The complexity of a human society does not make it unintelligible, not even when it is a society torn by contradictions and in process of collapse—unless one views the collapse without benefit of philosophy. Such a procedure means: viewing the symptoms of a disease without knowing that they are symptoms, or that they have a unifying cause.
No doctor would ascribe a case of bubonic plague to the accidental onset at the same time of fever, chills, prostration, swellings in the groin, etc. None would say that, given “such a barrage of evidence from so many different sides,” no “one-line interpretation” can be adequate. If any doctor did say it, he would not be entrusted for long with the care of men’s bodies.
In the humanities and social science departments of our universities, the counterparts of such a doctor are being paid to shape men’s minds.
The intellectuals are ignorant of philosophy’s role in history—because of philosophy. Having been taught by philosophers for generations that reason is impotent to guide action, they regard the mind and its conclusions as irrelevant to life. Having been taught that philosophy is a game, with no answers to offer, they do not look to it for answers. Having been taught that there is no system to connect ideas and no causality to connect events, they do not look for system or causality, but treat social developments as random, unrelated occurrences. Having been taught that abstractions have no basis in reality, they brush them aside and focus only on concretes, whether of the moment or of the century.
Men who hold such ideas are unable to take ideas seriously. They cannot believe that ideas are the motor of history.
They do ascribe some influence to political ideas, such as racist preachments; but they do not understand the nature or source of this influence, because they treat politics as a self-contained subject, without reference to the rest of philosophy. What they do not grasp is the power of wider abstractions in man’s life, such as men’s view of reality, of knowledge, of values. Thus the omission from the above quote, which in this regard is standard, of the philosopher most responsible for the condition of modern Germany and of the modern world.
Those who do not grasp the essence of historical events cannot discover their relationship to similar but superficially varied events in other nations or eras. If a man sees only disconnected concretes in pre-Hitler Germany, he can see no more than that in America today.
A dictator is not a self-confident person. He preys on weakness, uncertainty, fear. He has no chance among men of self-esteem. But in an age of self-doubt, he rises to the top: men who do not know their own course or value have no means to resist his promises and demands.
Men cannot know their course or value without the guidance of principles. A nation does not learn from disaster—only from discovering its cause.
The solution is the rebirth of the great science discovered by the Greeks. What it would lead to is the rebirth of the great country founded on that science.
A country with a philosophic base, freed of fundamental uncertainty and guilt, would not tolerate leaders who evade every choice, crawl down the middle of every road, and wait for the deluge. It would not tolerate any deluge by the waves of self-righteous, man-hating evil, foreign or domestic. It would not apologize for its greatness to the worshipers of weakness. It would not watch in despair while its youth turned in despair to cults, communes, and cocaine.
A country with a philosophic base would know its ideas and its direction: conviction would replace paralysis. It would know its values: moral judgment would replace appeasement, and the passion for justice would stamp out the haters. It would know what to say to its youth: it would tell them the source of human joy, and the meaning of their nation in history, and the standard to which the wise and honest can always repair, the human standard, reason.
Then the kind of man who loves his life—the kind who still feels hope and pride—the man who loves this country, would teach it to love itself.
And then the country, and the world, would be safe. According to the Greek legend, as the spirit of Narcissus crosses the river leading to the land of the dead, he leans over the boat’s edge to look in the waters, in order to gain a last glimpse of his own beauty.
For the spirit of man, it does not have to be a last glimpse—not if men can discover once more the land of the living.
In 1787, one of the members of the Constitutional convention, asked by a bystander what kind of government the framers were giving to the new nation, answered: “A republic—if you can keep it.”15
He was not asked what is required to keep it, but the answer to that now would be: “A philosophy—if you can get one.”
References
Chapter One
1 Hitler at Bückeburg, Oct. 7, 1933; cf. The Speeches of Adolf Hitler, 1922-39, ed. N.H. Baynes (2 vols., Oxford, 1942), I, 871-72; I owe this translation, and several later ones, to Professor George Reisman. Mein Kampf, trans. R. Manheim (Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1943), p. 298.
