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MODERN FREEDOM

EUROCENTRISME AND THE MASTER RACE: LOCKE, LEIBNIZ, HUME AND KANT

Christopher Richard Wade Dettling (2019)

The White race contains all impulses and talents within itself ... The Negro … undoubtedly holds the lowest of all remaining levels by which we designate the different races. Immanuel Kant¹

At first sight nothing would seem more disparate than the idea of nationality and the sane, rational, liberal internationalism of the great Königsberg philosopher. Of all the influential thinkers of his day, Kant seems the most remote from the rise of nationalism. Isaiah Berlin²

The wars of the French Revolution marked the transition to the nation–state defined by common language and culture … [The United States] have never been nation–states in the European sense. America has succeeded in forming a distinct culture from a polyglot national composition. Henry Kissinger³

INTRODUCTION: AMERICANISM VERSUS EUROPEAN MODERNITY

America in the nineteenth century is transformed by the Civil War, — the destruction of slavery as a political and economic institution, — the political and economic transfiguration of the theological and religious idealism of America’s clergy in the 1840s and 1850s, is completed in the 1860s: Modern European right, unlike American Liberty, is untransformed by the destruction of institutionalized slavery in the United States, and unfreedom in the Western world is justified by the modern European ruling classes emergent from the upheaval of the French Revolution and the Napoléonic wars, according to the ideology of superior and inferior human races. Modern European right as opposed to the tradition of Roman Law, is therefore the bastion of the sophistical doctrine of the master race: The wars of the French Revolution marked the transition to the nation–state defined by common language and culture (Henry Kissinger), a Machiavellian re–definition effectuated via the transcendental epistemological delusions (Kantian raciology) of the master race as Bonapartism, — autocracy founded upon popular consent as the power of the people and tyranny of the masses, — the dictatorship of the proletariat as Liberal Internationalism. The Machiavellianism unchained by the French Revolution, across western Europe as Bonapartism, in opposition to European monarchism and royalism as established in the Holy Roman Empire, is institutionalized as the Napoléonic and French Revolutionary category of right: The political and economic divisions unchained by the French Revolution and Napoléonic wars as modern Bonapartism, are institutionalized in European political economy as the world historical division given by the decomposition of the Hegelian school, between Left and Right, — at least until the collapse of European civilization in the middle of the twentieth–century. Modern right in Europe is therefore conceived as unfreedom in the face of American Liberty:

“Such were the leading principles of the Roman law … and such was the law of the continent of Europe wherever based on the civil law, till the adoption and spread of the Code Napoléon, first among the Latin races, and more recently among the nations of central and northern Europe … and would thus seem to have swept away at once the entire doctrine dependent upon the Roman system, which was based on a principle exactly the reverse.”⁴

Modern right is the European unfreedom of the Bonapartist ruling classes as Eurocentrisme: In the face of American Liberty, the outdated and surpassed Napoléonic and French Revolutionary category of right is the great political and economic delusion at the very heart of Bonapartism, variously espoused as modern European liberalism, conservatism, republicanism, nationalism, socialism and communism:

“The renovation of Parliamentary government, the transformation of the conditions of the ownership and occupation of [xxxix] land, the relations between the Governments at home and our adventures abroad in contact with inferior races, the limitations on free contract, and the rights of majorities to restrict the private acts of minorities, these are only some of the questions that time and circumstance are pressing upon us.”⁵

Modern European civilization collapsed because it did not evolve to a much higher level of colonial and imperial freedom, — the political and economic order of European modernity was incapable of further developmental unification and coaxial integration, precisely because of modern unreason’s mortal opposition to the admixture of peoples, resultant from the sophism of the master race, which is the fundamental irrationalism of modern European political economy, as found in Europe’s liberal, conservative, nationalist, socialist and communist regimes, as the nation–state defined by common language and culture: Subjectivism, relativism and irrationalism of the Kantian traditions serves the delusional purpose (subjective, relative and irrational) of justifying the political economy of the master race, — as the erstwhile mediaeval struggle between Christian and infidel ruling classes in the warfare of Western civilization against despotisme asiatique (Montesquieu), is phantasized by European modernity as the clash between superior and inferior human races.⁶ The Western philosophical tradition of Jerusalem, Athens and Rome is immune to the political and economic sophisms of modern European unreason, although modern irrationalism loves to regale itself with critical phantasms and delusions of religious warfare between Catholics and Protestants in European world history, it ignores and neglects the central role of modern Europe’s political and economic irrationalism in the fratricidal strife between modernism and mediaevalism, which places nations against nations, citizens against citizens, — in the name of Machiavellianism: Modern European unreason turns a blind eye to the world historical significance of the Renaissance, namely the place of Machiavellianism in the collapse of the Holy Roman Empire, and its rejection by Martin Luther in the rise of Protestantism, from out of the mediaeval clash between Western and Eastern civilization, unchained during the Crusades, and especially after the fall of Constantinople. The ideology of superior and inferior human races is upheld in the modern European arena of politics and economics by the followers of Locke, Leibniz, Hume and Kant in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as the central doctrine of scientific political economy (in stark contradistinction to the mediaeval feudalism of the Holy Roman Empire), in the modern European justification of colonialism and imperialism, and is opposed to the British constitutional monarchism of the Industrial Revolution, — which brought forth Americanism in the New World:

“The Industrial Revolution … is not only one of the most important facts of English history, but Europe owes to it the growth of two great systems of thought — Economic Science, and its antithesis, Socialism.”⁷

Machiavellianism and Bonapartism, the fountainhead of modern European unfreedom, as the polar opposite of American Liberty, is Eurocentrisme, — the political and economic irrationalism of the master race, the struggle between ruling classes as the clash between superior and inferior human races: The secret of the struggle between superior and inferior ruling classes upon the stage of modern history, in the universal historical clash between the political and economic powers unleashed by the strife between the Industrial and French Revolutions, in the collapse of European modernity and rise of Global civilization as the supremacy of American Liberty, is therefore the combat between Kant and Hegel as the historical self–unfolding of the conceptual rationality of the notion of universal freedom in the world. The teaching of the concept is the inescapable lesson of history.

The secret of the struggle between superior and inferior ruling classes upon the stage of modern history is the combat between Kant and Hegel as the historical unfolding of the conceptual rationality of the notion of universal freedom in the world? What a very strange and mysterious secret! The secret of Kant and Hegel does indeed sound very strange to some twentieth–century ears, deafened by the clamorous roar of anti–Americanism during the Cold War, they cannot hear very well the glorious symphony of American Liberty.

AMERICANISM: THE ANTI–COPERNICAN REVOLUTION

The Digital Revolution unchained, in the first decade of the twenty–first century, a worldwide intellectual upheaval: The most closely guarded secrets of our government run schools and universities were quickly uncovered before the eyes of the world, the most groundbreaking being the secret of Kant and Hegel. The great intellectual upheaval in philosophy that shook our twentieth–century academic temples to the ground, was first unleashed by the twenty–first century Digital Revolution, and begins with both Kant and Hegel:

“What is at stake in these discussions is not simply Kant’s views on specific topics but a complete reassessment of his contribution to the ‘project of modernity,’ inasmuch as Kant’s contribution to the construction of liberal internationalism is viewed as a core element of that project … Kant was indeed generally ‘opposed to the mixing of races’ and that his views on this matter are recorded in texts dating from the 1760s through the late 1790s.”⁸

At the very same time that two hundred years of traditional Kant scholarship around the world was upended and rendered obsolete, — the outdated and surpassed project of modernity as “Liberal Internationalism,” the Napoléonic and French Revolutionary category of right, — the same situation occurred, in the reverse direction, with regards to Hegel:

“[Hegel’s] many manuscripts and transcripts — even ones not available to his students — have been found. When one compares these manuscripts and transcripts with the lectures published by his students, the differences between them are in no case simply philological niceties … this information may drastically challenge our historical picture of Hegel.”⁹

While this knowledge of the bad Kant and good Hegel was a very closely guarded secret in the hands of a select few academic specialists and government bureaucrats during the twentieth–century, the information was disseminated around the world in the blink of an eye, thanks to the powerful technological and computational conjuncture unchained by the Digital Revolution: The result of the reassessment and reorientation of Kant and Hegel in academic philosophy during the past decade, is a complete upheaval of academia, within the sciences, philosophy and history as well as religion, literature and art, — the anti–Copernican Revolution. The twenty–first century Digital Revolution is a vast anti–Copernican reorganization of the Western world, aligned upon the conceptual axis of Americanism: Of course, with the invention of the modern printing–press, very few foresaw the vast reorientation of Western civilization upon the axis of European modernity, the rise of modern science and decline of Latin. European modernity did not replace the universalism of the Middle Ages, but is rather the movement of decomposition, which explodes the mediaeval world, in the realignment of humanity upon the universal road of Americanism.

In the world of today, the main weapon of anti–Americanism of the past hundred years is finally undone, — the modern European mask of Americanism collapsed under the hammer blows of the Digital Revolution. What else is the Europeanized Americanism of the twentieth–century but the pseudo–Americanism and anti–Americanism of the Kantian traditions, — as mortally opposed to Americanized Europeanism? The modern European sophistical distinction between the good Kant and bad Hegel is no more, at least in the minds of knowledgeable scholars and intellectuals: The veil of Maya is therefore lifted, and the genuine visage of Americanism is made visible before the eyes of Western humanity, as the rational conception of the American world, — the age of American Idealism is at hand, as the planetization of rational political and economic order, in the rise of Americanism as the Global supremacy of American Liberty.

American Idealism is the fountainhead of Global civilization. The teaching of the concept is the inescapable lesson of history: As the historical self–determination and self–unfolding (as well as scientific, philosophical, theological, literary and artistic) of the conceptual rationality of the notion of universal freedom, Americanism is rising upwards in the world of today,— in the genuine Hegelian meaning of reason, in the rational Hegelianism of the pure Hegel:

“Admirers of Hegel are accustomed to refer to the first edition [Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences], as having most of the author’s freshness and power … in America, no one can look back a few years, without observing that the whole tone of our public men has changed, and that the phrases, ‘progress,’ ‘necessary development,’ and ‘God in history,’ occur with marked frequency.”¹⁰

THE AMERICAN IDEALISM OF JOSEPH ALDEN

Where is this American Idealism found? In the world historical rise of Americanism, the nineteenth–century American Idealist philosophy of Joseph Alden teaches that “there is no such thing as a general infinite.”¹ Does the philosophical notion of the general infinite, according to American Idealism following the Civil War, entail that in nineteenth–century American philosophy there is no such thing as the World Spirit, as expounded by the genuine Hegel of rational (pure) Hegelianism?² We think not. American Idealism follows in the footsteps of Descartes, Spinoza, Berkeley and Hegel, while modern European irrationalism follows behind Locke, Leibniz, Hume and Kant: Western rationalism in America is the philosophical tradition of Jerusalem, Athens and Rome, and is mortally opposed to modern European unreason, — especially that which portrays Socrates, Plato and Aristotle as embryonic Copernican revolutionaries of the ancient “French revolution” of the Peloponnesian war, or as diabolical monarchists and Catholics (dogmatists, metaphysicians and absolutists). Popular twentieth–century European scholarship is profoundly ignorant of nineteenth–century American thought, especially because many works of Americanism were hidden–away in the rare book departments of public universities, controlled by mortally corrupt politicians, their friends and families, — whose electoral success depends upon our collective ignorance, in the form of inert ideas, outdated and surpassed conceptions.

The American Idealism of Joseph Alden teaches that “we cognize infinite objects, and can thus form an abstract idea of infinity … the idea [of the infinite] is not definable.”³ That the idea of the infinite is not definable means that cognized ideas (conceptions), such as an abstract idea of infinity, or the conceptualization that we cognize infinite objects, are not themselves definable as dictionary definitions, but rather transcend the fields of lexicography, and englobe philosophy as both epistemology and ontology, conceptions which in the above passages are applied to the notion of rational theology.⁴ Joseph Alden does not therefore teach that the conceptualization of the idea of infinity is the conceptualization of the dictionary meaning of infinity found in lexicography.

“There has been a great deal written about the absolute and infinite which conveys no meaning to such as have not the faculty of understanding the unintelligible.”⁵ Joseph Alden attacks as sophistry the Kantian tradition, whose schools classify the idea of infinity as unintelligible, because amongst them “there has been a great deal written about the absolute and infinite which conveys no meaning”:

“Many assertions have been made for which there is no proof. For example, Mansel says: ‘That which is conceived as absolute and infinite, must be conceived of as containing within itself the sum, not only of all actual, but of all possible modes of being.’”⁶

The conceptual rationality of the rational conceptualization of conceptions, ideas and notions of infinity is not itself definable as a dictionary definition, but rather transcends the field of lexicography, and englobes philosophy as both epistemology and ontology: We mean that conceptions, ideas and notions of infinity are not themselves conceptualized as mere dictionary definitions are conceived, because lexicographical cognition is inseparable from the rational conceptualization of the notion of the epistemological and ontological distinction between exact and inexact lexicography. When lexicographical cognition cognizes the science of lexicography, based upon the rational distinction between scientific and pseudo–scientific lexicography, the conceptual rationality of the cognition is not itself conceptualized in rational conceptualization as the mere definition of lexicography is cognized, found in such and such a dictionary, but rather transcends the field of lexicography per se. Of course, the modern European sophists of the Kantian tradition reject such conceptual rationality as unreason, but the political and economic irrationalism of European modernity is transcended and therefore refuted in the conceptual rationality of Americanism, as the supremacy of American Liberty in the world of today.

§1/ Let us examine this question in more detail, in light of our conception of the world: For what is more truly ours, than our conceptions, especially our conception of the world? For we conceive of the world, whatever name our preferences attribute to our conceptualization. Indeed, our conception of the world, as we conceive ourselves and the world, is our conception of ourselves and the world, but in the sense that we ourselves conceive of the world. We need not avoid the first person plural, for in the singular the same ideas hold sway. I conceive of the world, which is the conception of my world: The conception of my world as my conceptualization of the world. Yet the conception of my world is also the conceptualization of the world. For my world is the conceptualization of the world that is mine: My conceptualization of the world is conceptual. Our conception of the world, as we conceive ourselves and the world, is our conception of ourselves and the world, but in the sense that we ourselves conceive of the world. We therefore conceive of ourselves and the world as we ourselves conceive of ourselves conceiving ourselves and the world. We may replace the word conception with any other term that we might prefer, perhaps the noun thought, whichever terminology is more congenial, but our conclusion remains the same: The world as our conception, our conceptualization of the conception of the world, is our conception of the universe.

Remarks: The ancient, mediaeval and modern skeptics doubt or deny the existence of the world, otherwise they doubt or deny the reality of knowledge of the world’s existence: They reject the conception of the world, For whatever is the existence of the world, but our conceptualization of the conception of the world? Skepticism does not here mean one’s skeptical nature, the skepticism of a skeptical nature. Skeptics that doubt the reality of the world, they do not doubt the reality of their doubt, and therefore they do not doubt the non–existence of the world: Their doubt is really legitimate, so they maintain. When philosophical skeptics doubt the reality of the world, therefore, they do not doubt or deny the reality of the rational world, upon which their doubt is founded, rather they reject a certain philosophical version of the universe: The philosophical skeptics give reasons for their doubt. Philosophical skepticism, so–called, is therefore the method and doctrine of the skeptical philosophy, which propounds the sophistical epistemology and ontology of skepticism. Skepticism affirms the non–existence of the world, and the non–existence of the conceptualization of the conception of the world: The skeptics are not skeptical of their skepticism. The skeptical “philosophy,” by which the skeptical methodology of doubt is used to attack their opponents the idealists, in order to reject the idealistic version of truth and reality, opposes the philosophical version of the rational world according to the school of Western Idealism: The sophistical method of skepticism therefore goes hand in hand with the sophistical doctrines of the skeptics.

Skeptics who affirm that they do not know, that they are devoid of knowledge, that they know that they do not know, that they know nothing, borrow from Kantianism, nay, they are themselves Kantians dressed in the garb of skepticism, in order to inculcate Kantianism in the guise of skepticism. That these skeptics know nothing therefore really means that in their eyes, the unknowable of Kant exists, while the “knowledge” that they know they do not know, is verbiage whereby they endeavor to advance the sophistical conceptions of their critical philosophy: Kantian skeptics use the methods of skepticism to advance the sophistry of Immanuel Kant. Skepticism draws the skeptical distinction between knowledge and ignorance, and feigns ignorance, to attack the idealistic version of knowledge of its philosophical adversaries, the school of anti–skepticism: Skepticism thereby conceives of what it allegedly doubts, — the conceptualization of the conception of the world. In their feigned ignorance they doubt or deny the existence of the world, but in their doubt and denial, they conceive of the rational world in order to affirm their ignorance, — in their so–called ignorance, they conceive of their doubt concerning the existence of the world. The doubt and denial of the existence of the world is itself an existential conception, since the conceptualization of doubt and denial is itself an affirmation of the power of reason, and the existence of the rational world. The suspension of judgement is itself an affirmation of judgement’s sovereign power of arbitration, — as the birth–pangs of a greater conceptualization of conceptual rationality.

Skepticism’s conception of the doubt of the existence of the world, as the skeptical difference between knowledge and ignorance, is the skeptical conception of the world as non–existent, the sophistical conception of the world as unknowable: Skepticism affirms the sophistical doctrine of the unknowable. Skepticism as a “philosophy” flounders upon the sophism that the rational world is unintelligible and that something unknowable exists: Skepticism ruthlessly pursued as an end in itself, is self–destructive of rationality. Skeptics who doubt everything must also doubt the veracity of their own doubts, lest they betray themselves and their philosophy, — a project which ultimately ends in the bottomless pit of sophistry. The doubt of the existence of the world is itself an existential conception: Skepticism was never a “philosophy” but always a purgative, in the service of something greater, a more all–encompassing, conception of the rational world. Skepticism is the corrosion that clears the crumbling conceptual ground, and therefore is an attack against a world that is passing–away in decomposition and disintegration, —as the rise of a far–greater conception of rationality. Skepticism is therefore found in the world historical strife between the Platonism and Aristotelianism of Rome and the Middle Ages, in the warfare between Christianity and paganism, as much as within the ancient struggles between Athens and Sparta, and the birth of Hellenism, from out of the Macedonian Empire, as the strife between Socrates and the materialists, — in Plato’s attacks against the Sophists. For this reason, healthy skepticism as rational doubt is really the seedbed of conceptual rationality, as the rejection of an earlier phase of cognition, as the fertilizer for newer, higher and ever–greater conceptions, — the ante–chamber of philosophical Science. The conception of skepticism, the skeptical doubt about knowledge of the world, is itself a conception of philosophy: The rational conceptualization of the conception of the history of Western philosophy, the philosophical history of the different schools of skepticism, conceives the conceptualization of the historical conception of skepticism. The conception of skepticism is conceptualized as the philosophical conceptualization of the world of philosophy: The conceptual realm of philosophy is a conception, is itself conceptually conceptualized, alongside the sciences, history, religion, literature and art, as the conceptualization of the rational conception of the world of conceptual rationality.

§2/ Our conceptions are conceptions of ours, as our conceptualizations: As conceptualization, our conception of the world is conceptualized as a rational conception, for we really and truly conceive the world, — namely our world. The conceptual rationality of our conceptualization of the world, as rational conception, is our conceptual rationalization of our world. The denial of this doctrine refutes itself, is self–contradictory, but we need not debate the veracity of our conception of the world in favor of our conceptions of the world, for the result is the same. The conceptual rationality of our conceptualization of the world, as a manifold, set or group of universal conceptions, is rationally conceptualized. Our conception of the world, as the conceptual rationality of the conceptual rationalization of our world, as our conception of the universe, is our rational conception: Our conceptual rationality is rational in the sense of our conceptualization of the conception of the world, the conceptual universe as the universality of conceptuality as the conceptualization of our conceptions:

Cartesius: “Ego cogito, ergo sum, sive existo … ea enim est natura nostrae mentis, ut generales propositiones ex particularium cognitione efformet.”⁷

Following the footsteps of Cartesius, the conceptualization of the rational conception of selfhood, is also the conceptualization of conceptual rationality: “Ego cogito, ergo sum, sive existo.” We conceive of ourselves and the world as we ourselves conceive of ourselves conceiving ourselves and the world: Our conceptions of the world are the same. The form and content of our conceptualization of the rational conception of the world, is the universality of conceptual rationality. Again, we may qualify the phrase “conceptual rationality” as we fancy, but as the conceptual rationality of the conceptualization of the rational conception of the world, these qualities themselves remain qualified by the category of universality. This is not so? The conception of our world is not our conception of the world? Indeed, whatever is or is not the case with regards to the world, is always so predicated and therefore conceived, as the conceptualization of the rational conception of the world.

§3/ A point of order: Our conceptions are conceptions of ours, as our conceptualizations. Our conceptualization of rational conceptions as forms of rationality, are conceptualizations of conceptions of rationality: Conceptions as forms of rationality are otherwise conceptualizations of conceptions, as the conceptualizations of rational worlds, they are conceptualizations. Forms of rationality, conceptualizations of rational worlds, are conceptualizations of conceptual rationality: Forms of reason are conceptualized rationally, are conceptions of the rational world. Rational worlds as forms of rationality, are conceptualizations of the conceptual rationality of the rational universe. We need not labour this point, for whether we replace the term reason with some other word, we are dealing with conceptualizations, as sensations, feelings, pleasures, satisfactions, even perspectives, views, outlooks and standpoints, but always in the name of intelligibility, as the rational conceptions of the conceptualization of conceptual rationality, in the genuine Hegelian sense of rational (pure) Hegelianism, — in the conceptualization of conceptualization as causa sui.

§4/ What is the exact difference between intelligibility and unintelligibility? The exact difference between intelligibility and unintelligibility is precisely conceptual, as the rational conceptualization of the conception of conceptual rationality: When we conceive of the exact difference between intelligibility and unintelligibility, we conceptualize the rational conceptualization of conceptual rationality, as the conceptualization of the difference between the intelligible and unintelligible worlds, as the conceptual rationality of the rational universe. The conception of unintelligibility, when opposed to intelligibility, is always rationally conceptualized: The conception of unintelligibility is not itself an unintelligible conception. When we charge our adversaries of sophistical argumentation, we accuse them of being unintelligible, their demonstration is defective, because we know what unintelligibility is, — we conceive that our conception of unintelligibility is conceptualized. We do not accuse our adversaries of unintelligibility when we do not know that they are in error, as though we conceive of a non–conception: Their conceptions are lesser, while ours are greater, — a conceptual distinction which is rationally conceptualized as the rational conceptualization of form and content.

§5/ The conceptual form and content of rational conceptualization, the formal and material conceptualization of universality, as the conceptual universality of conceptual rationality, is universally conceptualized as our conception of the world: The rational conceptualization of the world as the conceptual universality of conceptual rationality, is therefore the conceptualization of conceptualization. The conceptualization of the conception of rational theology, is an instructive instance: Our conceptualization of the conception of philosophical theology as well as the conception of philosophical physics is the same, in the conceptual rationality of the conceptualization of the conception of the rational world. In the conceptualization of the rational conception of the science of theology, philosophical conceptions applied to theology are no more theological conceptions, in the modern European pejorative sense, than the application of philosophical conceptions to physics, in the conceptualization of the rational conception of the science of physics, are themselves conceptions of physics, in the modern European non–pejorative sense. The conceptual rationality of the conceptualization of the conception of the rational world, conceives theological conceptions formally and materially: The conceptual rationality of the universality of conceptuality as the conceptualization of the conception of theology is universally conceived, formally and materially, as the rational conceptualization of churches, parishes, Sunday schools and so forth: As the conceptual complexifications of rational conceptualizations between priests and parishioners, and so forth. Rational conceptions of the priesthood are conceptualized in the cannons of ecclesiastical doctrine. Conceptions of theology are conceptually inscribed, universally conceived, as the conceptual complexifications rationally exemplified as the conception of organized religion. Is this not the same for all conceptual knowledge, including the conceptualizations of the sciences? The same remark holds good of pedagogy, jurisprudence, criminology, psychology, and so on, even the field of military science. The conceptual rationality of the universality of conceptuality, formally and materially, as the conceptualization of the rational conception of world, is the world of universal and particular conceptualizations: Our formal and material conceptions of the universal and particular world, rationally conceptualized, are themselves theoretical and practical conceptions, are themselves worldly conceptualizations. Whether or not entirely permissible, at this stage of the conceptual argument, our rational conceptualization, we pose the following question, which is not rhetorical: Where is theology ever found in the rational world, conceptualized rationally, without both priest and parishioner, or jurisprudence without both judge and accused? Even the scientists have their laboratories and conduct experiments upon their subjects.

§6/ We conceive of ourselves as rational conceptualizations: We conceive of ourselves and the world as we ourselves conceive of ourselves conceiving ourselves and the world. Therefore our conceptualizations of our rational conceptions of ourselves are themselves conceived conceptually as the conceptual rationality of universal conceptuality. As such is the case, our conceptions of ourselves are themselves conceived as rational conceptualizations: They themselves are conceived conceptually. The manifold agencies of conceptual rationality conceive the conception of personhood: The rationality of the selfhood of personality is the universality of conceptuality. The universality of conceptual rationality, as the conceptual universe of truth and reality, is the rationality of the selfhood of personality as the universality of conceptuality, as formal and material self–conceptualization. We need not therefore refer to ourselves in the conceptual rationalization of rational conceptualization, as somehow “unconceived,” as apart from the world of rational conceptions: As conceptions of ourselves, the conceptual rationality of universal conceptuality conceives of the rational conception of our conceptual world as rationally conceptualized, as our conceptualization of ourselves and the world. Self–conceptualization conceives of the rational world as the conceptual rationality of the universality of conceptuality: The conceptual universe as causa sui.

§7/ Conceptualization of Americanism, in the rational Hegelian sense, is therefore the form and content of the conceptual rationality of the American world, as the struggle between subjective and objective freedom in world history, from out of the clash between Kant and Hegel, from which arises the absolute freedom of American Liberty. The substantial form, the concrete universality of American conceptual rationality, its developmental unification and coaxial integration, as the Noetic scientivity of the Noosphere, is found within the clash of ruling classes: From out of the womb of history, arise universal historical determinations, the amniotic complexifications of which constitute the embryonic development of the world. The worldhood of the American world, the realm of its universality as the Noetic scientivity of the Noosphere, is the conceptual rationality of the rational conceptualization of the conception of Americanism.

§8/ The conceptual rationality of the rational conceptualization of the conception of Americanism, conceives that the political and economic worldhood of the American world englobes North America, the United States, Canada and Mexico, not merely in the notional form and content of the political and economic geography of continentalism, but also as the central and innermost sphere of Americanism. Make no mistake, the conceptual relationship between the innermost essence of Americanism and its outermost conceptualization, englobes the entire Western world. The innermost and basic dynamism of Americanism, the essence of American conceptual rationality as causa sui, self–determination in the genuine Hegelian sense, namely the myriad relationships between the White House, Washington and Wall Street, englobes North America within the developmental unification of the coaxial integration of the American world.

§9/ Conceptualization, since rational conceptions possess a life and freedom of their own (self–determination as causa sui), therefore conceives of the political and economic worldhood of the American world as the rationalization between core and periphery, which conceptually arises from the very conceptual substrata of Americanism itself, — within concrete universality as the universal form of the immanence of the self–determination of American conceptual rationality. What is the rationality of personality, but the evolution of conceptuality? We must draw attention to the essential conceptual complexifications between the political economies of the West coast of the United States of America with Mexico, as well as between the East coast with Canada: This political and economic dynamism is always found within the rational calculations of the American political economy of the White House, Washington and Wall Street, as the developmental unification of the coaxial integration of the American world, — as America’s rational conception of itself.

§10/ For readers accustomed to the sophistical verbiage of twentieth–century Kantian anti–Hegelianism and Kantio–Hegelianism, especially in the twenty–first century, how very foreign our language must sound, devoid of reverberations of American perspectives, views, outlooks and standpoints of the world (standpunkt, perspektive, weltanschauung). Make no further mistake: The application of outdated and surpassed conceptions, as rational solutions to today’s political and economic challenges, is irrationalism: Modern European unreason in the Global world is undone in the rise of Americanism, having self–destructively cleared away from Western civilization’s universal historical ground, the political and economic delusions and phantasms of modernity, as the inescapable lesson of history, in the strife of ruling classes under the floodtide of American rationality.

MODERN EUROPEAN UNREASON: LOCKE, LEIBNIZ, HUME AND KANT

1/ DAVID HUME AND THE MASTER RACE

I am apt to suspect the Negroes to be naturally inferior to the Whites. David Hume¹

The sophistical mind of David Hume, his inveterate mental weakness and conceptual perversity, is the victim of modern European political and economic irrationalism: For this reason Hume espouses the modern European sophism of superior and inferior human races. The Scottish Enlightenment is also inscribed within the world historical collapse of European modernity and the rise of Globalism, as evidenced by the contagion of pseudo–Hegelianism and anti–Hegelianism in Scotland, Great Britain and the British Empire. Modern right is not Global freedom: The disintegrating hordes of modernity, the flabby minds of the earth, in the name of inexact historiography, follow the one–way road of Locke, Leibniz, Hume and Kant into oblivion, and therefore cannot perceive that their self–destruction is the result of their own decadence, under the hammer blows of Americanism.

“I am apt to suspect the Negroes to be naturally inferior to the Whites. There never was a civilized nation of any other complexion than white, nor even any individual eminent either in action or speculation. No ingenious manufacturer amongst them, no arts, no sciences. On the other hand, the most rude and barbarous of the Whites, such as the ancient German, the present Tartars, still have something eminent about them, in their valor, form of government, or some other particular. Such a uniform and constant difference could not happen in so many countries and ages, if nature had not made an original distinction betwixt these breeds of men. Not to mention our colonies, there are Negro slaves dispersed all over Europe, of whom none ever discovered any symptoms of ingenuity; though low people, without education, will [229] start up amongst us, and distinguish themselves in every profession. In Jamaica, indeed, they talk of one Negro as a man of parts and learning; but it is likely he is admired for slender accomplishments, like a parrot who speaks a few words plainly.”²

Some will exculpate David Hume from the charge of racism, undoubtedly in order to salvage the last remnants of Kantianism and Kantio–Hegelianism in the world of today (some, in their sophistical annals of modern European unreason, — Henry Louis Gates Jr., — even make Kant and Hegel equivalent with regards to modern racialism and racism, by referring to texts from the latter’s discredited editors):

“It is entirely fair to think poorly of Hume for the view that he does express. Though ‘le bon David’ no doubt had many virtues, ability to rise above the racial prejudices of his day was not one of them. But in condemning him in this regard, as I think we should, we ought not to make the mistake of believing that Hume’s philosophy itself is somehow racially coded. There is no reason to believe with Eze, that when Hume spoke of human nature he “meant only a white ‘we.’” Indeed, Hume’s philosophy — especially his emphasis on the universality of human nature — is incompatible with the racialism he expresses … Hume, it is true, was a racialist, and perhaps a racist, but Humeanism is neither.”³

Hume, it is true, was a racialist, and perhaps a racist, but Humeanism is neither?

“In 1753 Hume wrote ‘I am apt to suspect the negroes and in general all other species of men (for there are four or five different kinds) to be naturally inferior to the whites.’ The history of this footnote displays the special contempt Hume reserved for blacks. Under criticism challenging his general claim that all non–white races — including blacks — were inferior to whites, he dropped the general claim but continued to insist on the specific claim that negroes were inferior. The revised footnote reads, ‘I am apt to suspect the negroes to be naturally inferior to the whites.’”⁴

David Hume reserved special contempt for blacks. Whatever it is that Andrew Valls views as “Humeanism,” is perhaps not racialist and racist, otherwise perhaps it is racialist and racist: “[David] Hume, it is true, was a racialist.” We eagerly await the magnum opus of Andrew Valls, perhaps entitled, “Humeanism: The True Philosophy of David Hume, — From a Kantian Perspective.” Until the day Andrew Valls advances a rational argument, the conclusion of which is, therefore the Vallsian interpretation of Humeanism is the true philosophy of David Hume (and therefore Hume is not a sophist), we hold our breath in the greatest of anticipation. We do not separate the historical David Hume from his sophistical Humean philosophy, but attach both together in the rational Hegelian conception of exact historiography and world history, in the collapse of European modernity and rise of Globalism: David Hume, in the same tradition as John Locke and his sophistical philosophy, propagates racialism precisely because Humean sophistry is modern European political and economic irrationalism in the English–speaking world. Wherefore? David Hume (the racialist) in his writings on the modern sophistical category of human nature, propagates the abominable sophism that Negroes are “naturally inferior to the Whites.” Of course, it goes without saying, pace Andrew Valls, that David Hume does not really prove that Negroes are “naturally inferior to the Whites”: In the same vein as his philosophical sophistry, David Hume’s category of universality is itself sophistical. Indeed, the world historical proof that flows from Hume’s modern European unreason, is his demonstration of the mental degeneration of the English inferior ruling classes, especially in Scotland.

David Hume is a racialist (a theoretical racist), but he is not a philosophical racist (Andrew Valls), and therefore he does not practice racism (Hume is not a racist): Hume’s philosophy — especially his emphasis on the universality of human nature — is incompatible with the racialism he expresses. David Hume maintains that he possesses the mental power (the aptitude) to affirm that there actually exists a “natural” (philosophical) distinction between superior and inferior human races: “I am apt to suspect the Negroes to be naturally inferior to the Whites.” That Hume’s affirmation of the racial inferiority of Negroes, as opposed to the racial superiority of Europeans, takes the form of a suspicion means that he possesses no rational proof to support his allegation, only the mental aptitude, — his subjective psychological state (subjectivity). That David Hume maintains he possesses no rational proof to support his allegation of racialism is not evidence that he denies (does not really affirm) that there actually exists a “natural” (Humean) distinction between superior and inferior human races, or that he suspends his judgement on the matter. Wherefore? In David Hume’s own estimation of himself, his “suspicion” is more than a mere opinion or hypothesis because bolstered by his self–proclaimed mental aptitude (subjectivism) as a great philosopher and master thinker.

David Hume is therefore a practical racist: He practiced racism by propounding that Negroes are “naturally inferior to the Whites.” David Hume’s racialist dogma, doctrine, teaching that Negroes are “naturally inferior to the Whites” is sophistry: Whether Hume propounds his racialist sophistry once, rather than emphasize it a thousand times, does not diminish its sophistical nature. David Hume does not advance a rational argument, the conclusion of which is, therefore Negroes are “naturally inferior to the Whites”: Therefore Hume’s racialism is not part of his Humean philosophy? Whether Hume advances a thousand bad arguments, or none at all, or repeats (emphasizes) his claim of universality a hundred times, like a broken record, — this is not philosophy, but sophistry: Andrew Valls’s sophistical distinction between racism and Hume’s racialism is sophistry, because like the latter, he himself ignores rational philosophical argument. Andrew Valls is not a philosopher, but a sophist because he advances no rational argument in support of his distinction between philosophy and sophistry, — nevertheless he asserts that David Hume is a philosopher, and that Humeanism is philosophy (which is the basis of his allegation that Hume is a racialist and not a racist). That David Hume emphasizes the “universality” of human nature is no rational proof that Humeanism is philosophy, and not sophistry: A fortiori, Hume’s emphasis on what he views as “universality” is no proof that he is a racialist, and not a racist. Wherefore? The sophism that there actually exists a rational distinction between superior and inferior human races is racialism and racism, regardless whether it is imagined, believed, propounded, uttered, written, broadcast, claimed, hypothesized, even suspected, — this at least is the verdict of exact historiography and world history in the 20th century.

