The Pete Quiñones Show - Episode 1277: Continental Philosophy and Its Origins - Pt. 18 - Edmund Husserl - w/ Thomas777

Episode Date: October 9, 2025

61 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 epi...sode Thomas concludes a talk about the Frankfurt School.Thomas' SubstackRadio Free Chicago - T777 and J BurdenThomas777 MerchandiseThomas' Buy Me a CoffeeThomas' 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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Starting point is 00:03:26 Everything's there. I want to welcome everyone back to the Pekanino Show. Thomas, how are you doing today? I've done pretty well. I'm jumping ahead a little bit. And as people probably gleaned, I'm not trying to present a conceptually biased curriculum, but I'm emphasizing what is relevant to people who are seeking a political education with certain partisan emphases. And I'm also narrowly tailoring what I deal with to represent, you know, discrete political philosophies. It's somewhat ambiguous, you know, what fingers constitute true political philosophers.
Starting point is 00:04:21 I mean, there's some where that's indisputable. You know, people like Machiavillia Hobbes, but you're talking about like Kant or Leibniz, it gets complicated. But political theory obviously is my wheelhouse. I mean, that's what I do. That's on my background. and but also I'm trying to present a curriculum of a partisan nature and I am not pretending to do otherwise.
Starting point is 00:04:54 You know, and if the people want to bone up on, you know, continental philosophy generally, there's better men than I who could do that. But I'm jumping ahead a little bit today. I'm going to talk about Edmund Husserl. You know, and Hustral was, Heidegger was a student of Hustral, and then he broke with him profoundly. And there's kind of a simpleton's ideological take that, like, oh, well, that's because Hustral was Jewish. That's not why. Heidegger was a national socialist, and Heidegger was politically and philosophically very anti-Jewish, but he wasn't some weird racialist. You know, Hanna Arendt, you can tell that Heidegger's intellectual DNA is shot through. her scholarship because, I mean, she was his protege and probably his mistress. And there's
Starting point is 00:05:52 nothing inconsistent about that. You know, it's not an error hypocritical. I mean, yeah, you shouldn't step out in your wife, but I mean, what I'm talking about is Heidegger associated with Jews in his professional and personal life, you know, and as one would imagine for somebody like him, but he also was uncompromising in his belief that. that in academia and in European intellectual life, going back on millennia, there is a Jewish perspective that was ontologically subversive. You know, but so, and Husserl also,
Starting point is 00:06:38 Hustral was a complicated figure, and he, people argue back and forth about whether Hustral was, I mean, you can't, you can't escape your, confessional heritage and there's there's there's an ontological reality to how you interpret things and the process of interpretation is to the lens of mind and that's discreetly situated you know according to you know whose mind we're speaking of but um the hospital wasn't really a partisan figure in the vein of wheel of strass or something i i consider him to be a lot like wideness but he's the father of phenomenology that that can't be disputed and heidegger is the
Starting point is 00:07:37 it wasn't like an ethical schism between him a heidegger it was uh heidegger's view of hermeneutics I'll get into what I mean by that was what really caused the intellectual breach. It wasn't a political question. And it wasn't because Hustral was
Starting point is 00:07:59 arguing for a Jewish political theory subliminally or otherwise. And that's important because, like I said, people on both sides of the aisle try to claim that there's people who claim hustrel who shouldn't isn't a political philosopher
Starting point is 00:08:25 and i don't accept that but even if i did again he he's he's basically the father of phenomenology okay every every 20th century every 20th century philosopher including heider obviously was in dialogue with Hustral. So you can't, you can't get away from that. And phenomenology and psychological aspects are paramount if we're talking about political theory. You know, and this also, this touches and concerns neuroscience, anthropology, group patterns of behavior, you know, positivism and the anti-positivist reaction. So it becomes political
Starting point is 00:09:30 regardless. So there'd be a gap in the conceptual narrative if I redacted them. But I mean, I wouldn't do that anyway because at base you know,
Starting point is 00:09:49 my own orientation is Hegelian and Heidegarian. So if you're going to ask me about political theory, you're going to have to subject yourself to hearing about Husserl. I was concerned with the fundamentals of thinking. And that, interestingly, because even though in terms of his ethics, He was totally at odds with somebody like Nietzsche or Marx, but that also put him in proximity to them more than these analytic philosophers
Starting point is 00:10:43 who often invoke phenomenological concepts. That's kind of like the only thing they take away from continental philosophy. So his legacy's kind of. complicated. You catch them in the corner of your eye. Distinctive. By design. They move you.
