Speaker 1: If you want to get the show early and ad free,
head on over to the Peak Kinyonas show dot com.
There you can choose from where you wish to support me.
Now listen very carefully. I've had some people ask me
about this, even though I think on the last ad
I stated it pretty clearly. If you want an RSS feed,
you're going to have to subscri through substack or through Patreon.
You can also subscribe on my website which is right there,
gum Road and what's the other one, subscribe Star And
if you do that, you will get access to the
audio file. So head on over to the pekan Yonashow
dot com. You'll see all the ways that you can
support me there. And I just want to thank everyone.
It's because of you that I can put out the
amount of material that I do. I can do what
I'm doing with doctor Johnson on two hundred Years Together
and everything else, the things that Thomas and I are
doing together on Continental Philosophy, it's all because of you.
And yeah, I mean, I'll never be able to thank
you enough. So thank you. The pekan Yonashow dot com.
Everything's there. Want to welcome everyone back to the Pekanyona Show,
or back with Thomas for another episode on Continental Philosophy.
Thomas take us away, please.
Speaker 2: Yeah, thanks for hosting me. And I'm sorry for the hiatus.
That was really sick because I think I shouted out
on my t ram. We're gonna deal with Hagel today
and this is going to be a two or three
part treatment. I realize I'm jumping around a bit, but
it's important to get textualize kind of philosophy. I mean,
it's typically essential in a way. It's not for some
other subject areas that are less kind of per numberic
in their in their significance. And subsequent to this Hegel treatment,
I want to do a single episode or two on theology.
I want to deal with a Quinas and Martin Luther
and Calvin, you know, because I think it's essential to
address a Quinas within that same discussion. And if that
seems like an exceptual bias because of my own, you know,
confessional heritage, please let me know that like any of
the subs I mean, and I'll tweak how I break
it down. But I've thought about this because I certainly
don't want anyone to feel offended or slighted. And I
think that's the sensible way to proceed. And aquinas that
really what brought Aristotelianism to the West. I mean, obviously
learned men and especially churchmen, you know, obviously they were
very They weren't just competent in ancient languages. They were ruins,
the stewards of the classical intellectual canon. It's sound as
if this was unknown, but this is what really sort
of brought Aristotilian thought paradigm is into what we think
of as European philobos. But Hegel, well, we're talking about
political theory. We're talking about Hegel just in in absolute terms.
And even if you're talking about Anglo Saxon political philosophy
as distinguished from the continental tradation, it's still in dialogue
with Hegel. And that's key. Hegel, in my other than Hobbes,
Hagel is really the only is really the only pure
political theorist. Like it's not to say that there's not
a complex metaphysical understanding within Hegel. There absolutely is. That's
not to say that he doesn't have a general theory
of knowledge. Obviously he does, because anybody who posits a
theory of mind is dealing fundamentally with you know, a
metaphysical tradition that you know originates with with classical Athens.
But his subject, mayor is to explicate man's experience as
a historical agent. And Hegel's discussion of political ontology it's
it's fundamentally existential. It's bound up with what man is,
and it's it's bound up with mind in a way
that's inextricable. And that's something that people misunderstand. Hagel wasn't
He wasn't some He didn't have some idolatrous view of
the state. He didn't view the state as some marvelous
godly thing or and he didn't view the modern state
as it existed, you know, really from the fifteenth century on,
where he didn't view it as some perennial thing. His
point was that the way that the state is structured,
that's essential to understanding human praxis, and it really is
an externalization of processes of mind, you know, and there's
an internal logic to statecraft that really it can be
understood in Hegelian terms as a providential move on. That's
what the source of it is. And to know that
process is to understand reason qua reason and you know, man,
being created in the image of God, is the only
organism capable of reason, you know, in higher rationality, and
to perceive the historical process of which the state is
but one aspect, is to perceive the mind of God,
and to participate in state craft is for a man
to reconcile this kind of inner psychological existence with the
pragmatic reality of you know, his own mortality and his
desire to create enduring structures and to bring formal and
symbolic things that he holds to be sacrosanct as well
as practical things that are prosaic and related to mere survival,
to take care as the process which these things are
brought into corporeal reality. So that's what to think of it.
