thinking in theses

a Glaux Press & Essay Engineering collaborative enterprise

Theses of multiple types are presented, ranging from ca. 35-100 words in length:

• a summary of the primary thesis (analytical findings) of a single major work (much as an annotated bibliography).

• a thesis identified in a single passage of a work, an article, or any other non-book publication.

• a thesis presenting a general principle, as constituting ἐπαγωγή, or the shift from particular to universal.

Researchers and scholars who wish to participate in the project may send a sample entry to Glaux Press, containing both a single-work thesis and an extrapolated general principle. (See the “Contact” page.) All individuals seeking impartial knowledge through rigorous, careful discernment are welcome, whether independent scholars or institutionally affiliated faculty. Strong academic credentials combined with significant private-sector experience are often the most reliable indicator of the faculty of judgment, whereby an individual knows to identify the most salient attribute of a matter, and thereby generate a concise, accurate, complete thesis.

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“We're all smatterers in a way, I suppose. But a certain amount of civilisation depends on intelligent smattering." (Frank Kermode, English literary scholar)

Hegemons on & Destruction of the European Continent

Fritz Fischer. Griff Nach der Weltmacht. – World War One entailed eager Prussia military activity, and in Fischer’s words, Germany “bears a considerable part of the historical responsibility for the outbreak of the general war”. It was Prussian generals, and foremost German Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg, who sought to annex territory from neighboring European nation-states – and by September 1914, exhaustive plans had been made to create a German Empire that would dominate not only Europe, but Asia and Africa as well. (cf. the decline of the Concert of Europe and the end of Bismarck's rule). – (cf. Christopher Clark. The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914.)  

open question on the Fischer thesis – had these plans for world domination (Weltmacht) been drawn up pre-1914? such that diplomatic tensions and Balkan crises constituted, for Prussia, primarily a pretext to pursue world domination?

ἐπαγωγή – the creation of an economic hegemon (Bismarck’s 19th century creation of the German nation-state under Prussian auspices and its economic domination of the European continent) necessitates ambitions of political hegemony (the two world wars of the twentieth century, centered on Europe).

ἐπαγωγή – different empires are incommensurable; each has a different raison d’être – cf. AJP Taylor. “Prussia for the sake of Prussia; Germany for the sake of Germany; ultimately world power for the sake of world power: such was the creed of the new crusaders, a creed which could never win converts. … each of her predecessors had stood for something: Spain for the Counter-Reformation, Monarchist France for aristocratic civilization, Napoleonic France for equality and civil liberty. Germany stood for nothing, except German power.” (AJP Taylor. The Course of German History)

Niall Ferguson – “most history is the history of empires; that no empire is without its injustices and cruelties; but that the English-speaking empires were, in net terms, preferable for the world to the plausible alternatives, then and now.” link to tweet.

Samuel P. Huntington – "The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion (to which few members of other civilizations were converted) but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do.”

“Look what Europe did to Europe” – two overlooked colonial empires of the twentieth-century: an inquiry into the nature and definition of empire in Intra-European colonial empires and hegemonic rule over vassal states, comprising mid-century Western & Central Europe (Nazi Germany), and post-1945 Eastern Europe (Soviet Russia’s “sphere of influence”).

– A Multi-Epoch Perspective

Paul Kennedy. The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000. – Kennedy employs a dual methodology. He uses economic history to show that a country's ability to raise debt funding and to increase taxes (to finance an increase in size of army and navy) has been a major factor in the warfare capacity of European nation states; he does this within a framework of diplomatic history in a multi-polar Europe, from 1500 to ca. 1990, where a single dominant nation (or the Habsburg Spain/Austria alliance, 1519-1659) strives for hegemony of the continent; but this attempt to create a unipolar world fails because medium-sized nations form an alliance and are together able defeat the would-be hegemon on the battlefield.

Twentieth-Century Europe – Political Economy

– Totalitarianism & Freedom

Erich Fromm. Die Furcht vor der Freiheit. (1941; transl: Fear of Freedom) – the individual is defined by its fear of facing the truth of its own life, the consequences of its own actions, i.e. its fate being its own responsibility; the totalitarian government’s constraints are thus welcomed by the individual who is afraid of his own freedom.

Friedrich Hayek. The Road to Serfdom – Political tyranny arises naturally from left-extremism’s control of a “command economy”, thus necessitating the loss of individual freedom. (cf. Fromm; Hayek presents the political-economic function opposite to Fromm’s psychological function).

