RUDOLF KJELLÉN VERSUS BIOPOLITICS: STATECRAFT AS A FORM OF LIFE

Christopher Richard Wade Dettling (2019)

The White race contains all impulses and talents within itself … The Negro … undoubtedly holds the lowest of all remaining levels by which we designate the different races. Immanuel Kant¹

At first sight nothing would seem more disparate than the idea of nationality and the sane, rational, liberal internationalism of the great Königsberg philosopher. Of all the influential thinkers of his day, Kant seems the most remote from the rise of nationalism. Isaiah Berlin²

The French Revolution believed that it had gone to great lengths in the establishment of human rights within a strictly defined realm of freedom, and its assignment to the state the role of a sentry at the periphery of this sphere … Immanuel Kant is the powerful vanguard of this latter school, at least within the world of modern thought (allmänna tänkandets värld). Rudolf Kjellén³

The wars of the French Revolution marked the transition to the nation–state defined by common language and culture … [The United States] have never been nation–states in the European sense. America has succeeded in forming a distinct culture from a polyglot national composition. Henry Kissinger⁴

1/ MODERN EUROPEAN BONAPARTISM AND MACHIAVELLIANISM

Bonapartism is Machiavellianism, — the power of the people and tyranny of the masses is modern European raison d’état, — modern European political and economic irrationalism. Americanism is neither Eurocentrism nor Europeanism, whether as multipolarity or polycentrisme: Modern right is not Global freedom.²

From whence comes autocracy founded on popular consent, the origin of the Napoléonic and French revolutionary conception of right? Indeed, it is necessary to elucidate that which the modern irrationalists name, in their various terminological disguises, the rationality governing human actions, the fountainhead of all justice according to the dispensers of modern freedom, and the origin of the Napoléonic and French revolutionary conception of right, the bastion of autocracy founded on popular consent:

“We propose a comparison between the doctrine of Machiavelli, as it emerges from the Prince, and the doctrine of absolutism, which we shall endeavor to discern, not from one or another of the theorists who were its champions, but from all of them … the absolutist doctrines, in their application, lead rulers to the same results as the doctrines of Machiavelli … Machiavellism and absolutism are derived from analogous historical situations. This is the first essential point of our parallel. The historical situation inspires Machiavelli with the idea of ​​the legitimacy of every means aimed at the achievement of public interest and the salvation of the State … those who were able to study Napoléon Bonaparte very closely tell us that he was a very powerful ruler who saw the spilling of blood (sang des hommes répandu) as perhaps the greatest remedy of political medicine … The Prince of Machiavelli and the doctrines of absolutism were born of the same sentiment of profound patriotism, at times and in countries where a powerful sovereign was necessary to put an end to the disorder and turmoil of the day, the causes of national distress … Machiavelli reveals himself as an immoral patriot who wants to save the State, even though his conception of government appears as a policy that is respectful of political freedoms and that is aimed at the happiness of the people.”³

Machiavellism and absolutism (autocracy not founded on popular consent) are derived from analogous historical situations; The Prince of Machiavelli and the doctrines of absolutism were born of the same sentiment of profound patriotism, at times and in countries where a powerful sovereign was necessary to put an end to the disorder and turmoil of the day, the causes of national distress; Machiavelli reveals himself as an immoral patriot who wants to save the State, even though his conception of government appears as a policy that is respectful of political freedoms and that is aimed at the happiness of the people; the absolutist doctrines, in their application, lead rulers to the same results as the doctrines of Machiavelli: The spilling of blood is the greatest remedy of political medicine.

Autocracy founded on popular consent, the Napoléonic and French revolutionary conception of right, the spilling of blood as the greatest remedy of political medicine, is Machiavellism?

“[Rulers] cannot observe all those things which are considered good in men, being often obliged, in order to maintain the state, to act against faith, against charity, against humanity, and against religion … [rulers] must have a mind disposed to adapt itself according to the wind, and as the variations of fortune dictate, and, as I said before, not deviate from what is good, if possible, but be able to do evil if necessitated.”⁴

What is Machiavellism? Rulers and lawmakers must have a mind disposed to adapt itself according to the wind, and as the variations of fortune dictate, and not deviate from what is good, if possible, but be able to do evil if necessitated. Wherefore?

“Many have been and are of opinion that worldly events are so governed by fortune and by God, that men cannot by their prudence change them, and that on the contrary there is no remedy whatever, and for this they may judge it to be useless to toil much about them, but let things be ruled by chance … Our freewill may not be altogether extinguished, I think it may be true that fortune is the ruler of half our actions, but that she allows the other half or a little less to be governed by us. I would compare her to an impetuous river that, when turbulent, inundates the plains, ruins trees and buildings, removes earth from this side and places it on the other; every one flies before it, and everything yields to its fury without being able to oppose it.”⁵

In other words, intelligent rulers and lawmakers are very savvy political and economic rapists:

“Fortune is a woman, and it is necessary, if you wish to master her, to conquer her by force; and it can be seen that she lets herself be overcome by these rather than by those who proceed coldly. And therefore, like a woman, she is a friend to the young, because they are less cautious, fiercer, and master her with greater audacity.”⁶

Machiavellism: Intelligent rulers and lawmakers are very savvy political and economic rapists; they cannot observe all those things which are considered good in people, being often obliged, in order to maintain the state, to act against faith, against charity, against humanity, and against religion; they must have a mind disposed to adapt itself according to the wind, and as the variations of fortune dictate, and not deviate from what is good, if possible, but be able to do evil if necessitated; the arena of politics and economics is a woman, and it is necessary, if you wish to master her, to conquer her by force, and to master her with great audacity.

Is this not the modus operandi of Napoléon Bonaparte? We also include within the modern European political and economic category of Bonapartism, rulers such as Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, as well as lesser dictators such as Mussolini, Franco and Salazar. Napoléon Bonaparte was a very powerful ruler who saw the spilling of blood as the greatest remedy of political medicine: The Napoléonic and French revolutionary conception of right was born of the same drive as Machiavellism, at a time and in a country where a powerful sovereign was necessary to put an end to the disorder and turmoil of the day, the causes of national distress. Wherefore? Bonapartism, the Napoléonic and French revolutionary conception of right, is French Machiavellism.

From whence comes autocracy founded on popular consent, the Napoléonic and French revolutionary conception of right, namely Machiavellism?

“These principalities … are upheld by higher causes, which the human mind cannot attain to, I will abstain from speaking of them; for being exalted and maintained by God, it would be the work of a presumptuous and foolish man to discuss them … if one could change one’s nature with time and circumstances, fortune would never change … God will not do everything, in order not to deprive us of freewill.”⁷

Higher causes, which the human mind cannot attain to, are exalted and maintained by God, the very highest power. Higher causation and rationality is the realm of the highest power, and is beyond the reach of humanity, civilization, and the rationality of Global political and economic order. What are the rational determinations of the highest power? We must abstain from speaking of them, for being exalted and maintained by God, it would be the work of a presumptuous and foolish person to discuss them: The highest power of Machiavellism is the Absolute of Kant and the modern irrationalists. The highest power governing human actions, the fountainhead of all justice according to the Machiavellians, the dispensers of modern freedom, is Unknowable: The fountainhead of the Napoléonic and French revolutionary conception of right is modern unreason.

The “rationality governing human actions, the fountainhead of justice,” according to Machiavelli, the modern delusion of rationality and human reason, is the unreason of European modernity, the basis of the outdated and surpassed Napoléonic and French revolutionary conception of right: Autocracy founded upon popular consent, the Napoléonic and French revolutionary conception of right, therefore comes from the modern irrationalism of Kant, Hume, Leibniz and Locke, — and then ultimately from Machiavelli. Machiavellism, autocracy founded on popular consent, the Napoléonic and French revolutionary conception of right, is modern unreason in the world historical arena of European politics and economics.

Western democracies which are mortally corrupted fall into the hands of autocracy founded upon popular consent, which is evidenced when every administration of government is ultimately the same, apart from the babble of degenerate élites, whether as liberal or conservative, otherwise as centrist, left–wing or right–wing: Their high tax, low growth agenda is always the result of backwards cartels, outdated monopolies and corrupt trusts. Often we hear the inferior ruling classes of Western civilization justify their mortally corrupt activities in the name of asymmetrical federalism and supply management.

As the genuine Hegel of rational (pure) Hegelianism has foretold, the grandeur and decadence of Western civilization is the result of the power struggles between superior and inferior ruling classes, as the dialectic of finitude, die erscheinende Dialektik der Endlichkeit: The aggrandizement of Western civilization is the work of superior ruling classes, while the decline of civilization into barbarism is the work of inferior ruling classes. The rise of Western civilization in world history is therefore the result of superior ruling classes, whether as aristocratic, monarchical or democratic.⁸

America in the nineteenth century is transformed by the Civil War, — the destruction of slavery as a political and economic institution, — the political and economic transfiguration of the theological and religious idealism of America’s clergy in the 1840s and 1850s, is completed in the 1860s: Modern European right, unlike American Liberty, is untransformed by the destruction of institutionalized slavery in the United States, and unfreedom in the Western world is justified by the modern European ruling classes emergent from the upheaval of the French Revolution and the Napoléonic wars, according to the ideology of superior and inferior human races. Modern European right as opposed to the tradition of Roman Law, is therefore the bastion of the sophistical doctrine of the master race: The wars of the French Revolution marked the transition to the nation–state defined by common language and culture (Henry Kissinger), a Machiavellian re–definition effectuated via the transcendental epistemological delusions (Kantian raciology) of the master race as Bonapartism, — autocracy founded upon popular consent as the power of the people and tyranny of the masses, — the dictatorship of the proletariat as Liberal Internationalism. The Machiavellianism unchained by the French Revolution, across western Europe as Bonapartism, in opposition to European monarchism and royalism as established in the Holy Roman Empire, is institutionalized as the Napoléonic and French Revolutionary category of right: The political and economic divisions unchained by the French Revolution and Napoléonic wars as modern Bonapartism, are institutionalized in European political economy as the world historical division given by the decomposition of the Hegelian school, between Left and Right, — at least until the collapse of European civilization in the middle of the twentieth–century. Modern right in Europe is therefore conceived as unfreedom in the face of American Liberty:

“Such were the leading principles of the Roman law … and such was the law of the continent of Europe wherever based on the civil law, till the adoption and spread of the Code Napoléon, first among the Latin races, and more recently among the nations of central and northern Europe … and would thus seem to have swept away at once the entire doctrine dependent upon the Roman system, which was based on a principle exactly the reverse.”⁹

Modern right is the European unfreedom of the Bonapartist ruling classes as Eurocentrisme: In the face of American Liberty, the outdated and surpassed Napoléonic and French Revolutionary category of right is the great political and economic delusion at the very heart of Bonapartism, variously espoused as modern European liberalism, conservatism, republicanism, nationalism, socialism and communism:

“The renovation of Parliamentary government, the transformation of the conditions of the ownership and occupation of [xxxix] land, the relations between the Governments at home and our adventures abroad in contact with inferior races, the limitations on free contract, and the rights of majorities to restrict the private acts of minorities, these are only some of the questions that time and circumstance are pressing upon us.”¹⁰

Modern European civilization collapsed because it did not evolve to a much higher level of colonial and imperial freedom, — the political and economic order of European modernity was incapable of further developmental unification and coaxial integration, precisely because of modern unreason’s mortal opposition to the admixture of peoples, resultant from the sophism of the master race, which is the fundamental irrationalism of modern European political economy, as found in Europe’s liberal, conservative, nationalist, socialist and communist regimes, as the nation–state defined by common language and culture: Subjectivism, relativism and irrationalism of the Kantian traditions serves the delusional purpose (subjective, relative and irrational) of justifying the political economy of the master race, — as the erstwhile mediaeval struggle between Christian and infidel ruling classes in the warfare of Western civilization against despotisme asiatique (Montesquieu), is phantasized by European modernity as the clash between superior and inferior human races.¹¹ The Western philosophical tradition of Jerusalem, Athens and Rome is immune to the political and economic sophisms of modern European unreason, although modern irrationalism loves to regale itself with critical phantasms and delusions of religious warfare between Catholics and Protestants in European world history, it ignores and neglects the central role of modern Europe’s political and economic irrationalism in the fratricidal strife between modernism and mediaevalism, which places nations against nations, citizens against citizens, — in the name of Machiavellianism: Modern European unreason turns a blind eye to the world historical significance of the Renaissance, namely the place of Machiavellianism in the collapse of the Holy Roman Empire, and its rejection by Martin Luther in the rise of Protestantism, from out of the mediaeval clash between Western and Eastern civilization, unchained during the Crusades, and especially after the fall of Constantinople. The ideology of superior and inferior human races is upheld in the modern European arena of politics and economics by the followers of Locke, Leibniz, Hume and Kant in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as the central doctrine of scientific political economy (in stark contradistinction to the mediaeval feudalism of the Holy Roman Empire), in the modern European justification of colonialism and imperialism, and is opposed to the British constitutional monarchism of the Industrial Revolution, — which brought forth Americanism in the New World:

“The Industrial Revolution … is not only one of the most important facts of English history, but Europe owes to it the growth of two great systems of thought — Economic Science, and its antithesis, Socialism.”¹²

Machiavellianism and Bonapartism, the fountainhead of modern European unfreedom, as the polar opposite of American Liberty, is Eurocentrisme, — the political and economic irrationalism of the master race, the struggle between ruling classes as the clash between superior and inferior human races: The secret of the struggle between superior and inferior ruling classes upon the stage of modern history, in the universal historical clash between the political and economic powers unleashed by the strife between the Industrial and French Revolutions, in the collapse of European modernity and rise of Global civilization as the supremacy of American Liberty, is therefore the combat between Kant and Hegel as the historical self–unfolding of the conceptual rationality of the notion of universal freedom in the world. The teaching of the concept is the inescapable lesson of history.

