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Everything's there. Want to welcome everyone back to the Peking
Yona Show, Thomas, how are you doing today?
Speaker 3: I've done pretty well.
Speaker 2: I'm jumping ahead a little bit, and it's people probably gleaned.
I'm not trying to present a conceptually biased curriculum, but
I'm emphasizing what is relevant to people who are seeking
a political education with a certain partisan emphasis. And I'm
also narrowly tailor narrowly tailoring what I deal with to represent,
you know, the discrete political philosophies. It's somewhat ambiguous. You
know what fingers constantly true political philosophers. I mean, there's
somewhere that's indisputable, you know, people like Machiavelli or Hobbes,
but you know you're talking about like Contorn. That's it
gets complicated. But political theory obviously is my wheel. I mean,
that's what I do, That's how my background is in.
But also I'm trying to present a curriculum of a
partisan nature, and I am not pretending to do otherwise.
You know, and if if people want to bone up
on you know, connin no philosophy, generally there's better men
than I who could do that. But I'm jumping ahead
a little bit today. I'm gonna talk about Edmund Hustrel.
You know what Hustoral was. Heideger was a student of Hustoral,
and then he broke with him profoundly. And there's kind
of a simple thing's ideological take that, like, oh, well,
that's becus Hustal was Jewish. That's not why the Heidegger
was a national socialist. And Heidiger was politically and philosophically
very anti Jewish, but he wasn't some weird racialist, you know.
Speaker 3: How to.
Speaker 2: You can tell that Heidiger's intellectual DNA is shot through
her scholarship because I mean she was his protege and
probably is mistress. And there's nothing inconsistent about that. You know,
it's not an error hypocritical. I mean, yeah, you shouldn't
step out in your wife. But I mean what I'm
talking about is Heidigger associated with uh with Jews in
his professional and personal life, you know, and as one
would imagine for somebody like him, But he also was
uncompromising in his belief that in academium and in European
intellectual life going back on millennia, there is a Jewish
perspective that was ontologically dibversing, you know. But so and
Hussroll also Austol was a complicated figure and he people
argue back and forth about whether Hustle was.
Speaker 3: I mean, you can't. You can't escape your.
Speaker 2: Confessional heritage, and there's there, there's there's an ontological reality
to how you interpret things, and the process of interpretation
is to the lens of mind, and that's discreetly situated,
you know, according to you know.
Speaker 3: Whose mind we're speaking of.
Speaker 2: But Hustle wasn't really a partisan figure in the vein
of Leo Strauss or something. I consider him to be
a lot like Widness, but he's the father of phenomenology
that that can't be disputed. And Heidegger is the It
wasn't like an ethical schism between him a Hidiger.
Speaker 3: It was.
Speaker 2: Heideger's view of hermin neutics. I'll get into what I
mean by that was what really caused the intellectual breach.
It wasn't a political question, and it wasn't because Hustle was.
Speaker 3: Arguing for.
Speaker 2: A Jewish political theory, subliminally or otherwise. And that's important because,
like I said, people on both sides of the aisle
try to claim that.
Speaker 3: There's people to.
Speaker 2: Who claim Hustle who shouldn't isn't a political philosopher, and
I don't accept that. But even if I did, again,
he's he's basically the father of phenomenology. Okay, every every
twentieth century, every twentieth century philosopher, including Heightiger obviously was
in dialogue with Hustle. So you can't you can't get
away from that and phenomenology and psychological aspects or paramount
if we're talking about political theory, you know. And this
also this touches and concerns neuroscience, anthropology, group patterns of behavior,
you know, positivism and the anti positivist reaction. So it
becomes political regardless. So there'd be a gap in the
conceptual narrative if I redacted him, But I mean, I
wouldn't do that anyway, because it at base, you know,
my own orientation is a Hegelian and Heidigerian. So if
you're gonna ask me about political theory, you're gonna have
to subject yourself to hearing about Hustrle. Us I was
concerned with the fundamentals of thinking, you know, And that
interestingly because even though in terms of his ethics he
was totally at odds with somebody like Nietzsche or Marks,
but that also put him in proximity to them more
than these analytic philosophers who often invoke phenomenological concepts. That's
kind of like the only thing they take away from
cominal philosophy. So his legacy's complicated. Hustle's view, and to
be clear to Hustell absolutely accepted the reality of the
crisis of Western civilization, and that's what he's fundamentally concerned with, Okay, And.
