'Philosophers and the birth of National Socialism' - meeting with Professor Stephen Hicks

Meeting with Professor Stephen Hicks at the Museum of the Second World War in Gdansk - "Philosophers and the birth of National Socialism".

[dreamdiction]

Everything Hicks says about the effect of philosophy on National Socialism equally applies to the responsibility of philosophy for creating Communism. Why was there no Nuremberg Tribunal for Communism?

[ChopinIsMyBestFriend]

What an incredibly difficult thing to do, having to translate a long winded philosophical discussion in real time. God bless that lady.

[paigemccormick]

Dr. Hicks, what a beautiful sculpture of thought and language, especially for a foreign-speaking audience.

[StephenCowley]

"Revisionism is the great intellectual adventure of the 21st century." - Robert Faurisson.

[untethered]

I wonder why Marxism and Fascism are considered to be opposite ends of a spectrum that involves individualism in any way. It seems to me like these two things are just different types of collectivism and are equally dangerous. Millions of people died due to the Nazis, but millions of people have also died due to the Marxists by way of Joseph Stalin and Mao Tse Tung. Both ideologies are incredibly nationalistic and promote a cult-like mindset of unquestioning adherence to a State that is endowed with far too much power. I really think Marxism, and any form of it, really should be considered to be Fascism.

[drlobomalo]

NSDAP was (IIRC) the world's first explicitly "Green" party. This likely comes out of a branch of German philosophy (in the broad sense of the term) that is represented by Heidegger at the highest level. NS was not surprisingly made up of elements already existing in German culture and Western culture.

[TheCodgod]

He seems to completely forget that nazism was a reaction to communism? They had no plans of WORLD domination or cultural domination lol.

[kingclover]

I always thought those psychosexual explanations for Nazism were dubious. I remember my high school social studies teacher going through a list of the Nazi leadership and their sexual proclivities in order to demonstrate that fascism was caused by sadomasochistic sexuality and repressed homosexuality and incest etc. But this view was out of date by the time I was in high school, even though it was a very common view about five or six decades ago. You don't hear it too much anymore.

[Ozgipsy]

This was a great talk, really good. I bet those 2 guys felt stupid for sitting there in the centre of everything.

[chriswaldrop]

This is a profound and needed talk in 2020. I believe it highlights the fact the US has been dominated by one political point-of-view for over 50 years. Every major American institution, cultural and public, has been unilaterally controlled by individuals who share a common belief system and more specifically ally and support one political party. Our collective knowledge, access to information and our education has been filtered through their lens and biases. Think about it, the right in America, Republicans, conservatives or libertarians, do not have a voice or significant influence on or in any of these powerful institutions—none of them. Big tech is predominately left wing. Our education system, teacher's unions and universities are predominately left wing. Our court and legal system is predominately left wing. Our federal bureaucracy is predominately left wing. Our current state as a country is in large part a direct result of this post-war system or network of like-minded institutions and individuals. I will take it a step further, all of our inner cities have been controlled uncontested by people who align themselves with this political and social point-of-view. Every high-profile shooting of black men has occurred in parts of the country that have been dominated by these same type of people. They are controlling the narrative because they dominate the news media. They are directing our national conversation on race issues but it is always the fault of America or whites but they have unilaterally controlled much of the black population and the highest concentration of disenfranchised and underperforming black populations. They promised they could solve the problems but their system and policies have failed miserably and they are fighting like mad to retain control and power and seeking to silence anyone, no matter the color, who shines a light on this failed system. The common denominator in all of this is the Democratic Party.

[bakters]

I pity the translator woman. I mean this guy who "asked" a half an hour "question" in Polish.

