Diagnostic Pseudomorphosis

Spenglerian thoughts.

In this essay, I will use the Spenglerian concept of Pseudomorphosis, and the idea that an embryonic/early High Culture suffering from Pseudomorphosis will exhibit resentment and hostility to the offending established High Culture, to diagnose the presence of a very early stage new High Culture, and to gain some insights into its characteristics. To illustrate this possibility, I will use my idea of an Overman High Culture as a model.

See this. White Nationalism 3.0 alert - a Turk writes for Counter-Currents attacking Russians. The Counter-Currents article is well-written and does in fact make several interesting arguments, although some commentators point out how the thesis of that article is being over-stretched to fit a potentialy misleading narrative. Of course, questioning motives instead of arguments would be ad hominem, so I will not ascribe the article to the historical grievances of Turks against Russia nor of that of homosexuals against Putin's Russia.

My “take” on this issue is as follows and is based not only on my reading of history, but also “anecdotal” real-life experience knowing a reasonable number of Eastern European immigrants (real Eastern Europeans, not Jews), as well as having travelled in Eastern Europe, staying with private citizens, not in hotels, and meeting a variety of people. Russia can be considered a separate civilization from the West but it is not necessarily hostile; Russian-Western relations is contingent on history. Being invaded by Swedes, French, and Germans has not helped. If Russia was treated differently after the “end of the Cold War” then the situation today could be quite different. I agree that there are some civilizational tensions between Russia and the West but there is also opportunity for cohesion and collaboration, as two heads of a single European organism. As regards non-Russian Eastern Europeans (especially the Orthodox), while they are not fully of the West, they are not fully non-Western either. They fall somewhere in between the West and Russia, with the Catholic ones being more oriented toward the West, and the Orthodox ones more oriented toward Russia (culturally, not politically), but they are all (potentially) assimilable to the West. The Faustian Western High Culture - not the modern degeneration of it - has possibilities in Eastern Europe. Even Yockey (an extreme Western chauvinist) wrote, in The Proclamation of London, that there were elements in Russia amenable to the West.  

A general thesis of Spengler, O'Meara, and the Counter-Currents article is that Russia may be the center of its own High Culture, which is still in its early embryonic form. Of course, any High Culture can only arise if the human material is there, and a “Russian High Culture” cannot arise without the Russian people, who are being race replaced as are all other Whites. One other thing – High Cultures, and civilizations in general, are emergent properties of large numbers of particular Race-Culture types living in a defined territorial space. Let us assume that Russia is indeed a separate civilization. However, small numbers of Russians can assimilate into the Western culture. Certainly, Russian-Americans do not behave significantly different from other White Americans. However, masses of Russians, living amongst themselves – particularly on their native soil to which they have a historical connection – will likely manifest civilizational differences to the West. Just as a crowd takes on a distinct “personality” independent of the individuals of which it is composed, so does a culture emerge from a mass effect. Also see this for a more materialistic explanation for the adherence of certain peoples to particular cultural forms as part of their “racial soul.” The emergent “twist” on the idea in that "empirical racial soul" post is that these tendencies may be weak on an individual basis, but manifest in a synergistic fashion when masses of similar “racial souls” congregate together. An individual, or small groups of individuals immigrating over a period of time, likely will, or can, assimilate into another cultural form, but a large group introduced, particularly en masse, into an different culture likely will not.

The same Turk elsewhere:

Wouldn’t it be amazing if Eastern and Northern Europe were the most powerful and influential among Western countries? Oh wait… They can be. Time for Intermarium.

Surprise! A Non-European Caucasian (NEC) wants to divide Europeans, and exclude Southern Europeans from a narrower White subgroup. I am shocked, shocked I say!  Indeed, it is almost as shocking and surprising as the sun rising in the morning.

If only, say, Germany and the UK would be as “powerful and influential” in Europe as Italy or Greece...If only the power center in France would be in Paris in the north rather than Marseille in the south…If only Sweden was as influential in Europe as Portugal, if only Madrid was as influential as Brussels. Oh wait…

Note to mendacious alien Turk - Northern Europe IS the "most powerful and influential among Western countries." That is precisely why we are in the predicament we are in.

You can always count on NEC concern trolls to attack the Pan-European ideal, either directly or indirectly. Every. Single. Time.

Back to the Counter-Currents article: 

He termed such cultural amalgamation where a certain cultural realm is forced to express itself under alien cultural forms imported or imposed from elsewhere as Pseudomorphosis. Oswald Spengler thus predicted a century earlier that Russia will be moving away from the European (Faustian) Civilization and asserting its own unique identity.

One vivid example of historical Pseudomorphosis is the pre-Islamic Middle East, which Spengler called Magian Culture, being dominated by Rome and hence forced to express itself through the forms of Graeco-Roman (Apollonian) Culture, which was entirely alien to it. Only with the advent of Islam did the Magian Culture free itself from Graeco-Roman influence and could express itself organically in line with its own nature.

It is therefore quite likely that Russia is undergoing a process similar to that which the Middle East underwent in the 6th and 7th centuries, when with the rise of Islam, it emphatically asserted its own nature. As a matter of fact, throughout the centuries of Roman rule and domination of the Classical cultural norms the Middle East was seething with apocalyptic hatred towards Rome and everything Roman. In this regard, Islam can be viewed as the consummate form of expression of the deepest longings of the Magian world. At the same time, it was the medium through which the ressentiment towards the Graeco-Roman culture manifested itself. The intensity of that ressentiment was huge due to centuries of cultural suppression under Rome and being forced into the mould of the forms of Apollonian Culture, which were unnatural to the Magian Culture.

This explains the enmity the Islamic (i.e. Magian) world today manifests towards the West, which is represented by Christianity and which they view as the continuation of Rome…

…Importantly, the liberation of an emerging culture from the grip of Pseudomorphosis often unleashes a deep-seated hatred and ressentiment toward the dominant culture that once suppressed it. This phenomenon can be observed across various historical contexts…The Crusades can therefore be seen as the Faustian world’s emphatic rejection of the Eastern cultural dominance that had constrained it for centuries, marking a decisive moment in the assertion of Western identity and independence.

The following analysis in my post is based on the premise that Pseudomorphosis is a valid concept and the idea that it can breed resentment and hostility is correct.

According to Wikipedia:

The concept of pseudomorphosis is one that Spengler borrows from mineralogy and is introduced as a way of explaining what he calls half-developed or only partially manifested Cultures. Specifically, pseudomorphosis refers to an older Culture or Civilization being so deeply ingrained that a young Culture cannot find its own form and full expression of itself. In Spengler's words, this leads to the young soul being cast in the old molds, young feelings then stiffen in senile practices, and instead of expanding creatively, it fosters hate toward the older Culture.

Spengler believed that a Magian pseudomorphosis began with the Battle of Actium, in which the gestating Arabian Culture was represented by Mark Antony and lost to the Classical Civilization. The battle was different from the conflict between Rome and Greece, which had been fought out at Cannae and Zama, with Hannibal being the representative of Hellenism. He said that Antony should have won at Actium, and his victory would have freed the Magian Culture, but his defeat imposed Roman Civilization on it.

In Russia, Spengler saw a young, undeveloped Culture in a pseudomorphosis under the Faustian (Petrine) form. He said that Peter the Great distorted the tsarism of Russia to the dynastic form of Western Europe. The burning of Moscow, as Napoleon was set to invade, he described as a primitive expression of hatred toward the foreigner. In the following entry of Alexander I into Paris, the Holy Alliance and the Concert of Europe, he said that Russia was forced into an artificial history before its culture was ready or capable of understanding its burden. This would result in a hatred toward Europe, which Spengler said poisoned the womb of an emerging new Culture in Russia. While he does not name the Culture, he said that Tolstoy is its past and Dostoyevsky is its future.

It is possible that a new High Culture emerges without ever having had experienced Pseudomorphosis. But let us focus on the possibility that Pseudomorphosis does in fact take place. Imagine a new High Culture – the very earliest stages, the “pre-cultural” phase as well as the earliest glimmers of the new civilization – arising on the territory occupied by the old, preceding, late stage High Culture. You would expect the new High Culture, particularly as it physically overlaps the old and is subject to the sociopolitical power of the old, will suffer from Pseudomorphosis, and will exhibit resentment toward the older culture.

Let us forget about the Russian High Culture for a moment. The focus of this essay is this – if a purely European (including the Diaspora) new High Culture is emerging, or will emerge, among the ruins of the Faustian Western Culture, then what signs would be observed of this based on the phenomenon of resentment due to imposed Pseudomorphosis? Would these signs point to us the existence of a possible new High Culture and of some possible characteristics that it will manifest? In other words, can we use a diagnostic Pseudomorphosis, observing reactions to possible Pseudomorphosis to diagnose the existence of pre-cultural or early state High Culture and to identify its characteristics? I would think that any future European High Culture would, if it is in any sort of existence today, be in the exceedingly early pre-cultural stage. Therefore, one would need to look extremely hard for this embryonic culture, and try very hard to dissect out signs of resentment of that early cultural form toward the older culture among all the "background noise" of modern life.

