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Thread ID: 14225 | Posts: 6 | Started: 2004-06-17
2004-06-17 01:13 | User Profile
[PaleoconAvatar comment: This was just posted on Bill White's site. It is of interest because some of you may have seen the "Hell Freezes Over" post referring to the website "anus.com" -- the author of the Amazon.com list referenced below, if I'm not mistaken, is the editor of that site]
An Introduction To Traditionalist Literature Prepared By One Of Our Readers
6/16/2004 12:25:57 PM Discuss this story in the forum Vijay Prozac
Book Review -- [Bill: I would add Revolt Against the Modern World and Lightning and the Sun to this, but it is a good little page:] [url]http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/guides/guide-display/-[/url] /290AAS2IBYMHB/104-1045097-2486342
So you'd like to... Learn about Traditionalism and Integralist Philosophy
A guide by S.R. Prozak, integralist
A Traditionalist is one who believes that human societies have grown and later collapsed in cycles according to an original Traditional way of life shared among all peoples; it is contrary to the modern Progressivist view in which society as a whole has been rising from a primal state (cavemen) to a utopic, technological and moral existence.
Julius Evola: Traditionalist and Hermetic Mystic
'Men Among the Ruins: Post-War Reflections of a Radical Traditionalist' - Perhaps the definitive Evola work, this discusses Traditionalist philosophy in the postwar European and American social climate, but is mainly an introduction to the Traditionalist view of history, which is contrarian to the Hegelian and Progressive/Progressivist viewpoints.
'The Doctrine of Awakening: The Attainment of Self-Mastery According to the Earliest Buddhist Texts' - The most lucid statement from Julius Evola, in the form of a historical retrospective of Vedic Buddhist thought and how it applies to both ancient people and moderns who have found discontent with their society. Its main contribution is a detailed explanation of warrior asceticism, a form of esoteric discipline, as a means of discovering truths that are not transient artifacts of the current era.
René Guénon: Traditionalist Catholic Philosopher
'The Crisis of the Modern World' - Although written in a cryptic, monastic style, this book interrupts the flow of social thinking in the context of progressive historical views, asserting a pre-Christian existence of Christian ideas and illustrating how Tradition can be expressed in Christianity in contrast to the modernizing influences of individualism.
Meister Eckhart: Gnostic Christian thinker
'Selected Writings' - A collection of writings. Eckhart took the liberalizing tradition of Christianity and instead of trying to move it forward, moved inward and found in his meditations a Gnostic vision of God accessible through what is essentially an internal quietus, or spiritual and mental focus and discipline. For anyone who ever wishes to combine Buddhist and Christian dogma (as 'The Original Jesus: The Buddhist Sources of Christianity' details, Christianity had origins and influences in Buddhism; 'The Jesus Mystery' is another good source), Eckhart is essential reading, as he develops the esoteric tradition of meditation in the context of Christian unity with God.
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche: Resurrector of Reality
While most of the Western world was falling over ways to implement neoplatonic Christianity or its secular counterpart, philosophical liberalism, F.W. Nietzsche was writing about ways to get closer to natural reality. The result is a series of witty, highly analytical and literary works which analyze the human psychology to find the motivations which make certain beliefs appealing; his technique of explaining around errors in thinking by presenting positive ways forward is unique in all of philosophy.
'The Birth of Tragedy and the Genealogy of Morals' - Essential reading for any modern person interested in thought, these two writings celebrate the cosmic idealism of the Greeks, and then, explore the roots of Christianity and Judaism and their relation to moral thought. In this book, Nietzsche establishes the foundation for Evola and others who will look into modern society's motivations and see parallels between morality, industry and modern soullessness.
'Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future' - Firing away, Nietzsche attacks morality as a commercially-inspired division between "Good" and "Evil" which asserts absolute categories as a means of avoiding contact with reality itself. For a man who saw so much, and knew what the future must then hold, to have such a positive and joyful outlook is mindboggling.
