Below is the third section (of Part II) of a four-section essay by Hans-Peter Raddatz about the EU, the Mediterranean Union, the Islamization of the West, and the deliberate engineering of the “Arab Spring” by the global elites to serve their own long-term goals. Previously: Section 1, Section 2. For the links to Part I, see the archive list at the bottom of this post.

This essay was originally published at Die Neue Ordnung in pdf form, and was kindly translated from the German by Rembrandt Clancy, who has also provided the reader with extensive notes.

Islamic Seasons and “Democratic” Global Policy

Part II: Fall and Winter in the Cycle of Radical Culture

Section 3

by Hans-Peter Raddatz

Translator’s Introduction

Dr. Raddatz uses references which may be unfamiliar to some. Therefore there are reference notes. These are of two types: translator’s notes and endnotes:

The point of Dr. Raddatz’ discussion of figures such as Kant and Derrida in the last section is that they trace the trajectory and help to form the radical ethos which we experience today. In Section 2 of this paper, “Radical Philosophy and Evil”, Dr. Raddatz introduced a trend of the Enlightenment which increasingly distances itself from reason (Logos) and moves toward its opposite, hylocentrism (matter), which in the social sphere becomes a narrowing of consciousness manifest in the form of reflex functionality replacing reflection or thought. The main representative of this trend is Immanuel Kant who introduced his Categorical Imperative and the philosophy of ‘radical evil’. The former is initially a maxim, an ethical principal, generated by each individual from an internal, pre-existing tendency called a disposition (Gesinnung). If the individual can accept the maxim without contradicting the golden rule, for example, then he should ‘will’ that it become the external universal law. The vagueness of the ‘disposition’ disposes it to co-optation by elites who then formulate the moral law themselves: the disposition “…solidifies … into an inner principle and creates structures of directed thinking and behaviour.” Radical evil, for its part, is embedded in human nature, since Kant’s “moral autonomy” requires that no external metaphysical entities exist, resulting in its independence from the Judeo-Christian tradition. Therefore morality comes down to the binary choice between good and evil dispositions, for nothing exists in between the two. To the elites, who take charge of the choice of maxims, “the Kantian system offers its most important imperative, according to which no maxim should contradict the moral law”. There is no alternative.

In this section, “Freedom, Coercion and Time”, Dr. Raddatz introduces a prolific Catholic writer, Franz von Baader (1765-1841), who challenges Kant’s philosophy at its weakest point, the inner principle of the ‘disposition’, which replaces natural law, or the moral law of the old culture. Von Baader provides a diagnosis for our times. He examines why the “omnipotence of reason” takes on an “arbitrary complexion” as a moral framework divorced from any spiritual influence outside of itself. The delusional character of choosing between two maxims rests on two grounds. Firstly, the individual only apparently participates in the choice of his own moral maxims. Due to the vagueness with which the maxims are generated, they are open to ideological “intensification” by the elites. Secondly, the putative freedom of a moral choice arising from omnipotent reason founders on an inherent corruption which, according to von Baader, arises from its “lost reference to God”. It becomes an active evil, a positive force in itself, and not merely an absence of good, or an ignoring or turning away from the good maxim. Degenerate reason is paradoxically expressed as deratiocination (reflexivity and automaticity) and a loss of culture.

3. Freedom, Coercion and Time

Since Kant is of exemplary significance for modernity’s sustained liberation from the clerical-Christian power of interpretation, he helps us to understand the systematisation of the power-mass model, which among many other things, and above all, directs basic functions underlying historical processes — spirit/body — just/unjust — good/evil — man/wife — life/death. To broaden our understanding, it is equally helpful to add some references from the body of Kantian criticism. Among its most important representatives is Franz von Baader [1765-1841] who was mentioned in Part I. As a committed Christian and inventive, speculative philosopher he not only devoted attention to Kant’s radical evil, but among other things, he also looked into the radical market doctrines of Adam Smith “and his imitators”.

Franz von Baader’s analysis of the “Proletaire”, that is, of the worker hard-pressed by industrialisation, does not appear to be all that far removed either from the tenor of contemporary global Islam criticism or from the power-mass mechanism [power-mass: elite’s rule of a deratiocinated (systematised) mass]. Accordingly it was determined that the “precarious situation of the worker” increased directly with the increase in productivity, and profits “were distributed among ever fewer individuals even as they accumulated”. Therefore, according to von Baader, “legal associations” had to be formed, which could stem the “conspiracy of the factory bosses” whose excesses after all revealed the true face of modern liberalism, namely, that it “leads back to the old despotism and servility”. “Christianity as the principle of society” must be set in opposition to this development, not as a stagnant “mummy-preservation”, but as a community of solidarity after the manner of the Founder, as an alternative to the destructive strategy of profit making and the “ego-inebriation” of liberalism, which destroys social unity, nature, and in the end, also religion and solidarity with God (Quoted from: Metzler Philosophen-Lexikon, 65f. Stuttgart 1995).

The expression “despotism and servility”, which precisely describes the dominance-submission drift of the power driven technological structure of the herd, owes its originality both to Franz von Baader’s intellectual acuity, as well as to the practical experience he accumulated as a mining engineer in the country which is mother to liberal capitalism’s exploitation [England]. Having developed concepts from the Natural Philosophy of the Renaissance, von Baader formed an all-encompassing contrast to Kant’s “insubstantial barrenness of Enlightenment-bringing [Aufklärerei]” and its “religiosity which remains only intensive”. His piety, thought von Baader, is fundamentally nothing but a fideistic fig leaf to avoid censorship, the ecclesiastical component of which appeared to von Baader, the Christian, as mere “mummy-preservation”.

Continue reading →