Adolf Hitler and his murderous regime slaughtered millions of human beings in the name of the so–called “master race,” while David Hume merely preached the sophism of racial superiority and inferiority in his “philosophy”: The former was a very big racialist and racist, while the latter was a smaller one.

Those who affirm (especially in the guise of a “claim”) that the primitive civilizations of Africa and elsewhere are examples of inferior ruling classes, when compared to the advanced technological civilization of today, they ignore or neglect the rational distinction between mere corruption and decadence (mortal corruption). Views, standpoints, perspectives and outlooks of racial inferiority (sophisms), as propagated in the self–destructive movements of modern European unreason, in the Machiavellianism inherited from the Oriental despotism of Asiatic barbarism (“despotisme Asiatique,” Montesquieu) after the fall of Constantinople, and opposed to the Western humanist traditions of Jerusalem, Athens and Rome, are inseparable from the popularization of Eurocentric political and economic irrationalism in the 20th century world: This at least is the verdict of exact historiography and world history, following in the footsteps of rational Hegelianism.

Western philosophy is mortally opposed to modern European sophistry.

We now turn our attention to another defender of David Hume’s sophistry: †Duncan Forbes and company downplay Hume’s modern unreason, in order to justify as natural their own degenerate British imperialist masters’ mortal corruption (“Europe’s Machiavellian relativism and selfishness,” Henry Kissinger),* especially at Whitehall, but also at Cambridge, and to a lesser degree at Oxford. In the name of Humean science (and the infamous Transzendentalphilosophie which was greatly influenced by the sophistical philosophies of Hume, Leibniz and Locke), Duncan Forbes and the modern British sophists follow in the footsteps of Immanuel Kant, the Great Sophister of European modernity:

“Hume’s science of politics included economics.”⁵

David Hume is a philosopher and scientist? Modern sophists thus obscure the rational distinction between mere corruption and decadence (appearance and reality versus appearance and delusion) in world history: As the victims of their own self–estrangement, the inferior ruling classes of the earth are therefore the flesh and blood that greases the cogwheels of world history:

“[Hegel’s dialectical] conclusions cannot be proved or disproved … [Hegel’s philosophy] is in danger of being destroyed or distorted if it is written down … The present edition of the introductory lectures on the philosophy of history has the advantage of bringing home the fact that so much of Hegel’s philosophy was talked.”⁶

So much of Hegel’s philosophy was talked?

“After Hegel’s death, his former students came together with the rather noble thought of assembling various transcripts of the lecture series he gave and to which they had access, hoping to bring to the light of a general public the ‘system’ that [they] were convinced was completed for years and presented orally in the lecture hall. However, the methodologies through which they assembled these transcripts into standalone monographs, with the aid of Hegel’s own manuscripts for his lectures, is [are] dubious at best. They paid little to no attention to changes between different lecture courses, combining them as they saw fit to guarantee the logical progression of the dialectical movement as they interpreted it. But without the original source material, it was impossible to test the suspicion that they may have falsified Hegel’s own views. Indeed, it was all we had to go on to have any understanding of his views. Now, however, many manuscripts and transcripts — even ones not available to his students — have been found. When one compares these manuscripts and transcripts with the lectures published by his students, the differences between them are in no case simply philological niceties … this information may drastically challenge our historical picture of Hegel.”⁷

The methodologies through which the editors of the Berlin edition assembled the transcriptions of Hegel’s lectures into standalone monographs, with the aid of Hegel’s own manuscripts for his lectures, are dubious at best?

“Hegel’s own course notes and those of his students should be used with caution to clarify and illustrate the meaning of the texts he published during his lifetime … In general, the student notes written during or after Hegel’s classes should be used with caution … What has been said about the student notes must also be applied to the so–called Zusatze (additions), added by ‘the friends’ to the third edition of the Encyclopedia (1830) and the book on Rechtsphilosophie … Some commentators, however, seem to prefer the Zusatze over Hegel’s own writings; additions are sometimes even quoted as the only textual evidence for the interpretation of highly controversial issues. For scholarly use, however, we should use them only as applications, confirmations, or concretizations of Hegel’s theory. Only in cases where authentic texts are unavailable may they be accepted as indications of Hegel’s answers to questions that are not treated in his handwritten or published work. If they contradict the explicit theory of the authorized texts, we can presume that the student is wrong, unless we can show that it is plausible that they express a change in the evolution of Hegel’s thought … According to Leopold von Henning’s preface (pp. vi–vii) in his edition (1839) of the Encyclopädie of 1830, the editors of the Encyclopedia sometimes changed or completed the sentences in which the students had rendered Hegel’s classes.”⁸

Hegel’s editors sometimes changed or completed the sentences in which the students had rendered his classes?

“The transcripts known today for all the Berlin lecture series are consistently, even surprisingly, reliable testimonies … It may indeed be disconcerting that only today do we doubt — and not everyone does — that Hegel’s lectures … are actually reproduced authentically in the published [Berlin] edition … that did not become full–blown for more than a hundred and fifty years. We can hardly examine here all the reasons for this circumstance.”⁹

Modern British sophists such as Duncan Forbes and Hugh Barr Nisbet corrupt exact historiography and world history in order to mask the rôle of their erstwhile élites in the collapse of the British Empire and European modernity:

“You can lay down all these general principles, but this is not a policy. Surely, if you are to have a policy you must take the particular situations and consider what action or inaction is suitable for those particular situations. That is what I myself mean by a policy, and it is quite clear that as the situations and conditions in foreign affairs continually change from day to day, your policy cannot be stated for once and for all, if it is to be applicable to every situation that arises.”¹⁰

The pseudo–Hegelianism and anti–Hegelianism of Duncan Forbes and Hugh Barr Nisbet, and their entourage at Cambridge and other British universities, is the mask of modern European political and economic irrationalism in the world historical collapse of modernity and rise of Globalism in the 20th century world:

“The intellectual superiority of the Left is seldom in doubt. The Left alone thinks out principles of political action and evolves ideas for statesmen to aim at … morality can only be relative, and not universal … ethics must be interpreted in terms of politics; and the search for an ethical norm outside politics is doomed to frustration.”¹¹

The intellectual superiority of the Left is seldom in doubt?

“[Duncan Forbes] is perhaps best remembered by his students for the exhilarating lectures on Hegel and Marx which he gave at the University of Cambridge during the 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s … [Forbes] perhaps played down rather too much the importance to Hegel of logical strictness and rigour … Forbes was deeply committed to [the impure] Hegel’s vision of political and social life.”¹²

Duncan Forbes is perhaps best remembered by his students for the exhilarating lectures on Hegel and Marx which he gave at the University of Cambridge?

“Hegel wants as much liberty as possible, and so does Marx. Hegel wants as little authority as is absolutely necessary, and so does Marx. And both want the maximum development of the individual. Marx’s tragedy, and the tragedy of not only Marx, was his failure to realize this.”¹³

Hegel and Marx both want as much “liberty” as is possible?

“[Hegel] was a thoroughly anti–critical, anti–revolutionary philosopher … Hegel’s teaching had been taken up by the Left in a one–sided and abstract way; and the great majority of people always prefer what one can become fanatical about, and this is never anything but what is abstract.”¹⁴

Hegel and Marx both want as much “liberty” as is possible?

Karl Marx: “My dialectic … is not only different from Hegel’s, but its direct opposite. To Hegel, the life process of the human brain is the demiurgos of the real world, and the real world is only the external, phenomenal form of ‘the Idea.’ With me, on the contrary, the ideal is nothing else than the material world reflected by the human mind, [5] and translated into forms of thought … In its mystified form, [the Hegelian] dialectic became the fashion in Germany, because it seemed to transfigure and to glorify the existing state of things. In its rational form it [the Hegelian Dialectic] is a scandal and an abomination to bourgeoisdom and its doctrinaire professors because it [the rational Hegelian Dialectic] includes in its comprehension and affirmative recognition of the existing state of things, at the same time also, the recognition of the negation of that state, of its inevitable breaking up; because it [the rational Hegelian Dialectic] regards every historically–developed social form as in fluid movement, and therefore takes into account its transient nature not less than its momentary existence; because it [the rational Hegelian Dialectic] lets nothing impose upon it, and is in its essence critical and revolutionary.”¹⁵

Hegel and Marx both want as much “liberty” as is possible?

“The absolute [of Hegel] became a stumbling–block to Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach and other members of the ‘Left.’ They rejected as an illegitimate interpolation the eternal subject of development, and, instead of one continuing God as the subject of all the predicates by which in the logic the absolute is defined, assumed only a series of ideas, products of philosophic activity. They denied the theological value of the logical forms — the development of these forms being in their opinion due to the human thinker, not to a self–revealing absolute. Thus they made man the creator of the absolute. But with this modification on the system another necessarily followed; a mere logical series could not create nature. And thus the material universe became the real starting–point. Thought became only the result of organic conditions — subjective and human.”¹⁶

Hegel and Marx both want as much “liberty” as is possible?

“The unfolded totality of the Hegelian school may be pictured in a brief compend. With the pseudo–Hegelians (Fichte, jun., Weisse, Brandis &c.) perception under the form of faith or experience, is the sole source of positive religious truth. On the extreme right of the Hegelian school, perception, (as with Hinrichs) is the absolute criterion of the results found by means of logical thinking; while Göschel gives it still a decisive voice in all religious affairs. Schaller, Erdmann, and Gabler, who form the pure right side, allow to religious perception a consultative vote, which however, like a good ruler with his subjects, they never leave unrespected. Rosenkranz, who ushers in the centre, proceeds for the most part in accordance with the voice of perception, but in some cases rejects it. In Marheineke, the perception is the witness, who can only speak respecting the fact, while the question of law or right can only be decided by speculative thinking. On the left of the centre, (that taken by Vatke, Snellmann and Michelet) the perception is a true–hearted servant, who must subject herself obediently to reason as mistress. Strauss, on the left side, makes her a slave, while with Feuerbach and Bauer she appears verily as a paria.”¹⁷

Hegel was a thoroughly anti–critical, anti–revolutionary philosopher: Global freedom is not modern European right. By leading their flocks into the wilderness of modern European unreason, twentieth century irrationalists such as Duncan Forbes and Hugh Barr Nisbet have cleared the political and economic ground of modernity in universal history, — for the supremacy of American Liberty in the Western world: American Idealism is the fountainhead of Global civilization. The teaching of the concept is the inescapable lesson of history (Hegel): As the historical unfolding of the conceptual rationality of the notion of universal freedom, Americanism is rising upwards in the world of today.

2/ KANTIANISM AND RACIOLOGY

These introductory comments should well demonstrate their importance, not only for discussions of Kant’s role in the formative development of our modern concept of race, but also for our understanding of the development of the critical philosophy itself. There is much in these texts that does not make for pleasant reading; but perhaps the recognition of what seems so wrong to us in these texts — especially with regard to the theory of race that Kant does undeniably sketch in them — should make us that much more appreciative of the fact that Kant distanced himself from these views as far as he arguably did in the ethical and political works he published in the 1790s. Mikkelsen¹

Immanuel Kant produced the most raciological [racialist and racist] thought of the eighteenth century. Count²

It is now known that unlike Kant, Hegel was despised by the Nazis.³

Modern apologists downplay Kantian raciology in the name of subjectivism, relativism and irrationalism, in order to salvage the Copernican revolution, thereby preserving Liberal Internationalism as the ideological and electoral justification of the political and economic irrationalism of inferior ruling classes, in the combat between Americanism and anti–Americanism on the stage of twenty–first century world history.

Kant distanced himself from these [racialist and racist] views … in the ethical and political works he published in the 1790s, — Jon M. Mikkelsen: Kant’s racism is a “theory of race,” i.e., racialism, — but Kantian racialism is not profound error and falsehood? We must pose this question in light of the great evils of the twentieth century. Kant distanced himself from his theory of race in the 1790s, he therefore distanced himself, not from his racist sophistry, but his racialist views: What therefore is this historical fact that Kant “distanced” himself from racialism and racism (i.e., that which “does not make for pleasant reading”), — but another Kantian view? Kant’s theory of race is racialism, his racist views are not error and falsehood, but perspectives, outlooks and viewpoints: The historical fact that Kant “distanced himself from these views,” the historical fact that he distanced himself from racism, is an historical truth, maintains Jon M. Mikkelsen, but no mere Kantian point of view, similar to Kant’s racism, his theory of racialism. For the Kantian historical view that Kant is not a racist must answer the question of why, in the first place, Kant really needed to distance himself from views, perspectives and standpoints (and why Kantianism must therefore totally abandon modern European subjectivism, relativism and irrationalism) and must therefore uphold the conceptual distinction between good and bad views, and conceptualize what an historical fact really and truly is, or at least conceptualize the difference between views that require “distance” and views which do not: Otherwise Kant was a racist, a theoretician of racialism (someone who upholds the sophism of superior and inferior human races), but in the 1790s only from a distance, — and whether the distance is great or small, Kantianism is still racism and racialism, especially the transcendental Anthropologie, — in other words, Immanual Kant is the father of Kantianism, the transcendental bastion of modern European raciology, especially as found in the idéologues of Nazidom (Chamberlain, Rosenberg and Goebbels).

Our first question’s razor sharp fangs are the historical truth and reality, the absolute historical certainty of the Holocaust. We must therefore ask ourselves how is it that we come, really and truly, to know what views exactly that Immanuel Kant, the historical personage, distanced himself from, — in the Mikkelsenian cannons of biographical psychology: At least we must advance a rational argument which purports to demonstrate why such and such texts are really and truly trustworthy, and others are not so, with regards to their veracity as historical windows into the inner mental states that Immanuel Kant once possessed, — but is not such a psychologistic and solipsistic endeavor historically futile (as the basis of a refutation of the racialism and racism of Kantianism, i.e., a refutation of the charge that the critical philosophy is sophistry), by the very Kantian definition of views, perspectives and outlooks, in a word, opinions?Kantian defenses of Kantianism flounder upon relativism, subjectivism and irrationalism: The same remark holds good of Kantian defenses designed to exculpate Kantianism from the charge of racialism and racism. Shall we therefore conclude that the Kantian salvaging of the critical “philosophy” of raciology from the charge of racialism and racism is itself a twenty–first century raciological justification of the historical foundations of modern European raciology?

Jon M. Mikkelsen is not the only Kantian who downplays the racialist and racist doctrines of Immanuel Kant’s raciology, in the name of views, perspectives and standpoints (Kant’s opinions), in order to defend the “critical philosophy” from well–deserved attacks, — as the justification of the sophistical foundations of his very own modern European political and economic irrationalism: Pauline Kleingeld also downplays the racialist and racist doctrines of Kant’s raciology in the name of views, perspectives and standpoints (Kant’s alleged opinions).

“Although Kant’s Lectures on Physical Geography were published in 1802 , this edition cannot be regarded as reflecting Kant’s views around that time … the development of Kant’s views during the Critical period … the description of Kant’s account of race and racial hierarchy … Before the 1770s, too, Kant made derogatory comments about non–Europeans … For the full argument that there is a contradiction between Kant’s moral principles and his views on racial hierarchy, see my ‘Kant’s Second Thoughts on Race.’”⁶

According to Pauline Kleingeld’s downplaying of Kantian transcendental raciology, Kant merely posits a connection between racial differences and politically relevant mental and agential characteristics: Kant’s raciological sophisms are merely characterizations of the different “races.” Pauline Kleingeld in her downplaying of Kantian transcendental raciology, in order to pretend that the critical “philosophy” is not tinged with the sophistry of racism and racialism, places the word race in quotation marks, thereby suggesting (implying) that what Kant really means in his differentiation(characterization) of superior and inferior human races is not really Kantian racism:

“In Kant’s characterizations of the different ‘races,’ we find many passages in which he posits a connection between racial differences and politically relevant mental and agential characteristics.”⁷

Kant’s transcendental raciological sophistry, according to Pauline Kleingeld, is not racism (profound error and falsehood), his transcendental raciological sophisms are not racist (profound errors and falsehoods), but rather paternalism and instrumentalization, merely accounts, theses and assertions:

“Kant reportedly asserts that Native Americans are the lowest of the four races because they are completely inert, impassive, and incapable of being educated at all. He places the ‘Negroes’ above them because they are capable of being trained to be slaves (but incapable of other forms of education). Asians have many more talents, but still fewer than whites. Kant invokes this racial hierarchy — along with the thesis that non–whites are incapable of governing themselves, incapable of being magistrates, and incapable of genuine freedom, and that whites, by contrast, do have the requisite capabilities — to justify ‘whites’ subjecting and governing non–whites through colonial rule. Kant’s account contains a mix of paternalism (as with India, which would be ‘happier’ as a European colony) and instrumentalization (as with Native Americans and blacks, whose alleged ‘purpose’ is to serve as slaves).”⁸

Once Kant’s transcendental raciology is classified as sophistry (falsehood and error), the critical “philosophy” is exposed as sophistry. With the exposition of Kantianism as sophistry, the project of Liberal Internationalism is exposed as modern European irrationalism: The political and economic agendas of Liberal Internationalism in the world of today are thus bankrupted. The electoral bankruptcy of Liberal Internationalism endangers the backwards cartels, outdated monopolies and corrupt trusts of inferior ruling classes (especially in the European Union) via the corrosive power of Americanism, in the rise of Global rational political and economic order. For this reason various European institutions controlled by the Bonapartists in Brussels are in the business of funding academics and educational authorities around the Western world (especially in America), in their endeavour to salvage modern irrationalism, and thereby retard the Americanization of Europe, — in the rise of world civilization and supremacy of American Liberty.

According to the modern European sophists in American academia (they are easy to detect, with all their talk of multipolarity and polycentrisme), the principles of Kant’s “philosophy” are not raciological, because his raciology (racialism and racism) is based on views, accounts and comments, while his “philosophy” is systematic: But the rational distinction between good and bad views is never elucidated except via the very Kantian categories that are themselves called into disrepute by adversaries, — as the subjectivism, relativism and irrationalism of Kantianism. Where is the rational argument that Kant’s “philosophical” principles are not themselves mere views, like his views of raciology (racialism and racism)? “[Kant] is best understood not as a ‘system builder,’ but as a systematic philosopher.”⁹ The “notion” of Kant as a systematic philosopher, deployed in his defense by Mikkelsen, is not infected by Kantian subjectivism, relativism and irrationalism? The elucidation of Immanuel Kant’s personality, i.e., the “best understanding” of Kant’s past mental states, as a systematic philosopher, is not itself contaminated with subjectivism, relativism and irrationalism, — in the name of psychologism and solipsism? Kant’s subjective idealism is used by Kantians to downplay the very raciology of his subjective idealism. Twenty–first century sophists: The Kantian transcendental “philosophy” has absolutely nothing to do with Kant’s racialism and racism, because his raciology is transcendentally unphilosophical, because his raciological views were not transcendental views, — raciological views are not transcendental views. Kant’s critics must prove, in order to make their case (according to his defenders), but only by using transcendental categories, that Kant’s raciology is transcendental, otherwise Kantianism is not raciological! The height of this absurdity is evident: Does anybody ever make the demand that proof of the racialism and racism of Hitlerism be established by using the raciological categories of Nazism?

Adolf Hitler and his murderous regime slaughtered millions of human beings in the name of the so–called “master race,” while Immanuel Kant merely preached the sophism of racial superiority and inferiority in his “philosophy”: The former was a very big racialist and racist, while the latter was a smaller one: “The White race contains all impulses and talents within itself … The Negro … undoubtedly holds the lowest of all remaining levels by which we designate the different races.”¹⁰

In simple words: Kantianism, the so–called critical “philosophy” of Immanuel Kant, is raciological sophistry.

Of course, our questions are not designed to suggest that the board of the State University of New York is in the business of perpetuating racism and racialism, only in protecting its intellectual reputation from the charge of modern European irrationalism, — thereby sustaining its endowments. Americanism, in stark contradistinction to Eurocentrisme as Liberal Internationalism, at least in the doctrines of Henry Kissinger, is a Harvard institution.

Kantians hold that Kant is a great philosopher, while anti–Kantians hold that Kant is a Sophist. Those academics who maintain that Kant is a great philosopher, and that they disagree with his philosophy (and that therefore they are anti–Kantians), really mean that they disagree with a certain interpretation of some element of Kantianism (but they do not reject Kantianism in general as sophistry): Precise examination of their “philosophies” proves that they themselves are actually Kantians in disguise, pushing Kantianism, or some version thereof, under some other name, i.e., existentialism, phenomenology, empiricism, and so forth, wherein are covertly imported transcendental arguments and distinctions under new names, — a tactic calculated to avoid serious criticism of their doctrines, which allows them to pass themselves off as intellectual innovators, especially in the arena of politics and economics. They are thereby saved from explaining how Kantianism is not raciology, saved from explaining the role of Kantianism in the Holocaust, and saved from explaining the difference between reason and unreason in twentieth century modern European history, especially the history of Genocide and nationalism:

“In The Myth of the Twentieth Century: An Evaluation of the Spiritual–Intellectual Confrontation of Our Age, Rosenberg’s claims that Kant’s religious philosophy was so popular with the Germans that ‘Kant’s words’ about ‘the starry heavens above us and the moral law within us’ (an allusion to the conclusion of Critique of Practical Reason) are in danger of being ‘reduced to triviality’ (197). That Rosenberg’s observation has some merit is clear from comments Adolf Eichmann made at his trial. During a police examination, Eichmann ‘declared with great emphasis that he had lived his whole life according to Kant’s moral precepts, and especially according to a Kantian definition of duty’ … Prominent Nazis such as Eckart, Alfred Rosenberg, and Adolf Eichmann read Kant, but most people from the Nazi period, [45] including Nazi élites, derived their view of Kant mainly from Houston Stewart Chamberlain, who is considered ‘the spiritual founder of National Socialist Germany,’ which is why Paul Gilroy rightly claims that ‘we can interpret Chamberlain’s work as he wanted it to be understood: As a strong bridge between Kant and Hitler.’ It is this link between Kant and the Nazis that has led prominent scholars to say that the German philosopher bears some responsibility for the Holocaust. As Berel Lang says: ‘Certain ideas prominent in the Enlightenment [and he specifies Kant] are recognizable in the conceptual framework embodied in the Nazi genocide.’ Or, as Charles W. Mills claims: ‘The embarrassing fact for the white West (which doubtless explains its concealment) is that their most important moral theorist [Kant] of the past three hundred years is also the foundational theorist in the modern period of the division between Herrenvolk and Untermenschen, persons and subpersons, upon which Nazi theory would later draw.’ Given Chamberlain’s comprehensive vision of religion, politics, and Germany, Rosenberg ‘hailed him as a pioneer and spiritual forerunner and viewed himself as Chamberlain’s true successor.’ In 1923, Joseph Goebbels read the Foundations, and when he met Chamberlain in 1926, he indicates in his diary how important Chamberlain was to National Socialism by referring to [46] him as a ‘spiritual father,’ dubbing him a ‘Trail blazer, pioneer!’ Chamberlain’s biographer, Geoffrey G. Field, notes that Hitler read the Foundations. But more importantly, Field indicates how crucial Chamberlain was by describing Hitler’s response to the famous writer’s public endorsement. After getting word of Chamberlain’s support, members at the Nazi party headquarters in Munich were euphoric, and Hitler was so giddy that he was supposedly ‘like a child’ … Hitler considered National Socialism to be based on idealism.”¹¹

In the rise of Americanism from out of the collapse of European modernity in world history, Nazidom is based on Kantian idealism?

Adolf Hitler: “Rational Idealism is profound Knowledge of the Unknowable.”¹²

The reason therefore that these Kantian and semi–Kantian idéologues of our bankrupt academia possess their government sinecures, as in the period of Nazidom, is not from intelligence, but rather from their political and family connexions: Of course they will argue that such behavior is evidence of intelligence, but only in mortal degeneration are corruption and criminality ever named as enlightenment.

Why is the Kantianism of Nazidom modern irrationalism?

“Kant inaugurated a Copernican revolution in philosophy, which claimed that the subject doing the knowing constitutes, to a considerable extent, the object; i.e., that knowledge is in part constituted by a priori or transcendental factors (contributed by the mind itself), which the mind imposes upon the data of experience. Far from being a description of an external reality, knowledge is, to Kant, the product of the knowing subject. When the data are those of sense experience, the transcendental (mental) apparatus constitutes man’s experience or his science, or makes it to be such.”¹³

“The subject doing the knowing constitutes, to a considerable extent, the object … [knowledge is] the product of the knowing subject”: The “Copernican revolution in philosophy” (the subject doing the knowing constitutes, to a considerable extent, the object) is not based upon Kant’s philosophical sophistry (knowledge is the product of the knowing subject)? De Vleeschauwer’s version of the Copernican revolution in philosophy, inaugurated by Kant, asserts that the subject doing the knowing constitutes, to a considerable extent, the object. Herman de Vleeschauwer, in the field of twentieth–century modern European world history, is therefore a good Kantian, and not a bad Kantian?¹⁴

“These principalities … are upheld by higher causes, which the human mind cannot attain to, I will abstain from speaking of them; for being exalted and maintained by God, it would be the work of a presumptuous and foolish man to discuss them … if one could change one’s nature with time and circumstances, fortune would never change … God will not do everything, in order not to deprive us of freewill.”¹⁵

Higher causes, which the human mind cannot attain to, are exalted and maintained by God, the very highest power. Higher causation and rationality is the realm of the highest power, and is beyond the reach of humanity, civilization, and the rationality of Global political and economic order. What are the rational determinations of the highest power? We must abstain from speaking of them, for being exalted and maintained by God, it would be the work of a presumptuous and foolish person to discuss them: The highest power of Machiavellism is the Absolute of Kant and modern European unreason. The highest power governing human actions, the fountainhead of all justice according to the Machiavellians, the dispensers of modern freedom, is the Unknowable of the modern irrationalists, Locke, Leibniz, Hume and Kant, — as well as their epigones.

From whence comes the Kantianism of Nazidom?

“The philosophical movement called Neo–Kantianism commenced in Germany in the 1860’s. Beginning with certain epistemological inquiries, it extended gradually over the whole field of philosophy. The individual thinkers who belong to this movement differ from each other in their interpretation of the Kantian doctrine as well as in the results which they reach from the Kantian premises. But, notwithstanding differences of detail, there is a certain methodical principle common to all of them. They all see in philosophy not merely a personal conviction, an individual view of the world, but they enquire into the possibility of philosophy as a science with the intention of formulating its conditions. They take their cue from the most general statement of the Kantian problem in the preface of the Critique of Pure Reason and in the Prolegomena. But in returning to the fundamental aim of Kant, to lead philosophy ‘into the safe road of a science,’ Neo–Kantianism finds itself confronted with a new task inasmuch as it must face a different state of science itself.”¹⁶

From whence comes the Kantianism (Neo–Kantianism) of Nazidom, in the arena of twentieth–century modern European politics and economics?

“Especially after 1871, the contagion of Kantianism in France is remarkable … Around 1880, Kantianism becomes the powerful beacon of French moral and political thought, in the eyes of those who are followers of France’s republican creed: For republican thinkers who want to be freed from ‘superstition,’ Immanuel Kant’s philosophy must provide the means of indoctrinating France’s young people with strict morality and civics, self–sacrifice and patriotism: Intellectual disciplines which will eliminate ancient French religious traditions via the powerful secular religion of republicanism.”¹⁷

In the rise of Americanism from out of the collapse of European modernity in world history, Kantianism is the vanguard of the surpassed and outdated Napoléonic and French revolutionary category of right: The “rationality governing human actions, the fountainhead of justice,” according to Machiavelli, the modern delusion of rationality and human reason, is the unreason of European modernity, the basis of the outdated and surpassed Napoléonic and French revolutionary conception of right: Autocracy founded upon popular consent, the Napoléonic and French revolutionary conception of right, therefore comes from the modern irrationalism of Kant, Hume, Leibniz and Locke, — and then ultimately from Machiavelli. Machiavellism, autocracy founded on popular consent, the Napoléonic and French revolutionary conception of right, is modern unreason in the world historical arena of European politics and economics.

Last remarks: Why is the Kantian raciological sophistry of Nazidom profound error and falsehood, especially as subjectivism, relativism and irrationalism?

“[158–159] According to Kant, we can never know anything but ‘phenomena,’ never a thing that exists independently of the mind. It cannot be but a subjective phenomenon, because the element of experience in it — the ‘impression,’ which is called the ‘matter’ of the object of a sense–intuition, is subjective, and the element of necessity and universality which is called the ‘form’ coming as it does from the mind, is likewise subjective. Hence the object before the mind, composed as it is by subjective elements, is wholly subjective. Yet Kant always calls such an object really objective. Because the term ‘objective’ always means for Kant, whatever contains a necessary and universal element. For such an element is the same for all human minds as they are at present constituted … [160] Now the ‘matter’ upon which these ‘apriori forms’ of the understanding are superimposed is the ‘phenomenal objects’ of ‘sense–intuition.’ The ‘phenomenal objects’ of sense are already an amalgam of ‘matter,’ — the sense–impression caused by the ‘noumenon’ plus the ‘apriori sense forms’ of ‘space’ and ‘time.’ Why are these ‘apriori forms of the understanding’ imposed upon the phenomena of sense? Because each of these sensuous phenomena are pictured by the imagination as either a substance, a cause, as one or many etc., and when they are so imaginatively pictured, the appropriate ‘apriori form of the understanding’ pops forth from ‘the fairy rath of the mind’ where live these ‘apriori forms’ and attaches itself to the sensuous phenomena and then we necessarily and universally are forced to think that such a sense–phenomenon is a substance, such another a cause, an accident, one or many etc. But in reality, of course, they are no such thing, for these ‘apriori forms’ give us no insight into reality.”¹⁸

What is the subjectivism, relativism and irrationalism of raciological Kantianism?

“In the philosophy of Kant the necessary grooves or laws which the mind must follow in its operations of reason have their origin solely in the mind; they are of the mind and in the mind. [9] We must think, Kant would say, according to these necessary laws because our minds, antecedently to all experiences of reality, are constituted that way … Kant conceives the laws of thought as ‘forms’ native to the mind and therefore as having no objective value. Hence he calls the science of these ‘forms’ ‘Formal Logic.’”¹⁹

Raciological Kantianism, the modern unreason of Nazidom in the arena of twentieth–century modern European politics and economics, via the subjectivism, relativism and irrationalism of Kant’s transcendental logic, is the vanguard of the surpassed and outdated Napoléonic and French revolutionary category of right.

The rational Hegelian philosophy of genuine Hegelianism, on the stage of modern European world history, maintains that the critical “philosophy,” so–called, is the theoretical justification of Kant’s practical “philosophy,” his anthropology and physical geography, which together serve alongside his science of law, as the basis of Kantian political economy. Sophists of the Kantian traditions who maintain the contrary, namely that Kant’s “philosophy” is separate from his practical works, his anthropology and physical geography (which they allege are untranscendental aberrations), they falsely and wrongly separate the two spheres of activity, and therefore wreck the theory and practice of Kant’s critical project and Copernican revolution, and thereby they falsify and distort exact historiography and world history.

This last remark applies equally to those sophists who do not separate Kant’s theoretical and practical project of his Copernican revolution, but instead separate some elements of his practical philosophy from its theory, in the name of Kant’s views (opinions), but maintain the link between the critical theory and some of its practice: Thereby they corrupt Kantian theoretical practice in the name of practical considerations which are themselves alien (non–theoretical) to Kantian theory: For they must admit that their “concerns” to purify Kantianism of the corrupt influence of Kant’s alleged “opinions” are in no wise extracted from the Kantian corpus. They therefore stab Kant’s authentic Copernican revolution in the back. We in no way condemn their treasonous behavior, but only draw attention to the fact that their sanitized version of the Copernican revolution, while entirely satisfying their personal gratifications, in no wise replaces the authentic Copernicanism of modern European history, and most certainly does not cause its satanic nature to vanish from the historical annals of modernity, but rather serves as a mask, which hides the inescapable lesson of exact historiography and universal history in the Western world of today:

“Mind and its world are thus both alike lost and plunged in the infinite grief … Mind is here pressed back upon itself in the extreme of its absolute negativity. This is the absolute turning point; mind rises out of this situation and grasps the infinite positivity of this its inward character, i.e., it grasps the principle of the unity of the divine nature and the human, the reconciliation of objective truth and freedom as the truth and freedom appearing within self–consciousness and subjectivity … The realm of fact has discarded its barbarity and unrighteous caprice, while the realm of truth has abandoned the world of beyond and its arbitrary force, so that the true reconciliation which discloses the state as the image and actuality of reason has become objective. In the state, self–consciousness finds in an organic development the actuality of its substantive knowing and willing; in religion, it finds the feeling and the representation of this its own truth as an ideal essentiality; while in philosophical science, it finds the free comprehension and knowledge of this truth as one and the same in its mutually complementary manifestations, i.e., in the state, in nature, and in the ideal world.”²⁰

In fine, the academic stratagem, whereby Kant’s sophistical philosophy is first separated from his opinions concerning superior and inferior human races (the sophistical Kantian doctrine of the master race), and then this separation between his sophistical philosophy on the one hand, and his mere opinions on the other, is justified as a transcendental conception in the name of psychologism and solipsism (via some novel interpretation of transcendental idealism), fails miserably in the light of rational Hegelianism. For interpretations of transcendental idealism are themselves contaminated with the aforementioned irrationalism: Covertly imported within their corrupt categorial scheme is the very paralogism between “philosophy” and opinion which is in dispute, — in the name of subjectivism, relativism and irrationalism. Of course this covert operation is not always categorized via traditional Kantian terms, but is evidenced in the form of transcendental “argumentation,” — resultant in transcendental perspectives, outlooks, views, standpoints, and so forth. In other words, the so–called interpreters of transcendental idealism, in their projects to salvage the Copernican revolution, themselves “interpret” the sophistical critical philosophy of Immanuel Kant, interpretations wherein they separate Kant’s alleged opinions from his philosophical sophistry: They psychologize and solipsize as “interpreters.” The phantasizing over what kind of mental states once occurred in the mind of Immanuel Kant at such and such a time and place, — in order to transcendentally justify the delusional separation between Kant’s sophistical philosophy on the one hand, and his mere opinions on the other, as a transcendental distinction, — is itself evidence of the complete intellectual bankruptcy of Kantianism in the world of today. The ideological project aimed at the rehabilitation of Copernicanism, in order to sustain Liberal Internationalism as the backbone of Eurocentrisme as multipolarity or polycentrisme, and thereby uphold Großdeutschland (der Merkel Apparat) as the prius of European political and economic power, flounders upon the rocks of psychologism and solipsism, — as modern European subjectivism, relativism and irrationalism.²¹ The extremely influential Kantian sophism that there exists a transcendental (certain and incorrigible) differentiation between superior and inferior human races, the transcendental “conception” of human races, is the fountainhead of modern European raciology, especially in the arena of politics and economics: Especially in the field of modern European history, the downplaying of Kantian racism and racialism (raciology), the transcendental “conception” (sophism) of superior and inferior human races, i.e., the sophistical transcendental justification of the political economy (modern slavery) of the master race (Eurocentrisme), as merely Kant’s view or opinion(such as the Kantian view or opinion that Kant is best understood as a systematic philosopher), is itself Kantian raciology in the world of today.