After some forty years in the wilderness, we finally enter the promised land, the first ever to discover the great secret of Kant and Hegel, — the paradise of the pure Hegelian philosophy. Many other pilgrims have fallen by the wayside, on the highway of ideas: I flatter myself as the first Hegelian philosopher ever to apply the dialectic of Hegel to the Hegelian dialectic. Drink from the chalice of rational Hegelianism, dear reader, and reap the rewards of American Idealism. With Kant in one pocket, and Hegel in the other, I walk towards the sun.

2/ KJELLÉNISM VERSUS MODERN EUROPEAN IRRATIONALISM

Kantian anti–Hegelian and Kantio–Hegelian idéologues and historiasters (especially today in the European Union) translate the Swedish word “lifsform” and German word “Lebensform” into English as “Living Organism,”in order to conjoin Kjellénism with the Machiavellian tradition of “Social Darwinism,” and to lend credence to their own phantasms and delusions of twentieth century totalitarianism (Bonapartism) as only a European right–wing and conservative phenomenon:

“Kjellén was Professor of Political Sciences at the universities of Gothenburg and Uppsala and a Bismarckian conservative politician often accused of having inspired national socialist ideologies both in Germany and elsewhere. Kjellén’s political legacy is, however, more [400] complex than that. But perhaps he should be best known for coining the word ‘geopolitics’ [39. Kjellén’s major work is Rudolf Kjellén, Staten som Lifsform (Hugo Geber: Stockholm, 1916) where the term ‘geopolitics’ was first introduced. In the absence of an English translation I have used the German edition, Rudolf Kjellén, Der Staat als Lebensform (Margarete Langfeldt trans., 2nd edn, S. Hirzel: Leipzig, 1917). All translations from the German are mine … ]. In terms of constitutionalism, Kjellén’s input can, perhaps, best be described as an organic state theory insofar as he considers states to be ‘sentient and rational beings’ [40. Kjellén, Der Staat als Lebensform, supra note 39, at 30. The classic formulation of this theory [Staten som Lifsform] is Herbert Spencer’s ‘organic analogy.’ See Herbert Spencer, ‘The Social Organism’ (originally published in 1860), in Herbert Spencer, Essays: Scientific, Political and Speculative (Williams and Norgate: London & Edinburgh, 1891) 265–307]. Kjellén constructs his overall theory around a perspective on territoriality that he describes as ‘geopolitical.’ Here geopolitics is defined as the synthesis of an ‘old’ juridical theory mainly represented by Jellinek and a ‘new’ geography that, for Kjellén, is inspired by the work of the German political geographer Friedrich Ratzel. The main flaw of the juridical theory, with or without its two–sided realism, is allegedly its static nature and its inability to explain states in a genuinely historical way. And Ratzel’s political geography, at least so Kjellén claims, provides the theory with the required historical dynamism: ‘geopolitics is the doctrine of the state as a geographical organism or a spatial phenomenon: in other words, the state as land, territory, area or, more precisely, as Reich’ [42. Kjellén, Der Staat als Lebensform, supra note 39, at 46, 32 and 43]. Reich, imperium, a new dynamic of territoriality: this is what Kjellén’s geopolitics seemingly contributes to our understanding of the state. But what would this imply in practice? Within the overall organic theory, territory as land that is ruled over by the imperium of the state takes on a central meaning: ‘One word tells us everything: the Reich is the body of the state. The Reich is not property like the peasant’s farm; it belongs to the personhood of the state. It is the state itself’ [43. Ibid., at 57. The word Reich is, of course, notoriously difficult to translate with its troubling political implications] … [403] So what is this ‘life’ that Kjellén situates at the core of his geopolitically flavoured notion of the state? If it is not merely a random metaphor, how can we explain the vitalism that would account for, perhaps not only Kjellén’s own apparent anti–liberalism, but also for the conservative political ethos of Brunner, Carl Schmitt, and a number of other late–Weimar and post–Weimar state theorist? I would like to suggest that the work of all mentioned is informed by a political philosophy that is at heart Nietzschean … The ‘life’ of Kjellén’s geopolitical vitalism is, I would then suggest, Nietzsche’s will to power [54. Although their is no apparent direct link between Kjellén and Nietzsche, the intermediate figure here is Oswald Spengler and, more generally, the Weimarian tradition of Geopolitik. [404] See e.g. David T. Murphy, The Heroic Earth: Geopolitical Thought in Weimar Germany, 1918–1933 …]”¹

Historiasters and sophisters guilty of the puerile fallacy of psychologism (once a very popular academic “method” based upon modern European subjectivism, relativism and irrationalism), insinuate that Rudolf Kjellén was a “Bismarckian conservative politician” who “inspired national socialist ideologies” in Germany, as well as the “conservative political ethos” of German fascists: The personality of Kjellén was very inspirational on the stage of twentieth century world history.

Totalitarianism (Bonapartisme) in Europe is only a European right–wing and conservative phenomenon, completely at odds with twentieth century European Social Democracy: Rudolf Kjellén is an “apparent” anti–liberal, in true psychologistic fashion, somehow related to Herbert Spencer, a Nietzschean, according to Panu Minkkinen, and perhaps fellow traveler Jarna Petman (Ius Gentium Association/Finnish Ministry for Foreign Affairs), undoubtedly under the European Union’s influence over the effete Finnish ruling classes, as the mask of Franco–German “Social Democracy,” which hides the mortal corruption of Großdeutschland under the banner of corporate welfare, also combined with a very strong dose of tariffs against American finance, commerce and industry. Kantian anti–Hegelian and Kantio–Hegelian idéologues and historiasters who elucidate Kjellén’s conception of Geopolitics based upon their own sophistical category of Life (Transzendentalphilosophie), ignore and neglect the rational philological and hermeneutical meaning of “lifsform,” namely the ontological and epistemological conception of Kjellénism: Life and its form as a world historical notion of political and economic knowledge and being.

Alas, Panu Minkkinen’s translations of Rudolf Kjellén’s translated works fail to draw a rational distinction between exact hermeneutical philology on the one hand, versus hermeneutical and philological sophistry on the other: Minkkinen’s English renderings depend upon German translations rather than the Swedish original: “All translations from the German are mine … the word Reich is, of course, notoriously difficult to translate with its troubling political implications.” Minkkinen does not translate into English the Swedish words of Rudolf Kjellén, but rather the German words of Margarethe Langfeldt: The inspirational psychology (psychologism) behind Panu Minkkinen’s sophistical version of 20th century modern European world history is based upon a defective logical and linguistic analysis of Kjellénism.

Why not extract the rational distinction between exact hermeneutical philology on the one hand, versus hermeneutical and philological sophistry on the other, based upon the works themselves, i.e., found within the very conceptual apparatus of world history in question? More on this rational methodology later, for the conceptual instrumentalities of “extraction” are themselves political and economic complexifications resultant from world historical determinations, — in the clash between Kant and Hegel.

Following in the selfsame tradition of the sophistical hermeneutical philology of modern European irrationalism, we propose another example of corrupted Kjellénism:

“Cornell University Press gratefully acknowledges receipt of a generous grant from The Foundation for Baltic and East European Studies, Stockholm, which aided in the publication of this book … Biopolitics was originally conceived as a naturalistic Staatsbiologie or ‘state biology’ based on the principle that all political and social life rested on biological foundations [7. Von Uexküll 1920; Lemke 2011: 9; Lemke 2008]. At the center of this perspective was the belief that the institution of the state itself was a biological organism or ‘life form,’ which had an anatomy and physiology and went through lifecycles of birth, growth, maturity, and eventual decline. Indeed, the term was devised by the Swedish political scientist Rudolf Kjellén precisely to emphasize that the political state shared the very same ‘dependency’ on the ‘laws of [biological] life’ that was characteristic for all organic life [8. Kjellén 1920: 94 (quote); Kjellén 1924: 38, 175; Lagergren 1998]. Deployed in this sense, biopolitics flourished during the interwar period, and the belief in the direct correlation of political behavior with biological factors.”²

The writings of Mark Bassin make his readers believe that Kjellénism is somehow connected to “naturalistic Staatsbiologie” and “biopolitics” in order to insinuate that the Kjellénian conception of “lifsform” is historically connected to Nazidom: “Biopolitics flourished during the interwar period … the belief in the direct correlation of political behavior with biological factors.” As evidence of so–called Kjellénian biopolitics, Mark Bassin inserts the word “biological,” between brackets, in a quote from Kjellén (1920) translated into English, between the words “laws of” and “life”: In a footnote to the quote, Mark Bassin also references “Lagergren 1998”³ as further proof, in the psychologistic fashion of modern European subjectivism, relativism and irrationalism, that Rudolf Kjellén held the belief and perspective that the “institution of the state itself was a biological organism.” In other words, Mark Bassin’s work merely affirms that the phrase “the laws of life” means “the laws of biological life” in the quotation that he cites from Rudolf Kjellén, because he inserts “biological” between the words “laws of” and “life.” Mark Bassin’s book causes his readers to imagine that Rudolf Kjellén held the belief and perspective that the “institution of the state itself was a biological organism” in order to connect him to whatever exactly it is that Bassin names as “naturalistic Staatsbiologie” and “biopolitics,” — which resembles proto–Nazism: The belief (Bassin) in the direct correlation of political behavior with biological factors.

Of course, there is no question here of any “interpretation” of Kjellénism whatsoever on the part of Mark Bassin, since he advances no rational philological and hermeneutical argument, the conclusion of which is, therefore “the term [Lifsform, Life Form] was devised by Swedish political scientist Rudolf Kjellén precisely to emphasize that the political state shared the very same ‘dependency’ on the ‘laws of [biological] life’ that was characteristic for all organic life.” Mark Bassin is therefore like a poet, except that his poetry is inscribed within the linguistic forms of academic writing instead of the Shakespearean sonnet, and he writes as if he is producing exact historiography, when in fact he is merely creating imaginative literature. We have read far better poetry and much better history.

We must make one last point before moving forward, lest we ourselves risk the counter charge of the very psychologism we condemn. When we maintain, for instance, that the writings of Mark Bassin make his readers believe that Kjellénism is X, we mean the following: Within the world historical strife of ruling classes, especially in Europe, the works of Mark Bassin justify political and economic attacks against “conservatism” and the “right,” labeled as the advocates of “Kjellénism” (naturalistic Staatsbiologie, biopolitics, lifsform), whether as “royalists” and “monarchists” or otherwise. Our own condemnation of psychologism in the field of historiography, on the other hand, is aimed at the destruction of mortal corruption in the political and economic arena of world history, — in the name of American Liberty. We therefore deploy the conception of beliefs, feelings, sensations and perceptions, not according to the Transzendental Logik of the Kantian tradition, but rather in the sense of the rational Hegelian meaning of the clash between ruling classes, as the higher notion of outdated and surpassed conceptions in the world of today: Inert ideas are inscribed within of the apparatus of world historical determinations, in the production of political and economic complexifications as the rational evolution of the notion of that which is coming–to–be and passing–away, i.e., the notion of the world which is its conceptualization of itself.

