Ominous Parallels (43 page)

19
Herman Finer,
Mussolini’s Italy
(New York, Holt, 1935), p. 218; quoting a speech given in Naples, Oct. 24, 1922.
Cf
. Rader,
op. cit.,
p. 25.

20
Essays in Pragmatism,
ed. A. Castell (New York, Hafner, 1952); “What Pragmatism Means” (Lecture II of
Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking
), p. 150.
Ibid.,
“Pragmatism’s Conception of Truth” (Lecture VI of
Pragmatism
), p. 170.

21
In his youth, Mussolini was personally acquainted with several Italian disciples of James, and published an occasional article in
La Voce,
a pragmatist journal of the period devoted to political and literary issues. Later, he made a point of giving James part of the credit for the development of Fascism. “The pragmatism of William James,” he said in a 1926 interview, “was of great use to me in my political career. James taught me that an action should be judged rather by its results than by its doctrinary basis. I learnt of James that faith in action, that ardent will to live and fight, to which Fascism owes a great part of its success.... For me the essential was to act.”
Cf.
Ralph Barton Perry,
The Thought and Character of William James
(2 vols., Boston, Little, Brown, 1935), II, 575; quoting the
Sunday Times,
London, April 11, 1926.

22
Mein Kampf,
pp. 214-15.

23
Aurel Kolnai,
The War Against the West
(New York, Viking, 1938), p. 59. Rauschning,
The Voice of Destruction,
p. 223. Viereck,
op. cit.,
p. 314; quoting from
The Atlantic Monthly,
June 1940.

24
Rauschning,
The Voice of Destruction,
pp. 188-89. Goering quoted by Eugene Davidson,
The Trial of the Germans
(New York, Macmillan, 1966), pp. 237-38.

25
Rauschning,
The Voice of Destruction,
p. 189.

26
Gangulee,
op. cit.,
p. 123.

27
Kolnai,
op. cit.,
p. 29; quoting a statement made at Frankfurt a.M., Oct. 1935. Shirer,
op. cit.,
p. 662.

28
This widespread form of subjectivism is implicit in every variant of the theory. If a man’s mental methods or contents are regarded as irreducible features of his consciousness, as primaries not derived from an awareness of reality—if his ideas are claimed to have no source in the perception of
facts
—then, the inventions of certain philosophers notwithstanding, the source is his emotions, his arbitrary (and, to him, causeless) feelings.

29
Mein Kampf,
p. 338. Kolnai,
op. cit.,
pp. 29-30; quoting a statement made by Goering in the spring of 1933. Mosse,
Nazi Culture,
p. xxxi; quoting from Benedikt Lochmüller,
Hans Schemm
(Bayreuth, 1935).

30
Kant does not repudiate the term “objective,” and claims to oppose subjectivism. His method of opposition, however, is to redefine “objectivity,” in accordance with his own presuppositions, in such a way as to make it a species of subjectivity. Hegel follows Kant’s lead in this issue.

31
Kolnai,
op. cit.,
p. 61; quoting Franz Haiser. Rauschning,
The Voice of Destruction,
p. 223.
Cf.
the statement by the Nazi physicist Philipp Lenard, a 1905 Nobel Prize winner for his work on cathode rays, in his treatise entitled “German Physics”: “Science, like every other human product, is racial and conditioned by the blood.” (Quoted in Rader,
op. cit.,
p. 31.)

32
Rader,
op. cit.,
pp. 102-03; quoting
Nature,
Jan. 18, 1936.

33
Tirala,
op. cit.,
p. 190 (trans. G. Reisman).

34
Ibid., p. 196.

35
Mein Kampf,
p. 253. Rauschning,
The Voice of Destruction,
p. 97.

Chapter Four

1
Mein Kampf,
pp. 404, 297. Jung quoted in Kolnai,
op. cit.,
p. 66; the last quoted sentence is Kolnai’s summary of Jung’s view.

2
Ibid.,
p. 105, n. 3; quoting
Wille und Macht
(Munich, Dec. 1936).

3
Mein Kampf,
p. 297.

4
The Origins of Totalitarianism
(new ed., New York, Harcourt, Brace & World, 1966), pp. 348, 315-16.

5
Ibid.,
p. 425, n. 98. Ziemer,
op. cit.,
p. 33. Hannah Arendt,
Eichmann in Jerusalem
(New York, Viking, 1965), p. 42.

6
Ethica Nicomachea
1168b28-1169b2.

7
Confessions,
trans. R.S. Pine-Coffin (Baltimore, Penguin, 1961), pp. 169, 93.
On Christian Doctrine,
trans. D.W. Robertson, Jr. (Indianapolis, Bobbs-Merrill, 1958), p. 19.

8
Confessions,
p. 181.
Approaches to Ethics,
ed. W.T. Jones
et al.
(New York, McGraw-Hill, 1962), pp. 161- 62; reprinted from
Meister Eckhart
, trans. R.B. Blakney (New York, 1957).

9
Adam Smith’s Moral and Political Philosophy,
ed. H.W. Schneider (New York, Harper & Row, 1970);
The Theory of Moral Sentiments,
pp. 39, 233-34, 249.

10
Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals,
ed. R.P. Wolff, trans. L.W. Beck (Indianapolis, Bobbs-Merrill, 1969), pp. 65, 14, 69.

11
Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone,
trans. T.M. Greene and H.H. Hudson (New York, Harper & Row, 1960), p. 41, n.
Foundations,
pp. 38, 6, 13, 49.

