Materialism>idealism

I’m not trying to get into a whole debate, it’s just interesting to me the way some people cling to these idealist philosophers. Same w the stoics imo. As a guy who used to read all of them… they’re useless to actually understanding life. Like it can be helpful to read them in order to understand how the Western worldview evolved, but they really shouldn’t be taken as some sort of handbook - which many seem to do. (reactionaries). People who read Nietzsche or Plato and think they have some sort of secret insight is my biggest red flag irt pseudo-intellectual who is just going to waste your time… same with Dostoevsky btw.

Confucius is based af though.

Edit: Also, yes these kinds of people exist- my former mentor/boss who spent decades at a white shoe DC law firm would accept any idea if you found a quote by Plato to justify it lmao.

  • Muad'Dibber@lemmygrad.ml
    71·
    2 years ago

    A herd of blond beasts of prey, a race of conquerors and masters, with military organizations, with the power to organize, unscrupulously placing their fearful paws upon a population perhaps vastly superior in numbers, … this herd founded the State. The dream is dispelled which made the State begin with a contract. What has he to do with contracts who can command, who is master by nature, who comes on the scene with violence.

    The possibility has been established for the production of…a master race, the future “masters of the earth”…made to endure for millennia — a higher kind of men who…employ democratic Europe as their most pliant and supple instrument for getting hold of the destinies of the earth.

    The homogenizing of European man … requires a justification: it lies in serving a higher sovereign species that stands upon the former which can raise itself to its task only by doing this. Not merely a master race whose sole task is to rule, but a race with its own sphere of life, with an excess of strength … strong enough to have no need of the tyranny of the virtue-imperative.

    • SpaceCowboy@lemmygrad.mlOP
      62·
      2 years ago

      Ummm but have you read this 3,000 page treatise on how that was taken out of context. You literally cannot utter a word until you have read that… plus this 18-volume analysis by CIA sponsored Foucault on the ideas and consequences of underwater basket weaving.

      see you in 20 years when you actually know enough to comment

      • Muad'Dibber@lemmygrad.ml
        51·
        2 years ago

        He very much was talking about races, and the need for european “blond beasts of prey” to expand outward and conquer the world, he was very explicit about that, in the quote above.

        He also is a thorough orientalist, and advocates for their conquering:

        The world has been Orientalized long enough; and men now yearn to be Hellenized.

      • Muad'Dibber@lemmygrad.ml
        31·
        2 years ago

        Also with respect to eugenics, he very much was an advocate of a landed hereditary aristocracy:

        Will this aristocracy be a caste, and their power hereditary? For the most part yes, with occasional openings to let in new blood. But nothing can so contaminate and weaken an aristocracy rich vulgarians, after the habit of the English aristocracy; As it was such intermarriage that ruined the greatest governing body the world has ever seen: the aristocratic Roman senate.

        Even Plato, who was an aristocratic philosopher, didn’t think that aristocracy should be hereditary, but rather based on ability.

          • Muad'Dibber@lemmygrad.ml
            51·
            2 years ago

            Will this aristocracy be a caste, and their power hereditary? For the most part yes, with occasional openings to let in new blood.

            How can you read this and not think he’s talking about genetics?