Speaker 3: His view was that.
Speaker 2: The highest way of life, the only way for European
civilization to save itself.
Speaker 3: Is to.
Speaker 2: Discover its potential for this hidden t helos that can
be realized within the culture and presumably within every individual
man who's capable of that sort of intellectual activity. You know,
Hustrow believe that all men can live somewhat autonomously, even
if they're not suited the higher intellectual activity. You know,
they can partake of this te los if it becomes
culturally insinuated. But obviously, you know, in all times, in
all epochs, and in every race and cultural form, there's
always a minority of philosophers, if you will, who you know,
kind of shoulder the task of you know, altering or
generating the prime intellectual modality, you know, what this higher
tilos was in his mind. He said that it needs
to be truly value neutral. And he said that European
rationalism and the scientific perspective is not actually value neutral.
It's burdened and uh, with all these conceptual biases and
value judgments that are passed off as factual, you know,
and there's all these there's all these assumptions that are
epistemologically prior to the people who present these ideas, you know.
And he said, at one time men were more cautious
about succumbing to that tendency, which in Hospital's view is
a great error. But he said that the nihilism of
late modernity has caused people to do away with that
sort of cultivated responsibility in any kind of caution, you know.
And that's why he said, you know, even even many
had huge respect for these philosophical giants like the cart
and Leibnitz. He said, they contributed some great things and
you know, demonstrating why philosophy is necessary, you know, for
a culture to survive.
Speaker 3: And they also.
Speaker 2: Educated ordinary men in you know, the sort of practice
of philosophy and philosophical systems and everyday life. But their
writings on these supposedly neutral subjects are not neutral, you know,
and thus it's not suited to.
Speaker 3: The enterprise of curating this higher tilos, you know.
Speaker 2: And he said that as theoretical discourse has sort of
trickled down into everyday life in Europe, it's completely value coded.
And even revolutionaries, you know, whether they're Marxians or whether
they're you know, right, reactionaries, they're all speaking as if,
you know, they're discussing some sort of scientific postulate, or
as if they're partaking of this kind of positivist empirical reality.
What in truth, what they're doing is they're they're abolishing
the fact value distinction, and they're claiming that they're revolutionary imperatives,
or they're or these crisis modalities that they've taken on,
you know, to resolve this terrible problem. They're suggesting that
there is some scientific solution, you know, and ultimately people
can't even tell the difference anymore, was his conclusion.
Speaker 3: And that's that's true, you know. The kind of.
Speaker 2: The major foil to hustle is viewed as Max Weber,
which is kind of interesting because most people associate Weber
contract Spangler and Weber and Spangler actually had a debate,
and it's interesting because it was a bunch of Weber students.
I'll bring this back. I realized this. It's tangential. A
bunch of Weber students organized this debate withou his a
little Spangler because Weber spontaneously began lecturing on the subject
of Decline of the West because he viewed it as
an important book, but he took exception to what he
viewed as it's distorted hermeneutics. Okay, and uh, if you
read the transfer to this debate, it's really quite fascinating.
Although at the time people viewed it as kind of
a dude. I attribute that to I mean, I don't know,
I I've got a passion for the subject, nat, but
I think that was reducible. You know how styles make
fights in in in boxing. I think people expected fire
wars between Vapor and Spangler, and that wasn't forthcoming.
Speaker 3: But it's it really helped reading. It really held my
interest like that.
Speaker 2: It's it's very different obviously, and the players involved we
couldn't be more different. But one of the only other
academic debates where I really got engaged with the material
was the Chomsky for cod of Beate. But yeah, but
in any event, you know, weber uh was was very
much kind of the the foil to.
