BEING
Ontology
Objective Reality
The material world independent of observation (Realism). Grounded in Timpanaro-style materialism, it serves as the baseline for all scientific inquiry and the primary physical constraint on human agency. It asserts that nature remains a prior and independent force.
KNOWING
Foundations
Classical Antiquity
Aristotle and the polis. The pursuit of the 'good life' through virtue ethics and shared civic participation, treating the citizen as a political animal within an inherited social unit. It emphasizes the duties of the individual to the stability of the state.
The Enlightenment
Locke and Kant. The pivotal shift toward individual autonomy and universal reason, rejecting traditional authority in favour of the self-legislating subject and universal rights. It provided the intellectual blueprint for modern individualist and liberal statecraft.
Epistemology
Empiricism
David Hume and the standard of evidence. All knowledge is derived from sensory experience, providing the inductive basis for modern evidence-based policy and scientific falsifiability. It demands that public claims be matched against external material observation.
Idealism
Hegel and the mental construct. The belief that reality is shaped by the structures of the mind or social Geist, marking the first retreat from the objective material base toward linguistic constructivism. It suggests that history is the movement of ideas.
Methodology
Scientific Method
Karl Popper and the mechanic of verification. A process for testing theories against material reality, ensuring knowledge remains public and distinct from ideological dogma or revealed authority. It acts as the mechanical engine for distinguishing fact from fiction.
Phenomenology
Edmund Husserl and the subjective turn. The study of structures of consciousness and meaning, prioritizing internal 'lived experience' over external material metrics or objective data. It places the individual's perception at the centre of the quest for truth.
Material Pivot
Industrial Revolution
Karl Polanyi and the 'Great Transformation'. The transition to manufacturing and the commodification of labour, forcing philosophy to become 'applied' to solve resulting social dislocations. It marks the moment when economic logic began to subsume social needs.
Political Philosophy
Utopian Socialism
Robert Owen and the design of community. The belief that poverty could be solved by engineering idealistic material environments, preceding the rigor of historical materialism. It sought to solve the social question through the strategic planning of physical surroundings.
Marxist Materialism
Karl Marx and the economic base. The theory that the means of production and class relations determine the legal, political, and cultural superstructure of a society. It identifies economic struggle as the primary driver of all historical and social change.
Democratic Socialism
Eduard Bernstein and revisionism. The use of democratic state institutions to protect the metabolic needs of labour and decommodify essential services via reform. It seeks to balance capitalist efficiency with the material security of the working class.
Classical Liberalism
Adam Smith and negative liberty. The defense of property rights and individual freedom from state interference through the mechanism of market self-regulation. It views the individual as a rational actor seeking to maximize utility within a rule of law.
Social Liberalism
Positive liberty and distributive justice (Keynes, Rawls). The belief that positive liberty requires state intervention to ensure the material prerequisites (healthcare, education) for true individual flourishing. It justifies the welfare state as a condition for freedom.
Neoliberalism
Friedrich Hayek and market fundamentalism. The late 20th-century resurgence of privatization and the application of market metrics to all human behaviour and state functions. It seeks to replace political deliberation with the efficiency of the price mechanism.
Traditionalism
Joseph de Maistre. The defense of inherited hierarchy, revelation, and the throne against the abstract universalism and social engineering of the Enlightenment project. It views society as an organic whole that cannot be restructured by human reason alone.
Burkean Conservatism
Edmund Burke and organic change. The prioritizing of stable institutions and 'little platoons' over abstract theory, viewing society as a contract between the dead and the living. It advocates for incremental reform that respects the wisdom of ancestors.
Post-Liberalism
Patrick Deneen and the critique of individualism. Seeks to restore place-based solidarity and shared moral horizons by rejecting the atomization of both the state and the market. It argues that liberal autonomy has dissolved the social units required for virtue.
20th Century Turn
Critical Theory (The Identity Shift)
The Frankfurt School and the cultural turn. A shift from economic class struggle to the critique of cultural and linguistic categories, displacing material analysis with recognition politics. It laid the groundwork for viewing power as embedded in language and identity.
High Modernism and Postmodernism
James C. Scott and Lyotard. The fusion of bureaucratic 'legibility' with linguistic relativism, dismantling material tradition to make populations easier to manage via administrative metrics. It turns the state into a machine for the technical management of social constructs.
IDENTIFYING
Institutional Pivot
Neo-Marxist Class (The Old Left)
Sebastiano Timpanaro. A return to the 'passive element' of materialism, focusing on the biological organism's immutable needs for healthcare, physical safety, and material security. It rejects the linguistic turn in favour of a biological and material baseline.
Managerial Technocracy (Administrative State)
James Burnham and the 'Managerial Revolution'. The rise of a credentialed elite who rule via administrative efficiency in both state and corporate sectors, turning political conflict into technical management. It justifies rule through metrics, audits, and credentialed expertise.
Identitarian Paradigm (The Logic of Power)
Michel Foucault and power-knowledge. A social theory viewing politics as a zero-sum conflict between competing identity groups, replacing class with the logic of representation and policing. It provides the linguistic framework for managerial control over social categories.
BIFURCATED PROLETARIAT
Class Decoupling (Marxist, Material Universalist - Working Class Left)
Adolph Reed and the forensic point of separation. The moment where economic universalism is fully decoupled from the institutional focus on recognition, isolating the working class left. It marks the transition where material redistribution is replaced by symbolic equity.
Professional Managerial Class (The 'Identitarian' New Left)
Barbara and John Ehrenreich. A class of salaried mental workers whose social function is the reproduction of capitalist culture and class relations through the management of social and linguistic categories (DEI, Quotas). It enforces the norms required for administrative control.
Class Decoupling (Material, Traditional, Nationalist - Working Class Right)
Christopher Lasch and the 'revolt of the elites'. A reactive protection of the traditional working class unit, prioritizing national interest and place over abstract managerialism. It seeks to anchor political loyalty in local communities rather than global systems.