Arthur Schopenhauer: The Genius Idealist
Idealism is the philosophical belief that reality as we know it is in the form of thoughts of our own based on external data, and that the external data upon which our perception is based in turn also develops like thought, including in its origin as a self-creating universe. Idealism does not deny material reality, or assert it is not real, but addresses direction the nature of what we can know through perception and how it shapes our concept of reality and values. Further, idealism has a prescriptive component which describes the importance of the significance of an action as superior to its immediate physical consequences; this thought arises from its belief in an animating consciousness of which we are incarnations.
'On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason' - It's probably not wise to undertake his complete philosophy as expressed in 'The World As Will and Representation (2-Volume Set)', because saddling yourself with a thousand pages of analytic writing is a good way to gain a paperweight, not knowledge. However, the basic tenets of his idealism are laid out in this exact writing, which incorporates humor and incisive philosophy in a direct and comprehensible form.
Vedic Spiritual Philosophy: The Perennial Truth
Unlike most religious, Vedic (Hindu, Buddhist and ancient religions) thought believes that truth is something which can be described and never captured, thus does not "belong" to any one tradition, but can be found in varying degrees in all of them. Its sense of history is the origin of Evolan Traditionalism, and its heroic idealism has been consistent through Indo- European thought leading up to Germanic idealism and even some rare cyberpunk novels.
'The Bhagavad Gita' - With an elucidating introduction by Western writer Aldous Huxley, the Bhagavad-Gita is the quickest introduction to Vedic thought, and shows through an epic poem the story of a people attempting to realize the importance of future ideals over present and tangible, perceptive barriers. Read this after Schopenhauer and the Traditional sense of history, values and heroism comes alive. (This book is a small excerpt from 'Mahabharata: The Greatest Spiritual Epic of All Time', which along with 'The Illiad (Cyber Classics)' and 'The Odyssey' form the basis of the Indo-European heroic tradition in epic poetry, as well as a subliminal introduction to associated spiritual thought.)
The above are a good introduction to Traditionalist thought, but by no means comprise the whole of Traditional thought.
Emailed to you by:
Libertarian Socialist News ATTN: Bill White, Editor
Post Office Box 12244 Silver Spring, MD 20908
[url]http://www.overthrow.com[/url] [email]bwhite@mail.overthrow.com[/email]
2004-06-17 04:11 | User Profile
PaleoconAvatar,
Great Post. This guys make the so-called thinkers of the American Right look like Apes.
2004-06-17 10:23 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Faust]PaleoconAvatar,
Great Post. This guys make the so-called thinkers of the American Right look like Apes.[/QUOTE]
Yes. The cream always rises to the top, though. We're headed upward.
2004-06-17 16:02 | User Profile
I think one can find most of these on the New Age shelf at Barnes & Noble in-between Deepak Chopra and Shirley MacLaine.
:lol:
Seriously, I don't think upward is the right direction. Most of these authors and 'thinkers' mentioned here were heavily into the occult and satanism.
:thumbd:
2004-06-17 16:21 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Texas Dissident]Seriously, I don't think upward is the right direction. Most of these authors and 'thinkers' mentioned here were heavily into the occult and satanism.
:thumbd:[/QUOTE]Are you sure this isn't a bit of an overstatement Tex, (though it is true that all but one of these writers aren't Christian)? Maybe Nietzsche fits here as someone whos writings at east flirted with the occult, and the rest of the writers do sound vaguely New Ageish, like you say, but that's still a long way from Satanism.
2004-06-17 16:31 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Okiereddust]Are you sure this isn't a bit of an overstatement Tex, (though it is true that all but one of these writers aren't Christian)? Maybe Nietzsche fits here as someone whos writings at east flirted with the occult, and the rest of the writers do sound vaguely New Ageish, like you say, but that's still a long way from Satanism.[/QUOTE]
Just for starters, Evola is most definitely occultist and Eckhart was a gnostic, which of course was/is the great heresy against traditional, orthodox Christianity.
I guess one can softpedal it if they wish, but the bottom line is that New Age thought/witchcraft/occult is ultimately satanist, even if seemingly 'soft-core', scholarly or intellectual.