The Renaissance scholar

AC Grayling and Adrian Monk disagree as to whether the Renaissance scholar is dead.

Reading Nietzsche in American politicians

Ali Eteraz says Barack Obama is a true Nietzschean for stifling nihilist pessimism.

Chris Dillow argues Hillary Clinton is a good Nietzschean for her will to power.

Don’t vote for Kant

Opinion on Western philosophers

Hobbes is the most important philosopher in the Western traditions of law and politics; not the more fashionable Kant or Locke.

Some proof later (when I can find the books I am looking for in this mess I am sitting in).

Would the end of the Union lead to a fascist England?

The following is a piece from Lawrence of Arabia’s “W(h)ither Fascism” which I was re-reading yesterday. LoA tries to accurately define ‘fascism’:

It seems to me there must be at least two components in place to have a genuinely fascist government, party, organization or movement. First, and probably most importantly, there must be a desire to rally the citizenry and organize the political realm around the idea of the nation-family: some common racial, or ethnic heritage, some common, natural, language, possibly, within which the cultural inheritance is passed down across the generations. There must be, then, a very rigorous form of nationalism, where the idea of the nation is taken quite literally: nation as a reference to our natus, or birth.

Secondly, fascism relates to the economic reorganization of the nation along the lines of a state capitalism in order to revitalize the productivity of the worker, but also to provide security for that same worker. Ernst Jünger, one of the economic theorists of fascism, argued in The Worker (1932), for instance, that the revitalization of German industry was linked to the revitalization of German men, warrior-men, and thus the strength of Germany itself.

The quote above had me thinking: would the break up of the Union lead to the rise of fascism in the Home Nations, and especially England? My untrained eye finds it remarkable that fascism, as defined by LoA above, has never gained widespread acceptance on these Isles. Perhaps the exclusiveness of ‘Englishness’ (white, Anglo-Saxon) was countered by the inclusiveness of being ‘British’?

Jumbling up of disciplines

I was reading through this attempt by Ali Eteraz to outline how Islamic theology can be consistent with evolution, noting that theology and jurisprudence are separate disciplines.

In that piece, Eteraz linked to an earlier piece which also criticised the Dhummies for their misunderstanding of this fact: that juruspridence and theology are separate disciplines. But I wonder in what way contemporary Muslims have also contributed to this?

Consider the way in which “Islamic knowledge” has been reduced to citing verses of the Qur’an and hadith material — as if that alone makes an argument (and such people ignore the subtle and implicit extra-textual argumentation they involve themselves in by choosing verse A over verse B).

On the abuses of ‘postmodernism’

Dear Muslims,

Just because you can use ‘postmodern’ techniques to ‘deconstruct the West’, does not mean the ‘vaccum’ you have created is automatically filled by your own beliefs.

Yours always lovingly,

Me

What is the difference between…

1. Lying on a bed with your knees and arms blown off due to an attack by someone who thought your life was expendable for some greater cause?

2. Lying on a bed with your knees and arms blown off due to a bomb from 30,000 feet, dropped by someone who thought your life was expendable for some greater cause?

Anyone?