(thx skye stewart)
Well you know, this is one of those things that you are much better at than I: meaning. My problem is that while I can agree with that which he appreciates, (a) it is not reducible to law, and (b) it is not stated as science.
So it’s somewhat like my criticism of Nietzche: these things carry meaning for those whose sentiments desire reinforcement and confirmation.
But they do not provide decidability between that which we aristocratic and male people(K) prefer, and that which the proletarian and feminine people (r) prefer.
So again, I see history as the evolution of argument from the platonic, to the rational, to the scientific to the ‘testimonial’.
So people like Nietzsche and EVKL provide meaningful, inspirational, and confirmation of ideas, they don’t provide legal and scientific ideas that I can test or warranty as truthful.
But they are still speaking in the language of religion. Not in the langue of reason. And not in the language of science. and not in the language of testimony.
In my current thinking, the philosophy of the west is captured in natural law and common law and articulated as law – as prohibitions. and that our commons articulated in our heroism, arts, literature, material commons, and civic institutions, constitutes the positive (aesthetic) ambitions of our civilization.
So I would say that just as children require fables and fairy tales, and youth require biographies and novels, and adults require inspiration and confirmation, and the wisest require require history and science, and today I would demand truthfulness in testimony. That we require these things to inspire us to positive action, so that we can justify our intuitions.
But that tells us nothing about how to resolve differences with people who do not share those objectives. And in fact, it provides us with what are DEMONSTRABLY weak arguments with which to defend ourselves from the hyper-consumption of the socialists, feminists and postmoderns we call secular humanists.
So I see the conservatives before me, other than perhaps Hayek, who correctly identified the law as the only source of liberty, as having failed precisely because they relied on perpetuating the language of religion that was with us during our great cultural formation in the middle ages. I might agree with Nietzche, and applaud his conflation of aesthetics with every branch of philosophy. I might agree with EVKL as a poet and preacher. But that tells me nothing. It teaches many. It informs many. It helps many FEEL less alienated. But it does nothing to empower us to overthrow that which alienates us today- by providing a decidable argument against dysgenic leftist parasitism.
I see the greek truth struggling to survive amidst the babylonian, jewish and christian dogma used as a means of managing the illiterate masses, and finally succeeding with the anglo enlightenment and the printing press.
So I would like to preserve the institution of the church, the pedagogy of the church, but using our pagan nature worshipping, ancestor worshipping, family worshipping, kin worshipping, testimony worshipping and therefore scientific culture exit all remnants of that mystical past.
Including justificationary yet informative essays.
So this isn’t a criticism or a disagreement with them, it is that they merely failed, because they did not know how to preserve meaningful poetic and literary persuasion while at the same time exiting the mysticism and romanticism of the past.
We must build justification on top of SOMETHING that matters. We cannot justify THAT WHICH HAS ALREADY FAILED.
I think truth and heroism are enough to build fable, myth, poetry, play, and narrative upon.
I think that because underneath all the babylonian, jewish and Christian mysticism, that’s all that stands their waiting for us. Because that is all we used to build the west.
Thank you for the wonderful question.
-Curt Doolittle