No.1990
I minored in philosophy because it seemed like quick easy path to earn study credits. It was, took me less than a year to complete that minor. Then the damn thing stuck on me big time, mostly thanks to political philosophy course which could be called massive eye-opener in many ways (that there is more than one idea of what is justice really shook me to core, it was unthinkable before). Another shaker course was classics, where Anscombe dissects what intention really means. Sounds boring but holy batman it was interesting! Scored straight A's on both courses.
Then I filled the blanks left by education, reading things university didn't include in curricula (careful with these books, kids!). I read fascist philosophy straight from source (Giovanni Gentile) and traditionalism (Julius Evola) and new right (Hans-Hermann Hoppe). Oddly enough, minor didn't cover even Nietzsche, so him too. Main drive was and is pure curiosity, as entire other half of political spectrum was dismissed from curricula. Evola's "Ride the Tiger" was another massive shaker. Not because it's particularly good in analytical sense, but because it was like "waaaah?? this kind of ideas can be formulated on paper in coherent way??". So off the whack of what is considered "normal" so to speak. Also the first in this category I've read.
During the past year I've been reading into neo-reactionary philosophy (Nick Land and Mencius Moldbug mostly). Considering how new neo-reactionary thought is, I think it spawned in early 00's, it's also most fascinating. Moldbug's "Open letter for open-minded liberals" (excellent read, all of them) is intended as easy text for unwashed, but I think it still prerequires philosophical foundation (Anscombe, Russell and Nozic/Rawls suffices) to fully appreciate. What makes neo-reactionary thought so interesting is timing and method. It is basically highly amped version of critical theory without any goal other than trashing the entire whig history and associated philosophies. The best part of it is that it all makes oddly much sense. The timing is interesting because it reinforces the central tenet of Cathedral. I mentioned that my minors curricula didn't include right-wing philosophies. Why? Likely because it is not considered important and there is limited time for humans to study something, so the faculty needs to select what to give students to read. Obviously the things that are considered most important are the philosophies with most impact today, which are... yup, we have identified the self-perpertuating cycle here. Add to that notion from Evola that societies are constructed from above and voilá, nous avons l'Eglisé! Why early 21st century? It is no coincidence neo-reactionary thought popped up in Internet age, as we can clearly see from my example. Defying 300 years of that perpetual cycle requires access to information outside the Cathedral. That is my hypothesis at this point, again supported merely by one more anecdote. University library had one book by Giovanni Gentile, in storage, by order, printed in 60's. Memory holes do exist, but they are not considered bad. Things just go out of fashion so to speak, so obviously as things drop off curricula less people get exposed to ideas outside the cycle, letting the cycle to continue. Again, my initial hypothesis, certainly full of holes and brainfarts at this point.
I think that neo-reactionary thought will end up as one of the big things to happen in field of philosophy by 2030's solely on basis that it is solid, interesting and very different yet familiar. The complete trashing of past 300 years sure makes it easy to label as edgy trilby stuff, but also so very interesting. Check it out. But at least read Russell's "Problems of philosophy" before it for some foundation.
