The Crisis of Modernity: Leo Strauss, Martin Heidegger, Alexander Dugin, Julius Evola

[blaketamez]

Understanding modernity through the lens of changing religiosity rather than secularization has been a helpful shift in my thinking. In fact, it's becoming harder for me to imagine a truly secular mindset, as if anyone can actually set aside or move "beyond" the elements of their personality that make man inherently religious. Thanks for another helpful overview. You're introducing me to connections between authors that are not frequently talked about. Very valuable videos.

[karimmotaouakkil]

Not sure if we can add him to the list, but I like the view of Viktor Frankl in Man's Search for Meaning. Paraphrasing Nietzsche, his thesis is 'if you can find your why, you figure out a how.' With the growing alienation that has come with modernity, crisis of meaning can be tied. Always love your insight

[lonecanadian]

When i was a child, i rarley ever heard the old folks talk about frivolous wants and desires for themselves. They always seemed to have obligations that went beyond themselves. Modernity is the plague of the individual. There is no history of the past for the individual without a personal interpretation of it, there is no present for the individual without the furnishing of immediate wants and desires, and there is no future for the individual as it has only present motivations to furnish future wants and desires for itself.
The individual is the most powerful force on the face of the planet, yet that power is meaningless when it is used solely for self-aggrandizement and pleasure as prescribed by the post modern individualist teachings. The modernist sees nothing more than the present and their own view of it as the most important point in human history.

[OfficialHasbara]

Not a certified hood classic like the Evola videos but prescient and timely as always Michael. Greatly appreciate your work and perspective.

[Plotinus]

Thanks again Michael! It would've been nice to throw Guenon on as well.

[NA-diyy]

Мой русский друг, интересующийся философией, недавно скинул мне ссылку на ваше недавнее видео со словами, дескать, наконец-то кто-то смог внятно и последовательно объяснить ему, кто такой Дугин и в чем заключаются его идеи. Удивительно, что для этого ему пришлось послушать серию подкастов на английском от канадского исследователя) Очевидно, это свидетельствует о ваших выдающихся преподавательских способностях.
Со своей стороны, я бы хотел поблагодарить вас за подкасты о Штраусе, они были очень полезны. На русском очень мало материалов о философии Штрауса и помимо Прокопенко, написавшего подробное предисловие об интерпретации Штраусом Платона, Аристотеля и Фукидида (предисловие к "Городу и человеку") читать особо нечего.
Спасибо, Майкл. Надеюсь вы - в числе прочего - продолжите рассказывать о Штраусе и его идеях.

[FeralPhilosophy_mw]

Thanks man. Will bring this to my study group next week.

[nachtwandeling]

10:25 Arthur Moeller van den Bruck, key figure in the Conservative Revolution. Would be interesting to hear more about the more obscure people in this movement.

[robinrobinson]

Thank you Michael! What a wonderful overview! It packs a powerful punch in a concise 12mins! I really hope that someday I can afford to attend your School!!😊👍

[deusvult]

Masterful though brief overview. Was it Carl Schmitt who said that all political questions ultimately boil down to theological questions? I think that the Gillespie book is the most profound in exploring the theological metaphysical origins of the crisis of modernity, but the specifically Catholic literature on the theology of history offers vast insights into the spiritual roots of the crisis because it includes what some of your authors tend to overlook, the principalities and powers that impact powerfully on human affairs. And then there is Voegelin of course.

[janmalaszek]

I wonder whether you will write a BOOK on this

[rabby-u]

The drive of modernity, this elusive force to live a life of comfort and ease is an ancient one, and I'll call it the spirit of Babylon. Even further than that ancient centre, in the story of the Tower of Babel, where the drive to unify and centralize all human behavior, ended up in complete discord, when somehow one common language became completely undone, where the meaning of words changed and no one could understand each other. Reminds me of today's protests by the "Woke".