Speaker 3: Hustle.
Speaker 2: What most students of philosophy will what will consider it
is what in reality they should be thinking of the Heidiger.
And I don't think most people really apprehend a Heidegger.
You've really got to study him for decades, and you've
got to have a you've got to have a deep
grass of a Aristotle and NEETs you to understand Heidegger.
And then on top of that you've also got to
understand phenomenology and the issue of herma neutics and what
Heidegger's injection was to a hustle. I think a lot
of people just sort of read the Cliffsnoes version of Hustlele.
They get some selected works or something, or they read
the write up and like the Leo Strauss and Joseph
Cropsy Encyclopedia of Political Philosophy, which is a great value,
but it's just like introductory and they don't realize the
depth of the conceptual divide, you know, between Highdiger and
a hustle, or they or they view Highdager as just
you know, the the intellectual progeny of Huscerle, but with
ideological commitments and prejudices that set them apart. So simply stated,
Hustle's assumption is that the highest way of life, the pure,
the hidden tilos, or the consummation of European man's higher
intellectual enterprise that will redeem Western civilization by placing it
on the same level as as Doric Athens, would be
the accomplishment of this kind of pure theoretical inquiry that
from the point of inception almost the sort of nirvana
state of the intellect, where from inception at the point
of contemplation there are not any epistemic prior in encumbrances, and.
Speaker 3: There's nothing.
Speaker 2: Within the beholder's mind or the active thinker's mind that's
corrupting his ability to interpret owing to conceptual biases or
psychological symbolic phenomenon. You know, it's a way in which
the uh it's it's a way in which man, culturally
situated man can totally take himself out of these discrete
characteristics that situate him as a historical and culturally engaged organism,
you know. And he to be clear too, he believed
that this was the logical progression.
Speaker 3: Of where.
Speaker 2: Athenian philosophy would have arrived headed endured, you know. And
to be clear too, as then we got into in
these cities. I'm not a classic scholar, but I don't
know some things. And the Peloponnesian War or is viewed
as having destroyed Athens, to be clear. So and this
is just kind of commonly accepted, especially among intellectuals of
hust les generational cadre. So his view is that we're
not trying to emulate dead forms or draw upon, you know,
perracles Athens in some sort of emulation to resolve this
existential crisis of our civilization.
Speaker 3: We're enduring.
Speaker 2: We're identifying potentialities and what can be accessed by higher
cultures of man, and we're attempting to go beyond that,
you know.
Speaker 3: And there's something there's something about this that.
Speaker 2: Is very Transcendentalists, not in like the New Age way.
Speaker 3: But.
Speaker 2: You know, I've been watching the movie two thousand and
one a lot, and Arthur C. Clark was very much
informed by this kind of philosophy. And the implication is,
you know, if you watch two thousand and one, or
if you read the book, that's the time of the film,
the creatures, the alien intelligences who left the monoliths. They
deposited those monolists, you know, millions of years ago, including
the one in subter in Africa that caused australiapithecal Is
to become a human being. But then, you know, a
million years subsequent when the monolists discovered on the Moon
these ets have forgotten. It suggested that they even deposited
these things because their view was that the cultivation of
intellect was the highest good. So they went around the
they went around the galaxy like encouraging evolution and the
development of of of intelligence, you know, in these creatures
as they found them. But then at some point, at
some point, these the these aliens uh became entities of
pure mind to the point that they got to upload
their consciousness and essence into machines. But then they also
they transcended the machines even and they became they became
intelligences of pure energy somehow. And that's why when Bauman
meets them, they don't really know how to deal with them.
So they read his mind about what they think a
human being would like, and they're like, okay, well, here's
a luxury hotel room and in some sort of imperfect
mock up of French architecture.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: And uh, they make food appear that they think like
a human being would like to eat, but it's been
so long since they were corporeal beings they can't really
figure it out, you know. And then they observe his
life cycle, and then when his body dies, they they
examp him and turn him into something like them, and
that's the next stage in human evolution. But there's something
of that concept very much coded into hospital. I'm not
sure just think hostile sat around thinking about science fiction
like I do, or even like further C.