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Starting point is 00:13:05 for European civilization to save itself is to discover its potential for this hidden telos that can be realized within the culture and presumably within every individual man who's capable of that sort of intellectual activity you know Husserl believe that all men can live somewhat autonomously, even if they're not suited to higher intellectual activity, you know, they can partake of this telos if it becomes culturally insinuated. But obviously, you know, in all times, in all epochs, and in every race and cultural form, there's always a minority of philosophers, if you will, who kind of shoulder the task of, you know,
Starting point is 00:14:13 altering or generating the prime intellectual modality. You know, what this higher telos was in his mind, he said that it needs to be truly value neutral. and he said that European rationalism and the scientific perspective is not actually value neutral. It's burdened
Starting point is 00:14:50 with all these conceptual biases and value judgments that are passed off as factual. You know, and there's all these assumptions that are epistemologically prior to the people
Starting point is 00:15:09 who present these ideas. You know, and he said at one time men were more cautious about succumbing to that tenancy, which in hospital's view was a grave error. But he said that the nihilism of late modernity has caused people to do away with that sort of cultivated responsibility in any kind of caution. you know and that's why he said you know even even a many had huge respect for these philosophical giants like descart and Leibniz he said they contributed some great things in you know um demonstrating why philosophy is necessary you know for for a culture to survive and they also educated ordinary men in, you know, the sort of praxis of philosophy and philosophical systems
Starting point is 00:16:24 in everyday life. But their writings on these supposedly neutral subjects are not neutral, you know, and thus it's not suited to the enterprise of curating this higher team. You know, and he said that as theoretical discourse has sort of trickled down into everyday life in Europe, it's completely value-coded. And even revolutionaries, you know, whether they're Marxians or whether they're, you know, right reactionaries, they're all speaking as if, you know, they're discussing some sort of. sort of scientific postulate or as if they're partaking of this kind of positivist empirical reality. What in truth, what they're doing is they're abolishing the fact value distinction and they're claiming that their revolutionary imperatives or these crisis modalities that they've taken on, you know, to resolve this,
Starting point is 00:17:50 terrible problem. They're suggesting that there's some scientific solution. You know, and ultimately people can't even tell the difference anymore was his conclusion. And that's true. You know, the kind of, the major foil to hustle role is viewed as Max Weber, which is kind of interesting, because most people associate Weber, contra Spangler. And Weber and Spangler actually had a debate, and it's interesting because, it was a bunch of Weber students. I'll bring this back.
Starting point is 00:18:33 It realizes this is tangential. A bunch of Weber students organized this debate with Oswald Spangler because Weber spontaneously began lecturing on the subject of decline of the West because he viewed it as an important book, but he
Starting point is 00:18:54 took exception to what he viewed as it's distorted hermeneutics. Okay. And if you read the transfer of this debate, it's really quite fascinating, although at the time, people viewed it as kind of a dud. I attribute that to, I mean, I don't know.
Starting point is 00:19:21 I've got a passion for the subject matter, but I think that was reducible. You know how styles make fights in boxing? I think people expected fireworks between Weber and Spangler, and that wasn't forthcoming. But it's, it really helped, reading it really held my interest. Like, it's very different, obviously, and the players involved couldn't be more different, but one of the only other economic debates where I really got engaged with the material was the Chomsky-Foucault debate. but yeah but in any event you know Weber was was very much kind of the the foil
Starting point is 00:20:22 the Husserol what most students of philosophy will consider it as when in reality they should be thinking of the Heidegger and I don't think most people really apprehend a Heidegger you've really got to study him for decades. And you've got to have a deep grasp of Aristotle and Nietzsche to understand Heidegger. And then on top of that, you've also got to understand phenomenology and the issue of hermeneutics. And what Heidegger's objection was to Husserl. I think a lot of people just sort of read the CliffsNotes version of Husterole. They get some selected works or something.
