The Pete Quiñones Show - Episode 1235: Continental Philosophy and Its Origins - Pt. 11 - Kant w/ Thomas777

Episode Date: July 3, 2025

51 MinutesPG-13Thomas777 is a revisionist historian and a fiction writer.Thomas continues a series on the subject of Continental Philosophy, which focuses on history, culture, and society. In this episode Thomas talks about Immanuel Kant.Thomas' SubstackRadio Free Chicago - T777 and J BurdenThomas777 MerchandiseThomas' Book "Steelstorm Pt. 1"Thomas' Book "Steelstorm Pt. 2"Thomas on TwitterThomas' CashApp - $7homas777Pete and Thomas777 'At the Movies'Support Pete on His WebsitePete's PatreonPete's SubstackPete's SubscribestarPete's GUMROADPete's VenmoPete's Buy Me a CoffeePete on FacebookPete on TwitterBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-pete-quinones-show--6071361/support.

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this is over the nation hamster. It's leargoal to doer and not the Gereena in Aundun, and leant of Gala to do not Fadha Gauta Deiardin. In Ergrid, we're dig tour

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thank you. The Pekignana Show.com. Everything's there. I want to welcome everyone back to the Pekignano show. Thomas is back and we are continuing the series on continental philosophy. How are you doing it, Thomas? I'm right. I'm going to talk about Emmanuel Kant today. Initially, I was going to discuss the Reformation and after providing a background in Aquinas and Thomas thought. But I'm going to do that after I conclude.

the main body of this series for reasons that I think will become clear as I proceed. Emmanuel Kant's fundamentally important to the Enlightenment Project. I mean, the point before that, in my opinion, one of the only purely political theoretical contributions from the Germans to the Enlightenment enterprise was Klausowitz. I stand by that because Kant wasn't a political theorist. He wrote precious little on politics and direct capacities. He said he has this enduring and tremendously outsized impact on, on conceptual matters relating to a political discourse, which makes sense. He was an intellectual giant.

I'm not this session going to talk about concepts like the categorical imperative. and a pro rhea and a posteriori distinctions, and the thing in itself as a conceptual postulate, those things are tremendously important, but we're getting into very deep metaphysics there, and things like the Anthropic principle, which in my opinion, I've got an epistemological view of politics, among other things.

That's one of the reasons why I hold out Heidegger is so significant, not just because of his ideas on epistemology and things and political ontology that I view as systemically and very integral. you know it's uh because i don't think that politics is um as discreet a domain as you know is is often suggested so it's probably be um a two-part treatment of con and the cont was in conceptual dialogue with hume um specifically hume's radical empiricism even for an enlightenment partisan that was remarkable but i mean hume obviously was not a continental theorist but we'll get into that too moving forward um i'm still not feeling great um that's one of the reasons why i split this up but i think it's appropriate just uh Not so much for the sake of brevity, but I think it makes more sense that way.

Otherwise, it becomes kind of unmanageable. Kant had an interesting background, say the least. He was the progeny of radical pietists. And the Germans is a deeply, theologically impacted people in terms of their intellectual culture, I think that can't be overstated. You know, I made the point before,

speaking of Heidegger, he's very much in the tradition of Meister Eckart, as with Schopenhauer, in my opinion, although it's more obvious with somebody like Heidegger than is a Schopenhauer or Ficta. But German pietism is equally important, and I'd argue was an essential aspect of the modern German political and cultural mind.

And one of the reasons I think it's misguided, for example, when people posit, it's mostly very partisan-minded Jewish writers, as well as Englishmen. They enjoy suggesting that the NSDAP was this culturally Catholic phenomenon. It really was not. at all the National Socialist Heartland was the rural and semi-rural Protestant North and I believe there's a direct connection between pietist thought and National Socialist ethics especially as regards the congregational understanding of communitarian life and the

inner witness as the arbiter of political and social ethics and things like that you know um this isn't middling um trivia or something you know what i'm getting at is that it's just a way the the to people such as the aforementioned you know fascism or the third rike is their stand in for Lucifer. So the end, they, you know, the, um, the, the English being rabidly anti-Catholic and, you know, Zionist types having similar prejudice is a little emergent from a different place. That's the source of that, um, conceptual prejudice. But even some people should know better, sometimes parrot that, that, um, suggestion.