Speaker 3: Clerk did, But there is.
Speaker 2: A very theologically oriented concept. There's a set of concept here.
And that's what I mean when I suggest that this
is a very very ethically driven postulate about this. Higher
tilos that then this is essential. Hustle is not saying
he's not He's not.
Speaker 3: He's not some.
Speaker 2: Enlightened post enlightenment liberals saying, oh, you've got a shit
old desire or you've got to abandon all belief in anything,
you know, beyond the pragmaticy. He's not saying that at all.
Quite the contrary, he's looking, uh, to elevate man ultimately,
I believe, into something else like not his po not
that his philosophy is transformative, obviously, but this is the
path before man's two, you know, overcome his own humanity,
and this birth process in part the potential of it.
This is one of the reasons why European man, as
the turn of the or at the close of the
nineteenth century and beyond is is enduring this crisis. And
that's why there's there's both great and terrifying aspects to it,
you know. So this is important because a lot a
lot of people mist understand that, you know.
Speaker 3: And to be.
Speaker 2: Clear too, when I said the hospital is the father
of phenomenology, he wasn't the first thinker to employ that term,
but the way he utilized it was distinct, and it
came to characterize his entire body of work in a
way that is this positive of what he aimed to convey.
He wasn't just trying to uncover the and describe the
primary uh phenomena of consciousness, you know, he was trying
to develop a rigorous methodology that was total in its
ontological implications for the human being, you know, and a
way of grounding this process without resort to suppositions and
epistemic priors and things. You know, this really is a
total enterprise that stands to alter human life. He's not
just saying, you know this, this is a better way
of doing science, or this is a better way of
interpreting cultural phenomena, or this is a more.
Speaker 3: Rigorous philosophy. You know.
Speaker 2: And uh, I think too. And again, this isn't Ustro
wasn't like Strauss. There's not there's not some hidden exegesis
that he believed could be access Quite the contrary, but
this is very theologically coded, I think. I think that's indisputable.
But that's part of the point, you know, because the
crisis of the crisis of the West is a nihilism,
and you can't remedy that by trying trying to revive
religious orthodoxies or or by trying to emulate again, you know,
the Athenians or anything like that. You know, you one
must advance the entire enterprise in absolute terms, and that
was an aim. And that's one of the reasons too,
why I spend so much time in the hostoral, because
that's a monumental ambition. But that's that's what philosophy should
be about and political theory that's worth anything. One of
the things that should separate the partisan right, not just from.
Speaker 3: The enemy, but from everybody else is uh, it's not.
It's not just some means.
Speaker 2: Of pragmatic administration or some alternative mode of social engineering
or like the a way of trying to identify you know,
good government and insteadivizes moral behavior within these structures that
supposedly cost a good government.
Speaker 3: You know, it's there.
Speaker 2: There's an integral aspect to the way you should think
about politics as a partisan and it should be theologically coded.
It should be primarily oriented towards a complete philosophy. There's
got to be a praxice there, you know, it's got
to be grounded in reality. People shouldn't retreat from the
world and be monks to try and achieve this sort
of elevated state of consciousness or something or intellect, but
the conceptual horizon and these to encompass all of these things.
Otherwise there's you know, if you don't view it that way,
they're you know, you're not really part of a resistance tendency.
You just have you know, you're just some kind of
reformist and you may feel very passionate about these things
you want to reform. But that's a different phenomenon or
a different commitment, you know. To be clear, when I
say that Hustle is the father of twentieth century phenomenology,
not not all phenomenologists abided Hustles thought or r any
agreement with it, or viewed it, or viewed it even
as particularly worthwhile. But he is the But they were
all in dialogue with him and his body of work,
you know, and pretty much every even of this day.
