Interesting idea-A Finnish philosopher- Jussi Backman writes that anti-liberal theory of reality is arising that allows local, national self-determination of metaphysics points instead of accepting a post-modern idea of liberalism. The conservative approach is supposed to be accepted by Russian President Putin. So Mr. Putin is not only a nationalist seeking national self-realization through history, he is anti-liberal! Evidently N.A.T.O. members need war on metaphysics as well as Russia from a Finnish perspective. Capturing the high ground on the metaphysics battleground might be regarded as a patriotic duty for post-modern liberals in the war of expansion eastward.
Reading Sein und Zeit in translation long ago didn’t provide great illumination for me as Heidegger’s pursuit of the roots of language seemed too located in philology for my preference. Nietzsche was another philologist German searching for something that he found in a sort of science fiction madness of eternal recurrence rendering meaningless the society and its moral values he perceived as ultimately ossified. Sartre’s approach to existence and an account for human behavior through ossified praxis, semiotics and phenomenal dialectical reason seemed more functional and immediate. I don’t regard any of that as metaphysics though, except in a minor, derivative way.
I took a course at coursera named ‘Søren Kierkegaard – Subjectivity, Irony and the Crisis of Modernity’ that was a broad view of society comparing Kierkegaard and Socrates view of social irony and the way the masses are acculturated. Socrates began the process of examining social beliefs and deconstructing them revealing their unsupported basis and incorrect assumptions. The course is somewhat droll from an American perspective and simultaneously brilliant. One encounters the left-wing Hegelians and followers of 19th century German romanticism with their disdain for social morals. I recommend the course for anyone. That last part makes it quite worthwhile.
https://www.coursera.org/learn/kierkegaard
Europeans though seem quite confused about social reality, philosophically. I think Sartre had the analysis right. Europeans have been traumatized by war and were splintered into nations and evolved from different cultures, had a sea of different social classes and economic theories for correcting that (e.g. Karl Marx). Ideas about unifying and overcoming the differences jostled with racism North-South, colonialism, post-colonialism (e.g. Algeria, Kenya, South Africa) and dynastic changes in leadership (e.g. French and german revolutions) brought a lot of self-reflection and a quest for theories to explain it all.
Ortega y Gasset’s ‘The Revolt of the Masses’ anticipated World War Two and examined the effect of new economic effects of modern technology like radio and mass production of cars and such upon society. Europeans have created a lot of theories about ‘metaphysics’ to explain their trans-nationalism and wars of conquest even upon each other as fellow, rival nations, religions and theories. Even evolution is a basis for eugenics theories of supremacy (i.e. fascism) and supports post-modernist interpretations of liberalism that rendered western liberalism a into a kind of Frankenstein’d upgrade to the Cult of Dionysius in the name of Orwell’s soma and a Big Brother State wherein morality and epistemology are entirely subjective phenomena. If one takes western liberalism as originating with Jesus Christ, God (the Jews wanted a king, God wanted Jews to have a democracy, yet because the Jews insisted he sent them Saul who was wandering about trying to find his missing ass, to be their King). Magna Carta and Adam Smith’s economics it is a hard graft of decadent morals of the modern left onto the tree of liberalism to bring it to bare a poisoned fruit that splinters society along lines of traditional moral norms and Dionysian values.
Effacing traditional morality to replace it with post-modern Dionysian liberalism occurs simultaneously with the global concentration of wealth. In the post-industrial global state individualism of the masses conserving their personal wealth is replaced by consumerism and mass indoctrination in marketplace values set by those with no moral boundaries. This notion of western liberalism as an agent of universal global right to power is a cultural imperialism at war on good sense and reason; better suited for a mileau of post-industrial Dionysian liberal use of mind-altering drugs.
Europeans will generate new and surpassing theories of social reality entitling them to run roughshod over Russians and anyone else that seems resistant to their will-to-political power. The problem isn’t with liberal economics or environmental economics and challenges or metaphysics; it is simply in failing human understanding and pragmatism and premises of classical liberalism that is rooted in the properties of rights, and right of property that is the foundation of the American west. Post-modern liberalism is at war on classical liberalism and would concert it into socialism or Dionysian socialism/corporatism. In either case the individual loses the right of self determination as do nations.
Europeans are simply confused about social reality because it concatenates from so many languages and directions. An external unifying opponent tends to overcome the confusion. They invent a challenge and provide a response for themselves- hence the Ukraine conflict that could easily have been avoided and/or solved peacefully with a proper rectification of the carpet-bagging land grab at the end of the Soviet Union that divested Russian of historically Russian real estate.
