Revisiting civic understanding of human nature is imperative to meeting the ethical challenges of advancing biotechnology: only by understanding the essence of humanity can society draw the lines for the beneficial use of science. There are four areas that present immediate challenges: knowledge of genetic causation, neuropharmacology, prolonged life, and genetic engineering — the latter being the most consequential. The must not be allowed to override human dignity, which is the touchstone of sociopolitical rights. Fukuyama’s argument is clear but policy prescriptions are thin. Additionally, the book (probably purposefully, given its scope) omits the question of artificial intelligence, both external and as a supplement to human biology (i.e., the body).
Author: kurto
8. Horowitz, The Hard Thing about Hard Things (21 Apr 2017)
A series of essays regarding leadership of young, high-tech businesses. Drawing on personal experience including oversight as a venture investor, Horowitz winds his way toward the ‘know thyself’ dilemmas of being chief executive. There are sound tactical observations, but no system which rises to the level of Drucker.
9. Burckhardt, Force and Freedom (15 May 2017)
Across the sweep of world history, three phenomena predominate: the state, religion, and culture. Synthesizing the course of events through the late 19th century, Burckhardt posits archetypal behaviors of these institutions and studies their equilibria (i.e., how they influence one another). The significance of history lay not in the rise and fall of civilizations (qua events), but in the legacy of original values forged and safeguarded to future civilizations. The author then turns to identifying the elements of crises — generally an exhausted worldview or one overwhelmed by a more virile rival — and notes they create opportunity for truly original and energetic individuals (who would not otherwise success thusly in ordinary times). Finally, a treatment of how the confluence of events make for fortune or misfortune in history.
10. Gallie, Philosophy and the Historical Understanding (28 May 2017)
Philosophic thought and particularly ‘essentially contested’ concepts improve with understanding of their predecessors, with a sense of context. History helps us to see the value of characteristics or features that otherwise seem arbitrary: when presented in a narrative (i.e., a story that can be followed, in which the crucial developments are contingent and the act of following expresses real interest), trends or ideas are integral to the topic in question and not analytical. Conversely, failure to see the entire range of possibilities (i.e., failure of imagination) undermines understanding of what the principal(s) in fact chose to say or do. Rather than a general set of scientifically discovered rules, history is a public exercise in continuous criticism (revision) combined with advancing interpretation via the discovery of new evidence. Having outlined a dynamic philosophy of history, the author shows that the schools of philosophy themselves – comprising logic (valid inferences), epistemology (objective criteria of different kinds of knowledge), and ethics (individual responsibility to society) – tend to talk past one another, and so their systems and constructs are weakened. As a case in point, the author suggests that metaphysics (Hegel: absolute presuppositions) can only be understood after the unquestioned becomes questionable.
11. Collins, Oval World (13 Jun 2017)
A sweeping, geographically oriented narration of rugby from its 19th-century origins to the present. The overarching themes are the ideological and socioeconomic challenge of professionalized competition — including contrasts between union and league — and the game’s relationship with (mainly Commonwealth) communities. From 1892 to 1995, professionalism bedeviled Victorian, ‘upper-middle–class’ ethos, most notably in England, Australia, and France. Collins asserts league rules changes in 1906 and 1972 kept the 13-man code ahead of union as a running-handling game, and so a spectator sport, and its meritocratic nature made it more deeply embedded in local communities. Union, by comparison, was a reluctant follower which often pragmatically chose to preserve its authority over strict application of its beliefs. In the Southern hemisphere, turning a blind eye (especially in isolated South Africa) as well as proximity to league’s accelerating commercialization (notably in Australia) better prepared the SANZAR countries for rugby’s becoming an ‘open’ game. Union’s approach failed notably in the instance of apartheid South Africa’s rivalry with New Zealand for world preeminence, when it found itself too far out of step with community sentiment. So too did the communist nationals present a novel threat. There is little discussion of club versus province. When it comes to the US, the two-fold framework falls over. Geography has always been the principal challenge: how to nurture a football code to rival gridiron across a continental nation, and how to win international recognition? As elsewhere, the author sometimes breezes past the evidence and so draws facile conclusions. For example, the US was never unified and so could not have fragmented after the collapse of Olympic rugby in the 1920s.
12. Butterfield, George III and the Historians (26 Jun 2017)
Assesses the historiography of George III’s early reign — how he intended to govern from 1760-63, and whether it constituted a significant break from his Hanover predecessors. The contest between neo-historicist Whig and more overtly partisan Tory interpretations culminated in Whig ascendancy, until the arrival the Namierite school of ‘structured analysis’, which asserted behavior is explicable according to classifiable political types (i.e., MPs). Burke, as a contemporary naturally belonged to the Whigs, although he was ‘satisfied’ with subsequent reform and so able to turn against the persecutors of the French monarchy. Butterfield asserts history is ‘both story and study’ (pp. 294-295): readers shouldn’t be able to guess the outcome. Meanwhile, an individual’s deeds are to be assessed in the context of the ideas then held, and primary sources are valuably supplemented by external evidence and evaluation. As to the historian, he is to be diligent in search of new or novel evidence, responsible in the use of evidence, and the best presenter of it. No amount of learning can surmount deficient imagination.