Further, one needs to look for such resentment coming specifically from the Right, particularly the Far Right. Why? Two reasons. 

First, we are considering here only potential purely European High Cultures. Whether or not some type of non-White, mixed-raced, multiracial High Culture emerges is of no interest to me. By definition it is not what I am looking for. The Left is opposed to the survival of European peoples and, to be honest, the Mainstream Right is as well. Only the Far Right is focused on saving European peoples and so it is reasonable to expect that a new European High Culture will emerge from a milieu that is purely European and that is focused on preserving the European peoples. One cannot expect a purely European High Culture to emerge from a multiracial morass intent on exterminating Europeans.

Second, one would expect to see resentment from the Left with respect to the West under all circumstances, regardless of Pseudomorphosis. How can one tease out leftist resentment toward the West due to Pseudomorphosis (that would be imposed on a possible embryonic Left-Woke High Culture) from run-of-the-mill leftist hatred of the West and Whites, or from hatred toward the West from non-White civilizational blocs that already exist? One could not distinguish the signal of a Pseudomorphosis-driven resentment from the background noise of generalized leftist and non-White hatred of the West. Never mind that it is unlikely that the degeneracy of the Left, the mish-mash of multiculturalism, will give birth to any new High Culture – it is the opposite of High Culture and anathema to civilization. On the other hand, the Far Right is typically well disposed to the Western High Culture, and does not naturally have resentment to that High Culture. Therefore, the presence of anti-Western Far Right resentment should be a diagnostic clue, a warning sign, a ringing alert bell that something is going on, and that something could be resentment due to an embryonic new European High Culture suffering from Pseudomorphosis from the Faustian West.

Three caveats: First, with respect to Pseudomorphosis, the resentment from the Far Right has to be against the authentic Faustian Western High Culture, not the degenerate “West” exemplified by the Woke Left System. Second, the resentment cannot be in the form of resentment based on adherence to old, passed cultural forms, e.g., hostility to Christianity because one adheres to Classical Greco-Roman values or because one is an Odinist pagan. The resentment has to derive from the suppression of a new value system, a new cultural form. Third, although resentment from a political and artistic direction is expected from the (Far) Right in the scenario described here, it is also possible to have, in certain contexts, apolitical resentment as well. This apolitical resentment would likely come from the realm of science. Most scientists today are leftists and would share the typical generalized leftist resentment of the West described above. However, among more objective, apolitical, dispassionate White scientists, demonstrations of cultural resentment, or even frustration, may be a sign of a reaction to Pseudomorphosis. Of course, the few rightist scientists, typically well disposed toward the West, can be particularly useful "canaries in the coal mine" with respect to possible resentment toward the West - if even they demonstrate such resentment in particular contexts, what does that tell us? Perhaps it is a reaction to Pseudomorphosis in the realm of science and due to frustration with the underlying metaphysics of the dominant older culture. So, resentment due to Western Pseudomorphosis does not necessarily have to be politically rightist, it could be apolitical (as in science), but it most definitely would not be expected from the Left.

In my Overman essay, I wrote:

…of course a High Culture is an organic phenomenon that cannot be created in a pre-planned form and artificially imposed on a people. However, it is possible to plant the seeds and to have some choice as to which seeds are planted. And then, we can nurture the seedling as it grows, and as it develops according to its own inherent character. This we can do and this we must do.

Of course dogmatic Spenglerians would reject that idea of "planting seeds," and also reject the idea that we can predict the form a new High Culture would take. But I am not a dogmatic Spenglerian, so let us proceed with my hypothesis outlined in this post, based on its assumptions of analyzing a model system of a potential new High Culture.

Therefore, I will use my Overman idea as a model for this analysis. I know others have offered alternative possibilities for a future European High Culture. One example is a High Culture based on Spenglerian cyclicity; thus, instead of a worldview based on upward-looking Faustian overcoming, it will instead be based on a view that everything moves in cycles and the entire metaphysics and epistemology and cultural artifacts of the society would be based on that. However, I see it as too convenient to use Spengler’s central idea to predict a High Culture based precisely upon that central idea. Of course, others would make similar critiques of my Overman High Culture; they would argue that it is too convenient for someone from a Faustian High Culture to predict a new High Culture than further transcends the Faustian in its upward impulses. Very well. But we cannot really predict any of this, so I will proceed with my Overman-based analysis; I have already made clear that it is being used as a model system to illustrate how potential reactions to Pseudomorphosis could be used to diagnose these issues. 

Just as Yockey talked about several types of Culture Disease, here I discuss Culture Diagnosis. The overall idea applies to whatever form a new High Culture may take, as long as Pseudomorphosis and a reaction to that is present. If there is no Pseudomorphosis then obviously one cannot base diagnostics on that, and would simply need to be attuned to what the early, embryonic stages of a new High Culture would be like, which is a much more general non-specific approach. Is speculating about High Cultures itself an embryonic form, or sign, of such a culture? Who knows? But back to Pseudomorphosis.

What exactly is the Faustian Western High Culture? See here. That is a somewhat confused essay. Duchesne argues – as Oliver did and I once did (I have changed my mind on this after reading Quigley) – that Ancient Greece and Rome at least partially fit with the Faustian ideal. But then he, somewhat approvingly, cites Spengler’s idea of the Nordic origins of Faustianism.  Unfortunately for the Nordicists, current available genetic data do not support that the Ancient Greeks and Romans were Nordic. If the Faustian ideal is Nordic and if the Ancient Greeks and Romans exemplified this ideal before the historical emergence of Germanic Faustianism, but the Greeks and Romans were not Nordic, you have a problem. You could of course just say the Faustian idea is European – that would also fit with the Faustian Portuguese explorers who also were not Nordic – but Nordicism is an obsession that is impermeable to facts and logic.

Side note: If the focal point of the birth of the modern West according to Quigley was France (I suppose Spengler would stress the Germanic peoples) and if we accept Quigley’s idea that a new culture springs up, in a geographic sense, on the periphery of the old (e.g., France compared to the Greco-Roman world), then perhaps a new European High Culture will originate in Southern and/or Eastern Europe (by Eastern I would exclude Russia if we are to accept that they are potentially birthing their own High Culture), which are on the periphery of France and Germany, whuch are generally considered the center of the Faustian cultural form.

Duchesne writes:

If I had to choose one word to identify the uniqueness of the West it would be “Faustian.” This is the word Oswald Spengler used to designate the “soul” of the West. He believed that Western civilization was driven by an unusually dynamic and expansive psyche. The “prime-symbol” of this Faustian soul was “pure and limitless space.” This soul had a “tendency towards the infinite,” a tendency most acutely expressed in modern mathematics. The “infinite continuum,” the exponential logarithm and “its dissociation from all connexion with magnitude” and transference to a “transcendent relational world” were some of the words Spengler used to describe Western mathematics. But he also wrote of the “bodiless music” of the Western composer, “in which harmony and polyphony bring him to images of utter ‘beyondness’ that transcend all possibilities of visual definition,” and, before the modern era, of the Gothic “form-feeling” of “pure, imperceptible, unlimited space” (Decline of the West, Vol.1, Form and Actuality [Alfred Knopf, 1923] 1988, pp. 53-90).

This soul type was first visible, according to Spengler, in medieval Europe, starting with Romanesque art, but particularly in the “spaciousness of Gothic cathedrals,” “the heroes of the Grail and Arthurian and Siegfried sagas, ever roaming in the infinite, and the Crusades,” including “the Hohenstaufen in Sicily, the Hansa in the Baltic, the Teutonic Knights in the Slavonic East, [and later] the Spaniards in America, [and] the Portuguese in the East Indies.” Spengler thus viewed the West as a strikingly vibrant culture driven by a type of personality overflowing with expansive impulses, “intellectual will to power.” “Fighting,” “progressing,” “overcoming of resistances,” battling “against what is near, tangible and easy” — these were some of the terms Spengler used to describe this soul (Decline of the West, pp. 183-216).

A variety of words have been used to describe or identify the peculiar history of the West: “individualist,” “rationalist,” “imperialist,” “secularist,” “restless,” and “racist.” Spengler’s term “Faustian,” it seems to me, best captures the persistent, and far greater, originality of the West since ancient times in all the intellectual, artistic, and heroic spheres of life.

Wikipedia states:

According to Spengler, the Faustian culture began in Western Europe around the 10th century, and had such expansionary power that by the 20th century it was covering the entire earth, with only a few regions where Islam provided an alternative world view. He described it as having a world feeling inspired by the concept of infinitely wide and profound space, the yearning towards distance and infinity.[clarification needed] The term "Faustian" is a reference to Goethe's Faust (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe had a massive effect on Spengler), in which a dissatisfied Intellectual is willing to make a pact with the Devil in return for unlimited knowledge. Spengler believed that this represented the Western Man's limitless metaphysic, unrestricted thirst for knowledge, and constant confrontation with the Infinite.

