Slavic vs Germanic thinking.... and the philosophical differences

Right on, Polson! I concur one hundred percent.

Slavic "civilization" might therefore be subsumed under Western civilization, i.e. by the Occidental tradition:-)

Wlodzimierz


Do you think that Poles, Russians and others still speak the same language ?
Do you think Russian atheism and polish Catholicism have something in common ?
What kind of ritual common to that people are you talking about ? Idolatry may be ?

hardly. Slavic civilization is older then Western world. Actually, from within Slavic world, embryo of that what we today comprehend as West was formed. But, its not solely we Slavs who gave Western world to the humanity.

Slavic ancestors lived as natives in Europe and not only in Europe. But, then comes the Egyptians, Jews and Arabs and, by trade and extreme hostility, penetrated their influences on the periphery of Slavdom. With time, new cultures emerged as result of the encounters of humans from those numerous civilizations. Encounters happened on the periphery of the Slavia and our ancestors contributed to the process in any sense. But then, those new hybrid cultures, motivated by the essential greed of the send people, started to move deeper into the Slavic inland. From that struggle between civilizations emerged that what was antic Greek and Roman world. Since then, pressure increased, even more new cultures was born, while Slavdom continued to retreats

Obviously the "common" language group was Old Slavonic, from which Polish, Czech, Russian etc. derive:-)
Where's your confusion (..or are you just being a characterLOL?)

R.U.R., Russians ATHEISTS?!!! Uhh, hate to disappoint you but the Russians were, are and will always be Orthodox Christians, similar to the Greek Orthodox (but unlike the more heavily Catholic Poles or Ukrainians!). Atheism was merely a cover for tacit lip service to the Communists who in fact DID propogate atheism.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurasianism

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neo-Eurasianism#Neo-Eurasianism

Good reading.

Comparing though Slavic with Germanic "thinking", the ancient Teutons (pre-Christian) as with the early Slavs, were profoundly heathen, worshipping any number of gods and goddesses. Norse mythology, for instance, is essentially concerned with the deeds of gods and heroes similar to ancient Greece or Rome:-)

The impact of Christianity on the entire world (including of course Islam itself) cannot be overstated.

Please pay attention to the following :

The idea of Eurasianism contrasts with Konstantin Leontyev's Byzantism, which is similar in its rejection of the West, but identifies with the Byzantine .

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurasianism

But the Byzantine is often regarded in historian literature as a eurasian civilization too.
And I think that the russian communist ( still a powerfull party in Russia ) are very close to these movements . And can anybody name predominantly proEuropean movements , groups or partiy in Russia ?

I also think that there is no such a thing as Germanic civilization too.
For me, Germany between 1933 - 1945 does not belong to European (western) civilization.
The country after 1945 experienced forced Europeanization or Westernization

The latter is then merely your considered opinion, nothing more:-)
I too might argue as you have that after the Shoah, Germany proved it never was a "civilization" in the sense of a "civilized" culture, but instead a nation of Barbarians!

Nonetheless, we both must face facts and the facts are that Germany is a civilized culture, as her inhabitants built and inhabited cities.

Whether or not she is an ENLIGHTENED culture, is a separate issueLOL

R.U.R.
Slavic and Germanic thinking

i concur

Wlodzimierz


you are certainly not mr.Sherlock Holmes or miss Marple if you
think that the above statement has something to do with me .


But I have never questioned that her inhabitants built and inhabit

cities. But sometimes their values seem somewhat strange to me :
human skulls used in applied arts, soap of the specific type end so

on ....
By the way the question of Germans identity (whether they belong to Europe ) was much debated well before Shoah and before WW II.
It was debated after WW I, german cruelties were such that the rest of Europe did not know what to think about the nation.

So you desagree with J. Fest ?

IRONSIDE


What does this mean ? A warning ?
But thinking grows out of a civilization, and is predefined by it

I think this is clear enough. I do not think that the abstract level
of the discussion is too high .