2 William Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (New York, Simon & Schuster, 1960), pp. 969-70.
3 National Socialism, prepared by Raymond E. Murphy et al; quoting Huber, Verfassungsrecht des grossdeutschen Reiches (Hamburg, 1939); reprinted in Readings on Fascism and National Socialism, selected by Dept. of Philosophy, U. of Colorado (Denver, Alan Swallow, n.d.), pp. 77, 90.
4 The Mind and Face of Nazi Germany, ed. N. Gangulee (London, John Murray, 1942), p. 26; quoting Sieburg, Germany: My Country. Ley’s statement was made in Munich in 1938.
5 “The Political Doctrine of Fascism” (address delivered at Perugia, Aug. 30, 1925); reprinted in Readings on Fascism and National Socialism, pp. 34-35.
6 Hitler at Bückeburg; cf. Baynes, op. cit., I, 872 (trans. G. Reisman). Gregor Ziemer, Education for Death (London, Oxford U.P., 1941), p. 20; quoting Bernhard Rust, Erziehung und Unterricht (1938). Murphy et al., op. cit., p. 65; quoting Gottfried Neesse, Die Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei—Versuch einer Rechtsdeutung (1935). Ibid., p. 90; quoting Huber.
7 Ibid., p. 91.
8 Op. cit., p. 262.
9 Erich Fromm, Escape from Freedom (New York, Farrar, 1941), p. 233; quoting Goebbels, Michael.
10 Fred M. Hechinger, “Educators Seek to Teach Context of the Holocaust,” May 15, 1979.
Chapter Two
1 Dialogues, trans. B. Jowett (2 vols., New York, Random House, 1937), Laws 739C-D. Republic, trans. F.M. Cornford (New York, Oxford U.P., 1945), 462C.
2 From Shakespeare to Existentialism (Garden City, N.Y., Doubleday, 1960), p. 105. Rosenberg’s statement is from Der Mythus des Zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts (Munich, 1935).
3 Works, ed. W.D. Ross (12 vols., London, Oxford U.P., 1910-52), Ethica Nicomachea 1124a1-2.
4 Critique of Pure Reason, trans. N. Kemp Smith (New York, St. Martin‘s, 1956), p. 29.
5 Philosophy of Right, trans. T.M. Knox (London, Oxford U.P., 1967), p. 241.
6 The Philosophy of History, trans. J. Sibree (rev. ed., New York, Colonial Press, 1900), p. 39.
7 Ibid. Philosophy of Right, pp. 279, 156.
8 “The Doctrine of Fascism” (Enciclopedia Italiana, vol. xiv, 1932); trans. M. Oakeshott, Cambridge U.P., 1939; reprinted in William Ebenstein, Great Political Thinkers (New York, Rinehart, 1951), p. 590.
9 Cf. Walter T. Stace, The Philosophy of Hegel (New York, Dover, 1955), p. 406.
10 Philosophy of Right, p. 196.
11 “The Doctrine of Fascism,” trans. I.S. Munro, Maclehose, 1933; reprinted in Readings on Fascism and National Socialism, p. 10. Gangulee, op. cit., p. 114; quoting Dietrich at the University of Berlin, 1937. Murphy et al., op. cit., p. 74.
12 The Philosophy of History, pp. 31, 30, 66-67.
13 Hitler at Würzburg, June 27, 1937; Baynes, op. cit., I, 411.
14 Philosophy of Right, pp. 217-18.
15 Omnipotent Government (New Haven, Yale U.P., 1944), p. 132.
16 Mein Kampf, pp. 290, 324.
17 Ernst Nolte, Three Faces of Fascism, trans. L. Vennewitz (N
ew York, Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1966), pp. 280- 81; quoting L’Aryen, son rôle social (1st ed., Paris, 1899).
