One of the themes in my Philosophy of Politics courses (Part 1, Part 2) is the vast gulf between the Continental and Anglo-American traditions over the desirability of war and peace. Relevant to that discussion are these quotations from Nietzsche on war: Why war is necessary: “War essential. It is vain rhapsodizing and sentimentality to […]
Friedrich Nietzsche on the necessity of war Read More »
Frederick Douglass’s connection to the British Enlightenment. Via David Henderson and David Beito, here is an excerpt from a letter Douglass wrote on November 17, 1864: “The old doctrine that the slavery of the black, is essential to the freedom of the white race, can maintain itself only in the presence of slavery, where interest
Frederick Douglass and Adam Smith Read More »
In my Modern Philosophy course we focus on the younger Marx and discuss Marx and Engels’s The Communist Manifesto. One question we raised is why Marx and Engels reject achieving socialism by democratic and reformist methods. Why the insistence upon violent revolution? Here’s Marx in an 1848 newspaper article: “there is only one way in
Marx’s philosophy and the *necessity* of violent politics Read More »
Wisdom from a giant of the nineteenth-century — Frederick Douglass (c. 1818-1895): “Everybody has asked the question … ‘What shall we do with the Negro?’ I have had but one answer from the beginning. Do nothing with us! Your doing with us has already played the mischief with us. Do nothing with us! If the
Frederick Douglass and self-respect Read More »
Reprising this post on Zeev Sternhell, an ally in the battle against the nihilism of the Anti-Enlightenment and its heirs. His book is written for scholars, but note this ringing conclusion: “To prevent the people of the twenty-first century from sinking into a new ice age of resignation, the Enlightenment vision of the individual as
Sternhell on the Enlightenment vision Read More »
In an earlier post on the Nazis’ efforts to collectivize sex and family life, I quoted from Dr. Franz Hamburger’s address to the German Medical Profession. As further evidence that National Socialists and Communist socialists are two variations on a common theme, here are some excerpts from Alexandra Kollontai’s Theses on Communist Morality in the
Collectivizing sex — Alexandra Kollontai’s communist version Read More »
An intriguing remark by the musician Shostakovich about life under Stalin, and why so many mediocrities rose to cultural prominence under the Soviets: “Fiction triumphed because a man has no significance in a totalitarian state. The only thing that matters is the inexorable movement of the state mechanism. A mechanism needs only cogs. Stalin used
The ‘genius’ cog in the system — Shostakovich comment Read More »
In Western nations, there is a clear connection between philosophy and totalitarian politics. Hegel’s philosophy, for example, took a “left” turn in Marx’s thinking — which Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin drew upon — and it took a “right” turn in Treitschke’s and Nietzsche’s thinking — which Goebbels, Hitler, and the National Socialists drew upon, as
German philosophy in pre-World-War-II Japan Read More »