In my Overman article, I quoted an older version of the Wikipedia article that importantly stated:

His description of the Faustian civilization is one where the populace constantly strives for the unattainable—making Western Man a proud but tragic figure, for while he strives and creates he secretly knows the actual goal will never be reached.

Note: "unattainable." To which I wrote in my Overman essay:

Here we see two defining characteristics of the “Faustian” civilization of the modern (i.e., post-Classical) West: first, a focus on infinity and the unknown, and second, that the striving toward that focus will always be unsuccessful; the objectives of Western Man are always “unattainable.”…

…I would argue that the Christian foundation of the Faustian High Culture is responsible for the fact that the ultimate goals that Western man strives toward end up being “unattainable”—and secretly known by him to be “unattainable.” The Christian mindset places inherent limits within the mind of Western man, so he is doomed to ultimately fail even if full success is theoretically possible…The full development of Western man has been restrained by an alien religion that has placed shackles on his mind and his soul…The motto of the Classical World was “Know Thyself,” while that of the Faustian Age was a combination of “Thou Shalt Not Know” with “Thou Shalt Try to Know and Thou Shalt Fail.” I propose that the new High Culture of the West have the motto: “Thou Shalt Know and Thou Shalt Overcome.” This will usher in an era in which Western Man unlocks his potential by unlocking the shackles imposed by an assumed inferiority to imaginary gods…In other words, no imaginary gods. It is Man that will become “God.”…No more “proud, tragic” failure in “striving for the unattainable” in the “Faustian” culture—instead the Overman Culture will be characterized by the proud successful attainment of the infinite. That is what a hopeful individual can project as the new High Culture of the West, with links to the Classical and the Faustian, but surpassing both in the aim and objective of the human spirit. 

So, we begin to observe differences between the Western (Faustian) and Overman High Cultures.

Another difference that I now add to my original thesis is that while the Faustian culture has the view of unlimited expansion upward and outward, the Overman culture has that view AND an unlimited expansion inward and downward as well, thus not only to the macro infinity but also to the micro infinity. Further, the Overman High Culture has a worldvieview associated with entangled essences, and relative frames of reference. Thus, from a metaphysical standpoint – and please forget for the moment about “Jewish influences” (e.g., agonizing over Einstein) – is it possible that such things as quantum mechanics and relativity theory are not merely the “materialistic degeneration” of the Winter of the West, but the seeds of a new formulation in opposition to Western ideas of classical reality and Newtonian mechanics? The inward expansion is suggested by quantum mechanics, nuclear physics, and genetics (and the whole molecular and cellular basis of life, in contrast to organismal and comparative anatomy) – thus, micro infinity. Entangled essences and relative frames of reference are associated with quantum mechanics (micro infinity) and special relativity (macro infinity), respectively. General relativity yields a quite different metaphysical view of space and gravity - macro infinity - than Newtonian physics does. In the old view, time flows; in the new metaphysics, time is a compilation of static realities connected by causality. The outward impulses toward the infinite are in one sense constrained by these new theories, but in another sense liberated from clockwork Newtonian and Copernican ideals, possibly opening up novel ways to break through the “try to transcend and fail” limitations of Faustianism. Perhaps the Faustian inevitably fails because its metaphysics sets it up for failure by not understanding views of realty that would be better comprehended by a different culture. Perhaps there is Pseudomorphosis at work here. Thus, we cannot understand the underlying realty of these new metaphysical laws because our way of thinking is constrained by Western Newtonian metaphysics. We believe that we are rejecting Newtonian ideals, but those ideas are so part of our worldview that the proper development of the alternative metaphysics is stifled. We believe that we are rejecting the old ways of thinking but we are still prisoners of them, and then fume in frustration when we come up against unknowns and “paradoxes” that seem to emerge from the new metaphysics. 

The same Pseudomorphosis may hold true in art. An archetypical expression of the Western soul is this, which is valued as a high form of expression by those who adhere to the Western tradition. However, such traditional Western art forms may be suffocating alternative artistic expression from a new High Culture, an embryonic example of which may be this. A representative of the Western culture would look at those two images and think that the David is a perfect example of Western artistic beauty that speaks to the Faustian soul, while the Chronos is a degenerate monstrosity. A representative of the Overman culture would acknowledge that the David is an important piece of work and would instrumentally value it as a creation of European genius (just as Westerners can admire products of the Classical civilization), but they would view the Chronos as representing the soul of the Overman civilizational worldview. And, yes, there may well be resentment that the Western art forms (e.g., David) are dominant within the rightist milieu and that more futurist cultural artifacts (e.g., Chronos) are dismissed and not properly comprehended. This here is another example of an artwork that may resonate more with an embryonic Overman sensibility while being rejected by Western traditionalists as “degenerate." Also consider this as another representation of a new artistic sensibility perhaps not properly understood by the defenders of the Western tradition..

We can bridge the gap from art to politics by considering futurism. Was the futurist movement an example of late stage Western culture, or was it a protest by an embryonic High Culture against the Pseudomorphosis imposed by Western art forms and by Western sociopolitical conventions? Note the importance of Italy in the futurist movement – was that an example of an embryonic High Culture emerging on the periphery of the Franco-German epicenter of the modern West? A radical idea – what if the Romanian Legionary Movement suffered from Pseudomorphosis by their embrace of Christianity as a core of their belief system? What if the New Man was actually the authentic core of that movement, reflective of the values of an embryonic new European High Culture (again in the periphery of the older, established Western one, given the geographic location of Romania), and so could one find in some of the more aggressive cult-like activities of the Legion hidden resentment against this Westernized Christian Pseudomorphosis?

Are all these things signs of resentment against Pseudomorphosis imposed by the Faustian culture? We observe the new scientific perspectives that aggressively reject old structures but find themselves struggling to articulate their metaphysics in a manner truly independent of the old. We see artistic movements that aggressively reject old forms. Fascism was perhaps a political revolt against Western political forms – Pseudomorphosis here was manifested by the defeat of Fascism by the democratic and economic (including Marxism) axes of the late-stage West, akin to the Magian High Culture being defeated by the Apollonian/Classical High Culture at Actium. Also note the links between futurism and Italian fascism. One wonders. Is the Yockey Imperium idea characteristic of a late stage Western High Culture or is it an idea that instead fits better with a fresh civilizational perspective?

Moral and ethical resentment against Western Christianity from a Nietzschean perspective may fit here – was Nietzsche less of a figure of old Western culture and more a Dostoevsky-like figure of an embryonic new High Culture? Certainly, Nietzsche – despite his tirades against ressentiment – demonstrated much hostility to restrictive old Western moral and ethical forms.

Let us consider Francis Parker Yockey, a paragon, an aggressive defender, of the Western Faustian High Culture. Yockey in Imperium (emphasis added) demonstrates his inability to understand the new science, exactly what one would expect from a representative of one High Culture trying to understand the metaphysics of another:

The down-going of science as a mental discipline had long preceded the World War. With the theory of Entropy (1850), and the introduction of the idea of irreversibility into its picture, science was on the road which was to culminate in physical relativity and frank admission of the subjectivity of physical concepts. From Entropy came the introduction of statistical methods into systematic science, the beginning of spiritual abdication. Statistics described Life and the living; the strict tradition of Western science had insisted on exactitude in mathematical description of reality, and had hence despised that which was not susceptible of exact description, such as biology. The entrance of probabilities into formerly exact science is the sign that the observer is beginning to study himself, his own form as conditioning the order and describability of phenomena. 

The next step was the Theory of Radioactivity, which again contains strong subjective elements and requires the Calculus of Probabilities to describe its results. The scientific picture of the world became ever more refined, and ever more subjective. The formerly separate disciplines drew slowly together, mathematics, physics, chemistry, epistemology, logic. Organic ideas intruded showing once more that the observer has reached the point where he is studying the form of his own Reason. 

A chemical element now has a lifetime, and the precise events of its life are unpredictable, indeterminate. 

The very unit of physical happening itself, the ―atom,‖ which was still believed in as a reality by the 19th century, became in the 20th century a mere concept, the description of whose properties was constantly changed to meet and prop up technical developments. Formerly, every experiment merely showed the ―truth‖ of the ruling theories. That was in the days of the supremacy of science as a discipline over technics, its adopted child. But, before the middle of the 20th century, every new experiment brought about a new hypothesis of ―atomic structure.‖ What was important in the process was not the hypothetical house of cards which was erected afterwards, but the experiment which had gone before. 

