Aesthetic Origins: Peter Viereck and the Imaginative Sources of PoliticsJay Patrick Starliper While it is gaining in academic prominence, discussion of the imagination is too often neglected. Society is dangerously unaware of the intimate relationship between culture and politics, ethics and aesthetics. Challenging this, Jay Patrick Starliper examines the imagination through the lens of the work of Peter Viereck and other likeminded thinkers. The result is a philosophical deconstruction that demonstrates why books are bullets.In 1941, before Nazi barbarism was public knowledge, a young Peter Viereck published Metapolitics: From Wagner and the German Romantics to Hitler. In it, Viereck attacked the diabolical spiritual foundations of National Socialism. He made the ostensibly absurd claim that a certain shade of romanticism was the ethical foundation of a German revolt against decency. According to Viereck, Nazism was the culmination of over a century and a half of bad culture, the result of an idyllic imagination. Starliper warns that the same diseased imagination that culminated in gas chambers and guillotines is subtly affecting the way millions of people view the world today and that, without the inspiration of an elevated aesthetic, civilization will not survive.In the spirit of Edmund Burke and Irving Babbitt, Viereck's insight into the ethical and political force of aesthetics provides a much needed critique of contemporary civilization. |
From inside the book
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... conservatism proper to modern America and Europe . In his 1950 book Conservatism Revisited , he did so by discussing ... American circumstances and problems . Viereck's earlier stress on the importance of the arts and the ...
... conservatism proper to modern America and Europe . In his 1950 book Conservatism Revisited , he did so by discussing ... American circumstances and problems . Viereck's earlier stress on the importance of the arts and the ...
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... modern conservatism. Kirk's notion of conservatism was very similar to Viereck's. He too regarded issues of morality and culture as central to any genuine conservatism, and he attributed great significance to the role of the imagination ...
... modern conservatism. Kirk's notion of conservatism was very similar to Viereck's. He too regarded issues of morality and culture as central to any genuine conservatism, and he attributed great significance to the role of the imagination ...
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... American post– WorldWar II conservatism. It advocated anticommunism, strictly limited constitutional government, and ... American thought called Conservatism: From Adams to Churchill (later renamed Conservative Thinkers: From John ...
... American post– WorldWar II conservatism. It advocated anticommunism, strictly limited constitutional government, and ... American thought called Conservatism: From Adams to Churchill (later renamed Conservative Thinkers: From John ...
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... America's future . The American intellectual conservative movement largely followed the course recommended by Buckley and National Review . For this conservatism , ideas tended to be chiefly political weapons . Its main concern was not ...
... America's future . The American intellectual conservative movement largely followed the course recommended by Buckley and National Review . For this conservatism , ideas tended to be chiefly political weapons . Its main concern was not ...
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... American conservatism. Kirk hoped to influence especially the younger readers of National Review. He was intellectually rather tolerant to begin with and was not prone to push intellectual disagreements to the point of rupture, a ...
... American conservatism. Kirk hoped to influence especially the younger readers of National Review. He was intellectually rather tolerant to begin with and was not prone to push intellectual disagreements to the point of rupture, a ...
Contents
Arbitrary Caprice | |
The Crux of Civilization | |
Ahistorical Rationality and Human Nature | |
Will and the Ethical Imperative of Inner Action | |
The Moral Imagination | |
The DreamNexus | |
An Imaginative Conservatism | |
The Standardless Threat to Liberty | |
The Unadjusted Incarnation of Order | |
Epilogue Strict Wildness a Love That Transfigures | |
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Aesthetic Origins: Peter Viereck and the Imaginative Sources of Politics Jay Patrick Starliper No preview available - 2014 |
Common terms and phrases
abstract aesthetic American American conservatism archetypes aristocracy artists Babbitt beauty Burke cash-nexus Claes G concrete conservatism conservative creative culture decent Democracy and Leadership dream-nexus economic Edmund Burke emotional ethical action ethical content ethical standards ethos existence existential experiential German German romanticism Germany's happiness healthy Hitler human condition human experience human nature ideas important indispensable individual inner check insight inspired intellectual intuitive Irving Babbitt Jahn Kirk lack legitimate liberal liberty living mass mass-man means Metapolitics moral absolutes moral imagination National Review Nazi Nazism neoconservatism Nietzsche overadjusted particular Paul Elmer person Peter Viereck philosophical Plato poetry political positivistic preserve psychological public imagination quality of imagination reality reason restraint Revolution romantic rootless roots Russell Kirk sense society soul spiritual stereotypes symbols tradition truth unadjusted understanding universal unwritten constitution values viable Viereck affirms Viereck avers Viereck believed Viereck refers Voegelin Volk Wagner Wagnerian