He's not saying the state is wonderful or the state
is something that we should revere at all. Like what
he's saying is that politics and political life, of which
the state is the subject matter, you know, is the
instantation of man's inner psychological experience, which partakes of, you know,
the divine spark in man, whereby you know, he is
the literal progeny of God. Okay, so that's key. And
he also wasn't saying. Again, when he talks about the state,
he's not He's not falling into this trap that a
lot of neo realists do, and a lot of political
science types in the twentieth and twenty birth century are
who are fixated on this kind of empirical modeling. But
he's not saying that the state as we know it
in his epoch, or even a thousand years prior a
thousand years subsequent. He's not saying that the peculiar configuration
of any given an era of the state is somehow essential.
There will always be some kind of state, even if
it's a minimal state. And the way you know, the
people like Murray Rothbard have thought about it, you know,
and even somebody like myself, you know, I I'm very
much a vanguardist in my disposition. And part of the
reason why I'm committed to this current law enform manuscript
I'm working on is because I'm constantly trying to, you know,
assisting understanding that the Westphalian state is dead and what's
going to succeed it is what's important. Then it's not
going to it's not really going to resemble the twentieth
century state managerial state, nor is it going to resemble
some sort of scale down version of that same conceptual
paradigm and enterprise. You know, but that doesn't matter even
if we're talking about, you know, a structure of kind
of a where whereby remedial justice is premised on self
help and where private actors are are primarily responsible for
we're heretofore in the modern era has been the exclusive
domain of of of public authority. We're still talking about
state craft, but we're still talking about a kind of state.
A state is literally that like a present sense experience
of deliberate political authority derived from, you know, an ongoing
historical process that we can interpret through our faculty for
for for both practical and higher reason. You know, that's
what he's talking about. Like, state has been kind of
a dirty word, especially in in rhetorical capacities where people
think that we're actueomantically talking about you know, some kind
of some kind of bloated, bureaucratic, you know, twentieth century
type state. That is that simply is endured in the
twenty first century owing to doing a basic and flexibility
of of the current system. You know that and that
that's something that people need to remedy, you know. But
so there's a you know, hey, and and and finally
before I get into like the meat of this, uh
you know again, like any whether people think they are
or not, people find themselves both on the right and
the left making hey Gailian arguments even if they don't
realize it, you know, and that that that's that's essential too,
I think because most people haven't read Hail because it's
I mean, to me, I don't think it's particularly arduous.
But if it's not your subject area or your research concentration,
you know, it can it can seem daunting to take
U to take on a study of Hegel. But Hegel's
thought is singularly and remarkably systemic, and they can't be overstated.
His most impactful and significant works, I think, in arguably
are elements of the philosophy of right. I'm gonna butcher
this pronunciation, but the the original title, the German title
is gruen Leanian. Their philosophy desrecs elements of the philosophy
of right. It's a tome of almost pure theory, and
I'd say complimentary to elements the philosophy were right. Elements
of the philosophy of right, whereas essays and then contemporaneous
government and process as a government that you know, he
viewed as an extricably related to historical process. He wrote
there's of essays on the German Constitution when he was
young that I consider essential reading. And then decades later
he wrote this very detailed treatment of the British Reform Bill,
which changed everything. I mean, there's there's a number of
reform bills in the UK. I'm talking about the eighteen
thirty Reform Bill that you know, it expanded the voting
franchise to basically, you know, every every male citizen of
majority wasn't you know, in a workhouse or in jail.
But you know this was both of these despite being
discrete and temporally situated in peculiar in particular ways, both
of these kind of bodies of essays, you know, they
they were singular and thorough examples of Hegelian praxis. But again,
conceptual modeling in praxis within the Hegelian paradigm. That's that's
something of a distinction without categorical difference. But what I
mean by that is Hegel's philosophy of right. He's not
talking about right in the way that humanists talk about it,
or the way that you know, somebody like John Locke
talked about it. He's he's basically talking about you know,
natural law in like a Cosmi Thomis sense. But Hegel's
philosophy are right, and thus his philosophy of state craft.
It's really inseparable from his philosophical teaching and doctrine as
a whole. And again this is far more systemic and
integrated than most other thinkers, you know, and this this
is clear really from the moment that somebody takes on
his study of Higeolean Thought. There's echoes of this in
his stuff on the hard sciences as well as metaphysics,
in the science it's a logic and the Encyclopedia of
the philosophic sciences. Hegel talks about a universal history that
is the product of eternal reason and the cutting of
reason and the revelation of this process, you know, whereby
man can apprehend it and you know, through his own
capacity for higher reason. You know, the dialectical process then
becomes this ongoing tautological developmental paradigm. You know. So in
the final analysis reason, why, reason and history in this
drugal process. These are not separable. The unfolding of reason,
the revelation of the mind of odd you know, it
parallels the historical process because they're synonymous, you know, And
in that way, the historical process is fundamentally rational, you know.
