Philosophers From Austria

"There is something pathetic in seeing Americans almost daily besmirching unconsciously their ideals and their traditions—all thanks to a faulty education. The Founding Fathers would turn in their graves if they could hear themselves called "Democrats"; America indeed was never a democracy, and never will be [...] Those who have been taught the wrong interpretation may ask their money back from the schools where they have wasted their adolescence. And the textbooks which preach a spurious democracy may still provide us with fuel in cold days to come."

"We have said before that it is difficult to find the exact reasons for the growing popularity of the word democracy and democratic taken from a dead language which is thoroughly nonunderstandable to 999 out of 1000 Americans. The decline of classical education in favor of progressive "self-realization" has favored the increased use of wrong labels."

"[T]here are in America about a hundred different types of "democracy," each held to be "real democracy, democracy as it was meant by the Founding Fathers, democracy as we all understand it." But the Founding Fathers, although they had very clear and concise ideas, wanted personally no democracy, and the only way out of the chaos is to go back like good children to the giants of the past, be they theologians like St. Thomas, philosophers like Plato, or statesmen like the authors of the Federalist. Confusion of words and meanings leads to the confusion of minds, and the confusion of minds breeds upheavals and revolution, as a well-known American once rightly pointed out."

"In the linguistic usage of the Left, "democratic" denotes much more frequently highly negative values. Everybody is acquainted with the real meaning of such expressions as "making democracy work in the classroom" which just stands for lack of discipline, or "democratizing literature" which means plain trash."

"The true "herdist" will carefully avoid acting or thinking originally, in order not to destroy the uniformity which is so dear to him, and he is also ready to rise immediately against anybody who dares to act independently and thus destroy the sacred unity of the uniform group to which he belongs. The loyal herdist will not rise alone against the sacrilegious offender; he will have the support of the rest of the circumscribed society and thus a mass action of collective protest will take place, forcing the "lonely individual" to conform or to withdraw. It must be fully borne in mind that no one of us is completely free from the influence of the herdist instinct and even the noblest among us yield to its dark appeal in one form or the other."

"The herdist instinct is furthermore not only personal, in the sense that it clamors for a personal collectivism; it creates also a longing and desire for the visual or acoustic contemplation of identitarian or uniformistic phenomena. The true herdist, the man truly dominated by that inferior instinct, will not only rejoice in marching amongst twenty thousand uniformly clad soldiers, all stepping rhythmically in one direction, but he will find an almost equal gratification in contemplating the show from a balcony. He will not only be happy in sitting amidst two hundred other bespectacled businessmen, drinking beer and humming one chant in unison, but the aspect of a skyscraper with a thousand identical windows will probably impress him more than a picture by Botticelli or Zurbarán."

"The true herdist [...] is nothing but an egoist who cannot tolerate anybody differing from himself. John Doe, the identitarian, wants a nation, a world, a universe peopled by millions of John Does. He cannot sympathize nor like anybody at variance with John Doe. No wonder that his wishful dream is a humanity of John Does without God or Devil. The herdist is by necessity a humanitarian."

"One should, in that connection, certainly not forget the "greatest" adventure of the herdist, his banal excursions into the animalistic aspects of sex. Here he hopes to drown the despair over his loneliness in the herd. The Romantic may be alone, but he is never lonely, and that because of his knowledge of the presence of God. (Certainly, also, there is more loneliness in an apartment house or in a crammed subway than in a village with widely dispersed cottages.) Yet the restriction of adventure to the sexual sphere is the reason why our urban culture and civilization is so terribly oversexed. The great thirst does not go for "women" or "men" but for sex alone, sex for sex' sake. It is not the attraction of the other sex, but sex as a drug and escape. It thus stands in the same category as the movies. Modern man, having abandoned the supernatural, here seeks for perhaps a last consolation, in order not to be completely overpowered by machine and monotony."

"True herdism, elevated from the status of a low and contemptible instinct to the supreme level of an ideology, of a Weltanschauung, has become a tremendous force in our modern culture and civilization. The herdist ideologies, based on that powerful animal instinct, have attacked and transformed most spheres of human activities including love, sex, and politics. The different "democratic" (and superdemocratic totalitarian) parties of the twentieth century have continued and fostered this process of dehumanization of our Christian culture to a degree hitherto unknown in the annals of human existence."

