The preeminent argument of 20th-century economics, regarding the political utility of marco- and microeconomics, took shape in the interwar rivalry between John Maynard Keynes and Friedrich Hayek. Keynes, a Cambridge don and Bloomsbury intimate, was a ‘public intellectual’ wile Hayek, an Austrian emigre who found a home at the London School of Economics, was a theorist who only later turned to polemics. Keynes held the economy could be managed, primarily on the demand side, and rejected conventional belief in the necessity for equilibrium between savings and investment. The 1936 publication his General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money transformed Western economic and political consensus, predominating through ~ 1980. Surprisingly, his rival made no reply, in contrast to his dogged challenges to Keynes’ earlier works. Hayek, defending the laissez-faire view of Alfred Marshall and Ludwig von Mises, contended that to manage demand is to manage prices, which is the individual’s role, and thus to court either inflation or contraction; further, when the stimulus is removed, increased consumption will collapse. The amount of money and speed of its movement is key to understanding an economic system. Yet improved ability to measure and calculate did not substitute for qualitative understanding: individual decisions can never be anticipated or planned. (In this respect, he agreed with Keynes that the economy rarely comes to rest, the classical equilibrium.) Keynes, later accused of being a socialist fellow traveler — not unfairly due to his Fabian associates — shrugged off planning as the route to totalitarianism, contending tyranny results from collective sociopolitical choice. Keynes began to recover ground with the 1949 founding of the libertarian Mount Pelerin society and his decamping for America. More important, at the University of Chicago, economists led by Milton Friedman, though accepting the macroeconomic premise of laissez-faire as an inadequate policy, embraced prices as core to understanding. Subsequent ‘freshwater’ economists determined inflation to be the main objective of public policy (unlike the ‘saltwater’ view of unemployment as paramount) and gave rise to supply-side economics embraced by Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. Moving faster than in the years of the Keynes-Hayek rivalry, the author sketches the decline of Keynesian economics over 1970-2000s. Ultimately, however, Wapshott’s history of ideas is a polemic in its own right: the Bush administration’s response to the Global Financial Crisis is portrayed as necessarily Keynesian, rather than the preliminary moves of an outgoing administration, and the last word is given by the Keynesian John Kenneth Galbraith against the now straw-man Hayek, without reference to the supply siders.
Book abstracts
1. Himmelfarb, Past and Present (4 Jan 2018)
A collection of essays treating giants in the history of ideas from the Victorian era forward, often with a view to present applicability. The underlying theme thus runs against historicism. One of the most enlightening chapters shows how Matthew Arnold’s stance against philistinism (i.e., belief in cultural equality) grounds opposition to the anarchy of multiculturalism. In contradistinction, to democratize culture is not to treat all forms as equal but to make the better forms available to all. William James is praised for observing that truth comes not from logic or science but experience and reflections, building on Lionel Trilling’s view that the search for truth, though likely to fall short, is undertaken as a point of intellectual honor – and the probability that something good may come of it. As to Thomas Carlyle, the role of the prophet is to criticize not to construct. In transition to politics, the author welcomes TA Eliot’s view that the field is more important for the pursuit of moral perfection than physical easement; Einstein’s ‘rationalism’ may have been a scientific triumph but can be shown a political failure. The recovery of morality in politics will entail less government so that value-driven participants can act on their beliefs. At the outset, in a chapter on Strauss, Himmelfarb writes that while Thucydides preceded Machiavelli and Hobbes in seeing politics as struggle for power, contra Plato, his view that justice holds a central place distinguished the Greek historian from the modern political scientist.
2. Davies, History of Wales (15 Jan 2018)
A sociopolitical chronicle of Wales from the Roman era to the early 21st century, emphasizing its loss of nationhood and reasons why the Principality failed to recover it during the age of nationalism in the 1800s and 1900s.