[SibylVane-wq]

This was unbelievable interesting! Thank you so very much for uploading this.
I think of a text Peter Oborne wrote a couple a years ago about the euro. He makes an interesting division between the empirical philosophical school of the British compared to the idealistic schools of thought on the continent. The idealististic schools come up with great (theoretical) ideas about a glorious tomorrow if only we have communism/nazism/the euro.(Après nous, le déluge, so to say.)
The conservative Brits, beginning w William of Ockham abandon projects if they don't work. Contrary, Napoleon and Hitler insist on attacking Moscow, even when their troops are freezing to death.
I also think that that a major difference to German philosophers to British ones is that the Black Death meant servitude/serfdom in eastern Europe (which is defined by the river Elbe = east of Hamburg!?!) and not abolished in Preussia until the beginning of the 19th century, while the labour shortage caused by the Black Death is a major factor in establishing both the late marriage pattern in Western Europe, as well as a foundation for personal freedom. After the Black Death, you simply couldn't treat people like shit in the West.
I think slave societies does something to people - foster a slave morality? = focus on the collective, while freedom will focus on the individual.
A Swedish librarian, spending time in Berlin in the late 1920s, points out that one reason nazism was so popular in Germany was that it allowed class transgressions. A day out with the nazi party in the 1920s/30s meant that the baron's son and the farmhand had to dig a trench, side by side, as comrades. That meant an awful lot in the extremely hierarchal German society at the time.

Another thing professor Hicks, where's Wittgenstein, an Austrian like Hitler, in all of this?
This was such fun! <3

[Greg-xspy]

If Hicks gives an accurate portrayal of Nietzschean thought, then I do not understand how Nietzschean thought is so admired amongst philosophers and academics. Jordan Peterson, who has nothing but disdain for collectivist thinking, believes Nietzsche was one of the all time greatest geniuses of philosophy, for example.

[jenpsakiscousin]

When they Nazis came to power fully, they supressed Oswald Spengler's writings. They didn't like the fact that he stated that western culture was already finished off. The German title for the decline of the west is "Der Untergang" it doesn't translate well into English, Untergang is more like a past tense, sort of like a "petrification" of the western land. Spengler died in 1933

[utgfy]

Darwin's influence on Nietzsche is clear, but it's important in this regard to see what the 19th c. idea of evolution was, and not to confuse it with contemporary ideas on evolution. By looking at how the 19th c. emphases in evolutionary theory were wrong (limited), we can also see clearly how Nietzsche went wrong, following them.

Speaking generally, the error of the common understanding of evolution in the 19th c. was its emphasis on the individual organism as the key to a species' evolution. Evolution's basic story was that exceptional individuals had traits that made them more suitable for survival, and they eventually passed these on to the species by being able to live longer, dominate, and reproduce more, thus strengthening the species (or at least making it more suitable for its environment.) Lacking from this common story was any stress on group dynamics--how social structures themselves could support individual survival and propagation. Or, to give an example in Nietzschean terms, having a society composed mostly of people with "slave mentality" and a few "masters" might actually be greatly beneficial for the survival of the members of that society (vs., say, a society composed entirely of people competing to be masters, which would be unsettled chaos ["war"].) We also now know that it's not a set of genes as fixed, hardwired, inner mechanics that matters, but rather gene expression, how genes are turned on/off, which has a great deal to do with settled society (family, education, range of experiences, etc.)

So you can see clearly how Nietzsche went wrong, emphasizing that all individuals capable of it throw off their yokes, fulfill their potential for power (even if it be at the cost of others), and make the "new man." Instead of seeing the complexity of the human being as a set of interlocked relationships that as a whole benefit everyone, he saw only greater and lesser examples of the species, and following the common understanding of evolution's emphasis on the exceptional individual, was even willing to do away with the "lesser" if it meant our species evolving into a more advanced form. A horrific attitude forged of an incomplete/slanted understanding of evolution.

[biancavonmuhlendorf]

The "Anti-Rationalism" is the most interesting aspect pointed out in that brilliant lecture. I always used to think it was mainly only "Anti- Intellectualism"

[vlm]

Very unenthusiastic applause from the audience for such an excellent presentation of the subject matter.

[LLlap]

Man that poor translator woman. The dude kept going and going. You cant translate that without hearing it first )))

[ypyp]

I disagree on the diagnosis. The Germans were the most educated and clearest thinking people of Europe.
Their analysis was based upon the evaluation of behaviours, ethics and morality. When you look at these parameters throughout the millennia, validated by the behaviours seen very clearly today in Gaza, I can see a very good case for concluding that these peoples are intrinsically antisocial and damaging to stable and harmonious societies.

[keeperofthecheese]

Do a shot every time Hicks says "Right?"