COPERNICAN “ANTI–COPERNICANISM”

From whence comes the motivation for the downplaying of Kantian raciology at the hands of our modern sophists? We must pose this question, which naturally arises in the conceptualization of the rational conception of twenty–first century American Idealism, as the conceptual universality of the powerful conceptualization of Western civilization, the traditional fountainhead of which is Jerusalem, Athens and Rome.

The Digital revolution is the seedbed of the anti–Copernican revolutionism of American Idealism: The Copernican “anti–Copernicanism” of the modern sophists, especially in the European Union, is Kantian reactionism. The salvagers of Kantian sophistry attack Western philosophy in toto, as Eurocentrisme (Bacon, Hobbes, Descartes, Spinoza, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Hegel and so forth), in order to draw their fraudulent distinction between good and bad Kantianism: Thereby they endeavour to protect the critical sophistical philosophy of Immanuel Kant from the charge of unreason, — in the name of views, standpoints and perspectives. The sophistical operation of Copernican “anti–Copernicanism” consists in the drawing of a sophistical (subjective, relative and irrational) distinction between “good” Kantians (philosophers) and “bad” Kantians (sophists), and then results in the condemnation of the bad Kantians (irrationalists allegedly hiding in the transcendental “garb” of Kant) as racists and racialists, while praising the good Kantians (real Kantianism) as humanitarians: The Copernican “anti–Copernican” sophistical distinction between good and bad Kantianism is based upon an equally specious differentiation between real and false Kantianism. Their specious differentiation between so–called real Kantianism, as opposed to false Kantianism, is drawn up in the name of phenomenology, existentialism, empiricism, realism, scientific philosophy and so forth ,—all of which is merely the same old modern European unreason (subjectivism, relativism and irrationalism) served upon a new platter: Modern sophists are abetted in the philosophical crime of Copernican “anti–Copernicanism” by the diminishing powers of anti–Americanism in the Western world, which in turn are facilitated by Oriental Despotism.²² Modern sophistry, in its doomed project to salvage the sophistical philosophy of Immanuel Kant, thus (1) ignores and neglects the genuine Hegelian distinction between exact and inexact historiography and world history, because it (2) ignores and neglects the rational Hegelian distinction between pure and impure Hegelianism, and (3) ignores and neglects the pure Hegelian distinction between pseudo–Hegelianism and anti–Hegelianism, — serious faults which are by no means the only defects of the Copernican “anti–Copernican” reaction.

Why does Copernican “anti–Copernicanism” salvage the sophistical philosophy of Immanuel Kant in the world of today? The ideological project aimed at the rehabilitation of Copernicanism is effectuated in order to sustain Liberal Internationalism as the backbone of Eurocentrisme as multipolarity or polycentrisme, and thereby uphold Großdeutschland (der Merkel Apparat) as the prius of European political and economic power. Wherefore? The world historical task of the Merkel Apparat is the clearing away of the very last vestiges of modernity in the European Union after the Cold War, to nurture the seedbed of Americanism and the supremacy of the superior ruling class, in the Global integration between Europe and Asia, in the unification of the western and eastern hemispheres, as the rational planetization of world civilization in the mastery of American Liberty. The development of Eurasia really begins with the integration of western and eastern Europe, after the reunification of Germany and the collapse of the Soviet Empire as a world power: The strife between western and eastern Europe in this direction, is the work of the Merkel Apparat, which brings to fruition the Ukrainian crisis. The entire geopolitical conjuncture of the region is profoundly realigned upon a completely new world historical basis. On the European side of these historical determinations, the Merkel Apparat in Brussels is behind the new developments, in the name of continentalism as EU–expansion in the rise of Großeuropa. The rise of Großeuropa therefore spells the doom of the Merkel Apparat, because the Ukrainian crisis in its turn is the seedbed of powerful new political and economic complexifications, which uplift superior ruling classes. The historical concretization of Eurasia as a political and economic reality within the sphere of Americanism means that the entire evolutionary advancement of European humanity is uplifted to a far higher plane of financial, commercial and industrial freedom: The rational and spiritual development of these powerful new forces, in conjunction with American Idealism, is the task of the twenty–first century.

1/ TRANSZENDENTALE LOGIK AND MODERN EUROPEAN UNREASON

We irrationalists do not foam at the mouth and behave like animals … we Americans have been more consistent than the Europeans. Richard Rorty¹

The defense will not amount to an attempt to demonstrate the truth of transcendental idealism; that being much too ambitious a project. Henry Allison²

In 1968 it is still true that Kant is the pre–twentieth–century philosopher most in the minds of men moving forward on their own paths. Louis White Beck³

Irrationalists like †Richard Rorty are unconcerned with the rôle of the Copernican revolution in the arena of modern European political and economic history: They ignore and neglect the contagion of subjectivism, relativism and irrationalism of modern unreason in the genocidal rôle of raciological Kantianism during the Holocaust and collapse of European modernity, — namely the schools of Locke, Leibniz, Hume and Kant, sophisters of the master race. Meaning: In the struggle between superior and inferior ruling classes, within the collapse of European modernity and rise of Globalism, — the clash between the Industrial and French revolutions as the supremacy of American Liberty and Global rational political and economic order, from out of the strife between subjective and freedom, as the world historical combat between Kant and Hegel, — the sophisters of Kantian anti–Hegelianism and Kantio–Hegelianism turn a blind–eye to the political and economic irrationalism of European modernity, in their efforts to clear the ground of world history of “Western unreason”: Kantian anti–Hegelians and Kantio–Hegelians are the gravediggers of modernity.

Flabby minds cannot perceive (1) how Transzendentale Logik is deployed within justifications of raciological Kantianism, (2) cannot perceive how the Transzendentale Logik of raciological Kantianism is deployed within the justifications of nationalism and socialism, (3) and most certainly cannot perceive how the transcendental raciology of Kantianism, in the arena of twentieth century world history, is deployed as the justification of the final solution: Flabby minds are immune to rational Hegelianism.⁴ In their ivory towers, especially at the behest of European think–tanks (Kulturmanagement), backed by their inferior ruling classes, they carry on in the name of business as usual, while Europe is convulsed once again by its backwards cartels, outdated monopolies and corrupt trusts, — as der Merkel Apparat.⁵ Our intellectual élites under the spell of modern European irrationalism in the world of today, turn a blind–eye to raciological Kantianism in twentieth century history, precisely because they are not thinkers, but idéologues and sophisters, — academic mercenaries in the pay of the highest bidder. They turn a blind–eye to the publishing and media combines of the backwards cartels, outdated monopolies and corrupt trusts of the inferior ruling classes, a blind–eye to their unreason in the arena of politics and economics: Public universities under the control of national educational authorities are victims of corrupt politicians and their régimes, in the struggle to maintain power, and thereby greatly enrich themselves and their backers, — ideology and propaganda are the weapons of our inferior ruling classes. In the world historical struggle between Kant and Hegel, as the collapse of European modernity and rise of Americanism, especially in twentieth century Europe, the strife between Kantian anti–Hegelianism (e.g.,Friedrich Nietzsche) and Kantio–Hegelianism (e.g., Karl Marx) in the arena of modern politics and economics, as the strife between monarchism and republicanism, is the clash between the Left and Right (from out of the decomposition of the Hegelian School), while the warfare between the good and bad Kantians (they “foam at the mouth and behave like animals”) is the struggle for political and economic centrism: “The manifest untenability of transcendental idealism, as they understand it, has led some critics to attempt to save Kant from himself.”⁶ Our modern academic sophisters are spellbound by the Transzendentale Logik of the Copernican revolution, — as the political and economic (Cosmopolitan) justification of their Liberal Internationalism,⁷ which they name as Americanism, i.e., “rational” political and economic order:

“The theoretical foundations of modern liberal society were completed by Kant, who, separating legality and morality, defined the former as the ‘rules of the game,’ so to speak, law dealt with procedural, not substantive issues. The latter were primary matters of conscience, with which the State could not interfere. This distinction has been at the root of the American democracy.”⁸

In the eyes of twentieth century modern irrationalism, — irrationalists who do not foam at the mouth and behave like animals (Rorty), — the Transzendentale Logik of Immanuel Kant is the very basis of American Idealism, the fountainhead of the Copernican revolution as Americanism in the world of today.

Modern sophists distinguish sophistically between Kantian “interpretations” of Kant’s transcendental, and Kant’s conception of the transcendental per se: They fail to notice that their so–called interpretations of Kant’s conception of the transcendental, are themselves Kantian versions of Kant’s transcendental(Kantians hold that Kant is a philosopher, while anti–Kantians maintain he is a sophist). In other words, they covertly import Kantian categories within their “interpretational frameworks,” their so–called categorial schemes, but meticulously avoid any discussion of these “fundamental assumptions” by cloaking their utterances in the garb of “claims,” yet at vital junctures of their expositions, which they qualify as argument, they cast aside their interpretive masks, and endeavour to pass beyond the phantasmagorical realm of their delusions, and surreptitiously enter the world of truth and reality. In other words, they ignore and neglect the fact that their self–proclaimed perspective, i.e., their so–called interpretations of Kant’s conception of the transcendental as a perspective, is either a perspective otherwise it is nonsense. When this question is brought to their attention, namely the omission in their writings of any rational distinction between meaning and nonsense, based upon exact hermeneutics and philology, they shrug their shoulders and cynically affirm that any criticism whatsoever of their expositions is itself merely an adversarial perspective: They even thereby forget, otherwise conveniently ignore, that their own “perspective,” that contradictions between perspectives are themselves perspectives, is either a perspective otherwise it is nonsense. When caught out in their fraudulent game, they scurry into their vermin–holes of silence and blissfully ignore all rational inquiry: Sophists are abetted in this activity by their masters, the inferior ruling classes, which use modern sophistry (the Copernican revolution) within their political and economic propaganda and ideologies, especially during the last hundred years as Liberal Internationalism, i.e., as Bonapartism and Machiavellianism.

“[36] Kant’s statement of what has come to be known as his ‘Copernican revolution’ may be viewed as a second and closely related way in which he endeavored to clarify his idealism … The central question for us is rather how Kant’s own philosophical ‘revolution’ is to be understood … [37] [The] ‘Copernican’ supposition that ‘objects must conform to our cognition’ (die gegenstande mussen sich nach unseren Erkenntnis richten), expresses the central tenet of transcendental idealism.”¹

Henry Allison’s version of Kant’s transcendental idealism, saved from the bad Kantians of Great Britain and the British Empire (Kemp Smith, Prichard and Strawson), is the basis of his new version of the Copernican revolution (“the central question for us is rather how Kant’s own philosophical ‘revolution’ is to be understood”). Flabby minds cannot perceive (1) how Transzendentale Logik is deployed within justifications of raciological Kantianism, (2) cannot perceive how the Transzendentale Logik of raciological Kantianism is deployed within the justifications of nationalism and socialism, (3) and most certainly cannot perceive how the transcendental raciology of Kantianism, in the arena of twentieth century world history, is deployed as the justification of the final solution: Kant’s Copernican revolution, according to the followers of modern European unreason, the schools of Locke, Leibniz, Hume and Kant, is a philosophical revolution: The fading lights of Kantianism in the world of today are incapable of grasping the world historical conclusion that Kantianism and sophistry are one and the same thing. There exists, however, in American academia an opposing philosophical tradition, that of anti–Copernican Scholasticism, whose own version of Kant’s transcendental idealism is not so flattering:

“[158–159] According to Kant, we can never know anything but ‘phenomena,’ never a thing that exists independently of the mind. It cannot be but a subjective phenomenon, because the element of experience in it — the ‘impression,’ which is called the ‘matter’ of the object of a sense–intuition, is subjective, and the element of necessity and universality which is called the ‘form’ coming as it does from the mind, is likewise subjective. Hence the object before the mind, composed as it is by subjective elements, is wholly subjective. Yet Kant always calls such an object really objective. Because the term ‘objective’ always means for Kant, whatever contains a necessary and universal element. For such an element is the same for all human minds as they are at present constituted … [160] Now the ‘matter’ upon which these ‘apriori forms’ of the understanding are superimposed is the ‘phenomenal objects’ of ‘sense–intuition.’ The ‘phenomenal objects’ of sense are already an amalgam of ‘matter,’ — the sense–impression caused by the ‘noumenon’ plus the ‘apriori sense forms’ of ‘space’ and ‘time.’ Why are these ‘apriori forms of the understanding’ imposed upon the phenomena of sense? Because each of these sensuous phenomena are pictured by the imagination as either a substance, a cause, as one or many etc., and when they are so imaginatively pictured, the appropriate ‘apriori form of the understanding’ pops forth from ‘the fairy rath of the mind’ where live these ‘apriori forms’ and attaches itself to the sensuous phenomena and then we necessarily and universally are forced to think that such a sense–phenomenon is a substance, such another a cause, an accident, one or many etc. But in reality, of course, they are no such thing, for these ‘apriori forms’ give us no insight into reality.”²

In other words, the anti–Kantian conception of Kant’s transcendental idealism is diametrically opposed to the Kantian version: “Kant’s theory of knowledge … makes mind and thought the measure of reality rather than making reality the measure of mind and thought. Kant maintains that things are so because we must think them so, not that we must think them so because they are really so independently of our thinking them. The reversal of the order of thought and reality, Kant calls his ‘Copernican Revolution’ in his theory of knowledge.”³

Our argument, in the rational Hegelian footsteps of genuine Hegelianism, is not that the German “die gegenstande mussen sich nach unseren Erkenntnis richten” expresses the central “tenet” of transcendental idealism. We reject this statement entirely: The “Copernican” supposition that “objects must conform to our cognition” expresses the central tenet of transcendental idealism. That the statement “objects must conform to our cognition,” itself expresses a “tenet” is nonsense, along with its portrayal by Allison as a “Copernican” supposition. The statement is either a tenet otherwise nonsensical: But where exactly does Allison draw the line between meaning and unmeaning with regards to his interpretative utterances? Where is the rational argument, the conclusion of which is, therefore the statement “objects must conform to our cognition” expresses a “tenet” of the Copernican revolution, rather than nonsense, i.e., modern European unreason? No such rational argument is forthcoming from Henry Allison, whose avoidance of the question of meaning is disingenuous at best, — coming, as he proclaims, from the analytical and linguistic tradition. Allison’s version of Kant’s transcendental idealism as a “‘Copernican’ supposition” (“objects must conform to our cognition”), rather than nonsense, is itself nonsense, — for Kantianism is modern European unreason, and therefore no “supposition” at all. That “squares must conform to circles” is no doctrine of geometry, whether we label mathematics as transcendental or otherwise: Of course this last remark applies equally to scientific theology and the doctrines of Christology, for instance, since we are not geometers at the expense of religion, literature and art.

For those who will attack us as sophists, since we have not published our own heavy and ponderous tome of philosophy upon the meaning of unmeaning, we respond in kind: We are to blame, readers of the Oxford University Press, for expecting more of their paid writers, — at least, a little bit more? We find that the publications of the Oxford University Press are defective in crucial areas, notably in the domain of exact hermeneutics and philology, an omission which is rather unfortunate for those readers such as myself, — lovers of truth and reality in the world of today.

Why not deploy rational arguments in favor of the justification of what really and truly is the precise difference between the historical Immanuel Kant and the unhistorical one, — in order to veritably differentiate between the historical tendencies and the pseudo–tendencies of an unhistorical and unpsychological version of exact and inexact hermeneutics and philology?

“The problem is not in the endeavor to relate Kant’s argument to contemporary concerns, but rather in a failure to consider seriously the relation of these concerns to those of the historical Kant.”⁴

The answer is easily forthcoming, since Allison advances no exact historiographical and world historical argument in favor of his distinction between the historical and unhistorical Kant: The only “arguments” that will ever be advanced by Henry Allison are culled from the twentieth century scatology of Kantian anti–Hegelianism and Kantio–Hegelianism, — itself infected with the phantasms of pseudo–Hegelianism and anti–Hegelianism!

“In short, the categories are valid a priori of appearances because they make possible the cognition of appearances as objects … If one accepts these propositions, the argument can be taken as having shown that both experience and its objects necessarily stand under the categories.”⁵

Henry Allison: Kant’s argument can be taken as having shown that both experience and its objects necessarily stand under the categories: “The categories are valid a priori of appearances because they make possible the cognition of appearances as objects.” In other words, according to Henry Allison, Kant’s argument does not really and truly prove “that both experience and its objects necessarily stand under the categories,” but rather the argument “can be taken as having shown” that “both experience and its objects necessarily stand under the categories.” Why labour this point? Because Allison does not rigorously distinguish between what he names as Kant’s transcendental idealism, from his own Kantian conception of Kant’s transcendental idealism, he remains an invisible player: What here passes for Kant’s transcendental idealism is Henry Allison’s conception of Kant’s transcendental idealism, — at least as exposed in his writings. Since Allison remains invisible, hermeneutically and philologically speaking, the question of the Kantian nature of his “conception” of Kant’s transcendental idealism never arises. Why bother with the question of Henry Allison’s Kantianism? When Allison maintains that Kant’s “argument can be taken as having shown that both experience and its objects necessarily stand under the categories,” he means that, within a very special theoretical world, i.e., his very own Allisonian universe, which incidentally is also a realm allegedly inhabited by scientific creatures, the aforementioned argument proves that “ both experience and its objects necessarily stand under the categories.” Why labor this point? Henry Allison has advanced absolutely no guarantees whatsoever that his covert hermeneutical and philological world (from whence spring the meanings, charitably speaking of course), that he attributes to the German text in his translations of Kant, as well as the meanings he attributes to English translations of Kant), is in any sense philosophically valid. We must ask our analytical friend, The Allisonian meanings which are attributed to Kant’s words, are they really and truly meanings, in the traditional Western philosophical sense, otherwise are they meanings in the sense of the “epistemologically based understanding” of twentieth century modern European Kantian anti–Hegelian and Kantio–Hegelian pseudo–Hegelianism and anti–Hegelianism.⁶

The Kantian conception of Kant’s transcendent, the “conception of the transcendent” (Transzendentale Logik) of the Copernican revolution in modern European world history, is the transcendental logic of pseudo–Hegelianism and anti–Hegelianism. Henry Allison does not promote his analytical justifications of exact hermeneutics and philology because he will come into open conflict with the Digital revolution in the world of today: Allison is thereby saved from explaining how Kantianism is not raciology, saved from explaining the role of Kantianism in the Holocaust, and saved from explaining the difference between reason and unreason in twentieth century European history, especially the history of Genocide and nationalism. The Kantian conception of Kant’s transcendent, the “conception of the transcendent” (Transzendentale Logik) of the Copernican revolution in modern European world history, is the product of pseudo–Hegelianism and anti–Hegelianism: Therefore, Kantianism must be decontaminated of its pseudo–Hegelianism and anti–Hegelianism accretions, and then the Copernican revolution will be cured of subjectivism, relativism and irrationalism? This last question, when seriously posed, is itself the result of pseudo–Hegelianism and anti–Hegelianism, for it is predicated upon Kantianism and Hegelianism, — the failure to recognize that genuine Hegelianism is the world historical refutation of Kantianism in the world of today. Sophists who seek a cure for their sophistical Kantianism in the rehabilitation of Hegel and Hegelianism are deluded by their sophistical political and economic version of the universal historical relationship between Kant and Hegel in modern European world history.

Henry Allison’s rejuvenation and rehabilitation of Kantianism as a “viable philosophical option,” in the name of “Kant’s Transcendental Idealism,” is effectuated via the beliefs (claims) of the historical personage of Immanuel Kant, his opinions: “The separability of Kant’s fundamental claims in the Critique from transcendental idealism will be categorically denied.”⁷ The usage of such statements and phrases such as “Kant’s transcendental idealism” (i.e., the Kantian philosophy) are harmless enough, but innocently appearing alongside these aforementioned sentences are other less innocuous ones such as: “The major source of the interpretive problem lies in Kant’s tendency to refer to the objects of human experience not only as ‘appearances’ but also as ‘mere representations.’”⁸ The omission by Allison of any precise distinction between what he names as Kant’s claims, on the one hand, as opposed to nonsense on the other, is an unfortunate oversight. Statements such as “What Kant actually says is that one might name this illusion the subreption of hypostatized consciousness,”⁹ are themselves in need of a philosophical conception of actuality, as opposed to delusion and phantasy, especially in the fields of exact hermeneutics and exact historiographical biography.¹⁰ The attribution of inner mental states, “tendencies,” to the historical personage of Immanuel Kant, at some past time and place, as essential premises in the interpretive “argument” is questionable as psychologism. For this reason Allison’s rejection of so–called Kantian anti–realism, “a vaguely Kantian sort of idealism or, better, anti–realism, which argues for the dependence of our conception of reality on our concepts and/or linguistic practices,”¹¹ requires texts translated by fellow Kantian hermeneuticists like Paul Guyer (whose refusals to seriously address questions of the rôle of European Kantianism in the Genocide and Holocaust are evidenced in their writings), and the fact that they are accepted without hermeneutical scrutiny is obscured, since Guyer¹² serves as a foil: Henry Allison’s rejection of so–called Kantian anti–realism leans at crucial junctures (“intimate connections”) mainly upon psychologistically illuminated translations from writings outside the Critical works proper: “Transcendental idealism is inseparable from the substantive doctrines of the Critique … [Transcendental Idealism’s] intimate connection with virtually every aspect of the Critique.”¹³ We must ask ourselves, is the alleged “tendency” of Immanuel Kant at fault, interpretively speaking, considering Allison’s lack of exact historiographical and biographical distinctions, or is his psychological profile, charitably speaking, itself a translational illusion of the English text? In other words, since Allison made the choice of which English translations to use in his interpretation of Kant’s transcendental idealism, how does he know these translations are better than others? When different translations of the same passages, made by various translators, corroborate the reading, interpretive certainty is increased: When there exists amongst them a contradiction with the reading, there is somewhere a mistranslation, which is easily rectified via grammatical analysis, since many German and Latin grammars abound from the period which are not “Kantian.”¹⁴

Henry Allison: “For a different account of this topic, see Norman Kemp Smith, A Commentary to Kant’s ‘Critique of Pure Reason’ … Kemp Smith claims that Kant’s denial that ‘existence’ here functions as a category is incompatible with the doctrine of the postulates. ‘Existence’ on his view differs from the categories of relation in that ‘it would seem to be impossible to distinguish between a determinate and an indeterminate use of it. Either we assert existence or me do not.’ This, however, is simply not the case. As we have seen in our account of the Schematism (chapter 8), the schema of actuality (Wirklichkeit) is ‘existence in some determinate time’ and the pure concept (logical actuality) is just the concept of assertion.”¹⁵

Henry Allison distinguishes between his account of Kantianism and the different accounts of his adversaries (Kemp Smith, Prichard and Strawson),but apart from his presentation of select translated texts, combined with his elucidation of their “correct” meanings, and his rejection of adversaries’ interpretations, as “simply not the case,” he advances no exact hermeneutical and philological distinction whatsoever between an accurate and inaccurate account of Kant interpretation (Allison cannot honestly assert that the meanings he attributes to his selected translations of Kant are really and truly meaningful, in the transcendental sense that he affirms, as opposed to meaningless): The reason for this omission is that Allison advances no rational argument in favor of any distinction between exact and inexact hermeneutics, i.e., “the epistemologically based understanding,”¹⁶ since this distinction requires the conceptualization of philosophical truth as opposed to falsehood, which Allison does not deploy (amongst other reasons) because the rational distinction between philosophy and sophistry of the Western tradition will undoubtedly create academic and institutional problems(tensions) over his division between epistemology and ontology (the basis of his “interpretation”), i.e., metaphysics. Either Henry Allison abandons his distinction between epistemology and ontology (wherein he covertly opposes Hegelian metaphysics, i.e., Hegel’s “Truth”)¹⁷ and espouses philosophy as opposed to sophistry (and thereby openly rejects Hegelian metaphysics as sophistry), otherwise he does not abandon his distinction, and does not refer to his adversaries as sophists and their accounts as sophistry. If Allison overtly condemns Hegelianism as sophistry, he will draw the ire of fellow Kantio–Hegelians of the Kantian traditions: The “moderate” Liberals will be divorced from the “radical” Left (not a good recipe for political and economic power in academia, especially during the twentieth century). During the Cold War, inferior ruling classes required the extreme left and right in order to survive in the age of American superpower, a much lesser evil in the face of Soviet communism, since the time–honored ways of old Europe no longer applied: The European sacking of their neighbours, extermination of all resistance, and burning them all down. Since Allison does not openly condemn his adversaries as sophists, especially in the English–speaking world, undoubtedly for political and economic reasons (Liberal Internationalism as the New Left and Eurocommunism, i.e., Western Marxism and the struggle between British conservatism and Labour), he takes the latter road: Henry Allison’s version of epistemology and ontology, alas, is not philosophical, as opposed to sophistry, — whether named as metaphilosophy or metacritique. What Henry Allison names as epistemology and ontology are therefore in no wise fundamentally different from what is usually named as sophistry: The same remark applies as well to Allison’s account of transcendental idealism, in both editions of his work. Those interpreters, like Henry Allison, who burn their Western philosophical bridges behind them, have not the wherewithal to return: Gravediggers of modernity (of those modern irrationalists who foam at the mouth and behave like animals), they are forever prisoners of the grave.

Henry Allison fails to rationally separate his brand of Kantianism from the modern European sophistry of the master race, as found in Locke, Leibniz, Hume and Kant: Allison opposes his own Copernican revolutionary version of Kant’s transcendental idealism to his version of pre–Kantian rationalism and empiricism, and thereby he Allisonianly distinguishes Kant’s idealism from what he names as “the norm of a putative divine cognition”:

“As forms of transcendental realism, both rationalism and empiricism share the underlying assumption that human knowledge must be measured against the norm of a putative divine cognition, which, by its very nature, must be non–conceptual. They differ mainly with respect to the question of the degree to which such intuitive cognition is attainable by the human mind.”¹⁸

Henry E. Allison maintains that both “rationalism and empiricism share the underlying assumption that human knowledge must be measured against the norm of a putative divine cognition,” as “forms” of transcendental realism, although he presents no rational distinction whatsoever between exact and inexact historiography, in order to elucidate and conceptualize his world historical distinction between rationalism and empiricism in the philosophical history of modern European thought, so that what Allison names as “putative divine cognition,” in the works of his so–called rationalists and empiricists, is indeed evidenced as “non–conceptual,” as opposed to the “sense” (assuming it is not nonsense, a rather fanciful opinion) in which he qualifies his usage of the word “conceptual,” as the sense, and seemingly opposed to nonsense, which he gives to his phrase “Kant’s theory of reason,” — or in any bona fide sense, for that matter: Allison references and cites no works in the history of modern European philosophy, such as Frederick Copleston, or in the field of theology, in order to validate the alleged existence in modern texts of whatever exactly it is, that he names as “putative divine cognition.” We should like to know more about Henry Allison’s alleged distinction between divine and non–divine cognition, especially in light of his theory of “forms” and its precise relationship to the exact history of modern European thought, such that “rationalism and empiricism share the [same] underlying assumption,” a statement which is itself, undoubtedly in Allisonian “theory,” a non–divine cognition, — whatever exactly is meant here by his usage of the word “assumption.” Of course, Henry Allison, in Kantian fashion, can lean upon his own “distinction” between transcendental idealism and realism, to lend plausibility to his version of pre–Kantian rational and empirical thought, unproved as it is, which will undoubtedly patch over somewhat the conflict between moderate and radical liberals in academia (and his own school), in their fight over the direction of Americanism in the world, albeit as Liberal Internationalism, — which will undoubtedly please his political masters, since their own policies can more easily be garbed, amongst the vulgar, in the vestiges of “reason,” which in turn increases their turnout on election day, thereby prolonging their grip upon power and increasing their ill–gotten wealth.American Idealism, in stark contradistinction, never usurps upon the power of the White House, Washington and Wall Street, only greatly advances the supremacy of American Liberty in the world.

Recapitulation: Henry Allison endeavors merely to establish the division between Kantian anti–Hegelianism and Kantio–Hegelianism in terms of his version of the distinction between the good versus bad Kant (thereby failing to distinguish his own good Kant from the really bad Kant of raciological Kantianism, — which follows in the wake of Locke, Leibniz, Hume and Kant),¹⁹as the Kantian differentiation between true and false Kantianism, for his opposition, as he himself readily admits, is not proof of the philosophical veracity of his own so–called transcendental idealism:

“[The] main goal is to provide an overall interpretation and, where possible, a defense of transcendental idealism. The defense will not amount to an attempt to demonstrate the truth of transcendental idealism; that being much too ambitious a project. It will, however, argue that this idealism remains a viable philosophical option, still worthy of serious philosophical consideration.”²⁰

The main goal is to provide an overall interpretation and, where possible, a defense of transcendental idealism: Henry Allison’s “defense” of transcendental idealism is not based upon the rational distinction between exact and inexact hermeneutics, and therefore is not an actual defense, based upon a hermeneutically exact analysis, and therefore he provides a possible “defense,” based upon a hermeneutically inexact “interpretation.” Since there is no question here of Western philosophy, i.e., epistemology and ontology in the traditional sense of Descartes, Spinoza, Berkeley and Hegel (philosophers uncontaminated by modern European unreason, and the sophism of the master race), Allison cannot rationally conceptualize actuality as a justification for real possibility, without which he must lean upon the sophistical versions of possibility of Locke, Leibniz, Hume and Kant (through the glass of Copernicanism), in order to make his defense appear as possible, as opposed to nonsensical. Henry Allison’s possible defense of transcendental idealism, which is therefore no less impossible than a round square, is diametrically opposed to rational interpretation as the self–conceptualization of causa sui.

Henry Allison advances no proof of the philosophical veracity of his brand of transcendental idealism, but only creates his own distinction (if indeed it really and truly is a distinction, in the logical and linguistic sense of claro et distinctio perceptio as inherited from the philosophical tradition of Western civilization) between its good and bad versions at the hands of Kantian interpreters (such as Kemp Smith, Prichard and Strawson), as opposed to pseudo–interpreters, and “defends” his so–called interpretation as a “viable philosophical option … worthy of serious philosophical consideration.”²¹Sadly, the transcendental idealistic truth of his defence of Kant’s “transcendental idealism” is never demonstrated, — although Henry Allison’s own interpretational justification of Kant’s “transcendental idealism” is most certainly not qualified by himself as transcendental realism, or putative divine cognition. Perhaps Allison will retort, in the traditional Kantian way, that any justification of his theories is itself an example of “putative divine cognition,” nay, the novel response that the very demand of any rational proof whatsoever, in favor of his statements, is indeed bad Kantianism and “putative divine cognition.” In other words, Henry Allison merely asserts that his version of transcendental idealism is philosophy, rather than sophistry:

“The defense will not amount to an attempt to demonstrate the truth of transcendental idealism; that being much too ambitious a project … this idealism remains a viable philosophical option.”²²

Henry Allison leans upon Kantian translators and their translations (contaminated with their Kant “philology”), in order to establish that the so–called idealism (“this idealism”) of his defense of Kant’s transcendental idealism is philosophical, rather than sophistical. We are not blind to the fact that Henry Allison’s “philosophical” defense of Kant’s transcendental idealism is itself advanced as Kantian subjective idealism. Since Henry Allison advances no proof of the philosophical veracity of Kant’s transcendental idealism, and therefore no demonstration that his own idealistic “interpretation” is philosophy rather than sophistry, he does not possess the philosophical wherewithal to draw any exact hermeneutical and philological distinctions between the texts of Kant’s so–called philosophical system of transcendental idealism of the Critiques, as opposed to texts whose interpretive bearings upon Kant’s idealism are objectionable or disputable upon strict (anti–Kantian) hermeneutical and philological grounds: “I have occasionally modified these translations. Where there is no reference to an English translation either the translation, is my own or the text is referred to but not cited.”²³ What Henry Allison names as philosophy is therefore in no wise fundamentally different from what is usually named as sophistry:

“In considering objects as they appear or as appearances, one is actually considering them as subject to intellectual as well as sensible conditions (the schematized categories and the Principles), whereas in considering them as they are in themselves the converse does not hold.”²⁴

Of course, our reservations regarding Kant’s Transcendental Idealism are not only aimed at Henry E. Allison but his school:

“I was awakened from my ‘dogmatic slumber’ … by the work of a former student, Michelle Grier. First in her dissertation and then, more substantively, in an important book based upon it, Grier has shown conclusively that for Kant transcendental illusion is inherent in the very nature of human reason. For present purposes, the importance of this fact, which is sometimes noted but seldom taken seriously, is that it shows the necessity of drawing a sharp distinction between transcendental illusion and transcendental realism. Since the former is inherent in the theoretical use of reason, it cannot be eliminated (though the metaphysical errors stemming from it can be avoided), whereas transcendental realism, as a metaphilosophical stance can (and should) be replaced by transcendental idealism. But if this is true, it follows that transcendental idealism does not, as I had previously assumed, eliminate transcendental illusion (that being an impossible task). Its service is rather to prevent us from being deceived by this illusion, which it accomplished by separating it from the transcendental realism with which it is commonly conjoined. The latter thus remains the real source of the difficulties in which reason [xviii] finds itself when, under the spell of transcendental illusion, it ventures into the transcendent.”¹

Grier has shown conclusively that for Kant transcendental illusion is inherent in the very nature of human reason: We should like very much to know rather more about what exactly Henry Allison means by “conclusively” in his statement about Grier’s Kantianism, such that “for Kant transcendental illusion is inherent in the very nature of human reason,” i.e., what exactly this “conclusive proof” means and entails with regards to the validity of the transcendental idealism behind Allison’s own non–transcendental realist“interpretation” of Kant’s transcendental idealism, as a defense of Kant’s theory of reason, — the truth of which he readily admits is never established.

“This work itself appears during a stage in the development in Kant’s thinking which de Vleeschauwer has referred to as Kant’s ‘empiricism’ … Kant’s assertion that the arguments of dogmatic metaphysics are all based on an illusion only makes sense in the broader context of his unique account of the nature and function of human reason … as I have tried to demonstrate, Kant developed the account of metaphysical illusion progressively throughout his career in conjunction with his changing theory of the intellect, or reason. The mature doctrine of transcendental illusion, then, goes hand in hand with the critical conception of reason.”²

Henry E. Allison’s brand of transcendental idealism, via his disciple Michelle Grier’s version of Kant’s doctrine of transcendental illusion, is contaminated with the subjectivism, relativism and irrationalism of Hermann Jan de Vleeschauwer’s Kantian conception of Kant’s transcendental (“la déduction transcendantale”), i.e., the Transzendentale Logik of modern European raciological Kantianism as found in the work of Houston Stewart Chamberlain and his epigones.