Starting point is 00:21:08 they read the write-up and like the leo strass and joseph cropsi encyclopedia of political philosophy which is a great value but it's just like introductory and they don't realize the depth of the conceptual divide you know between heidegger and a husserl or they view heidegger as just you know the the intellectual progeny of husserl but with ideological commitments and prejudices that set them apart um So simply stated, Hustl's assumption is that the highest way of life, the pure, the hidden telos, or the consummation of European man's higher intellectual enterprise that will redeem Western civilization by placing it on the same level as Doric athletes. would be the accomplishment of this kind of pure theoretical inquiry that from the point of inception
Starting point is 00:22:30 almost this sort of a nirvana state of the intellect where from inception at the point of contemplation there are not any epistemic prior in encumbrances and There's nothing within the beholder's mind or the active thinker's mind that's corrupting his ability to interpret owing to conceptual biases or psychological symbolic phenomenon. You know, it's a way in which the, it's a way in which the, it's a way in which, man, culturally situated man, can totally take himself out of these discrete characteristics that situate him as a historical and culturally engaged organism. you know and he to be clear to he believed that this was the logical progression of where athenian philosophy would have arrived had it endured you know and to be clear too as I think we got
Starting point is 00:24:08 into in vicissities I'm not a classic scholar but I don't know some things and the Peloponnesian war is viewed as having destroyed Athens. 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 Terramar. Now with flexible PCP finance and trade-in boosters of up to 2000 euro,
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Starting point is 00:25:22 Lidl, more to value. And now this is over next to the hamster is leargoal Gah and not great in Aundoon and lehands the Gala to giontahead
Starting point is 00:25:37 Gawortha Gawortha in Woonagh in Funea Foonive Invoin'Oin'Oan Woh, there's a Wackackack on the first, he could have had to be the entire thaw,
Starting point is 00:25:50 and people tariffewan t'er a cooctew agone full of Nis more in Ergaret Pongaii. To be clear, so, and this is just kind of commonly accepted
Starting point is 00:26:05 especially among intellectuals of Hussarles generational cadre so his view is that we're not trying to emulate dead forms or draw up
Starting point is 00:26:20 upon, you know, Pericles, Athens, in some sort of emulation to resolve this existential crisis of our civilization we're enduring. We're identifying potentialities and what can be accessed by higher cultures of man. And we're attempting to go beyond that. you know um and there's something there's something about this that um is very transcendentalist not not in like the new age way but you know i i've been watching the movie 2001 a lot
Starting point is 00:27:20 and arthur c clark was very much informed by this kind of philosophy And the implication is, you know, if you watch 2001 or if you read the book, that's the tie into the film, the creatures, the alien intelligences who left the monoliths. They deposited those modelists, you know, millions of years ago, including the one in sub-Saharan Africa that caused Australopithecus to become a human being. but then, you know, a million years subsequent, when the model is discovered on the moon, these ETs have forgotten, it suggested that they even deposited these things because their view was that the cultivation of intellect
Starting point is 00:28:24 was the highest good. So they went around the galaxy like encouraging evolution and the development, of um of uh of uh of intelligence you know in these creatures as they found them but then at some point at some point these these aliens uh became entities of pure mind to the point that they got upload their consciousness and essence into machines but then they also they they transcended the machines even and they became they became intelligences of pure energy somehow and uh that's why when
Starting point is 00:29:18 bowman meets them they don't really know how to deal with them so they read his mind about what they think a human being would like and they're like okay well here's a luxury hotel room and it's some sort of imperfect mock-up of french architecture architecture, you know, and they make food appear that they think like a human being would like to eat. But it's been so long since they were corporeal beings, they can't really figure it out. You know, and then they observe his life cycle, and then when his body dies, they zap him and turn him into something like them. and that's the next stage in human evolution. But there's something of that concept
Starting point is 00:30:12 very much coded into Hustral. I'm not suggesting Hustral sat around thinking about science fiction like I do or even like Ruther C. Clark did. But there is a very theologically oriented concept or set of concepts here. And that's what I know.
Starting point is 00:30:37 mean when I suggest that this is a very, very ethically driven postulate about this higher telos, and this is essential. Hustrell's not saying, he's not, he's not some in late, post-enlightment liberal saying, oh, you've got to shed old desire, you've got to abandon all belief in anything, you know, beyond the pragmatic. He's not saying that at all, quite the contrary he's looking to elevate man ultimately i believe into something else like not his philosophy is transformative obviously but this is the path before man's to you know overcome his own humanity. And this birth
Starting point is 00:31:35 process, in part, the potential of it, this is one of the reasons why European man at the close of the 19th century and beyond is
Starting point is 00:31:53 enduring this crisis. And that's why there's both great and terrifying aspects to it. You know, So this is important because a lot of people misunderstand that. You know, and to be clear, too, when I said Hustrell is the father of phenomenology, he wasn't the first thinker to employ that term. But the way he utilized it was distinct.
