Skip to content

Nazi activism and the two-world philosophy of Kant

Professor L. G. Tirala, a philosophically trained Nazi ideologist, sees beyond the obvious romanticist sources of this attitude. He traces the Nazi activism to the two-world philosophy of Kant (which in turn he ascribes to Kant’s “Aryan” nature). Kant’s view, he writes, is:

“The essence of the world is richer and deeper than the world of appearance.” The world of activity and action is subject to different laws from the world of appearance. . . . [T]his primacy of action, of the world of action—in the case of Kant, especially the world of ethical action—arises from a primary predisposition of the Aryan race which does not derive from the quibbling, hairsplitting intellect [“klüglerischen Verstand”]. All Teutonic men of science have acknowledged this truth more or less consciously in a primacy of action over pure thinking. The deed is all, the thought nothing!

Unreservedly accepting such a viewpoint, Nazis and Fascists alike frequently state that it is a matter of indifference whether the doctrines fed to the masses are true or false, right or wrong, sane or absurd.

Pin It on Pinterest