But, um, Kant was a good. East Prussian from what's now Kalenegrad you know so the easternmost frontier of the Prussian

state you know and that undoubtedly colored his perspective on you know high politics he lived a very priestly life he was very much like in that mold. You know, he never married. He devoted pretty much the entirety of his

waking life to academic research and writing. He was tremendously prolific, you know, and I'm not sure people fully grasp his influence. You brush up against Kantian perspectives constantly. in serious academic, such that it continues to exist in legacy terms. And it's just something people take for granted. Nonsense, like democratic peace theory, which no serious person abides, obviously. There is some connection to Kant therein, but it's abyser and it's dumbed down to the point of being infantile such that, I don't really think it's fair to claim a direct lineage. However, Kant's anthropological suggestions about man as a political actor and what his intrinsic motives are

and how these things can be manipulated are remarkably at odds with, reality and uh it his conclusions aren't really suggestive of the they're very kind of self-daming you know this is a man who had absolutely no understanding of the political you know and no most of the earth by karl smit is a substantial portion of that book, which is Schmidt's magnum opus in many ways. It's a savage repudiation

of Kantian conceptual biases and theoretical models, you know, which is very well placed. But nevertheless, Kant was complicated, just like Hobbs

was, you know, Hobbs was a pure political theorist, contrary. Emmanuel Kant. However, his ontological claims were, you know, nakedly at odds with reality.

And stuff like this, of course, is the basis of, of scientism. You know, in the sense, Wolfgang Smith talked about it.

You know, not a, not a bias for the scientific perspective. Scientism is, you know, a conceptual prejudice that, you know, suggests that scientific paradigms you somehow

facilitate a revelation of reality that's essentially curative of all, you know, human shortcomings and things, and that's obviously preposterous beyond belief. The cons, you know, again,

His direct treatment of politics is largely oblique and derivative relative to the main thrust of his subject matter. Nevertheless, it becomes central when one immerses himself and comes to truly understand the core tenets of of Conte in metaphysics and ethical postulates. The three chief works cont is most known for are critique of pure reason, critique of practical reason, and critique of judgment. For example, critique of judgment, he speaks of politics in direct terms

literally in one paragraph and that's it. When he talks explicitly of politics, he generally does so under the guise of metaphysics or law. He was very much an illegal theorist

or by resort to historical analogy or drawing upon what he views as precedent to the historical record to discuss what he views. as progressive or curative imperative. These are so make no mistake.

The body the main body of Kantian theory is full of practical proposals and utopian social engineering proposals. But if you were saying, if you were seeking out some sort of statement where by Kant, like Hobbes does, you know, breaks down what he views as, you know,

European man's political mind and the source of, you know, it's structure and the nature of

you know, the relationship between, you know, the relationship between ethics and politics in direct capacities you're not going to find that um ready for huge savings

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is regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland. And now this is over the nation-hamsher. It's leargoal to the law and not yet greeing in Aondon and leander Gala to gain time of father to doeran. In Ergrid, we're taking to talk in one-of-he and women-vae

to do not even though to do so much a lot of doing for example lecturers on as to go ahead and people tariff in the Awean. It's a year of Coochduagin. Follam, less more, in Ergaret Pongaii. The two most significant theories that Kant was in dialogue with

and that impacted his political thought where Rousseau and um Isaac Newton I haven't read many contemporary people who understand this fully E Michael Jones does Newton was

a strange character and his entire body of work is basically an almost kind of petulant attempt to repudiate Aristotelian logic