ἐπαγωγή – The Destruction of Mitteleuropa – These works of mid-twentieth century scholarship make evident the extent to which Nazi Germany completely obliterated the most sophisticated, by-far dominant intellectual culture of the twentieth century. – “Civilizations die from suicide, not by murder.” (Arnold Toynbee)

– Philosophy of Science & Political Economy

Karl Popper. The Open Society and Its Enemies. (London, 1945)

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Renaissance & Reformation

Norbert Elias. Über den Prozeß der Zivilisation. (transl: )

Theo Hobson. God Created Humanism: the Christian Basis of Secular Values.

Baruch Spinoza – the creation of individual prerogative, contra ecclesiastical authority.

Enlightenment & Counter-Enlightenment (aka Romanticism)

M.H. Abrams. The Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic Theory and the Critical Tradition. Link to publisher’s synopsis.

Isaiah Berlin. The Roots of Romanticism. Link to publisher’s synopsis.

Stephen Halliwell. The Aesthetics of Mimesis: Ancient Texts and Modern Problems. Link to publisher’s synopsis.

Historical Figures.

Floyd W. Hough – German map data & the post-war US creation of a globalized “unified geodetic network” for missile guidance in the Cold War. (“The Untold Story of the Secret Mission to Seize Nazi Map Data: How a covert U.S. Army intelligence unit canvassed war-torn Europe, capturing intelligence with incalculable strategic value.” Smithsonian Magazine. November 2019.)

Jesus Christ in the context of Judaism, recent archaeological findings. (“Unearthing the World of Jesus”. Smithsonian Magazine, January 2016.)

Saarbrücken Schule.

Idealismus* vs. Materialismus (i.e. Idealism vs. Materialism)

“The mood decides the fortunes of people, rather than the fortunes decide the mood.” (Churchill)

* N.B. “idealism”/“idealist” is a technical term in philosophy that means “ultimate reality consists of ideas and/or subjectivity, and not physical-material objects”; and in the academic field of History of Ideas (or History of Philosophy), it is set forth as the central doctrine of various 18th century schools of Philosophical Idealism. This philosophical term has nothing to do with being “idealistic” in the sense of having impractical or unrealistic notions of perfection. A usage example: “Marx’s materialist philosophy of historical necessity clearly rejects Hegel’s philosophy of idealism [the technical philosophical term] and its notion that spirit is the source of all material reality and historical development. But Marx’s so-called philosophy is widely understood to be entirely unrealistic in its conception of the material world: it is pure utopianism and idealism [the everyday, non-philosophical sense], it is the most naive conception of reality that engages in the purposeful misconstrual of basic and immutable laws of economics.”

(The major thinker of Philosophical Idealism is Johann Gottlieb Fichte, who developed his Philosophical Idealism in response to and in rejection of central tenets of Kantian philosophy (also known as Transcendental Idealism). Fichte’s philosophy is summarized in the section after this.)

– The nature of character and delight, idealism and existentialism in The Hurt Locker (dir. Bigelow, 2008)

Sanborn: “I mean, how do you do it, you know, take the risk?”

Wm James [sic]: “I, I don’t know, I just … I guess I don’t think about it.”

Sanborn: “Every time we go out, it’s life or death, you roll the dice. You recognize that, don’t you?”

Wm James: “Yeah yeah. Uh, yeah, I do. But I don’t know why … uh… yeah.” (exhale) “I don’t know J.T. Do you know why I am the way I am?”

Sanborn: “No, I don’t.” (The Hurt Locker, 1:59.30)

[The denoted words “Yeah, I do” has an explicit sense “I do recognize that”; but contra this denotation, what is unspoken is, “I recognize it theoretically, just I don’t care about death, so it doesn’t even register that way for me.”]

