Philosophy Now Forum

henry quirk wrote: ↑Sat Apr 15, 2023 11:50 pm

Harbal wrote: ↑Sat Apr 15, 2023 11:36 pm

You are such a drama queen, Alexis.

He really is: but he's still right and you're still wrong.

If you say so, henry, you little bundle of fun.

henry quirk wrote: ↑Sat Apr 15, 2023 11:49 pm

Harbal wrote: ↑Sat Apr 15, 2023 10:41 pmIf morality were an objective fact, all nature would be bound by it. Gravity is an objective fact, we cannot avoid it by refusing to acknowledge it, but we are free to make a choice with morality.

We ignore gravity all the time: it called an airplane.

That isn't ignoring it, it's dealing with it.

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Sat Apr 15, 2023 12:27 amIf you provided one example of malicious stupidity it would be helpful.

"Malicious" admittely is overstated; that would imply intent and I don't believe that much of the idiot things he states were meant to be malicious being much nearer to comatose if judged by logic, reality and not least by necessity.

You ask for examples when in fact you already gave one in your war and heroism quote which reeks of nonsense from end to end.

But here's another:

A woman who is perfectly woman is superior to a man who is imperfectly man, just as a farmer who is faithful to his land and performs his work perfectly is superior to a king who cannot do his own work.

What is all this "perfectly" perfect BS all about? What it retails to is that a women can only be perfect if the man is imperfect. If the man is perfect the women to remain perfect must yield to the greater perfection of the male. What greater hogwash can be imagined as if any side could even be close to perfect! DNA has made no such differences apparent where a specific half is inferior to the other. Is there anywhere in the animal kingdom where the male regards the female as inferior?

The reason he's mentioned so few times as a philosopher is because he's primarily regarded as an occultist and mystic who reifies myth into a realm reality never possessed. His eternal recurrent struggles to recreate the truly valid and sacred values of the past as he imagines it is an extreme form of nihilism in its desperation to inform the present which admittedly has become too secular in its own Will to Power complex. It's a gross contradiction to believe that one can heap past values from ages that were themselves brutal beyond imagining to give meaning to the present.

Thought too is ruled by entropy which doesn't allow such perversions without more catastrophe.

In that respect René Guénon spoke true when he said...We have in fact entered upon the final phase..., the darkest period of this dark age, the state of dissolution from which there is to be no emerging except through a cataclysm, since it is no longer a mere revival which is required, but a complete renovation.

"Renovation" does not mean "Reiteration".

Finally, here are a couple of links re Evola, the longer one I find a little too derogatory in its assumptions regarding him though it seems fairly well documented, but what is fact remains fact regardless.

You can, if you read it, splice it in any way you want based on your knowledge of him.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julius_Evola
https://www.theatlantic.com/internation ... ht/517326/
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Julius_Evola

It would be interesting to know beyond the mere academic, what value he has based on what's required now!

henry quirk wrote: ↑Sat Apr 15, 2023 11:49 pm

Harbal wrote: ↑Sat Apr 15, 2023 10:41 pmIf morality were an objective fact, all nature would be bound by it. Gravity is an objective fact, we cannot avoid it by refusing to acknowledge it, but we are free to make a choice with morality.

We ignore gravity all the time: it called an airplane.

If we could ignore gravity we wouldn't need airplanes.

Harbal wrote: ↑Sat Apr 15, 2023 11:36 pmYou are such a drama queen, Alexis.

I guess — seen from your angle of course — that is, what? a negative certainly?

You would be right if you referred to the dramatic in the sense of moving, vital, relevant.

We are in decline. The strings have untuned. The consequences ripen before our eyes. There are consequences to our choices.

And you have no means, no language, no concepts (no perceptual lens) to see and understand yourself nor any of this.

If the drama had a tragic clown, the sort of man of your aspiration would be it.

This amazes me!

Yes! A drama (a play) like the abstract and brief chronicle of the time Shakespeare referred to is certainly needed.

Harbal wrote: ↑Sun Apr 16, 2023 12:02 amThat isn't ignoring it, it's dealing with it.

Dubious wrote: ↑Sun Apr 16, 2023 12:12 amIf we could ignore gravity we wouldn't need airplanes.

Nitpickers.

Fine.

We thumb our noses at gravity; in the same way we can thumb our noses at morality.

But: you gotta land eventually.

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Sun Apr 16, 2023 12:17 am

Harbal wrote: ↑Sat Apr 15, 2023 11:36 pmYou are such a drama queen, Alexis.

I guess — seen from your angle of course — that is, what? a negative certainly?

You would be right if you referred to the dramatic in the sense of moving, vital, relevant.

We are in decline. The strings have untuned. The consequences ripen before our eyes. There are consequences to our choices.

And you have no means, no language, no concepts (no perceptual lens) to see and understand yourself nor any of this.

If the drama had a tragic clown, the sort of man of your aspiration would be it.

This amazes me!

Yes! A drama (a play) like the abstract and brief chronicle of the time Shakespeare referred to is certainly needed.