be that as it may Newton was viewed as this intellectual giant who ushered in the scientific revolution and thus the enlightenment this is the way that you know partisans of that perspective viewed it and even those who are not particularly disposed

to take up that proverbial banner with zeal. He viewed him as essentially the progenitor of you know kind of the new science all right the view of cot was that um you know man had been essentially mired in ignorance until he was able to master the kinds of methodologies that were most splendidly synthesized and systematized by um people like newton you know this for example, you know, without an understanding of the natural world and how to manipulate its aspects, you know, things like land navigation or maritime navigation would be unthinkable,

you know, even comparatively prosaic things, like building shelters against the elements. You know, this is the source of all practical and curative knowledge relating to how man can master's environment and um improve upon his own mind towards um those um pragmatic ends so conts belief was that um there was a method that could be applied to state relations most significantly international relations, but also within the state where peace had been achieved in discrete and limited capacities at minimum. And once this sort of physics of the political had been fully systematized, and adopted then um a kind of architecture of permanent peace could be implemented and sustained why that would be desirable we'll get you in a minute in the contian perspective it's different

than what we think of as the secular humanist perspective although again there is a relationship there of um dissent you know um not dissent like descent is and descended from the former. However, again, it's, I take exception to it when people posit that these sort of lazy, polemical appeals of the secular humanist left, you know, partake of a meaningful philosophical tradition, because they really don't. um and um con would have never used the term democracy because that would be meaningless in context you know he talked he talked about an enlightened republicanism which was not accidental the um relationship between um i think there's actually strains of neoplatanism and kant but

that's a bit um far afield anyway theory that we consider it to be like a discrete Kantian political theory. It can be summed up as Republican government, enlightened republicanism, and international organization. Kant had this idea that the doctrine of state, for to be not just legitimate but enduring, it had to be rooted in law above all else. And again, he viewed the law as this sort of discrete science you know whereby basic truths about the world could be revealed you know almost by way of a methodology that you know that the law to him represented a sort of like science of ethics you know um and both these formulations you know the idea of republican government and international

organization it relied on this suggestion of peace through law you know and he drew the distinction within and among states the process of coming to order political order is a matter of passing from the state of nature um which is axiomatically a state of war to um a state of uh higher reason you know which is a the permanent or semi-permanent piece so you did by definition or by essential aspects the the the lawful state and the legitimate state are synonymous and the function of it is a maintenance of the peace at above all else, which facilitates all other goods coming into being.

And again, he appeals to morality and history more than he does what we think of as a conventional political theoretical partialists. you know it's um it's not so much esoteric as it is oblique that's the best way i can describe it um however con viewed the primary tension within the european political mind and thus within the modern state itself, you know, the nascent modern state. He viewed the primary tension or the primary internal contradiction within that conceptual

framework as involving science contra morality. Like, again, Newtonian physics de Kant represented a kind of deep and revealed truth about the nature of reality, its structure, its potentialities. And he discerned within it like a natural tendency towards balance and order. It's almost like this little Marquis and kind of will within nature and within reality. You know, whereby, you know, the scientist or the physicist, you know, he can divinate. and identify in discrete terms, you know, kind of the trajectory of this inherent will within reality and matter. And by curating that, you know, structures that partake of its essence can, you know, become perfected with the correct.

mode of intervention and um engineering um however this is co-extent and alongside a moral consciousness which uh man and man alone is um capable of cultivating you know which distinguishes him from beasts of the field um you know and the problem is that the setting of moral activity how it comes to be the precedent for it the only way we can understand it you catch them in the corner of your eye distinctive by design they move you even before you drive. The new Cooper plugin hybrid range for Mentor, Leon and Teramar

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Kant realized that these two tendencies couldn't be properly reconciled in conventional ways. But they could coexist in a complimentary fashion, kind of like competing

forces within physics, bound by the same laws of nature and gravity or what have you if a common theoretical basis could be identified and an understanding of these competing forces therein you know and how they could be cultivated so as to allow some sort of harmonious resolution to be realized, at least in terms of praxis. And what's essential and understand here, too, is that the state of nature, yes, it is the state of war, but it also is a state of perfect freedom. And the, you know, free will can flourish within that setting. The problem is that there's not ethical restraints.