Starting point is 00:32:33 and it came to characterize his entire body of work in a way that is this positive of what he aimed to convey. He wasn't just trying to uncover and describe the primary phenomena of consciousness. He was trying to develop a rigorous methodology. that was total in its ontological implications for the human being, you know, um, and a way of grounding this process without resort to suppositions and epistemic priors and things. You know,
Starting point is 00:33:35 so this, this really is a total enterprise that stands to alter human life. he's not just saying you know this this is a better way of doing science or this is a better way of interpreting cultural phenomena or this is a more rigorous philosophy
Starting point is 00:33:57 you know and uh I think too and again this isn't Hustro wasn't like Strauss there's not there's not some hidden exegesis that he believed could be access, quite the contrary. But this is very theologically coded, I think. I think that's indisputable. But that's part of the point, you know, because the crisis of the West is nihilism. And you can't remedy that by trying to revive religious orthodoxies or by trying to emulate, again,
Starting point is 00:34:48 you know the athenians or anything like that you know you one must uh advance uh the entire enterprise in absolute terms and that was his aim and that's one of the reasons too why i spend so much time of the hustle because that's a monumental ambition but that's that's what philosophy should be about and political theory that's worth anything one of the things that should separate the partisan right not just from the enemy but from uh everybody else is uh it's not it's not just some means of pragmatic administration or some alternative mode of social engineering or like a way of trying to identify, you know, good government and incentivize moral behavior within these structures that supposedly constitute good government. You know, it's, there's an integral aspect to the way you should think about politics as a partisan, and it should be theologically coded.
Starting point is 00:36:19 it should be primarily oriented towards a complete philosophy. There's got to be a praxis there. It's got to be grounded in reality. People shouldn't retreat from the world and be monks to try and achieve this sort of elevated state of consciousness or something or intellect. but the conceptual horizon it needs to encompass all of these things. Otherwise, there's, you know, if you don't view it that way, you know, you're not really part of a resistance tendency.
Starting point is 00:37:11 You just have, you know, you're just some kind of reformist. And you may feel very passionate about these things you want to reform but that's a different phenomenon or a different commitment you know and to be clear when I say that Hustral is the father of 20th century phenomenology
Starting point is 00:37:34 not not all phenomenologists abided Husterole's thought or were in agreement with it or viewed it or viewed it even as particularly worthwhile but
Starting point is 00:37:51 he is the but they were all in dialogue with him and his body of work. You know, and pretty much every, even to this day, I mean, the mainstream academic culture, the EU is just, is literal garbage. But there are still serious guys writing about history, writing about, you know, I'm talking about in the revisionist camp. There are still serious guys writing about political theory. you know and all these all of these people you know and this it's um hostrials concepts and his
Starting point is 00:38:39 his particular phenomenological way of thinking touches and concerns all this stuff okay and even you know you read i mean there's no idea is important too but you know obviously the concepts that Heidegger improved upon, in my opinion, were nevertheless, you know, devised by Husterole in the form we're talking about, you know, if you're talking about AI, if you're talking about neuroscience, if you're talking about the nature of thought, you're talking about consciousness and what it is. And whether it's contingent upon a material configuration, or if it exists independent of matter.
Starting point is 00:39:33 All of this stuff relates to Husserl and his systemic paradigms. You know, he really was a giant of philosophy and this kind of high concept of thinking. you know um and to a lesser degree in america i mean america is always kind of on its own program and american academic culture is very strange you know even the minority within mainstream academe who are producing valuable stuff that's intellectually rigorous and serious and isn't you know um propaganda oriented it's very
Starting point is 00:40:35 it's almost obsessively oriented towards the analytic tradition it you know even even people who don't have an ethical objection
Starting point is 00:40:54 to this kind of material they they go out of their way to avoid it it's you know I mean that that's a whole other discussion but even so the way these questions are framed
Starting point is 00:41:15 owed to phenomenological populates that are framed by the theoretical body of work devised
Starting point is 00:41:37 and articulated by Hustral. And that was to clarify some of what Hustral particularly the stuff he was writing towards the end of his life. You know, even the crisis of European civilization was well underway by 1848, but it truly reached Zenith in 1914, obviously.