No compunction was felt about having two theories, irreconcilable with one another, to describe the ―structure‖ of the ―atom,‖ or the nature of light. The subject-matter of all the separate sciences could no longer be kept mathematically clear. Old concepts like mass, energy, electricity, heat, radiation, merged into one another, and it became ever more clear that what was really under study was the human reason, in its epistemological aspect, and the Western soul in its scientific aspect.

Scientific theories reached the point where they signified nothing less than the complete collapse of science as a mental discipline. The picture was projected of the Milky Way as consisting of more than a million fixed stars, among which are many with a diameter of more than 93,000,000 miles; this again as not a stationary cosmic center, but itself in motion toward Nowhere at a speed of more than 600 kilometers a second. The cosmos is finite, but unlimited; boundless, but bounded. This demands of the true believer the old Gothic faith again: credo quia absurdum, but mechanical purposelessness cannot evoke this kind of faith, and the high priests have apostatized. In the other direction, the ―atom‖ has equally fantastic dimensions — a ten-millionth of a millimeter is its diameter, and the mass of a hydrogen atom stands to the mass of a gram of water as the mass of a post card stands to the mass of the earth. But this atom consists of ―electrons,‖ the whole making up a sort of solar system, in which the distances between the planets is as great, in proportion to their mass, as in our solar system. The diameter of an electron is one three-billionth of a millimeter. But the closer it is studied, the more spiritual it becomes, for the nucleus of the atom is a mere charge of electricity, having neither weight, volume, inertia nor any other classic properties of matter. 

In its last great saga, science dissolved its own psychical foundations, and moved outside the world of the senses into the world of the soul. Absolute time was dissolved, and time became a function of position. Mass became spiritualized into energy. The idea of simultaneity was discarded, motion became relative, parallels cut one another, two distances could no longer be said absolutely to equal one another. Everything which had once been described by, or had itself described, the word Reality, dissolved in the last act of the drama of science as a mental discipline.

Let us focus on this excerpt from Yockey’s diatribe:

…the strict tradition of Western science had insisted on exactitude in mathematical description of reality, and had hence despised that which was not susceptible of exact description, such as biology. The entrance of probabilities into formerly exact science is the sign that the observer is beginning to study himself, his own form as conditioning the order and describability of phenomena. 

Thus, we see the contrast between the metaphysics of the Faustian West and the metaphysics of what could be the embryonic beginning of a new High Culture.

It is true that we do not observe scientists demonstrating overt resentment and hostility based on contrasting metaphysics, but that may be expected from a group that allegedly represents objective rational academic dispassionate discourse.  What we observe instead is frustration due to a lack of understanding of the new concepts, and due to the fact that a thorough understanding of the new metaphysics may be impeded by viewing everything through the lens of Western metaphysics. Of course, the majority of scientists, who are on the Left, do in fact demonstrate resentment and hostility toward the West, but this is derived from leftist political ideology, not metaphysics. The White Left shares the same basic metaphysics as does the West and that metaphysics is not compatible with a true understanding of the newer concepts. Further, the reason non-White scientists are unable to fully understand these concepts would not be due to Pseudomorphosis (as it is with rightist or apolitical Whites) but simply because these new concepts derive from an embryonic High Culture that derives from Europe and from which an inner spiritual connection is barred to non-Europeans. Note that I do not sense the same frustration from non-Whites concerning these concepts, simply a lack of full understanding that they, as culture aliens, accept with more equanimity.

Let us back up a bit. How can we succinctly describe the basic metaphysics of relevant civilizations?

The basic metaphysics of the Apollonian/Classical High Culture was said to be locality - the present time (locality in time) and locality in space, the Magian High Culture was focused on “the world as cave or cavern,” and the Faustian/Western High Culture was (and is) characterized as "thrusting upward into infinite space.” The Overman High Culture instead could have a metaphysics of reality as information, observation, interaction, structure, and space expanding infinitely both outward and inward.  Thus, we observe the primacy of genetic information as opposed to phenotype (see my work, pssobly rpresentative of the new perspective?), quantum mechanics (observation, interaction), relativity theory (structure of spacetime), nuclear physics, etc. Quantum mechanics and nuclear physics expand inward, while relativity theory expands outward, but in a structured manner (e.g., Minkowski spacetime diagrams). The new perspective considers dimensionality as important, not only in spacetime but in the human experience. Let us consider the (first iteration of) opening of the famous TV series The Twilight Zone (putting aside complaints of “Jewishness”). The “fifth dimension” is one related to human experience and the unknown, and there is a sense of existentialism; indeed, a right-wing existentialism that is not traditionalist could delve into aspects of a new cultural zeitgeist.

I will actually answer the “but you are referring to Jewish activities” complaints. Yes, Jews are of the Magian High Culture and are not part of the West and I doubt that they will be part of any future European High Culture. But Jews are a clever people and as Yockey noted they know how to exploit other High Cultures to promote their interests, even their personal interests (fame, money, status, etc.), never mind their group interests. It is therefore possible that some Jews have sensed a change in the civilizational zeitgeist and therefore they formulate memes and activities that leverage interest in these changes.

Let us consider some examples. Relativity theory is “Jewish” but Einstein in his thought experiments extrapolated from the work of Maxwell and other Europeans to produce Special Relativity; General Relativity is a further extrapolation from the Special theory. So, relativity may be “Jewish” but it tapped into ideas originating among Europeans and (unknowingly) situated these ideas in a novel theory that could fit into the metaphysics of a new High Culture. Quantum mechanics and genetics, as well as information theory, have been mostly European products, with later Jewish contributions. Nuclear physics is a mixed European-Jewish affair; the original work was European. With respect to politics and the arts, fascism and futurism are of European origin. Note that the most “Avant Garde” fascism is French in origin and futurism has strong Italian connections. They are not Jewish. To the extent that The Twilight Zone reflected existentialist themes, existentialism is essentially European. So, we cannot say that in these things that Jewish influence was absolutely decisive, and in any case such influence reflects undercurrents that are ultimately of European origin.

To summarize with respect to possible manifestations of resentment and hostility of an embryonic new (Overman) European High Culture to Pseudomorphosis from the Western High Culture, we can say the following. In politics and the arts, the signs are more clear, and with respect to philosophy, Nietzsche and the existentialists may reflect this as well. The more dispassionate nature of science makes resentment and hostility more difficult to detect, but one can say there is, at least, frustration with respect to serious problems in being able to understand and articulate a new (scientific) metaphysics given limitations imposed by a Western Faustian background.

However, note that the major objective of this essay is NOT to “prove” that another European High Culture is coming, what its characteristics would be, that it is the Overman High Culture, and that we can see definitive signs of resentment and hostility due to Pseudomorphosis. No, instead the argument, based on using the Overman example as a model system, is that in theory we may be able to discern something about an embryonic High Culture by considering how Pseudomorphosis from an older High Culture may affect the newer form, and then looking carefully for reactions – resentment and hostility, or at least frustration – to point us in the direction of some characteristics of the new form and how it is being impeded by Pseudomorphosis.  Thus, the argument here is that Diagnostic Pseudomorphosis is possible. Whether such an exercise can yield useful information is another matter.

Selective Breeding and the Birth of Philosophy

Book review.

See here.

Amazon review:

This is an argument that philosophy is born with and dependent on the idea of nature; and that this idea was first discovered or manifested in the perception of biological reality, in particular the perception of hereditary transmission of physical and behavioral qualities, together with the perception that moral and legal codes are relative and contingent. It was generally only within the spiritual and intellectual horizon of certain types of aristocracies to have access to such perceptions, as well as ability and liberty to openly state or explore them. A connection is further observed, on these grounds, between philosophy and tyranny, or rather the philosopher and tyrant as closely related types that emerge during the decline of e.g., Greek and Renaissance Italian aristocratic communities. I make this case through a study of Nietzsche's reading of antiquity, in particular his reading of Plato and Pindar, or rather a Nietzschean reading of these. The first long chapter also covers George Frazer and anthropological and historical literature, as well as Homer. This is a revised version of my own doctoral dissertation, and includes a long new introduction explaining my intentions in this book. I make the case in this introduction that this same matter of selective breeding, whether sexual selection, or various societies' management of marriage and reproduction, constitutes the most important part of morality, legislation, or of the "lawgiver's art," and that a sharp awareness of this reality is what led, again, to the discovery of the standard of nature and the subsequent birth of philosophy.

The type of the tyrant is ultimately interpreted as a kind of "active philosophy," although it must be emphasized that such can only be the case for the ancient Greek or Renaissance Italian type, not what is called by the name "tyrant" indiscriminately today. Accordingly the voice of Callicles in Plato's Gorgias is interpreted as the political philosophy, or the weaponized posture of the pre-Socratic philosophical type.

The author:

Bronze Age Pervert, also known as BAP or B.A.P.,is a pseudonymous far-right Internet personality, associated with the manosphere. The media have identified Costin Vlad Alamariu (born May 21, 1980), a Romanian-American, as the person behind the pseudonym…Alamariu is of Romanian and Jewish descent…

More, see this.

