/lit/ - Literature

>>14396398
A stated material opposition does not necessarily mean one has completed the opposition in spirit. Schmitt correctly points out how the Christian conservatives retained Kantianism as a method even in their reaction against modernity. This is most clear in de Maistre's "legitimate usurpation", an obvious irony in the very name, yet one can still analyse where its Kantian limits are. Authority is no longer a thing-in-itself, not a being or force that can be known or even sensed, thus a further justification is required. The justification comes in the form of duration, a conceptionof time which follows Kantianism.

The same can be said of reactionary elements aware of the problem created by Kantian thought. Schopenhauer, for example, solves the thing-in-itself by replacing it with the will. Nietzsche does the same with power. We never know what power is, and this is why Nietzsche is incapable of ever defining it - it is merely a function, a series of its elemental responses, but never a force which achieves dominion nor acts as a diplomatic factor establishing peace between multiple dominions. According to this method one must look at power from its effects, hence the mathematical mind which looks towards genealogy only from the present: a taxonomy of great men who achieve power sans phrase. Paradoxically, Nietzsche relies upon a romantic Christian and Darwinian understanding (unconsciously, no doubt) and is incapable of seeing the form of power in modernity - his proximity obscures the details. Even the greatest opponent of rationalism saw the world through its artificial eyes, his romanticism was nothing more than a desperate attempt to escape the inevitable.

Totality is impossible after Descartes/Kant. All that remains is completion, a certainty of territories within, yet dominion and essence are beyond reach. This is captured perfectly in Junger's image of the maxima/minima of a thermometer: precision which is capable of measuring the data of a substance even as it changes, however nothing may even be measured beyond these parameters. The instrument achieves a living quality while eliminating all essence of form from itself. Only technology overcomes the Kantian limitation.

Understanding this it is much easier to arrive at Guenon's Kantianism. There is no divine-in-itself, thus a complete religion must act in its place. It is as if the remaining traditions may be sought out as a replacement for pilgrimage, an entire world religion accumulated from scattered parts - then reverse engineering returns us to God-in-itself.

>>14373585
Maybe, but I'd have to agree with him not understanding tradition or modernity. Another neo-kantian retroactively refuted by time.

Past a certain age, a man without Kant can be a bad thing. I'm glad to say de Maistre found him early on and didn't stray too far from liberalism.

>>14345683
>Past a certain age, a man without Kant can be a bad thing.