“Yeah, you love playing with that. You love playing with all your stuffed animals. You love your mommy, your daddy. Your nature pajamas. You love everything, don’t you? Yeah. But you know what, buddy? As you get older, some of the things that you love might not seem so special anymore, you know. Like your jack-in-the-box. Maybe you realize it’s just a piece of tin and a stuffed animal. But the older you get, the fewer things you really love. And by the time you get to my age, maybe it’s only one or two things. With me, I think it’s one.” (The Hurt Locker, 2:03.50)

[James characterizes the experience of something not seeming so special anymore as realizing there is only a materiality to an experience of a physical object, where there was before the experience of something special. The nature of the phenomenon inheres in the perception, in a thing seeming to be this or that. cf. the after-the-fact disavowal of love as “there was nothing serious there”, i.e. there was never anything special between us whether there was once love, whether the term serious only stands in to conceal that there was once something special, is immaterial. The relevant point is the present day where there is only the empty materiality; as a jack-in-the-box ceases to be magical and becomes entirely unremarkable and is “just a piece of tin and a stuffed animal”, i.e. is nothing at all. cf. Weber’s Wissenschaft als Beruf on Entzauberung. cf. Hyperbole and a Half for a similar representation of this experience of toys losing their magic for the child and ensuing adult malaise.]

– The self in revelation and fullness, in another person caring.

“This isn’t real. You aren’t real. Derek, why do you care about these people? They don’t care about you, none of them. They don’t even know you. Because you haven’t shown them. Every day you’ll wake up and there’ll be less of you. You live your life for them and they don’t even see you. You don’t even see yourself. We don’t get a lot of things to really care about.” (“Pig” 2021, dir. Sarnoski. Nicholas Cage.)

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Fichtescher Idealismus (“Fichtean Idealism”)

The major thinker of Philosophical Idealism is Johann Gottlieb Fichte, who developed his Philosophical Idealism in response to, and in rejection of central tenets of Kantian philosophy (also known as Transcendental Idealism).

Fichte’s essential idea is this: when a person is aware of itself (its self being the I ), that person is aware of its own activity that involves an object of the world, of external reality (where external reality is everything that is not ‘the I’, not the individual); and this thought (i.e. the awareness of an object) is the individual’s action.

But why is the individual’s thought said to be the same as the individual’s action? Because before the individual has any thought about an object (e.g. a table, another human being), the individual has a thought about itself. (It is this “itself” that is the same thing as “the I”.)

This is the perhaps strange idea at the heart of Fichte’s entire philosophy: that the individual’s awareness of itself (i.e. awareness of the I) is the same thing as the individual’s awareness of any and all objects of the world. “The intellect observes itself (sieht sich selbst zu); and this seeing of itself is immediately united with everything applying to it” (Zweite Einleitung in die Wissenschaftslehre, 435 (1797) [Second Introduction to the Science of Knowledge]). Another way to think of what Fichte is saying is this: that each individual believes objects to be separate from itself, but this is wrong; in fact, in truth, there cannot exist any objects separately from the individual (“the I”); just as there cannot exist an individual (“the I”) separately from an object or a set of objects.

The necessary conclusion, therefore, is the following: no object can exist separately from the individual ("the I”, or the self in its intellect). And since this is true of each and every single object of external reality, it is true, in turn, of the entire world that each individual experiences. (Because the world is in its essence constituted by objects; and the experience that an individual has is the aggregate set of objects that are present for this individual.)

(cf. Wittgenstein’s remark “Hegel seems to me to be always wanting to say that things which look different are really the same, whereas my interest is in showing that things which look the same are really different”. One fundamental approach and method of philosophy is to say that there is one thing which is thought to be entirely separate from and different from a second thing; but in fact (the philosopher claims) these two things are in fact one thing.)

A second necessary conclusion: is that the nature of the individual (the I) is what determines the nature of objects – or rather, that there is no such difference as the nature of an object and the nature of an individual. But rather, shifts in the nature of the individual happen simultaneously to and immediately with any shift in the object. (And vice versa: shifts in the nature of an object happen simultaneously to and immediately with any shift in the individual.)

A further question that arises is this: how do shifts in the nature of the individual / object happen ? Do these arise spontaneously such that an individual has no control over these changes ? Or is the individual somehow in control of these shifts in the nature of individual / object (being one entity) ? And what, then is the nature of the individual’s control ? This question is perhaps best answered by Aristotelian ethics and its topic of composure and discomposure (ἐγκράτεια καὶ ἀκρασία).

For those interested, Alan Wood’s article “Fichte' s Philosophical Revolution” (Philosophical Topics, vol 19, no2, fall 1991) presents both a background of what philosophy was like before Fichte, and what the main ideas of Fichte’s philosophy are.