Offa’s Dyke separated Brythonic Welsh from Britons, but there were no significant racial distinctions in the British Isles. The Saxons seized the lands most Romanized, but Celtic culture and language proved durable. Unlike Ireland, Welsh high culture to ~ 800 developed in isolation, and the ‘kingdom’ united through marriage not conquest. Welsh law was based on custom not statute, aspiring to order among the clans (not punishment); inter-marriage weakened the clans. The acceptance from 871 that Alfred had claims on Welsh lands set subordination well in motion. The Norman conquest connected the British Isles to feudal Europe through the Latin church and the 12th-century Renaissance. The Welsh were equals to the Normans, especially after the death of William II in 1100. Llywelyn the Great (d. 1240) won Gwynedd’s primary among the Welsh regions; son Dafydd ap Llellwyn was the first to call himself Prince of Wales; Llywelyn ap Gruffudd was acknowledged by Henry III in 1267’s Treaty of Montgomery. Thus Wales had all the elements of statehood but not independence. Edward I, the most powerful medieval English king, executed Dafydd ap Gruffudd and destroyed this Wales in 1282-83. The country needed time to jell; it fell not inevitably but through a combination of contemporary events. Though English law subsequently replaced the Welsh code, poetry remained; English focus on Wales helped Scotland to persist.
In the 14th century the Welsh Marcher lords were seen as lawless. Owain Glyndwr’s rising of 1399 was a peasant revolt backed by clerics. Penal laws against the Welsh church created a power vacuum filled by the gentry, perpetuating belief in hierarchical society. In the 15th century coastal trade including with Ireland expanded while peasants of the valleys returned to the southern lowlands. With the passage of 1536’s Act of Union (followed by adjustments in 1543), an act of aggrandizement, Wales became an ‘internal colony’ for the next 250 years (to approximately 1770). The Counter Reformation failed; this was the height of the gentry’s reign. Renaissance Wales was a conservative culture, uninterested in humanism, ‘behind’ the continent, lacking centers of wealth (i.e., towns). The upper class began to learn English, especially as its sons sent to English universities, often to study law, since they were no longer welcome in Europe’s Catholic schools. The ‘squirearchy’ supported the Stuart monarchs, conscious of Welsh coasts being open to invasion (ship money) and averse to Puritan theology. The gentry was anglicizing by marriage, whereas Nonconformism was Gaelic. The Welsh Bible saved the language.
In the election of 1713, only 4 of 27 Welsh seats at Westminster were won by Whigs: the party of the Hanover court was opposed by the Welsh country gentry. The population numbered 500,000 in 1770, and was to grow to 1.1 million by 1850, much more quickly than the doubling over the previous 12 centuries. In a striking assertion, the author contends industrialization turned more on new sources of energy and transport – copper for ironworks such as steam engines and railways – than on the factory system. Following centuries of dependence on English trade, the 18th century opened the northwest ports to new markets. In the south, Merthyr Tydfil’s iron was to become the main resource of modern Welsh growth, supplemented by coal, limestone, timber, and water. Industrialization pulled populace to Glamorgan and Monmouth, thereby realigning the country’s hitherto equal distribution. Swansea, Neath, Cardiff, and Newport were all connected to the coalfields by 1800 by canal or railway; Cardiff, the 25th biggest Welsh town in 1801, grew to 4th by 1880. Railways equally served to break down the isolation of rural communities. The Gaelic speakers were typically Methodist; the urbanites were Baptist or Independent. Therefore rural areas favored hierarchical presbytery, while industrial regions were congregational, meaning the latter never achieved a national moral authority. By the end of the 19th century, the erstwhile even distribution of populace had become 2 of 3 Welshmen living in the coal valleys or the coastal cities; but the country’s values remained rural. Many churches were built, promoting Gaelic. But from 1830 the Welsh chanceries were absorbed into English system, making the courts expensive and effectively out of reach of Welsh farmers. The Rebecca Riots, evidencing hatred of toll roads raising the cost of bringing crops to market, were a kind of rural Chartism. Faint-hearted Welsh nationalism in the 19th century reflects succumbing to English Victorian virtue: the Welsh were too concerned with respectability. Simultaneously, Nonconformism and the Welsh language couldn’t find common cause, particularly as British initiatives to expand schooling also anglicized (the so-called Treachery of the Blue Books). In the 1870s English speakers surpassed the Welsh.
In the 1880s Liberals sought Disestablishment only in Wales, on the premise of its nationhood. Conservatives were maneuvered into opposition, presaging the end of squirearchy. (By contrast, county government fell abruptly.) Freehold tenure grew rapidly since land, no longer the key to power were sold, and became the majority by 1950. Welsh nationalism, active at century’s end, peaked in 1900. There was no pronounced Republican element in Welsh Home Rule, only hopes for regional parliament: Radicalism was sufficient to win Conservative opposition but not worker allegiance. Emigration to Liverpool accelerated from 1880. The rise of rugby owed to physical labor creating taste for physical recreation. Employers believed organized games promoted organized workforce. Clubs in turn drew on communal tradition.
