Month: October 2021

18. Smith, Reclaiming Patriotism in an Age of Extremes (23 September 2021)

by kurto

Patriotism is an Aristotelian mean between nationalism and cosmopolitanism, a Burkean political loyalty to one’s people, region, and heritage. American patriotism is fealty to the constitutional tradition, crucially including didactic reasoning (i.e., questioning) and thus habit of reference. In the Federalist Papers #1, Hamilton contended a people could establish good government by choice: this is the core of American exceptionalism, of Americans being ‘creedal’. Lincoln, commenting on the Dred Scott decision, saw the Framers as having declared the right of equality just so that imperfect application could progress as quickly as possible to the goal.

Aristotle thought that without understanding the purpose of a regime, there was no basis of criticism. The ancients viewed patriotism as individual submission to the polis; Rousseau favored Sparta as an exemplar of the general will, but Montesquieu rejected this as deficient in humanity while Smith thought political leaders ought to express benevolence for the community. Thence to the Federalists, who viewed the Constitution as reflecting popular pursuit of liberties but enshrined republican government to stage off the excesses of the mob. Smith contends patriotism is best expressed by those capable of sympathizing with one’s fellow citizens. Nationalism is exclusionary, ultimately a struggle of interests; cosmopolitanism is rootless, stateless, relativist – incapable to sympathy or loyalty.

Considering the ends of politics, Max Weber distinguished between an ethic of responsibility, characterized by prudence, the view that ends do not justify the means, that politicians are responsible for outcomes; and an ethic of absolute ends, evaluated by intentions not results. The cosmopolitan, in its contemporary American guise of the progressive, exemplifies the latter. Cosmopolitanism seeks to evade the past and lacks a view of virtue grounded in experience. In this respect, the postmodern (to use another label) ironically recalls Marx, another mystic cosmopolitan who ironically insisted that history is the final arbiter of intentions.

Smith is harder on Trump and nationalism, or populism. Well argued until the end, the book’s concluding chapter feels trite. 

 

 

6. Hughes, Rome (3 May 2019)

by kurto

A breezy sketch of Roman history intertwined with trenchant art and architectural criticism, culminating in the sad observation that the Eternal City lost its leadership of the visual arts after World War II. Rome could not have ruled without concrete for its buildings, roads, and aqueducts, the projection of power. Greek culture captivated the Latins, which adopted its gods for purposes legitimacy and succession. Yet piety (i.e., ancestor worship) was the highest praise of a Roman; only Victorian England’s certainty of divine assent for White Man’s Burden is comparable. Augustus (r. 27BC-14AD) refurbished the Roman state’s governance; Constantine (r. 306-337AD) revamped citizenship by allowing Christians to be tried in church courts. Losing to the Goths at Adrianople (378AD) shook Roman confidence like nothing since Cannae six centuries earlier. Skipping ahead to the Renaissance (which started in Florence), the new forms of architecture recalled classic Rome, then hidden by ruin and overgrowth in a town reduced to 25,000 inhabitants. The style was ‘truth of representation’ as well as a faithfulness. After the Council of Trent (1543-68) kicked off the Counterreformation – don’t argue with Luther, show superior emotion and intensity – Sixtus V (from 1585) created the basis of modern Rome with rebuilding, shaping the Baroque age of religious art. Thence to neoclassicism, a noble simplicity, calm grandeur. To again jump ahead: the Futurists despised the authority of Roman tradition, seemingly an underappreciated milestone in the postwar loss of primacy (in an aside, Hughes suggests no city has been so compromised by the auto). Hughes opines Rome’s energies were spent, its classicism no longer inspiring to emerging artists. Coda the ‘freedom’ of abstract art leads to monotony, because over time there’s no anchorage to the real world. What really underpins variety is a connection to things as they appear; the world is sufficiently full of wonder.  

7. Parker, Chamberlain and Appeasement (19 May 2019)

by kurto

            Narrates British foreign policy in the 1930s, relying on government records and personal papers to show Neville Chamberlain clung to once-respectable appeasement well after the dangers of Hitler’s Germany superseded the errors of World War I. The consequences were postponed rearmament, loss of any chance to head off the conflict, and near disaster in 1940. The consensus of appeasement comprised sympathy for rectifying the Versailles treaty, for great power conciliation (contra French obstruction), and limiting remilitarization, particularly aircraft. It further included strong belief in the League of Nations, and implicit opposition to an antebellum arms race. Chamberlain, who never attended university and so was uncomfortable with challenging debate, held an overmighty opinion of himself and was susceptible to Hitler’s flattery. Close allies Eden and Halifax were pushed away during a succession of events that gradually swung public opinion against status quo: occupation of the Rhineland, the Spanish Civil War, Anschluss, Czech occupation, Polish occupation. The author’s treatment of Soviet gambits, which Chamberlain correctly resisted as camouflaged aggression, is wrongheaded: although diplomatic papers don’t prove it, Stalin’s postwar behavior clearly shows his intent to aggrandize. Chamberlain was prepared to concede Hitler’s demands, if possible through Italian intervention, because he focused on independence (as determined by the UK) not territorial integrity; Eden’s exit from the cabinet made the policy his own. When Chamberlain finally allowed rearmament as a hedge, he focused on the navy and then the air force, despite the obvious threat of the new technology. His course neither deterred Germany nor made conciliation possible. (Aside: the possibility of the unseen moderate is plausible only if the extreme leader can be identified. Otherwise the leader is in fact the extremist and the policy is his.) Having drawn the main line, the author veers into problems presented by totalitarians in Spain and Japan, the latter threatening British economic interests in China, observing Chamberlain was too slow to pursue US support. This highlights the book’s understating Britain’s position as the world’s hegemon, but a declining one – the Athenian problem. Pursuant to which is treatment of Britain’s economic position, compromised by balance of payments shortfall and skilled labor shortage: the US recession of 1937 helped the British position. Chamberlain’s foreign policy dictated rearmament, at a slow pace. The Liberals offered no real alternative to the Conservative prime minister, but Winston Churchill’s presence offered a ‘duel’ comparable to Fox-Pitt or Gladstone-Disraeli; oddly, the author says Chamberlain’s policy has been ‘unfairly’ portrayed by the victor.

18. Rubenstein, Aristotle’s Children (17 October 2020)

by kurto

            Assesses Aristotle’s influence in early Islam and late medieval Europe. The philosopher’s works thrive in confident historical eras: to know is to understand causes; to reason is to press boundaries. Aristotelian thought fell into desuetude with the fall of the Roman empire; traveled to Persia and Mesopotamia in the 6th century with the flight of Nestorius; and spurred Averroes, Avicenna, and Maimonides who elaborated the connection of reason and Muslim faith. They  were surpassed in the 12th century by al Ghazali, who contended that God produces all effects. Still Muslim advances into Europe brought Aristotle back to the Latin world, where Dominicans in particular saw reason as elaborating faith, none more than Thomas Aquinas. The doctrinal controversies of the next three centuries turned on where to draw boundaries; the neoplatonic division of spirit and matter was sidelined. Aquinas’ dual causation asserted God causes matter to cause themselves. William of Ockham initiated the Western sundering of faith and reason, by asserting it was too complicated to coexistence, paving the way for Luther to complete the split (albeit more on a socioeconomic basis). The idea of medieval dark age is dependent on the prejudice that science had to free itself of fundamentalism; conversely fundamentalist doctrine too emerged from (i.e., did not preexist) the attack of Aquinas’ absolution of Aristotelian science. Lively and told in a light, almost smarmy, manner but dated in failing to confront Aristotle’s postmodern challengers.