tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3077210.post1035604049714341045..comments2024-03-17T18:57:54.001+01:00Comments on Limited, Inc.: cioran 2Roger Gathmannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11257400843748041639noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3077210.post-77960909580153823522007-12-01T17:47:00.000+01:002007-12-01T17:47:00.000+01:00LCC - you put your finger on a real weakness of my...LCC - you put your finger on a real weakness of my essay. I've long thought that the beginning of the 19th century marks a real turn in the way the European 'other' was discussed. You go from the suave cultural relativism of an Orientalist like William Jones to the contempt for Oriental culture of someone like James Mill - it is like a switch is flicked across the board. Maistre, hating the 18th century, is still so much a part of it that his view of the Sultan i alive in the idea that the Ottoman empire is in no way culturally inferior to that of France, for instance. It is an odd thing, but the reactionary ideology in the 19th century seems imprinted with Maistre's envy of a certain image of Islam - Gobineau immediately comes to mind, and in the twentieth century, the semi-sinister Guenon - out of whom comes the wholly sinister Evola and the crew of post Mussolini fascists. <BR/><BR/>That crew was not just sinister in their occult-y books - the fascist network definitely helped keep the Christian Dems in power in Italy, and provided the program for the dirty war in Argentina, allied with Pinochet, and provided the ideology for Reagan's dirty wars in the 80s.Roger Gathmannhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11257400843748041639noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3077210.post-4624126744003347402007-12-01T10:15:00.000+01:002007-12-01T10:15:00.000+01:00such a great spate of posts!"for if there was one ...such a great spate of posts!<BR/><BR/>"for if there was one thing the liberal period was sure of, it was the monstrosity of the middle ages, and of the Spanish inquisition, and in general the atrocities wrought under the ancien regime"<BR/><BR/>and also this was the contemporary oriental foil - the Sultanate. Of which de Maistre is openly envious; his vision of the alternative to "liberalism" not only a sun king nostalgia but an dream of the common cultural fantasy of the Ottoman empire. Much is projected into that setting, and much of that is reflected back in dreams of order spleandor and stasis...this envy of a fantasy of the Sultanate I think is wound up in his masonic thought. In his memo on freemasony to the duke of brunswick, he is especially envious of how the "mohametans" have manged to split into only two sects: while "le christianism en a trente - et comme si nous étions destinés à nous déshonorer tour à tour par les excès opposés, après nous être engorgés pour nos dogmes, nous sommes tombés sur tout ce qui concerne la religion dans une indifférence stupide que nous appelons <I>tolérance.</I>"Le Colonel Chaberthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18090919492176021408noreply@blogger.com