 G'day mate. I got a new book here The other guard that failed Hence Hans Freyja and the de-radicalization of German conservatism. I Spent 30 bloody bucks Buying this book That's what I did for you mate. I dug deep I spent $31 Okay All right come closer We need to have a nice cozy little chat here All right mate So why did some of the best and brightest of Weimar intellectuals advocate totalitarian solutions to the problems of Liberal Democratic capitalist society How did their radical conservatism contribute to the rise of national socialism? What roles did they play in the Third Reich? How did their experience of totalitarianism lead them to recast their social and political thought? This biography of Hans Freyja prominent German sociologist and German political ideologist is a case study of Intellectuals and a guard that failed not on the political left, but on the right where its significance has previously been overlooked So is this where's this from? Yeah, Broward County Library But it's mine now Paid good money for this book mate Hans Freyja and other radical conservative intellectuals Regarded the characteristic processes of modernity is leading to the decline of collective purpose An individual meaning during the Weimar Republic They advocated an all-encompassing state which would ensure a political and cultural integration A disillusionment during the Third Reich set the stage for the acceptance of liberal democracy and welfare state capitalism on the German intellectual Right after 1945 So this book explores the interaction of political ideology and academic social science in democratic and totalitarian regimes Transformation of German conservatism by the experience of national socialism and the ways tension between former collaborators and former opponents of National socialism continued to mold West German intellectual life in the post-war decades So this book came out in 1987 Pretty exciting stuff I'm much more motivated to read books that I've spent good money on I've got hundreds of books downloaded but This is a book about intellectuals and totalitarianism So is it accurate to call the Nazi state totalitarian because if you didn't bother the Nazi state they didn't Interfer with your life nearly as much as say the communists interfered with the lives of the common people It's about the transformation of the German intellectual right. So yeah, what happened? I was interested what what happened to the German intellectual right after World War two So there's this recurring pattern of among modern intellectuals That they go through periods of attraction to totalitarian solutions and then disillusionment So the one common thing that all these intellectuals have in common. I believe is they're all secular I think if you're religious You don't yearn for totalitarian solutions nearly as much So the emergence of a successful democratic political culture in Germany out of the ashes of a totalitarian regime Interested me What was the role of the Nazi past in shaping the political identity of later joint generations of German intellectuals? So the specter of past misdeeds haunted the German right Okay, so who the hell is Hans Freier? I'd never heard of him Okay, so the name has little resonance Among contemporary English-speaking social theorists or historians among the younger generations of Germany is virtually forgotten It he was perhaps the most articulate Historically self-conscious thinker associated with the movement for a conservative revolution in the 1920s He was one of the most prestigious intellectuals to lend his support to national socialism In the years immediately before Hitler's a session to power Here's one of the most respected voices of German conservatism during the first decade and half of the Federal Republic of West Germany In the years after World War one his status as a social theorist was acknowledged by intellectuals as diverse as George Simmelcar Mannheim Erbrett Makuza and Talcott Parsons title of his book of 1931 revolution from the right Passed into the political discourse the Weimar Republic After Hitler's rise to power, Hans Freier became president of the German sociological association Head of one of the most eminent institutes of historical research in Europe The history of Europe that he published in 1948 was admired by Arnold Toinbee It was regarded as a high point of post-war historical consciousness in Germany His widely read theory of the current age of 1955 Contributed to the reformulation of conservative thought in West Germany So many of the most influential West German sociologists and historians 1950s and 60s were students of Hans Freier, but he's virtually forgotten today So this is the work of intellectual history What can we learn about this historical time period from World War one to the 1960s in Germany? By looking at the life and times of Hans Freier So you can imagine after World War two there was quite a bit of tension between intellectuals who Supported and those who opposed the Nazis now they were working together Okay, what is it about intellectuals and totalitarianism? For all generation of European intellectuals who came of age at the end of the 18th century the prosent promise and disappointment of the French Revolution Marked a turning point in their development In the early years after the French Revolution many intellectuals from across Europe But they saw in France the creation of a new type of politics that would restore a sense of collective meaning in a society divided By the characteristic processes of modernity so with the decline of organized religion a lot of people look to politics to Try to give society a coherent sense of meaning It was this generation of Hegel of Coleridge of Wordsworth and Saint Simone in France who formulated a critique of societies characterized by an advanced division of labor market economies and a lessening of traditional religious and political authority And this critique remains recognizable to the present day So what were the alternatives to a market economy? So after the bloody French Revolution some intellectuals turned away from revolutionary solutions to their dilemmas Some turn to less radical politics some turn to realms beyond the Political the high hopes of many intellectuals for the French Revolution followed by their shared disappointment the