And that's why misguided. As Again, a lot of these
contemporary political sciences may be in their methodology that that
I'm not making an argument like some of the Vonnesians do,
and that you know, modeling is is a fool's errand
and impossible, like it absolutely is possible. It's just that
the criteria and the inputs that are being employed aren't
aren't aren't the correct ones. That's somewhat tangential, but that's
important to understand. Essential to Hegelian thought is the concept
of sicklish kite literally ethical life or ethical order, the
concept of the simplish kite that reconciles the apparent polarity
and irreconcilability between metaphysics and historiography and engaged practice within
political life. As Hegel described it, it represents quote, the
life of the states within individuals are problem more properly
with within individual minds, Okay, attitudes of a moral or
theological or self constantly intellectual nature. You know. The common
critique is that, well, poltical philosophy is a domain of academics,
and and and for a large part of the history
of the West, you know, with the domain of of
monastically cloistered you know, churchmen, you know, and and and
according to a lot of Enlightenment theorists, this is incorrect
because it's not pragmatic and it's somehow divorced from the
reality of state craft. Hagel suggested, that's absolutely incorrect. Okay,
this kind of this contemplative orientation, it doesn't at all
rejects the verbial sound and fury of political reality, war
in peace, or the struggle of the classes or anything
else like whatever you're chosen. Emphasis of subject matter, you know,
conceptual political life and the press, excess of the political
or synonymous and Hegelian thought. It is through the state.
And again we're not talking about the state as if
it's some object of reverence or anything and of itself.
This is value mutual, okay. But it is through the state,
whatever configuration the state takes in any given epoch, that
the individual man, you know, gains a true reality. As
this conceptual existence comes to full flourishing, and he partakes
of that universal history and the cunning of reason, which
is the mind of God at work in man's affairs,
you know. And through this process, this is how the
state you know, comes to devise laws, and the sovereign
actor being the only agent that can implement universally binding
strictures through instituting the laws, you know, man in his kind,
in his in his psychological cloister of inner life, such
that the experiences that participates in this universal historical process,
you know, even if he's only so situated as an
observer who can perceive what is underway. Okay, And finally,
a state that's at all legitimate, And this is key,
and I'm always making the point that Hegel is axiomatically
a right wing thinker, and will get deeper into what
I mean by that as we go on. But at
the end of the day, the only state that is legitimate,
the only state that partakes of this aforementioned process and
thus reflects you know, higher rationality and practical reason is
based on morality, because morality itself is derivative from a reason,
and morality seeking universality and the flourishing through universality and
absolute application. This can only be realized and actualized by
being incarnated in institutions and manners. Manners and morals are
one way to understand Zipli site like ZiT lich Kite.
In other words, the life of the state is really
the life of the culture, constitute of constituted of individuals
and their devotion to a discrete way of life bound
up with manners and morals which themselves derive from a
historical mode of existence. Okay, And it's through this is
this is the tautology too, of racial and cultural posterity.
You know. The state derives from this psychological existence of
man with and it gives him a training and an
education and habituates him to the manners and morals of
his culture or his race and these things. That's you know, this,
this is a an educational mechanism and a mechan it
means of imbuing people with cultural competence. But these institutions themselves,
you know, derive from the psychological inner lives of people
who are the constituent elements of that culture. You know.
So it's a tautology, but not impunitive terms. It's kind
of a feedback loop okay, And this is where the
devotion to a state or political order derives from, you know.
And this is one of the this is at base
why secular regimes fail, because they're not premised on anything
that's that's truly human. You know. No, nobody's going to
devote their their lives, you know, nobody's going to invest
this kind of higher moral value and some sort of
abstract the theory of you know, distributive justice. You know,
this should be obvious, I think, but I think many
people don't fully understand the kind of constituent elements of
that perspective, you know, in order to develop a full
conceptual picture. So there's sod hegel. There's an ontological and
an existential significance to political order, you know. And in
the state, it's not merely a pragmatic derivation, you know.