So it becomes this, you know, if not a war of all against all in Habezian terms. It becomes a kind of glorified beastiery where might makes a right. and the perfection of the human will and the full flourishing of it can't possibly be realized this relates to what Kant also identified as the basis of

metaphysics and this comes up again and again in his main body of work he essentially divided the world into the realm of the realm of phenomena and the realm of numina the world of or the realm of phenomena is a the realm of things in their manifestation or appearance the world of numina is the world of things as they are in themselves or as they could be known

in their essential capacity if knowledge of them could be acquired without the mediation of experience which is a fascinating postulate but you know what's relevant here is that

the world of phenomena is what science reveals to us the world of numina is from where ethics derive and how these things can be reconciled, if they can be reconciled,

that would be the basis of a perfectly enlightened politic whereby a perpetual peace could be accomplished, and thus a full flourishing of the human will, which, in Kantian terms, is like the telos of politics. Like that's why the state exists Ready for huge savings Well mark your calendars from November 28 to 30th Because the Liddle Newbridge Warehouse Sale is back

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Search Trump Ireland gift vouchers. Trump on Dunebiog, Kush Farage. You know, that's why politics exists, you know, of the enlighten sort, as he would characterize it. Of course, that begs the question, and this is Schmidt's big concern, like, why is that important? and more critically and more immediately, that's not the way humans are. And politics isn't this process whereby, you know, we become ethically perfected,

or we socially engineer man into, you know, something better than he was. You know, politics is the business of friends and enemies. And why, you know, and Cyril and made the same point. like why violence is not just intrinsic to man but why it's essential to his creativity you know and they're going to convergence of reason will and passion in violent political impulses allows man to kind of reach a relative zenith of action and conceptual activity it doesn't really matter why that is. It just is.

You know, and so this idea that well, we're going to break a man of these things that allow him to be creative and allow him to you know, act out

heroic values on sort of the grand historical stage. You know, the idea that we need to do away with that to realize some sort of perfect free flourishing of free will for every man and woman as much as possible that really can't be rationalized and um you know it's it's the problem with all enlightenment paradigms and the problem of capital of liberalism is at base it takes a splendidly arbitrary set of

values and aesthetical preferences and declares these things are the highest good for all time, for all people, because I say so. You know, and I say so isn't good enough. And appeal to universal ethics, few that these postulates may. be a number isn't good enough you know and it also and again I'm no I'm no libertarian or Von Meesean but it also begs the question why why is this the business of the state you know the state isn't this perennial thing it's something that was emergent as we know I made a mistake, the modern state is this discreet and unique phenomenon. You know, it's not, we're not just talking about different iterations of some identical tendency or sociological impulse.

The modern state emerged out of the catastrophe of the 30 years' war. It endured for a little under 300 years, you know, and then gave it. way briefly to a kind of true globalism in political terms, which proved to be totally unsustainable, only to a combination of factors, some related to hubris, some of which were historical. But, you know, the state's business is war and peace. It's not the perfect demand or to like educate your children or to improve you know the or to like mitigate the tragedy of the commons or something or like help men and women like understand each other better you know um frankly suggesting the state should be doing anything other other than

what um it was tailored to do commensurate with, you know, the raison d'etra of, um, of a collective defense and, um, the need to mitigate catastrophes such as that, um, that began with the defenestration of Prague and ended with the Westphalian peace. You know, um, like, why, why is the state that instrumentality? Of course, um, you know, the Schmidian view is that, well, the state does a stand-in for God to the secularist and