I mean, uh, the maintain academic culture. The EU is
just is literal garbage. But there are still serious guys
writing about history, writing about you know, talking about like
in the revisionist camp. There are still serious guys writing
about political theory, you know, and uh, all these all
of these people you know, in this the it's hust rules,
concepts and his his particular phenomenological way of thinking, touches
and concerns, all this stuff, okay, and even you know
you read, I mean, this is why Heidiger is important too.
Speaker 3: But you know, obviously.
Speaker 2: The concepts that Heidiger improved upon, in my opinion, or nevertheless,
you know, devised by Hustoral in the form we're talking
about you know, you're if you're talking about AI, if
you're talking about neuroscience, if you're talking about the nature
of thought, you're talking about consciousness and what it is
and whether it's contingent upon a material configuration or if
it exists independent of matter. All of this stuff it
relates to Hustle and his systemic paradigms. You know, he
really was a giant of of of of philosophy and
and uh of these this kind of high concept thinking,
you know, and to a lesser degree in America. I mean,
America is always kind of on its own program. And
American academic culture is very strange. You know, even the
minority within mainstream academ who are producing valuable stuff that's
intellectually rigorous and serious and isn't you know, propaganda oriented.
It's very it's almost uh, it's almost obsessively oriented towards
the analytic uh tradition. It it you know, even even
people who don't have an ethical objection to to this
kind of material, they go out.
Speaker 3: Of their way to avoid it.
Speaker 2: It's you know, I mean that that's a whole other discussion.
But even so, the way these questions are framed, oh
to the phenomenological postulates that are framed by the you know,
theoretical body of work devised and articulated by Hustle.
Speaker 3: You know, and that was.
Speaker 2: To clarify some of what Hustoral, particularly the stuff he
was writing forwards the end of his life.
Speaker 3: And you know, in a even.
Speaker 2: The christ of the European civilization was was well underway
by eighteen forty eight, but it truly reached zenith in
nineteen fourteen, obviously, And one of the reasons why the
crisis emerged, you know, most sharply in Weimar, where there
was just no reconciliation possible between the factions of what
had been the fractured cultural organism, is because the epistemic
priors that informed deliberate contemplation and intellectual activity, even that
which was oriented towards a hard positivist sort of methodology
or ethico, those sort of conceptual poll stars or framing devices,
had been totally corrupted, you know, and they were inseparable
from these anxieties and existential realities that were totally disrupting
people's lives. So it was impossible for any kind of
higher t los to be identified within at the point
of contemplation. You know, it'd be like like an imperment metaphor,
Like it'd be like trying to work out complex math problems,
like while you're under artillery fire. You know, you can't
truly elevate your your conceptual activity beyond immediate crisis modalities
when you're in the midst of life and death challenges
every waking hour, you know, and even such that, you know,
a certain level of concrete knowledge could be taken from
the sciences as they then existed, it didn't really matter
because this wasn't being purposed and directed towards elevating European
man and resolving you know, the crisis and nihilism. These
things are just being purposed to deal with, you know,
immediate exigencies and mortal crises. Really get into this kind
of permanent emergency, you know, So that not only did
that not solve the problem, it arguably made it worse,
you know. And that's that's why World War One became
such a metaphor.
Speaker 3: For the.
Speaker 2: For the failure of of of progress and the entire
progressivist mindset, because all this high technology in a very
punctuated and raw sense as opposed he was going to
do things, you know, like like liberate man from the
burdens of labor. And and it was going to create
plenty it was being used to like systematically slaughter people, you.
Speaker 3: Know, and.
Speaker 2: It wasn't uh, it wasn't even doing that in a
in an efficient way. I mean, it was very efficient
at creating corpses, but it was it was it was
creating scalemates in the battle space. It's not even like
it was you know, sparing attrition and things by you know,
rapidly bringing hostilities to conclusion or something, you know.
Speaker 3: And this is why.
Speaker 2: This fundamental doubt about the ability to ascribe some sort
of uh rational some sort of positivist rationality to you know,
these these processes and these challenges amidst the crisis and nihilism.
