by Jonas E. Alexis, VT Senior Editor
E. Michael Jones is right on target when he argues in Degenerate Moderns that
“The intellectual life is a function of the moral life of the thinker. In order to apprehend truth, which is the goal of the intellectual life, one must live a moral life. One can produce an intellectual product, but to the extent that one prescinds from living the moral life, that product will be more a function of internal desire—wish fulfillment, if you will than external reality. This is true of any intellectual field and any deeply held desire. In the intellectual life, one either conforms desire to truth or truth to desire.”[1]
The moral life is essentially the substance that determines the rise and fall of any intellectual or philosophical or political project or system or movement. In that sense, failing to subordinate the intellectual life to the moral life or to what Immanuel Kant calls the categorical imperative will always end up in internal contradiction and philosophical disaster.
This is true of Baron d’Holbach, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Bertrand Russell, Aldous Huxley, D. H. Lawrence, Guy de Maupassant, H. G. Wells, Oscar Wilde, Gustave Flaubert, Lord Byron, Jean-Paul Sartre, Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche,[2] Michel Foucault, and more recently Richard Spencer and Jim Goad. Huxley himself admitted that the reason he and his contemporaries rejected morality was “because it interferes with our sexual freedom.”[3]
Huxley was quite frank, for if one examines the personal lives of those who reject the moral order or even metaphysical Logos, he will discover that these people want to have the best of both worlds. They want to reject morality, and at the same time, they seek to impose their own worldviews upon much of the world as if to say that objective moral principles do exist! As we shall see, this existentially worthless position always gets them into intellectual trouble, and not a single person has been able to wiggle out of that juggernaut.
For example, take the life of Jim Goad. It was reported that Goad beat up his girlfriend, Anne Ryan, in 1999, while his former wife was sick with cancer. Goad went to jail for doing exactly that. The Portland Tribune declared that it was like watching “the Jerry Springer Show.”[4] It stated:
“After breaking her eye socket with his fist and biting her thumb, he kicked her out of his car on Northwest Skyline Boulevard and fled to Washington. Two days later, he was back in town and the police arrested him. He was on his way home from Radio Shack where he had bought equipment for saving her threatening voice mails to him onto tape. Facing 15 years, he eventually copped a plea and served 29 months for assault and attempted kidnapping.”[5]
Jonas E. Alexis has degrees in mathematics and philosophy. He studied education at the graduate level. His main interests include U.S. foreign policy, the history of the Israel/Palestine conflict, and the history of ideas. He is the author of the new book Zionism vs. the West: How Talmudic Ideology is Undermining Western Culture. He teaches mathematics in South Korea.
ATTENTION READERS
We See The World From All Sides and Want YOU To Be Fully InformedIn fact, intentional disinformation is a disgraceful scourge in media today. So to assuage any possible errant incorrect information posted herein, we strongly encourage you to seek corroboration from other non-VT sources before forming an educated opinion.
About VT - Policies & Disclosures - Comment Policy