“I share with many commentators the view that Kant’s argument can best be understood in light of the internal development of his thought, which eventually led him both to the recognition of the need for a transcendental deduction and to the forms that it took in the first two editions of the Critique. In short, I believe that in order to understand Kant’s novel project it is necessary to traverse the path through which he arrived at his understanding of the problematic to which it is addressed and his method of addressing it.”³

Henry Allison’s “new” version of Kant’s transcendental idealism, based upon his Kantian “conception of transcendental” (Transzendentale Logik), is an interpretive phantasm which is itself borrowed by twentieth century Kant philology from modern European sources, namely from Hermann Jan de Vleeschauwer via Houston Stewart Chamberlain’s brand of German Neo–Kantianism (propagated for thirty years around the Anglo–Saxon world, — London, New York and Toronto, — until the fall of Hitlerite Germany),which is the same old modern European unreason served upon a polished twenty–first century platter of subjectivism, relativism and irrationalism, despite his endeavour to theoretically distance himself from the aforementioned sophists, by casting aspersions upon British Kantianism (whose tentacles undoubtedly reached even into the erstwhile Committee of Imperial Defence, thanks to Asquith and his entourage), itself indebted to Chamberlain’s early English followers (Lord Redesdale and his friends), — some of whom undoubtedly even laboured under the early spell of Moore, Russell and Wittgenstein. Sophists who dispute that Chamberlian’s Kantianism is really Kant’s transcendental idealism, should attach an annex to their disputation, which contains an elucidation of how their own “interpretation” of Kant’s idealism is itself a “rational conception,” i.e., devoid of the Kantian “conception of Kant’s transcendental” (Transzendentale Logik).

“Expressed in present–day philosophical parlance, Kant’s Transcendental Deduction may be described as an endeavour to establish a ‘warranted assertability’ with regard to a unique set of concepts, which determines the grounds and boundaries of their legitimate use. Although most of the difficulty concerns the first part of this endeavour, we shall see that these are complementary and equally essential sides of his project, because as a ‘critical’ philosopher Kant regarded all such warrants as limited and was therefore concerned to establish the bounds as well as the right to use the pure concepts of the understanding. We shall further see that, in virtue of the underlying transcendental idealism, these tasks are inseparably linked; for, as Kant notes in the Schematism, ‘the schemata of sensibility [i.e., the sensible conditions under which the categories apply to appearances] first realize the categories, yet they likewise also restrict them, i.e., limit them to conditions that lie outside the understanding (namely, in sensibility)’ (A146/B185–86). And, finally, in view of these and other considerations, it will be argued that the currently popular attempt to save the Transcendental Deduction or some reasonable facsimile thereof, by separating it from this idealism, is bound to fail.”⁴

By pretending to solve a pseudo–problem, i.e., the separation of good from bad Kantianism, in order to uplift the modern European unreason of his Kantian “conception of the transcendental,” which is really a salvaging operation, Henry Allison further endeavors to lend credence to his decontamination policies by applying the results to rescue the “popular attempt to save the Transcendental Deduction.”

“Despite its obscurity at key points and a manifestly inadequate account of the categories, which often appear to be almost an afterthought, the A–Deduction contains a carefully designed, if not elegantly executed, line of argument, the intent of which is to introduce the reader, step by step, to a radically new philosophical project. But I have also expressed a strong preference for the B–Deduction because its two–step–in–one proof–structure, in which the first step isolates the understanding in order to analyse its contribution to cognition and the second relates the formal structure of thinking stemming from the understanding to the content furnished by sensibility. My claim is that this provides a more perspicacious view of the problematic with which the Deduction in both versions is concerned; viz., the nature of the connection between what is given in sensibility in accordance with its a priori forms and the requirements of the understanding, which are themselves grounded in the synthetic unity of apperception as the supreme principle of discursive thinking.”⁶

In other words, Allison wants to “save” the transcendental deduction from his version of “bad” Kantianism, seemingly oblivious to the fact that his distinction between true and false transcendental idealism is utterly sophistical, and therefore doomed to extinction, since all Kantism is sophistry, as opposed to philosophy, — especially in the world of today. Will the sophists of the Oxford University Press, renovators of the sophistical philosophical justification, — the Copernican revolution, — of Kant’s cosmopolitan project, still receive post–BREXIT their lucrative intellectual bribes, thanks to massive EU–subsidies, once the clique of Liberal Internationalists enamored with Brussels is swept–out of the British educational authority, — and under such an eventuality, what is the fate of sophisters like Henry Allison, greatly enriched at the teats of der Merkel Apparat? The Oxford bosses can undoubtedly find new employment at the Sorbonne.

Henry E. Allison’s Kantian “interpretation” of Kant’s conception of the transcendental follows in the footsteps of Anglo–American subjectivism, relativism and irrationalism (ultimately borrowed from the modern European unreason of Moore, Russell and Wittgenstein):

“The approach will be both analytical and historical. While the main goal is to provide a critical analysis and evaluation of the Transcendental Deduction, as it is found in the first and second editions of the Critique, I share with many commentators the view that Kant’s argument can best be understood in light of the internal development of his thought, which eventually led him both to the recognition of the need for a transcendental deduction and to the forms that it took in the first two editions of the Critique. In short, I believe that in order to understand Kant’s novel project it is necessary to traverse the path through which he arrived at his understanding of the problematic to which it is addressed and his method of addressing it.”¹

The Allisonian conception of Kant’s transcendental (Transzendentale Logik) is the fountainhead of Kant’s Transcendental Idealism and Kant’s Transcendental Deduction, — part of the last great counteroffensive against Western philosophy deployed by modern European irrationalism in the English–speaking world: Henceforth the retreat becomes a rout, under the universal historical barrage of the Digital revolution, as the supremacy of American Liberty in the world of today.

When Henry E. Allison states that “Kant’s argument can best be understood in light of the internal development of his thought,” the meaning is that Kant’s “argument” can best be understood in light of writings culled from his works, a procedure characterized as the “internal development of his thought,” — which is a legitimate method of exposition. But this is not all that Allison’s statement means: The “internal development of Kant’s thought” also means that the historical personage of Immanuel Kant, during his lifetime, possessed a very special “purpose,” an attitude, state of mind, disposition, inclination, passion, desire and so forth, which is somehow “evidenced” in the texts, — a “purpose” Allison often refers to as “Kant’s project.” What we mean is this: Henry Allison’s reading of Kant’s “purpose” (Kant’s project), requires for its plausibility, some Archimedian reference beyond the Kantian corpus. The “meaning” of the phrase “internal development,” as an analytical and historical “conception” of Kant’s thought, itself comes from the transcendental Archimedian reference point beyond the Kantian corpus. The “analytical and historical” method is especially designed to justify the Allisonian distinction between texts that constitute the Kantian corpus, and those which do not, — i.e., their utilization is not permissible in the “bona fide” elucidation of Kant’s purpose. In order to shed light upon Kant’s secret “purpose” we are covertly steered down a path which must lead outside the limits of Kant’s Critique, into the fields of psychology, biography and history. We do not arbitrarily condemn the usage of psychology, biography and history in the study of philosophy, we merely inquire: Is the analytical and historical method deployed by Henry Allison in the interpretation of Kant’s conception of the transcendental, as the “internal development of Kant’s thought,” the hermeneutical and philological basis of his aforementioned works, really and truly a rational method of exact hermeneutics and philology in the field of Kant studies? We answer in the negative: The analytical and historical method deployed by Henry Allison as the methodology behind his interpretation of the “internal development” of Kant’s thought, is itself infected with modern subjectivism, relativism and irrationalism, and is therefore defective as a rational conceptualization of exact hermeneutics and philology.

We shall discover that what Henry E. Allison means by Kant’s purpose, evidenced as his project, is Kant’s conception of the transcendental as intentionality, i.e., analytic philosophy combined with transcendental phenomenology, — namely German Neo–Kantianism as propounded by the followers of Wittgenstein and Husserl, which is precisely infected with the subjectivism, relativism and irrationalism of the Kantian conception of Kant’s transcendental, especially as propounded by Chamberlain and de Vleeschauwer, — the very basis of continental “philosophy.”

Henry Allison’s Kantian transcendental ratiocination is an instance of the analytico–logico–linguistical Neo–Kantianism, as epistemology, phenomenology, empiricism, realism and so forth, imported into America by the schools of Quine, Kripke, Chomsky and Rorty. Kantians like Saul Kripke seriously argue that the evils of the twentieth century might never have even happened because “Hitler might have spent all his days in quiet in Linz.”¹“[Hitler’s] most important properties consist … in his murderous political role … [Hitler] might have lacked these properties altogether.”² The reason that Hitler’s Holocaust might never have even happened, according to Saul Kripke, is that there exists a “theoretical” world wherein people like Adolf Hitler “could have had careers completely different from their actual ones.”³From within the (relative) safety of his logico–linguistic and Hitlerian fortress, Kripke maintains that “a designator is rigid, and designates the same thing in all possible worlds.”⁴ Professor Kripke spent many years at Harvard, and other schools, adumbrating this Kantian sophistry, wherein Adolf Hitler and Mother Teresa coexist in perfect Kripkean–established harmony, for after all, the latter might never have been a saint, — but perhaps a close friend of Herr Goebbels? Wherever this strange world of Doktor Kripke may or may not actually be, whether on the side of reality or phantasy, his “rigid designator” is drenched with the blood of exact historiography and world history: “Rational Idealism [i.e.,transcendental idealism] is profound Knowledge of the Unknowable.”⁵

Saul Kripke is a follower of Kant, in the fashion of Anglo–American Kantian anti–Hegelianism, following in the footsteps of British Neo–Kantianism, advanced by Moore, Russell and Wittgenstein. Bertrand Russell for many years spread his version of Liberal Internationalism in the United States via his “logico–linguistic philosophy.” Kripke is an epigone of Neo–Kantianism in the English–speaking world:

“A problem which has arisen frequently in contemporary philosophy is: ‘How are contingent identity statements possible?’ This question is phrased by analogy with the way Kant phrased his question ‘How are synthetic a priori statements possible?’ In both cases, it has usually been taken for granted in the one case by Kant that synthetic a priori judgments were possible, and in the other case in contemporary philosophical literature that contingent statements of identity are possible … what really is possible is that people (or some rational sentient beings) could have been in the same epistemic situation as we actually are, and identify [163] a phenomenon in the same way we identify heat, namely, by feeling it by the sensation we call ‘the sensation of heat,’ without the phenomenon being molecular motion.”⁶

But Kripke frames the debate over the scientific nature of his Neo–Kantianism in terms of his own updated version of Kant’s transcendentalism:

“I do not intend to deal with the Kantian question … I will not discuss who was right on the possibility of synthetic a priori judgments.”⁷

The reason Kripke will not discuss who was right on the possibility of synthetic a priori judgments, is because he wants to advance his own updated version of Kant’s transcendentalism, and thereby transcend Moore, Russell and Wittgenstein, although not thereby to abandon his erstwhile Neo–Kantianism, but rather to adapt the message of Liberal Internationalism to the new conditions of 1960s America:

“So, it might be thought, to imagine a situation in which heat would not have been the motion of molecules, we need only imagine a situation in which we would have had the very same sensation and it would have been produced by something other than the motion of molecules. Similarly, if we wanted to imagine a situation in which light was not a stream of photons, we could imagine a situation in which we were sensitive to something else in exactly the same way, producing what we call visual experiences, though not through a stream of photons.”⁸

Saul Kripke cloaks his Anglo–American Neo–Kantianism, his version of cognitive power as transcendental (Transzendentale Logik), in the 1960s garb of “imagination,” which is his way of hiding Kant’s transcendentalism behind the verbiage of “possible worlds,” which is the basis of his theory of designation:

“Let me make some distinctions that I want to use. The first is between a rigid and a nonrigid designator. What do these terms mean? As an example of a nonrigid designator, I can give an expression such as ‘the inventor of bifocals.’ Let us suppose that it was Benjamin Franklin who invented the bifocals, and so the expression, ‘the inventor of the bifocals,’ designates or refers to a certain man, namely, Benjamin Franklin. However we can easily imagine that the world could have been different, that under different circumstances someone else would have come upon this invention before Benjamin Franklin did, and in that case, he would have been the inventor of the bifocals. So, in this sense, the expression ‘the inventor of the bifocals’ is nonrigid: Under certain circumstances one man would have been the inventor of bifocals; under other circumstances, another man would have. In contrast, consider the expression ‘the square root of 25.’ Independently of the empirical facts, we can give an arithmetical proof that the square root [145] of 25 is in fact the number 5, and because we have proved this mathematically, what we have proved is necessary. If we think of numbers as entities at all, and let us suppose, at least for the purpose of this lecture, that we do, then the expression ‘the square root of 25’ necessarily designates a certain number, namely 5. Such an expression I call ‘a rigid designator’ … What do I mean by ‘rigid designator’? I mean a term that designates the same object in all possible worlds … [146] when I use the notion of rigid designator, I do not imply that the object referred to necessarily exists. All I mean is that in any possible world where the object in question does exist, in any situation where the object would exist, we use the designator in question to designate that object. In a situation where the object does not exist, then we should say that the designator has no referent and that the object in question so designated does not exist.”⁹

(1) Let us suppose that it was Benjamin Franklin who invented the bifocals: So the expression, ‘the inventor of the bifocals,’ designates or refers to a certain man, namely, Benjamin Franklin? By merely supposing that it was Benjamin Franklin who invented the bifocals, the expression, ‘the inventor of the bifocals,’ designates or refers to a certain man? The expression, ‘the inventor of the bifocals,’ supposedly designates or supposedly refers to a certain man, namely, Benjamin Franklin. The expression, ‘the inventor of the bifocals,’ as a Kripkean “supposition,” does not actually designate or refer to any certain man: For we suppose, following in the Neo–Kantian footsteps of Saul Kripke, that it was Benjamin Franklin who invented the bifocals, but not really and truly a man named Benjamin Franklin. (2) We can easily imagine that the world could have been different, that under different circumstances someone else would have come upon this invention before Benjamin Franklin: But which world is this, that we “imagine” could have been different, since we suppose that it was “Benjamin Franklin” who invented the bifocals? The world that we imagine in this Kripkean thought experiment is an imaginary world, a phantasy. That we can easily imagine that the world could have been different, rather than we cannot easily imagine that the world could have been different, — this is another question, For what exactly is this Kripkean world, imaginary and delusional? What exactly does Saul Kripke mean by the power of our imagination? Imagination, in the Kripkean lexicon, is cognition, conceptualization, even consciousness? (3) “When I use the notion of rigid designator, I do not imply that the object referred to necessarily exists”: When Saul Kripke deploys the term rigid designator, — as opposed to a nonrigid designator, i.e., that which supposedly designates imaginary things, which are of assistance (allegedly) in the production of our phantasms, — he uses a notion of designation. What a strange notion this is, the notion of the designation of phantasms. Surely, the objection will be raised, “in any possible world where the object in question does exist, in any situation where the object would exist, we use the designator in question to designate that object”? The rational distinction between possible and actual worlds, and therefore the precise distinction between possible and impossible worlds, in his discussion of identity and necessity, is nowhere evidenced, for the very reason that Saul Kripke does not advance any conception whatsoever of “the” world, whether empirical or non–empirical. Saul Kripke means by the “power” of his imagination to “designate” rigidly and nonrigidly, precisely what Kant means by his transcendental, — i.e., as deployed in his transcendental “inferences.” The alleged potency of Kripke’s vivid imagination (the “veracity” of his realm of possible worlds) is not forwarded by himself in the name of Kant’s transcendental ratiocination, but is rather advanced covertly as the “epistemological” power of his modal logic.

According to Saul Kripke, there exists a Kripkean distinction (epistemological) between possible and impossible worlds, i.e., worlds that are really and truly possible, and ones which are not possible, — such that Kripkean possible worlds are really and truly possible, epistemologically speaking of course:

“We cannot say, for example, ‘If Nixon had only given a sufficient bribe to Senator X, he would have gotten Carswell through’ because that refers to certain people, Nixon and Carswell, and talks about what things would be true of them in a counterfactual situation. We must say instead ‘If a man who has a hairline like such and such, and holds such an such political opinions had given a bribe to a man who was a senator and had such and such other qualities, then a man who was a judge in the South and had many other qualities resembling Carswell would have been confirmed’ … Who is to prevent us from saying [148] ‘Nixon might have gotten Carswell through had he done certain things’? We are speaking of Nixon and asking of what, in certain counterfactual situations, would have been true of him. We can say that if Nixon had done such and such, he would have lost the election to Humphrey. Those I am opposing would argue, ‘Yes, but how do you find out if the man you are talking about is in fact Nixon?’ It would indeed be very hard to find out, if you were looking at the whole situation through a telescope, but that is not what we are doing here. Possible worlds are not something to which an epistemological question like this applies. And if the phrase ‘possible worlds’ is what makes anyone think some such question applies, he should just drop this phrase and use some other expression, say ‘counterfactual situation,’ which might be less misleading. If we say ‘If Nixon had bribed such and such a Senator, Nixon would have gotten Carswell through,’ what is givenin the very description of that situation is that it is a situation in which we are speaking of Nixon, and of Carswell, and of such and such a Senator. And there seems to be no less objection to stipulating that we are speaking of certain people than there can be objection to stipulating that we are speaking of certain qualities. Advocates of the other view take speaking of certain qualities as unobjectionable. They do not say, ‘How do we know that this quality (in another possible world) is that of redness?’ But they do find speaking of certain people objectionable.”¹⁰

Saul Kripke’s modal logic is Kant’s Transzendentale Logik garbed in the verbiage of “possible worlds” as his theory of designation, but is infected with modern subjectivism, relativism and irrationalism all the same: The symbological arrangements of Kripkean modal logic are likewise rendered nonsensical, by the very modern European unreason that contaminates Kripke’s Neo–Kantianism. That Saul Kripke’s modal logic is corrupted by modern unreason does not entail world historically that Kripkeanism is a dangerous obstacle to the supremacy of American superpower: As an instrument in the clearing away of the rubble of European modernity as Liberal Internationalism, Kripke’s modal logic is an American weapon of political and economic consequence. The ragged edges of Kripkean logic, once inscribed within the political and economic rationalization of Global civilization, dissolve within the conceptual rationality of the conceptualization of Americanism as the rational planetization of American Liberty in the world of today.

American Idealism destroys the analytico–logico–linguistic structure within the schools of Quine, Kripke, Chomsky and Rorty, and thereby extracts and eliminates the modern unreason of Neo–Kantianism within their delusional Liberal Internationalism, which is forthwith inscribed within the conceptual rationality of Americanism as the twenty–first century “logic” of American superpower.

With Kant in one pocket, and Hegel in the other, I walk towards the sun.

To Be Continued …

1. Immanuel Kant in Robert Bernasconi, “Kant As An Unfamiliar Source of Racism,” Philosophers on Race: Critical Essays, Julie K. Ward & Tommy L. Lott, editors, Malden, Massachusetts, Blackwell, 2002, 145–166; 148. [Italics added]

See: “The Negro … undoubtedly holds the lowest of all remaining levels by which we designate the different races.”

Immanuel Kant in Robert Bernasconi, “Kant As An Unfamiliar Source of Racism,” Philosophers on Race: Critical Essays, Julie K. Ward & Tommy L. Lott, editors, Malden, Massachusetts, Blackwell, 2002, 145–166; 148.

See: “[Kant] also warned, with reference to European breeding with either Native Americans or Blacks that race mixing degrades ‘the good race’ without lifting up ‘the bad race’ proportionately.”

Robert Bernasconi, “Kant As An Unfamiliar Source of Racism,” Philosophers on Race: Critical Essays, Julie K. Ward & Tommy L. Lott, editors, Malden, Massachusetts, Blackwell, 2002, 145–166; 155.

2. Isaiah Berlin in Bernasconi, Ibidem, 145. [Italics added]

See: “Locke, of course, was not only familiar with the use of African slaves in North America, but helped to formulate the severe code whereby the freemen of Carolina had absolute power and authority over such slaves.”

Robert Bernasconi, “Kant As An Unfamiliar Source of Racism,” Philosophers on Race: Critical Essays, Julie K. Ward & Tommy L. Lott, editors, Malden, Massachusetts, Blackwell, 2002, 145–166; 164.

See: “Immanuel Kant appears to be well on his way to becoming the prophet of ‘progressive international reform’ in the post–Cold War era.”

Cecilia Lynch in Mark F.N. Franke, “Introduction: Kant in International Relations,” Global Limits: Immanuel Kant, International Relations, and Critique of World Politics, Albany, New York, State University of New York, 2001, 1–24; 18.

See: “Kant is indeed in ascendance as the seer for many scholars predicting and theorizing the possibility of a multipolar liberal international peace. The practical impact of his work in this domain is intensifying at a substantial rate.”

Mark F.N. Franke, “Introduction: Kant in International Relations,” Global Limits: Immanuel Kant, International Relations, and Critique of World Politics, Albany, New York, State University of New York, 2001, 1–24; 18.

See finally: “For Kant, no international order could promote a lasting peace between states which required the separate states to surrender their sovereign independence to an international state, or to a world government. Hence, he insisted that international peace could come about only through the voluntary acceptance by states of an international rule of law, where this rule of law presupposed, as the condition of its own legitimacy, the retention by the states that accepted its authority of the rights that were essential to their sovereignty and independence.”

Charles Covell, Kant, Liberalism and the Pursuit of Justice in the International Order (Studies in the History of International Relations), Münster/Hamburg, Lit Verlag, 1994, 71.

3. Henry Kissinger, Diplomacy, New York, Simon & Schuster, 1994, 806–808. [Italics added]

See also: “America serves its values best by perfecting democracy at home, thereby acting as a beacon for the rest of mankind … America’s values impose on it an obligation to crusade for them around the world … [American Idealists] envisioned as normal a global international order based on democracy, free commerce, and international law. Since no such system has ever existed, its evocation often appears to other societies as utopian, if not naïve. Still, foreign skepticism never dimmed the idealism of Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, or Ronald Reagan, or indeed of all other twentieth–century American presidents. If anything it has spurred America’s faith that [modern European] history can be overcome and that if the world truly wants peace, it needs to apply America’s moral prescriptions.”
Henry Kissinger, Diplomacy, New York, Simon & Schuster, 1994, 18.

See also: “In the post–Cold War world, American idealism needs the leaven of geopolitical analysis to find its way through the maze of new complexities.”
Henry Kissinger, Ibidem, 812.

See finally: “Americans, protected by the size and isolation of their country, as well as by their own idealism and mistrust of the Old World, have sought to conduct a unique kind of foreign policy based on the way they wanted the [old] world to be, as opposed to the way it really is … Modern diplomacy emerged from the trials and experiences of the balance of power of warfare and peacemaking … America, sometimes to its peril, refused to learn its [modern European diplomacy] lessons … Americans, from the very beginning, sought a distinctive foreign policy based on [American] idealism.”
Henry Kissinger, Ibidem, Jacket.

Remarks: In contradistinction, and mortally opposed to the philosophy of American Idealism, there exists in America an ever–diminishing quantity of the outdated and surpassed tradition of modern European political and economic irrationalism as anti–Americanism (which is sometimes used by corrupt politicians in state legislatures to debase federal power, especially under the influence of Mexican and Canadian Bonapartism, but is mostly found as the rotten purview of degenerate academia): Noam Chomsky was seduced very early by the philosophical sophistry of Locke, Leibniz, Hume and Kant, namely “Europe’s Machiavellian relativism and selfishness” (Henry Kissinger), the subjectivism, relativism and irrationalism of modern European unreason: Noam Chomsky maintains the ultimate realm of logical and linguistic truth and reality is unknowable; in other words, Chomsky’s program to revise and replace traditional grammar is deeply inspired by the Kantian delusion that the ultimate realm of truth and reality is unknowable; Chomsky endeavors to transform traditional grammar based upon his version of logical and linguistic phenomena, in order to lend credence to the highfalutin verbiage with which he clothes his modern European political and economic irrationalism, and to attack his adversaries as bad grammarians, namely as Hegelians (as conservatives, right–wing extremists and fascists). Chomsky’s 20th century modern European irrationalism has collapsed in the face of Globalism and the supremacy of universal freedom in the world of today.

“Nearly fifty years ago Chomsky argued for explicit rigor, for various levels of representation provided by a theory of grammar, and for seeking a precise evaluation metric to compare grammars … we can revisit this matter and many others in light of subsequent work developing theories of grammar and spelling out the details of Universal Grammar, now seen [by Chomskyians] as defining the language faculty … It has also spawned new approaches to old philosophical questions, notions of meaning and reference, and Chomsky has taken the lead in this area.”
David W. Lightfoot, “Introduction,” Syntactic Structures, 2nd edition, Noam Chomsky, New York/Berlin, Mouton de Gruyter, 2002, v–xviii; xvi.

Noam Chomsky, according to David W. Lightfoot, is not a sophist, but is a philosopher, among other things. We will evaluate how exactly Chomsky puts into political and economic language the so–called explicit rigor, levels of representation and precise evaluation of his grammar theory. A fortiori, Chomsky’s political and economic grammar is inseparable from his theory of grammar: We will uncover and expose this link. We will examine in detail some of Noam Chomsky’s sophistical philosophical arguments with regards to his “notions” of meaning and reference in the world historical realm of political and economic language.

We will discover that Chomsky’s sophistical notions (sophisms) of meaning and reference are advanced in the world historical realm of politics and economics as “logical and linguistic” justifications for the language of modern European political and economic irrationalism. Noam Chomsky’s anti–American sophisms of meaning and reference are therefore very dangerous delusions in the Global world of today, especially in the Middle East, but also in Western countries vulnerable to terrorist attacks, such as nations in southern and eastern Europe: The anti–American ideology of Noam Chomsky and his followers is a very serious threat to America and Americans in every corner of the Globe:

“The successful use of terrorism is not considered a scandal. On the contrary, it is welcomed and applauded, including large–scale state terrorism in the Middle East–Mediterranean region sponsored or carried out directly by the United States.”
Noam Chomsky, The Culture of Terrorism, London, 1988, 92.

For what reason these labors of American Idealism? The American victims of Global terrorism, and their families, must be financially compensated for the terrible pain and suffering they have endured over the years: Class action lawsuits must be launched against Noam Chomsky and his followers, the publishing firms and websites that have backed them, and the academic institutions that have employed them. Anti–Americanism has greatly fanned the flames of terrorism and violence around the world, and contributed to radicalization and extremism, the fertile recruiting ground of terrorist organizations. Noam Chomsky and his followers have provided terrorist groups and cells across the Globe with the sophistical and ideological weapons of anti–Americanism which have greatly contributed over the decades to the contagion of terrorism and violence against America and the Western world.

How many American lives have been ruined or destroyed by anti–Americanism around the world, and how much terrorism and violence were unleashed upon America in the past half–century, thanks to the anti–American ideology of Noam Chomsky and his followers?

4. Judah Philip Benjamin (1811–1884), A Treatise on the Law of Sale of Personal Property: With References to the American Decisions and to the French Code and Civil Law, London, Henry Sweet, 1868, 299. [Italics added]

See: “There is no mystery about the origins of Bonapartism. It is the child of Napoléon Bonaparte and the French Revolution … the strong executive founded upon the plebiscite which was to be the pillar of Bonapartism; and [Napoléon] had come to the conclusion that legislative assemblies should be merely supervisory, that they should have no power to change the constitution or to interfere with the executive … This is not the place for a detailed examination of the principles of Napoléonic law. It is well, however, to notice that the civil code alone was drawn up during the Consulate, that it is nearer both in time and spirit to the revolutionary law than are the codes which were compiled in a more perfunctory manner under the darker shadows of imperial despotism … in the codes, in the common system of administration, the foundations of a modern Italy were laid. And here the memory of Napoléon was not easily forgotten … The French nation, being consulted for the third time, for the third time by an overwhelming majority ratified its belief in Bonapartism … The guiding principle of Bonapartism was autocracy founded on popular consent, safeguarding social order and social equality [social democracy, i.e., socialism].”
Herbert Albert Laurens Fisher, Bonapartism: Six Lectures Delivered in the University of London, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1908, 7–22–39–55–87–120.

See also: “We propose a comparison between the doctrine of Machiavelli, as it emerges from the Prince, and the doctrine of absolutism, which we shall endeavor to discern, not from one or another of the theorists who were its champions, but from all of them … the absolutist doctrines, in their application, lead rulers to the same results as the doctrines of Machiavelli … Machiavellism and absolutism are derived from analogous historical situations. This is the first essential point of our parallel. The historical situation inspires Machiavelli with the idea of ​​the legitimacy of every means aimed at the achievement of public interest and the salvation of the State … those who were able to study Napoléon Bonaparte very closely tell us that he was a very powerful ruler who saw the spilling of blood (sang des hommes répandu) as perhaps the greatest remedy of political medicine … The Prince of Machiavelli and the doctrines of absolutism were born of the same sentiment of profound patriotism, at times and in countries where a powerful sovereign was necessary to put an end to the disorder and turmoil of the day, the causes of national distress … Machiavelli reveals himself as an immoral patriot who wants to save the State, even though his conception of government appears as a policy that is respectful of political freedoms and that is aimed at the happiness of the people.”
Louis Couzinet, “Le Prince” de Machiavel et la théorie de l’absolutisme, Paris, Librairie Nouvelle de Droit et de Jurisprudence, Arthur Rousseau, Éditeur, 1910, xix–xxi–xxvii–136–349–352: “Nous nous proposons un rapprochement, une comparaison, entre la doctrine de Machiavel, telle qu’elle ressort du Prince, et la doctrine de l’absolutisme, que nous essayerons de dégager, non pas de tel ou tel des théoriciens qui en furent les champions; mais de l’ensemble de ces théoriciens … les doctrines absolutistes, dans leur application, conduisent les princes aux mêmes résultats que les doctrines de Machiavel … Machiavélisme et absolutisme sont issus de situations historiques analogues. C’est là un premier point essentiel de notre parallèle. Cette situation inspire à Machiavel l’idée de la légitimité de tous les moyens destinés à atteindre un but d’intérêt public et à réaliser le salut de l’État … Tous ceux qui ont pu étudier Napoléon l de près, nous disent qu’il y avait en lui le Napoléon homme d’État, qui voyait dans le sang des hommes répandu un des grands remèdes de la médecine politique … Le Prince de Machiavel et les doctrines de l’absolutisme sont nés d’un même sentiment profond de patriotisme, à des époques et dans des pays où un souverain puissant était nécessaire pour faire cesser, sous sa domination, les désordres et la désunion, causes de la détresse nationale … Machiavel nous apparaît comme un patriote sans scrupule lorsqu’il s’agit de sauver l’État. Dans sa conception du gouvernement il se révèle à nous comme un politique soucieux du bonheur du peuple et respectueux de sa liberté.”

See also: “These principalities, therefore, are secure and happy. But as they are upheld by higher causes, which the human mind cannot attain to, I will abstain from speaking of them; for being exalted and maintained by God, it would be the work of a presumptuous and foolish man to discuss them … [Rulers] cannot observe all those things which are considered good in men, being often obliged, in order to maintain the state, to act against faith, against charity, against humanity, and against religion … [Rulers] must have a mind disposed to adapt itself according to the wind, and as the variations of fortune dictate, and, as I said before, not deviate from what is good, if possible, but be able to do evil if necessitated … It is not unknown to me how many have been and are of opinion that worldly events are so governed by fortune and by God, that men cannot by their prudence change them, and that on the contrary there is no remedy whatever, and for this they may judge it to be useless to toil much about them, but let things be ruled by chance … Our freewill may not be altogether extinguished, I think it may be true that fortune is the ruler of half our actions, but that she allows the other half or a little less to be governed by us. I would compare her to an impetuous river that, when turbulent, inundates the plains, ruins trees and buildings, removes earth from this side and places it on the other; every one flies before it, and everything yields to its fury without being able to oppose it; and yet though it is of such a kind, still when it is quiet, men can make provision against it by dams and banks, so that when it rises it will either go into a canal or its rush will not be so wild and dangerous. It happens similarly with fortune, which shows her power where no measures have been taken to resist her, and turns her fury where she knows that no dams or barriers have been made to hold her … if one could change one’s nature with time and circumstances, fortune would never change … fortune is a woman, and it is necessary, if you wish to master her, to conquer her by force; and it can be seen that she lets herself be overcome by these rather than by those who proceed coldly. And therefore, like a woman, she is a friend to the young, because they are less cautious, fiercer, and master her with greater audacity … God will not do everything, in order not to deprive us of freewill.”

Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli (1469–1527), The Prince, Luigi Ricci, translator, Oxford, Humphrey Milford, 1921, 44–71–71–99–100–101–102–105. [1532]

See also: Abbé Aimé Guillon de Montléon (1758–1842), Machiavel commenté par Napoléon Bonaparte, manuscrit trouvé dans la carrosse de Bonaparte, après la bataille de Mont–Saint–Jean, le 15 février 1815, Paris, Nicolle, 1816.

See also: “The history of France between the fall of Robespierre and the rise of Napoléon is full of instruction for those who believe in representative democracy as a universal panacea for the political distempers of mankind.”

Walter Alison Phillips (1864–1950), “Preface,” After Robespierre: The Thermidorian Reaction, Albert Mathiez; Cathrine Alison Phillips, translator, New York, Grosset & Dunlap, 1965, v–vii; vii. [1931]

See: “There is a widespread impression that the French are a distinctly inferior race … A glance at the product of the French Parliament since 1879 shows that France today, as well as England, is a land where ‘freedom slowly broadens down,’ if not from precedent to precedent, at least from statute to statute. To be sure freedom is a larger thing than acts of legislatures, but it is also larger than decisions of judges.” [Italics added]

James Thomson Shotwell (1874–1965), “The Political Capacity of the French,” Political Science Quarterly, 24(1 March 1909): 115–126; 115–120.

See also: “Especially after 1871, the contagion of Kantianism in France is remarkable … Around 1880, Kantianism becomes the powerful beacon of French moral and political thought, in the eyes of those who are followers of France’s republican creed: For republican thinkers who want to be freed from ‘superstition,’ Immanuel Kant’s philosophy must provide the means of indoctrinating France’s young people with strict morality and civics, self–sacrifice and patriotism: Intellectual disciplines which will eliminate ancient French religious traditions via the powerful secular religion of republicanism.”

Albert Rivaud (1876–1956), “La diffusion du Kantisme,” Histoire de la philosophie: La philosophie allemande de 1700 à 1850: De l’Aufklärung à Schelling, première partie, tome 5, Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 1968, 273–276; 274. [1967]: “Il est remarquable que le Kantisme se vulgarise surtout après 1871 … le Kantisme devient–il, vers 1880, le symbole d’une pensée morale et politique profonde, aux yeux de ceux qui sont animés d’une foi républicaine. La philosophie de Kant doit fournir, à une pensée qui se veut affranchie de la «superstition», les moyens de répandre dans la jeunesse une moralité sévère, le civisme, le désintéressement, le patriotisme, toutes ces disciplines apportant un substitut républicain à l’ancienne formation religieuse, en somme l’armature d’une religion laïque.”

See also: “The awakening of the new age, namely, the ‘kingdom of the realized spirit’ (royaume de l’esprit réalisé), is the age of the Critical Philosophy of Immanuel Kant and the French Revolution. A free will, albeit formal, whose content is created as it touches the real, is the Kantian principle: This principle of the Critical Philosophy, without doubt, is the very basis of the French Revolution (c’est là le principe kantien et c’est, non moins, le principe de la Révolution française). The Kantian principle brings practical results to the French Revolution. Kantian reason legislates for the collective will as well as for the individual will … The French Revolution made the bold attempt to begin with individual wills, with the atoms of will: The revolutionary philosophy of Kant attacks the collective will of the Ancien Régime for its abusive privileges.”

