The Underlying Problem of Our Time (and of All Known History)

I have responded to a comment to an article on the American Thinker site. The comment referred to Nietszche and Hegel, recognized as modern philosophers, and the more ancient Plato, and the following is my response:

Philosophy has not advanced since its "beginnings" in Plato; Aristotle was known in Plato's Academy as a master of Rhetoric (compelling argumentation, or debating points), not Philosophy, and his later fame held back the development of physics (and mathematics) for 2,000 years. Darwin also won the day in his time only on the quantity and determination of his rhetoric, his endless, seemingly plausible debating points, not on his "science".

All of the most famous, or popular, philosophers of recent memory -- or even of the last 2,000 years (and yes, that includes all the religious philosophers, of all of the world's religions) have done little to help mankind know itself.

As I summarizd in my book, "The End of the Mystery":

"Behold the new paradigm: Materialistic reductionism, randomness, and mindless evolution are dead, both as logically prior (“a priori”) assumptions and as historical explanations of our world. As Darwin was wrong in biology, Hegel was wrong in philosophy, and Marx was wrong in economics, politics and sociology**; all of the people, famous or otherwise, who have since been inspired by any of them (even to the point of World War) have been fundamentally misled, and in their turn misleading. “Evolutionary” archaeology and anthropology (which consider that mankind civilized itself, many times and in many places, among different peoples) are wrong.

**Just as Aristotle was wrong in “natural” science, the antecedent to physics, chemistry, etc.. They all believed that the material world is complete in itself, and that various observed divisions of the world are fully explained by their necessary interactions with one another. Thus Darwin set species against species, or species against the environment; Hegel set individuals against the state; and Marx set class against class, or workers against employers. They all overvalued their categories as being the only reality."

But the world, especially all of its academic authorities, a.k.a. "experts", will not abide any talk of that new paradigm. And that is THE underlying problem of this climactic, critical time, with all of its resurgent, divisive dogmas.