TOM NAIRN
Scottish Marxian
author:
Tom Nairn writes at length about the modern British state,
and about the appropriation of state power in Britain by an English
"self-regulating elite group" which established a firm hold over
England and, later, Britain and its empire. It is this group which
holds power over the decaying, yet still-intact state to this day, he
argues. See Tom Nairn, The Break-up of Britain: Crisis and
Neo-nationalism, 28.
Nairn on nationalism
and identity:
"Identity
tends of course to be a term of approval. In the psychologistic terms
which inform so much discussion of nationalism, 'identity' is what
frustrated nationalities want and nation-states possess. What this
myth refers to is presumably the standard type of developmentasl
social structure asociated with national-based states . . . In this
sense, Scotland appears as a highly developed society (as distinct
from simply being part of a larger developed area, the United Kingdom)
which, nevertheless does not possess all the standard fitments of
development."
See Nairn, 172.
~~~~~~~~~~
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
"God is Dead!"
Yes, that was Nietzsche's
most famous assertion, by which he meant that the notion of God could
no longer sit at the center of Western consciousness, Christianity no
longer meant anything, and the idea of immortality and absolute laws
had gone, vanished, forever. Wild, huh?
Well, Nietzsche was a pretty wild guy, a radical German philosopher
who held that we are driven by vitalism ("bio-psychological drives")
which are repressed only by our manners and morals. The people who
really make and control the world are the ones who throw off these
manners and morals and realise their true drives: thus the
Ubermensch (Superman) is born. (NB: More than a generation
later, Nietzsche's ideas were ripped off and altered by the Nazis to
suit their needs; but FYI, the ideas themselves were not directly
related to the fascist philosophy of Nazism.)
Although he died at the dawn of the 20th century, Nietzsche's
writings were a major influence on such movements as existentialism,
French post-structuralism,
and deconstruction.
He was inspired primarily by German Romanticism and Darwin's theory of
evolution, among other things. He parted from the Enlightenment
tradition of human progress as a grand, self-righting process. (An
idea first championed by Milton.)
Instead, he began the move toward relativism and
post-structuralism.
Nietzsche argued that getting a handle on truth/reality
is always difficult (whose truth are we dealing with, for example).
Also:
See also:
CT. Author Index
Nn
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