But again that's not to say the state is some
ending itself, you know, by virtue of its mere existence,
you know, be it merely perfunctory or or profound, the uh,
it is true, you know. And again, like any any
any practice, you know, derives from an oncological imperative. And
thus the state can be said to constitute a kind
of final end for the individual in order to find
truth within his own existence, you know, and the revelation
of things like duty and the satisfaction and actualization or
appearance or at least the suggestion of the divine in
the external world. But again, this is a this is
a reciprocal relationship, you know, essentially reciprocal, even tautological. Again,
you know, it's only a final end to the extent
which the political order derives from practical reason and higher rationality,
which is essentially human and exclusively human, but also only
can come to fruition in conditions where human minds can
perceive the process that is underway, you know, and and
those participate in the dialectical you know, the phenomenon of
of higher dialectics. Okay, you know, so there's there's not
any there's intrinsic moral content to the state other than
what you know, human and discreetly and cultural and conventional
practices and morals you know, bring to it in this
kind of reciprocal cycle of development, you know. And as
the individual goes beyond the level of his private, discreetly
personal thoughts and passions and wishes, you know, this this
process of the flourishing of higher reason through the political
order and state craft. So what Hegel calls the subject
dejective mind. I've heard people refer to it as the
collective subconscious, as if there's some sort of Youngian implication.
That's not the way to think of it. It's a
it's far more kind of brass tax and categorically essential
than that. But through the dialectical process and through the
state and its development, the individual man becomes habituated to
universalizing his wishes in terms of you know, his political
existence and his life is as a historical as a
historically situated actor. You know, because again, the state being
the exclusive sovereign agent with the power, actual potential to
implement universally binding laws. You know, that's that, that's the
only that that that is all, that's the only thing
that can be the subject matter of this process, you know,
as a per praticis. You know, the state is a reality,
not not a project. And this is key as well.
It's not some modality of social engineering, you know, it
has to do it it It derives from the way
man lives his life and thinks his thoughts. You know,
it's the means by which the individual man, as in
identitarian and communitarian terms, and in historical terms and thus
political terms. This is the means by which he takes
his place in the world, you know, and whereby you know,
he comes to identify what is reasonable within is you know,
moral and political and thus historical consciousness from what is
pre rational and merely you know, derived from the passions.
Now the mere appearance again in realization of the divine
of of a of a providential phenomenon of the mind
of God that does. That's not to say that God's
will is some ultimately constituted or exhausted or fulfilled by
the state or the existence of the state. Again, this
is a misunderstanding, and that that that be a form
of high idolatry. And it's also a basic misunderstanding of
Hegel's political ontology. You know, the state is not an
ending itself. You know, it's a process of man's capacity
to the reason, and you know, God's will in the
affairs of a man, and you know, the the realization
of the psychological life in terms of you know, practice
and tangible and concrete and corporeal things, you know, And
that's why it's essential to understand that Hegel was not
some romantic nationalists or any kind of nationalists, you know,
because the state is essentially and state craft, you know,
is essentially irrational, you know, and to turn away from
practical reason, you know, in favor of some romantic ambition
or to pursue some utopian social engineering project. In contrast,
you know, as there's a lot of reformers and capital
l liberals are prone to or to turn away from
the states and political order as it actually is on
grounded somehow immoral or incorrect. This this, this is to
deny reality, you know, and it's it's it's talent to
saying that you you don't believe in gravity, you know,
like Wiley Coyote does you know Wiley Coyote claimed he
or he's ignorant in gravity, so like he walks off
a cliff and he's like walking on nothing and then
rode on her hands on like a book on gravity,
and then he learns of it and then he falls
like that that that's not that that's that's that's kind
of a good metaphor for you know, the way utopians
tend to view political matters. You know, philosophy can't go
beyond the reality of human affairs. You know, or beyond
what is potential and potentially realizable within you know, the
the domain of the political. And this actually is a
significant beyond, beyond this kind of narrow domain. The function
of philosophy itself, it's it's not it's not to criticize
the the the the supposed moral shortcoming of of of
sociological or political paradigms, or or to invent you know,
perfect societies and conceptual terms. Its function is to identify
and draw out the truth then informs reality as it is,
you know. And this is what Hegel viewed as as mandate.
He was fundamentally concerned with demonstrating, systemically, explicating and proving
that there was an underlying and essential rationality to the
state and state craft in praxis, in spite of a
parent and characteristic irrationality, you know, born of passion and
wie of reason, as is commonly alleged about the political
you know, the entirety of the process of state craft
represents a tautological whole which is greater than the sum
of its constituent elements. And again, this whole tends towards
the realization and fulfillment. Hegel used the term triumph of reason.
