/lit/ - Literature

>>17279977

This is in fact the position taken up by one form of evolutionism, namely Bergsonian intuitionism, which in fact is not less individualistic and anti-metaphysical than rationalism itself; indeed, although it is just in its criticism of the latter, it sinks even lower, by appealing to a faculty that is really infra-rational, to a vaguely defined sensory intuition more or less mixed up with imagination, instinct, and sentiment. It is highly significant that there is no longer any question here of 'truth', but only of a 'reality' that is reduced exclusively to the sensible order and conceived as something essentially changing and unstable; with such theories, intelligence is reduced to its lowest part, and reason itself is no longer admitted except insofar as it is applied to fashioning matter for industrial uses. After this there remained but one step: the total denial of intelligence and knowledge altogether and the substitution of 'utility' for 'truth'. This step was pragmatism, to which we have just referred; here we are no longer even in the merely human domain as with rationalism, for the appeal to the 'subconscious', which marks the complete reversal of the normal hierarchy, brings us down in fact to the infra-human. This, in its main outlines, is the course that 'profane' philosophy, left to itself and claiming to limit all knowledge to its own horizon, was bound to tread, and has indeed trodden: as long as there existed a higher knowledge, nothing of this sort could happen, for philosophy was bound at least to respect that of which it was ignorant, but whose existence it could not deny; but when this higher knowledge had disappeared, its negation, already a fact, was soon erected into a theory, and it is from this that all modern philosophy has sprung.

>>17258523
>what's wrong with common sense?

Attention must once again be drawn to a a point that has been mentioned earlier; the modern sciences do not possess the character of disinterested knowledge, nor does their speculative value, even for those who believe in it, amount to much more than a mask behind which purely practical considerations lie concealed, one which makes it possible nevertheless to retain the illusion of a false intellectuality. Descartes himself, in working out his physics, was already primarily concerned with extracting from it a system of mechanics, medicine, and morality, and a still greater change came with the spread of the Anglo-Saxon empiricism; moreover, the prestige of science in the eyes of the general public rests almost solely upon the practical results it makes attainable because, here again, it is a question of things that can be seen and touched. We have said that pragmatism represents the final outcome of all the modern philosophy and marks the lowest stage in its decline; but outside the philosophical field there also exists, and has already existed for a long time, a diffused and unsystematized pragmatism which is to philosophical pragmatism what practical materialism is to philosophical materialism, and which merges into what people generally call “common sense.” This almost instinctive utilitarianism is inseparable, moreover, from the materialistic tendency: common sense consists in not venturing beyond the terrestrial horizon, as well as in not paying attention to anything devoid of an immediate practical interest; it is “common sense,” above all, that regards the world of the senses as alone being real and admits of no knowledge beyond what proceeds from the senses; and even this limited degree of knowledge is of value in its eyes only in so far as it allows of satisfying material needs and also sometimes because it feeds a certain kind of sentimentalism, since sentiment, as must be frankly admitted at the risk of shocking contemporary “moralism,” really is very closely related to matter. No room is left in all this for intelligence, except in so far as it may consent to be put to the service of practical ends, acting as a mere instrument subordinated to the requirements of the lowest or corporeal portion of the human individual, “a tool for making tools,” to quote a significant expression of Bergson’s: “pragmatism” in all its forms amounts to a complete indifference to truth.

>>17017015
>>17017022
>>17017028
>>17017035
Traditional and Guenonpilled.