The author’s alleged identity as “Bronze Age Pervert” and his ethnicity will not affect my review, which is as follows.

The book unfortunately takes HBD too seriously and positively notes execrable trash like “HBD Chick.” The book also supports the idea of steppe conquerors establishing themselves as an aristocratic class (there may be some truth in this), a variant of Hamilton’s noble barbarian thesis:

Hamilton, W.D. (1975), Innate social aptitudes of man: an approach from evolutionary genetics, in R. Fox (ed.), Biosocial Anthropology, Malaby Press, London, 133-53.

The incursions of barbaric pastoralists seem to do civilizations less harm in the long run than one might expect. Indeed, two dark ages and renaissances in Europe suggest a recurring pattern in which a renaissance follows an incursion by about 800 years. It may even be suggested that certain genes or traditions of pastoralists revitalize the conquered people with an ingredient of progress which tends to die out in a large panmictic population for the reasons already discussed. I have in mind altruism itself, or the part of the altruism which is perhaps better described as self-sacrificial daring. By the time of the renaissance it may be that the mixing of genes and cultures (or of cultures alone if these are the only vehicles, which I doubt) has continued long enough to bring the old mercantile thoughtfulness and the infused daring into conjunction in a few individuals who then find courage for all kinds of inventive innovation against the resistance of established thought and practice. Often, however, the cost in fitness of such altruism and sublimated pugnacity to the individuals concerned is by no means metaphorical, and the benefits to fitness, such as they are, go to a mass of individuals whose genetic correlation with the innovator must be slight indeed. Thus civilization probably slowly reduces its altruism of all kinds, including the kinds needed for cultural creativity (see also Eshel 1972).

I object to the “genetic correlation with the innovator must be slight indeed” statement in that it is incorrect from a global and/or group selection standpoint, although it is true with respect to the isolated population itself, which is probably how Hamilton meant it. Therefore, my objection is more how the Left/System and the HBD scum would misinterpret Hamilton’s point (“you see, members of the same group are unrelated and free riding destroys ethnic nepotism”) as opposed to the specific point that Hamilton is making about the dilution of altruism in a population. One can make arguments against Hamilton in that in a closely related population the “genetic altruism” may be widespread and that given computational modeling showing that ethnocentrists outcompete free-riders (as well as universalists), if we extend altruism into the ethnocentrism equation, things might not be as bleak as Hamilton suggests.

In any case, the book being reviewed here seems to be of the school of outside conquerors (e.g., from pastoralist/steppe settings) setting themselves up as an aristocratic ruling elite among settled farming people (e.g., “my noble position was won by my forebears wielding battle axes”) and one can view that in from the spectrum of degenerate “civilized” populations being enriched by the blood of “barbarians.”  However, there are no more White barbarians to do such enriching, and even if “suitable” non-White barbarians existed (and they do not exist – all we have are destructive low quality parasites), such “enrichment” would be racially destructive and so the EGI costs would outweigh any purported benefits. No, instead our regeneration now much come from within. Perhaps the Far Right elements of today’s degenerate and xenophilic White populations are the new barbarians. Who knows?  Or at least, a Far Right victory would allow for an enriching eugenics.

Putting the obsession with altruism aside, the following is Hamilton extending inclusive fitness beyond narrow kin:

The usefulness of the 'inclusive fitness' approach to social behavior (i.e. an approach using criteria like (b[AB]K-k)>0) is that it is more general than the 'group selection', 'kin selection', or 'reciprocal altruism' approaches and so provides an overview even where regression coefficients and fitness effects are not easy to estimate or specify. As against 'group selection' it provides a useful conceptual tool where no grouping is apparent -- for example, it can deal with an ungrouped viscous population where, owing to restricted migration, an individual’s normal neighbours and interactants tend to be his genetical kindred.

Because of the way it was first explained, the approach using inclusive fitness has often been identified with 'kin selection' and presented strictly as an alternative to 'group selection' as a way of establishing altruistic social behavior by natural selection (e.g. Maynard Smith 1964; Lewontin 1970). But the foregoing discussion shows that kinship should be considered just one way of getting positive regression of genotype in the recipient, and that it is this positive regression that is vitally necessary for altruism. Thus the inclusive-fitness concept is more general than 'kin-selection'. Haldane's suggestion about tribe-splitting can be seen in one light as a way of increasing intergroup variance and in another as a way of getting positive regression in the population as a whole by having the groups which happen to have most altruists divide most frequently. In this case, the altruists are helping true relatives. But in the assortive-settling model it obviously makes no difference if altruists settle with altruists because they are related (perhaps never having parted from them) or because they recognize fellow altruists as such, or settle together because of some pleiotropic effect of the gene on habitat preference. If we insist that group selection is different from kin selection the term should be restricted to situations of assortation definitely not involving kin. But it seems on the whole preferable to retain a more flexible use of terms; to use group selection where groups are clearly in evidence and qualify with mention of 'kin' (as in the 'kin-group ‘selection referred to by Brown 1973), 'relatedness' or 'low migration' (which is often the cause of relatedness ingroups), or else 'assortation', as appropriate. The term 'kin selection' appeals most where pedigrees tend to be unbounded and interwoven, as is so often the case with man.

Let’s get to the main thesis of the book.

The original native societies (e.g., in very early Ancient Greece) were ruled by egalitarian “totalitarian democracies” (not the same as I use that term) that had as their underlying structure a strict, absolute, dogmatic adherence to ancestral tradition and laws (”nomos”). Councils of elders held the real power, and dissent from a slavish adherence to tradition could mean death. Ethnically and culturally, these societies were non-martial farming people of a gracile phenotype.

How did things change? These lands were invaded and conquered by physically robust pastoralists of a martial nature (e.g., steppe people) who set themselves up as a ruling elite and instituted an aristocratic ethos, with a willingness to accept new ideas, and a hierarchical social structure and establishment of kings with real power and an aristocracy.  Even if the newcomers and the natives genetically melded over time (sometimes this happened, sometimes it did not), these social and cultural changes and structures persisted.

Given the aristocratic ethos, physical characteristics, pastoralist origins (e.g., animal breeding) of the newcomers and the establishment of a societal culture around newcomer values, issues like breeding came into focus as important, not only of animals, but, more importantly, of people as well. The innate heritable abilities of people come into focus. A key to the aristocratic ethos was the idea that the aristocracy were fit to rule due to their innate (heritable) superiority (but see below) and that a purpose to the understanding of nature with respect to the aristocracy was a breeding program to create superior individuals of moral and physical vigor. The author mentions the:

…observed descent of concrete physical qualities by blood and breeding as opposed to the authority of ancestral stories and laws…

And:

Nature is body and blood, and blood and is therefore heredity, Knowledge of breeding and heredity is, again, to be expected among a pastoral people who have long experience with livestock breeds. Furthermore, when war and hunting are prized, there is also an emphasis on the breeding of horses and of dogs…

This led to the “discovery of nature” – the ability to understand the natural world – as opposed to adherence to blind tradition. This in turn led to the rise of philosophy and of tyranny (sometimes supported by philosophy) – philosophy and tyranny often manifesting as important during periods of degeneration of the aristocratic regimes, when these regimes needed to better justify and fortify themselves.  The author states (italics in original): 

 …it is this element of absolute unmooring from the settled, democratic rule of the ancestral customs  that, when the actual aristocracies are in political and social decline in the late Archaic age. Is radicalized, recovered, refined, and made abstract, not only by the philosophical way of life and its discovery of nature, but by the way of life of the tyrant.

Thus, in a sense, philosophy and tyranny are used as tools to attempt to regenerate a declining aristocratic social structure, in part through the “discovery of nature.”

Note how Nietzsche associated the rise of Socrates and subsequent Geek (Apollonian) philosophy with a degeneration of the aristocratic (Dionysian) Hellenic society. The book’s author stresses that the various upheavals in (Ancient) Greek ancestry were not, as supposed, an attempt to return to an idyllic “settled” life, but rather a regeneration of the “wild” and “barbaric” unsettled martial way of life. This goes back to Hamilton (“…suggest a recurring pattern in which a renaissance follows an incursion by about 800 years. It may even be suggested that certain genes or traditions of pastoralists revitalize the conquered people”); the idea here is that the original pastoralist conquerors became too settled and a fresh infusion of pastoralist barbarism regenerates the original aristocratic attitude (in this sense, “settled” means the non-martial “democratic” farming societies while “unsettled” represents the war-like aristocratic pastoralists, including pastoralist warbands of young warriors).