18 The Open Society and its Enemies (4th ed., 2 vols., New York, Harper & Row, 1963), II, 61-62.
19 Quoted in Walter Kaufmann, Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre (New York, Meridian, 1957), p. 18. Hartmann Grisar, Luther. trans. E.M. Lamond, ed. L. Cappadelta (London, Kegan Paul, 1916); On the Jews and their Lies, V, 405. Luther Hess Waring, The Political Theories of Martin Luther (New York, Putnam‘s, 1910), p. 104; quoting a sermon on “Tribute to Caesar.”
20 The Characteristics of the Present Age, trans. W. Smith (2nd ed., London, John Chapman, 1859), p. 36. Addresses to the German Nation, ed. G.A. Kelly, trans. R.F. Jones & G.H. Turnbull (New York, Harper & Row, 1968), p. 177.
21 Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, trans. T.B. Bottomore; reprinted in Erich Fromm, Marx’s Concept of Man (New York, Ungar, 1966), pp. 78, 130. Critique of the Gotha Programme; quoted (by Lenin) in Modern Political Thought, ed. W. Ebenstein (2nd ed., N.Y., Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1960), p. 431.
22 Works, ed. O. Levy (18 vols., New York, Russell & Russell, 1964); The Genealogy of Morals, First Essay, XIII, 40.
23 Von Treitschke, Politics, trans. B. Dugdale and T. deBille (2 vols., London, Constable, 1916), I, 66. Peter Viereck, Metapolitics (New York, Capricorn, 1965), p. 105; quoting aphorisms “from Wagner’s various works during 1847-51.” Moeller quoted by Walter Laqueur, Weimar: A Cultural History 1918-1933 (New York, Putnam’s, 1974), p. 96.
Chapter Three
1 Rauschning, The Voice of Destruction (New York, Putnam‘s, 1940), p. 222. Melvin Rader, No Compromise (New York, Macmillan, 1939), pp. 25-26; quoting Rosenberg, Mythus. The Nazi Years, ed. J. Remak (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., Prentice-Hall, 1969), p. 41; quoting Neesse, Brevier eines jungen Nationalsozialisten (Olden-burg, 1933).
2 Rauschning, op. cit., pp. 224, 184, 212, 210-11.
3 Rauschning, The Revolution of Nihilism, trans. E.W. Dickes (New York, Longmans, Green, 1939), pp. 49-50. Rader, op. cit., p. 43; quoting Mythus. Johst quoted in Viereck, op. cit., p. 255.
4 Rauschning, The Voice of Destruction, p. 224.
5 Mein Kampf, p. 408. George L. Mosse, Nazi Culture, trans. S. Attanasio et al. (New York, Grosset & Dunlap, 1968), pp. 282-83; quoting Hans Schemm spricht, ed. G. Kahl-Furthmann (Bayerische Ostmark, 1935). The Great Quotations, ed. G. Seldes (New York, Lyle Stuart, 1960), p. 321; taken from John Gunther, The Nation (n.d.).
6 Mein Kampf, p. 233. Sombart, A New Social Philosophy (Princeton, Princeton U.P., 1937), p. 10.
7 George L. Mosse, The Crisis of German Ideology (New York, Grosset & Dunlap, 1964), p. 15.
8 The Portable Nietzsche, ed. W. Kaufmann (New York, Viking, 1954); Thus Spake Zarathustra, Second Part, p. 238.
9 Romanticism, ed. J.B. Halsted (New York, Harper & Row, 1969), p. 26. Ibid., p. 237; from “The Revolution,” in Richard Wagner’s Prose Works, trans. W.A. Ellis (London, 1899-1900).
10 Viereck, op. cit., p. 7; quoting Ernst Troeltsch, Deutscher Geist und Westeuropa (Tübingen, 1925).
11 Koppel S. Pinson, Modern Germany (New York, Macmillan, 1954), p. 272; quoting Rathenau, “Zur Mechanik des Geistes” (1912).