You know, there's there's a metaphor of applied to the
Hegelian paradigm of a of a Gothic Cryside Gothic cathedral,
where there's this enormous complexity within its architecture that nevertheless
is you know, incredibly harmonious. You know, when viewed from
a distance, I think of it as something more like
like imagine an obelisk, like in two thousand and one,
you know, like the monolith. If you see, if you're
pressed up against an obelisk in the desert, you know,
like you can't really make out its configuration, but at distance,
you know, it becomes clear that there's like a perfect
symmetry there and that it's it's, you know, a deliberately
configured object. That's really the way to understand the historical process.
And de Maestra echoed this and and and and in moral,
moral and aesthetical terms, which is really interesting. But that
the historical process, you know, the political theorist needs to
and the informed layman of like needs to approach this
as as a systemic whole. You know, you you can't
take discreet instances you know, of what appears to be uh,
you know, a mass flight from reason in the historical records,
you know, and and and and out of context, you know,
hold this out as a proverbial case in chief that see,
there's not there's not there's not any any sort of
rational practice underway here. You know, it's all this sort
of scattershot and impassioned activity that isn't informed by you know,
precedent or historical memory. This that's the wrong way to
look at it. And the Heglien rebuttal two would be, well,
obviously it's not true because like here we are you know,
I mean that that that that that that that speaks
for itself. You know, you don't and that that's why
a lot of people too miss, misconstrue or misunderstanding. Hagel
is a progressive, Like, that's not what he's saying, Like
he's not saying that, you know, the historical process just
like developmental cycle to a higher morality. What he's saying
is that, you know, there's underlying structural features that you know,
can only be interpreted as derivative of reason, you know,
And I think that's an arguable if for another reason,
then that we would exist in a state of complete
stasis or managing, we would have gone extinct, you know,
because people would have starved to death and lieu of
being able to you know, develop remedies based upon you know,
the knowledge derived from precedent and things. But the uh,
this does create something of a paradox because it does
suggest that history is the result of unconscious forces, you know,
while at the same time positing that conscious processes of
the rational mind creating the model of God, you know,
is what corresponds to the historical process, you know. So
the ariient against this perspective is that the state is
both a final result allegedly and a precondition. But again
that's that's that's true. That's the way to understand it.
You know, it is the result of individual action and
thought and inner psychological experiences. The inner of the passions
does play a huge role in these outcomes. But the
empirical fact of state craft, as you know, understood from
on the conventional timeline, I guess, you know, five thousand BC,
like a tagricy Phraate's civilization until the present, you know,
the origin of political order and the cutting of reason
or a basic rational core. Even if you reject the
providential movement as the key variable. You know, I think
those objections tend to evaporate it what kind of time ago? Okay,
and this too, This is one reason it's so misguided
when people interpret, when people interpret, or a sign is
some so some kind of moral weight to history, or
speak of war and peace as a process that needs
to be remedied, or arbitrarily declare that slaveholding societies were
just evil. You know. The state, like any dialectical like
the product of any dialectical process, is born of conflict, obviously,
and the state itself again, the state meaning the configuration
of political order. It's literally the setting, the theater, if
you will, a myriad potential conflicts, you know, and this
is this is where Carl Schmidt partook of Hegel in
very explicit terms. You know, when Schmidt talks about the
doction of exceptionalism like the state of exception, which is
essential understanding the Schmidtian concept of sovereign authority. You know,
he emphasizes above all else that the invocation of of
of the state of exception cannot be legitimately invoked to
preserve an obsolescent constitutional regime, you know, categorically and axiomatically.
You know, state craft and the practice of political order.
Is is a process of creative destruction, you know. And
this is the state reflects the mind and soul of
the man himself. Man doesn't do what he does to
exist in isolation and and and remove himself from history.