Fest, as with other "unwitting" participants in the so-termed 'Historikerstreit' (Historians' Conflict) such as Stuermer, Nolte or the chap from Cologne (???), blanking on his name at the moment I'm afraid, believed that horrible as Hitler was, his was NOT a "unique" genocide within the historical context or specificity of "mass murder"!!!

In this sense, I cannot agree with him, respect his scholarship as I do:-)

This thread is hillarious...
So, Germany isn't a civilized culture and became a part of the West only after 1945. I wonder in what environment people like Bach, Beethoven, Goethe, Schiller, Kant, Leibniz, Duerer, Kepler, Gauss, Nietzsche, Hegel, Gutenberg, Marx, Benz, Planck, Luther, Weber, Humboldt, Wagner, Brecht or Schopenhauer could develop. And how Western civilization would look without them.

no no you are wrong, see, all the above mentioned extinguished gentlemen were Serbs, everybody knows that even if they don't

There is no such a thing like Slavic and Germanic thinking. If anything that deep in the past there were the same tribal thinking.


Germany is a Byzantine civilization planted in the middle of Europe.


I think all would do just fine without them. All the others are not a key figures as well.

there is the difference between Slavic and Germanic thinking regarding approach to diversity.

being older and with it, more refined, Slavic culture is in general more tolerant then Germanic. To be clear here, i don`t point on simple racial, cultural or ideological tolerance. Its not that simple. i would say that Slavic mind-set comprehend diversity among humans as something natural and even positive. In the same time, Slavs are somewhat xenophobic, after all as most of the human beings. But, Slavs seams to be more open for the competition with other races, without feeling, in the same time, to say that way- fatal hate on others (fatal in the sense that hate always coming back as boomerang to those who initiate it). On the contrary to it, Germanics feel safe only in uniform world. That`s why their culture tend to totalitarian regimes. That`s why they don`t understand why is diversity natural and good for humanity, providing eternal reason for the competition, that way pushing the progress.

Yeah, right. Western music without leitmotif (or the hymn of Europe), Western philosophy without the categorical imperative and Marxism, Western sociology without the Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, mathematics without Gauss, Western history without Protestantism.

Some of you are seriously deluded.

BTW: what exactly did Poland contribute to the Western civilization if these people don't count? Was Poland ever a civilized culture or just a peasants society?

I'm sure that suitable would arise if needed. As for Protestantism I'm sure that Europe would be better off for that particular distraction which is dying anyway, the same goes for Marxism which is definitely evil, what spirit of capitalism, people were enterprising long before Protestantism, if you mean that naked greed had been unleashed, that is not something to be proud off.

With expedition of Gauss all those figures could be erased from history without much regret.
You are delusional if you think that all that are irreversibly necessary for European culture to develop.


BTW If you must ask what exactly you are doing in this thread? Reacting to the world Germanic? Get a life.

In essence, scholars of Germany, from Friedrich Meinecke through Gordon Craig, have basically agreed that the foundations of Germanic "thinking" were shaped primordially by the drive for territorial expansion, dating back to the days of the Teutonic Knights during the early Middle Ages! This eternal quest throughout history for a "Volksgemeinschaft", one of those almost untranslatable concepts in German meaning roughly "community of race and nationhood", shaped a good deal of German history right on through and culminating in Hitler's Third Reich!

Slavic history was shaped by different currents, whereby culture more than sheer territorial expansion, informed Slavic thinkers and writers. Poles such as Mickiewicz saw themselves as both proud Poles as well as historically Baltic ("Litwo, ojczyno moja.!") in nature. Russian philosophers saw a kind of Russian "melos" or cultural melancholy as informing the pessimistic "Russian soul".

Clichees perhaps, and yet much of history can be boiled down to general trends and developments.

Ironside


But I have the same opinion, probably your are confusing me with someone else

There is no Germanic thinking. As for expansion you can say that Prussian circumstances coupled with french Huguenots resulted in a new nation called German Empire in which aggressiveness and a spirit of conquest has between imprinted by the very example of Prussian success in destroying the Kingdom of Poland. Which has been afterwards methodically and scientifically squared by German Universities hence your scholars, servants of the state, reason over morality, typical for Byzantine philosophy.