You are a nobody, just as I am, so don't pretend that anything either of us does is going to make a jot of difference to anything.

henry quirk wrote: ↑Sun Apr 16, 2023 12:21 am

Harbal wrote: ↑Sun Apr 16, 2023 12:02 amThat isn't ignoring it, it's dealing with it.

Dubious wrote: ↑Sun Apr 16, 2023 12:12 amIf we could ignore gravity we wouldn't need airplanes.

Nitpickers.

Fine.

We thumb our noses at gravity; in the same way we can thumb our noses at morality.

But: you gotta land eventually.

You are like a dog with a bone, henry, you just can't let go.

Harbal wrote: ↑Sun Apr 16, 2023 12:30 amYou are a nobody, just as I am, so don't pretend that anything either of us does is going to make a jot of difference to anything.

One pushes on you and gets certain reactions. Mostly easy dismissal.

Here, you’ve given something else.

If instead of insensate subjectivity as superficiality, the subjective focus is ‘the inner man’, I believe I can say with certainty that it does make a difference.

Some battles must be fought even if they are losing battles.

Dubious wrote: ↑Sun Apr 16, 2023 12:07 am …

I don’t quote your whole post but it certainly interests me. I have numerous thoughts.

I see what you are getting at, and I do not dismiss it, but I think your stance, overall, is dismissive.

He sees a man’s spiritual life as demanding a warrior’s attitude: hard, uncompromising, disciplined, militant. He is not writing to “mass man” but to those with an aspiration in tune with his own.

What you quoted (no idea where it came from) discusses the notion of *dharma*: to be a good gardener, if that is ones rôle, is better than a false aspiration that one cannot handle.

What I think he was getting at there is different than how you have interpreted it. Though perhaps some of your social-political ideas are different from his — and those I have considered.

That would amount to a substantial conversation.

Wiki and the other page present a skewed and indeed a slanderous picture. But that figures given how slanted its editors are. I see what they are referring to but they inflect him unfairly.

I see his, say, faults but I cannot dismiss him as flippantly as you. And rereading A handbook for Right-Wing Youth I see how prescient he was in his criticism of the 60s youth movement.

Have you ever read Revolt of the Masses (José Ortega y Gasset)? On another, but a similar, critical level.

Finally, if you agree that renovation is necessary — how have you answered this for yourself, in yourself?

A Handbook for Right-Wing Youth

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Sun Apr 16, 2023 1:21 am Finally, if you agree that renovation is necessary — how have you answered this for yourself, in yourself?

...as something which emerges by degrees within the psyche. If it were a purely volitional enterprise, a purely philosophical one, it would fail. An inner truth - let's call it that - requires no counterpart in the outer world which offers none.

Dubious wrote: ↑Sun Apr 16, 2023 1:33 am

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Sun Apr 16, 2023 1:21 am Finally, if you agree that renovation is necessary — how have you answered this for yourself, in yourself?

...as something which emerges by degrees within the psyche. If it were a purely volitional enterprise, a purely philosophical one, it would fail. An inner truth - let's call it that - requires no counterpart in the outer world which offers none.

I can accept that. And I am not so sure your ethic contradicts what Evola might have been interested in stimulating.

At least in what I’ve read so far.

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Sun Apr 16, 2023 1:37 am

Dubious wrote: ↑Sun Apr 16, 2023 1:33 am

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Sun Apr 16, 2023 1:21 am Finally, if you agree that renovation is necessary — how have you answered this for yourself, in yourself?

...as something which emerges by degrees within the psyche. If it were a purely volitional enterprise, a purely philosophical one, it would fail. An inner truth - let's call it that - requires no counterpart in the outer world which offers none.

I can accept that. And I am not so sure your ethic contradicts what Evola might have been interested in stimulating.

At least in what I’ve read so far.

As I mentioned, Evola is far too involved with the occult and all the ancient mysteries, East or West to give credence to...at least for me.

If you're going to insert ancient values and perceptions into a Revaluation which attempts to serve the present and the future, they too may have to be amended to fit a new paradigm and not merely assert a superiority it actually never had or misinterpreted.

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Sun Apr 16, 2023 1:21 am
He sees a man’s spiritual life as demanding a warrior’s attitude: hard, uncompromising, disciplined, militant. He is not writing to “mass man” but to those with an aspiration in tune with his own.

I meant to comment here but forgot...

This is already named within the Nietzschean canon as the Übermensch, a near mythical being capable of metabolizing fate to where it even defeats the will of the gods. But inevitably, most often detrimentally, each kind of philosophized Übermensch is stamped with the visage of its creator reflecting its agenda. I'm quite sure Nietzsche's "agenda" would not have seen eye-to-eye with almost all of Evola's version.

Dubious wrote: ↑Sun Apr 16, 2023 1:58 am As I mentioned, Evola is far too involved with the occult and all the ancient mysteries, East or West to give credence to...at least for me.

Ah yes, the belief (among other things) of Kali Yuga and the *spiritual science* of ancient India. Guénon too.