What is /lit/ reading and writing in regard to political philosophy or theory? I'm curious what this place is up to in this field, from everyone including just starting casuals, to more experienced casuals, to actual academic and scholars lurking and dipping in and out. (Shitposters try not to be too retarded please)Who or what interests you, and why? What are the central ideas, and is it just for fun, or a serious project of understanding/writing? Is it just of historical value, or of contemporary relevance? I am doing a deep project on the origins of totalitarianism, from a critique of Hannar Arendt's shortcomings, as her analysis of very a limited historical method. Her dialog with Voegelin pinpoints her shortcomings, and I work from there via a political-historical work starting with Plato/Aristotle, their metaphysics, and classical natural law, and how the moderns disenchanted the world and lowered political ethics across Machiavelli, Bacon, Descarte, and Hobbes. Center to it is that the "domination" or "mastery" of nature teamed with modern natural law both de-telos'd man and societies purpose, and that modern progressive logic entails the obtainment of the perfect secular universal society via affluence, not virtue. Strauss details this in his Crisis of Modernity and its three waves to the side of his other works, and warns that the mastery or "conquest" of nature has turn inwards against the nature of man. Arendt, despite her flaws, recombines back here in that totalitarianism is the regime-type manifestation in which modern ideologies seek a new grand artificial teleos or end in the form of world domination and total state terrorism that smashes the human condition and all individuals to reform them towards the regime's ideology and grand goals as the peak and end of history.Finally, my contribution is that totalitarianism is threatening to re-emerge under AI-Human fusion under Posthumanism, and will have heavily expanded technological means towards world domination, ushering in the true end to world history and the beginning of cosmic history under a Final Imperium that will leave the planet.
>>24691988I'm doing some work on the Federalist at present.
>>24691988Gonna look for the connection between theology, history and politics. Writing histories of ideas right now and connecting them to psychological states
>>24692161What connection/themes specifically are you looking at? My work is very much history of ideas and the centrality of theology within everything came to surprise me.
>>24691988If you're interested in that Strauss did author a piece on Kojeve and the link between Kojeve's ideas and tyranny. Oddly enough the route Kojeve took to get to his position arguably made him one of the few people to actually consider Strauss's points. This poses a split dilemma for both sides, Kojeve will entertain the challenger but he also has 2 state of nature responses, Strauss isn't lacking in this by any means but he is usually forced into a sort of Heidegger situation in most instances which does tend to highlight his point but also means nothing to Kojeve. Kojeve is most likely to side with Hegel that the lord's real power is death and the ability to rob death from the bondsman. The synthesis of the 2 still benefits Kojeve in this scenario. Reversing Marx's sequential order and setting the bondsman to death only is the easiest way to throw Kojeve off. This is usually why Kojeve isn't perceived as having been able to truly successfully synthesize the 2 thinkers. The approach isn't a likely one for Strauss though, knowledge of more advanced Marxist dialectic is needed. Kojeve's revisions to Hegel more or less demand that he side with the bondsman, but he is most likely to view Marx as the bondsman, most encounters are likely to reinforce this. When confronted with a bondsman willing to die he is likely to be spoofed into thinking he dealing with another Hegelian or possibly a Heideggerian and will likely choose symmetry. Marx/bondsman/death with reversed order isn't concerned with the enticements that are normally offered or even with any concessions whatsoever. Kojeve's last option is the synthesis but he's forced into one camp so his most likely option is just to move on, from Strauss's perspective this is an irreconcilable paradox, arguably one reason he didn't engage more seriously with Marx but in this case it harms his core position. If left to his own devices Kojeve will always engage with Strauss but he's more likely to have the upper hand.
All you need is Schmitt.