Starting point is 00:42:31 One of the reasons why the crisis emerged, you know, most sharply in vines. where there was just no reconciliation possible between the factions of what had been the fractured cultural organism is because the epistemic priors that informed deliberate contemplation and intellectual activity, even that which was oriented towards a hard positivist sort of methodology or ethic, those sort of conceptual poll stars or framing devices have been totally corrupted, you know, and they were inseparable from these anxieties and existential realities that were totally disrupting people's lives. So it was impossible for any kind of higher telos to be identified within at the point of
Starting point is 00:44:21 contemplation. you know it'd be like like an imperfect metaphor like it'd be like trying to work out complex math problems like while you're under artillery fire you know you can't
Starting point is 00:44:40 truly elevate your conceptual activity beyond immediate crisis modalities when you're in the midst of life and death challenges every waking hour, you know, and even such that, you know, a certain
Starting point is 00:45:15 level of concrete knowledge could be taken from the sciences as they then existed. It didn't really matter because this wasn't being purposed and directed towards elevating European man and resolving you know the crisis and nihilism these things are just being purposed to deal with you know immediate exigencies and and and mortal crises relating to this kind of permanent emergency you know um so that not only did it not solve the problem it it arguably made it worse you know and that's um that's why world war one became such a metaphor for the for the failure of of progress and the entire progressivist mindset because all this high technology in a very punctuated and raw sense that supposedly was going to do things, you know, like,
Starting point is 00:46:37 like liberate man from the burdens of labor and, and it was going to create plenty. It was being used to, like, systematically slaughter people, you know, and it wasn't even doing that in an efficient way. I mean, it was very efficient at creating corpses, but it was creating stalemates in the battle space. It's not even like it was, you know, sparing attrition and things by, you know, rapidly bringing hostilities to conclusion or something, you know. And this is why this fundamental doubt about the ability to ascribe some sort of rational, some sort of positivist rationality
Starting point is 00:47:35 to these processes and these challenges amidst crisis and nihilism. That's a point that Nietzsche and Vavor and even like Marx made that point too. You know and obviously
Starting point is 00:47:55 like all three men radically different as they were what they posited as the solution was totally at odds what Hustral would have considered to be correct, but they were in agreement about the ontological reality of things, you know, and that's really interesting because it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, um, Weber, it was Marx, it was later Heidegger, who agreed
Starting point is 00:48:31 with these core premises, you know, um, the, um, that framed Husserl's entire system of thought. It wasn't these empiricists, these people who were, you know, view themselves of the airs, the, you know, Kant and Hume who were taking on this perspective, even though in supervisual terms, one would think that those of the people
Starting point is 00:49:03 like most positively disposed. But again, I mean, that's why Marx and Nietzsche are important, whatever their shortcomings. And however, misguided, you know, they were in their account of the human being and things. You know, they were, they understood the spirit of the age. and the epoch in a way that most didn't. And, I mean, that's really the mark of a great political theorist. You know, it's not, I mean, yeah, there's some, there's people, in my opinion, like Bentham,
Starting point is 00:50:02 who most of what they produce is this literal garbage. But that's the exception. You know, like I said, even the reason I'm trying to study Marx is, is it's not it goes out saying that you know marks embodied the the spirit of the age of the entire 20th century was it was this violent dialogue with mars you know um and that i mean that speaks for itself it's got it's incidental that you know he was a godless uh radical you know that that's the whole point you know that's what that's what that's what this that's what the zeitgeist was um you know and it uh and to clarify i want to when the time i got left i want to say at least a little bit about heidegger specifically and we'll segue into a discussion of heidegger in coming uh days and weeks um you know and heidegger pedantic stuff.
Starting point is 00:51:29 Heidegger's phenomenology, the very word for the term phenomenology, it's a portman two. Is that the right term? Is a portman two, like two words smack together? Is that what a portman too is? I'm trying to remember.
Starting point is 00:51:53 I haven't heard that term in Portman two is blending the sounds and combining the meanings of two others, for example, motor and hotel. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, okay. So phenomenology is a portmanteau of phenomenon and logos. Okay. What it actually translates to is that which reveals itself.