Wood writes that: “The philosophical revolution made the self the central issue of philosophy, while at the same time changing the very conception of the self. Nineteenth-century philosophy rejected the self as the epistemological ‘subject’ confronting nature as ‘object’ of knowledge, in favor of an active self, a creator of its own distinctive world - a social, cultural, artistic, historical world.” (2) Wood notes the challenges presented by Fichte’s own writings, meaning it simply very difficult to understand what exactly Fichte is saying and what exactly Fichte means: “Fichte' s procedure in the Theory of Science of 1794 is so obscure that scholars disagree even about the most rudimentary issues of interpretation. […] Whatever the status of his first principle, Fichte is at least emphatic about what the principle is: it is the I. Yet Fichte states the first principle in various ways.” (6)

At all events, this first principle of the I is further elaborated by Wood as follows: “Every state of consciousness involves an awareness of the I. ‘The intellect observes itself (sieht sich selbst zu); and this seeing of itself is immediately united with everything applying to it’ (ZE 435). ‘No object comes to consciousness except under the condition that I am conscious of myself, the conscious subject’ (NWL 526-27). By such statements Fichte obviously does not mean that every mental state involves an explicit attending to a certain special object whose name is ‘I’. Rather, its import is that every awareness involves at the same time the awareness of being aware.” (78)

This phrase of Wood’s, “the awareness of being aware”, makes for a confusing construction, which unto itself presents a riddle more than clarification; Wood helpfully explains more directly what he means by this phrase, and his meaning is put more simply in this way: “… awareness of the I, though present in every consciousness, is both highly distinctive and of the greatest possible philosophical significance. For it is an awareness of our own activity. In any consciousness, even the most passive apprehending of some object, we are aware of doing something; this doing is what Fichte means by ‘I’.” (7) Wood further elaborates the significance of this “awareness” by explaining the following quotation of Fichte: “ ‘you directly note activity and freedom in this thinking, in this transition from thinking the I to thinking the table, the walls, etc. Your thinking is for you an acting ." What Fichte chooses to designate by the word ‘I’ is only this experience of acting, and nothing else.” (7)

(Another major thinker of Philosophical Idealism is the Anglo-Irish philosopher George Berkeley; his major works on the topic are A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge (1710); and the Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous (1713). However, it is the Post-Kantian Idealism of Fichte, and thus a German Idealism that is considered far the dominant school of Philosophical Idealism.)

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Aristotle – the notion of ἐπαγωγή (induction); distinction between love and the erotic; malevolent and maleficent forces; the faculty of judgment qua application of categories to particular circumstance and action.

The essential concept of inductive reasoning – the shift from particular circumstance to general principle – was first delineated by Aristotle, in the Posterior Analytics, as the concept of ἐπαγωγή (induction). The lengthy section in which Aristotle describes ἐπαγωγή (induction) constitutes the better part of chapter 19 of the second (and final) book of the Posterior Analytics, and can be found (with translation) here. It bears noting that Aristotle not only defines induction as the method linking sense-perception (of the particular circumstances of empirical reality) to universals (i.e. conceptual knowledge). Moreover (and to the contemporary sensibility, most surprisingly), Aristotle not only links νοῦς (intuition) and ἐπιστήμη (scientific knowledge) – he asserts that νοῦς (intuition) is both more accurate than and precedent to ἐπιστήμη (scientific knowledge). That is, Aristotle asserts that scientific knowledge is derived from intuition. (N.B. the term scientific knowledge here does not refer to the natural sciences, but rather to any knowledge at all, whether of natural science or human science.)

δῆλον δὴ ὅτι ἡμῖν τὰ πρῶτα ἐπαγωγῆι γνωρίζειν ἀναγκαῖον· καὶ γὰρ ἡ αἴσθησις οὕτω τὸ καθόλου ἐμποιεῖ. Ἐπεὶ δὲ τῶν περὶ τὴν διάνοιαν ἕξεων αἷς ἀληθεύομεν αἱ μὲν ἀεὶ ἀληθεῖς εἰσιν, αἱ δὲ ἐπιδέχονται τὸ ψεῦδος, οἷον δόξα καὶ λογισμός, ἀληθῆ δ᾽ ἀεὶ ἐπιστήμη καὶ νοῦς, καὶ οὐδὲν ἐπιστήμης ἀκριβέστερον ἄλλο γένος ἢ νοῦς, … εἰ οὖν μηδὲν ἄλλο παρ᾽ ἐπιστήμην γένος ἔχομεν ἀληθές, νοῦς ἂν εἴη ἐπιστήμης ἀρχή. (II, 19. 100b)