The author extends his theory a bit and talks about how the radicalization of nature (e.g., with the Ancient Greeks) was associated with a decline in aristocratic power due to both external and internal influences. With respect to the external, the rule of a given aristocracy can be physically challenged as well as their legitimacy to rule deconstructed. With respect to the internal, a given aristocracy can degenerate.  The author notes a bit of a discordance between a strict adherence to (a) the aristocracy is fit to rule to their superior qualities, and (b) there exists a tradition of rule by a certain aristocracy, which leads to the question as to whether the aristocracy rules due to their currently existing innate qualities or by tradition.  Of course, part of the aristocratic tradition itself is the idea of nature and of innate superiority of the rulers, but the existence of this discordance led to the further radicalization and abstraction of the nature principle with the philosophy and tyranny manifesting during periods of decline. One can question as well whether the discordance between rule by superiority or rule by tradition became more of an issue in the event of a degenerating internal decline of the aristocracy.  The author quotes Pindar talking about strength in men manifesting in alternate generations, such as may happen with crops and fruit trees; the aristocratic apologia here is that while the sons of aristocratic heroes may be mediocre, the blood is still there, and subsequent generations may yield men of quality once again – sort of a upward progressing to the mean. The author rejects such an interpretation of Pindar’s passage as an apologia for his own time, since it seems that the passage was meant for aristocrats who did not require self-legitimacy, rather than for public propaganda purposes. I might add though that we today could interpret the meaning of Pindar’s passage in the manner described above, as our own justification for aristocracy (regardless of Pindar’s intention); however, I prefer an elite chosen on the basis of exhibited manifest personal superiority, rather than a hereditary aristocratic class from which we may merely hope for future ability.

The author stresses the Pindarian ideal of innate, biological, heritable traits being of immeasurably more value than that learned by education, training, and convention; one must be bred to be an impetuous “beast,” both fox and lion, with the manly aristocratic traits whose most refined manifestation is a result, ultimately of nature, not nurture, traits whose source is the “blood.”  It seems clear that Pindar valued heredity, nature, and blood, a theoretical basis of human understanding compatible with today’s Far Right.

There is also a discussion of Plato’s Gorgias, specifically the ideas of Callicles and how that fits in with the aristocratic idea of nature, the primacy of biology, and the link between philosophy and tyranny, with the philosopher and tyrant being “kindred types.” The author states that the “fundamental function of political philosophy on the one hand, and of tyranny on the other” is the “protection - the breeding - and training or protection of this biological specimen.”  Thus, philosophy and tyranny aim at creating “game reserves” for the “aristocratic breeding project” now abstracted into political philosophy as independent of classes or tribes.”  Plato may be attempting to hide his beliefs in this regard and conceals the kinship between philosophy and tyranny through attacks on tyranny. Given the persecution of philosophy by democratic forces (the trial and death of Socrates being just one prime example), Plato (and others) tried via apologia to deflect this animus and obscure the connection between philosophy and tyranny (as noted above).

Complaints about philosophy can come from the perspective of omission or commission. Of the former, from a Jewish/Islamic perspective, by relentlessly questioning everything, including societal conventions, philosophy can erode adherence to those conventions and cause the omission of people following conventions and traditions considered essential for societal stability. By placing doubts in the minds of men regarding fundamental principles, apathy can result. As regards the latter, the Ancient Greek complaint was more that philosophy can encourage the commission of illegal acts and the march to tyranny.

Traditionally, the interpretation of the Gorgias was that Plato was siding with Socrates in the Callicles-Socrates debate, with Socrates seemingly arguing for a more “morale, humane, proto-Christian” position while Callicles argued in favor of a more Social Darwinist “might makes right” approach, which was nature based, and that was concerned with promoting the interests of superior human specimens.  Indeed, Callicles’ thought was to support the political over the philosophical life, in the direction if tyranny to safeguard the promotion of nature and the well-being of his superior human specimens.  In a sense, Callicles was promoting the pre-Socratic philosophical position from which he derives the idea of the superior man breaking free of the stifling bounds of convention. The author however believes that Plato secretly sided with Callicles and claims that the “refutation” by Socrates of the positions of Callicles was not much of a refutation at all, and in one sense Socrates “doubled down” on some of Callicles’ ideas.  Socrates seemed to believe that Callicles was being somewhat political naïve in believing that convention suppressed the superior only through (coercive) “speech” (in modern language: memes and ideologies) while Socrates invoked the reality of a (democratic) regime resorting to physical force to restrain the ambitions of Callicles’ “Übermensch.”  Note that Callicles considered Socrates as a superior man and that the tyranny would also serve to protect philosophy from democratic persecution – a persecution that was all too real. To protect and promote philosophy in a city like Athens, Plato had to both “spiritualize” Callicles’ “aristocratic radicalism” and obscure the link between philosophy and tyranny; indeed, to make philosophy seem in opposition to tyranny.  Plato’s aims here are said to be to “advise potential philosophers on the necessity of liberation from convention, "to assure the cities that this liberation would not encourage tyranny,” and that “the philosopher is the true possessor of the political art.” Plato thus wants to leverage Greek city politics to advance the cause of philosophy. Convention cannot be openly opposed as such, but infiltrated from within, for the sake of philosophy and aristocratic natural values.

I assume that the reader is familiar with Nietzsche and his work so that I can briefly touch on some of the more novel points this book makes on Nietzsche and his work. Thus, as regards Nietzsche, the fan of Napoleon, he regarded philosophy as a way of life and had as a goal “making the world safe for philosophy,” so to speak rather than the goal of certain Greeks to focus on producing a “supreme physical specimen.” Ultimately though, the link between philosophy and tyranny remains. I agree with the author that at some point the writings of Nietzsche need to be taken at face value, and not merely interpreted as him “joking” or “making a point.”  Additional information on Nietzsche:

See this.

And this.

For Nietzsche (and philosophy/religion in general), we see a distinction between exoteric and esoteric programs; the former is the outward political and moral program and the latter is the inner spiritual meaning, such as the interests of philosophy and the life of the philosopher. Both are real, both are relevant, and it is wrong to consider the exoteric as merely a “metaphor” or “irony” or a “joke” (in the case of Nietzsche). The author gives Sufism as an example – jihad can certainly have an esoteric meaning of an inner spiritual struggle and personal warfare, but it also has an exoteric meaning as warfare against unbelievers, and it is the exoteric that provides protection for the esoteric. Likewise, if Nietzsche’s aim was the preservation of philosophy, then his exoteric objectives were not merely “metaphor” or “jokes” but need to be taken at face value as ideals for the protection of philosophy.  Both Plato and Nietzsche had the same objective of preserving philosophy, but their tactics differed due to the context of their respective eras. Plato and the Socratic school felt that they needed to obscure, to spiritualize and make abstract the aristocratic  ethos to protect philosophy from the attacks of democracy.  Nietzsche on the other hand believed that the Platonic school was all too successful, resulting in an enervation of European man, who required rebarbarization.

As part of this is an reexamination of aristocracy, emphasizing its physical aspects. Here we observe a discussion of tanning. Thus, contra to the Nordicist view, in Ancient Greece, a tanned physique was demonstration of the aristocratic warrior, and the tanned Spartan-Greek aristocracy was contrasted to the (effete) Persian-Oriental oligarchy.  This would perhaps be a surprise to those who have drunk the “movement” Kool-Aid, but you should understand by now how the Nordicists are wrong about just about everything. In any case, this focus on tanning emphasizes the “physicality” of the Greek aristocracy, resulting from a long history of breeding and training (with the latter, often outdoors, contributing to tanning, as did being on military campaigns).  We again observe the link between physicality, breeding, and training and the focus on nature as the basis of philosophy, and we observe the analogy of the philosopher and a bred and trained “athlete of the intellect.” While Plato was more direct than Nietzsche in the link between physicality and philosophy, the latter did basically agree with the former. The aristocratic ideal – that contained within it physicality, competition, breeding, and training; hence, nature – was the foundation for philosophy and high culture. Of course, physicality and training are insufficient for philosophy and high culture, as the case of Sparta makes clear.  However, Athens had a balance between the aristocratic idea and the balanced promotion of culture and philosophy. Thus, aristocratic physicality can be viewed as necessary but not sufficient for a philosophical regime.  We can consider Ancient Rome – that Nietzsche stated was a case of the stalk growing at the expense of the flower – as akin to a Latin Sparta, in that their aristocratic values (i.e., the patricians) did not result in the “flower” of a native philosophy/culture.