Ideologies of inferior ruling classes, in the rational Hegelian philosophy, are therefore the political and economic weapons with which they destroy themselves, in the floodtide of rational political and economic order. Superior ruling classes choose their own medicine, while inferior ruling classes choose their own poison: The rationality of higher conceptions uplift superior ruling classes, while the irrationality of inert ideas destroys inferior ruling classes. We choose our fate because freedom is our destiny, while our choices themselves are the results of our ideas, conceptions, notions and perceptions, — in the pure Hegelian meaning: Knowledge overpowers ignorance because the rise of science overcomes ideology in the world historical arena of politics and economics:

“All actions, says the Pure Hegel, including world historical actions, culminate with individuals as subjects giving actuality to the substantial, namely, while the consciousness of civilizations is absorbed in their mundane interests, they are all the time the unconscious tools and organs of the world mind: World historical individuals and actions are the living instruments of what is in substance the deed of the world mind and they are therefore directly at one with that deed and it is concealed from them and is not their aim and object. All actions, says the Pure Hegel, including world historical actions, culminate with individuals as subjects giving actuality to the substantial, namely, while the consciousness of civilizations is not absorbed in their mundane interests, they are not all the time the unconscious tools and organs of the world mind: World historical individuals and actions are the living instruments of what is in substance the deed of the world mind and they are therefore directly at one with that deed and it is not concealed from them and is their aim and object. World historical individuals and actions, therefore, are the living instruments of what is in substance the deed of the world mind, and some of them are therefore directly at one with that deed, and it is not therefore concealed from some of them, and it is their aim and object. Wherefore? The historical development of the principle of Western civilization blossoms into the self–conscious freedom of ethical life in world history: World historical individuals and actions are the living instruments of what is in substance the deed of the world mind, and some of them are directly at one with that deed, and it is not concealed from them as their aim and object, — as the historical development of the principle of the self–conscious freedom of ethical life in world history. The deed of the world mind is the historical development of the principle of the self–conscious freedom of ethical life in world history: The dialectic of universal history is therefore the principle of the historical development of the self–conscious freedom of ethical life, namely, world civilization. World historical individuals and actions are therefore the living instruments of the historical development of the principle of the self–conscious freedom of ethical life as world civilization: World historical individuals are the living instruments of the dialectic of world history. The historical development of the principle of the self–conscious freedom of ethical life is in substance the deed of the world mind, namely, as individual subjects giving actuality to the substantial, from the embryonic stage until it blossoms: They are not therefore absorbed in their mundane interests, they are therefore all the time the conscious tools and organs of the mind of the world.”⁴

Bonapartism in Europe requires the assistance of American intellectuals, in order to recast its Machiavellian agenda within the world historical form of Americanism, as the political and economic strife between Republicans and Democrats in America, thereby creating the illusion of rational political and economic order, and thereby avoiding the ire of the White House, Washington and Wall Street: The Bonapartist reformulation of Machiavellianism as American Idealism is the world historical downfall of the last vestiges of modern European political economy covertly imported into institutions of the European Union, especially at Maastricht. Bonapartist intervention within American political economy entails the self–destruction of European Machiavellianism, which is evidenced in the world of today. All these political and economic complexifications are inscribed within world historical determinations aimed at the unification of the western and eastern hemispheres, as the rise of Global civilization in the developmental unification of the coaxial integration of the American world, as the supremacy of American Liberty.

“Kjellén, a Germanophile political scientist and journalist, was schooled in Staatswissenschaft, an integrated field containing law, politics, economics, and history, which was nineteenth–century Germany’s form of political science. He produced the earliest extended elucidation of geopolitics in 1916 in his book Staten som lifsform (The state as a life form), which was translated from its original Swedish into German the following year. Kjellén treated geopolitics as one of many aspects of what he intended as a synthetic ‘system of politics on the basis of a purely empirical conception of the state.’ Kjellén anticipated the methods of the Weimar geopoliticians by making geopolitics a purported practical guide to political action, a wegweiser. In the geopolitical marriage of geography and politics the latter clearly played a dominant role. Geopolitical writing ultimately came to be devoted almost entirely to topical German political issues accompanied by precious little scientific geographical content. Kjellén, in his influential definition of geopolitics, helped to ensure that from the start geography would play second fiddle to politics in the geopolitical equation: ‘Geopolitics is the teaching of the state as a geographic organism or a manifestation in space: therefore, the state as land, territory, district or, most obviously, as an empire. As a political science it has the state unit constantly in its focus and wished to contribute to the understanding of the essence of the state; political geography, on the other hand, studies the earth as the site of human communities in their connections to the other properties of the earth.’ Kjellén offered his ‘empirically based’ science of the state as an alternative to what he felt were the sterile abstractions and theoretical juridical concepts that dominated thinking about the state in his day. Geography, he hoped, would form one of the bases of the new science, anchoring it in the physical, the real, and empirically demonstrable facts of geography rather than in the airy legal theorizing on which traditional concepts of the state were constructed. Geopolitics would investigate and explain why a particular state occupied a given area and no other and how mountains, rivers, climate, access to the sea, and other geographical factors shaped the political life and cultural characteristics typical of its people. Kjellén’s effort to create an ‘empirical’ substitute for legalistic conceptions of the state [7] and to find an ‘empirical’ rather than legal basis for relations between states would occupy geopoliticians throughout the Weimar era.”⁵

David T. Murphy’s writings make Rudolf Kjellén into an empiricist, in order to make him and his followers responsible for the evils of the World Wars, and thereby rescue Kant and Locke from Kjellén’s attacks against that which he names as the Manchester School of Advanced British Liberalism, which inherited Social Democracy from the Continent, — Joseph Chamberlain and David Lloyd George being some of British Bonapartism’s earliest and loudest twentieth century Kantian and Lockean mouthpieces: Murphy’s work fails to deploy in its English translations of Kjellén, the exact philological and hermeneutical distinction between the Swedish Kjellén and the Kjellén of the German interpreters, whose inexact translations popularized his ideas for their Kantian and Hegelian audiences in Germany.

Rudolf Kjellén: “Från studiet af statens förhållande till de olika sidorna i sitt eget väsen har undersökningen till sist skridit in på statens förhållande till de enskilda individer, som utgöra cellerna i hans nationella kropp.”⁶

Margarethe Langfeldt: “In der Untersuchung über das Verhältnis des Staats zu den besonderen Seiten seines Wesens sind wir zuletzt bei seinem Verhalten zu den einzelnen Individuen, den zellen seines natürlichen Körpers, angelangt.”⁷

Here we have an instance, amongst many examples, of how the works of Kjellén’s German interpreters, in their inexact translations, make Kjellénism into “empiricism,” and make Geopolitics into “science,” in the very popular manner of Machianism, namely German Neo–Kantianism: Nationella kropp = natürlichen Körpers.

How very simple and easy is the task of writing “exact historiography,” following in the footsteps of Bassin, Minkkinen and Murphy (upon whose sophistry Minkkinen depends), when we imagine the psychology of Rudolf Kjellén our protagonist, and then phantasize biographically about his personality (When we imagine and phantasize: When we allow ourselves to become the political and economic victims of inferior ruling classes), as the psychoanalysis of imaginative literature, and thereby reconcile our interpretative yearnings and desires (the political and economical mask of Social Democracy) with world history, instead of embarking upon a rigorous philological and hermeneutical analysis of rational Kjellénian conceptions, — and hence we avoid the intense intellectual work necessitated by the laborious travail of an exact elucidation of Kjellénism!

David T. Murphy’s book defends modern European political and economic irrationalism from the charge of Bonapartism and Machiavellianism, commits the same fatal philological and hermeneutical blunder as found in the works of Mark Bassin and Panu Minkkinen, and fails to distinguish the German production of Kjellénism from the Swedish original, by wrongly making the spirit of both works roughly commensurate: Lifsform is Lebensform, or “Life form” in the sense of “biological organism.” Murphy’s book concentrates upon the German significance of Lifsform as Lebenswelt in its evaluation of the role of Rudolf Kjellén and Kjellénism in twentieth century world history, and justifies this endeavor with an “historical,” “autobiographical” and “psychological” assessment of Kjellén as a “Germanophile”: The subjective mental states (desires, passing fancies, fears, sensations, pleasures, feelings and so forth) that are alleged to have once existed, many years ago, in the head of Rudolf Kjellén, at particular times and places. In the name of psychologism, therefore, the works of Murphy, Bassin and Minkkinen ignore the powerful dimension of genuine Hegelianism within Kjellénism, combined with its resolute rejection of the Kantian traditions: Instead of concentrating upon Nazidom’s love of Kant and his sophistical category of Untermenschen (subhumans), especially as the basis of his anthropology, they prefer to saddle the Western tradition of Athens, Jerusalem and Rome with the barbarism of the twentieth century. Indeed, the mask of Social Democracy was still quite useful 20 years ago, in the race to self–enrichment and self–glorification of the inferior ruling classes at state controlled schools, colleges and universities hell bent upon the usurpation of federal powers, especially under the Machiavellian influence of the Narco–élites and Québécocracy: Indeed, the “social democrats” were clearing away the last remnants of European modernity from the ground of universal history, in the name of corporate welfare, in preparation for the foundations of twenty first century American Idealism, the almighty spiritual awakening of Americanism unchained by the Digital Revolution, and rising upwards in the world of today. Is Social Democracy really to blame for the flabby minds of social democrats? They are merely useful tools in the birth of a far higher conception of the world, as the rise of Global rational political and economic order, in the supremacy of American Liberty.

Social democrats who attack their adversaries as “anti–social” ignore that Hitlerism is as much Bonapartism as Leninism, Trotskyism and Stalinism: But the mortal enemies of modern European Social Democracy as historical Bonapartism, especially in the twentieth century, are in no wise obligated to accept its “definition” of itself, forged at the hands of self–proclaimed social democrats. The promises of “welfare,” the uplifting of the poor and downtrodden masses, made in the name of historical Social Democracy, are really methods of self–enrichment designed to advance the backers of modern political and economic irrationalism, whether in the lower, middle and upper classes: The greatest beneficiaries of historical Bonapartism, whether as socialism, liberalism and conservatism, whether as centrism or extremism, are always the backwards cartels, outdated monopolies and corrupt trusts of the Machiavellians. The modern European category of Social Democracy is outdated and surpassed in the American world of today: Modern right is not Global freedom.

One last example of how Kjellénism is corrupted at the hands of the Kantian traditions will suffice to drive home the point:

“[1] Walter Benjamin, Carl Schmitt, Martin Heidegger, and Hanna Arendt are known to readers of European history or culture. Add to this list Jacob von Uexküll, Stefan George, Ludwig Klages, Ernst Cassirer, Gershom Scholem, and Martin Buber to identify just a few of those intellectuals of the 1920s who star in the writings of biopolitical critics [Kantians] a century later … [2] Esposito, like Agamben and other biopolitical critics [Kantians], identifies figures such as Jacob von Uexküll, Ludwig Klages, Rudolf Kjellén, Georg Simmel, and Henri Bergson as Lebensphilosophers of the early 1900s … [4] As Heinrich Rickert, the acclaimed neo–Kantian philosopher warned, Lebensphilosophers formulated a comprehensive, aesthetic discourse of ‘naked life [blossen Leben],’ turning it into the ‘fashionable philosophical trend of our time.’ A mere decade after it was considered fashionable, life philosophy was co–opted by the Nazis … The earlier positive reception of Lebensphilosophie among radicals on the left was ignored and suppressed … In The Destruction of Reason, published first in German in 1954, Georg Lukács — a well–known neo–Marxist who was educated in Germany — identifies Lebensphilosophie with ‘the dominant ideology of the whole imperialist period in Germany,’ and, furthermore, with the type of irrational and antiparliamentary ‘belligerent preparation for the impending barbaric reaction of the Nazi regime’ … [5] organicism was developed as an alternative to bourgeois culture on either side of the political spectrum … [6] there was more to irrationalism than the arbitrary appearance of romantic concepts … Such concepts were part of a larger discourse of aesthetics and philosophy and, even more than that, a discourse that avoided linearity, introductions, and closures.”⁸

The Kantian traditions endeavour to salvage themselves via their various distinctions between good and bad Kantianism, the latter which is usually elucidated as false Kantianism, otherwise as irrationalism in the disguise of Kantianism: The good Kantian anti–Hegelians (Heinrich Rickert) charge the bad Kantio–Hegelians with “Kantian” unreason (Lebensphilosophie, biopolitics, organicism and so forth) in the twentieth century, otherwise the good Kantio–Hegelians (Georg Lukács) charge the bad Kantian anti–Hegelians with the same philosophical crime of irrationalism. In this rough and tumble, both sides neglect the subject of Kantian raciology, i.e., they never grasp the root of their problem, namely modern European unreason; the Kantian traditions are out of touch with the Digital revolution, — they remain prisoners of twentieth century irrationalism. Their dying embers are fanned in the world of today by the last remnants of Bonapartism in the European Union, in the delusion that Eurocentrisme, whether as multipolarity or polycentrisme, is reborn in the twenty–first century: The principal ringleaders in Europe are the backwards cartels, outdated monopolies and corrupt trusts of Großdeutschland, — backers of the Merkel apparat (Unionsparteien). In their sophistical projects of Kant rehabilitation, Rudolf Kjellén is usually collateral damage, thanks to their inexact hermeneutics and philology, while exact historiography is thrown to the winds. The point is that Kantianism, the sophistical critical philosophy of Immanuel Kant, is racism and racialism in the guise of science, and as modern European political and economic irrationalism, the Copernican revolution is a vanishing phase of world history.