Thus it is clear that we must get to know the primary premises by induction; for the method by which even sense-perception implants the universal is inductive. Now of the thinking states by which we grasp truth, some are unfailingly true, others admit of error – opinion, for instance, and calculation, whereas scientific knowing and intuition are always true: further, no other kind of thought except intuition is more accurate than scientific knowledge, … If, therefore, it [intuition] is the only other kind of true thinking except scientific knowing, intuition will be the originative source of scientific knowledge. (II, 19. 100b)

By curious coincidence, it is in the Prior Analytics that Aristotle states the essential distinction between love and the erotic. This coincidence is noteworthy, given that the concept of ἐπαγωγή is definitive for the human sciences; as, similarly, love and the erotic are the definitive forces of human existence, if one discounts malevolent and maleficent forces. One imagines that love and the erotic are, indeed, prior to the human sciences and induction.

Aristotle sets forth the essential distinction between love and the erotic in the Prior Analytics as follows:

“If then every lover under the influence of his love would prefer his beloved to be disposed to gratify him (Α) without doing so (Γ) [–] rather than gratify him (Δ) without being inclined to do so (Β), clearly Α [– that the beloved should be so inclined –] is preferable to the act of gratification. To be loved, then, is preferable to intercourse, according to the nature of erotic desire. Erotic desire, then, is more a desire for love than for intercourse. If it is most of all for that, that is also its end. Either intercourse, then, is not an end at all or it is for the sake of being loved.” (Prior Analytics 68a39. II. xxii. Loeb pg 513)

εἰ δὴ ἕλοιτο πᾶς ὁ ἐρῶν κατὰ τὸν ἔρωτα [τὸ Α] τὸ οὕτως ἔχειν ὥστε χαρίζεσθαι, καὶ τὸ μὴ χαρίζεσθαι τὸ ἐφ᾽ οὗ Γ, [–] ἢ τὸ χαρίζεσθαι τὸ ἐφ᾽ οὗ Δ, καὶ τὸ μὴ τοιοῦτον εἶναι οἷον χαρίζεσθαι τὸ ἐφ᾽ οὗ (Β), δῆλον ὅτι τὸ Α τὸ τοιοῦτον εἶναι αἱρετώτερόν ἐστιν ἢ τὸ χαρίζεσθαι. τὸ ἄρα φιλεῖσθαι τῆς συνουσίας αἱρετώτερον κατὰ τὸν ἔρωτα. μᾶλλον ἄρα ὁ ἔρως ἐστὶ τῆς φιλίας ἢ τοῦ συνεῖναι. εἰ δὲ μάλιστα τούτου, καὶ τέλος τοῦτο. τὸ ἄρα συνεῖναι ἢ οὐκ ἔστιν ὅλως ἢ τοῦ φιλεῖσθαι ἕνεκεν· καὶ γὰρ αἱ ἄλλαι ἐπιθυμίαι καὶ τέχναι οὕτως. (Prior Analytics 68a39. II. xxii. Loeb pg 513)

Aristotle, as well, provides a definitive statement on the nature of malevolent and maleficent forces of human existence.

ἀγνοεῖ μὲν οὖν πᾶς ὁ μοχθηρὸς ἃ δεῖ πράττειν καὶ ὧν ἀφεκτέον, καὶ διὰ τὴν τοιαύτην ἁμαρτίαν ἄδικοι καὶ ὅλως κακοὶ γίνονται. (Nicomachean Ethics. 1110b)

“At all events, all wicked men indeed are ignorant of what one must do and what one must not do, and it is because of this that injustice and, in general, evil come into being.” (Nicomachean Ethics. 1110b)

This statement more than suffices as an essential point of departure, though it requires amplification with regard to the nature of judgment (τὸ κρίνειν) – namely distinguishing which categories (what one must do versus what one must not do) apply to which specific actions; incorrect judgment applies the wrong category to the particular circumstance or action. Per Churchill’s remark “I decline utterly to be impartial between the fire brigade and the fire” – the matter of judgment consists in correctly identifying what of life is fire brigade and what is fire. Incorrect judgement imagines the fire brigade to be the fire, and vice versa. (Thus the nature of τὸ ἁμαρτάνειν in storytelling in the tragic mode.)