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History & Utopia

Nietzsche's work explicitly and in an exemplary manner articulates the critique of democratic modernity and the denunciation of the argumentative foundation of norms: in this way it permits us ―better than does the work of other philosophers― to grasp all that is involved, within the choice between tradition and argumentation, in the rejection of the latter.

Nietzsche's central obsession is hierarchy. He says so and repeats it: “Given that it is the problem of hierarchy of which we must speak, that it is the problem for us, free spirits.” Hierarchy: meaning both the problem of the hierarchy of values and praise of the values of the hierarchy. To think is, of course, to judge, but this in the sense of the value judgement.

The open society, it is asserted, is actually impossible. Its possibility is not proved at all by what is called the progress toward the open society. For that progress is largely fictitious or merely verbal. Certain basic facts of human nature, which have been honestly recognized by earlier generations, are at the present time verbally denied, superficially covered over by fictions legals and others.

Moral life, it is asserted, means serious life. Seriousness, and the ceremonial of seriousness—the flag and the oath to the flag—are the distinctive features of the closed society, of the society which by its very nature, is constantly confronted with, and basically oriented toward, the Ernstfall (the serious case), the serious moment, M-day, war.

The German nihilists’ moral protest against modernity proceeds from the conviction that the internationalism inherent in modern civilization, or, more precisely, that the establishment of a perfectly open society which is as it were the goal of modern civilization, and therefore all aspirations directed toward that goal, are irreconcilable with the basic demands of moral life.

Nietzsche asserted that the atheist assumption is not only reconcilable with, but indispensable for, anti-democratic, anti-socialist and anti-pacifist policy; according to him, even the communist creed is only a secularized form of theism, of the belief in providence.
— Leo Strauss​, German Nihilism.

Denken wollen ist eins; Talent zum Denken haben, ein Anderes.

Wanting to think is one thing, having a talent for thinking another.

Ce livre est composé de trois essais par Leo Strauss:
1.Sur le nihilisme allemand (1941)
2. La crise de notre temps (1962)
3. La crise de la philosophie politique (1962).

Much of the book is dedicated to examining fears of the social and political consequences of his view of human nature:
1. The fear of inequality.
2. The fear of imperfectibility.
3. The fear of determinism.
4. The fear of nihilism.

Pinker argues that modern science has challenged three "linked dogmas" that constitute the dominant view of human nature in intellectual life:
1.The Blank Slate (Empiricism): the mind has no innate traits.
2.The Noble Savage (Romanticism): people are born good and corrupted by society.
3. The Ghost in the Machine (Dualism): each of us has a soul that makes choices free from biology.

Wir stehen im Kampf mit der Sprache.
We are engaged in a struggle with language.

In keiner religiösen Konfession ist soviel durch den Mißbrauch metaphorischer Ausdrücke gesündigt worden wie in der Mathematik.
There is no religious denomination in which so much sin has been committed through the misuse of metaphorical expressions as in mathematics.

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