12 Mein Kampf, pp. 337-38.
13 Ibid., pp. 267, 459. Rauschning, The Voice of Destruction , pp. 239-40.
14 Rader, op. cit., pp. 191-92; quoting Goering, Germany Reborn (London, 1934).
15 Viereck, op. cit., p. 289; quoting from Eugene Lyons, “Dictators into Gods” (American Mercury, March 1939).
16 Ibid.; quoting from The New York Times, Feb. 11, 1937.
17 Mosse, Nazi Culture, p. 10; quoting from a speech in Munich, April 27, 1923.
18 Rauschning, The Voice of Destruction, p. 224. Lothar Gottlieb Tirala, Rasse, Geist und Seele (Munich, 1935), p. 220 (trans. G. Reisman).
19 Herman Finer, Mussolini’s Italy (New York, Holt, 1935), p. 218; quoting a speech given in Naples, Oct. 24, 1922. Cf. Rader, op. cit., p. 25.
20 Essays in Pragmatism, ed. A. Castell (New York, Hafner, 1952); “What Pragmatism Means” (Lecture II of Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking), p. 150. Ibid., “Pragmatism’s Conception of Truth” (Lecture VI of Pragmatism), p. 170.
21 In his youth, Mussolini was personally acquainted with several Italian disciples of James, and published an occasional article in La Voce, a pragmatist journal of the period devoted to political and literary issues. Later, he made a point of giving James part of the credit for the development of Fascism. “The pragmatism of William James,” he said in a 1926 interview, “was of great use to me in my political career. James taught me that an action should be judged rather by its results than by its doctrinary basis. I learnt of James that faith in action, that ardent will to live and fight, to which Fascism owes a great part of its success.... For me the essential was to act.” Cf. Ralph Barton Perry, The Thought and Character of William James (2 vols., Boston, Little, Brown, 1935), II, 575; quoting the Sunday Times, London, April 11, 1926.
22 Mein Kampf, pp. 214-15.
23 Aurel Kolnai, The War Against the West (New York, Viking, 1938), p. 59. Rauschning, The Voice of Destruction, p. 223. Viereck, op. cit., p. 314; quoting from The Atlantic Monthly, June 1940.
24 Rauschning, The Voice of Destruction, pp. 188-89. Goering quoted by Eugene Davidson, The Trial of the Germans (New York, Macmillan, 1966), pp. 237-38.
25 Rauschning, The Voice of Destruction, p. 189.
26 Gangulee, op. cit., p. 123.
27 Kolnai, op. cit., p. 29; quoting a statement made at Frankfurt a.M., Oct. 1935. Shirer, op. cit., p. 662.
28 This widespread form of subjectivism is implicit in every variant of the theory. If a man’s mental methods or contents are regarded as irreducible features of his consciousness, as primaries not derived from an awareness of reality—if his ideas are claimed to have no source in the perception of facts—then, the inventions of certain philosophers notwithstanding, the source is his emotions, his arbitrary (and, to him, causeless) feelings.
29 Mein Kampf, p. 338. Kolnai, op. cit., pp. 29-30; quoting a statement made by Goering in the spring of 1933. Mosse, Nazi Culture, p. xxxi; quoting from Benedikt Lochmüller, Hans Schemm (Bayreuth, 1935).
30 Kant does not repudiate the term “objective,” and claims to oppose subjectivism. His method of opposition, however, is to redefine “objectivity,” in accordance with his own presuppositions, in such a way as to make it a species of subjectivity. Hegel follows Kant’s lead in this issue.
31 Kolnai, op. cit., p. 61; quoting Franz Haiser. Rauschning, The Voice of Destruction, p. 223. Cf. the statement by the Nazi physicist Philipp Lenard, a 1905 Nobel Prize winner for his work on cathode rays, in his treatise entitled “German Physics”: “Science, like every other human product, is racial and conditioned by the blood.” (Quoted in Rader, op. cit., p. 31.)