"We must furthermore always bear in mind that equality presupposes the perpetual application of force; equality after all is an unnatural condition — it is just as unnatural as a completely straight line, a geometrical plain, a perfect circle, distilled water, etc. It needs the intervention of human agencies who have to curtail and to stem the natural growth and development sometimes in the most brutal and cynical way. Docteur Guillotin, Procrustes, the mythological Hellenic bandit, and the magistrate of Strasbourg who decided during the French Revolution to demolish the tower of the medieval cathedral because it was higher than the surrounding houses, belong all to the same category."

"Dignity is naturally an "aristocratic" virtue, best demonstrated in adverse circumstances, in bearing of suffering, in facing death, childbirth, or the guillotine. Dignity as an attitude is also something personal and not collective. Democratism never liked dignity. Nothing infuriates the howling mob more than dignity."

"Ochlocracy is revolution in permanence."

"Neither are the progressivists, in present-day America, revolutionaries or enemies of the order. Being "radical" or "progressive" they merely want to continue with greater speed and determination along the established, wrong trail."

"Rightist ideas are only truly magnetic if they are absolutely pure; Leftist ideas, on account of their materialistic and heretic essence, never demand perfection. Mediocrity is the death of every Rightist movement, but it is the very air in which Leftism thrives. A totalitarian leader who betrays practically every point of his party program hardly shakes the faith of his fanatical followers, but mediocre monarchs, Popes, and prelates have destroyed the old order."

"In the Middle Ages, people were born and baptized into the Church. But the Church was the corpus mysticum and it depended upon one's own free will whether one wanted to be a living or a dead member of the Mystical Body of Christ. The cry "traitor" was only raised against those who broke the solemn oath of allegiance, not those who chose to go ways different from their status of birth. The Connêtable Charles de Bourbon who served with Charles V, or Marshal Moritz of Saxony, the great general under Louis XV were hardly considered to be traitors. Soldiers picked out the countries they wanted to serve. Prospective monks chose their orders. There were no "traitors to the proletariat" or "traitors to democracy." Today we live in an age of increased predestination and decreased free will, where Calvin, Freud, Marx, Luther, Darwin, Dewey, and the host of racial biologists have laid down the inexorable laws of anthropological, religious, psychological, environmental, and sociological determinism with no hope for escape. We are merely exhorted to make a virtue out of necessity and to be loyal to our prison and prisoners. Every attempt from our side to escape the artificial shell or to use our dormant remainders of free will to destroy the chains is branded as treason and punished accordingly by State or Society or even by both."

"The automatic desire for more power is only apparent in children, primitives, people of low character or intellect; for the superior man, power is like a cross, duty a burden, responsibility an obligation."

"The personal mystery of medieval man has been largely destroyed by capitalistic technicism and bourgeois scientism. There was always something mystical in personal creation as well as a "secret" in manual, artistic skills; convents and monasteries jealously kept the secret of their liquors; craftsmen had their secrets and so had doctors, alchemists, astrologers, and pharmacists in their more or less dark trades. Mystics, hermits, midwives, cooks, and violin builders harbored their secrets. Nature was full of unpenetrable mysteries and strange events; the scarcity of written documents furthered the growth of sagas, folklore, and legends. But not only man, nature, and life had their mysteries; even today we speak of the mysteries of the Rosary, of the Mass. In the Armenian Rite of the Catholic Church a veil is spread between the altar and audience during the Consecration of the Host. These mysteries on the other hand, personal as they might be, were far from creating walls between human beings who were by them not less magnetically attracted than by distance. Bodies are mutually attracted by nearness, knowledge, and pleasure but souls by distance, mystery, and suffering."

"Liberty is the ideal of aristocracy, just as equality stands for the bourgeoisie and fraternity for the peasantry. One can combine liberty with fraternity but neither of them with equality."

"The worship of size and number is an old ochlocratic as well as materialistic trend as opposed to the Christian traditional love for quality. It is "bigger and better" and not "better and bigger" which inspires our democratists with their competitive and recordistic tendencies."

