Organicism in the context of "Völkisch"

Traditionalist conservatism, often known as classical conservatism, is a political and social philosophy that emphasizes the importance of transcendent moral principles, manifested through certain posited natural laws to which it is claimed society should adhere. It is one of many different forms of conservatism. Traditionalist conservatism, as known today, is rooted in Edmund Burke's political philosophy, as well as the similar views of Joseph de Maistre, who designated the rationalist rejection of Christianity during previous decades as being directly responsible for the Reign of Terror which followed the French Revolution. Traditionalists value social ties and the preservation of ancestral institutions above what they perceive as excessive rationalism and individualism. One of the first uses of the phrase "conservatism" began around 1818 with a monarchist newspaper named "Le Conservateur", written by Francois Rene de Chateaubriand with the help of Louis de Bonald.

The concepts of nation, culture, custom, convention, religious roots, and tradition are heavily emphasized in traditionalist conservatism. Theoretical reason is regarded as of secondary importance to practical reason. The state is also viewed as a social endeavor with spiritual and organic characteristics. Traditionalists think that any positive change arises based within the community's traditions rather than as a consequence of seeking a complete and deliberate break with the past. Leadership, authority, and hierarchy are seen as natural to humans. Traditionalism, in the forms of Jacobitism, the Counter-Enlightenment and early Romanticism, arose in Europe during the 18th century as a backlash against the Enlightenment, as well as the English and French Revolutions. More recent forms have included early German Romanticism, Carlism, and the Gaelic revival. Traditionalist conservatism began to establish itself as an intellectual and political force in the mid-20th century.

Far-right politics encompasses a range of ideologies that are marked by ultraconservatism, authoritarianism, ultranationalism, radical anti-communism, ethnonationalism, and nativism. This political spectrum situates itself on the far end of the right, distinguished from more mainstream right-wing ideologies by its opposition to liberal democratic norms and emphasis on exclusivist views. Far-right ideologies have historically included reactionary conservatism, fascism, and Nazism, while contemporary manifestations also incorporate neo-fascism, neo-Nazism, supremacism, and various other movements characterized by chauvinism, xenophobia, and theocratic or reactionary beliefs.

Key to the far-right worldview is the notion of societal purity, often invoking ideas of a homogeneous "national" or "ethnic" community. This view generally promotes organicism, which perceives society as a unified, natural entity under threat from diversity or modern pluralism. Far-right movements frequently target perceived threats to their idealized community, whether ethnic, religious, or cultural, leading to anti-immigrant sentiments, welfare chauvinism, and, in extreme cases, political violence or oppression. According to political theorists, the far right appeals to those who believe in maintaining strict cultural and ethnic divisions and a return to traditional social hierarchies and values.

Open society (French: société ouverte) is a term coined by French philosopher Henri Bergson in 1932, and describes a dynamic system inclined to moral universalism. Bergson contrasted an open society with what he called a closed society, a closed system of law, morality or religion. Bergson suggests that if all traces of civilization were to disappear, the instincts of the closed society for including or excluding others would remain.

The idea of an open society was further developed during World War II by the Austrian-born Jewish philosopher Karl Popper. Popper saw it as part of a historical continuum reaching from the organic, tribal, or closed society, through the open society (marked by a critical attitude to tradition) to the abstract or depersonalized society lacking all face-to-face interaction transactions.

Structural linguistics, or structuralism, in linguistics, denotes schools or theories in which language is conceived as a self-contained, self-regulating semiotic system whose elements are defined by their relationship to other elements within the system. It is derived from the work of Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure and is part of the overall approach of structuralism. Saussure's Course in General Linguistics, published posthumously in 1916, stressed examining language as a dynamic system of interconnected units. Saussure is also known for introducing several basic dimensions of semiotic analysis that are still important today. Two of these are his key methods of syntagmatic and paradigmatic analysis, which define units syntactically and lexically, respectively, according to their contrast with the other units in the system. Other key features of structuralism are the focus on systematic phenomena, the primacy of an idealized form over actual speech data, the priority of linguistic form over meaning, the marginalization of written language, and the connection of linguistic structure to broader social, behavioral, or cognitive phenomena.

Structuralism as a term, however, was not used by Saussure, who called the approach semiology. The term structuralism is derived from sociologist Émile Durkheim's anti-Darwinian modification of Herbert Spencer's organic analogy which draws a parallel between social structures and the organs of an organism which have different functions or purposes. Similar analogies and metaphors were used in the historical-comparative linguistics that Saussure was part of. Saussure himself made a modification of August Schleicher's language–species analogy, based on William Dwight Whitney's critical writings, to turn focus to the internal elements of the language organism, or system. Nonetheless, structural linguistics became mainly associated with Saussure's notion of language as a dual interactive system of symbols and concepts. The term structuralism was adopted to linguistics after Saussure's death by the Prague school linguists Roman Jakobson and Nikolai Trubetzkoy; while the term structural linguistics was coined by Louis Hjelmslev.