Starting point is 00:52:25 You'll see it translated as that which is shown or that which is observing. well, that's not what it means. This is important. It's that which shows itself or is revealed. And in Heidegarian terms, this is the essence of sensory experience. You know, is objects and subject matter revealing itself. you know so Heidegger's view of Logos
Starting point is 00:53:08 is that it's tantamount to a kind of discourse with the human mind you know and the discrete mind of the beholder as a sort of mediator between you know subject and object
Starting point is 00:53:27 and the senses to which it is being revealed, you know, and Heidegger intentionality and categorical intuition to Heidegger is an essential aspect of the process. So there's not any true a priori positivism, you know, because that removes the reality of the situatedness of the discrete human mind from the equation. You know, because mental activity is always about something. It's never just this neutral interpretive function that's not encumbered by symbolic psychological phenomenon and discrete aspects of you know the
Starting point is 00:54:48 idiosyncratic mind you know and this is this is why Heidegger's a hermeneutics are the basis of his you know antipositive as
Starting point is 00:55:10 sensibility if we can think of it in that way I don't some would disagree but I'll I stand by that assessment you know there's there's always this sort of give and take and you know um it's this kind of phenomenology to hider is kind of this this broadest possible epistemological process you know and
Starting point is 00:55:43 how that that doesn't mean that there's no such thing as objectively rational assessments but the process of thought is being it's literally Dysine their being, you know, and to be in the world is to be what you are. You can't take your mind or your perception outside of that their being and neutralize those essential characteristics and somehow do away with hermeneutics and intentionally thinking about this subject or object before you or that you've sought out. So this kind of higher state of telos that Hustville considered to be, you know, Western man's salvation from the crisis of nihilism, that's simply not possible.
Starting point is 00:56:55 You know, it's not even, it's not even that Heidegger was, was condemning this because it didn't have the potential for palaninesis or whatever. I mean, that might be true, too, but that wasn't a Heidegger's objection. It was that this is a mischaracterization of, you know, ontological things. You know, human beings can't be something they're not. So, suggesting that this is possible. possible is a just a kind of counterfactual thought experiment, which if it was presented that way, might have some merit. Like obviously, John Rawls, I mean, Rawls didn't have merit.
Starting point is 00:57:52 Rawls was a shithead. But those kinds of thought experiments can have merit. And maybe like Hobbs, a better example. Okay. But it wasn't, but the whole point was that it wasn't being presented as that. it was being presented as a potentiality you know and that's that's they're in the problem wise um you know and the and the real the real point of contention i can't remember where i read or saw this but it's not um but it's not my concept you know basically
Starting point is 00:58:55 the point at which like phenomenology to Heidegger is the point at which the human mind engages with the subject and all of that entails you know axiomatically and essentially the Husserol
Starting point is 00:59:24 this can somehow supposedly through teleological cultivation, this can become some sort of fixed point of reference, whereby everything, that moment and everything subsequent can be unencumbered, you know, by conceptual biases. You know, I think of it as kind of a sort of state of pure inquiry. it's almost Kantian it's sort of
Starting point is 01:00:28 and if like this and if this was presented again like Haas categorical imperative or like Nietzsche's eternal recurrence that would totally change things but it's not what is being posited this is being presented as an active
Starting point is 01:00:47 potentiality aspirational as it may be you know and that you know to be clear two and I'll wrap up with this. Hustrow wasn't saying he wasn't trying to affirm reason as this is this ultimate good in and of itself he really was I mean however much you can criticize his account of ontological things he really was fundamentally concerned with human beings and the process by which human beings engage with the world and he had a grave concern for the human organism and the human soul I believe
Starting point is 01:02:09 because otherwise you know what would be the point of his emphases you know like I said at the start of this discussion you can't really escape from the fact that Hustrow was very theologically oriented you know and you know the implications for political theory are complicated but the but the fact that they're there should be pretty clear you know and And that's why I include Husterole in this series. But also, you know, like I said, I think if there's a single philosopher and there's probably, I'm not, I'm a heritage American, like, reformed prod. I'm not a guy like Yaki who's kind of, you know, who I think was spiritually European, frankly, like a lot of Roman Catholics are. And Imaniaki was an Irishman.
Starting point is 01:03:36 I'm not somebody who feels like spiritually European at all. I'm very much American, whether I like it or not. But so it probably sounds strange to people that I kind of view Heidegger and Hegel as the intellectual foundation. of a partisan commitment. But, you know, I, it's essentially understand Hegel and Heidegger. And the intellectual traditions that, you know, they emerged from if you want to understand what we're doing, or at least what me and my cadre are trying to accomplish. So I try to always tie this back to praxis or, you know, practical aspects as well.
Starting point is 01:04:51 I mean, I'm all for learning about things to better yourself, but at the end of the day, political subject matter needs to be front and center. And political subject matter without praxis is not a great use of time. time because all of us have limited time left on this planet. But yeah, I'm going to stop there, man. All right. Pick it up on the next episode. Head on over to Thomas's substack, realthomas-77.7.7.com.
Starting point is 01:05:30 And check the show notes on this. And there will be links to every way that you can support Thomas and find the rest of his work and all of his work. So, yeah, always appreciate it, Thomas. Thank you very much. Yeah, thank you, Pete.

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