first of waves of attraction to and disenchantment with radical political movements and This pattern of attraction to totalitarianism then disillusionment It's repeated itself With greater tragedy and greater force in the 20th century The solutions that many intellectuals proposed grew more radical in the 20th century more all-encompassing They wanted a totally integrated society, which is really any possible the homogeneous society Society in which all would subordinate their egos to some shared belief or goal Are trying to restore a sense of meaning to the individual and purpose to society as a whole so meaning of purpose traditionally came through religion Alexis de Tocqueville wrote man's admiration of absolute government is proportionate to the contempt He feels for those around him So contempt for the present combined with the hope of a totally integrated society in the future Their 20th century intellectuals to support totalitarianism They wanted the political to embrace the whole realm of human existence Wanted to treat all human thought and action as having societal Significance and politics was the art of applying this philosophy to the organization of society So they wanted this political philosophy to reign supreme over all areas of life. So a little bit like traditional Judaism, which is an approach to life that affects everything in life It's it's total. So they wanted a total state now just because You had movements that aim for a total state such as perhaps fascism Communism doesn't mean they achieve that So certainly in Italy and Germany wasn't nearly as much of a total state Totalitarian regime as it was in the Soviet Union and even there it wasn't total So totalitarian politics are often portrayed as rising without the efforts of intellectuals But totalitarianism has long existed as an idea and an ideal Developed by intellectuals because the idea of a totally integrated society looks very compelling on paper And it's attracted the best and the brightest And in the long run few major intellectuals who once advocated totalitarian solutions The problems of modernity were pleased by the behemoth they helped to conjure up So were intellectuals important to the rise of Nazism or would Nazism have risen without the Nazism was primarily a party of the working class so the guard that failed that refers to a collaborative autobiographical volume by Arthur Kessler Andre Jied, Richard Wright, Steven Spender, Lewis Fisher about their Attraction to communism and then disillusionment with communism So the other guard that failed is about intellectuals on the right Yes, this is an ASMR stream Intellectuals who pin their hopes on movements on the totalitarian left and right Often drew from common traditions and from one another Informulating their common but radical critique of liberal democratic capitalism So Hans Freyre and George Lucas Had their intellectual roots in neo-hagian Hegellianism both with students of George Simmel both influenced by Karl Schmidt man of the right So water Benjamin Otto Kirchheimer were deeply influenced by a Karl Schmidt's D Litage de legitimation of contemporary liberal democracy so intellectuals on the left would look for a total solution to the needs of the proletariat Which is not race-based and intellectuals on the right would look for needs for the Volk So that means the people or a particular nation that is race-based that's a major divergence between intellectuals on the left and the right and The origin of this divergence lies in the 18th century It depends on different answers to the question What is the source of the purposes that men ought to hold in common and of the institutions that embody those purposes? Say those who believe that the ultimate source of such purposes lay in reason They were men of the left If you think that we can just arrive at a Total solution for society through use of reason You're going to be on the left So you call this the party of the Enlightenment the party of humanity That's how the philosophers thought of themselves as the party of humanity So they shifted reason from the direction of the methods of natural science to social science They thought the universe was rational So the practice of enlightened absolutism revolutionary republicanism and the application of the Napoleonic code to non-French nations within the Napoleonic Empire They all shared the premise that because men were fundamentally the same everywhere There were universal goals and universalizable institutions. So this is very much a belief on the left people on the right I believe that different people have different gifts So this is a leftist universalism It's a commitment to a proletariat that knows no fatherland. So it's not race-based so because it's not race-based because it's not based on blood and soil so this Descendant of the Enlightenment this whether it's communism or some variant It's this premise and promise of universalism that made left-wing totalitarianism such as communism disproportionately attractive to intellectuals who sprang from ethnic and religious minorities Now what about intellectuals on the right? If you add some ascension today Come on, mate. Here have some ascension So refreshing Do you like my new bed? My new mattress Very pretty color, wouldn't you say? All right, mate. Let's go back here. Got a jolly good book to share with you I hope you're as excited as I am Spent 30 bucks on this book Okay, what about the intellectuals on the right? So they descended from what was called the counter enlightenment They form no party what they shared was a skepticism towards the central dogmas of the Enlightenment The belief that the ultimate ends of all men at all times were identical and could be apprehended by universal reason So the orientation of the thinkers of the counter enlightenment was usually historicist and particularist so talking about people like Paul Godfried historicist means that to Understand what's happening in the world. You have to understand it in its particular time period and its particular circumstance And that because times and circumstances are always changing and the way people will react is always going to be changing because they're going to be facing different incentives Then particularist so they Understand that different people have different predispositions. So