”
Do some classical liberals and libertarians have more in common ideologically with the alt-right than they’d like to believe?
“Maistre is a fascinating thinker not so much due to the quality of his arguments themselves but instead what they represent and anticipate.”
“Notice how Maistre does not consider the actions of the people valid because they committed a crime against the nation by undermining its sovereign.”
“We turned to technology as a substitute for our inability to deal with the persistent riddles of existence and the lack of meaning in our life in a post-God era.”
“Analyzing the relationship is important because, as we all know, oftentimes law is not a medium for justice. Rather it is one that operates to repress, marginalize, and even tyrannize under the right circumstances.”
“But there are times in every polemicist’s career when he must take a genuine stab at intellectual respectability, put away sloganeering and manic hyperbole and see not through the dark lens of partisanship, but grasp the complex world as it truly is.”
“Despite these contrasts, one of the striking things about the debate was how frequently Zizek and Peterson seemed to agree with one another.”
“The argument that people should value ideals beyond the pursuit of their self-interest and subjective opinion was an elitist way of looking at things, and De Tocqueville’s Americans would have none of it.”
“The point of politics can, therefore, never be to try and make individuals act well. Indeed, for Hobbes the very idea that there is any good or evil beyond our subjective desires is vainglorious and foolish.”
“Neoliberal society and post-modern culture emerged together on the promise that they could provide greater economic prosperity and opportunities for self-development than any other social form.”
“Because the youth of today are primarily taught that the point of life is simply to achieve satisfaction, they are prone to a kind of easy relativism which seeks to not judge between superior or inferior ways of life.”
“Lain’s novel Bash Bash Revolution is not just a very funny work of science fiction (though it is). It is also very much a piece of engaged leftism; its irony and satire are never declaratory or moralistic…”
“Similar to Peterson’s argument that happiness is not the sole purpose of life, Burke claims that the ‘pain’ the sublime instills in us is extremely helpful.”
“So claiming that the Nazi’s nationalism and imperialism were exceptional strikes me as untrue. Almost all of the modern nation-states held up as examples made exceptions of Westphalian principles for themselves, often invoking national glory or superiority as an excuse.”
“Whether one buys into his system, the Left needs more thinkers with Unger’s courage and intellectual ambition.”
“Strangely enough, for all its notoriety, the ‘Intellectual Dark Web’ has few of the characteristics of a unified movement oriented around concrete goals.”
“Like any good satirist, McLeary directs a lot of his vitriol against the powers that be. He condemns the wealthy families and politicos that encouraged the country to give into its worst impulses, and then fled into space when the inevitable decline set in.”
“A technologically-advanced species with the capacity to destroy itself had better learn how to work together.”
“Rather than emphasizing abstract duty like Kant—or God, as Kierkegaard did—Nussbaum maintains that we become who we are through the people we interact with and the projects we are capable of pursuing.”
“And this is the rub of Kant’s political critique of nationalist-type arguments. If the nationalist allows too much deviation from the shared identity of the nation, then his society risks becoming one of liberal individuals.”
“We needn’t regard internationalism as a failed or misguided project, which the 20th century demonstrated was destined for the ash heap of history. Rather we should regard it as our first, clumsy, and tentative steps towards establishing a more complete global union.”
“Moreover, this also implies postmodern writers should be far more modest and careful when criticizing the virtues of science and reason, since it is not clear that they fully appreciate what it is that scientists actually do and believe.”
“The political right has long been better at playing the Nietzschian game of values than the political left.”
While post-modern conservatism is not doomed to failure due to some immanent dialectical process, it is utterly unable to rectify the social and political problems of the day.
“Unless there are certain universal mores, then a preference for the national values of the United Kingdom over those of Iran seem purely aesthetic, not moral.”
“Proponents of identity politics tended to push for these historically marginalized groups, in all their intersectional complexity, to have a greater say in the cultural and political dynamics of the day.”