At 1900, at least one quarter of world energy trade originated in Wales, while the remainder of British coal was primarily for domestic use: Wales was geared to the world market. The coal towns fomented Welsh working class values, Nonconformist and socialist. The latter worked against nationalism because of proletarian solidarity; but the coalfields also promoted Gaelic, and the language was vital to nationalism because Welsh law had disappeared and boundaries were attenuated (in contrast with Scotland). But non-speakers also saw themselves as Welsh, defined by Radical politics, rugby, churchgoing and garrulous sociability. Neither model was relevant to the Marcher borders or northern seaside towns.
The religious revival of 1904-05 presaged the Liberal win of 1906, opposed to the 1902 Education Act, in favor of temperance. Miners were the only group to strike during World War I, going against Lloyd George, proof of its fundamental militancy. Postwar reforms brought socialism early to Wales but Labour nonetheless eclipsed the Liberals in by-elections. Amid the era’s ‘revolutionary spirit’ (e.g., Soviet Russia or Berlin), Welsh unionists opposed the Royal Coal Commission of 1919, which had declined to recommend nationalization. Over 1918-22, one quarter of Welsh land was sold, as land was no longer the sole source of power. Finally the estates were broken up; however the selloff was also an Anglicizing force because the English were the highest bidders, and promoted consolidation of farms, halving the number of them. Conversely, Welsh emigration now centered on London and the southeast, as the Merseyside was slowing down.
The long 20th-century depression began in 1925 with the initial decline of coal employment – the trend terminally accelerating in 1960s – due to the collapse of overseas markets. The improvement of Labour’s prospects at Westminster from 1922 undermined nationalism (though the Liberals polled credibly until 1938). The failure of the General Strike of 1926 persuaded union leaders to abandon syndicalism for Westminster. The Five in Llyn arson trial of 1937 renewed nationalism. Over the first two years of World War II, Wales received 200,000 immigrants, restoring its peak population. After its end, two thirds of factories were sponsored by Labour government; however, renewed iron and related industries served to forge ties with the Midlands. In all, it was the most socialist region of the UK, with 40 percent of the workforce in state bodies and 60 percent controlled by the state. But Atlee and Labour tended to see not Wales but regions for purposes of planning (with a second wave of coming in during 1958-64), while Bevan was keen on solidarity. By 1960 the boom-to-bust mining cycle was complete: workers accepted pit closures without regret. Nearly one quarter of Welsh lived in council houses.
Nationalism was spurred by Welsh awareness of higher living standards in England, while Conservative electoral success helped to promote Plaid Cymru, as did Cardiff’s continuing rise capped by the 1970 completion of the national stadium. The success of the Scottish National Party aided the tabling of the 1978 Wales Act, but Labour, government institutions, and the chattering classes were against and it polled just 25 percent in plebiscite. Kinnock’s 1983 ascension marked the first Labour leader from the coalfield, but Scargill’s 1984 strike received tepid support.
In the 1990s, the Welsh regional budget allocation grew to £7 billion from £1.7 in 1979. At decade’s end, in 1997, with Scottish devolution having succeeded one week earlier and the Gaelic speakers campaigning more effectively, Wales passed its home rule act, the choice now being either Wales or Wales-plus-England. The most important outcome of devolution (to date) has been re-introduction of Conservatism as a political force. The Internet has promoted Gaelic, while in the 21st century state support for a Welsh education system improved; the European Union also has been helpful. Rugby in the professional era rose and fell with the economy, important because the national team is the country’s primary cultural product. Welsh identity is primarily cultural and social, as compared with Scotland’s legal and constitutional presence.