Recapitulation: The grandeur and decadence of Western civilization is the result of the power struggles between superior and inferior ruling classes, as the dialectic of finitude, — die erscheinende Dialektik der Endlichkeit (Hegel). The aggrandizement of Western civilization is the work of superior ruling classes, while the decline of civilization into barbarism is the work of inferior ruling classes: The rise of Western civilization in world history is therefore the result of superior ruling classes, whether as aristocratic, monarchical or democratic.

3/ RATIONAL HEGELIANISM: KJELLÉNISM AND WORLD HISTORY

We avoid the pseudo–Hegelianism and anti–Hegelianism of impure Hegelianism, and prefer the phrase “Form of Life,” because Kjellénism (Kjellénismus) is neither 20th century Kantian anti–Hegelianism nor Kantio–Hegelianism: Indeed, the 20th century Kantian anti–Hegelianism or Kantio–Hegelianism of Rudolf Kjellén’s own German interpreters and translators (Carl Koch, Margarethe Langfeldt, Alexander von Normann and Friedrich Stieve)¹ whether as “Vitalism,” “Social Darwinism,” “Biopolitics” or “Staatsbiologie” (also pejorative terms, the bad Kantian meanings of which are invented by self–acclaimed good Kantian critics, to discredit the rational Kjellénian conception of Geopolitics, amongst other things), is completely alien to the rational conception of Kjellénism in the realm of world history:

“From our study of the relationship between the state and the various elements of its own essence, our investigation has finally arrived at the behavior of the state towards its own individuality, towards the very cells which constitute its national body.”²

“The behavior of the state towards its own individuality” (statens förhållande till de enskilda individer): The world historical significance of these Swedish words, and their English translation, greatly demonstrates the powerful influence of Hegelian causality or “self–determination” upon Kjellénism and the Kjellénian conception of organism in the universal historical arena of politics and economics as lifsform: “The relationship between the state and the various elements of its own essence” (statens förhållande till de olika sidorna i sitt eget väsen), namely, causa sui as the speculative logical and dialectical relationship between the one and many, as universal and particular, in the pure Hegel’s system of the philosophical science of absolute idealism.³ In the rational Kjellénian conception of the Geopolitics of Kjellénism, the relationship between the state and the various elements of its own essence, means the historical relationship between the state and the various elements of its own essence, because the investigation of the relationship between the state and the various elements of its own essence, is an historical study.

Of course, in order to conceptualize the aforementioned demonstration, one must first possess the rational Hegelian conception of the difference between pure and impure Hegelianism (based upon pseudo–Hegelianism and anti–Hegelianism) in modern European world history: Otherwise one remains the intellectual victim of the views, outlooks, perspectives and standpoints of the Kantian tradition.⁴

The Kjellénian ontological and epistemological conception of organism, from which comes the political and economic notion of “lifsform,” is in no way inherited from the Darwinian theory of evolution, but rather comes from organic development in the Hegelian sense, especially as outlined in Hegel’s Rechtsphilosophie, and is interpreted in conjunction with Scandinavian traditions, which are neither revolutionary nor reactionary.

“The nations of the earth also do not live upon bread alone, and still less by the satisfactions of the flesh. Herein resides the ultimate line of demarcation between materialism and idealism: In the conception of what should be, not in the conception of what is.”⁵

The ultimate realization of Kjellénism is unchained as the distinction between philosophical materialism and idealism in the political and economic arena of modern European world history, based upon the the Kjellénian conception of what should be, not merely the conception of what is: The rational Kjellénian conception of what should be is not divorced from the realm of organic development in the genuine Hegelian sense of the Rechtsphilosophie because “In the world of today … the nations of the earth also do not live upon bread alone.” Therefore Lifsform is also inscribed within the realm of world history: Idealism and materialism coexist in the Kjellénian conception of rational political and economic order. Philosophical idealism and materialism are opposed in the political and economic arena of modern European world history as sophistry (propaganda and ideology), when the nations of the earth live upon bread alone, — “bread alone” is a metaphor for European modernity, the Bonapartism which Kjellénism rejects, namely Machiavellianism (“the world of today … is overflowing with martyrdom”): Kjellénism reconciles philosophical idealism and materialism in the political and economic arena of modern European world history, in the rational Kjellénian conception of statecraft based upon the state as a form of life, as the Kjellénian philosophical conception of rational political and economic order in the realm of world history, in the genuine Hegelian sense of the organic development of what should be and what is. The philosophical reconciliation of political and economic idealism and materialism in world history (and the rejection of the sophistical distinction between them), in the organic development of statecraft as Lifsform, means that the philosophy of Kjellénism as rational Hegelian “Idealism” is mortally opposed to the subjectivism, relativism and irrationalism of modern European unreason, especially in the contagion of Kantian anti–Hegelianism and Kantio–Hegelianism unleashed by the Bonapartist and French Revolutionary category of right.

What is the philosophical aim of Kjellénian statecraft, in the genuine Hegelian organic development of the state, as Lifsform? “[Wealth] which alone increases the value of life, in the fullest sense of the word, and which uplifts personal development (Persönlichkeit) to ever greater heights of achievement.”⁶

4/ KJELLÉNISM AND AMERICANISM: DOWNFALL OF MODERNITY

The modern European irrationalism of monarchism and republicanism, in the Kantian anti–Hegelian and Kantio–Hegelian political and economic forms of imperialism and nationalism, whether as liberal or conservative, otherwise as centrist, left–wing or right–wing, does not justify the slaughter of millions of human beings in the Great War: The notion of Western freedom, in the sense of Jerusalem, Athens and Rome, which uplifts civilization from barbarism in world history, is worth the combat of nations, — in order to safeguard humanity from the floodtide of satanism and barbarity.

President Wilson is a truly great American Idealist, which no effete and degenerate modern European “statesmen” surpass in the history of the Great War, — whether as Prime Minister, Homme d’État, Kaiser and Czar. President Wilson and the almighty American Idealists of the earth, in the name of American Liberty, beacon of Americanism in the world, ended the greatest slaughter in the history of humanity.

The Kjellénian conception of Geopolitics leads European modernity astray because it is alien to the Kantian traditions, precisely because of the world historical significance of Americanism in rational Kjellénism: American world power is on the rise, unlike fractured European modernity. Indeed, the decomposition of modern Europe and the rise of Americanism, is precisely the world historical strife between Kant and Hegel. The rational Kjellénian Geopolitical distinction between monarchism and republicanism places the United States of America between the extremes of 20th century world power, and is therefore opposed to the modern European political and economic distinction between the Industrial and French Revolutions. The Geopolitics of Kantian anti–Hegelianism and Kantio–Hegelianism in the 20th century destroys itself, and for very good reason: The Kjellénian conception of statecraft is an embryonic political and economic rationalism, following in the wake of Americanism.

“In the post–Cold War world, American idealism needs the leaven of geopolitical analysis to find its way through the maze of new complexities.”¹

ENDNOTES

1. Immanuel Kant in Robert Bernasconi, “Kant As An Unfamiliar Source of Racism,” Philosophers on Race: Critical Essays, Julie K. Ward & Tommy L. Lott, editors, Malden, Massachusetts, Blackwell, 2002, 145–166; 148. [Italics added]

See: “The Negro … undoubtedly holds the lowest of all remaining levels by which we designate the different races.”

Immanuel Kant in Robert Bernasconi, “Kant As An Unfamiliar Source of Racism,” Philosophers on Race: Critical Essays, Julie K. Ward & Tommy L. Lott, editors, Malden, Massachusetts, Blackwell, 2002, 145–166; 148.

See: “[Kant] also warned, with reference to European breeding with either Native Americans or Blacks that race mixing degrades ‘the good race’ without lifting up ‘the bad race’ proportionately.”

Robert Bernasconi, “Kant As An Unfamiliar Source of Racism,” Philosophers on Race: Critical Essays, Julie K. Ward & Tommy L. Lott, editors, Malden, Massachusetts, Blackwell, 2002, 145–166; 155.

2. Isaiah Berlin in Bernasconi, Ibidem, 145. [Italics added]

See: “Locke, of course, was not only familiar with the use of African slaves in North America, but helped to formulate the severe code whereby the freemen of Carolina had absolute power and authority over such slaves.”

Robert Bernasconi, “Kant As An Unfamiliar Source of Racism,” Philosophers on Race: Critical Essays, Julie K. Ward & Tommy L. Lott, editors, Malden, Massachusetts, Blackwell, 2002, 145–166; 164.

3. Rudolf Kjellén (1864–1922), “Afslutning om statens ändamål,” Politiska Handbocker III: Staten som Lifsform, Årg. 3, Stockholm, Hugo Gebers Förlag, 1916, 179–183; 179: “Sig franska revolutionen göra nog med att slå fast de individuella rättigheterna inom en strängt fixerad frihetssfär och anvisa staten ställningen af vaktpost kring denna sfär … LOCKE är den förra och KANT den senare lärans store banerförare i det allmänna tänkandets värld.” [Italics added]

See: “Die französische Revolution damit genug getan zu haben, dass sie die individuellen Rechte innerhalb einer streng fixierten Freiheitsphäre feststellte und dem Staat die Stellung eines Wachtpostens an der Peripherie dieser Sphäre anwies … und Kant [ist] der große Bahnbrecher der letzteren in der Welt des Denkens.”

Rudolf Kjellén, “Schluß: Der Zweck des Staats,” Der Staat als Lebensform, Zweite Auflage, Übersetzt von Margarethe Langfeldt, Leipzig, S. Herzel Verlag, 1917, 227–233; 227–228. [1916]

4. Henry Kissinger, Diplomacy, New York, Simon & Schuster, 1994, 806–808. [Italics added]

See also: “America serves its values best by perfecting democracy at home, thereby acting as a beacon for the rest of mankind … America’s values impose on it an obligation to crusade for them around the world … [American Idealists] envisioned as normal a global international order based on democracy, free commerce, and international law. Since no such system has ever existed, its evocation often appears to other societies as utopian, if not naïve. Still, foreign skepticism never dimmed the idealism of Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, or Ronald Reagan, or indeed of all other twentieth–century American presidents. If anything it has spurred America’s faith that history can be overcome and that if the world truly wants peace, it needs to apply America’s moral prescriptions.”
Henry Kissinger, Diplomacy, New York, Simon & Schuster, 1994, 18.

See also: “In the post–Cold War world, American idealism needs the leaven of geopolitical analysis to find its way through the maze of new complexities.”
Henry Kissinger, Ibidem, 812.

See finally: “Americans, protected by the size and isolation of their country, as well as by their own idealism and mistrust of the Old World, have sought to conduct a unique kind of foreign policy based on the way they wanted the [old] world to be, as opposed to the way it really is … Modern diplomacy emerged from the trials and experiences of the balance of power of warfare and peacemaking … America, sometimes to its peril, refused to learn its [modern European diplomacy] lessons … Americans, from the very beginning, sought a distinctive foreign policy based on [American] idealism.”
Henry Kissinger, Ibidem, Jacket.

1/ Modern European Bonapartism and Machiavellianism

1. See: “There is no mystery about the origins of Bonapartism. It is the child of Napoléon Bonaparte and the French Revolution … the strong executive founded upon the plebiscite which was to be the pillar of Bonapartism; and [Napoléon] had come to the conclusion that legislative assemblies should be merely supervisory, that they should have no power to change the constitution or to interfere with the executive … The French nation, being consulted for the third time, for the third time by an overwhelming majority ratified its belief in Bonapartism … The guiding principle of Bonapartism was autocracy founded on popular consent, safeguarding social order and social equality [Social Democracy, i.e., Socialism].”

Herbert Albert Laurens Fisher, Bonapartism: Six Lectures Delivered in the University of London, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1908, 7–22–39–87–120.

See finally: “The Industrial Revolution … is not only one of the most important facts of English history, but Europe owes to it the growth of two great systems of thought — Economic Science, and its antithesis, Socialism.”

Arnold Toynbee (1852–1883), “The Chief Features of the Revolution,” Lectures on the Industrial Revolution of the Eighteenth Century in England, Popular Addresses, Notes, and Other Fragments, London, Longmans, Green, and Company, 1920, 64–73; 64. [1884]

See: Aimé Guillon de Montléon (1758–1842), Machiavel commenté par Napoléon Bonaparte, manuscrit trouvé dans la carrosse de Bonaparte, après la bataille de Mont–Saint–Jean, le 15 février 1815, Paris, Nicolle, 1816.