We also come back to the idea that philosophy can be viewed as the abstraction and spiritualization of physicality, physical beauty, competition, etc. that occurred  during a period of aristocratic decline, in which a “liberalization” allows for aristocratic energy to be focused on intellectual pursuits, which themselves can be used to defend the declining aristocratic regime. What Nietzsche saw as fundamental for establishing the aristocratic  regime were cruelty, intolerance, and the ‘pathos of distance.” The creation of the Greek polis involved citizen quality over quantity, and, at least in the beginning, a ruthless weeding out of the inferior could be considered as essential. Danger – internal, external, or both – was important for creating the context for intolerant cruelty to build and maintain the regime, and a paradox for such a system was how to both create the required “predatory beasts” (my term) while at the same time constraining their ambition to prevent them from wrecking an aristocratic society. With degeneration these “pent up” political and spiritual tensions burst forth and during periods of “liberalization” these tensions and energies can be focused on intellectual and cultural pursuits.  Indeed, the author states that ”Political weakening is good for culture” – Spengler’s distinction of culture vs. civilization comes to mind (although in his scheme culture peaked in the earlier times before centralized authority and civilization, not later during degeneration) and it is during these times of decline that Nietzsche claimed that “the most amazing specimens can emerge.”  Indeed, there must be the right types of people to take advantage of these periods, and this is when tyranny can emerge (another link between philosophy and tyranny). Tyranny emerges here not only because of the weakening of the aristocratic constraints but also because of a “strengthening” that can take place in those rare “amazing specimens” – novel, brilliant, tyrannical men (“beautiful monsters,” e.g., Caesar) - that allow them to flourish in periods of decline, in the same manner that the philosophers (“tyrants of the spirit”) can flourish.

Thus, barbarians establish an aristocratic regime over a sedentary population and under the pressure of danger establish an aristocratic regime characterized by cruelty, intolerance, pathos of distance, and the breeding program, coupled to training, to produce the requisite human material. This human material, and its training, and the background of the aristocratic ideals furnish the raw material for high culture, including philosophy.  Then during decline, political weakness, when the pent-up energies are released, “monstrous types” emerge – and akin to the concept of biological mutation, most of these types will be weak and botched (and men of mixed race and warring heredities) but a minority of the more fortunate will be stronger and these will be the “beautiful monsters” – Alcibiades, Caesar, da Vinci, and, no doubt, Napoleon. 

The Platonic project had as an exoteric meaning to fight Geek decadence and an esoteric meaning to make the cities safe for philosophy.  But as described above, to obfuscate, the abstraction and spiritualization of nature ended up reinforcing an enervating decadence that Nietzsche opposed. The Socratic-Platonic school’s attempted cure for the age of dissolution reinforced the problems.  While it made the remaining Classical World safe for philosophy it also created a breeding ground for Christianity, which the author claims led to “the misbreeding of modern European man.” Thus, the conditions for philosophy become untenable – the misbreeding eliminates even most of the “beautiful monsters” and creates a zeitgeist unsuitable for philosophy.  While Platonism – suitable for a late-stage civilizations and not for barbarians introduced to culture (in other words, suitable for Spengler’s [late] Fall and not Spring) - can be forgiven for not foreseeing the Christian threat, the Platonist tendency to ascetic “otherworldliness” was an inherent flaw that cannot be explained away. On the one hand, ascetism was a reasonable “treatment” in a age of decadence and unrestrained instincts. But the problem was that a proper understanding of nature and of the body was lost, which became disastrous when Christianity was able to enforce Platonist exoteric doctrine (morality, etc.) more powerfully than what Plato imagined. The true power of philosophy is in its inner esoteric meaning of breeding and nature; Platonist moral philosophy was “contingent” on historical circumstances and should not be broadly applied, certainly not in its Christian variant.

Nietzsche and Plato disagreed on tactics, not aims, a point made clear all above. The aims include the preservation and promotion of nature, the breeding of genius, of amazing specimens, and to make society safe for philosophy.  As the author points out, “man is a political animal, attracted to “force, power, and violence.”  The purpose of human nature is the production of genius, and the specific production of military genius is a prerequisite for the stability of a state that can allow genius more generally to flourish. Inevitably there is the association of philosophy with tyranny. The Conclusion of the book summarizes all of this.  The Appendix may be of utility to those interested in Strauss but does not alter the interpretations already discussed.

To summarize the fundamentals here: The “idea of nature” derives from aristocratic ideals, and defenders of aristocracy respond to its decline by “abstracting and radicalizing” the “idea of nature.” The author connects two strands of philosophical thought; first, Nietzsche’s thesis that philosophy and tyranny (that are linked) originate with aristocratic degeneration and, second, the Straussian idea that “nature” is a requisite precondition for the development of philosophy.

In summary, this was an interesting book.  You can argue that it is a bit “dense” and repetitive, but it is adapted from a thesis, so that needs to be considered.  The author presents sufficient evidence to support his major contentions, and the emphasis here on nature, heredity, biology, and breeding is a healthy response to those who want to strip Greek philosophy and the philosophy of Nietzsche of its biological connotations (indeed, the author critiques those who wrote that Nietzsche was “joking” or didn’t mean what people assumes he meant).  Thus, the book is a necessary corrective in response to the tendency of the Left and Center to de-biologize philosophy and merely extol its purely abstract ethical considerations. I would recommend this book for those on the Right who are more of the “intellectual type,” at least as a thought-provoking exercise in considering deeper meanings of various philosophical and historical currents of relevance to the West.  Indeed, a biology-based philosophy steeped in nature can be utilized to form an ethical defense of our genetic interests, including those interests at the group level, a topic I’ve broached at my blogs (and of course the third part of On Genetic Interests begins the discussion of such issues).

Lincoln's Electric Cord Speech

A different perspective on the origins of American multiculturalism.

There are those - and here I have in mind one Canadian commentator at Majority Rights - who will claim that American multiculturalism had its ultimate roots in the "great wave" immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe in the late 19th and early 20th centuries - the so-called "race replacement that dare not speak its name."

But if we shift back to a famous speech by a well known American in the year 1858, we will find that the real ultimate roots of multicultural American "constitutional patriotism" was in the first large scale "race replacement that dare not speak its name" - the migration of Germans, Irish, Frenchmen, and Scandinavians into an America whose founding population was primarily of British Protestant stock. Yes, there were some other ethnies present, but these were a decided minority of the White population and, as Lincoln suggests, had little or nothing to do with the founding of America. As of 1858, these peoples were seen as essentially foreign to the American experience, and their assimilation into America was viewed as an example of disentangling citizenship from an ethnic basis.

See here.

…Now, it happens that we meet together once every year, sometime about the 4th of July, for some reason or other. These 4th of July gatherings I suppose have their uses. If you will indulge me, I will state what I suppose to be some of them.

We are now a mighty nation, we are thirty—or about thirty millions of people, and we own and inhabit about one-fifteenth part of the dry land of the whole earth. We run our memory back over the pages of history for about eighty-two years and we discover that we were then a very small people in point of numbers, vastly inferior to what we are now, with a vastly less extent of country,—with vastly less of everything we deem desirable among men,—we look upon the change as exceedingly advantageous to us and to our posterity, and we fix upon something that happened away back, as in some way or other being connected with this rise of prosperity. We find a race of men living in that day whom we claim as our fathers and grandfathers; they were iron men, they fought for the principle that they were contending for; and we understood that by what they then did it has followed that the degree of prosperity that we now enjoy has come to us. We hold this annual celebration to remind ourselves of all the good done in this process of time of how it was done and who did it, and how we are historically connected with it; and we go from these meetings in better humor with ourselves—we feel more attached the one to the other, and more firmly bound to the country we inhabit. In every way we are better men in the age, and race, and country in which we live for these celebrations. But after we have done all this we have not yet reached the whole. There is something else connected with it. We have besides these men—descended by blood from our ancestors—among us perhaps half our people who are not descendants at all of these men, they are men who have come from Europe—German, Irish, French and Scandinavian—men that have come from Europe themselves, or whose ancestors have come hither and settled here, finding themselves our equals in all things. If they look back through this history to trace their connection with those days by blood, they find they have none, they cannot carry themselves back into that glorious epoch and make themselves feel that they are part of us, but when they look through that old Declaration of Independence they find that those old men say that "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal," and then they feel that that moral sentiment taught in that day evidences their relation to those men, that it is the father of all moral principle in them, and that they have a right to claim it as though they were blood of the blood, and flesh of the flesh of the men who wrote that Declaration, (loud and long continued applause) and so they are. That is the electric cord in that Declaration that links the hearts of patriotic and liberty-loving men together, that will link those patriotic hearts as long as the love of freedom exists in the minds of men throughout the world.

Irrational Man

Book review.

Irrational Man.  The Amazon description of the book succinctly summarizes its contents:

Widely recognized as the finest definition of existentialist philosophy ever written, this book introduced existentialism to America in 1958. Barrett speaks eloquently and directly to concerns of the 1990s: a period when the irrational and the absurd are no better integrated than before and when humankind is in even greater danger of destroying its existence without ever understanding the meaning of its existence.

Irrational Man begins by discussing the roots of existentialism in the art and thinking of Augustine, Aquinas, Pascal, Baudelaire, Blake, Dostoevski, Tolstoy, Hemingway, Picasso, Joyce, and Beckett. The heart of the book explains the views of the foremost existentialists—Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Sartre. The result is a marvelously lucid definition of existentialism and a brilliant interpretation of its impact.

