Beschreibung
I am not a political scientist, rather a philosopher by trade and inclination. My earlier professional and personal intellectual interests have been mostly directed to literary matters (leading to my two books on Marx as structurally onto-poetic) and, then, predicted to ontological or fundamental philosophical subjects (I published the first critical book on one of Spain's leading philosophers, Xavier Zubiri). However, as a human being, an intellectual and a citizen my interests have been, and still are, concerned with political issues, particularly political discourse as a condition for any sound polity. In specific, the philosophical dimensions of political ideologies have been the focus guiding my attempts to understand contemporary political life. For instance, just what is "ideology"? This is a question I discuss in my first chapter within the framework a societal and cultural theory. My analytical approach owes much to the theoretical influence of the French political scientist, Pierre Manent ("le problème theologique-politique") relative to the origins and evolution of modern political from Machiavelli through Locke (others too) to Tocqueville, particularly in the context of post-medieval city formation. Following from afar (Europe) political discourse in the USA, I have encountered much confusion and ambiguity regarding the usage of terms such as "liberal", "progressive" and "leftist"; and I mean just limiting myself to those on the conservative side, a side I used to fully share. Consequently, the personal origin and, thus very first objective of my study, was directly aimed at gaining clarity for myself. Once having obtained my first objective, I judged that my thoughts would be of value in a book form for a general readership, which became my second objective. The second objective is the prime reason for presenting my insights as a prima facie study. In other words, I have sought to organize, systematize and expound my insights in a way accessible to a general readership. On a philosophical level, I judged that my goal required from me a preliminary reflection on methodology, considerations adequate for a successful clarification of limited scope. The methodological insight obtained is discussed in Chapter 1 and establishes the prima facie limits of my effort. The reflection on methodology also enabled me, among various things, to resolve the problems caused by contradicting analyses of various conservative thinkers, the resolution of which followed from my adaptation of the hermeneutic approach developed by Susanne Langer in her Philosophy in a New Key. In course of applying the fundamental idea from Langer to the the somewhat chaotic subject matter, I found that I now possessed a tool with which to construct a comprehensive classification of various ideologies that are subsumed under an unsuspected unity. In summary, the use of the key idea enabled me to integrate structurally such disparate ideologies as found in French revolutionary thought, Marx' Marxism, the New Leftism of post-'68ers, postmodernism and American Liberalism, along with insight into the ideology sustaining the demographic suicide of the West. This initially unsuspected product of my reflection generated the specific textural objective, which I will now outline.
