western value - philosophical basics

The world is currently in the midst of a hegemonic war. The Trump administration, championing MAGA (Make America Great Again), will lead the United States from 2025, and it appears they are already preparing for a post-Trump era under the Vance regime. This means that the current power competition and America's transformation should be viewed not within a four-year framework, but rather through an eight-year lens. From a long-term perspective, the next two years are likely to bring significant changes in political, technological, and structural aspects. At the center of these changes lie the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), the AI Manhattan Project, and Palantir.

Palantir is expected to play a crucial role in completely reshaping the United States over the next 3-4 years from 2025. Through collaboration with DOGE, which involves FEDSTART. Palantir is likely to contribute significantly by lending public legitimacy to the Trump administration's decision-making process. Additionally, through new operating systems like WARPSPEED, they are expected to contribute substantially to the comprehensive reform of defense and manufacturing sectors.

To understand the trajectory of America's upcoming AI hegemony war, it's crucial to understand Palantir. However, Palantir is an exceptionally unique company that's difficult to comprehend without approaching it from a humanities and philosophical perspective. This is because the company's very foundation was rooted in implementing a specific philosophy. At the core of this philosophy lies "Western values." (Remember that Palantir was established in response to 9/11.)

This essay represents a modest attempt to understand these Western values from two distinct perspectives. The first approach examines the philosophical foundations through a deeply philosophical lens, exploring the Frankfurt School's influence on Palantir's CEO, Alex Karp.

The second approach takes a historical perspective, tracing the evolutionary path from ancient Greece through the Roman Empire and the Renaissance period to modern-day America.

This article constitutes the first part of this analysis, focusing on the philosophical perspective.

The Frankfurt School

To understand Palantir's philosophy, we must first comprehend the philosophical foundations of its rather unique CEO, Alex Karp. This requires an understanding of the traditional intellectual current of the German Frankfurt School. This is particularly relevant as Alex Karp was one of the most distinguished students of Jürgen Habermas, a second-generation Frankfurt School scholar, and Karp himself has stated that inheriting Habermas's philosophy was one of the best decisions of his life. To this end, we will examine the thoughts of four key thinkers representing the first generation of the Frankfurt School, followed by an exploration of Jürgen Habermas's philosophy.

Max Horkheimer

Horkheimer criticizes how reason in modern society has degraded into mere instrumental functionality. Originally, reason was a critical and normative capacity concerned with what is right and wrong, and what constitutes a human life worth living. However, within the context of capitalism and technological advancement, reason has become fixated solely on "how to achieve goals efficiently."

In other words, modern reason has fallen into the paradox of instrumentalizing itself through its merger with capitalism, and Horkheimer argues that it must reclaim its original critical and emancipatory role. Reason should be a profound capacity for discussing and determining the meaning of human existence and the value of community.

Theodor W. Adorno

Adorno primarily focuses on art. Art originally possessed the potential for creativity, criticism, and liberation, leading to contemplation and aesthetic experience. However, as mass media became commercialized and mass-produced, art and culture degraded into mere consumer goods, leaving only entertainment and consumption. He argues that as capitalism and technology add their commercial perspective, they inhibit audiences' critical thinking and replace aesthetic sensibility with passive and superficial pleasure.

While technological advancement appears to offer people diverse content choices, in reality, they are merely selecting from options predetermined by big capital within the confines of 'safe narratives' and 'commercial success formulas.' As this phenomenon persists, the public loses its capacity for independent criticism, becoming trapped in the status quo pleasures provided by the culture industry, and ceasing to question the capitalist structure. This naturally evokes Marx's concepts of 'alienation' and 'superstructure.'

Erich Fromm

Fromm focuses on the concept of 'alienation.' While pre-modern humans were bound by tradition, community, and social hierarchy, these constraints paradoxically provided them with a sense of identity and security. In contrast, while individuals in modern society appear liberated, they struggle to construct self-identity and experience isolation and anxiety due to being thrust into competitive logic. Consequently, they tend to cling to authoritarianism like fascism or consumer culture and materialism, attempting to escape from freedom and responsibility.

Humans naturally find psychological comfort in becoming consumers or conformists rather than free subjects. Advertising and media promise success and happiness through product purchases, while authoritarian leaders claim to provide safety through obedience. Whether capitalism or fascism, both induce 'psychological escape' by making individuals conform to externally set norms rather than exercise genuine autonomy and critical thinking.