8. Cox, Other Oregon (26 April 2022)
Synthesizes historical research and journalism to sketch the socioeconomic trajectory of Oregon east of the Cascades since 1850, observing the arid yet variegated environment shapes the populace but its communities have never managed a workable approach to land usage. Between 1845-70, some 400,000 settlers passed through on the way to Portland and the Willamette Valley. Some stayed, others came directly in pursuit of mining, lumber, livestock, and dry farming, especially wheat in the north/northeast. The author rejects the ‘colonial’ economic paradigm: while outside capital was often required, these were individual agents in pursuit of a better way of living. The federal government initially sought to manage Indian claims – calling into question ‘Manifest Destiny’ as a policy. Later the Carey Act (1894), concerned with irrigation, the Taylor Grazing Act (1934), and others aimed to restrict and proscribe ‘exploitive’ land usage. Though Carey generally failed its purpose, it reshaped central Oregon, particularly Redmond and Bend (Oregon’s Jackson Hole, no longer belonging to the high desert paradigm). Indeed there is substantial evidence of Progressivism’s shortcomings: outside experts simply weren’t, but only another self-interested party. Late 19th-century railroads shaped regional economic development, but in the 1920s and 30s state-managed highways did more to enlarge eastern Oregon’s worldview, surprisingly including commodity export. In the postwar era, birds not the broader conservation movement drew in outside nonprofits, yet conflicts broadened into local defenders of property rights pitted against external, self-styled land managers. Cox devotes a large part to more recent controversies in the easternmost counties such as Grant, noting the state is deemed to evidence America’s highest degree of county autonomy. Detailed with personal anecdote and descriptive but not quite analytic, Cox leaves one yet searching for a balanced polity encompassing external actors.
3. Millard, Hero of the Empire (19 Jan 2018)
Narrates Winston Churchill’s Boer War capture and escape, which launched the immodestly ambitious young man into his Parliamentary career. Following an election loss, Churchill secured a journalism commission but acted as a (very brave) combatant during a Natal reconnaissance mission. Held in Pretoria, his escape from the Transvaal countryside turned on the good fortune of seeking help from an English-born mining manager and smuggled transport in the rail car of a compatriot wool exporter. Although generalizations weigh down the outset, the main tale is well told and the book holds some insight into Churchill’s personality. However, the attempt to connect every thread is too ambitious – and Jan Smuts is left out!
4. Smith, Reading Leo Strauss (27 Jan 2018)
Surveys the German-American political philosopher’s primary teachings:
On political philosophy
• Political philosophy, which aims to replace opinion with knowledge, paradoxically pits the organic wisdom against rational inquiry
• The terrible truth of philosophy is there’s no objective need for it – the only critical necessity is intrinsic to its practice
• One of Strauss’ most enduring themes is Athens vs Jerusalem: Each is obligated to open itself to the other’s challenge. The two sides agree the need for morality, which is core to justice (and thus law). Athens is steadfastly moral; Jerusalem is alive to the possibility of revelation
• Jewish political thought evidences the particular rather than the universal. The Jewish state is modified exile. Strauss showed outward fidelity to Israel, inward commitment to philosophy, in order to combat atheism while preserving truth in knowledge
• Political thought is the first of the social sciences because human experience is practical, borne of action for a purpose (i.e., to preserve or to change). Political opinion presupposes a structured way of life, codified by law, underpinned by a theory of governance
• Justice is a mixture of freedom and coercion, or virtue and persuasion
• Straussian ‘esoteric reading’ is not a doctrine but a process. The emphasis on close reading, which may reveal hidden ideas and emphases, was taken from Heidegger. Politics is implicit in every text because texts are sure to be read in their social context
• Strauss avoided ontology, the nature of being. Not everything is permissible – thus political philosophy, not ontology, is the bedrock of humanity
• It’s safer to understand the low in light of the high (i.e., the ideal), in order to appreciate the best of man’s political traditions
• The experience of history and daily affairs cannot override evidence of simple right and wrong, which is the bottom of natural right. The problem of justice in every context persists
• The distinction between philosophy and ideology is the regard for permanent conditions of human nature – which makes some things insoluble
• Statesmanship is the highest non-philosophical pursuit: the pursuit of freedom and justice through prudence transcends lawyers, technicians, visionaries, and opportunists
• The cultivation of friendship (with one’s opposites) is imperative to practicing the craft
On the history of ideas:
