This is excellent stuff. Trump is indeed the rightful representative of America, the true face of the US. I’ve disliked the US since my adolescence, and therefore also dislike Trump; Fixed Cross has loved it since childhood, and therefore also loves Trump.
Last night I was in a heightened state and wrote something in English again, against my resolution–something philosophical, that is. I will post it here in honour of the Philosophers and also because it may be fitting in this context.
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Philosophical supremacism is the claim that philosophers rank above all other men, or that philosophy ranks above all other–activities. Now this has always been widely considered insane–consider Glaucon’s response to Socrates’ idea of the philosopher kings in Plato’s Republic–, and even in modern times it will be considered so. For to a modern, philosophy or science only has value insofar as it improves the people’s life. But one need not be a modern or even a Platonist to find grave problem with the claim. For there is an inner, analytic inconsistency to it.
Philosophical supremacism is concerned with rank. Rank however is not the subject of philosophy as such, but only of political philosophy. That is to say, it’s not the subject of natural, but only of moral philosophy, not of physics or metaphysics but only of ethics, at most of religious philosophy but not of “first philosophy”–philosophy proper, “philosophical” philosophy. This means that philosophy proper cannot claim a higher rank than any other activity.
The philosophers proper, however,–the genuine or actual philosophers–are those who lay claim to a highest form or way of human life, a virtuous life or person. To claim this about the (meta)physician is inconsistent, as we have seen. But is claiming it for the political philosopher not circular and thereby absurd? “The highest man is he who commands and legislates as a statesman, a moralist or a prophet that his kind of life is considered the highest.” He will then have to do so as a rhetorician, a play actor, an inspired poet: his self-expression, not what is expressed is then the focus: it is only the shadow play suggestive of the blaze behind it.
In the case of moral philosophy, that blaze is the blaze of natural philosophy: the impassioned conviction that every part of nature, as a manifestation of the whole or the nature of nature, is divinely glorious to see in truth. On some level, be it only the microscopic, science and divine service are one. Sublime patterns are found that fill us with awe. But the microscopic and telescopic are in a sense different planes from our natural, human-scaled one. In this sense, science is an escape. The greatest challenge lies in what is seen with the naked eye and the naked mind. This is the level on which dust is dust and fire is fire. The level on which virtue or virility banishes filth into nooks and crannies. On this level, the divine itself is ranked into high and low–even into divine and non-divine, even demonic.
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The level on which dust is dust and fire is fire is also the level on which worms are worms (as per another of FC’s most recent posts). I was actually thinking of worms around when I wrote “filth” and, then, “dust”. I also thought of the brain of the leech (Zarathustra part 4) and of gnats’ anuses (Aristophanes’ Clouds).
Here’s something else I wrote today: “Tastism: the view that there is such a thing as good and bad taste.” I may be a Cato to Trump’s “Caesar”, but I do assert that an objectively higher taste and tastefulness can only arise out of the consistent assertion of some irrational and arbitrary taste.
“Voegelin seems to believe that ‘post-constitutional’ rule is not per se inferior to ‘constitutional’ rule. But is not ‘post-constitutional’ rule justified by necessity or, as Voegelin says, by ‘historical necessity’? And is not the necessary essentially inferior to the noble or to what is choiceworthy for its own sake? Necessity excuses: what is justified by necessity is in need of excuse. The Caesar, as Voegelin conceives of him, is ‘the avenger of the misdeeds of a corrupt people.’ Caesarism is then essentially related to a corrupt people, to a low level of political life, to a decline of society. It presupposes the decline, if not the extinction, of civic virtue or of public spirit, and it necessarily perpetuates that condition. Caesarism belongs to a degraded society, and it thrives on its degradation. Caesarism is just, whereas tyranny is unjust. But Caesarism is just in the way in which deserved punishment is just. It is as little choiceworthy for its own sake as is deserved punishment. Cato refused to see what his time demanded because he saw too clearly the degraded and degrading character of what his time demanded. It is much more important to realize the low level of Caesarism (for, to repeat, Caesarism cannot be divorced from the society which deserves Caesarism) than to realize that under certain conditions Caesarism is necessary and hence legitimate.” (Strauss, “Restatement on Xenophon’s Hiero”.)
With this ad hoc “signature” quote I will return to my self-imposed exile from English in philosophicis.