The Ominous Parallels

The Ominous Parallels
by Leonard Peikoff

The ideas of the Third Reich can be exemplified in a single statement: "We have to be strong enough to live in contradictions;” a quote by Arthur Moeller van den Bruk. The first group to back Hitler was the university professors, and it was through education that the people accepted Nazism as the surrender of I to thou; socialism is sacrificing the individual to the whole.

Piekoff introduces the idea that Nazism took root in Germany as the result of generations of philosophers promoting the principles of Plato. He puts forward the notion that from Plato comes the driving thrust for collectivism and the subsequent evolution of thought that an individual must surrender himself to the State. He draws contrast between Plato and Aristotle and creates a Yin and Yang argument, yet in the introduction spends the majority of his argument on the Patio heritage. He summarizes the basic argument of prominent German philosophers Kant and Hegal. Each philosopher provides an interpretation of Plato, which unconsciously clouds his argument when attempting to put the Aristotle school of logic as the viable alternative. Of which leaves the reader on 2004 pondering a "third way" or possibly a balance between the two or finally the urge for a little cherry picking of both.

I believe it is worth pointing out that many readers will find their own foundations challenged in the beginning. But completing the book is a must. My personal reaction at the beginning of the book; vested largely on 48 years of surrender to the whole, due to the experience of learning through discovery, and that the premise for which I based my logic was errant; which then draws on the selfless character espoused in Plato and flies in the face of Aristotle. However the intriguing element of the book is not in the individual analysis but in the connection of philosophy to politics as he applies ethics and to social questions. So while the reader may have an induced undercurrent of his own individual views of I, he is compelled by the notion that one not only could surrender to society but also to a supreme ruler, right or wrong in his philosophy. To see where the larger picture is going as Piekoff leads you through the history of western philosophy to provide a lesson for today. The challenge is to look at history through the lens of philosophy and analyze of the minds of leading men put into practice. If ethics is adherence to laws we cannot enforce and politics is a construct of ethics on a scalable social playing field; then how does one discern an absolute aspect of truth through cognitive reasoning when the author requires the absence of the observer in the reality equation? Piekoff with the aid of history makes a very good argument in answering this question.

In a caption: The Fuhrer did this by the uniting of god’s representative(s) with the nihilism of a Machiavellian skeptic, and a new phenomena, new at least in its brazen openness, enters the world scene: the absolute of the moment, or the immutable which never stands still, issued at an omniscience that ceaselessly changes its mind.

Aristotle says: A is A regardless of the observer. Plato: internalizes A and processes it. He may add something to it or take something away from it. If the water is blue, what color water does the blind man see. To be a visionary and create something that currently does not exist Platonic logic must prevail. To contend with day-to-day reality, Aristotelian logic must prevail. The only other place on earth of today where I am aware of such a polarized position between Aristotle and Plato is in the extreme fundamental regions of the Middle East and specifically Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and the yet to be formed Palestine. This parallel occurred in the mind of this reader as more looming than what was intended for this book. Also back to the western mind, Peikoff does not amply address man’s aspiration to leave this earth a better place in an Aristotle rationale. Yet I am reminded of Chief Seattle when he said, we should leave this earth just as we found it. He, a mystic did not read either yet finds himself unknowingly in Aristotle’s camp.

Historical events are a good test to the notion that an event can be observed in pure Aristotle methodology. The author spends great effort in the book to make a case for Objectivism -v- Subjectivism. He sites pre WWII Germany as a people: " The reason was millions of non-thugs in a land of poets and philosophers found hope in Hitler, duty bound men who condemned what they saw as selfishness of the Weimar Republic.” In a narrow view the theory may be valid. However with an expanded view of the same history, one would observe the economic hardship imposed upon the German people by the international community. Such hardships may have collectively and singularly led to the same behavior. Desperate people do desperate things. Piekoff does write one sentence to this regard.