2. In The Stronghold of Hegel (2016), which was first published with the Medium Corporation, I have outlined in some detail the American Idealist conception of Americanism and the American world:

“That I have laid out some of the philosophical reasons for this doctrine in the third edition of another writing of mine, an outline of sorts, named Americanism: The New Hegelian Orthodoxy, is of slight importance: That the teaching therein involves the sciences of economics and politics is of some interest, however, and therefore has a bearing upon the subject at hand, namely, as the developmental unification and coaxial integration of the American world. In that work I flatter myself as the first Hegelian philosopher ever to apply the Dialectic of Hegel to the Hegelian Dialectic: ‘Modern irrationalism, in order to validate pseudo–Hegelianism and anti–Hegelianism, squares the Lecture Notes and the great works published by Hegel in his lifetime. Pseudo–Hegelianism and anti–Hegelianism thus squares both Kant and Hegel in order to prove the speculative logical and dialectical system of the genuine Hegel’s philosophical science of Absolute Idealism is flawed. Irrationalism thus perverts the history of philosophy and modern Europe … Pseudo–Hegelianism and anti–Hegelianism is therefore the political and economic mask of modern European Raison d’État. One drawback will never be remedied in Hegel philology: The Lecture Notes are not authoritative and are therefore useless in the exact determination of the ultimate worth of genuine Hegelianism … In the 20th century upwards of 500 million human beings were slaughtered in the contagion of modern political and economic satanism, more than in all the periods of history combined: Many hundreds of millions more were utterly ruined and destroyed by the most barbaric slavery ever recorded in the world. This is the ultimate verdict of exact historiography and universal history. From whence comes the disease of modern unreason?’”
Christopher Richard Wade Dettling, Stronghold of Hegel: Modern Enemies of Plato and Hegel, San Francisco, California, The Internet Archive, 2018, 60–61.

See: “After Hegel’s death, his former students came together with the rather noble thought of assembling various transcripts of the lecture series he gave and to which they had access, hoping to bring to the light of a general public the ‘system’ that [they] were convinced was completed for years and presented orally in the lecture hall. However, the methodologies through which they assembled these transcripts into standalone monographs, with the aid of Hegel’s own manuscripts for his lectures, is [are] dubious at best. They paid little to no attention to changes between different lecture courses, combining them as they saw fit to guarantee the logical progression of the dialectical movement as they interpreted it. But without the original source material, it was impossible to test the suspicion that they may have falsified Hegel’s own views. Indeed, it was all we had to go on to have any understanding of his views. Now, however, many manuscripts and transcripts — even ones not available to his students — have been found. When one compares these manuscripts and transcripts with the lectures published by his students, the differences between them are in no case simply philological niceties … this information may drastically challenge our historical picture of Hegel.”

Sean J. McGrath & Joseph Carew, editors, “Introduction: What Remains of German Idealism?” Rethinking German Idealism, London, 2016, 4. [Italics added]

See: “Hegel’s own course notes and those of his students should be used with caution to clarify and illustrate the meaning of the texts he published during his lifetime … In general, the student notes written during or after Hegel’s classes should be used with caution … What has been said about the student notes must also be applied to the so–called Zusatze (additions), added by ‘the friends’ to the third edition of the Encyclopedia (1830) and the book on Rechtsphilosophie … Some commentators, however, seem to prefer the Zusatze over Hegel’s own writings; additions are sometimes even quoted as the only textual evidence for the interpretation of highly controversial issues. For scholarly use, however, we should use them only as applications, confirmations, or concretizations of Hegel’s theory. Only in cases where authentic texts are unavailable may they be accepted as indications of Hegel’s answers to questions that are not treated in his handwritten or published work. If they contradict the explicit theory of the authorized texts, we can presume that the student is wrong, unless we can show that it is plausible that they express a change in the evolution of Hegel’s thought … According to Leopold von Henning’s preface (pp. vi–vii) in his edition (1839) of the Encyclopädie of 1830, the editors of the Encyclopedia sometimes changed or completed the sentences in which the students had rendered Hegel’s classes.”

Adriaan Theodoor Basilius Peperzak, Modern Freedom: Hegel’s Legal, Moral, and Political Philosophy (Studies in German Idealism), Dordrecht, 2001, xvi–27–28–29–29.

See: “The transcripts known today for all the Berlin lecture series are consistently, even surprisingly, reliable testimonies … It may indeed be disconcerting that only today do we doubt — and not everyone does — that Hegel’s lectures … are actually reproduced authentically in the published [Berlin] edition … that did not become full–blown for more than a hundred and fifty years. We can hardly examine here all the reasons for this circumstance.”
Annemarie Gethmann–Siefert, “Introduction: The Shape and Influence of Hegel’s Aesthetics,” Lectures on the Philosophy of Art: The Hotho Transcript of the 1823 Berlin Lectures, Oxford, 2014, 32–36–36–36.

See: “[The] more sympathetic tradition in Hegel scholarship has reasserted itself decisively since the middle of this century, to such an extent that there is now a virtual consensus among knowledgeable scholars that the earlier images of Hegel, as philosopher of the reactionary Prussian restoration and forerunner of modern totalitarianism, are simply wrong, whether they are viewed as accounts of Hegel’s attitude toward Prussian politics or as broader philosophical interpretations of his theory of the state.”

Allen William Wood, editor, “Editor’s Introduction,” Elements of the Philosophy of Right, G.W.F. Hegel, Cambridge, 2003, ix.

3. Louis Couzinet, “Le Prince” de Machiavel et la théorie de l’absolutisme,Paris, Librairie Nouvelle de Droit et de Jurisprudence, Arthur Rousseau, Éditeur, 1910, xix–xxi–xxvii–136–349–352.

4. Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli, The Prince, Luigi Ricci, translator, Oxford, Humphrey Milford, 1921, 71.

5. Machiavelli, Ibidem, 99–100.

6. Machiavelli, Ibidem, 102.

7. Machiavelli, Ibidem, 44–44–101–105.

8. See: “Their deeds and destinies in their reciprocal relations to one another are the dialectic of the finitude [die erscheinende Dialektik der Endlichkeit] of these minds, and out of it arises the universal mind, the mind of the world, free from all restriction, producing itself as that which exercises its right — and its right is the highest right of all — over these finite minds in the ‘history of the world which is the world’s court of judgement.’”

Thomas Malcolm Knox, translator, “The Philosophy of Right,” Great Books of the Western World: Hegel, vol. 46, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel; Robert Maynard Hutchins, editor in chief, Chicago, 1960, §340, 110.

See: Hegel, Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts. Naturrecht und Staatswissenschaft im Grundrisse. Zum Gebrauch für seine Vorlesungen, Berlin, 1821, §340, 342–343: “Die Prinzipien der Volksgeister sind um ihrer Besonderheit willen, in der sie als existierende Individuen ihre objektive Wirklichkeit und ihr Selbstbewußtsein haben, überhaupt beschränkte, und ihre Schicksale und Taten in ihrem Verhältnisse zueinander sind die erscheinende Dialektik der Endlichkeit dieser Geister, aus welcher der allgemeine Geist, der Geist der Welt, als unbeschränkt ebenso sich hervorbringt, als er es ist, der sein Recht, — und sein Recht ist das allerhöchste, — an ihnen in der Weltgeschichte, als dem Weltgerichte, ausübt.”

9. Judah Philip Benjamin (1811–1884), A Treatise on the Law of Sale of Personal Property: With References to the American Decisions and to the French Code and Civil Law, London, Henry Sweet, 1868, 299. [Italics added]

See: “There is no mystery about the origins of Bonapartism. It is the child of Napoléon Bonaparte and the French Revolution … the strong executive founded upon the plebiscite which was to be the pillar of Bonapartism; and [Napoléon] had come to the conclusion that legislative assemblies should be merely supervisory, that they should have no power to change the constitution or to interfere with the executive … This is not the place for a detailed examination of the principles of Napoléonic law. It is well, however, to notice that the civil code alone was drawn up during the Consulate, that it is nearer both in time and spirit to the revolutionary law than are the codes which were compiled in a more perfunctory manner under the darker shadows of imperial despotism … in the codes, in the common system of administration, the foundations of a modern Italy were laid. And here the memory of Napoléon was not easily forgotten … The French nation, being consulted for the third time, for the third time by an overwhelming majority ratified its belief in Bonapartism … The guiding principle of Bonapartism was autocracy founded on popular consent, safeguarding social order and social equality [social democracy, i.e., socialism].”
Herbert Albert Laurens Fisher, Bonapartism: Six Lectures Delivered in the University of London, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1908, 7–22–39–55–87–120.

See also: “We propose a comparison between the doctrine of Machiavelli, as it emerges from the Prince, and the doctrine of absolutism, which we shall endeavor to discern, not from one or another of the theorists who were its champions, but from all of them … the absolutist doctrines, in their application, lead rulers to the same results as the doctrines of Machiavelli … Machiavellism and absolutism are derived from analogous historical situations. This is the first essential point of our parallel. The historical situation inspires Machiavelli with the idea of ​​the legitimacy of every means aimed at the achievement of public interest and the salvation of the State … those who were able to study Napoléon Bonaparte very closely tell us that he was a very powerful ruler who saw the spilling of blood (sang des hommes répandu) as perhaps the greatest remedy of political medicine … The Prince of Machiavelli and the doctrines of absolutism were born of the same sentiment of profound patriotism, at times and in countries where a powerful sovereign was necessary to put an end to the disorder and turmoil of the day, the causes of national distress … Machiavelli reveals himself as an immoral patriot who wants to save the State, even though his conception of government appears as a policy that is respectful of political freedoms and that is aimed at the happiness of the people.”
Louis Couzinet, “Le Prince” de Machiavel et la théorie de l’absolutisme, Paris, Librairie Nouvelle de Droit et de Jurisprudence, Arthur Rousseau, Éditeur, 1910, xix–xxi–xxvii–136–349–352: “Nous nous proposons un rapprochement, une comparaison, entre la doctrine de Machiavel, telle qu’elle ressort du Prince, et la doctrine de l’absolutisme, que nous essayerons de dégager, non pas de tel ou tel des théoriciens qui en furent les champions; mais de l’ensemble de ces théoriciens … les doctrines absolutistes, dans leur application, conduisent les princes aux mêmes résultats que les doctrines de Machiavel … Machiavélisme et absolutisme sont issus de situations historiques analogues. C’est là un premier point essentiel de notre parallèle. Cette situation inspire à Machiavel l’idée de la légitimité de tous les moyens destinés à atteindre un but d’intérêt public et à réaliser le salut de l’État … Tous ceux qui ont pu étudier Napoléon l de près, nous disent qu’il y avait en lui le Napoléon homme d’État, qui voyait dans le sang des hommes répandu un des grands remèdes de la médecine politique … Le Prince de Machiavel et les doctrines de l’absolutisme sont nés d’un même sentiment profond de patriotisme, à des époques et dans des pays où un souverain puissant était nécessaire pour faire cesser, sous sa domination, les désordres et la désunion, causes de la détresse nationale … Machiavel nous apparaît comme un patriote sans scrupule lorsqu’il s’agit de sauver l’État. Dans sa conception du gouvernement il se révèle à nous comme un politique soucieux du bonheur du peuple et respectueux de sa liberté.”

See also: “These principalities, therefore, are secure and happy. But as they are upheld by higher causes, which the human mind cannot attain to, I will abstain from speaking of them; for being exalted and maintained by God, it would be the work of a presumptuous and foolish man to discuss them … [Rulers] cannot observe all those things which are considered good in men, being often obliged, in order to maintain the state, to act against faith, against charity, against humanity, and against religion … [Rulers] must have a mind disposed to adapt itself according to the wind, and as the variations of fortune dictate, and, as I said before, not deviate from what is good, if possible, but be able to do evil if necessitated … It is not unknown to me how many have been and are of opinion that worldly events are so governed by fortune and by God, that men cannot by their prudence change them, and that on the contrary there is no remedy whatever, and for this they may judge it to be useless to toil much about them, but let things be ruled by chance … Our freewill may not be altogether extinguished, I think it may be true that fortune is the ruler of half our actions, but that she allows the other half or a little less to be governed by us. I would compare her to an impetuous river that, when turbulent, inundates the plains, ruins trees and buildings, removes earth from this side and places it on the other; every one flies before it, and everything yields to its fury without being able to oppose it; and yet though it is of such a kind, still when it is quiet, men can make provision against it by dams and banks, so that when it rises it will either go into a canal or its rush will not be so wild and dangerous. It happens similarly with fortune, which shows her power where no measures have been taken to resist her, and turns her fury where she knows that no dams or barriers have been made to hold her … if one could change one’s nature with time and circumstances, fortune would never change … fortune is a woman, and it is necessary, if you wish to master her, to conquer her by force; and it can be seen that she lets herself be overcome by these rather than by those who proceed coldly. And therefore, like a woman, she is a friend to the young, because they are less cautious, fiercer, and master her with greater audacity … God will not do everything, in order not to deprive us of freewill.”

Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli (1469–1527), The Prince, Luigi Ricci, translator, Oxford, Humphrey Milford, 1921, 44–71–71–99–100–101–102–105. [1532]

See also: Napoléon Bonaparte & Abbé Aimé Guillon de Montléon (1758–1842), Machiavel commenté par Napoléon Bonaparte, manuscrit trouvé dans la carrosse de Bonaparte, après la bataille de Mont–Saint–Jean, le 15 février 1815, Paris, Nicolle, 1816.

See also: “The history of France between the fall of Robespierre and the rise of Napoléon is full of instruction for those who believe in representative democracy as a universal panacea for the political distempers of mankind.”

Walter Alison Phillips (1864–1950), “Preface,” After Robespierre: The Thermidorian Reaction, Albert Mathiez; Cathrine Alison Phillips, translator, New York, Grosset & Dunlap, 1965, v–vii; vii. [1931]

See: “There is a widespread impression that the French are a distinctly inferior race … A glance at the product of the French Parliament since 1879 shows that France today, as well as England, is a land where ‘freedom slowly broadens down,’ if not from precedent to precedent, at least from statute to statute. To be sure freedom is a larger thing than acts of legislatures, but it is also largerthan decisions of judges.” [Italics added]

James Thomson Shotwell (1874–1965), “The Political Capacity of the French,” Political Science Quarterly, 24(1 March 1909): 115–126; 115–120.

See also: “Especially after 1871, the contagion of Kantianism in France is remarkable … Around 1880, Kantianism becomes the powerful beacon of French moral and political thought, in the eyes of those who are followers of France’s republican creed: For republican thinkers who want to be freed from ‘superstition,’ Immanuel Kant’s philosophy must provide the means of indoctrinating France’s young people with strict morality and civics, self–sacrifice and patriotism: Intellectual disciplines which will eliminate ancient French religious traditions via the powerful secular religion of republicanism.”

Albert Rivaud (1876–1956), “La diffusion du Kantisme,” Histoire de la philosophie: La philosophie allemande de 1700 à 1850: De l’Aufklärung à Schelling, première partie, tome 5, Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 1968, 273–276; 274. [1967]: “Il est remarquable que le Kantisme se vulgarise surtout après 1871 … le Kantisme devient–il, vers 1880, le symbole d’une pensée morale et politique profonde, aux yeux de ceux qui sont animés d’une foi républicaine. La philosophie de Kant doit fournir, à une pensée qui se veut affranchie de la «superstition», les moyens de répandre dans la jeunesse une moralité sévère, le civisme, le désintéressement, le patriotisme, toutes ces disciplines apportant un substitut républicain à l’ancienne formation religieuse, en somme l’armature d’une religion laïque.”

See also: “The awakening of the new age, namely, the ‘kingdom of the realized spirit’ (royaume de l’esprit réalisé), is the age of the Critical Philosophy of Immanuel Kant and the French Revolution. A free will, albeit formal, whose content is created as it touches the real, is the Kantian principle: This principle of the Critical Philosophy, without doubt, is the very basis of the French Revolution (c’est là le principe kantien et c’est, non moins, le principe de la Révolution française). The Kantian principle brings practical results to the French Revolution. Kantian reason legislates for the collective will as well as for the individual will … The French Revolution made the bold attempt to begin with individual wills, with the atoms of will: The revolutionary philosophy of Kant attacks the collective will of the Ancien Régime for its abusive privileges.”

Charles Philippe Théodore Andler (1866–1933), “Préface: Hegel,” Le pangermanisme philosophique, 1800 à 1914: Textes traduits de l’Allemand par M. Aboucaya [Claude Aboucaya?], G. Bianquis [Geneviève Bianquis, 1886–1972], M. Bloch [Gustave Bloch, 1848–1923], L. Brevet, J. Dessert, M. Dresch [Joseph Dresch, 1871–1958], A. Fabri, A. Giacomelli, B. Lehoc, G. Lenoir, L. Marchand [Louis Marchand, 1875–1948], R. Serreau [René Serreau], A. Thomas [Albert Thomas, 1878–1932], J. Wehrlin, Paris, Louis Conard, Librairie–Éditeur, 1917, xxix–xlv; xliii: “L’ère nouvelle qui s’annonce, c’est–à–dire le ‘royaume de l’esprit réalisé,’ est celle, non seulement de Kant, mais de la Révolution française. Un vouloir libre, tout formel, dont le contenu se crée à mesure qu’il touche au réel, c’est là le principe kantien et c’est, non moins, le principe de la Révolution française. Ce principe donne des résultats pratiques dans la Révolution d’abord. La raison kantienne légifère pour le vouloir collectif comme pour le vouloir individuel … La Révolution fit cette tentative audacieuse de commencer par les vouloirs individuels, par les atomes du vouloir. C’est le vouloir collectif, l’Ancien Régime, que la philosophie révolutionnaire incrimine pour ses privilèges abusifs.”

See also: “The publication of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason marks one of the two key events after which we may take nineteenth–century philosophy to begin. The other event is the French Revolution, of which many people saw Kant’s philosophy, with its emphasis on autonomy, as the theoretical correlate. ‘Nineteenth–century’ philosophy … thus actually begins in the later 1780s and the 1790s, in response to Kant’s Critical philosophy and the French Revolution.”

Alison Stone, editor, “Philosophy in the Nineteenth–Century,” The Edinburgh Critical History of Nineteenth–Century Philosophy, Howard Caygill & David Webb, general editors, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 2011, 1–12; 1.

See finally: “The standpoint of Kantian philosophy is a high one … the march of God in the world, that is what the state is.”

Eduard Gans, “Additions to The Philosophy of Right,” Great Books of the Western World: Hegel, vol. 46, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel; Thomas Malcolm Knox, translator & Robert Maynard Hutchins, editor in chief, Chicago, Encyclopedia Britannica, 1960, Addition 1–Addition 194, 115–150; Addition 86 = §135/129–Addition 152 = §258/141. [Lasson, 2nd edition, 1921]

Eduard Gans, “Zusätze aus Hegels Vorlesungen, zusammengestellt,” Naturrecht und Staatswissenschaft im Grundrisse: Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts, mit den von Eduard Gans redigierten Zusätzen aus Hegels Vorlesungen, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, neu hrsg., von Georg Lasson, Herausgegeber, [=Hegels sämtliche Werke, Band VI], Leipzig, Verlag von Felix Meiner, 1911, Zusätze 1–Zusätze 194, 281–371; Zusätze 86 = §135, 318–Zusätze 152 = §258, 349: “Den Standpunkt der Kantischen Philosophie hervorhoben … Es ist der Gang Gottes in der Welt, daß der Staat ist.”

10. John Morley (1838–1923), 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn (1882) in William Hastie, “Translator’s Introduction,” Kant’s Principles of Politics Including His Essay on Perpetual Peace: A Contribution to Political Science,William Hastie, editor & translator, Edinburgh, T. & T. Clark, 1891, vii–xliv; xxxviii–xxxix. [Italics added] See: John Morley, Studies in Literature, 1891.

See: “[158–159] According to Kant, we can never know anything but ‘phenomena,’ never a thing that exists independently of the mind. It cannot be but a subjective phenomenon, because the element of experience in it — the ‘impression,’ which is called the ‘matter’ of the object of a sense–intuition, is subjective, and the element of necessity and universality which is called the ‘form’ coming as it does from the mind, is likewise subjective. Hence the object before the mind, composed as it is by subjective elements, is wholly subjective. Yet Kant always calls such an object really objective. Because the term ‘objective’ always means for Kant, whatever contains a necessary and universal element. For such an element is the same for all human minds as they are at present constituted … [160] Now the ‘matter’ upon which these ‘apriori forms’ of the understanding are superimposed is the ‘phenomenal objects’ of ‘sense–intuition.’ The ‘phenomenal objects’ of sense are already an amalgam of ‘matter,’ — the sense–impression caused by the ‘noumenon’ plus the ‘apriori sense forms’ of ‘space’ and ‘time.’ Why are these ‘apriori forms of the understanding’ imposed upon the phenomena of sense? Because each of these sensuous phenomena are pictured by the imagination as either a substance, a cause, as one or many etc., and when they are so imaginatively pictured, the appropriate ‘apriori form of the understanding’ pops forth from ‘the fairy rath of the mind’ where live these ‘apriori forms’ and attaches itself to the sensuous phenomena and then we necessarily and universally are forced to think that such a sense–phenomenon is a substance, such another a cause, an accident, one or many etc. But in reality, of course, they are no such thing, for these ‘apriori forms’ give us no insight into reality … [166] Kant’s doctrines are destructively opposed to Catholicism. His teaching has been condemned by Popes Leo XIII and Pius X. His great work, ‘The Critique of Pure Reason’ was placed on the Index, 11th June, 1827. Inconsistent with Catholic teaching are (1) Kant’s Metaphysical Agnosticism, which declares his ignorance of all things as they really are; (2) his Moral Dogmatism which declares the supremacy of will over reason, thereby making blind will without the guidance of reason the rule of action; (3) his giving to religious dogma merely a symbolic signification; (4) diametrically opposed to scholastic teaching and the common sense of mankind is Kant’s theory of knowledge which makes mind and thought the measure of reality rather than making reality the measure of mind and thought. Kant maintains that things are so because we must think them so, not that we must think them so because they are really so independently of our thinking them. The reversal of the order of thought and reality, Kant calls his ‘Copernican Revolution’ in his theory of knowledge.”

Michael Joseph Mahony, History of Modern Thought: The English, Irish and Scotch Schools, New York, Fordham University Press, 1933, 158–159–166.

See: “Kant in his writings habitually ascribes to philosophical terms a meaning quite different from that which they traditionally bear … Kant maintains that things are so because we must think them so, not that we must think them so because they are really so.”

Michael Joseph Mahony, History of Modern Thought: The English, Irish and Scotch Schools, New York, Fordham University Press, 1933, 159–166.

See: “Many modern authors use the name ‘Formal Logic’ instead of the usual Scholastic term ‘Minor Logic’ and the Aristotelian term ‘Dialectics.’ The philosophy of Kant has popularized the term ‘Formal Logic.’ But the Kantian concept of this part of Logic is essentially different from the meaning which Scholasticism has assigned to it. In the philosophy of Kant the necessary grooves or laws which the mind must follow in its operations of reason have their origin solely in the mind; they are of the mind and in the mind. [9] We must think, Kant would say, according to these necessary laws because our minds, antecedently to all experiences of reality, are constituted that way … Kant conceives the laws of thought as ‘forms’ native to the mind and therefore as having no objective value. Hence he calls the science of these ‘forms’ ‘Formal Logic.’ Scholasticism admits these laws are in the mind but not of the mind. They are rather engendered in the mind by objective reality. They put us therefore in touch with reality. Hence ‘Formal Logic’ does not mean to Scholasticism what it means to Kantianism.”

Michael Joseph Mahony, Essentials of Formal Logic, New York, The Encyclopedia Press, Inc., 1918, 8–9.

11. See: “We want to know how far Montesquieu was dependent upon the ideas of his time and how he influenced his successors, — where we can place him in the context of European attitudes toward the Eastern world, and in the evolution of these opinions … The concept of ‘oriental despotism’ coined by the West served above all to justify the military, and especially commercial, interventions of Europeans in Asia.” [Italics added]

Rachida El Diwani, L’Orient des Lettres Persanes, Morrisville, North Carolina, Lulu Press, Inc., 2009, 1–11: “Nous sommes intéressée à savoir jusqu’où Montesquieu était tributaire des idées de son temps, comment il a influencé ses successeurs et où peut–on le placer dans le courant des attitudes européennes envers l’Orient, et dans le courant des changements et de la continuité de ces attitudes … Le concept du ‘despotisme asiatique’ forgé par l’Occident servait surtout à justifier les interventions guerrières et surtout commerciales des Européens en Asie.”

Remarks: Indeed, the Kantian traditions have used the concept of “oriental despotism” (despotisme asiatique) to justify the military, and especially commercial, interventions of Europeans in Asia. The subjective, relativistic and irrational identification of European modernity with Western civilization based upon attitudes and opinions (perspectives, views, outlooks and standpoints), is used by the selfsame outdated and surpassed Kantian traditions to disguise the political and economic irrationalism of modern Europe, in order to debase and corrupt the rational conception of Western civilization, usually as White Supremacy, White Nationalism or some such sophistry, which in the Berliner hands (Business Insider) of the Bonapartists of the European Union, — the Dieselgate aristocracy of Eurocentric Eurocracy, — is used as a modern cudgel against the big American Idealists of the White House, Washington and Wall Street, i.e., American superpower that rejects all or most European political and economic irrationalism in the realm of American finance, commerce and industry. Apart from the degenerate trans–Atlantic influence, in general, of the European Bonapartists upon their misguided puppets in the United States (thankfully very few in number, e.g., Volkswagon), the modern European truncheon of political and economic irrationalism is often used, albeit unsuccessfully, by corrupt state legislators in America to usurp federal powers, — an activity which is deeply influenced by the Bonapartism of Canada and Mexico (lesser and greater Banana Republics), especially via states along the US borders.

