Universal - Particular
Global - Local
All folkish thought is particularistic—different strokes for different folks.
Such a thing cannot be maintained under a propositional framework. Propositions are inherently universalist—what’s true for me is true for you too. As such, propositional (AKA ideological) notions of “The Good” always and invariably collapse into moral equality, as they have done under Christianity when it brought in imago dei. “There are different goods for different agents” becomes “all agents are beholden to the same good expressed differently” becomes “all agents are beholden to the same good” becomes “all agents are the same”.
Folkishness cuts across all that because it is pre-propositional, meaning pre-ideological.
Folkishness traffics in imperatives, and imperatives are naturally agent-specific. The commands for the husband and the commands for the wife cannot be reduced to a common standard. As such, moral particularism can be set on a secure footing, and indeed, becomes the foundation of all morality since morality is foundationally imperative.
The Odinic is the founding god, and the Tyrrhic is the folk whose duty is to carry out the god’s will. Under folkishness, the god’s will is sovereign, even over ideology. The god’s will cannot be beholden to a principle, a justification, or a proposition. Because folkishness properly bases ethics on command rather than proposition, ethics is agent-specific just as commands are. This maintains the boundaries between classes, and between insider and outsider.
Under the alternatives to folkishness, which we can broadly class as Axiality, ideology is sovereign.
The juridical interpreter of commands becomes sovereign over the king, the issuer of commands. It becomes “interpretation all the way down”, and as Schmitt has shown, sovereign decision is deferred indefinitely. Sovereignty then devolves on to each man to command himself—an impossibility.
Folkishness posits an originary will, embodied in the command of the sovereign. That will cannot be carried out by any other people (folk); no people can alter the will of the founder (elite). The two are bound together irrevocably, just as the father needs the son, and the son needs the father.
[Imperium Press]
‘Who’s the Boss — Folk or Elite?’, Imperium Press, Substack