Walter Benjamin

Benjamin contemplates the disappearing 'aura' in capitalist systems. While traditional paintings and sculptures possessed originality and aura (unique presence), photography and film transform artworks into everyday consumer goods through infinite reproducibility.

In the capitalist system, Benjamin worried that reproduced images could be misused for propaganda or advertising. He argued that as mass media becomes commercialized and politicized, it risks producing passive audiences and serving the interests of power and capital.

Jürgen Habermas

The first-generation philosophers of the Frankfurt Institute keenly identified the crisis of reason brought about by capitalism and industrialization. They critically analyzed how modern society had caused reason to lose its original purpose, reducing humans to passive consumers and ultimately leading them to depend on authoritarianism. This regression of reason progresses through superstructures such as art, commerce, and culture, with the most concerning aspect being citizens' gradual loss of critical awareness of these phenomena.

While inheriting these concerns, Habermas went further by seeking practical solutions. He proposed specific ethical and moral principles for communities to recover the essence of reason and build a better society. His philosophical contributions are crystallized in two core theories: 'discourse ethics' and 'the theory of communicative action.'

Discourse Ethics

Habermas's discourse ethics argues that the legitimacy of moral and ethical norms stems not from individual subjective preferences or authoritative directives, but from mutual agreement through rational discourse. Under conditions of rational and equal discourse, all participants can reach acceptable moral principles, and this process of agreement itself guarantees the legitimacy of these norms.

The realization of discourse ethics requires four essential conditions:

• Equal Opportunity for Expression: All participants must have equal speaking rights
• Non-coercion: Persuasion must occur freely without any external pressure or compulsion
• Truthfulness: There must be no intentional falsehoods or deception
• Sincerity: Participants must express their genuine beliefs and be prepared to take responsibility for them

Theory of Communicative Action

Habermas distinguishes communicative action from purely instrumental action aimed at achieving specific goals. Communicative action is a human activity fundamentally aimed at mutual understanding and reaching consensus. It is not merely a means to achieve particular objectives but a process seeking genuine understanding and agreement among participants.

In modern society, as instrumental rationality dominates various sectors including economy, administration, and organization, the 'lifeworld'—the natural communication sphere of individuals and communities—is under threat. The lifeworld refers to the domain where everyday communication, culture, tradition, and social relationships take place. Habermas argues that communicative action occurring in this lifeworld remains vital, and by protecting and expanding it, we can preserve individual subjectivity and the possibility of democratic consensus.

In other words, the revitalization of the lifeworld through communicative action becomes a crucial mechanism for protecting human autonomy and opening possibilities for emancipation from systems dominated by capital and power. The fundamental assertion of communicative action theory is that for the realization of true democratic society, social members must establish social norms through dialogue and discussion within an equal communicative structure.

Palantir's Philosophical Inheritance

Palantir inherits the critical consciousness of the first-generation Frankfurt Institute while simultaneously implementing Habermas's discourse ethics and theory of communicative action through technological means to offer more practical solutions.

Their aim is twofold: to restore instrumentalized reason to its original form, thereby recovering humanity's pioneering spirit and capacity for critical, self-directed reflection; and to enable society's crucial decisions to reach consensus through transparent, mutual understanding-based communication.

As populations grow, it becomes inherently difficult for an entire society to establish norms through dialogue and discussion within an equal communicative structure for all matters. It is physically impossible to create a structure where hundreds of millions of people can participate equally in discussions about a single topic.

However, it is technically feasible to establish this as an aspiration and create an understanding framework that makes these important discourse processes transparent and enables public participation. Palantir appears to be pursuing this through collaboration with DOGE, seeking to bestow public legitimacy upon government decision-making processes.

As emphasized in Habermas's theory of communicative action, the goal is to make governmental and corporate actions technically transparent and accessible to many people, thereby enabling citizens to participate meaningfully in decision-making processes where accountability is assured. In this process, decision-making will manifest not only through discussions incorporating public opinion formation but also through practical engagement in matters of direct interest, such as the provision of government software.

This approach embodies the core of Western values. Specifically, the legitimacy of social decisions must stem from civic participation rather than from systems or authority, and decisions lacking public participation must lose their legitimacy and justification, bearing appropriate responsibility.