the left is universalist. The right is particularist Think Paul Godfried here So thinkers of the counter enlightenment the historicist and particularist I am historicist. I am particularist I come from a particular orientation to life. I come from the world of orthodox Judaism So they regard the attempt to discover universal standards of conduct as foolish in the attempt to impose such standards as a threat to particular historical courtiers From which individuals derive their sense of purpose and meaning and Cohesion so the thinkers of the counter enlightenment regard different cultures different peoples as both inherently different and Valuable so the the universalist cosmopolitan outlook according to the thinkers of the counter enlightenment Destroyed everything that makes you human makes you yourself So people thinkers on the right See people as born into a group primarily not as individuals with Inalienable rights, but members of a group members of a tribe. That's the right-wing approach to life We're not primarily individuals. We're primarily members of groups and so Well, there were no more No way Organized in their politics and they belong to no party the thinkers of the counter enlightenment resisted the attempt Rational reorganization of society based upon universalist and rationalist ideals So the central stream of the Western tradition has been the problems of value were in principle soluble Thinkers the counter enlightenment Differed from that They believe the traditions which give a group its identity Which are expressed in its culture were not rationally grounded So nationalism is not rationally grounded. It is a non-rational belief that a Particular people to which you belong It's really your just your extended family. And so thinkers of the counter enlightenment again. These are not Primarily religious people. They believe that moral order is a product of conventions that varies from group to group So thinkers of the left thought that we could all agree on right and wrong Thinkers of the counter enlightenment enlightenment thinkers on the right Saw that moral standards would vary from group to group So liberalism cosmopolitanism socialism communism Actually came from the enlightenment conservatism nationalism fascism came off on the counter enlightenment So the counter enlightenment wanted to promote tolerance based upon a respect for difference in diversity To claim the totalitarianism of the left descended it from the rationalist universalist legacy of the Enlightenment While the totalitarianism of the right descended from the historicist a particularist legacy of the counter enlightenment It's not to argue that these 20th century phenomena were caused by 18th century antecedents But they were descended from them So prior allegiance to either the Enlightenment or the counter enlightenment There's a fact that not only Where you place your hopes such as fascism or communism? But on the choices you make after your disillusionment with totalitarian solutions And you won't hear ever heard of harm's friar is a big deal among German intellectuals between about 1920 and 1970 so For intellectuals in interwar Europe between World War one and World War one whether to commit oneself to communism or to fascism Dependent on whether you identified yourself more with the Enlightenment or with the counter enlightenment So when they became disillusioned They maintained their attachment to the universalism and rationalism of the Enlightenment and remained on the left They typically evolved into liberals and social Democrats those who became disillusioned with fascism Remain sceptical of the universalism and rationalism of the Enlightenment And they came to Accept liberal democracy So Hans Freier was part of a social circle of radical conservative intellectuals Also in his circle was Karl Schmidt Social theorist Arnold Geeland the philosopher Martin Heidegger and the writer Ernst Junger Among the important trends in recent Anglo-American moral and political philosophy has been the rediscovery of the major Arguments of the counter enlightenment. I think it's bred in the Enlightenment tradition but aware of its limitations So what I'm reading from here was published in 1987 Put your guard rods down guys Set up straight just looking through the footnotes here to find the good stuff for you those who are surprised at the suggestion that men of great intellectual stature may have been a conservative or even radically conservative even Sympathetic toward national socialism should recall that in interwar Germany the great majority of critical intellectuals as well as conformist academics Were on the political right that's interesting. I didn't know that most Intellectuals and academics into war Germany were on the right The identification of the majority of German intellectuals with the left is a phenomenon of the post-World War two era So as a reaction to the failures of Nazism Intellectuals in Germany moved steadily to the left after World War two For many German intellectuals who came of age in the late 1940s and 1950s The link of former radical conservative intellectuals like Hans Freyre with national socialism So to discredit German intellectual conservatism There because Nazism was so awful. They wanted nothing to do with right-wing politics so like their counterparts on the left the right wing intellectuals who supported or Favorably predisposed towards Nazism Usually quite disappointed with the reality The path to disillusionment is rarely smooth For Freyre those liking disillusionment with Nazism Had to a moderation of their earlier critical analyses of modern liberal pluralist societies So lives and influence of those who'd supported national socialism and communism Of course did not come to sudden stop the end of these regimes So let's talk about the continuity among the political economic and social elites from the interwar German period to the post-war Republic of West Germany So Hans Freyre represents the joining of two streams of European thought and culture rarely seen as part of the same intellectual landscape namely radical conservatism and Sociology, so one would normally think of sociologists as being overwhelmingly on the left Did not used to be that way Samuel Huntington says we should define conservatism neither as an inherent substantive set