The Québécocrats, many of whom hide out in America, and thereby avoid retribution at the hands of their many Canadian victims (especially in Alberta), never classify their Québécocentrisme (politique fonctionnelle as Québécocentric asymmetrical federalism) as French Gaullist Bonapartism, and therefore categorically reject any historical identification of the Québec regime in Ottawa 1968–2006 (the empire of Paul Desmarais) with Bananaism.

See: Alain Grosrichard, Structure du sérail: La fiction du despotisme asiatique dans l’Occident classique, Paris, Seuil, 1979.

See finally: “The present inquiry analyzes the patterns of class in a society whose leaders are the holders of despotic state power and not private owners and entrepreneurs. This procedure, in addition to modifying the notion of what constitutes a ruling class, leads to a new evaluation of such phenomena as landlordism, capitalism, gentry, and guild. It explains why, in hydraulic society, there exists a bureaucratic landlordism, a bureaucratic capitalism, and a bureaucratic gentry. It explains why in such a society the professional organizations, although sharing certain features with the guilds of Medieval Europe, were socially quite unlike them. It also explains why in such a society supreme autocratic leadership is the rule. While the law of diminishing administrative returns determines the lower limit of the bureaucratic pyramid, the cumulative tendency of unchecked power determines the character of its top … I have started my inquiry with the societal order of which agromanagerial despotsim is a part; and I have stressed the peculiarity of this order by calling it ‘hydraulic society.’ But I have no hesitancy in employing the traditional designations ‘Oriental society’ and ‘Asiatic society’ as synonyms for ‘hydraulic society’ and ‘agromanagerial society’; and while using the terms ‘hydraulic,’ ‘agrobureaucratic,’ and ‘Oriental despotism’ interchangeably, I have given preference to the older formulation, ‘Oriental despotism’ in my title, partly to emphasize the historical depth of my central concept and partly because the majority of all great hydraulic civilizations existed in what is customarily called the Orient.”

Karl August Wittfogel, Oriental Despotism: A Comparative Study of Total Power, New Haven/London, Yale University Press, 1967, 4–8. [1957]

12. Arnold Toynbee (1852–1883), “The Chief Features of the Revolution,” Lectures on the Industrial Revolution of the Eighteenth Century in England, Popular Addresses, Notes, and Other Fragments, London, Longmans, Green, and Company, 1920, 64–73; 64. [1884]

2/ Kjellénism Versus Modern European Irrationalism

1. Panu Minkkinen, contributor, “The Container and the Septic Tank: Statism, Life, and the Geopolitics of Territoriality,” Finnish Yearbook of International Law: 2012–2013, Jarna Petman, editor–in–chief & Maija Dahlberg, Ruth Donner, Sabine Frerichs, Mónica García–Salmones, Waliul Hasanat, Florian Hoffmann, Stephen Humphreys, Samuli Hurri, Henry Jones, Eva Kassoti, Virpi Laukkanen, Rain Liivoja, Tero Lundstedt, Padraig McAuliffe, Samuli Miettinen, Jarna Petman, Maria Pohjanpalo, Patrick C.R. Terry & Silke Trommer, contributors, vol. 23, Portland, Oregon, Bloomsbury Publishing, 2016, 389–410; 399–404.

See: “The Ius Gentium Association gratefully acknowledges the support of the Legal Department of the Finnish Ministry for Foreign Affairs to the publication of the yearbook.”

Jarna Petman, editor–in–chief, Finnish Yearbook of International Law: 2012–2013, vol. 23, Maija Dahlberg, Ruth Donner, Sabine Frerichs, Mónica García–Salmones, Waliul Hasanat, Florian Hoffmann, Stephen Humphreys, Samuli Hurri, Henry Jones, Eva Kassoti, Virpi Laukkanen, Rain Liivoja, Tero Lundstedt, Padraig McAuliffe, Samuli Miettinen, Panu Minkkinen, Jarna Petman, Maria Pohjanpalo, Patrick C.R. Terry & Silke Trommer, contributors, Portland, Oregon, Bloomsbury Publishing, 2016, copyright page.

2. Mark Bassin, The Gumilev Mystique: Biopolitics, Eurasianism, and the Construction of Community in Modern Russia, Ithaca/London, Cornell University Press, 2016, copyright page–5.

Remarks: We are being very charitable in our argument that Mark Bassin is like a poet: A far less charitable evaluation of his writings maintains that Bassin is an idéologue and historiaster, bent on corrupting the American mind, — in the name of modern European unreason. Perhaps Mark Bassin will therefore find gainful employment at Business Insider, and produce (for the vulgar) some sophistical political and economic arguments to justify European tariffs against American finance, commerce and industry … (Of course, the flabby minds will imagine that because we critique an American book on Lev Gumilev, that we are therefore in cahoots with Vladimir Putin!)

3. Fredrika Lagergren, “Den mångsidige statsvetaren: Rudolf Kjellén och den biopolitiska teorin,” Forskarbiografin, Stockholm, 1998, 109–122.

See: Fredrika Lagergren, På andra sidan välfärdsstaten: en studie i politiska idéers betydelse, Stockholm, Stehag, Brutus Östlings Bokförlag Symposion, 1999.

4. Christopher Richard Wade Dettling, Stronghold of Hegel: Modern Enemies of Plato and Hegel, San Francisco, California, The Internet Archive, 2018, 14–16. [2016]

5. David T. Murphy, The Heroic Earth: Geopolitical Thought in Weimar Germany, 1918–1933, Kent, Ohio, Kent State University Press, 1997, 6–7. [Italics added]

See: “Geopolitics was originally a Swedish term, coined in 1899 by Rudolph Kjellén, a political scientist who sought to elaborate Friedrich Ratzel’s idea that the state was an organism. Geopolitics was thus conceived as the effect of natural geographical factors on the state as a living thing. These ideas proved influential to the thinking of Germany’s General Karl Haushofer between the first and second world wars. Haushofer and others were looking for a ‘scientific’ justification of how Germany could reverse its losses from World War I. Viewing the state as an organism that needed to expand to survive fitted neatly with Nazi plans for territorial expansion, although it is debatable whether these ideas directly influenced Hitler. As a result, the term geopolitics became closely associated with the Nazis and fell out of popular use among English–speaking scholars.”

Carl T. Dahlman, “Geopolitics,” Key Concepts in Political Geography, Carl T. Dahlman, Carolyn Gallaher, Mary Gilmartin, Alison Mountz & Peter Shirlow, London, Sage Publications Ltd., 2009, 87–98; 87.

See: “Swedish social democracy’s concept of the ‘people’s home’ — Folkhemmet — was appropriated from the nationalist political theorist Rudolf Kjellén, who in turn was inspired by the social–reformism of Otto von Bismarck’s conservative Realpolitik.”

Leigh Phillips, Austerity Ecology and the Collapse–Porn Addicts, Alresford, Hants, John Hunt Publishing Ltd., 2015. [Italics added]

6. Rudolf Kjellén, Politiska Handbocker III: Staten som Lifsform, Stockholm, 1916, 179.

7. Margarethe Langfeldt, translator, Der Staat als Lebensform, Rudolf Kjellén, Zweite Auflage, Leipzig, 1917, 227.

8. Nitzan Lebovic, “Introduction: Where It All Began,” The Philosophy of Life and Death: Ludwig Klages and the Rise of a Nazi Biopolitics (Palgrave Studies in Cultural and Intellectual History), London, Palgrave Macmillan, 2013, 1–20; 2–3–4–5–6.

See: “Thomas Kemme … and his colleagues at the Deutsches Literaturarchiv Marbach supplied me with material and advice that were badly needed for a young scholar who was taking his first steps into an unfamiliar world.”

Nitzan Lebovic, “Preface,” The Philosophy of Life and Death: Ludwig Klages and the Rise of a Nazi Biopolitics (Palgrave Studies in Cultural and Intellectual History), London, Palgrave Macmillan, 2013, xi–xiii; xi.

See: Kurt Sontheimer (1928–2005), Antidemokratisches Denken in der Weimarer Republik: Die politischen Ideen des deutschen Nationalismus zwischen 1918 und 1933, München, Nymphenburger Verlags–Handlung, 1962; Roberto Esposito, Bios: Biopolitics and Philosophy, Timothy Campbell, translator, Minneapolis, Minnesota, University of Minnesota Press, 2008.

3/ Rational Hegelianism: Kjellénism and World History

1. Carl (Karl) Koch; Margarethe Langfeldt (1875–1922); Alexander Hellmuth August von Normann (1893–1983), Die Gesetzgebung des Deutschen Reiches und Preußens zum Schutze der Republik: einschliesslich der Gesetze über Straffreiheit für politische Straftaten, Textausgabe mit Einleitung und Beigabe d. erg., Berlin, Georg Stilke, 1922; Friedrich Stieve (1909–1985), Was die Welt nicht wollte: Hitlers Friedensangebote 1933–1939, Berlin, Zentralverlag der NSDAP., Franz Eher Nachf. GmbH., 1940.

2. Rudolf Kjellén, “Afslutning om statens ändamål,” Politiska Handbocker III: Staten som Lifsform, Årg. 3, Stockholm, Hugo Gebers Förlag, 1916, 179–183; 179: “Från studiet af statens förhållande till de olika sidorna i sitt eget väsen har undersökningen till sist skridit in på statens förhållande till de enskilda individer, som utgöra cellerna i hans nationella kropp.”

3. See: “Med dessa spekulativa förutsättningar gå vi nu att betrakta utvecklingens faktiska gång under de senaste seklerna i västerlandet. Huru klar speglar sig icke progressismens ande i renässansen med dess lifsstegring på alla områden, dess expansion i geografisk kunskap, i religiös frihet, i konstnärlig skaparkraft — för att nu uttaga blott de mest iögonfallande dragen! Men på denna tid följer absolutismen, ett konservatismens bakslag med stark koncentration i statslifvet, stelnade former i religionen, en förminskad horisont inom andens och skönhetens värld. Kommer så i tidsföljd liberalismen, »ancien régime’s» direkta negation, bäraren af ett nytt politiskt och andligt frihetslif tillika med ett nytt uppfinningarnes tidehvarf — hvem igenkänner icke progressismens mäktiga vingslag till utvidgning af den mänskliga horisonten! Sådan ligger den nyare historien uppenbar i sitt sammanhang för vår syn. Skulle då successionsserien vara [12] slut nu? Ha vi kommit till en Hegelsk syntes, där utvecklingen slutar? Eller äga vi grund att motse en ny utvecklingsfas, denna gång alltså en ny konservatismens hägemoni? Ingen har på svenskt språk gett sannare och djupare uttryck åt otillfredsställelsen i samtiden än författaren till »Masskultur». Är det möjligt att förbise sammanhanget emellan denna själanöd och den herskande liberala lifsåskådningen? Vi skola återkomma till denna räkning i fråga om vårt eget land; nu må endast i största allmänhet framhållas, huru naturligt det är om mänskligheten skall börja känna något liknande öfveransträngning efter den oerhörda expansionen på alla områden. Men när den känslan mognat till medvetande, då är tiden kommen till aflösning i det stora spelet: då stundar en ny tid af relativ hvila, under koncentration. Endast en ny uppenbarelse af den konservativa idén kan frälsa en värld, som håller på att digna under sina framsteg. Och redan se vi den nya tidens förebud vid himlaranden. Ett af dem är protektionismen: en reaktion mot liberalismens ekonomiska system. Ett annat och större är socialismen … Var liberalismen [13] en reaktion mot absolutismen, så är socialismen i sin tur en reaktion mot liberalismen. Linjerna äro i praktiken högst förvecklade, framför allt genom ungsocialismens framträdande under detta namn i faktiskt förbund med socialdemokratien; i själfva verket är den anarkiska rörelsen ett barn af liberalismen — dess idé drifven ut till den yttersta konsekvensen — men socialismen dess polära motsats. Socialismen bäres öfver många sina synder af folkens djupa behof i riktning mot ordning, disciplin och stabila förhållanden efter individualismens utsväfningar.”