Man's existence as a historical actor is basically like a
fight to the death for recognition for some kind of posterity,
you know, because his immortal life is short, and man
essentially is a creator, you know. That's again what distinguishes
man from beasts of the field. No man other than
an absolute cretem or a mental dwarf views his life
as existing only for himself in splendid isolation, you know,
the only, really, the only in historical terms, again, the
only reason to create or act at all, is is
for recognition and to guarantee the enduring historical memory and
posterity of his deeds and actions. And extrapolated to a
nakedly political context between friends and enemies, the degree the
wish for recognition and the form of cultural posterity and
triumph within the historical process while repudiating a competing actor
you know, similarly situated within an opposing paradigm. I mean,
that's the that's the essence of war and peace. Like
that's the essence of conflict for which you know, the
state is the stage. You know. The enemy is he
who which is for his own way of life to
flourish and endure perennially while repudiating the similar wish will
an impulse within his enemy, within the heart and mind
of his enemy, you know. And this, this, this is
neither good nor bad. This is simply what he is,
you know. And I mean such that there is a
moral aspect to it, okay, to remove to remove that catalyst,
I mean, what what what? What would there be like
a a culturalist society of sleeping people, like figuratively and literally,
like like how would that be desirable? You know? Like
I say again and again one of the reasons why
contemperate liberals or not, they do not have a legitimate perspective,
you know, they're they're basically saying that, like the perfect
society is like a nursing home or or a hospital
or something, or maybe like a prison where there's you know,
comparatively luxurious accommodations or good food or something. You know,
I mean that like like robbing the human life of
all meaning eradicating history, eradicating all value, because that's what
makes things physically secure. I mean, that's that's literally senile,
you know, And I realize, uh, I realize a lot
of these people probably aren't capable of apprehending political life
in any thing approaching a complete capacity, but even even
in limited capacities. I mean that that's to strike getting
man or woman is totally absurd, you know, And I
think that I think it some of that is beginning
to accrue. I think that's one of the reasons why
this uh kind of consensus on values or lack thereof
that was so characteristic of you know, the the brief
kind of triumphalist era of the Clinton nineties until you know,
two thousand and one. You know, I think that that's
why the the vestigial aspects of at or something nobody
takes seriously. And you know, I mean, because like, how
could you take that seriously? But uh, yeah, sorry, I mean, stee,
where I'm at, you can tell I'm still in at
one hundred percent. So forgive me if I seem kind
of I swear I'm not going seen isle. I'm just
still feeling a bit out of it. Yeah, let's uh yeah,
let's uh and not well. And it's also to here
the this and this is important and this is uh
Hobbes that this is this is there's a parallel and
Hobbasy and thought here too the the the original conflict
kind of the the original you know, the the original
conflict paradigm that is probably to the state is the
conflicence between master and slave. Okay. And in Hegel's formulation,
this this kind of setting of the stage of the
of the primordial stage with you know, the master slave
dichotomy in in the Hegelian formulation that that's that's the
parallel of of Hobbes's you know, state of nature if
you follow me. And in both cases there's a tremendous
mark or like imprint rather on on historical reality subsequent
historical and political reality subsequent you know, and axiomatically, you know,
that suggests not only have the state emergence from violence,
because the first relationship among the men is you know,
want of conflict, and it uh, it establishes the motivating
factors in pre rational terms for political action, which are
derivative of the passions, you know, the first being the
first being of vanity, you're the desire for recognition and
posterity and and power. We think of a clout and
secondly the fear of violent death. You know. But there's
a unique characteristic and the master slave paradigm because the
it doesn't end with the victory of the master and
his ability to corral his slave into this paradigm of servitude.
You know, this is a dynamic process in Gelian terms,
you know, and the master is far from idle. In fact,
he's the opposite. The master is able to devote one
hundred percent of his energies and thought in his quest
for recognition and posterity, you know, for prestige and glory,
generally through war. You know, slave holding society. The first
societies were based on war and slavery. There's a slavery
is complex and the reason why it's truly the universal
sociological institution. There's anthropological reasons for this, there's psychological ones.
I mean, we could we could devote an endless series
on discussing the various aspects of slavery, okay, and what
its origins are in anthropological terms, historical ones, biological ones,
psychological ones. But in purely political terms, you know, uh,
warrior societies take slaves essentially so that you know, the
master cast can be free to pursue glory through warfare, okay,
But at the same time that that doesn't mean the
slave is it's something like worthless life, or that he
should be disdained or that people should have contempt for him,
like not at all, because he works, you know, albeit
to satisfy the demands of the Master, and the produce
or and or harvest things according to the Master's needs.
It's the slave who transforms nature and himself. You know.
He becomes physically strong, he develops skills, he removes objects
from nature and reconfigures them or processes them to make
them utile, you know. And his daily life, you know,
he's working in the service of an abstract idea, you know,
devised by the Master, but also you know, an immediate
project to be realized. So I said, so, I mean
he the external world is it basically only exists and
like the practice of the Master only comes to fruition
through literally the physical labor of the slave, you know.