13. Hamburger, Macaulay and the Whig Tradition (12 Jul 2017)
Thomas Macaulay, conventionally seen as a Whig, was in fact a trimmer, primarily concerned to reconcile opposing politicians in order to preserve civil order. Danger lay both in ultra Tory reaction or democratic or religious radicalism. Macaulay followed Burke in holding that respect for tradition creates a political environment safe for debate. ‘Noiseless’ revolutions point to correct decisions, and to be too late to make generous concessions is a cardinal policy error. To productively transform a ‘conjuncture’ (i.e., a revolutionary situation) into reform is high statesmanship. Macaulay gained notoriety for interpreting the Great Britain’s constitutional struggles of the 17th and 18th centuries, so as to make them a common (i.e., public) possession; however, his intellectual glosses and programic reading of history reduced his academic stature. Further, his temperament was unsuited for trimming, and although a believer in induction, he also held the progressive’s belief in ends justifying the means. History has no intrinsic use, but ought to be mined for precedent and instruction; more particularly, contra Burke revolution ought to be judged by the consequences, not the substance of events.
14. Plumb, England in the 18th Century (4 Aug 2017)
An opinionated survey of the 18th century which ever seems to anticipate the coming of the 20th. Plumb divides the years 1714-1815 into three eras, those of Walpole, Chatham, and Pitt the younger, while elucidating the incipience of the Industrial Revolution from 1750. At the start of the era, for all the excitement of the closing of the revolutionary era, the country was decidedly premodern. Improved social organization emerged through local administrative reform. So too politics were personal rather than based in the party: Walpole sought to marginalize Tories but was too engaged in courtly intrigue to be a master statesman; his usage of patronage enabled the Duke of Newcastle to establish the Whig ascendancy at the expense of the Hanovers; the landed gentry became the opposition. Chatham, taking power in 1756, surmounted the French but shortly England lost the American colonies as England under George III failed to recognize they had come of age. But she gained immense wealth and power from India. The now-familiar enclosures of the English countryside were taking shape, while towns began turning from administrative centers into early industrial hubs centered around the mill or mine (instead of the feudal castle). Social organization improved with still more local administration, and in combination with improved medicine and public health, helped the poor live longer and so create a rising commercial elite — who bumped up against the squirearchy. Burke’s campaign for economic reform (of the monarchy) trumped association reform (of parliament), which had to wait until 1832. Also in the second half of the century, Bohemian romantics abjured aristocracy and classicism, and embraced the French Revolution, as did Fox, whose break with Burke split the party for a generation. Most of the nation rallied behind Pitt (supported by George and the City of London) against the French threat, initially by sea power alone, and then to the standard of Wellington. The English emerged justifiably proud but also arrogant.
Against populism in American conservatism
It seems the Republican party, that is the official (officious?) arbiter of American conservatism, is obliged to fight a two-front war:
What began in the twentieth century as an elite-driven defense of the classical liberal principles enshrined in the Declaration of Independence and Constitution ended up, in the first quarter of the twenty-first century, as a furious reaction against elites of all stripes. Many on the right embrace a cult of personality and illiberal tropes. The danger was that the alienation from an antagonism toward American culture and society expressed by many on the right could turn into a general opposition to the constitutional order. That temptation had been present in the writings of the Agrarians, in the demagogy of Tom Watson, Hue Long, and Father Charles Coughlin, in the conspiracies of Joseph McCarthy, in the racism of George Wallace, in the radicalism of
Triumph
, in the sour moments of the paleo-conservatives, in the cultural despair of the religious right and in the rancid antisemitism of the alt-right. But it was cabined off off. It was contained. That would not be the case forever – as Trump and January 6, 2021 had shown.
15. Wood, Radicalism of the American Revolution (10 Aug 2017)
The American Revolution exhibited none of the socioeconomic conditions classically associated with political upheaval, yet was a time of thoroughgoing change. Spanning 1740-60s (i.e., before the French and Indian War) to the Jacksonian era, Wood narrates a series of transformations in colorful detail, emphasizing social phenomena. For example, vertical connections of patronage were replaced by egalitarianism, as paternal authority began melting away. Leisure became a suspect trait of residual aristocracy; property transformed from a source of authority to merely another economic interest. Superior virtue was seen to derive from common moral sense, sharpened by participating in society (not government), rather than educated reason. In this way, the emergent middle class fused the gentility of the upper class with the bona fides of the working class to create a distinctly American ‘moral hegemony’. In the economic sphere, commerce which had been predicated on trust (credit) became more purely transactional, while the colonial ‘trading society’ predicted on business with England grew aware of its internal market and thus potential self-sufficiency. Servitude — save for slavery — all but dissolved. In the Federalist era, the granting of private charters became commonplace, such that not every purpose was publicly oriented, thereby raising questions of property rights; so judges became arbiters of public power versus private rights. Politically, government office went from an obligation to a source of social standing. Proto-group rights (first manifest by anti-Federalists), replaced disinterest as the defining standard of decision making. Then the first avowed political parties gook hold as the expression of loyalty to common interest and advancement. The Jacksonian age further restored monarchical characteristics under the cloak of popular rhetoric, such as the spoils system. Wood concludes: the revolution was about deciding who are America’s proper sociopolitical leaders, elsewhere noting the founders died depressed as the new society zoomed past republicanism into democracy. Deeply researched, the author’s taste for anecdote works to crowd out military, economic, and political events (context). Oddly, there is little discussion of Turner’s social mobility in migration, nor much regional color — although the author displays humility in allowing the character of local histories will require adjustments to the main narrative. A major question left unanswered is why the resultant concentration of wealth and broader inequality did not foster increased political instability?