The author engages in a neo-Spenglerian discussion stating that different eras exhibit (Western) man having innate metaphysical inclinations for different forms of philosophy, literature, and art, with those era-appropriate forms resonating with the people of that time, while other forms, of past eras, would not resonate.  Further, any putative affinity for these expired forms, in the present day, would merely be artificial sentimentality. Thus, he avers that the current age (for him and I presume for us as well) is that of existentialist philosophy and literature, and of modern art. I suppose that he would beleive that a modern preference for, say, Michelangelo or Dante would be philosophical-cultural pseudomorphosis.

The author distinguishes, derived from the thought of Matthew Arnold, the Hebraic worldview of action, doing, and moralism with the Hellenic worldview of thought, intellectualism, and abstraction. While this distinction is somewhat truthful, it is also ironic that the "action-oriented, pragmatic" Hebrew was obsessed with god and the spiritual-moral world of that god, while the "intellectual, abstract" Hellene valued science, the body, and physical beauty.  So, the action-oriented Hebrews were focused on a Big Daddy in the Sky, while the abstract intellectual Hellenes were admiring the physiques of young men and formulating the first foundations of what would later become Western science. The author never recognizes, much less dissects, these contradictions and inconsistencies. The author associates the Hebraic mindset – the one he discusses, not the contradictions and inconsistences mentioned here – as being that which is being revived by existentialism.  I have problems with that thesis, given my focus on the contradictions and inconsistences noted above. 

A key point in the existentialist worldview is that existence (the fact that an entity exists) precedes essence (what that entity is). Platonism and related doctrines flips that by asserting that it are only the essences of entities that are truly real, while the particularities of existence are only ephemeral manifestations of essence. Platonism, with its prioritizing of the universal over the individual, of essence over existence, is presented as the antithesis of existentialism; indeed, it is part of the Classical/Western tradition that existentialism has attempted to overturn. But even here, Plato is said to demonstrate some existentialist characteristics, as his championing of reason as philosophy was for the redemption of the individual, as well as down-to-earth practical matters of designing a perfect polity, rather than being abstraction for the sake of abstraction.  Of course, the author attempts a bit of mind-reading, and avers that Plato’s promotion of the universal and eternal Platonic ideals was Plato’s way of defying the inevitability of change, decay, and death in the real world.  Hence, according to Plato, while the existing particular is ephemeral and not fully real, the fully real Platonic is timeless and eternal. See this for more about Platonic vs. existentialist reality.  Christianity, based as it is on faith and personal redemption, reflects its Hebraic origins, and also has some seeds of existentialist viewpoints.

I finish my summary of this part of the book by quoting the author on Blake and Nietzsche:

“Drive your plow over the bones of the dead” is not the aphorism of a man who is seeking merely to hearken back to the “green & pleasant land” of ancient Britain. If a man marries his hell to his heaven, his evil to his good, Blake holds, he will become a creature such as the earth has not yet seen.  Nietzsche put the same insight paradoxically “Mankind must become better and more evil.”

As regards the heart of the book - the analysis of Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Sartre – the summary and interpretation is fine as far as it goes (not that I agree with all of it). Of these four individuals, the only one I really value is Nietzsche (not that I agree with him on all, and, anyway, he didn’t want to be seen as a prophet, nor his views looked at as some sort of dogma). His work has power, and especially that from the second half of his career is eminently readable, unlike the pompous windbag Heidegger, the grand traditionalist who needs a book to make a point more elegantly summarized in a single page, and who can pontificate endlessly (and incomprehensibly) about “Being”. Kierkegaard’s interest in Christianity leaves me cold, and I see Sartre as an over-rated leftist polemicist.

The author’s favoritism is laughably obvious, with his lickspittle defense of, and promotion and admiration of, Kierkegaard, to the point that one wonders if Barrett spontaneously ejaculated while reading Kierkegaard’s work. Not surprisingly, (given Kierkegaard’s Christianity), Barrett also has an obvious bias in favor of God and of religion, while subtly mocking atheism.  The author doesn’t seem to grasp all of the implications of Nietzsche’s Overman and believes it is just an Olympian superman in the clouds, rather than a self-overcoming and a more practical reality (Nietzsche admired Napoleon and to an extent Cesare Borgia).  The author takes the anti-Faustian view that the well-rounded man needs to cultivate some mediocrity and “humor” (juvenile jackassery such as in the Alt-Right?).

A useful insight from the author, re: Nietzsche and the underlying theory about a will to power is as follows:

…the peculiar attraction Communism holds for the so-called backward or underdeveloped countries: it is a will to power on the part of these peoples, a will to take their fate in their own hands and make their own history. This powerful and secret appeal of Communism is something that our own statesmen do not seem in the least to understand.

Far enough. But note that like Christianity, Communism and other doctrines of the Far Left are based on resentment of the lower for the higher, the revolt of the underman, ultimately based on Bioleninism.  In contrast, when Whites, when higher men, want to take their fate in their own hands, they turn to Fascism, to doctrines of the Far Right.  Barrett writes:

…The goal of power need not be defined, because it is its own goal…

…the subject facing the object in a kind of hidden antagonism…Nature thus appears as a realm to be conquered, and man as the creature who is to be the conqueror.

For Nietzsche the era of reason and science raises the question of what is to be done with the primitive instincts and passions of man; in pushing these aside the age threatens us with a decline in vitality for the whole species.

Fair enough. I always say that science and technics – and rationality as a whole – are methods, means to an end, and not ends to themselves.  You cannot ultimately define values, ends, from means, from methods. Relate to that, see this: Racial Existentialism. Also see the role of the rational (Salter) and irrational (Yockey) in pro-White activism discussed here.

Readers of my work know that I am no fan of the pompous windbag traditionalist Heidegger.  With respect to this book the author describes Heidegger’s concept of Dasein as a “field theory” of human being that is analogous to energy field theories of matter in modern (in his day) physics. Thus, a person’s being is not only what is under their skin but encompasses all of their interactions and associations with reality; it is theirs, but it is not specifically confined to a material bodily core.

There is an amusing aside by the author in this section:

David Hume, in a moment of acute skepticism, felt panicky in the solitude of his study and had to go out and join his friends in the billiard room in order to be reassured that the external world was really there.

I am no fan of the leftist windbag Sartre either, and I see little to be gained by his philosophical perspectives. Of course, at the time this book was written, the American public strongly associated existentialism with the likes of Sartre; thus, this had to be an integral part of Barrett’s analysis. Barret describes Sartre as a hyper-masculine Cartesian dualist, whose philosophy is essential alien to nature-based women. Sartre distinguishes the object of Being-in-itself with then subject Being-for-Itself, with the former being more feminine, and the latter, acting through an always conscious act of will, being masculine, defining a life project through free will and the ability to say “no.”

Nothing in the book altered my high regard for Nietzsche, my indifference to Kierkegaard, and my negative attitude toward Heidegger and Sartre.

Conclusion

The book ends with a concluding summary The Place of the Furies (there are some subsequent appendices, but they are not essential enough to comment on in this review). Here, the author indulges in his typical atomic hysteria about man blowing up the world, and makes various insights, some truthful and amusing (Americans are non-intellectual, anti-intellectual, and unreflective by nature) and some controversial (taking the 1984-style idea that communists are Nietzscheans in the sense of caring only about the exercise of power and control – he states that communists “...have thus always exhibited a strange ambivalence: the most naively optimistic view of human nature in theory, and in practice the most brutal and cynical attitude toward human beings”). He believes that abstract rationalism is a threat to humanity; the following may be a reasonable summary of the author’s views:

Contrary to the rationalist tradition, we know now that it is not his reason that makes man man, but rather that reason is a consequence of that which really makes him man. For it is man’s existence as a self-transcending self that has forged and formed reason as one of its projects. As such, man’s reason is specifically human…

That I suppose is to be expected from a book whose title is Irrational Man.  He also states:

Today is always and for all men the digging of one’s way out of the ruins of yesterday.

In summary, he has an anti-Faustian worldview that is at odds with my own.

The book would have benefited from a clearly stated definition and dissection of what (according to the author at least) existentialist thought actually is, instead of assuming the reader already knows and/or can reconstruct the philosophical paradigms from the descriptions of examples of existentialist thought and art examined in the book. The author’s whining about nuclear weapons and the assumed atomic apocalypse around the corner – while perhaps somewhat understandable (but still somewhat hysterical) at the time the book was written - seems dated today (more than 60 years with no nuclear war, how about that?), although hysterics today are becoming breathless about Putin (some things never change).  The author’s commentary about how technology has made traditional politics and diplomacy irrelevant is just more over-heated hysteria.

All in all, despite my reservations about the author and his viewpoints, this is a good introduction to existentialism. And it is not dated, since existentialism has, if anything, declined in the past sixty years; there have been no significant advancements. In the modern age, today, all we have is “critical theory” “deconstructionism” obsessed with race and gender. And if you want a summary of that, just look into an unflushed, used stall toilet in an airport men’s room.