tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6832901.post4623441088952212427..comments2024-03-25T19:48:24.624+11:00Comments on Oz Conservative: Gottfried BennUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6832901.post-42999842151242920662013-02-12T03:08:24.462+11:002013-02-12T03:08:24.462+11:00Mark, I get your point, and I agree with you; bur ...Mark, I get your point, and I agree with you; bur I can't help feeling rather sympathetic to a nihilist who feels the world has deserted him as opposed to a nihilist who willingly deserts the world, so to speak, and who "agrees" with nihilism, defends it, promotes it, etc. Without knowing Gottfried Benn, I sense from what you quoted that he belongs to the first category, and on most days, that's the way I feel too, i.e. powerless against a world that forces nihilism into you.Yannick Roynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6832901.post-22041166116908259912013-02-11T17:41:55.079+11:002013-02-11T17:41:55.079+11:00Yannick,
I'm interested in reading more about...Yannick,<br /><br />I'm interested in reading more about Benn too, but from what I've gleaned on the internet he never found his way back to anything - his attempts at a post-nihilism seem lame to me. <br /><br />Mark Richardsonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15961688379656119701noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6832901.post-719538624596246402013-02-11T15:40:47.929+11:002013-02-11T15:40:47.929+11:00I'm not mad about the concept of original sin....I'm not mad about the concept of original sin. It seems to imply that you thought people would be capable of more, that they should be "good", not "bad", whatever arbitrary interpretation is placed on those words. <br /><br />And of course that's exactly what it means: "If only Adam hadn't fallen we'd be living in paradise!". It's the prototype of the romantic nostalgia shared by anti-modernists of the right and left alike, from Joseph De Maistre (for whom the Revolution was equivalent to the Fall), right through to John Zerzan (an anarcho-primitivist Rousseauian who thinks that we went astray with the earliest social division of labour). <br /><br />Personally, I believe in taking people as they are. The kind of Romanticism that is reprobated by reactionary modernists like Benn and Hulme (read his pertinent essay here: http://www.counter-currents.com/2013/02/romanticism-and-classicism/#more-33973) seem to me to evince a kind of preformationism: the figure of full-grown romanticism is already implicit in the christian embryo, which is identical with this idea of original sin. Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6832901.post-64418566122842941262013-02-11T03:30:30.969+11:002013-02-11T03:30:30.969+11:00Thanks Mark; very interesting description of moder...Thanks Mark; very interesting description of moderne times, and of course things have only gotten worse (man believes more than ever in his own "goodness"). It reminds me of Polish philosopher and historian Leszek KoĊakowski, who wrote about modern man having fatefully forgotten the original sin. I will add Gottfried Benn, whose name I did not even know, on my list of "authors I have to read".Yannick Royhttp://www.inconvenient.canoreply@blogger.com