/lit/ - Literature

>>16432467
Christianity also was used to justify slavery, and the divine right of kings, advocates of class and monarchy like de Maistre were integraly Catholic, etc. For Christ's sake, the Catholic clergy is a heirarchy. it's clearly the social, economic and political trends which condition how Christianity comes to be viewed and deployed (and even how influential it is) in a given era. A cursory knowledge of history is all that required to see how patently ridiculous Nietzsche's assertions.

In the whole vast dome of living nature there reigns an open violence. A kind of prescriptive fury which arms all the creatures to their common doom: as soon as you leave the inanimate kingdom you find the decree of violent death inscribed on the very frontiers of life. You feel it already in the vegetable kingdom: from the great catalpa to the humblest herb, how many plants die and how many are killed; but, from the moment you enter the animal kingdom, this law is suddenly in the most dreadful evidence. A Power, a violence, at once hidden and palpable. . . has in each species appointed a certain number of animals to devour the others. . . And who [in this general carnage] exterminates him who will exterminate all others? Himself. It is man who is charged with the slaughter of man. . . The whole earth, perpetually steeped in blood, is nothing but a vast altar upon which all that is living must be sacrificed without end, without measure, without pause, until the consummation of things, until evil is extinct, until the death of death

>inb4 this is called edgy without even slightly being refuted

>>15086867
>AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!!! I-IS IS THAT NATURE!?!?!? OH GOD OF MERCIFUL LIFE BUILD THE WALLS HIGHER!!!! JACKALOPES IN MY DREAMS!!! AAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!! PLEASE LORD OF LIGHT BLOCK IT OUT INTO THE HEAVENLY DARKNESS!!!! BUILD THE WALLS OF HEAVEN AT MY FEET!!!!! DRAGONS AND UNICORNS!!!!!! I'M GOING INNNSSSAAAAAAANNNEEEE!!!! AAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!

>>14491661
Joseph de Maistre.

What does /lit/ think of Joseph De Maistre?

>>13623077
it's time you read pic related anon

>>13593381
“Human reason reduced to its own resources is perfectly worthless, not only for creating but also for preserving any political or religious association, because it only produces disputes, and, to conduct himself well, man needs not problems but beliefs. His cradle should be surrounded by dogmas, and when his reason is awakened, it should find all his opinions ready-made, at least all those relating to his conduct. Nothing is so important to him as prejudices, Let us not take this word in a bad sense. It does not necessarily mean false ideas, but only, in the strict sense of the word, opinions adopted before any examination. Now these sorts of opinions are man’s greatest need, the true elements of his happiness, and the Palladium of empires. Without them, there can be neither worship, nor morality, nor government. There must be a state religion just as there is a state policy; or, rather, religious and political dogmas must be merged and mingled together to form a complete common or national reason strong enough to repress the aberrations of individual reason, which of its nature is the mortal enemy of any association whatever because it produces only divergent opinions.

All known nations have been happy and powerful to the extent that they have more faithfully obeyed this national reason, which is nothing other than the annihilation of individual dogmas and the absolute and general reign of national dogmas, that is to say, of useful prejudices. Let each man call upon his individual reason in the matter of religion, and immediately you will see the birth of an anarchy of belief or the annihilation of religious sovereignty. Likewise, if each man makes himself judge of the principles of government, you will at once see the birth of civil anarchy or the annihilation of political sovereignty. Government is a true religion: it has its dogmas, its mysteries, and its ministers. To annihilate it or submit it to the discussion of each individual is the same thing; it lives only through national reason, that is to say through political faith, which is a creed. Man’s first need is that his nascent reason be curbed under this double yoke, that it be abased and lose itself in the national reason, so that it changes its individual existence into another common existence, just as a river that flows into the ocean always continues to exist in the mass of water, but without a name and without a distinct reality.”

Is anyone familiar with de Maistre? I like his banter shitting on voiltaire. Apparently he goes even harder on Bacon but the book is over 300 pages and i'm too lazy to read it. Anyone got some excerpts?

The name of a spiritual being is necessarily relative to its action, which is its distinctive quality. Hence among the ancients, the highest honor for a divinity was polyonymy, that is to say, having more than one name, which indicates a variety of functions or a greater extent of power. Ancient mythology has Diana, still a child, asking Jupiter for this honor, and in the verses attributed to Orpheus, she is hailed with the title Demon polynyme (spirit of many names).* Essentially, this means that God alone has the right to bestow a name. He has named everything because he has created everything. He has named the stars** and the angels. The Bible mentions only three of the latter by name, but each relates to the purpose of these ministers. It is the same with men whom God has seen fit to name Himself, with whom Holy Scripture has acquainted us in considerable numbers. The names are always relative to the functions of these men.*** Has He not said that in His future kingdom, He would give the conquerors A NEW NAME**** proportionate to their exploits? Have men, formed in God's image, found a more solemn way to reward victors in battle than by giving them a new name, the most honorable of all in human estimation, that of the vanquished nation?***** Each time that a man's life is supposed to change and take on a new character, thus often does he receive a new name. This is true in baptism, confirmation, enlistment of soldiers, entrance into a religious order, liberation of slaves, etc. In a word, the name of every being explains what he is, and there is nothing arbitrary about it. The common expression, he has a name, he doesn't have a name, is quite true and expressive. No man may be ranked among those who in the time of assembly were called by name****** unless his family is marked by a sign which distinguishes it from all others.

>** I recall no famous epithet of Voltaire - perhaps this is merely due to forgetfulness on my part.]

>>12773817
De Maistre is far better

À gauche, homme basé et rougepilulé

Chomsky is an hack, but so is Skinner.

In fact, pic related is the only non-hack that I know of, and I know about everyone.

de Maistre held that order and security are the foundation of human life, and that order should thus have a nature and origin so imperviously mysterious as to be unassailable by reason.

Reason always questions and destroys order. Look at the West today.

>>10784567
>reading in breadth, not in depth
stay pleb

>>10743738
>The state of nature, says Pufendorf, is not the condition that Nature proposes to itself principally as the most perfect and most suitable to the human race',34 and elsewhere, The state of nature pure and simple ... is not the state to which nature has destined man.35
>Which is to say that the state of nature is against nature, or in other words, that nature does not want men to live in the state of nature. The wording of this proposition is a little strange, but it is not surprising; it suffices to be understood. So what is this pure and simple state of nature that is against nature?
>It is that where we conceive each person finding himself as he was born without all the inventions and all the purely human or divinely inspired establishments... by which we understand not only the diverse sorts of arts with all the general commodities of life, but also civil societies whose formation is the principle source of the good order we see among men.36 In a word, man in the state of nature is a man fallen from the clouds31
>Pufendorf is right; ordinary usage opposing the state of nature to the state of civilization, it is clear that man in the first state is only man, less all that he has from the institutions that surround him in the second state; which is say a man who is not a man.
>In effect, when one says that nature destines or does not destine a particular being to a particular state, the word nature necessarily awakens the idea of an intelligence and a will. When Pufendorf says that the state of nature is against nature, he is not contradicting himself: he only gives two different meanings to same word. In the first case, the word signifies a state and in the second a cause. In the first case, it is taken for the exclusion of art and civilization; and in the second, for the action of some agent.
>Moreover, as in an equation one of the members can always be taken for the other, since they are equal, likewise the word nature every time that it expresses an action can only express that of the divine action, manifested immediately or by the intermediary of some secondary agent; it follows that without changing values, one can always substitute the value God for that of nature.
>The proposition is thus reduced to this: the state of nature is not a state to which God has destined man. This is a very clear and most reasonable proposition.