12
Ibid.,
pp. 36, 49, 21 (n. 2), 14, 23.

13
Ibid.,
pp. 27, 16-17.

14
Ibid.,
p. 17.

15
Ibid.,
p. 28.

16
Ibid.,
pp. 79, 81, 83, 87, 82.

17
Ibid.,
pp. 93-94.

18
Ibid.,
pp. 23, 72.

19
The Categorical Imperative
(4th ed., London, Hutchinson, 1963), pp. 50, 258.

20
Foundations,
pp. 57-58. Kant grants that even the moral man requires an interest or incentive of some kind in order to act; the only interest Kant regards as moral, however, is the interest in acting from duty, i.e., an interest in action divorced from goals.

21
Ibid.,
p. 35, n. 3.

22
Ibid.,
p. 66.
Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone,
p. 55.
Foundations,
pp. 35, 25, 19.

23
Religion,
p. 31.
Foundations,
pp. 50 (n. 11), 21 (n. 2).
Religion,
p. 41, n. In this last note, Kant permits what he calls “moral self-love,” described as “the inner principle of such a contentment as is possible to us” by reason of “unadulterated” obedience to duty.
Ibid.
, p. 41.

24
Religion
, pp. 31-32.

25
Ibid.,
p. 50.
Foundations,
pp. 27-28.

26
Religion,
pp. 25, 28, 46, 38, 32, 28, 38.

27
Ibid.
, p. 40.

28
Ibid
., pp. 44, 51 (n.).

29
Ibid
., p. 55.

30
Ibid.,
pp. 55, 69.

31
Ibid
., pp. 55, 45.

32
New York, Random House, 1957; p. 1028.

33
The Positive Philosophy of Auguste Comte,
trans. and condensed by Harriet Martineau (2nd ed., 2 vols., London, Triibner, 1875), II, 239.

34
Fichte,
The Characteristics of the Present Age,
pp. 33-34. Hegel,
The Phenomenology of Mind,
trans. J.B. Baillie (New York, Harper & Row, 1967), pp. 526-29. Schopenhauer,
On the Basis of Morality,
trans. E.F.J. Payne (Indianapolis, Bobbs-Merrill, 1965), pp. 165, 141-42, 139-40. Marx,
Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts,
p. 132.
The Communist Manifesto,
English trans. of 1888, ed. F. Engels; reprinted in Ebenstein,
Great Political Thinkers,
p. 670.

35
Nietzsche is an exception to the altruist trend. But he typically advocates the sacrifice of others to self. This viewpoint, though it is a form of egoism, leaves unchallenged the basic Kantian idea that man is an object of sacrifice. Nietzsche’s view was easily adapted by the Nazis to suit their own purposes (
cf
. Ch. 2, above). A theory of egoism that does not accept the concept of sacrifice in any variant is indicated below (Ch. 16).

36
Kolnai,
op. cit
., p. 89; the last sentence is a quote from Bergmann. Mosse,
Nazi Culture,
p. 223; quoting a lecture given by Gauger at Bad Neuheim, 1934. Murphy
et al
.,
op. cit.
, p. 68; quoting Beck,
Die Erziehung im dritten Reich
(Dortmund and Breslau, 1936).
Mein Kampf,
pp. 300, 298.

37
Op. cit.
, p. 491.

38
Philosophy of Right,
p. 109.

39
Kolnai, op.
cit
., p. 54; quoting Wilhelm Stapel. Rosenberg quoted by Robert A. Brady,
The Spirit and Structure of German Fascism
(New York, Viking, 1937), p. 116.

40
Rauschning,
The Voice of Destruction,
p. 78.

41
Communism, Fascism, and Democracy,
ed. C. Cohen (New York, Random House, 1962), pp. 406, 409; quoting speeches at Essen (Nov. 22, 1926) and at Chemnitz (April 2, 1928).

42
Mein Kampf,
pp. 299, 138-39.

43
Quoted in Shirer, op.
cit
., p. 982.

44
Eichmann in Jerusalem,
pp. 137, 150.

45
Rauschning,
The Voice of Destruction,
p. 225.

46
A. James Gregor,
Contemporary Radical Ideologies
(New York, Random House, 1968), p. 214.

Chapter Five

1
Urian Oakes at Cambridge, in 1677; reprinted in
The American Puritans,
ed. P. Miller (Garden City, N.Y., Doubleday, 1956), p. 206. Cotton Mather,
Durable
Riches (Boston, 1695); in
Ideas in America
, ed. G.N. Grob and R.N. Beck (New York, Free Press, 1970), p. 49. Cotton Mather,
Essays to Do Good
(1710); Miller,
op. cit.,
p. 219.

2
Writings,
ed. A.E. Bergh (20 vols., Washington, Jefferson Memorial Assoc., 1903), VI, 258.

3
Principles of Nature
(New York, 1801); Grob and Beck, op. cit., pp. 81, 83, 85, 84.

4
Charles Backus,
A Sermon Preached in Long-Meadow at the Publick Fast
(Springfield, 1788); Grob and Beck,
op. cit.,
pp. 133-34.

5
Life and Works
(10 vols., New Rochelle, Thomas Paine National Historical Assoc., 1925), II, 179-80.

6
Joseph L. Blau,
Men and Movements in American Philosophy
(Englewood Cliffs, N.J., Prentice-Hall, 1952), p. 44; quoting the original provisional constitution of the State of New Hampshire (1766).

7
Adams,
Report of the Committee of Correspondence to the Boston Town Meeting
(Nov. 20, 1772); Grob and Beck,
op. cit.,
p. 107. Bernard Bailyn,
The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution
(Cambridge, Harvard U.P., 1967), p. 187; quoting Dickinson,
An Address to the Committee of Correspondence In Barbados
(Philadelphia, 1766).

8
Grob and Beck,
op. cit.,
p. 108.