"Almost everywhere and at all times the saying of St. Augustine aptly described the situation: "et paupera et inops est ecclesia — the Church is poor and helpless." The Church was powerful only when the state wanted it to be so or when pious laymen had a burning desire to make it so. In the Middle Ages especially the Church was sedulously oppressed: Popes were frequently imprisoned, made the pawns of secular rulers, persecuted, ridiculed, besieged, plundered, exiled, imprisoned and insulted. What about Canossa? People forget how the story ended, and the words of Gregory VII on his death-bed in exile: "Dilexi iustitiam et odi iniquitatem, propterea morior in exilio [I loved justice and hated injustice, therefore I die in exile]." Finally there came the Babylonian Captivity at Avignon. It is true that all of this looks quite different in the elementary schools of Kazachstan, in McKinley High and to our intellectuals, whose grasp of history is almost nil. The situation altered very little in the nineteenth century. Once again there was a prisoner in the Vatican, Pius IX, whose body the mob yelling "Al fiume la carogna!" wanted to throw into the Tiber. This brings us to the twentieth century: Mexico City, Moabit, Dachau, Plötzensee, Auschwitz, Struthof, Carcel Modelo, Andrássy-út 66, Sremska Mitrovica, Vorkuta, Karaganda, Magadan, Lubyanka, Ocnele Mare — these are the modern Stations of the Cross of our clergy."

"Cities like London, New York, Berlin, Paris, Chicago, Pittsburgh, Detroit, or Glasgow are high spots of slavery in comparison to Albania, Bulgaria, or even Central Africa. The slavery of the watch and clock, the bourgeois, anthropocentric slavery of material prestige and successful competition (to slave in order to keep up standards), the wage slavery of the proletarian, the school slavery of the children, the conscription slavery of the adolescents, the road slavery, the factory slavery, the barrack slavery, the party slavery, the office slavery, the parlor slavery of manners and conventions — all these slaveries make political "freedom" appear a bitter joke."

"The natural, romantic man, regardless of whether he liked or disliked the Jews, saw in them the representants of an interesting and ancient race, blood brothers of our Lord. Yet the true herdist resented the baptized or unbaptized sons of Abraham violently, and for the identitarian National Socialist, with his latent inferiority complex and his petit bourgeois lack of worldly experience, they were the worst offenders against the sacred law of uniformity."

"Who is secure in all his basic needs? Who has work, spiritual care, medical care, housing, food, occasional entertainment, free clothing, free burial, free everything? The answer might be “monks and nuns,” but the standard reply is, “prisoners.” And inevitably this conjures up citizens of the Provider State who have protection from the “cradle to the grave.”"

"American nationalism has been conditioned, to a large extent, by the "indoctrination" of the children of immigrants, inevitably coupled with a certain denigration of the Old World. Any German, or Italian, or American gentleman will naturally defend his country against patently unjust accusations—loyalty demands this; but he will not try to convince others that his nation has the highest qualities in the world, the most gifted inventors, the most profound philosophers, the best writers, the finest painters, the fastest trains, the most beautiful women. (This uncouth boasting is reserved for the traveling salesman after a third drink, or the likes of a National Socialist or a Russian Communist.)"

"Arbitrary compulsory education is after all a flagrant curtailment of parental rights and at least as "totalitarian" as conscription. Yet practically nobody dared to contradict the sacrifices made to the idol of "education" and few people sensed that compulsory elementary education was a great step in the direction of totalitarianism which in time intervened in every region of human existence. True, the father's right is not violated by compulsory education in so far as a certain degree of education is reasonably deemed necessary by the State for citizenship, to be administered in the school of the father's choice, provided that school is not subversive in its nature. But the supreme rule is that the child belongs to the parent and not to the State."

"Men learned to speak in order to understand one another. Cultural languages have lost the ability to help men to advance beyond the most rudimentary level and attain understanding. It seems that the time has come to learn to be silent once again."

"By determining law — so far as it is the subject of a specific science of law — as norm, it is delimited against nature; and science of law against natural science. But in addition to legal norms, there are other norms regulating the behavior of men to each other, that is, social norms; and the science of law is therefore not the only discipline directed toward the cognition and description of social norms. There other social norms may be called “morals.” and the discipline directed toward their cognition and description, “ethics.” So far as justice is a postulate of morals, the relationship between justice and law is included in the relationship between morals and law."

