-Caveat Lector-
In a message dated 99-10-16 17:22:39 EDT, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
>In a message dated 10/16/99 7:31:48 AM Eastern Daylight Time,
>[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
>
>> Just read your Hegel piece for the first time !
>>
>> I spent quarter century in Universities in several countries and I do not
>> recall any idiot professor with your brilliance of exposition...this
>> should be required reading.
>> Ive been trying for years to say that right -left is a phony
Thought you'd like that ... A little lacking in "brilliance," in my own
opinion, that post --originally intended as an intro to a series of
philosophical history studies for CTRL subscribers I was planning back in '97
when I had free time) because, being a fast first draft, it suffers from my
usual bad habits in prose, e.g., sentences with multiple clauses in
parentheses, rarely a declarative sentence without "footnotes" squeezed into
it ...
But all in all, I suppose it's a passable outline of what major
socio-political-psychological problems HEGEL, our Plato in modern dress, has
caused us. What most of us today
fail to realize --as I'm sure YOU know!-- is that the Left/Right dichotomy,
sanctified as an "article of faith" by the Cold War, is not a dichotomy at
all but a local difference in "public image" between two variants of
TOTALITARIANISM, each of the two based on COLLECTIVISM and the coercive
identification of the populace with the "Holy" State,
its "Sacred Tradition," and its "Glorious Leader," all these glorified with
quasi-religious
fervor rationalized (made "rational") as "patriotism" and "nationalism" or
"imperialism."
It's Hegel whom we can blame for our post-Enlightenment "mystical"
reification of the State and its ruling class (treated as if a "priesthood"
with some kind of "divine right") -- a rational-materialist's answer to
contemporary loss of faith in a "Holy" Roman Empire (which wed the mystique
of an elite "born to rule" politically with the irrational worship of
authority and tradition in the Catholic Church), erecting an ersatz
SUBSTITUTE for it.
Beyond the puppet-show set up by Hegel, Left AND/OR Right TOTALITARIANISM and
COLLECTIVISM is only half the full picture -- only one pole of a GREATER
dichotomy
or dualism, with "democratic" LIBERTY and INDIVIDUALITY at the OPPOSITE pole.
Both Communists and Fascists (even Nazis) were functionaries --"drones"-- of
a "hive" society based on the individual's self-immolating identification
with The Greater Whole,
whether as a "Volk" revering the State's authority or as authority-figures
themselves.
Examining that definition squarely, even "Americans" are guilty of the same
tendency toward MASS-identification -- made to seem less "mass"-like ONLY by
the process of ABSTRACTION, by which their MASS-identity is directed toward
worshipping certain "rational" IDEALS (The Free World, The Good Society,
Humanitarian Peacekeeping, etc) which really have NO REAL-WORLD SUBSTANCE
apart from offering the citizenry a "feel-good" alibi for obedience to the
"authority" of an amoral, hypocritical oligarchy.
Before the de facto demise of the Church and Papacy in the late 16th Century
and early 17th Century, if men required an "explanation" for their pitiful
subservience to others in a feudal society rooted in special privilege and
unequal liberty, RELIGION provided this,
in such myths as "divine right" and Paul's promise of "justice" only in the
AFTER-life.
When, however, the masses awakened from their hypnotic trance (till then
maintained by the mass-media monopoly of the late-medieval Church) to find
that the rule of RAW POWER continued and the FEUDAL nature of government,
little changed, persisted,
and the masses began to REVOLT --the defining event of the 17th and 18th
Centuries--
an effective "explanation" for the unequal servile status of most of the
populace had to be sought elsewhere, in PHILOSOPHY, the intelligentsia's
substitute for "theology."
Hence HEGEL, who did for the Old Order in Europe what Plato did for the Greek
elite
of his time, longing for an Absolutist State such as encountered abroad in
Persia and looking forward, without knowing it, to the "Empire" of Alexander
and then of Caesar ....
But Hegel's peculiarly European philosophical "solution" to the societal
crisis manifest in the French Revolution (Hegel viewed the parallel American
Revolution with disdain) stands in vivid contrast to another "solution"
postulated by less religiously-influenced thinkers in Britain and in America
-- a pragmatic re-evaluation of INDIVIDUAL liberty, more down-to-earth and
less abstract (devoid of Plato's divinized "Ideal") and with no rose-colored
glasses concerning the raison d'etre for the State and its Ruling Class.
No glamor in politics, no State-worship, no subjective idealizations of
"Tradition" --
just practical operating principles to assure every individual's personal
freedom from abuse by those who seek POWER --unjustly-- by depriving others
of their RIGHTS
(typically covering up the power-grab with a con-man's manipulation of
EMOTIONS).
Think of Jefferson's cast of mind, "democratic" (hoping for an "EDUCATED
public"!)
and libertarian, bordering on anarchist, knowing full well what we've since
FORGOTTEN about the nature of ANY State and the CLASS structure needed by its
Ruling Class. .
>
>Hear, hear, from another supporter of the venerable Goat. AND, if you like
>that stuff, wait until he REALLY gets on a roll! LOL Seriously DasGoat is
>quite an effective writer and encapsulates thoughts well. We are fortunate
>to have him on this list (as well as many others of above average caliber,
>including MR. Sutton, and our list owner Kris, Lloyd Miller of A-albionic,
>Kenn Thomas, etc. . . don't be offended if I haven't included your name
>here), and I consider myself very fortunate to call him a friend.
>
>
>
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