I realize that in the pre-Nazi Germany the philosopher
Max Scheler clearly saw the danger of the fascist tendencies
(youth movement, radical conservatives) and of the dictatorial
tendencies (Marxism, Nazi).
He pictured an integration of vital drive and spirit:
the Allmensch, the Total-Man.
"The man who is most deeply rooted in the darkness of the earth
and nature....... the man who, simultaneously, as a spiritual person,
in his consciousness of self, reaches the outmost heights of the
luminous world of ideas, that man is approaching the idea of Total-Man,
and wherewith, the idea of the substance of the very source of the world,
through a constantly growing interpenetration of spirit and drive."
(Scheler)
"The person who thinks most deeply, loves what is most alive." (Hoelderlin)
So the process of a universal, cosmic becoming in time has two
increasingly mutually penetrating poles:
an uncreated vital drive, or impulsion, and spirit.
Without life, which is the form of impulsion, spirit is shown to be
impotent to bring anything into existence. Spirit needs realizing factors
such as life-conditions, history, economics, geo-politics, social and
geographic conditions that make possible for spirit to realize ideas with
them.
This Total-Man (Allmensch) seems quite different from Nietzsche's
Transhuman (Ubermensch) and perhaps similar to the Renaissance
concept (Leonardo da Vinci & co.).
Anyway I really do not know how much these
speculations are useful.
About Max Scheler
http://members.aol.com/fringsmk/Scheler1.htm
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