That's the point that like Nietzsche and Webor and even
like Marks like made that point too, you know. And obviously,
like all three men radically giveven as.
Speaker 3: They were.
Speaker 2: What they positive as the solution was totally odds to
what Hustle would have considered to be correct. But they
they were in agreement about the ontological reality of things,
you know, And that's really interesting because it was it
was it was it was. It wasn't Nietzsche, it was uh,
it was Weber, it was Mars. It was later Heidegger
who agreed with these core premises you know, that framed
Hustle's entire system of thought. It wasn't the it wasn't
these uh empiricists. Are these people who were you know,
viewed themselves, are the heirs the you know, cont and
Hume who were taking on this perspective, even though in
super visual terms one would think that those are the
people like most positively disposed. But again, I mean that's why,
that's why Marx and Nietzsche are important, whatever their shortcomings.
And however, as a guided you know, they were in
their account of the human being and things, you know,
they they were they understood the spirit of the age
and the epoch in a way that most didn't. And
I mean that that's really the mark of of of
a great potical theorist, you know, it's not I mean,
I mean, yeah, there's some there's people, in my opinion,
like Ben Thumb, who most of what they produced is
this literal garbage. But that's the exception, you know, Like
I said, even the reason why I'm murder to study
Marx is is it's not It goes out saying that,
you know, Marx embodied the spirit of the age. I mean,
the entire twentieth century was it was this violent dialogue
with Mars, you know, and that that speaks for itself.
It's got it's incidentally, you know he was uh a
godless uh radical, you know. I mean that's the whole point,
you know, That's what That's what this, that's what the
zeitgeist was, you know. And it's uh. And to clarify,
I want to why the time I got left. I
want to say at least a little bit about Heideger specifically,
and we'll segue into a discussion of Hidegger and coming
uh days and weeks. You know what Heidiger, this isn't
just panantic stuff. Heidiger is phenomenology. The very word or
the term phenomenology. It's uh a portmanteau is that the
right term is a portman two, like two words smacked together.
Is that what a portman two is.
Speaker 1: I'm trying to I'm trying to remember, I have it, okay.
Term in port matten two is blending the sounds and
combining the meanings of two others. For example, motor and hotel.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: Okay, so the phenomenology is a portmanteau of phenomenon and logos. Okay,
what it actually translates to is, uh, that that which
reveals itself.
Speaker 3: You'll see it. Uh yeah, you'll see it.
Speaker 2: Uh, translated as that which is shown or that which
is observable. That's not what it means. This is important.
It's that which shows itself or is revealed. And in
Heidigerian terms, this is the essence of sensory experience, you know,
is subjects and subject matter revealing itself.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: So Heidegger's view of logos is that it's tantamount to
a kind of discourse with the human mind, you know,
in the discrete mind of the beholder, as this sort
of mediator between you know, subject and object and the
senses to which it is being revealed, you know.
Speaker 3: And Heideger.
Speaker 2: Intentionality and categorical intuition, to Heidiger is an essential aspect
of the process. So there's not any true a priori positivism,
you know, because that removes the reality of the situatedness
of the discrete human mind from the equation, you know,
because mental activity is always about something it's never just
this neutral interpretive function that's not encumbered by symbolic psychological
phenomenon and discrete aspects of you know, the the idiosyncratic mind,
you know.
Speaker 3: And this is this is why.
Speaker 2: Heidegger's h hermeneutics are the basis stuff is you know,
anti positive as sensibility. If if we can think of
it in that way, another Summer would disagree, but I'll
I stand by that assessment. You know, there's there's always
a sort of give and take, and you know, it's
this kind of phenomenology to Hidigger is kind of this
this broadest possible epistemological process, you know, and how that
that doesn't mean that there's no such thing as objectively
rational assessments. But the process of thought is being. It's
literally die seen their being, you know. And to be
in the world is to be what you are. You
can't take your mind or your perception outside of that
there being and neutralize those essential characteristics and somehow do
away with hermeneutics and intentionally thinking about this subject or
object before you or that you've sought out. So this uh,
this kind of higher state of telos that hospital considered
to be, you know, Western man's salvation from the Christ
of nihilism, that that's simply not possible, you know, it's
not even it's not even that Hidiger was was condemning
this because it didn't have the potential for pealagenesis or whatever.
