Carl Schmitt
Just read his Concept of the Political and some of his letters with Kojeve.
Absolutely breathtaking insights.
In terms of writing, de Maistre is as an equal. But Schmitt's mastery of breaking down subjects to their absolute essential elements is without comparison.
Is there any greater conservative intellectual than Carl Schmitt?
>Nazi
>Conservative
Choose one.
Schmitt was also, by the way, an opponent of the Nazis until they won power, then he joined them. Maybe he thought he could bring them down from the inside?
He's a good writer, and I'm usually pretty excited by his work while I'm reading it, but I find that his insights are more suggestive then substantive and I end up not retaining that much when I'm down. I do love the idea from The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy that fascism is more democratic than liberal democracy and use it to annoy my lefty friends all the fucking time.
...
Johann was a better Schmitt philosophy wise senpai
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>Nazi
>Schmitt, was also, by the way, an opponent of the Nazis until they won power, then he joined them.
Choose one. That just makes him an opportunist.
Dugin larps as Heidegger and Schmitt.
>fascism is more democratic than liberal democracy
You know I get his argument about constitutionalism impeding the volonté générale, but I think you'd find it hard to argue Hitler was the embodiment of the general will rather than the interests of German finance capital.
Also this Schmitt disliked the fact that the Weimar Constitution's neutrality went to the point of being able to legally abolish itself, which left the country on the brink of a civil war between fascist and communist forces. Him later joining the NSDAP was opportunism and hope of melding Hitler's policies towards his own, which of course failed.
This guy is the GOAT of conservative intellectuals - actually a type of conservatism I can sympathize with.
Also inspired by both Heidegger and Schmitt. Read Kritik und Krise.
> but I find that his insights are more suggestive then substantive and I end up not retaining that much when I'm down.
He's dense and subtle. The way he critiques human rights, state sovereignty, at first glance it might seem unsubstantive but then you realize it's really quite genius and cannot be unseen.
> Maybe he thought he could bring them down from the inside?
> That just makes him an opportunist.
It's a little more complicated than that. Especially because he refused re-education post-war and justified this refusal philosophically. He saw that parliaments were shit but also states had become too complex for a kind of direct democracy general will (a la Rousseau). Maybe he genuinely thought this would be a good advancement.
I think among a lot of intellectual circles there was a sense that, "We might as well get the brightest in the Nazi party to balance out the stupid."
He met Mussolini in 36 and when asked where Hegel's spirit resided (Germany, Italy or Russia) Schmitt told him in Italy.
>but I think you'd find it hard to argue Hitler was the embodiment of the general will rather than the interests of German finance capital.
My man...I...completely agree.
Doesn't look bad at all. Do you have it in you to give me a quick rundown?
>Reinhart "Absolutism was comfy" Koselleck
No thank you.
Not him, but his argument in Kritik und Krise is basically that the absolutist state of the 17th and 18th century represented a kind of Hobbesian guardian of peace and the Enlightenment and consequently the French Revolution ruined it and plunged the world into disorder.
>you'd find it hard to argue Hitler was the embodiment of the general will rather than the interests of German finance capital
Personally, I'd find it harder to argue the opposite. German finance capital went with Hitler as a last ressort; that is when everything else failed and he got elected. I'm personally under the impression that you are falling for the "fascism is the most reactionary form of capitalism" meme.
>German finance capital went with Hitler as a last ressort; that is when everything else failed and he got elected.
how is that different from what he was saying though?
You forgot Louis de Bonald desu.
But, yep, his work is a must-read, and that's coming from a lefty.
political philosophy is garbage and should be called something else
thomas carlyle imo
absolutism is just so based, bumping this thread for great justice
Ann Coulter and Ben Shapiro
Because high finance chose Hitler reluctantly, not willingly.
Nietzsche
Reading Critique and Crisis now because of this thread. Holy fuck.
>The disintegration of Absolutism was part of an impetuous process into which history had been drawn by bourgeois criticism. The verdicts of the moral inner space saw the existing situation simply as an immoral being that provoked its indictment so long as, and to the extent which the moral judges themselves were powerless to execute their verdicts. However, the new elite was to the same extent strengthened in its belief that it personified the true, the moral, the essential being. History was stripped of its factualness in order to give bourgeois morality legitimacy. The apolitical bour geoisie, alienated from historicity, maintained that the rescision of the view of history as nature's fall from grace was to be expected. Henceforth, history could only be seen in historico-philosophical terms, as a process of innocence that had to become fact. The sovereignty of society seems to spring apparently unchecked from sovereign criticism. As author the bourgeois man of letters believes himself to be the creator of authority. For the bourgeoisie the threatening civil war, whose outcome was unpredictable, had al ready been morally decided. The certainty of victory lay in the extra and supra-political consciousness which - initially as the answer to Absolutism - intensified into Utopian self-assurance. Bourgeois man, condemned to a non-political role, sought refuge in Utopia. It gave him security and power. It was the indirect political power par excellence in whose name the Absolutist State was overthrown.