of eternal values and institutions Or is the ideology of a particular group but rather Positionally it's the ideology of those who any in any situation of fundamental political Discord defend at the existing order. So historically Right-wing orientation is to defend the existing order. The left-wing orientation is to seek change Conservatism Huntington writes is the intellectual rationale of the permanent Institutional prerequisites of human existence and the foundations of society are threatened Conservative ideology reminds men the necessity of some institutions and the desirability of the existing ones So the right-wing impulse is always to restore order and to protect order and to defend order and to define order You can judge someone's politics Often by just walking into their room if it is clean and neat well organized. They're most likely on the right if it is messy filled with posters of movie stars and rock stars is most likely someone of the left So when the foundations of society Seen as decayed beyond restoration The radical conservative ideology reminds men of the desirability of strong institutions and the necessities of new ones. So The right-wing Orientation is always towards order protecting order creating order defending order Extending order So what distinguishes the conservative from the radical conservative radical conservative sees that we may need radical revolutionary change to restore The virtues of the past to one radical conservative described himself as too conservative not to be radical and another Conservative means creating things that are worth preserving so the thirst for order is Is a defining characteristic of right-wing thought Another characteristic of right-wing thought is the need for authority for the sacred of a continuity with the past in the life of the individual and of society So traditional conservatives seek to shore up the authority of existing institutions But for the radical conservative these institutions may lack authority. It may be Incapable or unworthy of getting the job done So they may revolt against existing institutions to return to the values of the past so radical conservatives and conservatives share in common a Commitment to the rule and role of institutions, but radicals will seek to create new institutions Will exert a far stronger hold on the individual than existing institutions Radical conservatives look to state power to reach their goals These aims typically include the reassertion of collective Particularity meaning of the nation the vogue the race the people The community of the faithful against a two-fold threat the internal threat of foreign ideas Such as the free market as the arbiter of express preferences parliamentary democracy the pluralism of value systems The capitalism and liberal democracy promote and then the threat of international socialism Which is similarly dangerous to an organized Collective particularity of people a vogue So external threats arise from powerful foreign states They're using their power to spread national social to spread socialism communism And ideas and institutions that are perceived by the conservative as corrosive and degenerate So radical conservatism Opposes liberalism poses Marxism it opposes capitalism and parliamentary democracy Advocates technological modernization So the defense against the courtroom political effects of modernity on the body politic It's not to require a homeopathic absorption of the organizational and technological hallmarks of modernity so people tend to think that modernization is Is is Opposed to the radical right This this view assumes that economic Technological processes required for greater productivity require increasing liberty equality and Universal fraternity radical conservatism shares much intellectual terrain with the thinkers from Auguste Comte to Emile Durkheim From George Hegel to Max Weber For a while the conservative critics of the French and industrial revolution sought to reassert the authority of Christianity and of existing institutions But the secular sociologists of the right critical of existing institutions an incapable of belief in the divine origins of Christianity Sought to forge new institutions that could command authority in a new faith that would serve as a substitute for Christianity So in the 1920s as leading German sociologist attempted to professionalize their discipline Hans Freier became a spokesman for those who sought to restore sociology to its radical activist origins And he wanted to recapture the legacy of Machiavelli Machiavelli was a common intellectual ancestor of both radical conservatism and the tradition of sociological thought So with capitalism rise of capitalism and the pursuit of self-interest There arose on the radical right this need to try to create a social solidarity through active participation in new institutions of collective purpose So they were trying to recreate a virtuous community under the conditions of modern society without reference to God and to Jesus And they believe that these new institutions would only be successful If they were shaped for a particular people for an ethnic particularity So Freier wanted to create a community of purpose devoted to the collective reassertion of particularity through the use of state power So Hans Freier came to embrace national socialism Out of a conviction that the movement embodied popular refusions in the nature of slogans But offered a plausible solution to the dilemmas bequeathed by the preceding generation of high social theorists He was an advocate of debodinization so an acute awareness of the costs and limits of modernity and A consideration of how those costs might be minimized and modernity overcome was a central concern of Hans Freier's thought Both his radical and his moderate conservative phases So he's straddled the roles of both social scientists and ideologists His writings were addressed to and read by both fellow academic social scientists and a larger public of politically concerned readers His work served as a conduit for the movement of ideas between ideological settings Outside the Academy and systematic social thought within it Okay, now getting ready for chapter one on this book here by Jerry Z. Mueller The other guard that failed Hans Freier and the deradicalization of German conservatism