its acts of sovereign authority take on the symbolic psychological trappings of miraculous events, quite literally. And there's also

if you accept the Kantian paradigm you basically need to accept that this sort of ethical schema political in nature isn't bound by any territorial imperative you know and a Schmidt point I keep back to Schmidt because he is the most

direct rebuttal to Kant in you know in any epoch It makes the point about the spatial nature of political life because that's an essential, it's not just conceptually essential. You know, you can't talk about sovereignty unless you're talking about sovereignty over a place. I can't give you coordinates in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean and say, okay, you see like the United States Navy sovereign over these coordinates. You know, I can't tell you that just anywhere you are on this planet.

planet, you know, that like the Portuguese Parliament has the power to tax you. I mean, I'm being going really obtuse, but, you know, to make a point, but part of it is, you know, pragmatic, conceptual. But part of it also is, you know, human life, the setting of human life is physical reality. You know, that's just the way humans are wired, psychological. but also you know it's literally the setting of any human action other than that which is purely um psychological in character um and in a category of pure mind you know um so if you're talking about it's not it's not accidental that the first political order um and during really until only a few centuries ago it always attached directly to a discrete land area great or small you know so it's all good

and well i mean aside from everything else that's wrong with these appeals to what is reportedly a universal ethical schema. Aside everything else that's wrong with that. You know, you're, it's located literally nowhere. You know, you're saying, and saying that, you know, there's a sovereign authority over everything. You're saying that, you know, you're sovereign over nothing. You know, there's a need for a concrete space,

orientation and that's fundamentally important. Frank Herbert makes that point too, which I mean it's probably sounds like incredibly like spur-ish but I especially because like in the Herbert universe you're quite literally talking about massive and vast swaths of space time you know and and discrete planets situated they're in but the reason why there's an emperor of the known universe is because people have to be able to say like you know there is a planet and there's a there's literally a man who you know sits in in um a palace on that planet and is the emperor of you know all of these other worlds you know otherwise even even even

even just a figurehead and like the the pedish um the pedasha emperors and dune Like some of them have more power than others, you know, depending on the man on the throne and depending on the constellation of factors that are kind of dictating affairs of the Lanzerad. But even if he's only a symbolic figure, Ed, there always has to be like an emperor of the known universe. You know, otherwise there's not an orientation point. And I remember this was before, like I read Carl Schmitt or anything. I was like 12 or 13 years old when I first read that. I remember thinking that was really profound because I'd never thought in those terms before. But yeah, that's essential.

It's, you know, and it's also too, obviously, I mean, I realized I'm spending more time on the critique than I am the subject matter, which, you know, being postulated, like, can't. But the, you know, the just war as an essential aspect of an ethical schema. Yeah, there's a very strong Thomas tradition there, but the way people talk about it, at least in the Anglosphere, it's a Kantian concept. you know at least during like the Vietnam era and beyond you know um just speaking to what people are probably familiar with who are listening to this now um you know and the everybody i would assume at this point you know who follows our content knows the schmidian

objection you know you're just talking about the tyranny of values dressed up as universal imperatives but aside from that you know con admits that you know again there's going to be a coercive aspect to forcing recalcitrant states and peoples to join this federation you know that has abolished war so i mean if you're going to if you're going to wage war to abolish war you're rendering your enemy the ultimate you know adversary of humanity, which means that you're exponentially increasing the level of enymical hostility that there would be otherwise within an accepted moral consensus bound by cultural and territorial parameters. So it's sort of a self-refuting proposition. And the

Conte and rebuttal to that is a kind of special pleading, whereby, well, you know, the ends justify that means so long as you are in fact, you know, acting in accordance with an enlightened reason. You know, and it's like, well, how would I determine that? Do I, like, consult a panel of philosophers? And if they give me, if they green lighted, that means I can do whatever I want.