Charles Philippe Théodore Andler (1866–1933), “Préface: Hegel,” Le pangermanisme philosophique, 1800 à 1914: Textes traduits de l’Allemand par M. Aboucaya [Claude Aboucaya?], G. Bianquis [Geneviève Bianquis, 1886–1972], M. Bloch [Gustave Bloch, 1848–1923], L. Brevet, J. Dessert, M. Dresch [Joseph Dresch, 1871–1958], A. Fabri, A. Giacomelli, B. Lehoc, G. Lenoir, L. Marchand [Louis Marchand, 1875–1948], R. Serreau [René Serreau], A. Thomas [Albert Thomas, 1878–1932], J. Wehrlin, Paris, Louis Conard, Librairie–Éditeur, 1917, xxix–xlv; xliii: “L’ère nouvelle qui s’annonce, c’est–à–dire le ‘royaume de l’esprit réalisé,’ est celle, non seulement de Kant, mais de la Révolution française. Un vouloir libre, tout formel, dont le contenu se crée à mesure qu’il touche au réel, c’est là le principe kantien et c’est, non moins, le principe de la Révolution française. Ce principe donne des résultats pratiques dans la Révolution d’abord. La raison kantienne légifère pour le vouloir collectif comme pour le vouloir individuel … La Révolution fit cette tentative audacieuse de commencer par les vouloirs individuels, par les atomes du vouloir. C’est le vouloir collectif, l’Ancien Régime, que la philosophie révolutionnaire incrimine pour ses privilèges abusifs.”

See also: “The publication of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason marks one of the two key events after which we may take nineteenth–century philosophy to begin. The other event is the French Revolution, of which many people saw Kant’s philosophy, with its emphasis on autonomy, as the theoretical correlate. ‘Nineteenth–century’ philosophy … thus actually begins in the later 1780s and the 1790s, in response to Kant’s Critical philosophy and the French Revolution.”

Alison Stone, editor, “Philosophy in the Nineteenth–Century,” The Edinburgh Critical History of Nineteenth–Century Philosophy, Howard Caygill & David Webb, general editors, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 2011, 1–12; 1.

See finally: “The standpoint of Kantian philosophy is a high one … the march of God in the world, that is what the state is.”

Eduard Gans, “Additions to The Philosophy of Right,” Great Books of the Western World: Hegel, vol. 46, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel; Thomas Malcolm Knox, translator & Robert Maynard Hutchins, editor in chief, Chicago, Encyclopedia Britannica, 1960, Addition 1–Addition 194, 115–150; Addition 86 = §135/129–Addition 152 = §258/141. [Lasson, 2nd edition, 1921]

Eduard Gans, “Zusätze aus Hegels Vorlesungen, zusammengestellt,” Naturrecht und Staatswissenschaft im Grundrisse: Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts, mit den von Eduard Gans redigierten Zusätzen aus Hegels Vorlesungen, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, neu hrsg., von Georg Lasson, Herausgegeber, [=Hegels sämtliche Werke, Band VI], Leipzig, Verlag von Felix Meiner, 1911, Zusätze 1–Zusätze 194, 281–371; Zusätze 86 = §135, 318–Zusätze 152 = §258, 349: “Den Standpunkt der Kantischen Philosophie hervorhoben … Es ist der Gang Gottes in der Welt, daß der Staat ist.”

5. John Morley (1838–1923), 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn (1882) in William Hastie, “Translator’s Introduction,” Kant’s Principles of Politics Including His Essay on Perpetual Peace: A Contribution to Political Science, William Hastie, editor & translator, Edinburgh, T. & T. Clark, 1891, vii–xliv; xxxviii–xxxix. [Italics added] See: John Morley, Studies in Literature, 1891.

See: “[158–159] According to Kant, we can never know anything but ‘phenomena,’ never a thing that exists independently of the mind. It cannot be but a subjective phenomenon, because the element of experience in it — the ‘impression,’ which is called the ‘matter’ of the object of a sense–intuition, is subjective, and the element of necessity and universality which is called the ‘form’ coming as it does from the mind, is likewise subjective. Hence the object before the mind, composed as it is by subjective elements, is wholly subjective. Yet Kant always calls such an object really objective. Because the term ‘objective’ always means for Kant, whatever contains a necessary and universal element. For such an element is the same for all human minds as they are at present constituted … [160] Now the ‘matter’ upon which these ‘apriori forms’ of the understanding are superimposed is the ‘phenomenal objects’ of ‘sense–intuition.’ The ‘phenomenal objects’ of sense are already an amalgam of ‘matter,’ — the sense–impression caused by the ‘noumenon’ plus the ‘apriori sense forms’ of ‘space’ and ‘time.’ Why are these ‘apriori forms of the understanding’ imposed upon the phenomena of sense? Because each of these sensuous phenomena are pictured by the imagination as either a substance, a cause, as one or many etc., and when they are so imaginatively pictured, the appropriate ‘apriori form of the understanding’ pops forth from ‘the fairy rath of the mind’ where live these ‘apriori forms’ and attaches itself to the sensuous phenomena and then we necessarily and universally are forced to think that such a sense–phenomenon is a substance, such another a cause, an accident, one or many etc. But in reality, of course, they are no such thing, for these ‘apriori forms’ give us no insight into reality … [166] Kant’s doctrines are destructively opposed to Catholicism. His teaching has been condemned by Popes Leo XIII and Pius X. His great work, ‘The Critique of Pure Reason’ was placed on the Index, 11th June, 1827. Inconsistent with Catholic teaching are (1) Kant’s Metaphysical Agnosticism, which declares his ignorance of all things as they really are; (2) his Moral Dogmatism which declares the supremacy of will over reason, thereby making blind will without the guidance of reason the rule of action; (3) his giving to religious dogma merely a symbolic signification; (4) diametrically opposed to scholastic teaching and the common sense of mankind is Kant’s theory of knowledge which makes mind and thought the measure of reality rather than making reality the measure of mind and thought. Kant maintains that things are so because we must think them so, not that we must think them so because they are really so independently of our thinking them. The reversal of the order of thought and reality, Kant calls his ‘Copernican Revolution’ in his theory of knowledge.”

Michael Joseph Mahony, History of Modern Thought: The English, Irish and Scotch Schools, New York, Fordham University Press, 1933, 158–159–166.

See: “Kant in his writings habitually ascribes to philosophical terms a meaning quite different from that which they traditionally bear … Kant maintains that things are so because we must think them so, not that we must think them so because they are really so.”

Michael Joseph Mahony, History of Modern Thought: The English, Irish and Scotch Schools, New York, Fordham University Press, 1933, 159–166.

See: “Many modern authors use the name ‘Formal Logic’ instead of the usual Scholastic term ‘Minor Logic’ and the Aristotelian term ‘Dialectics.’ The philosophy of Kant has popularized the term ‘Formal Logic.’ But the Kantian concept of this part of Logic is essentially different from the meaning which Scholasticism has assigned to it. In the philosophy of Kant the necessary grooves or laws which the mind must follow in its operations of reason have their origin solely in the mind; they are of the mind and in the mind. [9] We must think, Kant would say, according to these necessary laws because our minds, antecedently to all experiences of reality, are constituted that way … Kant conceives the laws of thought as ‘forms’ native to the mind and therefore as having no objective value. Hence he calls the science of these ‘forms’ ‘Formal Logic.’ Scholasticism admits these laws are in the mind but not of the mind. They are rather engendered in the mind by objective reality. They put us therefore in touch with reality. Hence ‘Formal Logic’ does not mean to Scholasticism what it means to Kantianism.”

Michael Joseph Mahony, Essentials of Formal Logic, New York, The Encyclopedia Press, Inc., 1918, 8–9.

6. See: “We want to know how far Montesquieu was dependent upon the ideas of his time and how he influenced his successors, — where we can place him in the context of European attitudes toward the Eastern world, and in the evolution of these opinions … The concept of ‘oriental despotism’ coined by the West served above all to justify the military, and especially commercial, interventions of Europeans in Asia.” [Italics added]

Rachida El Diwani, L’Orient des Lettres Persanes, Morrisville, North Carolina, Lulu Press, Inc., 2009, 1–11: “Nous sommes intéressée à savoir jusqu’où Montesquieu était tributaire des idées de son temps, comment il a influencé ses successeurs et où peut–on le placer dans le courant des attitudes européennes envers l’Orient, et dans le courant des changements et de la continuité de ces attitudes … Le concept du ‘despotisme asiatique’ forgé par l’Occident servait surtout à justifier les interventions guerrières et surtout commerciales des Européens en Asie.”

Remarks: Indeed, the Kantian traditions have used the concept of “oriental despotism” (despotisme asiatique) to justify the military, and especially commercial, interventions of Europeans in Asia. The subjective, relativistic and irrational identification of European modernity with Western civilization based upon attitudes and opinions (perspectives, views, outlooks and standpoints), is used by the selfsame outdated and surpassed Kantian traditions to disguise the political and economic irrationalism of modern Europe, in order to debase and corrupt the rational conception of Western civilization, usually as White Supremacy, White Nationalism or some such sophistry, which in the Berliner hands (Business Insider) of the Bonapartists of the European Union, — the Dieselgate aristocracy of Eurocentric Eurocracy, — is used as a modern cudgel against the big American Idealists of the White House, Washington and Wall Street, i.e., American superpower that rejects all or most European political and economic irrationalism in the realm of American finance, commerce and industry. Apart from the degenerate trans–Atlantic influence, in general, of the European Bonapartists upon their misguided puppets in the United States (thankfully very few in number, e.g., Volkswagon), the modern European truncheon of political and economic irrationalism is often used, albeit unsuccessfully, by corrupt state legislators in America to usurp federal powers, — an activity which is deeply influenced by the Bonapartism of Canada and Mexico (lesser and greater Banana Republics), especially via states along the US borders.

The Québécocrats, many of whom hide out in America, and thereby avoid retribution at the hands of their many Canadian victims (especially in Alberta), never classify their Québécocentrisme (politique fonctionnelle as Québécocentric asymmetrical federalism) as French Gaullist Bonapartism, and therefore categorically reject any historical identification of the Québec regime in Ottawa 1968–2006 (the empire of Paul Desmarais) with Bananaism.

See: Alain Grosrichard, Structure du sérail: La fiction du despotisme asiatique dans l’Occident classique, Paris, Seuil, 1979.

7. Arnold Toynbee (1852–1883), “The Chief Features of the Revolution,” Lectures on the Industrial Revolution of the Eighteenth Century in England, Popular Addresses, Notes, and Other Fragments, London, Longmans, Green, and Company, 1920, 64–73; 64. [1884]

8. Jon M. Mikkelsen, “Recent Work on Kant’s Race Theory,” Kant and the Concept of Race: Late Eighteenth–Century Writings, Jon M. Mikkelsen, translator and editor, New York, State University of New York Press, 2013, 1–40; 2–13.

9. Sean J. McGrath & Joseph Carew, editors, “What Remains of German Idealism?” Rethinking German Idealism, Joseph Carew, Wes Furlotte, Jean–Christophe Goddard, Adrian Johnston, Cem Kömürcü, Sean J. McGrath, Constantin Rauer, Alexander Schnell, F. Scott Scribner, Devin Zane Shaw, Konrad Utz & Jason M. Wirth, contributors, London, Palgrave Macmillan, 2016, 1–19; 4.

See: “After Hegel’s death, his former students came together with the rather noble thought of assembling various transcripts of the lecture series he gave and to which they had access, hoping to bring to the light of a general public the ‘system’ that [they] were convinced was completed for years and presented orally in the lecture hall. However, the methodologies through which they assembled these transcripts into standalone monographs, with the aid of Hegel’s own manuscripts for his lectures, is [are] dubious at best. They paid little to no attention to changes between different lecture courses, combining them as they saw fit to guarantee the logical progression of the dialectical movement as they interpreted it. But without the original source material, it was impossible to test the suspicion that they may have falsified Hegel’s own views. Indeed, it was all we had to go on to have any understanding of his views. Now, however, many manuscripts and transcripts — even ones not available to his students — have been found. When one compares these manuscripts and transcripts with the lectures published by his students, the differences between them are in no case simply philological niceties … this information may drastically challenge our historical picture of Hegel.”

Sean J. McGrath & Joseph Carew, editors, “What Remains of German Idealism?” Rethinking German Idealism, Joseph Carew, Wes Furlotte, Jean–Christophe Goddard, Adrian Johnston, Cem Kömürcü, Sean J. McGrath, Constantin Rauer, Alexander Schnell, F. Scott Scribner, Devin Zane Shaw, Konrad Utz & Jason M. Wirth, contributors, London, Palgrave Macmillan, 2016, 1–19; 4. [Italics added]

See also: “The transcripts known today for all the Berlin lecture series are consistently, even surprisingly, reliable testimonies … It may indeed be disconcerting that only today do we doubt — and not everyone does — that Hegel’s lectures … are actually reproduced authentically in the published [Berlin] edition … that did not become full–blown for more than a hundred and fifty years. We can hardly examine here all the reasons for this circumstance.”
Annemarie Gethmann–Siefert, “Introduction: The Shape and Influence of Hegel’s Aesthetics,” Lectures on the Philosophy of Art: The Hotho Transcript of the 1823 Berlin Lectures, Robert F. Brown, editor and translator, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2014, 7–176; 32–36–36–36.

See also: “Hegel’s own course notes and those of his students should be used with caution to clarify and illustrate the meaning of the texts he published during his lifetime … In general, the student notes written during or after Hegel’s classes should be used with caution … What has been said about the student notes must also be applied to the so–called Zusatze (additions), added by ‘the friends’ to the third edition of the Encyclopedia (1830) and the book on Rechtsphilosophie … Some commentators, however, seem to prefer the Zusatze over Hegel’s own writings; additions are sometimes even quoted as the only textual evidence for the interpretation of highly controversial issues. For scholarly use, however, we should use them only as applications, confirmations, or concretizations of Hegel’s theory. Only in cases where authentic texts are unavailable may they be accepted as indications of Hegel’s answers to questions that are not treated in his handwritten or published work. If they contradict the explicit theory of the authorized texts, we can presume that the student is wrong, unless we can show that it is plausible that they express a change in the evolution of Hegel’s thought … According to Leopold von Henning’s preface (pp. vi–vii) in his edition (1839) of the Encyclopädie of 1830, the editors of the Encyclopedia sometimes changed or completed the sentences in which the students had rendered Hegel’s classes.”

Adriaan Theodoor Basilius Peperzak, Modern Freedom: Hegel’s Legal, Moral, and Political Philosophy (Studies in German Idealism), Reinier Munk, series editor, Dordrecht, Springer Science+Business Media, B.V., 2001, xvi–27–28–29–29.

See also: “[The] more sympathetic tradition in Hegel scholarship has reasserted itself decisively since the middle of this century, to such an extent that there is now a virtual consensus among knowledgeable scholars that the earlier images of Hegel, as philosopher of the reactionary Prussian restoration and forerunner of modern totalitarianism, are simply wrong, whether they are viewed as accounts of Hegel’s attitude toward Prussian politics or as broader philosophical interpretations of his theory of the state.”

Allen William Wood, editor, “Editor’s Introduction,” Elements of the Philosophy of Right, G.W.F. Hegel; Hugh Barr Nisbet, translator, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2003, vii–xxxii; ix. [1991]

See also: “[In The Philosophy of Right] the state so described is unlike any existing state in Hegel’s day. It is a form of limited monarchy, with parliamentary government, trial by jury and toleration for Jews and dissenters. In all these respects it differed from the contemporary Prussia. It has often been said by Hegel’s detractors that his book was written on the ‘dunghill of servility’ and that his ideal state is identified with the monarchy of Friedrich William III. Little historical knowledge and little study of Hegel is required to see that this is nonsense.”

Thomas Malcolm Knox, “Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel,” Encyclopedia Britannica, 14th edition, vol. 11, Chicago, William Benton, 1967, 298–303; 302.

See also: “The problem as to whether or not and to what extent Hegel succeeded in overcoming Kant’s ‘thing–in–itself’ is a separate question. At any rate, this was his aim. In a metaphysics of the Absolute Spirit, realities beyond the realm of knowledge, in so far as the ‘thing–in–itself’ represents such realities, cannot exist.”

Richard Hoenigswald, “Philosophy of Hegelianism,” Twentieth Century Philosophy: Living Schools of Thought, Dagobert David Runes, editor, New York, Philosophical Library, 1947, 267–291; 270.

See also: “It is a mistake to regard his [Hegel’s] philosophy as nothing more than the logical outcome of Kant’s system. The influence of Greek philosophy on Hegel, particularly of Plato and Aristotle, must not be overlooked. Indeed, it is not difficult to defend the thesis that the essentials of Hegel’s philosophy are to be found in Plato and Aristotle and that all that he did was to make a new synthesis of them with such modifications as modern knowledge required. The beginning, for example, of his logic, all that he says about being and nothing, will be found almost in identical terms in Plato’s Parmenides.”
Hiralal Haldar, Neo–Hegelianism, London, Heath Cranton, Ltd., 1927, 10.

See finally: “It is the Transcendental Deduction that has played the most important part in the arguments of the English Kantio–Hegelians.”
Andrew Seth Pringle–Pattison in Hiralal Haldar, Essays in Philosophy, Calcutta, University of Calcutta, 1920, 6.

10. Anonymous, “Karl Rosenkranz: The Life of Hegel,” The Biblical Repertory and Princeton Review, 20.4(October, 1848): 561–591; 575–586.

See: “[153] [Hegel’s] system was hailed in Germany as the highest effort of human wisdom; and, even at this hour, it constitutes the philosophical creed of more than one half of all the speculative literati in that country … [155] For a more detailed account of Hegel’s ‘Logik,’ see his Cyclopedia of Philosophical Sciences, vol. 6 … [157] As a mere piece of speculative philosophy, the system of Hegel is absurd and untenable … These views have, as might naturally be expected, from the celebrity of their author, been prolific of the most wild and outrageous theological doctrines in Germany; doctrines so entirely denuded of every particle of scriptural authority and common sense, that we stand aghast in amazement at the audacity and folly which gave utterance to them. There are, however, distinctive signs that this fever of [159] speculative folly is now rapidly abating; and that there are good grounds for hoping that German philosophy will once more come within the pale of reason and common sense.”

Robert Blakey, “Chapter II: Metaphysical Writers of Germany, From the Year 1800 Until the Present Day: George Wm. Fred. Hegel,” History of the Philosophy of Mind: Embracing the Opinions of All Writers On Mental Science From the Earliest Period to the Present Time, vol. 4, London, Trelawney Wm. Saunders, 1848, 149–159; 155–157–158–159. [Italics added]

1. Joseph Alden (1807–1885), Elements of Intellectual Philosophy, New York, D. Appleton & Company, 1866, 290.

See: “[29] No writer has carried personification of the faculties to a greater length than has Kant. ‘Pure reason,’ he says, ‘leaves every thing to the understanding which refers immediately to the objects of the intuition, or rather to their synthesis in the imagination.’ Here the mind disappears altogether, and certain imaginary entities take its place … [102] Consciousness does not affirm that the mind creates space: It affirms that the mind cognizes it. It is not, then, a creation of the mind, a subjective state, as is held by Kant … [107] we know that duration is. Like space, it is neither a material nor a spiritual existence. It is not a creation of the mind or form of our cognitions, as is asserted by Kant and others — whatever that phrase may mean … [219] The absolute perfection of God is revealed to us.”

Joseph Alden, Elements of Intellectual Philosophy, New York, D. Appleton & Company, 1866, 29–102–107–219.

See also: “That which belongs to time and space on the one hand, is (according to Kant) bare phenomenon or appearance, behind which the real thing hides itself; neither, on the other hand, have the ideas of the pure reason anything but a negative import; and so this philosophy, both in its lower and higher movement, remains entirely empty of all reality; it is a theory wisely founded indeed, and admirable in its original plan, but on account of one error (that respecting time and space) in the outset, and the logical consequences of it in the execution, it sinks at last into an enormous deficit, and ends in a palpable contradiction.”

Immanuel Hermann Fichte (1796–1879) in John Daniel Morell, Historical and Critical View of the Speculative Philosophy of Europe in the Nineteenth Century, 2nd edition, 1 volume edition, New York, Robert Carter, 1848, 175. [1846–1847]

See also: “The weightiest objection against the doctrines of Kant we conceive to be the fact, that he makes reason, with all its conclusions, purely subjective and personal. The categories with him are simply subjective laws, while the supersensual ideas or noumena, which the reason forms, are nought but regulative principles, and can point us to no real existence, inasmuch as we have no right to transport them out of ourselves, and make them signs of objective reality. Truth may, therefore, ever be truth, so long as our minds remain as they are; but as we can never get beyond the bounds of our own subjectivity, we are not at liberty to affirm that any conclusion of our reason is ‘per se’ eternally true, or that to us there is such a thing as truth at all, outside the limits of our own direct consciousness. The ground of this delusion (for as such we assuredly regard it) appears to lie in the purely abstract view which Kant endeavored to take of the a priori element in human knowledge. Anxious to separate this element from any admixture of empiricism, he views it solely in its connection with the human mind. Phenomenon and essence, matter and form, are regarded as entirely distinct from each other, and the effort of Kantism is to establish the reality of each element in its isolation [176] Essential existence, however, never reveals itself per se: We cannot realize in a direct consciousness the bare essence either of the soul or the world, and consequently Kant is obliged to view them on his principles, simply as subjective forms or laws of our own reason. Had he traced up the actual character of our ideas to their primitive state or origin, it would have become at once apparent, that nothing is given to us originally in the abstract, but always in the concrete; that essential existence reveals itself to us, first in connection with phenomena, and that it is only by degrees that we view it abstractedly, as the substratum by which all phenomena are supported. In Kant’s entire separation of the pure and abstract element of our knowledge from the empirical, we recognize the germ of a principle which tends inevitably to a subjective idealism. The idea of nature, it is true, is not destroyed, but it is contracted to the narrowest possible limits; — the idea of God, or the absolute, is banished altogether from the region of strict philosophy, and made to rest only upon a lower kind of belief; the reason, that emanation from heaven, that portion of eternal truth that is granted by the infinite mind to the finite, is turned into a personal and regulative law, while, on the other hand, the subjective ME, if it does not actually create matter, yet gives it all its attributes, includes as part of itself all the categories from which the laws of nature, as perceived by us, originate, and possesses the idea of God, in such a manner as simply to imply an inward principle, not at all as indicating an outward fact. The grand error is the want of faith in reason as the revealer of eternal verities. Admit the non–personality of reason; place it on the same footing as consciousness; mould the Kantian doctrine to this idea, and it would evolve a mass of abstract truth which no scepticism could shake. As it stands, however, it has given occasion to the re–separation of the empirical and a priori elements, which it strove to unite into an indissoluble synthesis. In this separation the whole of the modern German idealism has its commencement … To search into the monuments [550] of antiquity, is, indeed, a labor for which the German mind is admirably qualified; but when all the authority of these records is discovered, its independence prompts further questions of this nature: — What is the authority of this authority? What means had men of yore to discover truth more than I have myself? Or, if the authority be Divine, the question still comes, What is the testimony on which it rests? What the process by which it reaches my own mind? What the ideas it involves? The German thinker is too subjective in his views and tendencies to be satisfied with any merely objective evidence. He wants to know what must necessarily be true to himself individually; what confidence is to be placed even in the dictates of his own reason and his own consciousness; in other words, he wants a fundamental philosophy as a substratum, before he can allow to authority the command, which it claims over the human mind.

The only scepticism, then, of which Germany is in danger, is that of the philosophical or absolute kind; for, should the reflections and the investigations of her metaphysicians in any instances so clash with one another, that no definite results can be arrived at, such a scepticism, of course, must follow. The only instance, perhaps, in the whole philosophical history of Germany, in which a shallow scepticism came into vogue, is to be found during the reign of the Leibnitzian–Wolfian metaphysics. At that time the influx of French writers, on the one hand, disseminated a low, worthless sensationalism; while, on the other, the pedantry and formalism of the idealistic school brought the deeper method of philosophizing into universal contempt. The result was what we just remarked; a low, shallow, and railing scepticism, un–German in its real character, but rendered sufficiently influential by circumstances to produce a baneful effect, both upon literature and morals. It was this, in fact, that roused up the mighty spirit of Kant to an intellectual effort, which swept away all the minor actors from the stage, and commenced a new scene in the wondrous drama of the world’s philosophy.

Whilst Kant, however, opposed so successfully the shallow scepticism of the age in which he lived, his philosophy contained many germs of another species of scepticism far more deep and philosophical. Determined to silence forever the quibbles and sophistries, in which so many were indulging, respecting the fundamental questions of ontology, of morals, of religion, he conceived the idea of removing them into a region altogether inaccessible to the reach [551] of ordinary logic, and there to let them repose in solemn majesty. The general idea of the Kantian metaphysics is, we trust, sufficiently remembered by the attentive reader to render repetition needless; but still, to prevent the obscurity, which a too great brevity might cause, we shall re–enumerate one or two of the principal conclusions. Of the three great faculties of the human mind, sensation, understanding, and reason, the first alone is capable of furnishing the material of our knowledge, the two latter are merely formal. Sensation gives us the simple fact of objective existence; understanding gives form to whatever notions we may have of it. Sensation, accordingly, in making known to us the reality of an objective world, does not tell us of what it consists, whether it be of a spiritual or of any other essence; it simply assures us of objective phenomena; and to these phenomena, accordingly, our real knowledge of the world without must be confined. Again: Since the understanding gives to our notions all their peculiar forms and aspects, defining their quantity, quality, relation, and mode of existence, this part of our knowledge must be purely subjective, and its truth, consequently, depend upon the validity of our faculties. But further; not only is the understanding merely formal in its nature, but reason is so likewise. Reason strives to bring the notions of the understanding to a systematic unity, and in doing so it personifies its own laws, and regards them as having a real objective existence; the three personifications being the soul, the universe, and the Deity. Any logical reasoning upon these three ideas, upon their existence, or their nature, Kant shows to be entirely fallacious, giving rise in each instance to endless paralogisms. They are, in fact, as ideas, the spontaneous productions of our own reason, and to argue upon them as being either realities or non–realities, is allowing the understanding to intrude upon a province (that, namely, of the supersensual or spiritual) with which it has nothing whatever to do.

In this way, Kant removed the chief points around which scepticism delighted to linger entirely out of the reach of all argumentation. If any one disputed respecting the material world, his reply was, ‘Of what value is discussion about an existence, of which we can never know aught beyond mere phenomena?’ Should any one contest or propound any theories respecting the nature of the soul, the origin of the world, or the existence of God, the same withering repulse was given, ‘Why reason of that which lies beyond all reasoning?’ ‘Your notions of the soul, of the universe [552] of God,’ he would continue, ‘are but subjective ideas; they are personifications of your own mental processes; I can give you strong reasons of a moral nature to believe in the soul and in God; but, as for theoretical science, it is incapable of saying anything whatever, whether it be for or against.’

But now it becomes a question to us, whether Kant, in cutting off the plea of the sceptic of his day, did not prove too much and whether he does not give occasion to another kind of scepticism, more deeply laid than that which he destroyed. Let us see the results, to which his principles gave origin.”

John Daniel Morell, Historical and Critical View of the Speculative Philosophy of Europe in the Nineteenth Century, 2nd edition, 1 volume edition, New York, Robert Carter, 1848, 175–549. [1846+1847]

2. See: “Admirers of Hegel are accustomed to refer to the first edition [Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences], as having most of the author’s freshness and power … in America, no one can look back a few years, without observing that the whole tone of our public men has changed, and that the phrases, ‘progress,’ ‘necessary development,’ and ‘God in history,’ occur with marked frequency.”

Anonymous, “Karl Rosenkranz: The Life of Hegel,” The Biblical Repertory and Princeton Review, 20.4(October, 1848): 561–591; 575–586.

3. Joseph Alden, Elements of Intellectual Philosophy, Ibidem.

4. Remarks: In the conceptualization of the rational conception of the science of theology, philosophical conceptions applied to theology are no more theological conceptions, in the modern European pejorative sense, than the application of philosophical conceptions to physics, in the conceptualization of the rational conception of the science of physics, are themselves conceptions of physics, in the modern European non–pejorative sense: Our conceptualization of the conception of philosophical theology as well as the conception of philosophical physics is the same, in the conceptual rationality of the conceptualization of the conception of the rational world.

After the Kantian Copernican revolution, philosophers maintain that thought of phenomena and noumena is real, matter, physical even if based on illusion and incomplete perception. Sophists maintain thought of phenomena is real, matter, physical even if based on illusion and incomplete perception. German Idealism elevates the Western conception of mind and matter, nature and spirit made popular since the time of Descartes: Since the birth of genuine Hegelianism, what philosophers name as thought based upon illusion and incomplete perception is very different from the German Idealism of the sophists. The same remark holds good of phenomena and noumena.

5. Alden, Elements of Intellectual Philosophy, 291.

6. Alden, Ibidem.

7. Renatus Cartesius, “Secundæ Responsiones,” Œuvres de Descartes: Meditationes de Prima Philosophia, vol. 7, Charles Adam & Paul Tannery, éditeurs, Paris, Léopold Cerf, 1904, 128–159; 140–141. [1641]

Remark: How very clear and distinct are the ideas of Cartesius, coming from his very own hand, although his best translators are also clear and distinct, but less clear and less distinct than the very words of Cartesius himself, as found in his very greatest works, since his Latin is now a dead language, while his modern interpreters fail to elucidate the rational foundations of their sophistical critiques.

Some interpretations of Descartes are very ingenious: “A decisive impetus to the interpretation I offer is imparted by Kant. While Kant’s concerns aren’t those of a professional historian of philosophy (although he has claims to have established the discipline), his backwards–directed perception is, I am convinced, far acuter than that of latter–day analysts. As I shall show towards the end, Kant’s writings contain the categorial polarity so central to my reading. Since I take my cue from Kant, the discussion of Descartes therefore has a slightly unusual historical cast: It is drawn forward by the Kantian terminus ad quem rather than pushed ahead from the scholastic terminus a quo … it is both mildly paradoxical and highly flattering to Kant that the lesson that might otherwise have been learned from him is completely missed, owing to his magnificent success in converting the field to his way of thinking. The dominant [12] metaphilosophy of our age has a Kantian provenance. Post–Kantian orthodoxy places philosophy in a characteristically oblique relation to science, divesting it of the dictatorial functions attributable to a foundational discipline. But Kant didn’t fail to say of his metaphilosophical revolution that it has substantive implications, which he puts by denying to man the possibility of knowledge of ‘things in themselves’; nearly enough, knowledge of the only kind that Descartes regards as worthy of the title … Descartes’ criticism of experience and knowledge as we know it — of the probable — isn’t immanently justified. If at all, it is justified only relative to a view of the world — a certain view — transcendent of our mundane patterns of cognition … Kant’s position is a development of the negative side of Descartes’ overall theory.”

Mark Glouberman, Descartes: The Probable and the Certain, Amsterdam, Rodopi, 1986, 11–11–12–346–346.

Remark: The rational distinction between Descartes, Spinoza, Berkeley and Hegel on the one side, as opposed to Locke, Leibniz, Hume and Kant on the other, is conceptualized world historically, — following in the footsteps of rational Hegelianism, — at once positively and negatively, which means dialectically: The universal notion of Western civilization, as opposed to European modernity in the strife between philosophy and sophistry (science and ideology), as the struggle between superior and inferior ruling classes, is therefore dialectically cognized as the conceptual rationality of universal freedom in the world of today.

Therefore, the idea of the Cartesian distinction between certainty and probability, as outlined above, is not the essence of the conceptual rationality of the history of Western philosophy and European modernity, which instead resides within the epistemological and ontological clash between reason and unreason, which is the world historical marrow of the former opposition, as the notion of universal freedom, — in rational Hegelian contradistinction to modern European right.

1. David Hume (1777) in Christopher J. Berry, Hume, Hegel and Human Nature, The Hague, Martinus Nijhoff, 1982, 108. [Italics added]

2. David Hume, “Part I, Essay XXI: Of National Characters,” The Philosophical Works of David Hume, Including all the Essays, and Exhibiting the More Important Alterations and Corrections in the Successive Editions Published by the Author: Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary, vol. 3, Edinburgh/Boston, 1854, 217–236; 228–229. [1752]

See: “I am apt to suspect the negroes and in general all the other species of men (for there are four or five different kinds) to be naturally inferior to the whites. There never was a civilized nation of any other complexion than white, nor even any individual eminent either in action or speculation. No ingenious manufacturer amongst them, no arts, no sciences. On the other hand, the most rude and barbarous of the whites, such as the ancient GERMANS, the present TARTARS, still have something eminent about them, in their valour, form of government, or some other particular. Such a uniform and constant difference could not happen in so many countries and ages, if nature had not made an original distinction betwixt these breeds of men.”

David Hume (1752) in Richard H. Popkin, “The Philosophical Basis of Eighteenth–Century Racism,” Racism in the Eighteenth–Century, Harold E. Pagliaro, editor, Cleveland/London, Case Western Reserve University Press, 1973, 245–262; 245.

See: David Hume, “Of National Characters,” Essays and Treatises on Several Subjects, London, T. Cadell, 1777, 208.

See also: “In the Political Discourses, Hume described the slavery of antiquity in horrific detail; he questioned the simile of arbitrary power as being like slavery; he added a homily to the equity of modern times (‘a bad servant finds not easily a good master, nor a bad master a good servant; and the checks are mutual, suitably to the inviolable and eternal laws of reason and equity’). But in a later passage — a footnote which he added in 1754 to his essay ‘Of National Characters’ — he expressed a view [92] of the natural inferiority of Africans which became one of the founding texts, even within his own lifetime, of the defense of slavery. Hume’s footnote was very far from being insouciant, or unintended. ‘I am apt to suspect the negroes, and in general all the other species of men (for there are four or five different kinds) to be naturally inferior to the whites,’ he wrote in 1754; in a version of the essay prepared not long before his death, and published in 1777, the capricious assertion of white superiority was reduced to the assertion of black inferiority. ‘I am apt to suspect the Negroes to be naturally inferior to the Whites’ Hume wrote in 1776; he likened the ‘one negroe’ in Jamaica (Francis Williams, the Latin poet) who was supposed to be ‘a man of parts and learning,’ to ‘a parrot, who speaks a few words plainly.’ Hume’s sentiments in respect of African slavery have been considered, rightly, as one of the most disturbing evils of enlightenment thought, and they are difficult to understand. Even in his own lifetime, the footnote was the subject of intense interest, of which he must to at least some extent have been aware. He was undoubtedly aware of the devastating criticism of his views by James Beattie in his Essay on Truth of 1777.”

Emma Rothschild, “David Hume and the Seagods of the Atlantic,” The Atlantic Enlightenment, Susan Manning & Francis D. Cogliano, editors, Burlington, Vermont, Ashgate Publishing Company, 2008, 81–96; 91–92.

See also: “Hume’s footnote, as Henry Louis Gates has shown, inspired Kant to assert that ‘the Negroes in Africa have by nature no feeling that rises above the trifling,’ and Hegel to abandon the supposed universality of Enlightenment: ‘the peculiarly African character is difficult to comprehend, for the very reason that in reference to it, we must quite give up the principle which naturally accompanies all our ideas — the category of Universality.’ Hume is not to be blamed for Hegel.”

Emma Rothschild, “The Atlantic Worlds of David Hume,” Soundings in Atlantic History: Latent Structures and Intellectual Currents, 1500–1830, Bernard Bailyn & Patricia L. Denault, editors, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 2009, 405–448; 423.