32 Rader, op. cit., pp. 102-03; quoting Nature, Jan. 18, 1936.
33 Tirala, op. cit., p. 190 (trans. G. Reisman).
34 Ibid., p. 196.
35 Mein Kampf, p. 253. Rauschning, The Voice of Destruction, p. 97.
Chapter Four
1 Mein Kampf, pp. 404, 297. Jung quoted in Kolnai, op. cit., p. 66; the last quoted sentence is Kolnai’s summary of Jung’s view.
2 Ibid., p. 105, n. 3; quoting Wille und Macht (Munich, Dec. 1936).
3 Mein Kampf, p. 297.
4 The Origins of Totalitarianism (new ed., New York, Harcourt, Brace & World, 1966), pp. 348, 315-16.
5 Ibid., p. 425, n. 98. Ziemer, op. cit., p. 33. Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem (New York, Viking, 1965), p. 42.
6 Ethica Nicomachea 1168b28-1169b2.
7 Confessions, trans. R.S. Pine-Coffin (Baltimore, Penguin, 1961), pp. 169, 93. On Christian Doctrine, trans. D.W. Robertson, Jr. (Indianapolis, Bobbs-Merrill, 1958), p. 19.
8 Confessions, p. 181. Approaches to Ethics, ed. W.T. Jones et al. (New York, McGraw-Hill, 1962), pp. 161- 62; reprinted from Meister Eckhart, trans. R.B. Blakney
(New York, 1957).
9 Adam Smith’s Moral and Political Philosophy, ed. H.W. Schneider (New York, Harper & Row, 1970); The Theory of Moral Sentiments, pp. 39, 233-34, 249.
10 Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, ed. R.P. Wolff, trans. L.W. Beck (Indianapolis, Bobbs-Merrill, 1969), pp. 65, 14, 69.
11 Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone, trans. T.M. Greene and H.H. Hudson (New York, Harper & Row, 1960), p. 41, n. Foundations, pp. 38, 6, 13, 49.
12 Ibid., pp. 36, 49, 21 (n. 2), 14, 23.
13 Ibid., pp. 27, 16-17.
14 Ibid., p. 17.
15 Ibid., p. 28.
16 Ibid., pp. 79, 81, 83, 87, 82.
17 Ibid., pp. 93-94.
18 Ibid., pp. 23, 72.
19 The Categorical Imperative (4th ed., London, Hutchinson, 1963), pp. 50, 258.
20 Foundations, pp. 57-58. Kant grants that even the moral man requires an interest or incentive of some kind in order to act; the only interest Kant regards as moral, however, is the interest in acting from duty, i.e., an interest in action divorced from goals.
21 Ibid., p. 35, n. 3.
22 Ibid., p. 66. Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone, p. 55. Foundations, pp. 35, 25, 19.
23 Religion, p. 31. Foundations, pp. 50 (n. 11), 21 (n. 2). Religion, p. 41, n. In this last note, Kant permits what he calls “moral self-love,” described as “the inner principle of such a contentment as is possible to us” by reason of “unadulterated” obedience to duty. Ibid., p. 41.
24 Religion, pp. 31-32.
25 Ibid., p. 50. Foundations, pp. 27-28.
26 Religion, pp. 25, 28, 46, 38, 32, 28, 38.
27 Ibid., p. 40.
28 Ibid., pp. 44, 51 (n.).
29 Ibid., p. 55.
30 Ibid., pp. 55, 69.
31 Ibid., pp. 55, 45.
32 New York, Random House, 1957; p. 1028.
33 The Positive Philosophy of Auguste Comte, trans. and condensed by Harriet Martineau (2nd ed., 2 vols., London, Triibner, 1875), II, 239.
34 Fichte, The Characteristics of the Present Age, pp. 33-34. Hegel, The Phenomenology of Mind, trans. J.B. Baillie (New York, Harper & Row, 1967), pp. 526-29. Schopenhauer, On the Basis of Morality, trans. E.F.J. Payne (Indianapolis, Bobbs-Merrill, 1965), pp. 165, 141-42, 139-40. Marx, Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, p. 132. The Communist Manifesto, English trans. of 1888, ed. F. Engels; reprinted in Ebenstein, Great Political Thinkers, p. 670.
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