"It is called a “pure” theory of law, because it only describes the law and attempts to eliminate from the object of this description everything that is not strictly law: Its aim is to free the science of law from alien elements. This is the methodological basis of the theory."

"The characterization of Kelsen’s pure theory of law as an ideology is here not meant as a reproach, though its defenders are bound to regard it as such. Since every social order rests on an ideology, every statement of the criteria by which we can determine what is appropriate law in such an order must also be an ideology. The only reason why it is important to show that this is also true of the pure theory of law is that its author prides himself on being able to ‘unmask’ all other theories of law as ideologies and to have provided the only theory which is not an ideology. This Ideolologie-kritik is even regarded by some of his disciples as one of Kelsen’s greatest achievements. Yet, since every cultural order can be maintained only by an ideology, Kelsen succeeds only in replacing one ideology with another that postulates that all orders maintained by force are orders of the same kind, deserving the description (and dignity) of an order of law, the term which before was used to describe a particular kind of order valued because it secured individual freedom. Though within his system of thought his assertion is tautologically true, he has no right to assert, as he constantly does, that other statements in which, as he knows, the term ‘law’ is used in a different sense, are not true. What ‘law’ is to mean we can ascertain only from what those who used the word in shaping our social order intended it to mean, not by attaching to it some meaning which covers all the uses ever made of it. Those men certainly did not mean by law, as Kelsen does, any ‘social technique’ which employs force, but used it in order to distinguish a particular ‘social technique’, a particular kind of restraint on the use of force, which by the designation of law they tried to distinguish from others. The use of enforceable generic rules in order to induce the formation of a self-maintaining order and the direction of an organization by command towards particular purposes are certainly not the same ‘social techniques’. And if, because of accidental historical developments, the term ‘law’ has come to be used in connection with both these different techniques, it should certainly not be the aim of analysis to add to the confusion by insisting that these different uses of the word must be brought under the same definition."

"Law is an order of human behavior. An “order” is a system of rules. Law is not, as it is sometimes said, a rule. It is a set of rules having the kind of unity we understand by a system. It is impossible to grasp the nature of law if we limit our attention to the single isolated rule."

"The mark of Platonic philosophy is a radical dualism. The Platonic world is not one of unity; and the abyss which in many ways results from this bifurcation appears in innumerable forms. It is not one, but two worlds, which Plato sees when with the eyes of his soul he envisages a transcendent, spaceless, and timeless realm of the Idea, the thing-in-itself, the true, absolute reality of tranquil being, and when to this transcendent realm he opposes the spacetime sphere of his sensuous perception-a sphere of becoming in motion, which he considers to be only a domain of illusory semblance, a realm which in reality is not-being."

"Justice is primarily a possible, but not a necessary, quality of a social order regulating the mutual relations of men. Only secondarily it is a virtue of man, since a man is just, if his behavior conforms to the norms of a social order supposed to be just. But what does it really mean to say that a social order is just? It means that this order regulates the behavior of men in a way satisfactory to all men, that is to say, so that all men find their happiness in it. The longing for justice is men's eternal longing for happiness. It is happiness that men cannot find alone, as an isolated individual, and hence seeks in society. Justice is social happiness. It is happiness guaranteed by a social order."

"One of the most important elements of Christian religion is the idea that justice is an essential quality of God. Since God is the absolute, his justice must be absolute justice, that is to say, eternal and unchangeable. Only a religion whose deity is supposed to be just can play a role in social life. To attribute justice to the deity in order to make religion applicable to human relations implies a certain tendency of rationalizing something which, by its very nature, is irrational-the transcendental being, the religious authority, and its absolute qualities."

""He who wounds me" exclaims an animated writer, “ injures my body only: but he who wearies me assassinates my soul.” And he who wearies himself needs to be placed under a system of mental dietetics."

"As character comprises the entire sphere of the educated will, so temperament is nothing else than the sum of our natural inclinations and tendencies. Inclination is the material of the will, developing itself when controlled, into character, and when controlling, into passions. Temperament is, therefore, the root of our passions; and the latter, like the former, may be distinguished into two principal classes. Intelligent psychologists and physicians have always recognised this fact..."