An acquaintance of mine from Latvia told me that Protestantism is much closer to christian orthodox
church then to Catholicism so it is true that at least partly Germany is a Byzantine civilization planted in the middle of Europe.


Ancient Greek philosophy contains almost all valuable ideas.

Often heard and read that Marxism is Jewish way of thinking , not european, may be German thinking
too , I do not know, I'm not sure about it (WW II )

Don't you understand that the victory of fascist Germany meant the end of European civilization ?

The victory of fascist Germany meant German civilization , not even Germanic civilization , THAT'S WHY GERMANY NEEDED WESTERNIZATION AND REEUROPEANIZATION

Yes and no to your riposte, Ironside et al.

Indeed, Prussia did seek tremendous expansion throughout the 18th and on into the mid-19th century prior to the 1871 Unification of the German Empire under Bismarck. The Hugenots however claimed practically 'asylum' status as a persecuted minority in staunchly Catholic France, thus Prussia merely offered them their succor as a supposed "free" state (although of course, she wasn't "free" at all)!

Read Hans Kohn's "The Germans" published (in English, by the way) in 1960. He gives a wonderfully comprehensive account of the so-called shibboteth surrounding "Germanic" thinking, providing a layman's groundwork for the trends and currents which eventually lead to the rise of totalitarianism to its Teutonic apotheosis in the figure of the Fuehrer. Plessner's "Nationhood Deferred: On the Political Gullibility of the Bourgeoise Intellect" (1933?? and reprinted in 1959) offers a more religious explanation for the foundations of Nazism as due to the slow, yet ineluctable decline of Christian brotherly acceptance of the equality of man as subjugated by the insurmountable control foisted upon the Church by the petty princes, fiefdoms, duchies and kingdoms within the Holy Roman Empire, making the healthy growth of enlightened democracy as practiced in England. France or the fledlging United States of America, nearly impossible.

Still feel infinite superiority ?

Try to use search engine and you'll find something like this:

The Polish School of Mathematics refers to the mathematics community that flourished in Poland in the 20th century, particularly during the Interbellum

Or something like this:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_School_of_Mathematics

Over the centuries, Polish mathematicians have influenced the course of history. Copernicus used mathematics to buttress his revolutionary heliocentric theory. Four hundred years later, Marian Rejewski - subsequently assisted by fellow mathematician-cryptologists Jerzy Różycki and Henryk Zygalski - in December 1932 first broke the German Enigma machine cipher, thus laying the foundations for British World War II reading of Enigma ciphers ("Ultra"). After the war, Stanisław Ulam showed Edward Teller how to construct a practicable hydrogen bomb

Hmmm, and I always thought Kopernikus was German... ;)

polishforums.com/news-politics-4/germans-want-germanize-kopernik-copernicus-outrage-28721/

In that case Merkel is Polish :(


They influenced Prussian elites big time.

Deal :)

When you think about it, Germans have never really done a great job exanding, not like the British, Spanish or French. When they did try it, it didn't work out. The one great accomplishment they have is exporting. Good idea to stick with that.

Hmmm, the rest of Europe and the whole world always thought Copernicus was Polish. Hehehehe....

You , Germans, certainly can appropriate 50% German Copernicus but then in this case our dear German friends, please, forget for good about the so called German school of mathematics and physics , forget forever about some important names in German literature, music etc. from now on it'll be JEWISH

German culture will be of course more German but it will at the same time be much more primitive. Let's talk about Jewish school of mathematics in Gettingen, Germany and so on.

As usual our dear Germans do not understand simple things that the rest of Europe
knows so well but I'll explain : It is education, society and country that counts, has importance and value in such cases, not blood. In Copernicus case, it is Jagiellonian University , Cracow, Poland.

And this means that if Copernicus were 100000% German , he would be 100% Polish for the
The whole world, Germany excepted of course.
But our Bright German boys want as usual to have all .... To have German school of mathematics and German Copernicus and in addition probably entire Poland Germanized ...............

TheOther, thanks for the link

Huh? I'm not German. And isn't this thread about feeling superior to Germans???