See also: “Hume’s rejection of ethical relativism is an important indicator of the tenor of his thought, because it shows the definite limits to his acceptance (and appreciation) of the significance of social differences. In this regard, Duncan Forbes drives too substantial a wedge between Hume’s sociological relativism and his (admitted) abjuration of ethical relativism. In terms of Hume’s intellectual situation the abjuration signals the attenuated character of his sociological relativism. Though Hume’s position (as interpreted by Forbes) is of course defensible, it requires a sophistication in distinguishing the ethical from the social for which Hume himself had no need. As noted above, Hume is able to treat the whole issue of understanding an alien culture as unproblematical for, as this study is aiming to show, it is post–Humean development of a contextualist [Kantio–Hegelian] theory of human nature that makes this issue contentious by rejecting the uniformitarianism that made all human activity explicable (comprehensible) on the same non–societally specific principles.”
Christopher J. Berry, Hume, Hegel and Human Nature, The Hague, 1982, 107.

3. Andrew Valls, editor, “‘A Lousy Empirical Scientist’: Reconsidering Hume’s Racism,” Race and Racism in Modern Philosophy, Ithaca/London, 2005, 129–149; 144.

See: “The ‘I am apt to suspect’ phrasing is used elsewhere by Hume, in his Essay Concerning the Principles of Morals, for endorsing views that he reckons are ‘solid and satisfactory.’ The first version of the footnote was commented on by contemporaries and by modern writers including Richard Popkin.”

Gabrielle D.V. White, Jane Austen in the Context of Abolition: “A Fling at the Slave Trade,” New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2006, 110.

4. Bernard R. Boxill, “Black Liberation — Yes!” The Liberation Debate: Rights at Issue, Michael Leahy & Dan Cohn–Sherbok, New York/London, Routledge, 1996, 51–64; 62.

*See: “Europe’s Machiavellian relativism and selfishness,” Henry Kissinger, Diplomacy, New York, Simon & Schuster, 1994, 820.

5. Duncan Forbes (1922–1994), “Introductory Preface,” Hume’s Philosophical Politics, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1985, vii–xii; vii. [1975] [Italics added]

6. Duncan Forbes, editor, “Introduction,” Lectures on the Philosophy of World History, Introduction: Reason in World History, G.W.F. Hegel & Karl Hegel; Hans Reiss (assistant) & Hugh Barr Nisbet, editor and translator; Johannes Hoffmeister, German editor, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1998, vii–xxxv; xiii–xiv–xiv. [1840–1955–1975]

7. Sean J. McGrath & Joseph Carew, editors, “What Remains of German Idealism?” Rethinking German Idealism, Joseph Carew, Wes Furlotte, Jean–Christophe Goddard, Adrian Johnston, Cem Kömürcü, Sean J. McGrath, Constantin Rauer, Alexander Schnell, F. Scott Scribner, Devin Zane Shaw, Konrad Utz & Jason M. Wirth, contributors, London, Palgrave Macmillan, 2016, 1–19; 4.

See: Christian Neugebauer, “The Racism of Kant and Hegel,” Sage Philosophy: Indigenous Thinkers and Modern Debate on African Philosophy, H. Odera Oruka, editor, New York, Brill, 1990, 259–272; Michael H. Hoffheimer, “Race and Law in Hegel’s Philosophy of Religion,” Race and Racism in Modern Philosophy, Andrew Valls, editor, Ithaca/London, Cornell University Press, 2005, 194–216.

8. Adriaan Theodoor Basilius Peperzak, Modern Freedom: Hegel’s Legal, Moral, and Political Philosophy (Studies in German Idealism), Reinier Munk, series editor, Dordrecht, Springer Science+Business Media, B.V., 2001, xvi–27–28–29–29.

See: “The German philosopher Hegel argued that human beings are ‘human’ in part because they have memory. History is written or collective memory. Written history is reliable, repeatable memory, and confers value. Without such texts, civilization cannot exist. ‘At this point we leave Africa,’ he pontificated, ‘not to mention it again. For it is no historical part of the world; it has no movement or development to exhibit.’”

Henry Louis Gates Jr., “Opinion: Henry Louis Gates Jr.: Restoring Black History,” New York Times, 23 September 2016.

See also: “Hegel, echoing Hume and Kant, claimed that Africans had no history, because they had developed no systems of writing and had not mastered the art of writing in European languages.”

Henry Louis Gates Jr., Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Reader, Abby Wolf, editor, New York, Basic Civitas Books, 2012.

See finally: Henry Louis Gates Jr., Figures in Black: Words, Signs, and the “Racial” Self, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1987, 19–25.

9. Annemarie Gethmann–Siefert, “Introduction: The Shape and Influence of Hegel’s Aesthetics,” Lectures on the Philosophy of Art: The Hotho Transcript of the 1823 Berlin Lectures, Robert F. Brown, editor and translator, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2014, 7–176; 32–36–36–36.

See: “The year 1992 poses a critical moral and cultural challenge for the more privileged sectors of the world–dominant societies. The challenge is heightened by the fact that within these societies, notably the first European colony liberated from imperial rule, popular struggle over many centuries has achieved a large measure of freedom, opening many opportunities for independent thought and committed action. How this challenge is addressed in the years to come will have fateful consequences. October 11, 1992 brings to an end the 500th year of the Old World Order, sometimes called the Colombian era of world history, or the Vasco da Gama era, depending on which adventurers bent on plunder got there first. Or ‘the 500–year Reich,’ to borrow the title of a commemorative volume that compares the methods and ideology of the Nazis with those of the European invaders who subjugated most of the world. The major theme of this Old World Order was a confrontation between the conquerors and the conquered on a global scale. It has taken various forms, and been given different names: Imperialism, neocolonialism, the North–South conflict, core versus periphery, G–7 (the 7 leading state capitalist industrial societies) and their satellites versus the rest. Or, more simply, Europe’s conquest of the world … ‘Hegel discoursed authoritatively on the same topics in his lectures on philosophy of history, brimming with confidence as we approach the final ‘phase of World–History,’ when Spirit reaches ‘its full maturity and strength’ in ‘the German world.’ Speaking from that lofty peak, he relates that native America was ‘physically and psychically powerless,’ its culture so limited that it ‘must expire as soon as Spirit approached it.’ Hence ‘the aborigines …gradually vanished at the breath of European activity.’ ‘A mild and passionless disposition, want of spirit, and a crouching submissiveness … are the chief characteristics of the native Americans,’ so ‘slothful’ that, under the kind ‘authority of the Friars,’ ‘at midnight a bell had to remind them even of their matrimonial duties.’ They were inferior even to the Negro, ‘the natural man in his completely wild and untamed state,’ who is beyond any ‘thought of reverence and morality — all that we call feeling’; there is ‘nothing harmonious with humanity … in this type of character.’ ‘Among the Negroes moral sentiments are quite weak, or more strictly speaking non–existent.’ ‘Parents sell their children, and conversely children their parents, as either has the opportunity,’ and ‘The polygamy of the Negroes has frequently for its object the having many children, to be sold, every one of them, into slavery.’ Creatures at the level of ‘a mere Thing — an object of no value,’ they treat ‘as enemies’ those who seek to abolish slavery, which has ‘been the occasion of the increase of human feeling among the Negroes,’ enabling them to become ‘participant in a higher morality and the culture connected with it’ … Hegel, Philosophy, 108–9, 81–2, 93–6; ‘the German world’ presumably takes in Northwest Europe … Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. The Philosophy of History (Dover, 1956; Lectures of 1830–31).”

Noam Chomsky, Year 501: The Conquest Continues, Montréal/New York, Black Rose Books, 1993, 3–4–5–291–313.

10. Neville Chamberlain, The Struggle For Peace, Toronto, Allen, 1939, 33. [Italics added]

Remark: In this instance, Chamberlain does not face every situation that arises, — he faces Hitlerite Germany: Neville Chamberlain “reconciles” his ideology with European events, and the result is subjectivism, relativism and irrationalism in the arena of modern British world politics and economics. Neville Chamberlain therefore fails to rationally reconcile the Industrial and French Revolutions in his domestic and foreign political and economic policy precisely because he is the fateful prisoner of 19th century British Kantio–Hegelian nationalism and imperialism.

11. Edward Hallett Carr, The Twenty Years’ Crisis, 1919–1939: An Introduction to the Study of International Relations, 2nd edition, London, Macmillan, 1962, 20–21–21. [1939]

See: “By my definition, a theory of international politics would be a set of generally valid and logically consistent propositions that explain the outcomes of interactions between and among political actors. As such, the theory would contain three kinds of statements: (1) those which identify or take inventory of components and properties of international systems and events, (2) those which identity and describe relationships among the components and properties of the international systems and events, and (3) those which explain or otherwise account for such relationships.”
Donald James Puchala, International Politics Today, New York, Dodd, Mead, 1971, 358.

12. Anonymous, “Obituary: Duncan Forbes, 1922–1994,” Bulletin of the Hegel Society of Great Britain, (1994): 112–113; 112.

13. Duncan Forbes, editor, “Introduction,” Lectures on the Philosophy of World History, Introduction: Reason in World History, G.W.F. Hegel & Karl Hegel; Hans Reiss (assistant) & Hugh Barr Nisbet, editor and translator; Johannes Hoffmeister, German editor, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1998, vii–xxxv; xxxv. [1840–1955–1975]

14. Johann Eduard Erdmann, A History of Philosophy: German Philosophy Since Hegel, 4th German edition, vol. 3, Williston S. Hough, translator, London, Swann Sonnenschein, 1899, 66–81.

15. Karl Marx in Bertrand Russell, German Social Democracy: Six Lectures, With an Appendix on Social Democracy and the Woman Question in Germany by Alys Russell, London and New York, Longmans, Green and Company, 1896, 4–5. [Italics added]

16. William Wallace (1844–1897), “Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel,” Encyclopædia Britannica, 11th edition, vol. 13, New York, Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 1911, 200–207; 205.

17. Friedrich Michelet (1842) in John Daniel Morell (1816–1891), “Hegel and German Hegelianism,” An Historical and Critical View of the Speculative Philosophy of Europe in the Nineteenth Century, 2nd edition, 1 volume edition, New York, Robert Carter, 1848, 456–481; 480. [1846+1847]

1. Immanuel Kant in Robert Bernasconi, “Kant As An Unfamiliar Source of Racism,” Philosophers on Race: Critical Essays, Julie K. Ward & Tommy L. Lott, editors, Malden, Massachusetts, Blackwell, 2002, 145–166; 148.

See: “The race of the American cannot be educated. It has no motivating force, for it lacks affect and passion. They are not in love, thus they are also not afraid. They hardly speak, do not caress each other, care about nothing and are lazy.” (Emmanuel Chukwudi Eze, translation)

Immanuel Kant in Emmanuel Chukwudi Eze, “Chapter Four: The Color of Reason: The Idea of ‘Race’ in Kant’s Anthropology: Kant’s Idea of ‘Race’: The Taxonomy,” Ka Osi Sọ Onye: African Philosophy in the Postmodern Era, Jonathan O. Chimakonam & Edwin Etieyibo, editors; Olatunji A. Oyeshile, introduction & Ifeanyi Menkiti, forward; Adeshina L. Afolayan, Ada Agada, Olajamoke Akiode, Oladele A. Balogun, Jonathan O. Chimakonam, Edwin Etieyibo, Emmanuel Chukwudi Eze, Michael Onyebuchi Eze, Bruce B. Janz, Ifeanyi Menkiti, Victor C.A. Nweke, Uchenna L. Ogbonnaya, Olatunji A. Oyeshile, Leonhard Praeg, Mogobe B. Ramose, Uduma O. Uduma, contributors, Wilmington, Delaware, Vernon Press, 2018, 85–124; 97–106; 97–102; 99. See: Immanuel Kant, “Von der Charakteristik des Menschen,” Immanuel Kant’s Menschenkunde oder philosophische Anthropologie: Nach handschriftlichen Vorlesungen, Friedrich Christian Starke (Johann Adam Bergk), hrsg., Leipzig, Die Expedition des europäischen Aufsehers, 1831, 337–358; 353: “Das Volk der Amerikaner nimmt keine bildung an. Es hat keine Triebfedern, denn es fehlen ihm Affekt und Leidenschaft. Sie sind nicht verliebt, daher sind auch nicht furchtbar. Sie sprechen fast nichts, liebkosen einander nicht, sorgen auch fur nichts, und sind faul.”

See also: “The race of Negroes, one could say, is completely the opposite of the Americans; they are full of affect and passion, very lively, talkative and vain. They can be educated but only as servants (slaves), that is they allow themselves to be trained. They have many motivating forces, are also sensitive, are afraid of blows and do much out of a sense of honor.” (Emmanuel Chukwudi Eze, translation)

Immanuel Kant in Emmanuel Chukwudi Eze, Ibidem. See: Immanuel Kant, Ibidem, 353: “Die race der Neger, konnte man sagan, ist ganz das Gegenteil von den Amerikanern; sie sind voll Affekt und Leidenshaft, sehr Lebhaft, schwatzhaft und eitel, sie nehmen Bildung an, aber nur eine Bildung der Knechte, d.h. sie lassen sich abrichten. Sie haben viele Triebfedern, sind auch empfindlich, furchten sich vor Schlagen und thun auch viel aus Ehre.”

See also: “The Kant most remembered in North American academic communities is the Kant of the Critiques. It is forgotten that the philosopher developed courses in anthropology and/or geography and taught them regularly for forty years from 1756 until the year before his retirement in 1797 … It was Kant, in fact, who introduced anthropology as a branch of study to the German universities when he first started his lectures in the winter semester of 1772–3 (Cassirer, 1963, 25). He was also the first to introduce the study of geography, which he considered inseparable from anthropology, to Konigsberg [86] University, beginning from the summer semester of 1756 (May, 1970, 4). Throughout his career at the university, Kant offered 72 courses in ‘Anthropology’ and/or ‘Physical Geography,’ more than in logic (54 times), metaphysics (49 times), moral philosophy (28), and theoretical physics (20 times), (May, 1970, 4). Although the volume Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View was the last book edited by Kant and was published towards the end of his life, the material actually chronologically predates the Critiques. Further, it is known that material from Kant’s courses in ‘Anthropology’ and ‘Physical Geography’ found their way into his lectures in ethics and metaphysics.”

Emmanuel Chukwudi Eze, Ibidem, 85–86.

See finally: “In my occupation with pure philosophy, which was originally undertaken of my own accord, but which later belonged to my teaching duties, I have for some thirty years delivered lectures twice a year on ‘knowledge of the world,’ namely on Anthropology and Physical Geography. They were popular lectures attended by people from the general public. The present manual contains my lectures on anthropology. As to Physical Geography, however, it will not be possible, considering my age, to produce a manual from my manuscript, which is hardly legible to anyone but myself.”

Immanuel Kant in Emmanuel Chukwudi Eze, Ibidem, 85.

2. Isaiah Berlin in Bernasconi, Ibidem, 145. [Italics added]

3. Jon M. Mikkelsen, “Translator’s Introduction: Recent Work on Kant’s Race Theory,” Kant and the Concept of Race: Late Eighteenth–Century Writings, Jon M. Mikkelsen, translator and editor; Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), Johann Georg Adam Forster (1754–1794), Christoph Girtanner (1760–1800), Christoph Meiners (1747–1810), Eberhardt August Wilhelm von Zimmerman (1743–1815), New York, State University of New York Press, 2013, 1–40; 40. [Italics added]

See: “[Kant] is best understood not as a ‘system builder,’ but as a systematic philosopher — that is, as a thinker who was ever reexamining the conclusions he had come to within each component part of the critical project both with respect to the conclusions he had previously established for the other component parts of the project as well as to his most favored ‘core’ beliefs. He was, in other words, not the sort of philosopher who never revised his views on the many topics that interested him, and he clearly endeavored to keep himself informed of developments in every imaginable field of investigation of his time. Consequently, to consider any narrowly [2] defined topic within the scope of the critical philosophy, such as Kant’s race theory or his philosophy of biology, could lead to a reconsideration of every other part of the critical project. We should then hardly find it surprising that significant interest in the texts by Kant included in this volume has, in the years since the volume was originally conceived, also increased among scholars concerned primarily with Kant’s political philosophy — or, more specifically, with his role in the formative development of a view that is difficult to define but commonly referred to as liberal internationalism. Thus it would be no exaggeration to suggest that what is at stake in these discussions is not simply Kant’s views on specific topics but a complete reassessment of his contribution to the ‘project of modernity,’ inasmuch as Kant’s contribution to the construction of liberal internationalism is viewed as a core element of that project as famously sketched by Jürgen Habermas in his 1980 Adorno Prize lecture, ‘Modernity versus Postmodernity’… Kant did indeed write numerous texts concerned with issues of race which had otherwise been almost universally ignored by English–language Kant scholarship in the past two centuries … [3] Who — half a century, or even a couple of decades ago — would ever have thought of Kant as a major contributor to the formative development of either race theory or the philosophy of biology? For the Kant we knew then was typically presented as a figure who had contributed so much to the development of modern liberal internationalism that it was inconceivable that he could ever have written or uttered comments that could be construed as racist or have even concerned himself with any of the problems of race theory — except, perhaps, in ways that directly contributed to the construction of modern concepts of human rights. Now, however, with new knowledge of the texts by Kant included in this volume and a reexamination of related texts and other source materials, there can be no doubt about the fact that Kant was not only deeply concerned with the analysis of the concept of race but that he gave expression to views both in print but in his private notebooks that are clearly racist not only in tone but also in spirit, if not, necessarily, in ideological intent … [5] [Earl W. Count] chided scholars for forgetting ‘that Immanuel Kant produced the most raciological [racist] thought of the eighteenth century’ … [10] ‘in spite of Kant’s avowed cosmopolitanism … evident in such essays as his ‘Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose,’ one also finds within his philosophy expressions of a virulent and theoretically based racism, at a time when scientific racism was still in its infancy’ … [13] Whatever definition of race is ultimately attributed to Kant — whether or not Bernasconi can make good on his claim that Kant was, in some sense or other, the inventor of the concept — it is clear from the references provided in the final section of the second of these articles that Kant was indeed generally ‘opposed to the mixing of races’ and that his views on this matter are recorded in texts dating from the 1760s through the late 1790s.”

Jon M. Mikkelsen, “Translator’s Introduction: Recent Work on Kant’s Race Theory,” Kant and the Concept of Race: Late Eighteenth–Century Writings, Jon M. Mikkelsen, translator and editor; Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), Johann Georg Adam Forster (1754–1794), Christoph Girtanner (1760–1800), Christoph Meiners (1747–1810), Eberhardt August Wilhelm von Zimmerman (1743–1815), New York, State University of New York Press, 2013, 1–40; 1–2–3–5–10–13.

4. Earl W. Count (1950) in Jon M. Mikkelsen, “Translator’s Introduction: Recent Work on Kant’s Race Theory,” Kant and the Concept of Race: Late Eighteenth–Century Writings, Jon M. Mikkelsen, translator and editor; Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), Johann Georg Adam Forster (1754–1794), Christoph Girtanner (1760–1800), Christoph Meiners (1747–1810), Eberhardt August Wilhelm von Zimmerman (1743–1815), New York, State University of New York Press, 2013, 1–40; 5. [Italics added]

See: Earl W. Count, editor, “Introduction,” This is Race: An Anthology Selected From the International Literature on the Races of Man, New York, Schuman, 1950, xiii–xxviii.

5. Yitzhak Y. Melamed & Peter Thielke, “Hegelianism,” New Dictionary of the History of Ideas: Game Theory to Lysenkoism, vol. 3, Maryanne Cline Horowitz, editor in chief, New York, Charles Scribner’s Sons, 2005, 975–977; 977.

6. Pauline Kleingeld, “Kant’s Second Thoughts on Colonialism,” Kant and Colonialism: Historical and Critical Perspectives, Katrin Flikschuh & Lea Ypi, editors; Martin Ajei, Katrin Flikschuh, Pauline Kleingeld, Sankar Muthu, Peter Niesen, Anthony Pagden, Arthur Ripstein, Anna Stilz, Liesbet Vanhaute & Lea Ypi, contributors, Oxford, The Clarendon Press, 2014, 43–67; 53 ff.

7. Pauline Kleingeld, Ibidem, 45.

8. Kleingeld, Ibidem, 46.

9. Jon M. Mikkelsen, “Translator’s Introduction: Recent Work on Kant’s Race Theory,” Kant and the Concept of Race: Late Eighteenth–Century Writings, Jon M. Mikkelsen, translator and editor; Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), Johann Georg Adam Forster (1754–1794), Christoph Girtanner (1760–1800), Christoph Meiners (1747–1810), Eberhardt August Wilhelm von Zimmerman (1743–1815), New York: State University of New York Press, 2013, 1–40; 1.

10. Immanuel Kant in Robert Bernasconi, “Kant As An Unfamiliar Source of Racism,” Philosophers on Race: Critical Essays, Julie K. Ward & Tommy L. Lott, editors, Malden, Massachusetts, Blackwell, 2002, 145–166; 148.

11. Michael Lackey, “The Fictional Truth of the Biographical Novel: The Case of Ludwig Wittgenstein,” The American Biographical Novel, New York, Bloomsbury, 2016, 35–82; 44–45–46–49.

See: “We can say that Kant, via Chamberlain, was certainly one of the most important influences on National Socialism.”

Michael Lackey, The Modernist God State: A Literary Study of the Nazis’ Christian Reich, New York, Continuum International Publishing Group Inc., 2012, 278.

See: “We can interpret Chamberlain’s work as he wanted it to be understood: as a strong bridge between Kant and Hitler.”

Paul Gilroy, Against Race: Imagining Political Culture Beyond the Color Line, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 2001, 63.

See: “The contention that there is to be found in Kant, or, more broadly, in the Enlightenment, certain conceptual or ideological origins of the Nazi genocide may appear initially either as tautological or as absurd. On the one hand, insofar as ideas are at all admitted as historical causes, the position of the Enlightenment at a crossroads of modern European social and intellectual history would assure it a role in the subsequent events of that history: to this extent, the tautology. On the other hand, to narrow this very general claim sufficiently to allege a direct connection or implication — to claim that specific motifs of the Enlightenment serve historically as an evocation of the events of the Nazi genocide — seems to strain the evidence to a breaking point. The span of 150 years which must be elided, the numerous factors (economic, geopolitical psychological — in addition to other ideological elements) that have been otherwise established, the compelling moral and social ideals of the Enlightenment to which we are indebted for the very phrase the ‘rights of man’: to find beyond these a contributory rule in the Enlightenment for an event as opaque in its rationale and as morally inhuman and notoriously ‘un–enlightened’ as the Nazi war against the Jews seems more than any assembly of evidence that was not simply tendentious could support. What will be outlined here, however, is a position that stands between the two alternatives, with the suggestion first, in the form of an analogy, that certain ideas prominent in the Enlightenment are recognizable in the conceptual framework embodied in the Nazi genocide; and, secondly, that if the relation between those two historical moments is not one of direct cause and effect (the one, that is, does not entail the other), the Enlightenment establishes a ground of historical possibility.”

Berel Lang, “Genocide and Kant’s Enlightenment,” Act and Idea in the Nazi Genocide, Syracuse, Syracuse University Press, 2003, 165–206; 168.

12. Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf: Zwei Bände in einem Band Ungekürzte Ausgabe, 851–855 Auflage, München, Zentralverlag der NSDAP., Verlag Franz Eher Nachf., G.m.b.H., 1943, 328: “Reinster Idealismus deckt sich unbewußt mit tiefster Erkenntnis.”

13. Herman Jean de Vleeschauwer (Herman Jan de Vleeschauwer, 1899–1977/1986?), “Kantianism,” Encyclopedia Britannica: Macropædia, 15th edition, vol. 22, Chicago, The University Press, 1991, 495–499; 495.

14. See: “Vleeschauwer, a Nazi collaborator during World War II, was tried for war crimes in 1945 and condemned to death in abstentia as he was in hiding.”

Elaine Harger, Which Side Are You On? Seven Social Responsibility Debates in American Librarianship 1990–2015, Jefferson, North Carolina, McFarland & Company, Inc., 2015, 60.

See: “The work of the ERR was to confiscate archives, libraries, and works of art from the ideological enemies of Nazism. It was the most productive unit of plunder in Belgium and was directed by archivists, librarians, and museum curators. De Vleeschauwer was close to senior ERR officials like Adolf Vogel, Karlheinz Esser, and Hans Muchow who targeted private libraries in Jewish homes in Belgium. He had attended German book exhibitions regularly, and wrote several articles on politics and culture for the German–language Nationalsocialist, advocating Nazism.”

Archie L. Dick, The Hidden History of South Africa’s Book and Reading Cultures, Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 2012.

15. Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli, The Prince, Luigi Ricci, translator, Oxford, Humphrey Milford, 1921, 44–44–101–105.

See: Napoléon Bonaparte (1769–1821) & Aimé Guillon de Montléon (1758–1842), Machiavel commenté par Napoléon Bonaparte, manuscrit trouvé dans la carrosse de Bonaparte, après la bataille de Mont–Saint–Jean, le 15 février 1815,Paris, Nicolle, 1816.

16. Ernst Cassirer, “Neo–Kantianism,” Encyclopedia Britannica, 14th edition, vol. 16, Chicago, The University Press, 1945, 215–216; 215.

See: “Neo–Kantianism is a term used in a rather arbitrary way to cover a wide variety of philosophical movements that not only show the influence of Kant’s thought but also explicitly claim to go back to Kant, to free his system from inconsistencies and other errors, or to develop it further in the light of new mathematical and scientific discoveries.”

Stephan Körner (1913–2000), “Neo–Kantianism,” Encyclopedia Britannica, 14th edition, vol. 16, Chicago, William Benton, 1967, 213–214; 213. See: Stephan Körner, Kant, Harmondsworth, Penguin Books, 1960. [1955]

17. Albert Rivaud (1876–1956), «La diffusion du Kantisme», Histoire de la philosophie: La philosophie allemande de 1700 à 1850: De l’Aufklärung à Schelling, première partie, tome 5, Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 1968, 273–276; 274. [1967]: «Il est remarquable que le Kantisme se vulgarise surtout après 1871 … le Kantisme devient–il, vers 1880, le symbole d’une pensée morale et politique profonde, aux yeux de ceux qui sont animés d’une foi républicaine. La philosophie de Kant doit fournir, à une pensée qui se veut affranchie de la «superstition», les moyens de répandre dans la jeunesse une moralité sévère, le civisme, le désintéressement, le patriotisme, toutes ces disciplines apportant un substitut républicain à l’ancienne formation religieuse, en somme l’armature d’une religion laïque».

See: “The hope was always the same: To trace the origins and perhaps the explanation of what made France an exceptional case [10] among all the great Western democracies: A nation–state that had exported her constitutions around the world, but a country whose own institutions were still questioned by a large part of the population. By studying these early years, and by trying to restore to the succession of events or accidents their dimension of uncertainty, which by recurring, had created a custom, perhaps it would be possible, if not to understand the ‘wherefore,’ at least to follow the birth and growth of our unwritten law which, as everyone knows, is ultimately more binding than any law ever written down. But is it really necessary to remember? Since May 10, 1981 something quite new has happened in the bowels of French universal suffrage: For the first time since 1871, a national election allowed the opposition to invest the head of the executive power. And invest it directly and in the clearest way. Does this mean that politics in France have become trivialized, and that we are now ripe for a British–style system of successive and peaceful alternations of opposing forces? This is not the place for such a discussion. The one thing to understand is that this radical form of electoral alternation had never existed before … [verso] The years from 1870–1889 chart the republican conquest of the Republic, and the victory of parliamentary Republicanism over different forms of constitutional revisionism … The analysis of the elections of 1881, 1885 and 1889, the systematic use of original documents, even unpublished archives, allow us to give a far more realistic version of the Republican adventure in a country still largely dominated by the monarchist parties and the Church’s Syllabus. To fight against the partisans of absolutism, the parliamentary Republic did not hesitate to distance itself from the liberalism which was its glory and its justification: Hence our title of absolute Republic (République absolue) for this Republic which, in the victory of its many combats, at the same time prepared the future conditions of its fall.” [Italics added]

Odile Rudelle, «Note Liminaire», La république absolue: Aux origines de l’instabilité constitutionnelle de la France républicaine 1870–1889, ré–édition, Paris, Publications de la Sorbonne, 1986, 9–10; 9–10–verso: «L’espoir était toujours le même: traquer les origines et peut–être l’explication de ce qui faisait de la France un cas exceptionnel [10] parmi toutes les grandes démocraties occidentales: un pays qui avait exporté des constitutions dans le monde entier, mais un pays dont les propres institutions étaient toujours contestées par une importante partie de la population. En étudiant les premières années, en essayant de restituer avec leur marge d’incertitude la succession des événements ou des accidents qui, en se reproduisant, avait créé une coutume, peut–être serait–il possible sinon de comprendre le pourquoi mais au moins de suivre la naissance et la croissance de cette loi non écrite qui, chacun le sait, est finalement plus contraignante que toutes les lois écrites. Mais est–il besoin de le rappeler? Depuis le 10 mai 1981 quelque chose de tout a fait nouveau s’est passé dans la France profonde du suffrage universel: pour la première fois depuis 1871, une élection nationale a permis à l’opposition d’investir la tête du pouvoir exécutif. Et de l’investir directement et de la façon la plus claire. Est–ce à dire que la France politique s’est banalisée et qu’elle est maintenant mûre pour un régime à l’anglaise fait d’alternances successives et pacifiques de forces opposées? Ce n’est pas ici le lieu d’en discuter. La seule chose importante est de savoir que sous cette forme radicale l’alternance électorale n’avait jamais existé auparavant … [verso] Les années 1870–1889 sont celles de la conquête de la République par les républicains et de la victoire de la République parlementaire contre les différents révisionnismes constitutionnels … L’analyse des élections de 1881, 1885 et 1889, le recours systématique aux documents originaux, voire aux archives inédites, permettre de donner une vision plus réaliste de ce qui fut l’aventure républicaine dans un pays encore largement dominé par les partis monarchistes et l’ Église du Syllabus. Pour lutter contre les partisans de l’absolutisme la République parlementaire n’hésita pas à prendre quelques distances vis–à–vis du libéralisme qui était sa gloire et son justificatif: d’où le titre de République absolue pour cette République qui, en gagnant de nombreux combats, creusait en même temps les conditions futures de sa chute».

See also: Frédéric Mourlon (1811–1866), Répétitions écrites sur le code civil contenant l’exposé des principes généreux leurs motifs et la solution des questions théoriques, 11e édition, revue et mise au courant par Charles Démangeât, Tome premier, Paris, Garniers Frères, Libraires–Éditeurs, 1880, [1846]; Frédéric Mourlon, Répétitions écrites sur le deuxième examen du code Napoléon contenant l’exposé des principes généreux leurs motifs et la solution des questions théoriques, 2e édition revue et corrigée, 3 vols., Paris, A. Marescq, Libraire–Éditeur, 1852, [1846].

See also: “France does not know it, but we are at war against America. Yes, an eternal war, a vital war, an economic war, a war without deaths … apparently. Yes, they are very predatory, the Americans, they are voracious, and they want to rule the world … Our war against America is a secret war, an eternal war, a war apparently without deaths, and yet a war unto death!”

François Mitterrand (1995) in Georges–Marc Benamou, Le dernier Mitterrand, Paris, Plon, 1996, 50–52: «La France ne le sait pas, mais nous sommes en guerre avec l’Amérique. Oui, une guerre permanente, une guerre vitale, une guerre économique, une guerre sans morts … apparemment. Oui, ils sont très durs, les américains, ils sont voraces, ils veulent un pouvoir sans partage sur le monde … C’est une guerre inconnue, une guerre permanente, sans morts apparemment, et pourtant, une guerre à mort!»

See finally: François Mitterrand in Alain de Benoist, Dernière année: Notes pour conclure le siècle, Lausanne, Suisse, Éditions L’Age d’Homme, 2001, 187; François Mitterrand in Henri de Grossouvre, «Guerre économique Europe/États–Unis», Paris–Berlin–Moscou: La voie de l’indépendance et de la paix, Pierre Marie Gallois, préface, Lausanne, Suisse, Éditions L’Age d’Homme, 2002, 38–40; 38.

18. Michael Joseph Mahony, History of Modern Thought: The English, Irish and Scotch Schools, New York, Fordham University Press, 1933, 158–159–160.

See: “Kant’s doctrines are destructively opposed to Catholicism. His teaching has been condemned by Popes Leo XIII and Pius X. His great work, ‘The Critique of Pure Reason’ was placed on the Index, 11th June, 1827. Inconsistent with Catholic teaching are (1) Kant’s Metaphysical Agnosticism, which declares his ignorance of all things as they really are; (2) his Moral Dogmatism which declares the supremacy of will over reason, thereby making blind will without the guidance of reason the rule of action; (3) his giving to religious dogma merely a symbolic signification; (4) diametrically opposed to scholastic teaching and the common sense of mankind is Kant’s theory of knowledge which makes mind and thought the measure of reality rather than making reality the measure of mind and thought. Kant maintains that things are so because we must think them so, not that we must think them so because they are really so independently of our thinking them. The reversal of the order of thought and reality, Kant calls his ‘Copernican Revolution’ in his theory of knowledge.”

Michael Joseph Mahony, History of Modern Thought: The English, Irish and Scotch Schools, New York, Fordham University Press, 1933, 166.

Remarks: Defenders of the Kantian traditions attack Catholicism based upon the evils of Gallicanism, but in their assaults upon Gallican theology, especially in the realm of practice, their refutations fall flat with regards to Ultramontanism: The Popes, in the name of Scholasticism, have vigorously rejected the evils of modernism.

Defenders of the Kantian traditions who attack Catholicism based upon the evils of Gallican theologians, and thereby assault Gallican theology, especially in the realm of practice, really only refute the satanic connexions between Gallicanism and modern European political and economic irrationalism, — and thus entirely miss their alleged target, namely the Catholic Church and Vatican.

American Idealism vigorously defends the Western traditions of Jerusalem, Athens and Rome.

19. Michael Joseph Mahony, Essentials of Formal Logic, New York, The Encyclopedia Press, Inc., 1918, 8–9.

See: “In spite of some sympathy shown in recent years for a vaguely Kantian sort of idealism or, better, anti–realism, which argues for the dependence of our conception of reality on our concepts and/or linguistic practices, Kant’s transcendental idealism proper, with its distinction between appearance and things in themselves, remains highly unpopular … many interpreters continue to attribute to Kant the traditional “two–object” or “two–world” or some close facsimile thereof, and in most (though not all) cases this reading is combined with a summary dismissal of transcendental idealism as a viable philosophical position. In fact, the manifest untenability of transcendental idealism, as they understand it, has led some critics to attempt to save Kant from himself, by separating what they take to be a legitimate core of Kantian argument (usually of an anti–skeptical nature) from the excess baggage of transcendental idealism, with which they believe it to be encumbered … there is an important asymmetry here. The reason for this is that in considering objects as they appear or as appearances, one is actually considering them as subject to intellectual as well as sensible conditions (the schematized categories and the Principles), whereas in considering them as they are in themselves the converse does not hold.”

