” Philip Says:
April 10th, 2017 at 11:40 pm

DNW, I think you’re onto something pointing out the anti-transcendent thread that exists in German philosophy. As much as I also like German culture, with the changes that my life has undergone since my time there, they now strike me as a really unspiritual people. For all that the German Romantics wrote about Geist, I think now that they had a poor conception of real spirituality. It’s both a symptom and a cause of their generally secular outlook. I think it would be good for me to get to know Polish or Hungarian culture more so that I could have more points of comparison within central Europe. Right now, my main reference is Greek thought.”

Just caught your remark. The psychology of the German, or of the group of people we are referring to as Germans, baffles me.

To a limited extent, a very limited extent, and within a particular context of a homogeneous, taken for granted kinship relation life, it reminds me a bit of a 19th century Middle American mindset; with its assumptions concerning “people like us”. And no harm there, insofar as it goes.

But then there is that matter of “spirituality” which they seem to identify with a more extreme form of the originally un-reflective animal spirit just described – only, in this case, developed ideologically, or as an ideology of life.

The most naive hillbilly, who’s immersed up to his neck in the very kind of world-encountering outlook that passes for what I am taking to be German spirituality, would have in general a more highly developed sense of the real transcendent, and less relative regard for “us” as “us” than it seems an educated German does. Even when the Germans are busy rejecting themselves, it is based on some alternative “we” theory, crap.

Even the rejection of the Das man, is a kind of amazingly flat thing.

I’ve spent some years trying to figure out whether Heidegger is one of the most profoundly deep and penetrative intellects ever, or the most profound, as in tireless, explicator of half inch deep life-waters that most of us hardly notice.

I’ve read that German university students crammed his early lectures with the greatest enthusiasm and excitement; and that his message resonated with them and opened new vistas and possibilities.

Had they been unconscious before?

Perhaps it’s impossible for someone like me, whose intellect was fashioned as a child with the template of a hierarchy of being etched into it, (whether one continues to affirm it as real or not as an adult) to grasp the mindset of someone who lives in a two dimensional reality; where “spirit” and transcendent are just names for different spaces, over there a bit, on the same horizontal checkerboard plane.

And here I will stop; since I am not sure I am making sense even to myself.

I have always been a voracious reader, but I do find my concentration isn’t what it used to be before the internet. As a tool for encouraging myself, I make a list of every book I read each year. Usually, I manage around 80. I find there is a natural tendency to make the list look more impressive by increasing both the quality and quantity of books on it, otherwise it would tend to be dominated by re-reads of Agatha Christie books and the like.

Some books have so far proved impervious though. The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann remains un-climbed as yet.

” Ray Van Dune Says:
April 9th, 2017 at 11:30 pm

Far from convincing me that Nazism could occur here or anywhere, “Rise and Fall” showed me that it grew in a society ripe for it. Worshipful of heredity, unquestioning of its innate superiority, and unhesitantly xenophobic, Germany was the perfect seed bed for an evil fruit.

I expected to read what I had been told about the Germans being victimized by the Allies after WW I, and falling unwittingly under the spell of the Nazis. BS, according to how I read Schirer. They were ready and eager to set things right, and “right” was their boot on everybody else’s neck! And the second time they would do it properly.”

Yes, there was something amiss before the first war.

How else does one explain the business in South West Africa, the toast “Der Tag!”, and the Rape of Belgium?

It’s difficult to reconcile this with what we know of German Romanticism, appreciation for natural beauty, and a seeming sensitivity to the human condition (think of “little Herr Friedmann”) …. but there you are.

There is an element of bellicose brutality which was celebrated by some in the German upper classes. They seem to have neither respected man, nor feared God.

I think one can see this developing in 19th century German political philosophy as well; as a number of sociopolitical writers self-consciously sought to distance themselves from the classically liberal natural law tradition, and re-orient east rather than west.

I have had a number of exchanges with German political progressives; and though they all know Marx, and Nietzsche, and Hegel, and possibly Carl Schmitt, not to mention numerous others more modern; none I have exchanged with, knew anything about Wilhelm Von Humboldt.

https://fee.org/articles/wilhelm-von-humboldt-german-classical-liberal/

There is a kind of almost aggressively anti-God, or anti-transcendent strain in some German thinking. Something I cannot quite put my finger on that may be characterological more than anything. Or maybe not.

I like most of the Germans I have met. I cannot claim to understand them.

Are we not seeing this hive mind from the left since 11/8/16!? Are they capable of achieving their goal? Not yet, but they never give up. Vigilance is required..

I expected to read what I had been told about the Germans being victimized by the Allies after WW I, and falling unwittingly under the spell of the Nazis. BS, according to how I read Schirer. They were ready and eager to set things right, and “right” was their boot on everybody else’s neck! And the second time they would do it properly.

What did the music at the Kerwa taste like in your time? 🙂

I do, too. I am working through Bernard Cornwell’s “Richard Sharpe”series of novels. I read most of his “Saxon Tales” and his period work is just excellent. Th men reading the novels do accents very well but I have trouble with them sometimes.

I read Rose and Fall a couple of times over the years and his “Collapse of the Third Republic” is also excellent. His memoir is also good.