For an Order in History
* Book: On Order in History. by Feliks Koneczny.
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"Translated into English by Stanislaw Kacsprzak."; copies available on eBay.
Description
"This is a short summary of the whole teaching on civilizations by Feliks Koneczny written shortly before his death. He believed that a view of history must be a posteriori, based on facts. When towards the end of his life, Koneczny asked whether there is any order in history analogous to that perceived in the natural sciences, he was not searching for some objective historical course leading inevitably to progress. He was looking only for a key to interpret social reactions that appear when conflicting ethical models of life meet. "History is governed by abstracts", he said, the ideas that people have about what they want to do. These abstracts he referred to as the quincunx, there being five of them, two spiritual, the notions of good and truth, two material, health and prosperity and one in between, beauty, linking the spiritual with the material. All civilizations have special attitudes to this quincunx."
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Contents
DISTINCTIVENESS OF SPIRIT 7
THE QUINCUNX AND CIVILISATION 12
A BIOLOGICAL VIEW 17
DEVELOPMENTAL ORDER 23
TWO PRINCIPAL LINES OF THOUGHT 28
INEQUALITY 33
FEATURES OF SEVEN CIVILISATIONS 40
SYNTHESIS OF RELIGIONS 52
MIXTURES 57
INFERIORITY PREVAILS 64
DEVELOPMENT OF MORALITY 71
LAWS OF HISTORY AND THE QUESTION OF PROVIDENCE 78
Excerpts
Feliks Koneczny:
"Order in nature was discovered long ago. Shall we not discover it in history? Only the adherents of dualism will want to take steps in this direction. Naturalistic monism rules out the very need of such investigations, for, if all is nature, and the human spirit merely a higher level of the material order, it suffices to know the laws of nature. In accepting monism one thereby acknowledges that matters of the human spirit are subject to the laws of nature: and these are known. This is the most important dispute in the sciences. Naturalistic monism and dualism are merging into philosophy and (to which no attention is paid) the science of law.
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A spirit will not admit of adjustment to a mechanism. An advance in a machine consists in a simplification, and we thus increasingly control the forces of nature. It is quite the opposite in the world of the spirit: an advance is simultaneously a complication. Even private life is becoming ever more complicated, to say naught of social life. It is ever more difficult to orientate oneself in an increasingly complex reality.
A spirit will not admit of mechanisation, for it did not arise from a development in nature! Hence there are two distinct energies, the physical and the spiritual; a dualistic order reigns on earth. Monism is contrary to reality, for man is made up of body and soul. We shall not explain the distinctiveness of the spiritual world, its aptitude for action and purposeful activity over the course of generations, other than by affirming the existence of the human soul. It is within the souls of each one of us that decisions are made as to which forces we desire to yield to, which to oppose. So we have free will.
As a soul is not subject to the laws of nature, death does not pertain to it. It is superior to matter, and it is not, in any way, just the most perfect manifestation of it. From this we conclude that the soul’s being is not dependent on the body’s being, and that it does not cease to exist on the death of the body, that is, that the soul is immortal."