Henry E. Allison, “Part I: The Nature of Transcendental Idealism: Chapter 1: An Introduction to the Problem,” Kant’s Transcendental Idealism: An Interpretation and Defense, 2nd edition, New Haven, Connecticut, Yale University Press, 2004, 1–74; 3–19; 3–453. [1983]

Remarks: In the world historical struggle between Kant and Hegel, as the collapse of European modernity and rise of Americanism, especially in twentieth century Europe, the strife between Kantian anti–Hegelianism (e.g.,Schopenhauer) and Kantio–Hegelianism (e.g., Marx) in the arena of modern politics and economics, as the strife between monarchism and republicanism, is the clash between the Left and Right, while the warfare between the good and bad Kant is the struggle for political and economic centrism: “The manifest untenability of transcendental idealism, as they understand it, has led some critics to attempt to save Kant from himself.” Henry Allison’s rejuvenation of Kantianism in the name of “Kant’s Transcendental Idealism,” is effectuated via the beliefs (claims) of the historical personage of Immanuel Kant, his opinions: “The separability of Kant’s fundamental claims in the Critique from transcendental idealism will be categorically denied (4).” Statements such as “What Kant actually says is that one might name this illusion the subreption of hypostatized consciousness (499)” are in need of a philosophical conception of actuality, especially in the fields of exact hermeneutics and exact historiographical biography. For this reason Allison’s rejection of Kantian anti–realism, “a vaguely Kantian sort of idealism or, better, anti–realism, which argues for the dependence of our conception of reality on our concepts and/or linguistic practices,” requires texts translated by Kantian hermeneuticists like Paul Guyer, and leans at crucial junctures mainly upon writings outside the Critical works proper: “[Transcendental Idealism’s] intimate connection with virtually every aspect of the Critique (4).” [Italics added] In other words, Henry Allison endeavors merely to establish the division between Kantian anti–Hegelianism and Kantio–Hegelianism in terms of the good versus bad Kant, as the Kantian distinction between true and false Kantianism, but his differentiation is no way a proof of the philosophical veracity of subjective idealism: “[The] main goal is to provide an overall interpretation and, where possible, a defense of transcendental idealism. The defense will not amount to an attempt to demonstrate the truth of transcendental idealism; that being much too ambitious a project. It will, however, argue that this idealism remains a viable philosophical option, still worthy of serious philosophical consideration (4).” [Italics added] Henry Allison is no way advances any proof of the philosophical veracity of transcendental idealism, but only establishes his own distinction between its good and bad versions at the hands of Kantian interpreters, and “defends” his interpretation as a “a viable philosophical option … worthy of serious philosophical consideration.” In other words, Henry Allison merely assumes that transcendental idealism is philosophy, rather than sophistry: “The defense will not amount to an attempt to demonstrate the truth of transcendental idealism; that being much too ambitious a project … this idealism remains a viable philosophical option.” Allison leans upon Kantian translators and their translations (contaminated with their Kant “philology”), in order to establish that the idealism (“this idealism”) of his defense of Kant’s transcendental idealism is philosophical, rather than sophistical. The reader should not be blind to the fact that Henry Allison’s “philosophical defense” of Kant’s subjective idealism is itself advanced as Kantian transcendental idealism. Since Allison advances no proof of the philosophical veracity of Kant’s transcendental idealism, and therefore his own idealistic “interpretation,” he does not possess the philosophical wherewithal to draw exact hermeneutical and philological distinctions between the texts of Kant’s so–called philosophical system of transcendental idealism of the Critiques, as opposed to texts whose interpretive bearings upon Kant’s idealism are objectionable or disputable upon strict (anti–Kantian) hermeneutical and philological grounds: “I have occasionally modified these translations. Where there is no reference to an English translation either the translation, is my own or the text is referred to but not cited (ix).” What Henry Allison names as philosophy is therefore in no wise fundamentally different from what is usually named as sophistry.

20. Hegel, “Part Three: Ethical Life,” The Philosophy of Right, Thomas Malcolm Knox, translator, Sections 358–360.

See: Hegel, Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts. Naturrecht und Staatswissenschaft im Grundrisse. Zum Gebrauch für seine Vorlesungen, Berlin, Nicolaische Buchhandlung, 1821; Hegel, Philosophische Bibliothek: Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts, mit den von Gans redigierten Zusätzen aus Hegels Vorlesungen, Neu herausgegeben von Georg Lasson, Band 124, Leipzig, Verlag von Felix Meiner, 1911; Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, Philosophische Bibliothek: Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts, mit Hegels eigenhändigen Randbemerkungen in seinem Handexemplar der Rechtsphilosophie, Vierte Auflage, Band 124a, Johannes Hoffmeister, Herausgegeber, Hamburg, Felix Meiner Verlag 1967. [1955]

21. See: Anonymous, “Brexit Could Cost UK Research Sector Billions, Says Oxford Boss,” The Guardian, 10 May 2018; Raphaela Henze & Gernot Wolfram, editors, Exporting Culture: Which Rôle for Europe in a Global World?Wiesbaden, Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden G.m.b.H., 2014; Anonymous (Goethe–Institut/Invent/Institut für Kulturkonzepte), Hrsgs., Report on the Cultural Management Africa Advanced Training Programme, München,Goethe–Institut, 2011; Anonymous (Goethe–Institut), Hrsg., Kompetenzzentrum Kulturmanager in Osteuropa und Zentralasien: Kultur und Entwicklung Dokumentation, München, Goethe–Institut, 2011; Raka Shome, “Internationalizing Critical Race Communication Studies,” The Handbook of Critical Intercultural Communication, Thomas K. Nakayama & Rona Tamiko Halualani, editors, Oxford, John Wiley and Sons, 2011, 149–170; Corina Suteu, Academic Training in Cultural Management in Europe: Making It Work, Amsterdam, Boekmanstudies, 2003; Corina Suteu, Another Brick in the Wall: A Critical Review of Cultural Management Education in Europe, Amsterdam, Boekmanstudies, 2006; Anonymous (UNESCO), editors, “Shaping Cultural Diversity,” Unesco Convention on the Diversity of Cultural Expressions: White Paper (German Commission for UNESCO), Bonn, Eigenpubli., 2005; Klaus Siebenhaar, Marga Pröhl & Charlotta Pawlowsky–Flodell, hrsgs., “Hrsg., im Auftrag der Bertelsmann Stiftung,” Kulturmanagement: Wirkungsvolle Strukturen im kommunalen Kulturbereich, Gütersloh, Bertelsmann Stiftung, 1993.

See also: “The conference brought together researchers as well as practitioners from different fields and fifteen different nations. They all set a momentum for putting international as well as intercultural relations into focus and for promoting greater critical discourses on the rôle of arts and cultural management and institutions within the context of internationalization, globalization and the increasing global migration of people.” [Italics added]

Raphaela Henze, “Guest Editorial: Cultural Management Without Borders,” Zeitschrift für Kulturmanagement: Kunst, Politik, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft/Journal of Cultural Management: Arts, Economics, Policy, Steffen Höhne & Martin Tröndle, editors–in–chief, 2.1(2016): 11–14; 11.

Remarks: The main business of Bonapartism in the Western world of today, is the preservation of the last remnants of modern European political and economic irrationalism (Eurocentrisme as multipolarity or polycentrisme), under the floodtide of American Liberty, — in the name of the backwards cartels, outdated monopolies and corrupt trusts of Großdeutschland, as der Merkel Apparat. The rôle of Federica Mogherini, Cecilia Malmström and Margrethe Vestager in Europe’s attacks upon Americanism is well known. The success of the European Bonapartist project of Eurocentrisme (the political and economic retardation of Americanism in Europe), requires the assistance of American intellectuals and academics, in the name of the Copernican revolution as Liberal Internationalism, — especially in the ranks of the Republican and Democratic political parties, whether as Kantian anti–Hegelians or Kantio–Hegelians.

See also: “The twenty–first century multipolar world presents a new context for international relations. The evolving shift of power in global governance — ‘from the West to the rest’ and from state to non–state actors — has witnessed the emergence of a new array of competing players … Shaping the EU Global Strategy: Partners and Perceptions considers the EU’s response to these fundamental global shifts in power and multiple internal challenges; it critically examines the global influence of the EU’s identity and values in the face of competing normative paradigms each with their own distinct policies and identities.”

Natalia Chaban & Martin Holland, editors, “Introduction: Partners and Perceptions,” Shaping the EU Global Strategy: Partners and Perceptions (The European Union in International Affairs), Cham, Switzerland, Palgrave Macmillan, 2019, 1–26; 1. [Italics added]

Remarks: What passes for “Global Strategy” among the Kantian traditions of the European Union is a mask, a useful propaganda tool, especially among intellectuals and academics, the intelligentsia, designed to hide the overwhelming influence of Berlin’s hand in the determination of foreign policy, which is always crafted with the aim of uplifting Großdeutschland as the prius of European political and economic power, — at least under the regime of der Merkel Apparat. The “multipolar world” is therefore a modern European delusion, which hides the inhumanity of political and economic irrationalism, the dumping of the sick and elderly into the boneyards as “cost savings,” so that European nations are not bankrupted by their inferior ruling classes as they pillage public wealth, — in the name of their backwards cartels, outdated monopolies and corrupt trusts: Puppets of the Dieselgate Aristocracy of Eurocentric Eurocracy (the Airbus ruling class), in their dirty works, thereby sooth their flabby minds, those of whom are not utterly depraved, with delightful phantasms of humanitarianism (Global Strategy in the multipolar world), as opposed to “authoritarianism,” i.e., so–called American unipolarity as Yankee imperialism. The Global Strategy of the European Union aims at uplifting the inferior ruling classes of the earth, in return for lucrative contracts and purchases from the backwards cartels, outdated monopolies and corrupt trusts of European Bonapartism, at the expense of the superior ruling classes, whose leaders around the world are often debased and even sidelined. The main political and economic victim of this modern European irrationalism is American finance, commerce and industry in Europe and around the world, — victimization that undermines the health of the American superpower, and which thereby endangers the Western democracies.

“Does all this ‘Global Strategy’ really matter, after everything is said and done, since Americanism is on the rise?” Indeed, our words are merely the rational justification of American Idealism, in the destruction of modern European political and economic irrationalism, — in the rise of Global rational political and economic order as the supremacy of American Liberty in the world.

See finally: “With the British referendum, the need for a common strategy was even greater than before. We needed — and we still need — to look beyond this self–induced crisis of European integration and to focus on what binds us together: the shared interests and the values driving our common foreign policy; our unparalleled strength, as the First–World economy, the largest global [viii] investor in humanitarian aid and development cooperation, a global security provider with a truly global diplomatic network. We need to focus on the immense untapped potential of a more joined–up European Union. We need to move from a shared vision to common action … The twenty–eight Heads of State and Government have approved my proposals for implementing the Strategy in the field of security and defence. It is a major leap forward for European cooperation — and eventually, integration — on defence matters. The process leading to the Global Strategy has helped build consensus on a set of concrete measures and on their rationale. Instead of getting stuck into never–ending ideological debates or exhausting negotiations on revising the Treaties, we moved pretty steadily from principles to practice — to finally get things done, where it really matters. The implementation of the Strategy is now under way in all sectors, from fostering resilience to public diplomacy, from a more joined–up development cooperation to a rethinking of global governance. The European Union of security and defense can be a major building block to relaunch the process of European integration, but it cannot be the only one. Europe can deliver to our citizens’ and our partners’ needs only when it acts as a true Union, at national and European levels, with our hard and soft power, in our external and internal policies alike. Europe delivers only when it is united.”

Federica Mogherini, “Foreward,” Framing the EU Global Strategy: A Stronger Europe in a Fragile World (Palgrave Studies in European Union Politics), Nathalie Tocci; Michelle Egan, Neill Nugent & William E. Paterson, series editors, Cham, Switzerland, Palgrave Macmillan, 2017, vii–ix; vii–viii.

Remarks: The European Union’s “Global Strategy” of Federica Mogherini, as Eurocentrism, i.e., multipolarity (“a shared vision to common action … [Europe’s] hard and soft power”), is opposed to the unipolarity of American superpower, and is the twenty–first century mask of European anti–Americanism, which preserves the backwards cartels, outdated monopolies and corrupt trusts of Großdeutschland at the expense of American finance, commerce and industry in Europe (especially the United States military–industrial complex), based upon the modern subjectivism, relativism and irrationalism of the Copernican revolution as Cosmopolitanism and Liberal Internationalism, — mortally opposed to the Western traditions of Jerusalem, Athens and Rome.

22. See: “The present inquiry analyzes the patterns of class in a society whose leaders are the holders of despotic state power and not private owners and entrepreneurs. This procedure, in addition to modifying the notion of what constitutes a ruling class, leads to a new evaluation of such phenomena as landlordism, capitalism, gentry, and guild. It explains why, in hydraulic society, there exists a bureaucratic landlordism, a bureaucratic capitalism, and a bureaucratic gentry. It explains why in such a society the professional organizations, although sharing certain features with the guilds of Medieval Europe, were socially quite unlike them. It also explains why in such a society supreme autocratic leadership is the rule. While the law of diminishing administrative returns determines the lower limit of the bureaucratic pyramid, the cumulative tendency of unchecked power determines the character of its top … I have started my inquiry with the societal order of which agromanagerial despotsim is a part; and I have stressed the peculiarity of this order by calling it ‘hydraulic society.’ But I have no hesitancy in employing the traditional designations ‘Oriental society’ and ‘Asiatic society’ as synonyms for ‘hydraulic society’ and ‘agromanagerial society’; and while using the terms ‘hydraulic,’ ‘agrobureaucratic,’ and ‘Oriental despotism’ interchangeably, I have given preference to the older formulation, ‘Oriental despotism’ in my title, partly to emphasize the historical depth of my central concept and partly because the majority of all great hydraulic civilizations existed in what is customarily called the Orient.” [Italics added]

Karl August Wittfogel, Oriental Despotism: A Comparative Study of Total Power, New Haven/London, Yale University Press, 1967, 4–8. [1957]

1. Richard Rorty, Philosophy and Social Hope, London, Penguin Books, 1999, xix–xx. [Italics added]

See: “We can only explain what ‘philosophical thinking about experience’ is by reference to the sort of thing which Kant did.” Richard Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1980, 150.

Remarks: American irrationalists like Richard Rorty, who follow in the footsteps of modern European unreason, do not “foam at the mouth and behave like animals,” although sometimes they foam at the mouth, but they are irrationalists all the same, albeit “consistent” ones (good Kantians), — their political and economic irrationalism is the selfsame Machiavellianism and Bonapartism of European modernity:

Napoléon Bonaparte (1769–1821) & Aimé Guillon de Montléon (1758–1842), Machiavel commenté par Napoléon Bonaparte, manuscrit trouvé dans la carrosse de Bonaparte, après la bataille de Mont–Saint–Jean, le 15 février 1815, Paris, Nicolle, 1816.

2. Henry E. Allison, “Part I: The Nature of Transcendental Idealism: Chapter 1: An Introduction to the Problem,” Kant’s Transcendental Idealism: An Interpretation and Defense, 2nd revised and enlarged edition, New Haven, Connecticut, Yale University Press, 2004, 1–74; 3–19; 4. [1983] [Italics added]

3. Louis White Beck, Kant Studies Today, La Salle, Open Court Publishers, 1969, vii. [Italics added]

See: “The White race contains all impulses and talents within itself … The Negro … undoubtedly holds the lowest of all remaining levels by which we designate the different races.”

Immanuel Kant in Robert Bernasconi, “Kant As An Unfamiliar Source of Racism,” Philosophers on Race: Critical Essays, Julie K. Ward & Tommy L. Lott, editors, Malden, Massachusetts, Blackwell, 2002, 145–166; 148.

See also: “The race of the American cannot be educated. It has no motivating force, for it lacks affect and passion. They are not in love, thus they are also not afraid. They hardly speak, do not caress each other, care about nothing and are lazy.” (Emmanuel Chukwudi Eze, translation)

Immanuel Kant in Emmanuel Chukwudi Eze, “Chapter Four: The Color of Reason: The Idea of ‘Race’ in Kant’s Anthropology: Kant’s Idea of ‘Race’: The Taxonomy,” Ka Osi Sọ Onye: African Philosophy in the Postmodern Era, Jonathan O. Chimakonam & Edwin Etieyibo, editors; Olatunji A. Oyeshile, introduction & Ifeanyi Menkiti, forward; Adeshina L. Afolayan, Ada Agada, Olajamoke Akiode, Oladele A. Balogun, Jonathan O. Chimakonam, Edwin Etieyibo, Emmanuel Chukwudi Eze, Michael Onyebuchi Eze, Bruce B. Janz, Ifeanyi Menkiti, Victor C.A. Nweke, Uchenna L. Ogbonnaya, Olatunji A. Oyeshile, Leonhard Praeg, Mogobe B. Ramose, Uduma O. Uduma, contributors, Wilmington, Delaware, Vernon Press, 2018, 85–124; 97–106; 97–102; 99. See: Immanuel Kant, “Kant’s philosophische Anthropologie: Von der Charakteristik des Menschen,” Immanuel Kant’s Menschenkunde oder philosophische Anthropologie: Nach handschriftlichen Vorlesungen, Friedrich Christian Starke (Johann Adam Bergk), hrsg., Leipzig, Die Expedition des europäischen Aufsehers, 1831, 337–358; 353: “Das Volk der Amerikaner nimmt keine bildung an. Es hat keine Triebfedern, denn es fehlen ihm Affekt und Leidenschaft. Sie sind nicht verliebt, daher sind auch nicht furchtbar. Sie sprechen fast nichts, liebkosen einander nicht, sorgen auch fur nichts, und sind faul.”

See also: “The race of Negroes, one could say, is completely the opposite of the Americans; they are full of affect and passion, very lively, talkative and vain. They can be educated but only as servants (slaves), that is they allow themselves to be trained. They have many motivating forces, are also sensitive, are afraid of blows and do much out of a sense of honor.” (Emmanuel Chukwudi Eze, translation)

Immanuel Kant in Emmanuel Chukwudi Eze, Ibidem. See: Immanuel Kant, Ibidem, 353: “Die race der Neger, konnte man sagan, ist ganz das Gegenteil von den Amerikanern; sie sind voll Affekt und Leidenshaft, sehr Lebhaft, schwatzhaft und eitel, sie nehmen Bildung an, aber nur eine Bildung der Knechte, d.h. sie lassen sich abrichten. Sie haben viele Triebfedern, sind auch empfindlich, furchten sich vor Schlagen und thun auch viel aus Ehre.”

See also: “The Kant most remembered in North American academic communities is the Kant of the Critiques. It is forgotten that the philosopher developed courses in anthropology and/or geography and taught them regularly for forty years from 1756 until the year before his retirement in 1797 … It was Kant, in fact, who introduced anthropology as a branch of study to the German universities when he first started his lectures in the winter semester of 1772–3 (Cassirer, 1963, 25). He was also the first to introduce the study of geography, which he considered inseparable from anthropology, to Konigsberg [86] University, beginning from the summer semester of 1756 (May, 1970, 4). Throughout his career at the university, Kant offered 72 courses in ‘Anthropology’ and/or ‘Physical Geography,’ more than in logic (54 times), metaphysics (49 times), moral philosophy (28), and theoretical physics (20 times), (May, 1970, 4). Although the volume Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View was the last book edited by Kant and was published towards the end of his life, the material actually chronologically predates the Critiques. Further, it is known that material from Kant’s courses in ‘Anthropology’ and ‘Physical Geography’ found their way into his lectures in ethics and metaphysics.” Emmanuel Chukwudi Eze, Ibidem, 85–86.

See finally: “In my occupation with pure philosophy, which was originally undertaken of my own accord, but which later belonged to my teaching duties, I have for some thirty years delivered lectures twice a year on ‘knowledge of the world,’ namely on Anthropology and Physical Geography. They were popular lectures attended by people from the general public. The present manual contains my lectures on anthropology. As to Physical Geography, however, it will not be possible, considering my age, to produce a manual from my manuscript, which is hardly legible to anyone but myself.” Immanuel Kant in Emmanuel Chukwudi Eze, Ibidem, 85.

See finally: “Kant is a recurring target of attempts to show that racism and modernity are associated inextricably with each other. Kant’s race–thinking and his racism are quite evident from his writings … It is not surprising, given his stature, that in the wake of Kant’s advancement of races, formalized race–thinking became widely established in Europe. In the nineteenth–century, race–thinking acquired both a scientific (anthropological) footing and expanded its specifically metaphysical reach. Much of this related to varieties of the Aryan hypothesis that started to emerge from the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and which later led to the horrific exterminations of the majority of the Jewish populations of East and West Europe.” Chetan Bhatt, “The Spirit Lives On: Races and Disciplines,” The SAGE Handbook of Race and Ethnic Studies, Patricia Hill Collins & John Solomos, editors, London, SAGE Publications, Ltd., 2010, 90–128; 95–101.

4. See: “If Hegel … had been led to talk more about social needs and less about Absolute Knowledge, Western philosophy might … have saved itself a century of nervous shuffles.” Richard Rorty, Philosophy and Social Hope, London, 1999, 71.

See also: “The issues raised by Hegel’s Kant criticism are extremely complex, but it should be noted that many of these criticisms reflect the standard picture. Thus Hegel typically presents Kant as a subjective idealist and skeptic, who separates knowledge or, rather, a subjectivistic surrogate for knowledge, from ‘Truth.’ A good example of this is his discussion of Kant at the beginning of the Encyclopedia, esp. §§40–43. I think that my remarks about the standard picture and its inadequacies apply equally well to this aspect of Hegel’s Kant criticism. Finally, I also think that the account of apperception in chapter 13 helps to explain how Kant can justify his fundamental claim about the discursive nature of human cognition, which is a major part of the problem of a ‘metacritique.’ The essential point is simply that apperception, insofar as it is ‘something real,’ is a consciousness of the spontaneity of thinking. Thus the conceptualizing activity of the mind is a datum of ordinary reflection, and this provides the basis for a transcendental or specifically philosophical reflection on the ‘forms’ and ‘conditions’ of this activity. This, of course, makes Kant’s philosophy a ‘philosophy of reflection’ in the Hegelian sense; the issue, which cannot be dealt with here, therefore becomes the cogency of Hegel’s overall critique of this philosophical ‘standpoint’ and of his own alternative to it.” Henry E. Allison, Kant’s Transcendental Idealism: An Interpretation and Defense, New Haven, Connecticut, Yale University Press, 1983, 372.

See also: “After Hegel’s death, his former students came together with the rather noble thought of assembling various transcripts of the lecture series he gave and to which they had access, hoping to bring to the light of a general public the ‘system’ that [they] were convinced was completed for years and presented orally in the lecture hall. However, the methodologies through which they assembled these transcripts into standalone monographs, with the aid of Hegel’s own manuscripts for his lectures, is [are] dubious at best. They paid little to no attention to changes between different lecture courses, combining them as they saw fit to guarantee the logical progression of the dialectical movement as they interpreted it. But without the original source material, it was impossible to test the suspicion that they may have falsified Hegel’s own views. Indeed, it was all we had to go on to have any understanding of his views. Now, however, many manuscripts and transcripts — even ones not available to his students — have been found. When one compares these manuscripts and transcripts with the lectures published by his students, the differences between them are in no case simply philological niceties … this information may drastically challenge our historical picture of Hegel.” Sean J. McGrath & Joseph Carew, editors, “What Remains of German Idealism?” Rethinking German Idealism, Joseph Carew, Wes Furlotte, Jean–Christophe Goddard, Adrian Johnston, Cem Kömürcü, Sean J. McGrath, Constantin Rauer, Alexander Schnell, F. Scott Scribner, Devin Zane Shaw, Konrad Utz & Jason M. Wirth, contributors, London, Palgrave Macmillan, 2016, 1–19; 4. [Italics added]

See also: “Hegel’s own course notes and those of his students should be used with caution to clarify and illustrate the meaning of the texts he published during his lifetime … In general, the student notes written during or after Hegel’s classes should be used with caution … What has been said about the student notes must also be applied to the so–called Zusatze (additions), added by ‘the friends’ to the third edition of the Encyclopedia (1830) and the book on Rechtsphilosophie … Some commentators, however, seem to prefer the Zusatze over Hegel’s own writings; additions are sometimes even quoted as the only textual evidence for the interpretation of highly controversial issues. For scholarly use, however, we should use them only as applications, confirmations, or concretizations of Hegel’s theory. Only in cases where authentic texts are unavailable may they be accepted as indications of Hegel’s answers to questions that are not treated in his handwritten or published work. If they contradict the explicit theory of the authorized texts, we can presume that the student is wrong, unless we can show that it is plausible that they express a change in the evolution of Hegel’s thought … According to Leopold von Henning’s preface (pp. vi–vii) in his edition (1839) of the Encyclopädie of 1830, the editors of the Encyclopedia sometimes changed or completed the sentences in which the students had rendered Hegel’s classes.” Adriaan Theodoor Basilius Peperzak, Modern Freedom: Hegel’s Legal, Moral, and Political Philosophy (Studies in German Idealism), Dordrecht, Springer Science+Business Media, B.V., 2001, xvi–27–28–29–29.

See also: “The transcripts known today for all the Berlin lecture series are consistently, even surprisingly, reliable testimonies … It may indeed be disconcerting that only today do we doubt — and not everyone does — that Hegel’s lectures … are actually reproduced authentically in the published [Berlin] edition … that did not become full–blown for more than a hundred and fifty years. We can hardly examine here all the reasons for this circumstance.” Annemarie Gethmann–Siefert, “Introduction: The Shape and Influence of Hegel’s Aesthetics,” Lectures on the Philosophy of Art: The Hotho Transcript of the 1823 Berlin Lectures, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2014, 7–176; 32–36–36–36.

See finally: “[The] more sympathetic tradition in Hegel scholarship has reasserted itself decisively since the middle of this century, to such an extent that there is now a virtual consensus among knowledgeable scholars that the earlier images of Hegel, as philosopher of the reactionary Prussian restoration and forerunner of modern totalitarianism, are simply wrong, whether they are viewed as accounts of Hegel’s attitude toward Prussian politics or as broader philosophical interpretations of his theory of the state.” Allen William Wood, editor, “Editor’s Introduction,” Elements of the Philosophy of Right,G.W.F. Hegel; Hugh Barr Nisbet, translator, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2003, vii–xxxii; ix. [1991]

5. See: “With the British referendum, the need for a common strategy was even greater than before. We needed — and we still need — to look beyond this self–induced crisis of European integration and to focus on what binds us together: the shared interests and the values driving our common foreign policy; our unparalleled strength, as the First–World economy, the largest global [viii] investor in humanitarian aid and development cooperation, a global security provider with a truly global diplomatic network. We need to focus on the immense untapped potential of a more joined–up European Union. We need to move from a shared vision to common action … The twenty–eight Heads of State and Government have approved my proposals for implementing the Strategy in the field of security and defence. It is a major leap forward for European cooperation — and eventually, integration — on defence matters. The process leading to the Global Strategy has helped build consensus on a set of concrete measures and on their rationale. Instead of getting stuck into never–ending ideological debates or exhausting negotiations on revising the Treaties, we moved pretty steadily from principles to practice — to finally get things done, where it really matters. The implementation of the Strategy is now under way in all sectors, from fostering resilience to public diplomacy, from a more joined–up development cooperation to a rethinking of global governance. The European Union of security and defense can be a major building block to relaunch the process of European integration, but it cannot be the only one. Europe can deliver to our citizens’ and our partners’ needs only when it acts as a true Union, at national and European levels, with our hard and soft power, in our external and internal policies alike. Europe delivers only when it is united.” Federica Mogherini, “Foreward,” Framing the EU Global Strategy: A Stronger Europe in a Fragile World (Palgrave Studies in European Union Politics), Nathalie Tocci; Michelle Egan, Neill Nugent & William E. Paterson, series editors, Cham, Switzerland, Palgrave Macmillan, 2017, vii–ix; vii–viii.

See finally: Natalia Chaban & Martin Holland, editors, “Introduction: Partners and Perceptions,” Shaping the EU Global Strategy: Partners and Perceptions (The European Union in International Affairs), Cham, Switzerland, Palgrave Macmillan, 2019, 1–26; Nathalie Tocci & Thomas Diez, editors, The EU, Promoting Regional Integration, and Conflict Resolution, Cham, Switzerland, Springer International Publishing, 2017; Raphaela Henze & Gernot Wolfram, editors, Exporting Culture: Which Rôle for Europe in a Global World? Wiesbaden, Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden G.m.b.H., 2014; Anonymous (Goethe–Institut), Hrsg., Kompetenzzentrum Kulturmanager in Osteuropa und Zentralasien: Kultur und Entwicklung Dokumentation, München, Goethe–Institut, 2011; Corina Suteu, Academic Training in Cultural Management in Europe: Making It Work, Amsterdam, Boekmanstudies, 2003; Klaus Siebenhaar, Marga Pröhl & Charlotta Pawlowsky–Flodell, hrsgs., “Hrsg., im Auftrag der Bertelsmann Stiftung,” Kulturmanagement: Wirkungsvolle Strukturen im kommunalen Kulturbereich, Gütersloh, Bertelsmann Stiftung, 1993.

6. Henry E. Allison, Ibidem, 3.

Remarks: With the destruction of right Hegelianism in Germany, the left Hegelians are victorious (with the assistance of French Bonapartism), but the political and economic void in Europe around the middle of the nineteenth century is filled by Kantian anti–Hegelianism in the world historical strife between Bismarck and Napoleon III. The clash between German and French Bonapartism reverberates throughout twentieth century world history.

See: “[3] In spite of some sympathy shown in recent years for a vaguely Kantian sort of idealism or, better, anti–realism, which argues for the dependence of our conception of reality on our concepts and/or linguistic practices, Kant’s transcendental idealism proper, with its distinction between appearance and things in themselves, remains highly unpopular. To be sure, there has arisen a lively dispute concerning the interpretation of this idealism, with some, myself included, arguing for a version of what is usually called a ‘two–aspect’ view (to be discussed below). Nevertheless, many interpreters continue to attribute to Kant the traditional ‘two–object’ or ‘two–world’ or some close facsimile thereof, and in most (though not all) cases this reading is combined with a summary dismissal of transcendental idealism as a viable philosophical position. In fact, the manifest untenability of transcendental idealism, as they understand it, has led some critics to attempt to save Kant from himself, by separating what they take to be a legitimate core of Kantian argument (usually of an anti–skeptical nature) from the excess baggage of transcendental idealism, with which they believe it to be encumbered … [453] there is an important asymmetry here. The reason for this is that in considering objects as they appear or as appearances, one is actually considering them as subject to intellectual as well as sensible conditions (the schematized categories and the Principles), whereas in considering them as they are in themselves the converse does not hold.” Henry E. Allison, Ibidem, 3–453.

Remarks: “Kant’s transcendental idealism proper, with its distinction between appearance and things in themselves, remains highly unpopular”: That Kantian transcendental idealism proper remains highly unpopular means that few academics and intellectuals profess their overt affiliations to Kantianism, yet a substantial number of our Western intelligentsia follow the Copernican revolution as Liberal Internationalism, especially in the arena of politics and economics: Their ideological weapon of choice is Transzendentale Logik.

7. See: “At first sight nothing would seem more disparate than the idea of nationality and the sane, rational, liberal internationalism of the great Königsberg philosopher. Of all the influential thinkers of his day, Kant seems the most remote from the rise of nationalism.” Isaiah Berlin (1972) in Robert Bernasconi, “Kant As An Unfamiliar Source of Racism,” Philosophers on Race:Critical Essays, Julie K. Ward & Tommy L. Lott, editors, Malden, Massachusetts, Blackwell, 2002, 145–166; 145. Isaiah Berlin, “Kant as an Unfamiliar Source of Nationalism (Original lecture, 1972),” The Sense of Reality: Studies in Ideas and Their History, Henry Hardy, editor, London, Chatto and Windus, 1996, 232–248.

See also: “Immanuel Kant appears to be well on his way to becoming the prophet of ‘progressive international reform’ in the post–Cold War era.” Cecelia Lynch in Mark F.N. Franke, “Introduction: Kant in International Relations,” Global Limits: Immanuel Kant, International Relations, and Critique of World Politics, Albany, New York, State University of New York, 2001, 1–24; 18.

See finally: “Kant is indeed in ascendance as the seer for many scholars predicting and theorizing the possibility of a multipolar liberal international peace. The practical impact of his work in this domain is intensifying at a substantial rate.” Mark F.N. Franke, “Introduction: Kant in International Relations,” Global Limits: Immanuel Kant, International Relations, and Critique of World Politics, Albany, New York, State University of New York, 2001, 1–24; 18.

8. Daniel Bell, The End of Ideology: On the Exhaustion of Political Ideas in the Fifties, New York, The Free Press, 1962, 122. [Italics added]

1. Henry E. Allison, “Part I: The Nature of Transcendental Idealism,” Kant’s Transcendental Idealism: An Interpretation and Defense, 2nd revised and enlarged edition, New Haven, Connecticut, Yale University Press, 2004, 1–74; 36–37.

See: “Although it would not be practical at this point to consider in detail the reasons why Bennett regards the Transcendental Deduction as a botch, I believe that it fair to say that they are quite similar to those expressed by Strawson and others; viz., the entanglement of a core analytic and anti–skeptical argument linking self–consciousness, understood [434] as the attribution of mental states or the awareness of a mental history, and the consciousness of an orderly objective world that is distinct from a subject’s awareness of it, which is paramount among the ‘good things,’ with the twin bogeymen of a transcendental psychology and a subjective idealism. Having endeavored in the in the body of this work and my previous writings on Kant to dispel these bogeymen I shall not say anything further these matters at present. I do believe, however, that, in addition to blurring the line between the tasks of the Transcendental Deduction and the Refutation of idealism, this view of what is salvageable in the former, although widely shared, reflects an anachronistic and exceedingly narrow conception of Kant’s project. The problem is not in the endeavor to relate Kant’s argument to contemporary concerns, but rather in a failure to consider seriously the relation of these concerns to those of the historical Kant.” Henry E. Allison, “Conclusion,” Kant’s Transcendental Deduction: An Analytical–Historical Commentary, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2015, 433–453;453–454.

2. Michael Joseph Mahony, History of Modern Thought: The English, Irish and Scotch Schools, New York, Fordham University Press, 1933, 158–159–160.

See: “Kant’s doctrines are destructively opposed to Catholicism. His teaching has been condemned by Popes Leo XIII and Pius X. His great work, ‘The Critique of Pure Reason’ was placed on the Index, 11th June, 1827. Inconsistent with Catholic teaching are (1) Kant’s Metaphysical Agnosticism, which declares his ignorance of all things as they really are; (2) his Moral Dogmatism which declares the supremacy of will over reason, thereby making blind will without the guidance of reason the rule of action; (3) his giving to religious dogma merely a symbolic signification; (4) diametrically opposed to scholastic teaching and the common sense of mankind is Kant’s theory of knowledge which makes mind and thought the measure of reality rather than making reality the measure of mind and thought. Kant maintains that things are so because we must think them so, not that we must think them so because they are really so independently of our thinking them. The reversal of the order of thought and reality, Kant calls his ‘Copernican Revolution’ in his theory of knowledge.” Michael Joseph Mahony, History of Modern Thought:The English, Irish and Scotch Schools, New York, Fordham University Press, 1933, 166.

3. Michael Joseph Mahony, History of Modern Thought: The English, Irish and Scotch Schools, New York, Fordham University Press, 1933, 166.