The author draws an interesting observation on the concept of ethics. While ethics makes an appeal to ones decision in his own interest, the national ego calls for one to make decisions in the interest of the whole, which evolved to mean state. As there is a theme to connect 19th century philosophers, Peikoff notes that these Platonian thinkers had never envisioned the total dedication to the ideal state. Piekoff sites the ethics of Christianity as the intermediary. The lineage of Augustine to Luther with Kant playing the philosophic accompli as a set up in social mindset, it actually took extremists of the 20th century to take advantage of the willing people, to submit to his thrust for selfish power. A complete circle of philosophy took place; where now modern altruist took over from the medieval Priests the principle of self-sacrifice, then dislodged God from the position of supreme collector, replacing him with other men.

As the book begins to drill into the mindset of 1920s Germany, the philosopher Mills acknowledges capitalism as "not based in any desire for abnegation or renunciation; but it is based on selfish profit”. Never the less he does concede that capitalism ensures most of the time, the actual result of the individual seeking happiness is the happiness of society on the whole. But that point taken to extreme held that a man’s happiness is measured in his noble deeds and that translated means a conversion from the egotistical baseness of man to a pursuit of collectivism. So in effect while the polarized factions of German society opposed capitalism, they found a philosophical definition that brought it to a productive means to a collective agenda without ever addressing or opposing directly the essence of capitalism.

Through the pragmatic philosophy of Dewy, the German mind was molded to one that could only react to that which existed. This philosophy took root in the youth of Germans through the education system, thus producing minds capable and prone to rebel against the status quo. The young Germans were producer of art and music that defied reason, leaving a portrait of the 1920 youth and ominous parallels to youth of our USA 1960s youth. Here is where the book takes on the shape of the title. Peikoff expounds on the American educational systems adaptation of German philosophy and further describes the dissolution of philosophy in our study. But with a bit further reading one becomes suspicious that the parallels proposed might actually parallel other regions of the world or are simply separate parallels. A parallel I began to track while reading was the track where modern "western" man has degenerated to a philosophy based not on the practice of both Plato and Aristotle. We in America are an amalgamation of more than Europeans. We also have the benefit of learning from the German tragedy. This may invoke scientific method to apply theory to experiment whereby the results may debunk or alter Piekoff’s original theory. Yet the author’s conclusion addresses this.

The basic tenants of Objectivism are also embodied in the vision of our Founding Fathers. They had conceived “rights” as entitlements to act to keep the products of one’s actions not as claims to the products of others. “Equality” in original American view, meant the right to every man’s independence – to make and sustain his life by his own effort. Piekoff spent a lot of time chronicling what went wrong and uses this to base a brief remedy to refocus our country on these original ideas. He proposes a restatement of our ideals based on moral and practical standards. The critical ingredient is that man begins with ideas and actually uses his own mind and then put his thought into practice. A society that leads to irrational and nihilistic thinking produces actions that leads one to believe that the world cannot be understood. This has been the history of Europe, which bore out tragic results. There is a reason why all those Hitler-inviting concretes occurred in the same country at the same time; it the same reason why none was present in the United States during the Enlightenment period. The reason lies in the disciplined concern with the fundamentals, because these subsume all derivatives and all social concretes. Philosophy is the factor that moves a nation, shaping every realm and aspect of men’s existence, including their values, their psychology, and in the end, the headlines in the daily newspapers. The faculty of reason makes philosophy possible.

My final reaction to this book is largely in concurrence with the proposed theory. I found it interesting that in Piekoff’s chronology of every preceding philosopher to Rand, he exposed contradictions and an eventual breakdown as it would be but into practice. I practice thinking then acting and then observing the results of my actions. I would then say I am a combination of Aristotle, Dewy, and Plato. There are times where my actions may appear out of sequence or without reason. So you would at times have to change the order of the philosophers. This phenomenon must be left to Kant and company and cannot be ignored. So I endorse a disciplined reason and a social foundation that perpetuate it as a primary philosophy. Objectivism. Questions still remain in testing such an endorsement, but lacking one would be a contradiction. And being human I ask for forgiveness when that discipline breaks down. So that makes me Christian in asking for ones faith that I will correct my errant behavior. I believe the next step from this book is to write a workbook with exercises in this theory. Practice makes perfect.

As a postscript note: I did get an operational definition of the word epistemology. This is a new word for me and I found myself while understanding its meaning from Piekoff, resorting to Webster to actually quote it herein. Oddly enough Webster and Piekoff drew parallel lines for me.

Epistemology: the division of philosophy that investigates the nature of knowledge