"Who is unacquainted with the sparkling eye. The full and quick pulse, the free respiration, the glowing colour, and serene brow of the joyous? Who is not familiar with the trembling aspect, the stammering hesitation, the cold ruffled skin, the bristling hair, the palpitating heart, the uneasiness, the impeded respiration, the paleness, the low pulse, and all the other symptoms occasioned by fear?"

"Those psychological observers who have accustomed themselves to consider the interior and exterior as intimately combined — as the inspiration and expiration of one living being— will readily understand and apprehend the views which I have here advanced. Not so those who are wont to regard mind and body as antagonistic entities associated in an arbitrary manner; or who adopt the prevailing opinion, that every enjoyment of man's sensual nature is detrimental to his spiritual being, or that the mind can only be cultivated at the expense of the body. Such a view would condemn the unfortunate mortal to an alternative of destruction in one form or another, from that creative force which every desire excites within him. But it may be asked, do not the frequent examples of sickness in the learned and the citizen, and of health in the illiterate and the peasant, confirm the opinion now alluded to? I answer that everything depends on our forming a correct idea of cultivation."

"You must master an object before you attempt to despise it."

"“The greatest treasure that God can give his creatures is and ever will be—genuine existence". If these words of Herder be true, cultivation is the key to the most precious of treasures; for as Nature has insured the permanence of existence by implanting in us a force of resistance and self-renovation, so may we, on our side, increase the force of these attributes by self-acquired powers of mind."

"Until we attain a clear idea of our inclinations, the best line of conduct we can pursue is to act uprightly; and establish for ourselves certain rules, adapting them to the various conditions of our existence, so as to penetrate and purify our whole life. Among these rules, I would include the conviction that hatred may be subdued by love; and to impress this axiom more strongly on the mind, we should remember the blessings conferred by love on the human race."

"It has been well remarked of the poems of Hafiz, that their refreshing influence does not depend so much on the sense of the words as on the tone of mind produced in the reader."

"We cannot avoid moodiness; but we may turn to account, as does the poet, the various dispositions of the mind, or give them form and shape, as the sculptor his marble."

"Composition, even when we have no idea of appearing in print, is an excellent dietetic tonic. ... The best and quickest mode of banishing a painful impression, or a torturing feeling, is to give it expression in words. We thus relieve the mind from present, and fortify it against future pangs."

"It is not enough to contemplate ourselves objectively; we must also treat ourselves objectively."

"Those views of life which deify pleasure are less likely to yield it."

"The man dissatisfied with the world will be dissatisfied with himself, so as to be continually eaten up by his own ill humor. And in such a state of mind how can he retain health?"

"True philosophy is a living wisdom, for which there is no death."

"Had Mephistopheles conferred no other service on Faust than easing him for a while of his cloak of learning, the doctor would have had little cause for despair. But the act of awaking is regulated by different principles from those which govern the act of going to sleep. In the former case, the hand of force is often necessary. Life points out with an iron staff the path which each individual should follow. Happy is the man who sees this staff, and follows the path; instead of tarrying by the way until weary, and, incapable of further exertion, he sinks bleeding to the ground. A high degree of mental culture, or a delicate tact, possessed by few, are required to distinguish the necessity of earnestness, or even of pain, in the midst of enjoyment."

"We live in stormy and unsettled times. Hence we may confer a benefit, not only on ourselves, but on others, by diverting attention from the exciting circumstances of the present day—from the disheartening eccentricities of a literature which meanders in a thousand frivolous directions—to the calm regions where the inner man, self-examined, submits himself to moral treatment. Here our connection with things, our object, our duty, become clear; and, while we quietly separate ourselves from a world which is unable to assure us of anything, we feel that the joy we thought lost again returns, and that a second innocence spreads its clear and tranquillizing light over human existence. The child may amuse himself with childish rhymes. Man should find his recreation in reflecting on his relation to the things of this life. To all has this power been vouchsafed; by all should it be exercised."

"We have aimed at popularity in the best sense of that term. The truly popular writer never sinks into the vulgar crowd. He rather raises the masses by bringing the highest subjects within their comprehension, making them, without a show of erudition, easily understood"