I mean, that might be true too, but that wasn't
a Hider's injection. It was that this is a mischaracterization
of you know, ontological things. You know, human beings can't
be something they're not, so suggesting that this is possible
is h It's just a kind of counterfitactual thought experiment,
which if it was presented that way, might have some merit.
Like obviously John Rawls, I mean, Rawles didn't have merrit.
Roles was a shithead, But those kinds of thought experiments
can have merits and maybe like Hobbs a better example, okay,
but it wasn't. But the whole point was is that
it wasn't being presented as that it was being presented
as uh potentiality, you know. And that's that's they're in
the problem wise, you know, and the and the real
the real point of contention. I can't remember where I
read or saw this, but it's not but it's not
my concept, you know, vase we the point at which,
like phenomenology, to Heideger, is the point at which the
human mind engages with the subject and all of that entails,
you know, axiomatically and essentially the hustle This can somehow,
supposedly through teleological cultivation, that can become some sort of
fixed point of reference whereby everything that moment and everything
subsequent can be unencumbered, you know, by by conceptual biases.
Speaker 3: You know. I think of it as kind of a.
Speaker 2: Kind of a a sort of state of pure inquiry.
It's almost Kandian, It's sort of And if like this,
and if if this was presented again like cause categorical
imperative or like Nietzsche's eternal recurrence, that would totally change things.
But that's not what is being positive. This is being
presented as an active potentiality, aspirational as it may be,
you know, and that you know, to be clear too.
And I'll wrap up with this. Hustle wasn't saying, He
wasn't trying to affirm reason, and this is this ultimate
good in and of itself.
Speaker 3: He really was.
Speaker 2: I mean, however much you can criticize his account of
ontological things, he really was fundamentally concerned with human beings
and the process by which human beings engage with.
Speaker 3: The world.
Speaker 2: And he had a grave concern for the human organism
and the human soul. I believe, because otherwise, you know,
what would be the point of.
Speaker 3: His emphasis.
Speaker 2: You know, like I said at the start of this discussion,
you can't really escape from the fact that Hustle was
very theologically oriented, you know. And you know, the implications
for political theory are complicated, but they but the fact
that they're there should be pretty clear, you know. And
that's why I include a Hustle in this series. But also,
you know, like I said, I think if there's a
single philosopher, and it's probably.
Speaker 3: I'm not.
Speaker 2: I'm a I'm a heritage American, like reformed proud. I'm
not a guy like Yaki who's gonna you know who.
I think it was spiritually European, frankly, like a lot
of Roman Catholics are, and I mean Yaqui was an irishman.
I'm not somebody who feels like spiritual European.
Speaker 3: At all.
Speaker 2: I'm very much American, whether I like it or not.
But so it probably sounds strange to people that I
kind of view Heidegger and Hegel as as the intellectual
foundation of a partisan commitment. But you know, I it's
essentially understand Hegel and Heideger and the uh intellectual traditions
that you know they emerged from if you want to
understand what we're doing, or at least when you know
me and my cadre are trying to accomplish. So I
try and always tie this back to practice or you know,
practical aspects as well. I mean, I'm all for learning
about things to better yourself, but at the end of
the day, political subject matter and needs to be front
and center, and political subject matter without practice is not
a great use of time because all of us have
limited time left on this planet. But uh yeah, I'm
gonna stop there, man.
Speaker 1: All right, pick it up on the next episode. Head
on over to uh Thomas's substack real Thomas seven seven
seven dot substack dot com and check the show notes
in on this and there will be links to every
way that you can support Thomas and find the rest
of his work and all of his work. So yeah,
always appreciate it, Thomas, Thank you very much.