Romanticism’s disdain for what Blake termed “the realm of necessity” emerged naturally from the speculations of the philosophers of the 18th Century. Enlightenment thinkers had generally assumed the empirical world to be an accessible source of Objective Truth, but Emmanuel Kant [1724-1804] separated the Subject from the Object, distinguishing between noumena [things in themselves] and phenomena [things as they are perceived by any given subject], declaring Man to be forever trapped within the phenomenal world. While Kant continued to believe in the existence of “the thing in itself,” however beyond our apprehension, Johann Gottlieb Fichte [1762-1814] saw this as an arbitrary assumption, declaring the Self to be the sole creator of the Not-Self. Hence Blake’s declaration of independence from what had been considered the inexorable actualities of the real world. Hence the Post Modern principle that if various sectors of the species have concluded 2+2 to be 7, they are perfectly entitled to do so. This is of course a gross simplification, but some of the world-views and lifestyles which those on the Left insist on defending in the name of Inclusiveness would seem to be as self-evidently absurd as this basic mathematical miscalculation.
For Objectivists such as Ayn Rand, Kant, however unwittingly, had created the virus that has been eating away at the brain of Western Civilization for the last 250 years. In the Wikipedia entry on German Idealism, Ortega y Gasset is quoted as follows on the subject of Fichte and his ilk:
They did whatever they felt like doing with concepts. As if by magic they changed anything into any other thing…..the basic force behind their work was not strictly and exclusively the desire for truth. [Phenomenology and Art, 1975]
George Santayana would seem to have agreed:
German Idealism….is essentially romantic and egotistical, and all in it that is not soliloquy is mere system making and sophistry. Therefore when …… represented as the rational foundation of science and religion, with neither of which it has any honest sympathy, it becomes positively odious. [Winds of Doctrine, 1913]
On April 5, 2017, “conservative” Heather MacDonald was scheduled to speak at Claremont McKenna College, UCLA, to defend American police forces against the charge of being systemically racist. Members of BLM disrupted the event, many in the mob chanting “Fuck White Supremacy,” claiming that they were fighting for their very right to exist. In response to the college president’s decision to defend the principle of Free Speech, BLM penned the following letter:
“Historically white supremacy has venerated the idea of objectivity, and wielded a dichotomy of subjectivity vs. objectivity as a means of silencing oppressed peoples. The idea that there is a simple truth….the Truth….is a construct of the Euro West that is deeply rooted in the Enlightenment.”
Of course there are truths we can never validate with any degree of certainty. But, as the Logical Positivists sought to prove, there are multitudes of statements we can make that are beyond dispute. BLM’s vilification of the very concept of the Truth as a White Western invention [construct] is perfectly in keeping with the intellectual/moral bankruptcy of the political Left, a failing which leaves it no other option but to eliminate discussion of the validity of Principles and Values from political debate on the grounds that really, nobody knows what’s true or false or right or wrong, all such distinctions being just veiled vehicles of hate and oppression.
I entitled this Blog “the politics of hate” knowing that most would see it as a reference to the White Supremacist hatred supposedly simmering on the political Right. Of course elements of such exist but they receive no validation whatsoever in the mainstream media while remaining, from any rational perspective, but an insignificant force in North American politics. What motivates those presently rampaging through the streets of America, however, is hatred pure and simple, the “truth” of Black urban crime, gang warfare, drug abuse, rampant sexual promiscuity with its consequent myriads of fatherless children, etc., etc. being, it would seem, but an invention of we White racists. Ibram X. Kendi would no doubt agree. Candace Owens, on the other hand, has, I note, called her latest podcast The Truth.
Santayana suggests the dismissal of the very notion of Objective Truth to be a ploy of the pathologically egotistical, those convinced that the only reality worth considering is their reality. Such would seem to be the orientation of many of our “social justice warriors,” irrational, immature, slaves to their emotions and ultimately incapable of genuine awareness of either themselves or the world beyond them. That they are supported by most of today’s “intellectuals,” academics and media commentators is an indication of just how truly sick our Civilization has become.