And that's that that that this is also like resident
in Christianity too, and like a lot of people don't
understand that either. You know, and the the admonition and
and the pall and letters especially to like not this.
I mean, you shouldn't disdain slaves anyway, because you like,
a man's moral character is not determined by his station.
But this is a core component of that, and people
don't understand it. It's not it's it's not some primordial
or or great antiquity version of like the noble savage
myth or something. And it's not it's not it's not
some moral claim about you know how uh the Russian
classes are somehow you know, superior to their haughty masters.
It's exactly what I just related, you know, and what
hegel explicated, you know, and the but in turn, you know,
the masters. Uh. When we talk about leisure in and
within this classical paradigm of of of master and slavery, like,
we're not talking about a guy sitting around sipping boat
drinks and warning like Hawaiian shirts, or or having you know,
like pretty like sexy ladies like feeding grapes. I mean, yeah,
there's like some of that, but generally, uh, we're talking about,
you know, the cultivation of a heroic and aristocratic attitude
which is brought to full fruition through creative destruction and
warfare and high politics and statecraft. You know, So there's
this there's an essential there there, there's there's an essential
function that both the master and the slave perform. You know,
without either one, the cunning of reason would not have
been possible, you know. And higher life you know, of which, uh,
the political is kind of both the most sanguinary and
and and immediately significant. I mean, owing to the fact
that it's subject matter is you know, literally life and death. Like,
none of this would be possible. So you can't you
can't sit around and say, like, well, slavery is evil.
That's something like plate tectonics is evil, Okay, I mean
so his okay, find history is evil because I mean
you can't. You know, it's it's not something that serious
people entertain, you know. I mean it's submit too, like
I one of the reasons, you know, and this is
one of the things that it is actually pure. It's
one of the few things that Marxists are pure Hegelians
in terms of you know, like you're one of the
reasons I object to it so strenuously, like you know,
I was talking about this in the pod the other
day with my my dear friend Anthony. You know, like
like like lim limousine liberals who love to sit around
and morally pontificate about the supposed evils of class dynamics,
like they're not Marxist. Marxists don't think that way, Like
Marxists are true Hegelians in this sense, you know, and
you know, and plus two, like it's arbitrary, like people
I go up to Sinclair, you know, like in the Jungle.
I mean that's like the subtext, you know, like his novel, like, oh,
agrarian slavery is the most evil thing ever. But you know,
working in some filthy, dangerous factory for starvation wages where
like twenty percent of men die on the job. Like
that's that's some that that's okay, you know, it's there's
like an arbitrary and as to this kind of feign
moral outrage that additionally like impeaches any legitimacy. But yeah,
I'm gonna we should stop here because I'm gonna take
us in a bit of a different direction and the
Hegel discussion. But I hope this This is a huge
topic and frankly, it's hard to distill down to intelligible terms.
I hope. I'm doing an okay job of it. I'm
not fishing for praise, but if I'm not, I want
the subs to tell me that i'm not. You know,
I that feedback is essential. But yeah, I really appreciate
you're hosting me for this man.
Speaker 1: Of course. Of course, anytime, tell everybody where they can
find your stuff and what you got going on.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a lot going on actually, and again forgive
me this past week nothing really got done on to
me being ill, but I am. The best place to
find you right now is substack. You know, that's one
of the few platforms that doesn't censor me and other
people that if you can find my podcast, my long
form stuff. You know that we got an active chat there.
It's a real Thomas seven seven seven. That's substack dot com.
That's I'm also listening help in building a new website, man,
And I'll shout that out again on my platforms, but
I need help with that as I kind of reconfigure
my content. I'm doing a stream here in about an
hour on Rumble, and at long last I'm gonna start
doing regular streams there. You can link to the Rumble
through the substack I'm on Telegram, I'm on Instagram. I'm
seeking you shall find. But yeah, for right now, as
I reconfigure my kind of the way I do things,
you know, find me at Substack and I am. I
am making progress on my manuscript. I'm running a I'm
writing a book on modern political theory and particularly the
regime that was imposed after the Second World War, and
that should be wrapped by the end of summer. What. Yeah,
that's where I'm at all.
Speaker 1: Right until part two on Hegel. Thank you very much, Thomas.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you