Rudolf Kjellén, “I. Statens allmänna väsen,” Politiska Essayer II: Studier till Dagskrönikan (1907–1913): Samhälls– och Författningspolitik, Andra Samlingen, Stockholm, Hugo Gebers Förlag, 1915, 9–38; 11–12–13. [Italics added, 12]

See: “Här må nu särskildt observeras och starkt framhållas, att statskunskapens orientering åt det sociala hållet betecknar en begynnande emancipation från den rena juridiken. JELLINEK (s. 125) har härom sagt några förträftliga ord, som icke böra saknas i vår framställning: ‘Den sociala synen på staten framställer sig som ett nödvändigt korrektiv på den juristiska. Rättsläran påstår, att den suveräna staten är öfverlägsen hvarje annan organiserad makt och underdånig ingen. Men de väldiga krafterna i samhällslifvet, ingalunda verksamma i en medveten [16] viljas form, dem är härskaren själf underdånig. Må juristen därför akta sig att förväxla sin värld af normer, som skulle behärska statslifvet, med detta lif själft! Alla de formål–juridiska föreställningarna om statsallmakt, hvilka i hypotetisk form hafva sitt goda berättigande, försvinna så snart man blickar bort från de juristiska möjligheternas värld och in i samhällets verklighet. Där härska de historiska krafterna, hvilka skapa och förgöra detta statens väsen i sig, som består på andra sidan om all juristisk konstruktion. Om detta väsen gäller hvad HEGEL uttalat I med sitt geniala ord: för statens födelse, lif och död ges‘ intet annat forum än världshistorien, som är världsdomen. Och dess normer äro säkerligen icke juristernas.’”

Rudolf Kjellén, “I. Statens allmänna väsen: Staten som hushåll och samhälle,” Politiska Handbocker III: Staten som Lifsform, Årg. 3, Stockholm, Hugo Gebers Förlag, 1916, 9–38; 11–17; 15–16.

See: “ROUSSEAU’S ‘volonté de tous’ i motsats mot ‘volonté generale’ utgör en ansats därutöfver, SCHLÖZER’S ‘Gemeinde’ likaså, HEGEL och de första socialisterna hafva från andra håll bidragit att utdestillera begreppet som en motsats mot staten, men först vid 1800 talets midt fastslogs en dylik motsättning i begreppet ‘Gesellschaft,’ sådant det framgick ur LORENZ STEIN’S och ROBERT VON MOHL’S grundläggande undersökningar.”

Rudolf Kjellén, “IV. Staten som hushåll, samhälle och regemente (ekonomipolitik, sociopolitik, regementspolitik): Samhällets begrepp och successiva typer,” Politiska Handbocker III: Staten som Lifsform, Årg. 3, Stockholm, Hugo Gebers Förlag, 1916, 125–160; 137–143; 137.

See: “Men dessa af kriminalisterna sjelfva erkända stridigheter emellan ‘ministerfunktionernas natur’ och straffrättens principer, hvilka stridigheter gjort det för alla omöjligt att med bibehållen konseqvens inrangera ministeransv. inom straffrätten — hvar hafva de sin yttersta grund? Skulle tilläfventyrs felet ligga icke i principen, utan i dess tillämpningar, [73] så att en rationell lära om ministeransv. ändock borde falla under en rationell straffrätt? Eller finnes det någon möjlighet att omgärda straffrätten med en principiell gräns, utanför hvilken mitt ämne skulle ligga? Enkel ställer sig den saken för HEGEL, som ur straffrätten bortrensar all orätt som icke är afsigtlig. Om nu detta allt för skarpt strider emot positiv rätt, skall man då nödgas antaga Bindings slutsats, att gränsen är positiv och aldrig kan vara annat?”

Rudolf Kjellén, “I. Om Ministeransvarighetens Princip, IV: §1. Den kriminalistiska teorien,” Studier Rörande Ministeransvarigheten I och II: Academisk Afhandling Som Med Tillstånd af Vidtberömda Filosofiska Fakultetens I Upsala Humanistiska Sektion För Filosofiska Gradens Vinnande Till Offentlig Granskning Framställes, Upsala, Almqvist & Wiksells Boktryckeri–Actiebolag, 1890, 19–149; 68–88; 68–75; 72–73.

4. The public opinion of the vulgar, their received wisdom, makes them into the victims of institutions controlled by inferior ruling classes, especially in the realm of healthcare and retirement pensions, in the name of “cost–savings” and pseudo–rationalization. Indeed, the vulgar embrace their fate at the hands of their corrupt institutions, with blissful ignorance, as they are shuffled into the boneyard of history, — any argument aimed at saving them from their unhappy demise they vehemently reject, in the most violent and thoughtless manner. We must therefore conclude that these “victims” of political and economic irrationalism, and their inferior ruling classes, are themselves together one and the very same thing: With their demise comes the collapse of the political and economic disorder which depended upon their ignorance for its survival.

5. Rudolf Kjellén, “Afslutning om statens ändamål,” Politiska Handbocker III: Staten som Lifsform, Årg. 3, Stockholm, Hugo Gebers Förlag, 1916, 179–183; 182.

6. Rudolf Kjellén, Ibidem, 182.

4/ Kjellénism and Americanism: Downfall of Modernity

1. Henry Kissinger, Diplomacy, New York, Simon & Schuster, 1994, 812.

BIBLIOGRAPHY OF WORKS CITED

Charles Philippe Théodore Andler (1866–1933), “Préface: Hegel,” Le pangermanisme philosophique, 1800 à 1914: Textes traduits de l’Allemand par M. Aboucaya [Claude Aboucaya?], G. Bianquis [Geneviève Bianquis, 1886–1972], M. Bloch [Gustave Bloch, 1848–1923], L. Brevet, J. Dessert, M. Dresch [Joseph Dresch, 1871–1958], A. Fabri, A. Giacomelli, B. Lehoc, G. Lenoir, L. Marchand [Louis Marchand, 1875–1948], R. Serreau [René Serreau], A. Thomas [Albert Thomas, 1878–1932], J. Wehrlin, (Paris: Louis Conard, Librairie–Éditeur, 1917), xxix–xlv.

Mark Bassin, The Gumilev Mystique: Biopolitics, Eurasianism, and the Construction of Community in Modern Russia, (Ithaca/London: Cornell University Press, 2016).

Judah Philip Benjamin (1811–1884), A Treatise on the Law of Sale of Personal Property: With References to the American Decisions and to the French Code and Civil Law, (London: Henry Sweet, 1868).

Robert Bernasconi, “Kant As An Unfamiliar Source of Racism,” Philosophers on Race: Critical Essays, Julie K. Ward & Tommy L. Lott, editors, (Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell, 2002), 145–166.

Louis Couzinet, “Le Prince” de Machiavel et la théorie de l’absolutisme,(Paris: Librairie Nouvelle de Droit et de Jurisprudence, Arthur Rousseau, Éditeur, 1910).

Carl T. Dahlman, “Geopolitics,” Key Concepts in Political Geography, Carl T. Dahlman, Carolyn Gallaher, Mary Gilmartin, Alison Mountz & Peter Shirlow, (London: Sage Publications Ltd., 2009), 87–98.

Christopher Richard Wade Dettling, Stronghold of Hegel: Modern Enemies of Plato and Hegel, (San Francisco, California: The Internet Archive, 2018). [2016]

Christopher Richard Wade Dettling, Americanism Versus Wilfrid Laurier and “Canadian” Liberalism, (San Francisco, California: The Medium Corporation, 2017).

Rachida El Diwani, L’Orient des Lettres Persanes, (Morrisville, North Carolina: Lulu Press, Inc., 2009).

Herbert Albert Laurens Fisher, Bonapartism: Six Lectures Delivered in the University of London, (Oxford, Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press, 1908).

Annemarie Gethmann–Siefert, “Introduction: The Shape and Influence of Hegel’s Aesthetics,” Lectures on the Philosophy of Art: The Hotho Transcript of the 1823 Berlin Lectures, Robert F. Brown, editor and translator, (Oxford, Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press, 2014), 7–176.

Alain Grosrichard, Structure du sérail: La fiction du despotisme asiatique dans l’Occident classique, (Paris: Seuil, 1979).

Aimé Guillon de Montléon (1758–1842), Machiavel commenté par Napoléon Bonaparte, manuscrit trouvé dans la carrosse de Bonaparte, après la bataille de Mont–Saint–Jean, le 15 février 1815, (Paris: Nicolle, 1816).

William Hastie, “Translator’s Introduction,” Kant’s Principles of Politics Including His Essay on Perpetual Peace: A Contribution to Political Science, William Hastie, editor & translator, (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1891), vii–xliv.

Henry Kissinger, Diplomacy, (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994).

Rudolf Kjellén (1864–1922), “Afslutning om statens ändamål,” Politiska Handbocker III: Staten som Lifsform, Årg. 3, (Stockholm: Hugo Gebers Förlag, 1916), 179–183.

Rudolf Kjellén, “Schluß: Der Zweck des Staats,” Der Staat als Lebensform, Zweite Auflage, Übersetzt von Margarethe Langfeldt, (Leipzig: S. Herzel Verlag, 1917), 227–233. [1916]

Nitzan Lebovic, “Introduction: Where It All Began,” The Philosophy of Life and Death: Ludwig Klages and the Rise of a Nazi Biopolitics (Palgrave Studies in Cultural and Intellectual History), (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 1–20.

Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli (1469–1527), The Prince, Luigi Ricci, translator, (Oxford: Humphrey Milford, 1921). [1532]

Michael Joseph Mahony, Essentials of Formal Logic, (New York: The Encyclopedia Press, Inc., 1918).

Michael Joseph Mahony, History of Modern Thought: The English, Irish and Scotch Schools, (New York: Fordham University Press, 1933).

Sean J. McGrath & Joseph Carew, editors, “Introduction: What Remains of German Idealism?” Rethinking German Idealism, Joseph Carew, Wes Furlotte, Jean–Christophe Goddard, Adrian Johnston, Cem Kömürcü, Sean J. McGrath, Constantin Rauer, Alexander Schnell, F. Scott Scribner, Devin Zane Shaw, Konrad Utz & Jason M. Wirth, contributors, (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 1–19.

Panu Minkkinen, contributor, “The Container and the Septic Tank: Statism, Life, and the Geopolitics of Territoriality,” Finnish Yearbook of International Law: 2012–2013, Jarna Petman, editor–in–chief & Maija Dahlberg, Ruth Donner, Sabine Frerichs, Mónica García–Salmones, Waliul Hasanat, Florian Hoffmann, Stephen Humphreys, Samuli Hurri, Henry Jones, Eva Kassoti, Virpi Laukkanen, Rain Liivoja, Tero Lundstedt, Padraig McAuliffe, Samuli Miettinen, Jarna Petman, Maria Pohjanpalo, Patrick C.R. Terry & Silke Trommer, contributors, vol. 23, (Portland, Oregon: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2016), 389–410.

David T. Murphy, The Heroic Earth: Geopolitical Thought in Weimar Germany, 1918–1933, (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1997).

Adriaan Theodoor Basilius Peperzak, Modern Freedom: Hegel’s Legal, Moral, and Political Philosophy (Studies in German Idealism), Reinier Munk, series editor, (Dordrecht: Springer Science+Business Media, B.V., 2001).

Walter Alison Phillips (1864–1950), “Preface,” After Robespierre: The Thermidorian Reaction, Albert Mathiez; Cathrine Alison Phillips, translator, (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1965), v–vii. [1931]

Albert Rivaud (1876–1956), “La diffusion du Kantisme,” Histoire de la philosophie: La philosophie allemande de 1700 à 1850: De l’Aufklärung à Schelling, première partie, tome 5, (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1968), 273–276.

James Thomson Shotwell (1874–1965), “The Political Capacity of the French,” Political Science Quarterly, 24(1 March 1909): 115–126.

Alison Stone, editor, “Philosophy in the Nineteenth–Century,” The Edinburgh Critical History of Nineteenth–Century Philosophy, Howard Caygill & David Webb, general editors, (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2011), 1–12.

Arnold Toynbee, “The Chief Features of the Revolution,” Lectures on the Industrial Revolution of the Eighteenth Century in England, Popular Addresses, Notes, and Other Fragments, Lord Milner, Reminiscence, (London: Longmans, Green, and Company, 1920), 64–73. [1884]

Karl August Wittfogel, Oriental Despotism: A Comparative Study of Total Power, (New Haven/London: Yale University Press, 1967). [1957]

©2019 Christopher Richard Wade Dettling, Rudolf Kjellén Versus Biopolitics: Statecraft as a Form of Life. All rights reserved. This work is only for MEDIUM and the MEDIUM CORPORATION and its users: Users are not permitted to mount this writing on any network servers. No part of this writing may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the author, except for reading and browsing via the World Wide Web.

We wish to thank our benefactors over the years for their goodwill: Humanity benefits greatly from the rise of Americanism in the world.