>In the helium omnium contra omnes of the Republic of Letters, morality continued to invent new reasons for pre-empting sover eign action which was essentially groundless. It fed on the constant change in the argumentation because access to power had been denied to it. Ultimately it had to decapitate the monarch. In despair over its inability to recognise the nature of power, it took refuge in naked force. It usurped power with the bad conscience of a moralist who claims that it is the intention of history to make power superfluous.
>Thus, Utopia as the answer to Absolutism ushered in the modern age which had long since outdistanced its staning-point. Yet the heritage of the Enlightenment was still omnipresent.
Jesus Christ. How has Peterson not name-dropped Koselleck yet?
>How has Peterson not name-dropped Koselleck yet?
Because Jung is good enough, right? Right?
is the english translation good?
>Not posting Daddy
Kek. Touche.
I'm a monolingual pleb so I can't really judge. Sounds pretty lucid to me tho.
Neither am I, I'm debating getting it in french.
One more money quote.
>The new elite's absence from the State gave their ideas an acquired political significance. The political secret of the Enlightenment lay in the fact that its concepts, analogous to the indirect assumption of power, were not seen as being political. The political anonymity of reason, morality, nature, and so on, defined their political character and effectiveness. Their political essence lay in being non-political.
>The examination and invocation of established laws of morality, of nature, of common sense, meant the assumption of an absolute, untouchable, immutable intellectual position, which in society as sured the same qualities the Absolutist prince laid claim to in the political realm. 'True is that which does not tolerate contradiction.' The exponentS o f the moral positions may b e politicalyl powerless, but they do gain an overwhelming power of exclusiveness. By the yardstick of the laws of the moral world, social and political reality is not only incomplete, limited, or unstable but also immoral, unnatural and foolish. The abstract and unpolitical starting point allows a forceful, total attack on a reality in need of reform.
And so social justice was born.
These are quite good, thanks. Still a little dismayed at this comment in a review (he still gives it 5 stars though)
> The name of the work's translator is hard to find, and in comparing the English to the German, one sees why--a lot of nuance is lost, and one has the sense, occasionally, that the translator is guessing at a particularly obtuse formulation. Admittedly, Koselleck does himself no favors in this regard (he is occasionally quite terse precisely when making major transitions) but it's unfortunate that this book, like other works of his, has been marred in translation.
If you wanted to be published you had to join their party. It was possible to without a membership but it made things a lot less difficult. And the chance that the Gestapo knocks on your door for your writing was way smaller.
>The Flying Inn is the final novel by G. K. Chesterton, first published in 1914. It is set in a future England where the Temperance movement has allowed a bizarre form of "Progressive" Islam to dominate the political and social life of the country. Because of this, alcohol sales to the poor are effectively prohibited, while the rich can get alcoholic drinks "under a medical certificate".
>The plot centres on the adventures of Humphrey Pumph (see also Humphrey Pump) and Captain Patrick Dalroy, who roam the country in their cart with a barrel of rum in an attempt to evade Prohibition, exploiting loopholes in the law to temporarily prevent the police taking action against them. Eventually, the heroes and their followers foil an attempted coup by an Islamic military force.
Did Chesterton go too far with this absurd premise for a comic novel?
I bet you Houellebecq has read the novel.
Houellebecq is too serious for me too take seriously. He's just not jolly enough. I'll take Chesterbelloc over Houellebecq any day of the week.
You forgot Henry Adams, T.S. Eliot, Thomas Carlyle, and Wyndham Lewis
The Karl Marx of the right.
He's a lot more self-aware than you might realize. He parodies himself constantly but has a very deadpan delivery
I was just saying there's no way Houellebecq hasn't read it. He name-drops distributism in Soumission iirc. I can't imagine him not having read the book for inspiration.
his liberal borrowings from Wikipedia, among other sources, are well-known.
he claimed it was a Lautreamont-style re-engineering when confronted with evidence of the plagiarism.
He references Chesterton elsewhere in his work, if I recall correctly.
The Pope.
>conservative
>intellectual
pick one
what about Sir Roger, then?
>his liberal borrowings from Wikipedia, among other sources, are well-known.
lol based, if it works for Bauman, why not for Houellebecq?
Hegel
>progressive
>not agent of chaos
Wow, what an accurate prediction of the future.
He looks like a gaudy baby-man.
Why are the especially extreme reactionaries so easily seduced by imagery? You drape somebody in gold and give them a stern face, and they're like "look at how much better this is"