[This is Section 18 of Nietzsche and the Nazis.] 18. Militarization The most important part of the new Germany was the military. On a historically unprecedented scale, the German economy became a war economy. Conscription had been reintroduced in 1935, and in 1936 Hermann Göring took over as Germany’s economic minister. Under Göring’s direction, Germany […]
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Following up on an earlier post contrasting modernism with pre-modernism, I here contrast post-modernism to both. Postmodernism as a philosophical system is defined by means of its characteristic claims in the five major branches of philosophy: metaphysics, epistemology, human nature, ethics, and politics. Postmodernism as a historical movement is defined by the time of its
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Intellectual systems and movements are defined philosophically by means of their characteristic claims in the five major branches of philosophy: metaphysics, epistemology, human nature, ethics, and politics. As historical movements, they are defined by the time of their formulation and most vigorous activity. So in the following table I offer a definitions of pre-modernism and
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Since 1990, the percentage of Americans who are Christian fell by 11 points, while the percentage of atheists rose 7 points. Those are, as Cathy Lynn Grossman of USA Today writes, “dramatic shifts in just 18 years.” According to this Pew Forum survey, religiousness in Illinois is below the national average, which may explain the
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How much do the twelve days of Christmas cost this year?
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Following up on The Knife Man and John Hunter, the great 18th-century anatomist and surgeon. In Hunter’s era surgery was brutal, in large part due to surgeons’ ignorance of anatomy, and in that earlier post I wondered why there was still such ignorance given that the 1700s were two centuries after Andreas Vesalius and a
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[This is Appendix 4 of Nietzsche and the Nazis. Sources for the quotations are at the end of this post.] Appendix 4: Quotations on German militarism Immanuel Kant (1724-1804): “War itself, if it is carried on with order and with a sacred respect for the rights of citizens, has something sublime in it, and makes
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[This excerpt is from Chapter 2 of Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault] Metaphysical solutions to Kant: from Hegel to Nietzsche Georg W. F. Hegel’s philosophy is another fundamentally Counter-Enlightenment attack on reason and individualism. His philosophy is a partially secularized version of traditional Judeo-Christian cosmology. While Kant’s concerns centered upon epistemology,
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