4. Henry E. Allison, “Conclusion,” Kant’s Transcendental Deduction: An Analytical–Historical Commentary, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2015, 433–453; 454.

5. Ibidem, 435.

6.

7. Henry E. Allison, Ibidem, 4. [Italics added]

See: “[6] [Harold Arthur Prichard] concentrates much of his attack on the alleged incoherence of Kantian ‘appearance talk.’ According to Prichard, whose critique was highly influential in the earlier part of the century, Kant’s whole conception of appearance is vitiated by a confusion of the claim that we know only things as they appear to us with the quite different claim that we know only a particular class of things, namely, appearances. Prichard also suggests that Kant only managed to avoid the above–mentioned dilemma by sliding from one of these claims to the other. Thus, on his reconstruction, what Kant really wished to hold is that we know things only as they appear to us; but since this supposedly entails that these things only seem to us to be spatial, in order to defend his cherished empirical realism, he was forced to shift to the doctrine that we know appearances and that they really are spatial. Underlying Prichard’s critique is the assumption that the claim, that we know objects only as they appear, is to be understood to mean that we know only how they seem to us, not how they really are. In fact, he makes this quite explicit by construing Kant’s distinction in terms of the classic example of perceptual illusion: the straight stick that appears bent to an observer when it is immersed in water. And given this, he has little difficulty in reducing Kant’s doctrine to absurdity. Although his analysis proceeds through various stages, Prichard’s main point is linguistic. Specifically, he claims that Kant’s account contradicts the clear meaning of ‘knowledge.’ Since to know something, according to Prichard, just means to know it as it really is, in contrast to how it may ‘seem to us,’ it follows that for Kant we cannot really know anything at all. Thus, far from providing an antidote to skepticism, as was his intent, Kant, on this reading, is seen as a Cartesian skeptic malgré lui.” Henry E. Allison, Ibidem, 6.

8. Allison, Ibidem, 36.

9. Allison, Ibidem, 499.

10. See: “I have occasionally modified these translations. Where there is no reference to an English translation either the translation, is my own or the text is referred to but not cited.” Allison, Ibidem, ix. [Italics added]

11. Allison, Ibidem, 3.

12. See: “Guyer does at times acknowledge that Kant held to something like a two–aspect view of transcendental idealism, but he sees this as an abandonment in 1787 of the original view of 1781 and claims that this later conception is likewise irrelevant to the central arguments of the Analytic.” Allison, Ibidem, 451.

See: “The Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) is without question one of the landmarks of the entire history of Western philosophy, comparable in its importance and influence to only a handful of other works.” Paul Guyer, editor, “Introduction,” The Cambridge Companion to Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2010, 1–18; 1. [Italics added]

Remarks: Paul Guyer and other academic sophists never distinguish Western philosophy from the modern European unreason of Locke, Leibniz, Hume and Kant: The academic sophists fall on the side of inexact historiography and world history. Their students enter the arena of politics and economics with a competitive disadvantage in the face of Americanism. Like many sophists dependent upon British academia, which received $Billions in EU–subsidies (culture, education and research) over the years from der Merkel Apparat in Brussels, their star is fading. The vast output at British universities of Kant apologetics over the years, the academic bastion of Liberal Internationalism, was a veritable cash cow for educational authorities and political élites. In the post–BREXIT world of today, the geopolitical conjuncture unchained by the Digital revolution is destroying the last academic remnants of the British New Left and Eurocommunism, while Western Marxism is totally discredited, — the opium of soixante–huitardisme is a vanishing phase of world history, as they themselves are unceremoniously dumped into the boneyards in the name of “cost–savings,” in order to subsidize the champagne and caviar of the Airbus ruling class in Berlin.

13. Allison, Ibidem, xix–4. [Italics added]

See: “An underlying thesis, which is independent of the viability of transcendental idealism, is its intimate connection with virtually every aspect of the Critique. In short, the separability of Kant’s fundamental claims in the Critique from transcendental idealism will be categorically denied. For better or worse, they stand or fall together.” Allison, Ibidem, 4.

14. X.

15. Henry E. Allison, Kant’s Transcendental Idealism: An Interpretation and Defense, New Haven, Connecticut, Yale University Press, 1983, 366. [Italics added]

16. Henry E. Allison, Ibidem, 16. [Italics added]

17. Allison, Ibidem, 1983, 372.

See: “[254] Kant’s philosophy is understood by most people as rationalism, and therefore as a pure doctrine of reason, and it is only this view which explains how it is that people are still bold enough to give out Fichte, Schelling, Hegel (the whole development in the direction of Panlogism, of the doctrine of reason as the only truth) — as a direct continuation and amplification of Kant. This is false from top to bottom … [314] We then speak of intellectual perception, and ever since Aristotle’s time there have been plenty of fairy tales to tell of it: Hegel in especial has had much to say about ‘supersensual perception’ … [321] we may also assert, and that is just what Hegel does, that there is a non–sensual form of perception, that is to say, that there is a form of understanding which is so constituted that without any intermediary of receptivity it perceives things by mere thought, by mere [322] spontaneity … [453] The sublime conception of the breath of life as the creative agent of the universe gradually dissolved even the world by interpreting the naïve mythological equation of ‘Thought’ with ‘Being,’ which exists exclusively in thought alone. Hegel made very great efforts to impose a similar system of philosophy during the last century.” Houston Stewart Chamberlain, Immanuel Kant: A Study and a Comparison with Goethe, Leonardo da Vinci, Bruno, Plato and Descartes, vol. 2, John Lees, translator & Algernon Bertram Freeman–Mitford (1st Baron Redesdale/Lord Redesdale, 1837–1916), introduction, London/New York/Toronto, John Lane/The Bodley Head, 1914, 254–314–321–322–453. [1905]

See: “[253] Kant reveals, and systematically investigates, reason in nature and nature in reason. With this it is proved that the transcendental method really lies entirely beyond this current distinction into subjective and objective, indeed so utterly beyond it that every continuous one–sided insistence, on one or the other standpoint, falsifies the peculiar fashion of this philosophy so as to make it unrecognisable … [254] When he [Kant] is minded critically to investigate the organisation of reason, he turns to nature: this is at once in itself the simplest and most beautiful example of the transcendental method … [257] We should rather say that Kant’s transcendental method, his conception of the domain of scientific philosophy, is neither subjective nor objective, neither reason nor nature; it is on the hither side of both; it sees the object only in the subject and the subject only in the object. But it is essentially impossible for us men to remain permanently upon the same point in the balance: In order to come to [258] an understanding we must hold either to a subjective or to an objective mode of expression, and that is why Kant’s system may be understood objectively (empirically) as well as subjectively (rationalistically) … [282] For the comprehension of Kant’s transcendental method in its specific nature a comparison with Newton may render good service. It will be remembered with what a stroke of genius Newton understood how to extract from a phenomenon what made it capable of being grasped and elaborated by means of theoretical science … [360] Transcendental philosophy has, however, shown you with detailed exactitude why such arguments do not hold good: Psychologically, freedom is of course completely incomprehensible, and to designate it as something belonging to the nature of the soul is a mere phrase; on the other hand, the fact of freedom finds its place in transcendental method and architectonics, it finds its connection with the other phenomena of reason, and so far also its comprehensibility: It is neither more nor less sure and comprehensible than the law of gravitation in theoretical science.” Chamberlain, Ibidem, 253–254–257–258–282–360. [Italics added]

See: “Transcendental philosophy is the general conception by critical observation in conjunction with hypothetical architectonics of the complicated system of the combinations which reciprocally condition one another. It does not touch special men and special things; it is not biological: It is not historical: It differs entirely from logic (cf. R.V. 61); neither is it speculative and dogmatic; least of all is it psychological. It only establishes scientifically and firmly those objective conditions without which there could be no world and no reason, and consequently also no recognition. And in doing this it erects everywhere the true defining landmarks and tears down those that are false and conventional.” Houston Stewart Chamberlain, “Kant: Science and Religion, With an Excursus on the ‘Thing in Itself,’” Immanuel Kant: A Study and a Comparison with Goethe, Leonardo da Vinci, Bruno, Plato and Descartes, vol. 2, John Lees, translator & Algernon Bertram Freeman–Mitford (1st Baron Redesdale/Lord Redesdale, 1837–1916), introduction, London/New York/Toronto, John Lane/The Bodley Head, 1914, 167–414; 292. [1905 & 1908]: “Transscendentalphilosophie ist die durch kritische Beobachtung, gepaart mit hypothetischer Architektonik, gewonnene Gesamtvorstellung des ganzen verwickelten Systems dieser sich gegenseitig bedingenden Verknüpfungen. Sie betrifft nicht besondere Menschen und besondere Dinge; sie ist nicht biologisch; sie ist nicht historisch; sie ist etwas ganz Anderes als Logik (vgl. namentlich r. V. 61 unten); ebensowenig ist sie spekulativ und dogmatisch; am allerwenigsten ist sie psychologisch. Sondern sie stellt lediglich die objektiven Bedingungen wissenschaftlich fest, ohne welche es keine Welt und keine Vernunft und folglich auch kein Erkennen geben würde. Und indem sie das tut, richtet sie überall die rechten Grenzpfeiler auf und reisst die falschen, hergekommenen nieder.” Houston Stewart Chamberlain, “Sechster Vortrag: Kant (Wissenschaft und Religion) mit einem Exkurs über das Ding an sich,” Immanuel Kant: Die Persönlichkeit als Einführung in das Werk, erste Auflage, München, Verlagsanstalt F. Bruckmann, A.–G., 1905, 551–767; 660. [Italics added]

Remarks: We must be wary when reading Redesdale’s English translation of Chamberlain’s Kant, and (1) distinguish meanings attributed to Chamberlain’s words in the English text, from their original German significance found in the first and second editions, which are quite alien to his German Neo–Kantianism (the different British and even Anglo–American meanings of “philosophy” as opposed to Weltanschauung), the significance of which is otherwise imported from the British Kantio–Hegelianism of Bradley, Bosanquet, McTaggart and so forth, albeit adulterated via the prism of popular culture, (2) and also be equally wary of the importation into our own twenty–first century interpretation of these English meanings, hermeneutical baggage (impedimenta) inherited from the twentieth century Anglo–American tradition, which in various ways, differs significantly from late nineteenth century Anglo–Saxon philosophy, — in particular, various “epistemological conceptions” which are often deployed to distinguish the former tradition from the alleged “irrationalism” of the latter’s sophistry, i.e., as early analytical philosophers like Moore, Russell and Wittgenstein draw oppositions to British Neo–Hegelianism (metaphysics), at the turn of the last century, which are later distinguished, opposed and reconstructed by Russell, Quine, Kripke, Putnam, Goodman, Rorty and so on, and dependent upon the different “meanings” that are given to language and logic (which historically obscure party affiliations when transported into the combat zone of ruling classes, when world history is prostrated before the alter of academic hair–splitting, and exact historiography is castrated in the name of subtle scholastic distinctions, themselves verbally conflated into Herculean proportions). In other words, our interpretation of Chamberlain’s Kant must historically navigate the “logical” fields of semantics, linguistics and semiology, which are themselves historically inscribed within the modern European “conception of the transcendental” (Transzendentale Logik): The political and economic struggles in central Europe which explode in the Great War are not strictu sensu world historical determinations, but are rather themselves complexifications from greater shocks, — the collapse of European modernity in the fratricidal strife between the Industrial and French revolutions, as the rise of Globalism within the supremacy of American Liberty, the beacon of Western civilization. In the world of today, as the genuine Hegelianism of the rational Hegelian philosophy,the Kantian traditions are overcome in the mastery of Americanism.

See finally: “[262] Wie nichtig das Vorhaben ist, von einer Natur aus, die wir selber erschaffen, deren notwendige Gesetze die Gesetze unseres eigenen Verstandes sind, kurz, von einem focus imaginarius aus die grossen Rätsel des Daseins lösen zu wollen, liegt auf der Hand; doch nach Kant ist das entgegengesetzte Verfahren genau ebenso trüglich. Es gibt kein Erfahrungs-Ich, von dem man begrifflich — mit Fichte-Hegel — oder sinnlich — mit Schopenhauer — ausgehen könnte, um auf ihm ein dogmatisches Gebäude zu errichten; das Ich liegt jenseits, oder — wenn Sie wollen — diesseits der Erfahrung … [285] Was hier vorliegt, ist genau das selbe wie das, was wir heute in unserer abstrakten und umständlichen Gedankenverknüpfung »die Lehre von der Identität von Denken und Sein« nennen, die namentlich durch Fichte, Schelling und Hegel wieder zu hohen Ehren kam, doch auch die versteckte Grundlage der Schopenhauerschen Lehre bildet und unter unseren Zeitgenossen sich nicht minder deutlich in so weit abweichenden Geistern wie Dühring und Wundt kundgibt … [286] Über diese selbe Brücke wandeln die Menschen noch heute hin und her, wenn auch die einen sich den Riesen Schopenhauer, die andern den Zwerg Büchner, die meisten aber irgend einen der zahlreichen dii minores zum Führer auf dem Wolkenpfad erküren. Aus genügender perspektivischer Entfernung erblickt, wird sich der Unterschied zwischen den naiven Annahmen eines altarischen, nachsinnenden Hirten und den äusserst gekünstelten eines Hegel in einen Gradunterschied auflösen; eine völlig neue Lösung des ewigen Rätsels ist nur die kritische Lösung … [309] Sie dürfen nämlich nicht etwa glauben, das, was Sie soeben in Hellas erblickten — der Fortgang aus Konkretem zu Abstraktem und aus naivem Monismus zu überlegtem Dualismus — sei eine notwendige Entwickelung. Derlei Auffassungen, die uns aus der Zeit Hegel’s, und neuerdings unter dem Einfluss des grassierenden Darwinismus, so fest anhaften, wie dumme Gänsefedern einem mit Teer Bestrichenen, verhindern jedes wahre Verständnis. Wir sprechen das Zauberwort »Entwickelung« aus, rücken dadurch das Phänomen in grenzenlose Entfernung, und wenn wir es dann nicht mehr erblicken, vermeinen wir, wir hätten es »erklärt«. Was sich »entwickelt«, ist immer das Nebensächliche, wogegen wir hier gerade auf das Wesentliche kommen möchten.” Houston Stewart Chamberlain, Immanuel Kant: Die Persönlichkeit als Einführung in das Werk, erste Auflage, München, Verlagsanstalt F. Bruckmann, A.–G., 1905, 262–285–286–309. Confer: 312–315–328–357–358–358–364–367–367–381–392–514–596–617–626–630–679–685.

18. Henry E. Allison, “Preface to the Revised Edition,” Ibidem, 2004, xiii–xxx; xvii.

See: “Hegel typically presents Kant as a subjective idealist and skeptic, who separates knowledge or, rather, a subjectivistic surrogate for knowledge, from ‘Truth’ … Apperception, insofar as it is ‘something real,’ is a consciousness of the spontaneity of thinking. Thus the conceptualizing activity of the mind is a datum of ordinary reflection, and this provides the basis for a transcendental or specifically philosophical reflection on the ‘forms’ and ‘conditions’ of this activity. This, of course, makes Kant’s philosophy a ‘philosophy of reflection’ in the Hegelian sense; the issue, which cannot be dealt with here, therefore becomes the cogency of Hegel’s overall critique of this philosophical ‘standpoint’ and of his own alternative to it.”

Henry E. Allison, Kant’s Transcendental Idealism: An Interpretation and Defense, New Haven, Connecticut, Yale University Press, 1983, 372.

19. X.

20. Allison, Ibidem, 4. [Italics added]

See: “This epistemologically based understanding of transcendental idealism requires that the transcendental distinction between appearances and things in themselves be understood as holding between two ways of considering things (as they appear and as they are in themselves) rather than as, on the more traditional reading, between two ontologically distinct sets of entities (appearances and things in themselves). In this regard it may be characterized as a ‘two–aspect’ reading. Nevertheless, this label requires careful qualification in order to avoid serious misunderstanding. The basic problem is that dual– (or multi–) aspect theories are themselves usually metaphysical in nature. In fact, they typically arise in connection with treatments of the mind–body problem, where some versions of ‘dual aspectism’ is sometimes presupposed as a viable alternative to both dualism and materialism … The main problem with attempting to interpret transcendental idealism on the basis of such a metaphysical model is that it loses sight of its fundamentally epistemological thrust, which is itself the result of approaching it independently of the discursivity thesis. As was argued above, this thesis entails that sensibility must have some a priori forms (though not that they be space and time). Accordingly, in considering things as they appear, we are considering them in the way in which they are presented to discursive knowers with our forms of sensibility. Conversely, to consider them as the are in themselves is to [17] consider them apart from their epistemic relation to these forms or epistemic conditions, which, if it is to have any content, must be equivalent to considering them qua objects for some pure intelligence or ‘mere understanding.’ It is the qualitative (transcendental) distinction between the sensible and the intellectual conditions of discursive cognition that makes this dual manner of consideration possible, just as it is the dependence of thought on sensibility for its contents that prevents the latter mode of consideration from amounting to cognition. When Kant’s distinction is understood this way, the claim that we can cognize things only as they appear, not as they are themselves, need not be taken (as it was, for example, by Prichard) to mean that we can know only how things seem to us under certain conditions or through a ‘veil of perception.’ Rather, such cognition is fully objective, since it is governed by apriori epistemic conditions. It is only that, as discursive, human knowledge differs in kind, not merely in degree, from that which might be had by a putative pure understanding.” Henry E. Allison, Ibidem, 16–17.

21. Allison, Ibidem.

See: “[36] the major source of the interpretive problem lies in Kant’s tendency to refer to the objects of human experience not only as ‘appearances’ but also as ‘mere representations’… Kant’s statement of what has come to be known as his ‘Copernican revolution’ may be viewed as a second and closely related way in which he endeavored to clarify his idealism … There is a considerable literature regarding the precise point of the comparison and the appropriateness of the Copernican analogy, the main point at issue being whether Kant has committed what is called the ‘anthropocentric fallacy’ in his reading of Copernicus. Fortunately, we need not concern ourselves with that issue here. The central question for us is rather how Kant’s own philosophical ‘revolution’ is to be understood, which remains a question, even if, as is frequently maintained, the analogy with Copernicus is particularly apt … [37] [The] ‘Copernican’ supposition that ‘objects must conform to our cognition’ (die gegenstande mussen sich nach unseren Erkenntnis richten), expresses the central tenet of transcendental idealism.” Allison, Ibidem, 36–37.

22. Allison, Ibidem. [Italics added]

See: “In reality, however, Bennett does seem to have some sympathy for the patchwork theory of Vaihinger and Kemp Smith, since at one point he states that it ‘throws some light on these passages about imagination; and it may even be possible to discover precisely and in detail lie [sic] behind the neurotically inept exposition of the Transcendental Deduction;’ although he proceeds to add that, ‘Such a discovery would probably not be worth the trouble.’” Henry E. Allison, “Conclusion,” Kant’s Transcendental Deduction: An Analytical–Historical Commentary, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2015, 433–453; 433.

23. Allison, “Note on Sources and Key to Abbreviations and Translations,” Ibidem, ix–xii; ix. [Italics added]

See: “EU Über Eine Entdeckung nach der alle Kritik der reinen Vernunft durch eine ältere entbehrlich gemacht werden soll (KGS 8) On a Discovery whereby any New Critique of Pure Reason Is to Be Made Superfluous by an Older One, in Theoretical Philosophy after 1781, trans. by Henry Allison, pp. 271–336. The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.” Allison, “Note on Sources and Key to Abbreviations and Translations,” Ibidem, ix–xii; xi.

24. Allison, Ibidem, 453. [Italics added]

See: “I am here attempting to correct a defect in my original analysis, where I suggested that transcendental idealism follows from the mere concept of an epistemic condition. In response to this, some critics charged me with ambiguity, noting that I sometimes present transcendental idealism in this way but at other times express the more orthodox view that it depends on Kant’s conception of human sensibility as having a priori forms or conditions. A very useful contribution to the discussion has been made by Karl Ameriks, who distinguishes between ‘non–specific’ and ‘specific’ versions of transcendental idealism. The former attempts to define transcendental idealism in broad epistemological terms as affirming the dependence of objects on our conceptual schemes, cognitive capacities, theories, or the like. The latter locate the essence of Kantian idealism in his theory of sensibility. Put in these terms, the view I am here advocating may be seen as a combination of both.” Henry E. Allison, Ibidem, 451.

1. Henry E. Allison, “Preface to the Revised Edition,” Ibidem, xiii–xx; xvii–xviii. [Italics added]

See: “I would like to thank those to whom I am indebted for their help with this revised edition. Foremost among these is my former student, Michelle Grier, not only for her own dissertation and book, which forced me to rethink a number of my earlier views, but also for her insightful comments and suggestions concerning drafts of the chapters dealing with Kant’s theory of reason … I would like to thank Cambridge University Press for permission to quote extensively from the translation of the Critique of Pure Reason by Paul Guyer and Allen Wood.” Allison, “Acknowledgements,” Ibidem, xxi; xxi. [Italics added]

2. Michelle Grier, Kant’s Doctrine of Transcendental Illusion (Modern European Philosophy), Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2004, 23–303–304. [Italics added]

See: “Vleeschauwer, a Nazi collaborator during World War II, was tried for war crimes in 1945 and condemned to death in abstentia as he was in hiding.” Elaine Harger, Which Side Are You On? Seven Social Responsibility Debates in American Librarianship 1990–2015, Jefferson, North Carolina, McFarland & Company, Inc., 2015, 60.

See: “The work of the ERR was to confiscate archives, libraries, and works of art from the ideological enemies of Nazism. It was the most productive unit of plunder in Belgium and was directed by archivists, librarians, and museum curators. De Vleeschauwer was close to senior ERR officials like Adolf Vogel, Karlheinz Esser, and Hans Muchow who targeted private libraries in Jewish homes in Belgium. He had attended German book exhibitions regularly, and wrote several articles on politics and culture for the German–language Nationalsocialist, advocating Nazism.” Archie L. Dick, The Hidden History of South Africa’s Book and Reading Cultures, Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 2012.

See: Herman Jean de Vleeschauwer, La déduction transcendantale dans l’oeuvre de Kant: La déduction transcendantale avant la Critique de la Raison Pure, tome 1, Antwerpen/Paris/‘S–Gravenhage, De Sikkel–Édouard Champion–Martinus Nijhoff, 1934; Herman Jean de Vleeschauwer, La déduction transcendantale dans l’oeuvre de Kant: La déduction transcendantale de 1781 jusqu’à la deuxième édition de la Critique de la Raison Pure (1787), tome 2, Antwerpen/Paris/‘S–Gravenhage, De Sikkel–Édouard Champion–Martinus Nijhoff, 1936; Herman Jean de Vleeschauwer, La déduction transcendantale dans l’oeuvre de Kant: La déduction transcendantale de 1787 jusqu’à l’opus postumum, tome 3, Antwerpen/Paris/‘S–Gravenhage, De Sikkel–Édouard Champion–Martinus Nijhoff, 1937.

See: “Among the authors who have interpreted paragraphs 24 and 25 as if they brought about an enquiry about the Self, we could mention Herman Jean De Vleeschauwer (La déduction transcendantale dans l’oeuvre de Kant, vol. III, p. 224 and 229). See, too, Dieter Henrich (Identität und Objectivität, p. 83), and Jean–Marie Beyssade (“La critique kantienne du ‘cogito’ de Descartes (sur le paragraphe 25 de la déduction transcendantale)”, p. 53). Jean Marie Beyssade finds in paragraph 25 “a privileged consciousness of the thinking ego and of its existence; this matches the first Cartesian cogito.” Karl Ameriks seems to support a similar position in his “Kant and Mind: Mere Immaterialism.” Mario Caimi, Kant’s B Deduction, Maria del Carmen Caimi, translator & Pablo Muchnik, editor, Newcastle upon Tyne, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014, 90.

3. Henry E. Allison, “Introduction,” Kant’s Transcendental Deduction: An Analytical–Historical Commentary, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2015, 1–10; 1. [Italics added]

See: “The approach will be both analytical and historical. While the main goal is to provide a critical analysis and evaluation of the Transcendental Deduction, as it is found in the first and second editions of the Critique, I share with many commentators the view that Kant’s argument can best be understood in light of the internal development of his thought, which eventually led him both to the recognition of the need for a transcendental deduction and to the forms that it took in the first two editions of the Critique. In short, I believe that in order to understand Kant’s novel project it is necessary to traverse the path through which he arrived at his understanding of the problematic to which it is addressed and his method of addressing it … In what follows, I shall use the terms ‘Transcendental Deduction’ or simply ‘Deduction’ to refer to the actual texts of Kant’s arguments in the Critique and ‘transcendental deduction’ or ‘deduction’ to refer to the project in general.” Allison, Ibidem, 1.

4. Allison, Ibidem, 9. [Italics added]

See: “This understanding of the purpose of the Deduction accords, with Henrich’s well–known philological thesis that Kant’s use of the term ‘deduction’ was borrowed from the legal system of the Holy Roman Empire, where Deduktionsschriften were writings issued by the parties involved in legal disputes, most of which involved territorial claims [11. Henrich, (1989a), esp. 30–40]. In short, Kant understood by a deduction not a deductive argument, but, rather, an argument (of whatever form) that endeavors to justify a right to possess and use something, which in the case of the Transcendental Deduction is a set of pure concepts of the understanding or categories. Indeed, Kant himself makes this quite clear, when he writes, ‘Jurists, when they speak of entitlements and claims, distinguish in a legal matter between the question about what is lawful (quid juris) and that which concerns the fact (quid facti), and since they demand proof of both, they call the first, that which is to establish the entitlement or legal claim the deduction’ (A84/B116).” Allison, Ibidem, 10.

5. Allison, “Conclusion,” Kant’s Transcendental Deduction: An Analytical–Historical Commentary, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2015, 433–453; 433. [Italics added]

See: “This is the first of three chapters dealing with the development of Kant’s thought during the ‘pre–critical’ period insofar as it bears on the problematic of the Transcendental Deduction.” Allison, “Chapter 1: Kant’s Analytic Metaphysics and Model of Cognition in the 1760s,” Ibidem, 11–42; 11.

See: “Because of the focus on texts that have a significant bearing on the future, not yet envisioned, deduction, there is no attempt to provide anything like a complete survey of Kant’s ‘pre–critical’ thought, which is quite wide ranging, encompassing virtually all of the [2] topics with which the ‘critical’ Kant was concerned … the main reason for this restriction is that these works provide the first clear expression of a concern that remained central to Kant’s thought throughout the remainder of his career and that eventually gave rise to the transcendental deduction project. Although this concern .” Allison, “Introduction,” Ibidem, 1–2.

1. Henry E. Allison, “Introduction,” Kant’s Transcendental Deduction: An Analytical–Historical Commentary, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2015, 1–10; 1.

1. Saul Aron Kripke, “Naming and Necessity: Lecture I, 20 January 1970,” Semantics of Natural Language (Synthèse Library), № 40, Donald Davidson & Gilbert Harman, editors, Dordrecht, Reidel Publishing Company, 1972, 253–355; 288.

See: “Aristotle’s most important properties consist in his philosophical work, and Hitler’s in his murderous political role; both, as I have said, might have lacked these properties altogether. Surely there was no logical fate hanging over either Aristotle or Hitler which made it in any sense inevitable that they should have possessed the properties we regard as important to them; they could have had careers completely different from their actual ones … I say that a designator is rigid, and designates the same thing in all possible worlds.” Saul Kripke, Ibidem, 289. [Italics added]

2. Kripke, Ibidem, 289.

See: “Let me make some distinctions that I want to use. The first is between a rigid and a nonrigid designator. What do these terms mean? As an example of a nonrigid designator, I can give an expression such as ‘the inventor of bifocals.’ Let us suppose that it was Benjamin Franklin who invented the bifocals, and so the expression, ‘the inventor of the bifocals,’ designates or refers to a certain man, namely, Benjamin Franklin. However we can easily imagine that the world could have been different, that under different circumstances someone else would have come upon this invention before Benjamin Franklin did, and in that case, he would have been the inventor of the bifocals. So, in this sense, the expression ‘the inventor of the bifocals’ is nonrigid: Under certain circumstances one man would have been the inventor of bifocals; under other circumstances, another man would have. In contrast, consider the expression ‘the square root of 25.’ Independently of the empirical facts, we can give an arithmetical proof that the square root [145] of 25 is in fact the number 5, and because we have proved this mathematically, what we have proved is necessary. If we think of numbers as entities at all, and let us suppose, at least for the purpose of this lecture, that we do, then the expression ‘the square root of 25’ necessarily designates a certain number, namely 5. Such an expression I call ‘a rigid designator’ … What do I mean by ‘rigid designator’? I mean a term that designates the same object in all possible worlds … [146] when I use the notion of rigid designator, I do not imply that the object referred to necessarily exists. All I mean is that in any possible world where the object in question does exist, in any situation where the object would exist, we use the designator in question to designate that object. In a situation where the object does not exist, then we should say that the designator has no referent and that the object in question so designated does not exist.” Saul Aron Kripke, “Identity and Necessity,” Identity and Individuation, Milton Karl Munitz, editor, New York, New York University Press, 1971, 135–164; 144–145–146.

Remarks: (1) Let us suppose that it was Benjamin Franklin who invented the bifocals: So the expression, ‘the inventor of the bifocals,’ designates or refers to a certain man, namely, Benjamin Franklin? By merely supposing that it was Benjamin Franklin who invented the bifocals, the expression, ‘the inventor of the bifocals,’ designates or refers to a certain man? The expression, ‘the inventor of the bifocals,’ supposedly designates or supposedly refers to a certain man, namely, Benjamin Franklin. The expression, ‘the inventor of the bifocals,’ as supposed, does not actually designate or refer to any certain man. For we suppose that it was Benjamin Franklin who invented the bifocals, but not really and truly a man named Benjamin Franklin. (2) We can easily imagine that the world could have been different, that under different circumstances someone else would have come upon this invention before Benjamin Franklin: But which world is this, that we “imagine” could have been different, since we suppose that it was “Benjamin Franklin” who invented the bifocals? The world that we imagine in this Kripkean thought experiment is an imaginary world, a phantasy. That we can easily imagine that the world could have been different, rather than we cannot easily imagine that the world could have been different, — this is another question, For what exactly is this Kripkean world, imaginary or delusional? What exactly does Kripke mean by the power of our imagination? Imagination, in the Kripkean lexicon, is cognition, conceptualization, even consciousness? (3) “When I use the notion of rigid designator, I do not imply that the object referred to necessarily exists”: When Saul Kripke deploys the term rigid designator, — as opposed to a nonrigid designator, i.e., that which supposedly designates imaginary things, which are of assistance (allegedly) in the production of our phantasms, — he uses a notion of designation. What a strange notion this is, the notion of the designation of phantasms. Surely, the objection will be raised, “in any possible world where the object in question does exist, in any situation where the object would exist, we use the designator in question to designate that object”? The rational distinction between possible and actual worlds, and therefore the precise distinction between possible and impossible worlds, in his discussion of identity and necessity, is nowhere evidenced, for the very reason that Saul Kripke does not advance any conception whatsoever of “the” world, whether empirical or non–empirical. Saul Kripke means by the “power” of imagination to “designate” rigidly and nonrigidly, precisely what Kant means by his transcendental, — i.e., as deployed in his transcendental “inferences.”

3. Kripke, Ibidem, 289.

4. Ibidem.

See: “When I hear the name ‘Hitler,’ I do feel it’s sort of analytic that the man was evil. But really, probably not. Hitler might have spent all his days in quiet in Linz.” Saul Kripke, Ibidem, 288.

Remarks: The famous analytic–synthetic distinction of our Kantian intelligentsia is the basis of their Anglo–American Transzendentale Logik, especially as outlined in Quine’s “Two Dogmas of Empiricism.”

5. Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf: Zwei Bände in einem Band Ungekürzte Ausgabe, 851–855 Auflage, München, Zentralverlag der NSDAP., Verlag Franz Eher Nachf., G.m.b.H., 1943, 328: “Reinster Idealismus deckt sich unbewußt mit tiefster Erkenntnis.”

6. Saul Kripke, “Identity and Necessity,” Identity and Individuation, Milton Karl Munitz, editor, New York, New York University Press, 1971, 135–164; 135–162–163.

7. Kripke, “Identity and Necessity,” Ibidem, 135. [Italics added]

8. Kripke, Ibidem, 158. [Italics added]

9. Ibidem, 144–145–146.

10. Ibidem, 147–148.

Henry E. Allison, Kant’s Transcendental Idealism: An Interpretation and Defense, (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1983).

Henry E. Allison, Kant’s Transcendental Idealism: An Interpretation and Defense, 2nd revised and enlarged edition, (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 2004). [1983]

Henry E. Allison, “Note on Sources and Key to Abbreviations and Translations,” Kant’s Transcendental Idealism: An Interpretation and Defense, 2nd revised and enlarged edition, (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 2004), ix–xii. [1983]

Henry E. Allison, “Preface to the Revised Edition,” Kant’s Transcendental Idealism: An Interpretation and Defense, 2nd revised and enlarged edition, (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 2004), xiii–xx. [1983]

Henry E. Allison, “Acknowledgements,” Kant’s Transcendental Idealism: An Interpretation and Defense, 2nd revised and enlarged edition, (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 2004), xxi. [1983]

Henry E. Allison, “Part I: The Nature of Transcendental Idealism,” Kant’s Transcendental Idealism: An Interpretation and Defense, 2nd revised and enlarged edition, (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 2004), 1–74. [1983]

Henry E. Allison, “Part I: The Nature of Transcendental Idealism: Chapter 1: An Introduction to the Problem,” Kant’s Transcendental Idealism: An Interpretation and Defense, 2nd revised and enlarged edition, (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 2004), 1–74; 3–19. [1983]

Anonymous, “Obituary: Duncan Forbes, 1922–1994,” Bulletin of the Hegel Society of Great Britain, (1994): 112–113.

Robert Bernasconi, “Kant As An Unfamiliar Source of Racism,” Philosophers on Race: Critical Essays, Julie K. Ward & Tommy L. Lott, editors, (Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell, 2002), 145–166.

Christopher J. Berry, Hume, Hegel and Human Nature, (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1982).

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Bernard R. Boxill, “Black Liberation — Yes!” The Liberation Debate: Rights at Issue, Michael Leahy & Dan Cohn–Sherbok, (New York/London: Routledge, 1996), 51–64

Edward Hallett Carr, The Twenty Years’ Crisis, 1919–1939: An Introduction to the Study of International Relations, 2nd edition, (London: Macmillan, 1962). [1939]

Ernst Cassirer, “Neo–Kantianism,” Encyclopedia Britannica, 14th edition, vol. 16, (Chicago, Illinois: The University Press, 1945), 215–216.

Neville Chamberlain, The Struggle For Peace, (Toronto: Allen, 1939).

Noam Chomsky, Year 501: The Conquest Continues, (Montréal/New York: Black Rose Books, 1993).

Earl W. Count, editor, “Introduction,” This is Race: An Anthology Selected From the International Literature on the Races of Man, (New York: Schuman, 1950), xiii–xxviii.

Herman Jean de Vleeschauwer, La déduction transcendantale dans l’oeuvre de Kant: La déduction transcendantale avant la Critique de la Raison Pure, tome 1, (Antwerpen/Paris/‘S–Gravenhage: De Sikkel–Édouard Champion–Martinus Nijhoff, 1934).

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