“I believe the Left has a great deal that is can learn from these arguments. For too long we have left problems of meaning to the Right, while largely focusing on issues of material equality and political participation.”
“While the task of critique is always important, it is not sufficient if the expectation is simply that deconstructing regimes of marginalization will immanently lead to the emergence of some vaguely conceived egalitarian society.”
“It is easier to imagine Emperor Palpatine of the Sith falling than to imagine a politician effectively challenging the power of Wall Street.”
“If the present seems increasingly like nothing more than a depressing prelude to a dark and unchanging future, it is unsurprising that individuals may look to past for answers to their personal problems.”
“It is the appealing but ultimately confusing conflation of textualism with Constitutional conservatism, of facts and norms, which gives textualism its ideological power.”
“After my most recent piece on Jordan Peterson, a string of correspondents contacted me with further questions and comments about my opinions about the controversial Canadian Professor (not words one usually sees strung together).”
“One wonders what Socrates, that foul destroyer of Western civilization, might say about appealing to book sales and public opinion as an argument for the correctness of one’s views.”
“Neoliberal economic policies have deepened the anxiety of many rural conservatives, who felt they were gradually being ‘replaced’ or outdated by an economic system which no longer prioritized the resource, industrial, and agricultural sectors.”
“I very much understand why Jordan Peterson might appeal to many who feel attracted to the kinds of questions he is asking. My problem is with the specific answers he gives at a political level.”
“Wouldn’t the French-speaking Quebecois have more in common with, say, francophone Roman Catholics from Haiti who happen to be black? To avoid this conclusion, Duchesne shows a truly ugly side by just biting the bullet and claiming that skin color and race matters.”
“The right has clearly learned how to deploy the language of values, while recognizing that we have entered an era where blatantly contradictory positions can be a strength rather than a weakness.”
“The world is not becoming meaningless; it is becoming so saturated with symbolism that meaning itself no longer means anything.“
“My point, and the point of the post-modern philosophers, was to demonstrate that even a simple word like apple can beget numerous interpretations, let alone words like justice, equality and so on.”
“So is Deneen right? Has liberalism failed? I think in the long run nothing wrought by the hand of man lasts forever. This includes political ideologies. We have a tendency to naturalize the world as it is and assume that things can never change.”
“This is especially true in large urban areas. Forces beyond our control compel us to focus on the now “yolo?” and live fragmented lives of needs and satisfaction. In these contexts, we focus on being like animals rather than selves, and become increasingly homogenous and indistinguishable.”
“We are not just material objects in a value-free universe. Kant makes the radical and highly innovative argument that autonomy of the individual is the enabling condition of moral philosophy.”
“As Harry Frankfurt of On Bullshit indicated, a liar is someone who still has some tangential sense of what the truth is. They are aware of what is true and choose to dishonestly present the opposite. This is not true of Mr. Trump and his acolytes.”
“If we value our heritage, conservative intellectuals like Peterson need to stop pandering to their followers, and instead start motivating them to be more reflective about the culpability of complex social forces.”
“The unceasing accusations of bias are no longer used to promote dialogue and bridge interpretive frameworks. Instead, they are used to seal ourselves off inside bubbles that allow us to preserve the integrity of our world view, free from contamination by the views of others.”
“The practice of politics is always a form of violence, whether literal or figurative, as different groups of friends and enemies attempt to overcome one another and seize control of the state.”
“My suspicion is that many of Peterson’s readers feel an affinity to the advice he offers and so don’t look to question his political commitments that deeply. This is problematic because it leads to deep inconsistencies in doctrine that, if applied as stated, would lead to a rather unusual politics.
“Why does Peterson get this so wrong? He simply doesn’t care to present a more complex narrative that would problematize his cute and hyperbolic story about the left.”
The problem for originalists is that there is little truth or historical validity to their argument, which amounts to just a feel-good story of the Constitution’s natural legitimacy.
The attempt to conflate Marxism and post-modernism under the label of “cultural Marxism” is, at the very least, highly problematic.