[MrBiswas]

Wonder if you will ever explore eastern philosophy...

[juvenalhahne]

Michael, acabo de ver e ouvi-lo sobre a crise da modernidade. Esta catastrofe nos vem acompanhando ha decadas e cada vez com maior gravidade. Admiro sua ousadia na critica a ela por seu abandono dos grandes valores e virtudes do mundo classico antigo, tendo em vista a forte oposicao do pensamento de esquerda em manter um patrulhamento sobre qualquer visao que nao seja em identificar a crise senao no capitalismo.
Enfatisar como voce faz, recorrendo a Leo Strauss, Heidegger e Dugan (de quem nunca ouvi falar, mas vou pesquizar), filosofos ou pensadores negados pelo pensamento de esquerda e apontar na religiosidade ao inves da secularizacao um caminho de restauracao... me leva por associacao a Simone Weil...
Tenho acompanhado uma serie dos mais variado videos sobre ela. Pergunto-me pois se o interesse que vem despertando nao corresponde ao mesmo levantado por voce?
--- Acharia bem oportuno que voce considerasse essa discussao...

[johnwilsonwsws]

David Hume showed you can’t argue from an is to an ought.

All the thinkers you discuss say society must have a political “ought” and that the “ought” is the primary issue.

We face the breakdown of capitalism on its own contradictions with war (makes their rivals pay), austerity (make workers pay) and dictatorship (crush the threat of revolution).

The sharpest contradiction is the division of the world into competing nation-states and the determination of US capital to maintain its hegemony over the world economy. All those political philosophers discussed her have nothing directly to say about this “is” because they the assume thought is primary. Heidegger’s frustrated collaboration with the Nazis show they aren’t above the crisis and their ideas express the needs of capitalism.

Heidegger’s search for an “ought” led him to tell Der Spiegel in 1966 that “only a god can save us”. It never led him to have any regrets about his collaboration with the Nazis, quite the opposite as he said in the same interview "... I see the situation of man in the world of planetary technicity not as an inextricable and inescapable destiny, but I see the task of thought precisely in this, that within its own limits it helps man as such achieve a satisfactory relationship to the essence of technicity. National Socialism did indeed go in this direction. Those people, however, were far too poorly equipped for thought to arrive at a really explicit relationship to what is happening today and has been underway for the past 300 years."

Recommended:
"Only a God Can Save Us" | Martin Heidegger & Nazism

[christophernason]

It's a crisis of interpretation. Among all the conflicting diagnoses how can one distinguish the truth?

[javidkagzi]

Hi Michael, do you know where can I buy Dugin's books in UK?

[vivianoosthuizen]

When someone says something stupid let them know it’s stupid instead of giving it the light of day.

[bobf]

I believe you can think of modernity as the epistemological crisis. The rise of science persuaded people that the scientific method was the only way to certainty. But beginning with Descartes, philosophers began to show that certain fundamental questions couldn’t be answered that way. So, unwilling to return to the philosophy of the past and lacking another approach, the Western world has been plunged into uncertainty ever since.

[sina]

One thing I haven't understood is how Heidegger's appeal to Völkisch culture as some primordial ground of being isn't the ultimate submission to das Man. His notion that authentic existence requires deep connection to one's cultural and geographical origins provides philosophical justification for exclusionary nationalism and opposition to cosmopolitanism, individualism, and Nietzschean projects of self-creation. I suspect Nietzsche would have been appalled if he had read stuff like this, and seen this as the exact opposite of the Übermensch's freedom to self-create values and projects. Heidegger's emphasis on Bodenständigkeit (rootedness) and "authentic dwelling" instead resonates with ethnonationalist and ultraconservative traditionalist ideologies, which explains its appeal to philosophers with strongly fascistic and bigoted tendencies like Alexandre Dugin. I don't think Heidegger's Nazi Party affiliation was merely coincidental to his philosophy—it reveals a fundamental contradiction at its core.