You know, I mean, that's, this is kind of what I mean by, saying that Khan was kind of the ultimate ivory tower academic and this is why this is why these people need to be kept as far from politics as possible

you know because I mean there's anti-human aspects to these things too and I'm not assigning this to Kant his loose ideological descendants are more often than not

of a certain stripe, ideological stripe, that is incredibly destructive and abides the kind of anti-human, anti-cultural zeitgeist that quite literally wants to wipe out the ability of people to live historically, it wants to annihilate the bases of human identity. I mean, really monstrous stuff but even in lesser iterations you know you're dealing with um you're you're dealing with zealids who are kind of like a child who when their inability to understand some relatively complex puzzle or something to set it on fire you know or like upset the table um maybe is a better analogy you know that's why I'm always coming back to the fact about dangerous it is that, I mean, I think, I think the president is kind of a cipher and a lame duck, but the office does still hold some concrete authority beyond the merely symbolic.

You know, one of the really bad things about Trump is that the man demands an idiot, you know, in politics. I mean, he's got zero understanding of high politics. you know it's it's like a monkey holding a book on high school algebra you know i mean aside from the fact that he's just kind of a bad guy and has um some really questionable commitments you know you can't have people like that rendering decisions that's that's preposterous you know um and uh these things can't be remedied oftentimes. You know, I'm going to make a point again and again, however anybody feels about Bush 41 and Baker, they had a viable model for the new global order moving forward.

You know, whether you, and again, I mean, I don't think globalism is a good thing, but because it was the reality after the interdurban border came down I'd rather have it be viable than not and I certainly rather have Bush and Baker at the helm than some crazy Zionists and some game show host

who's an absolute cretan on matters of like politics you know the an abject cretan you know white inward like piggy Bill Clinton deciding with these uniform fetishist fuckheads like Wesley Clark you know to for all practical purposes like assault the Russian Federation and the Balkans they they destroyed a decade of goodwill proceeding and eradicated any

possibility of full disarmament of strategic nuclear forces they basically poisoned um the 21st century you know um by sheer hubris and in the case of piggy just like abject like staggering degrees of stupidity you know you can't i mean don't the fact that bill clinton you know the guy the guy should have been like face down in a ditch like no i'm not having violence or like fed posting or bed speaking but um like the guy is a totally completely like subhuman piece of shit so i mean that's like an extreme example but you can't you can't um you can't with these people anywhere near um the levers of power that's what i got today like i'm sorry that this was kind of brief man

and i'm still kind of recovering um from not feeling well and i've been burning the candle on both then sort of because I'm trying to get stuff done before the fourth. And I've got people coming to town, which I'm excited about. There's a lot of fun stuff on the agenda, but I'm trying to get my health back so that I can be a proper host and stuff. So forgive me if this didn't go as long as you or the subs would like. No worries. No worries.

Just tell people where you're at right now. And, yeah, we'll get out here. Well, no, thanks. You're very generous. I mean, always, but yeah. My website is in the process being retooled, and it's almost done. But it's an up-to-date feed now of, like, everything I'm doing. Like here with Pete and with our dear friend, Jay Burton, and with my friend, Adam and Nick, and with my My PhaserPod, it's like a one-stop kind of site where you can find everything I'm doing.

It's Thomas 777.com. It's number 7, HMAS 777.com. I'm told that the mobile version is still kind of janky that's being worked out. But if you try and load it like on your smartphone or, you know, your droid or whatever, and it doesn't work, don't like blow me up. It doesn't work. It doesn't work. It just might be fucked up on the mobile app.

Other than that, you can always find me in Substack. That's where my pod is and like long form stuff and all kinds of other good things. And we got like an active chat going there. It's real Thomas 777. That's substact. Like going to those two places and you can find all my other stuff. You know, like my, I've got a Tgram and an Instagram and things like that. But yeah, go to go to my website or go to Substant.

All right. Until the next episode. Thank you, Thomas. Appreciate it. Yeah, you're welcome.