• Like Burke, Strauss sided with the ancients because political thought is closest to the political community
• Classic political thought derives directly from the experience of newly conscious political society. Subsequent political philosophy was tempered by the traditions borne of the political context (i.e., the choices society made)
• According to the classics, honor is secondary to virtue and wisdom. Initiated by Machiavelli, the concern with virtu is shared by Strauss and also the ancients; but Machiavelli omitted the concern with moderation
• Plato’s Laws, Machiavelli’s Discourses, Montesquieu’s Spirit of the Laws put issues of ‘political education’ front and center, in an ‘institutional’ or regime-based approach
• Machiavelli broke with the ancients in 1) abandoning the concern for morality in society and justice in government, 2) elevating politics’ concern for security and consumption over ideals, and 3) positing nature (i.e., the environment) as something to be exploited by technology
• Machiavelli’s view that the means justify the ends eliminated morality and paved the way for tyranny. The modern American concern for freedom runs counter to Machiavelli
• Property unbounded from classic, medieval limits to acquisition is at the core of modern capitalism. Initiated by Locke, this was a big change in natural law: the central value of labor shifted the moral center of property from nature to creativity
• There are three waves of modernity: 1) Hobbes and Locke grounded politics in passion and self-preservation; 2) Rousseau, Hegel, and Marx shifted to historical processes, which are fixed (in contrast to malleable passions; 3) Nietzsche and Heidegger introduced radical historicism so as to reintroduce theology into politics. But the ‘accidental advantage’ of the ‘dead god’ enables the recovery of idealism
• The elasticity of Heidegger’s thought accommodates very bad political philosophy, ideology such as Nazism. Concern for being, versus for humanity, lead to indifference to tyranny. Thus Heidegger had dismissed ethics from the center of philosophy
• Strauss returns to the primacy of politics as a basis for criticizing Heidegger. Both held the West to be in crisis, Heidegger for its loss of culture – the spiritual decay facing Germany – Strauss because Western liberalism was being undermined by relativism and historicism
• Strauss recovered Plato as a source of modern liberalism, by showing Plato denied the possibility of a completely just city and by showing the dialogue as a vehicle of authorial intent – it’s the content that counts
• Natural Right and History seeks to restore natural right, in response to the inroads made by Heidegger’s relativism, to shore up liberalism’s defenses against tyranny. Natural right itself points toward admiring the excellence of the human soul for its intrinsic value, without regard for material conditions
• Strauss has been criticized for his focus on the end of a just society, which implies hierarchy (i.e., political inequality)
On liberalism and tyranny:
• The regime is core to classical political philosophy, both in a factual and a normative sense
• The completely open society will exist on a lower level than a closed society aiming at perfection
• Moral behavior arises from obligations to others, felt needs and strong attachments, not arbitrary commitments
• The Counter Enlightenment was an effort to save morality from determinism of reason. Divesting religion of its public character was a victory for the Enlightenment
• Liberal education is a ladder from mass democracy to ‘democracy of everybody’, but it is elitist and not egalitarian
• Liberalism entails a public-private divide. To abolish the liberal framework would be to pave the way to tyranny
• The contrast between core defense of personal liberty and agnosticism of personal liberty is symptomatic of the crisis of the West. The root problem is attenuated understanding of liberalism, triggered by Nietzsche and Heidegger, and refracted by Berlin
• From Carl Schmitt, Strauss learned to see politics defined as ‘friend or enemy’. A world without conflict would be conformist. When man abandons what is (seen to be) right in favor of comfort, he forsakes human nature
• Evil is ever present. Ideals require moral fervor but also political prudence. The revolutionary’s goal, post-Enlightenment, is to fix it now. The crisis of the West can be treated by prudence, by recourse to liberalism
• Social scientists haven’t recognized fascism and communism as modern tyranny
• The so-called fact-value distinction is at root of nihilism. Social science which can’t distinguish tyranny has no value
• Not only ideology but also science and technology (the conquest of nature) are instruments of social control. The path was blazed by Machiavelli, who sought to connect ‘virtu’ with the ancients albeit without moderation
7. Machiavelli, Prince (18 April 2022)
In the most famous example of Machiavelli’s modern, ‘scientific’ approach to government, the Florentine observes there are leaders with the means of forcing the issue and those who must rely on persuasion: the former leverages either fortuna or, better yet, prowess (skill). The prince must understand and even foresee circumstances and boldly, opportunistically match his behavior to the times: the ends justify the means, and certainly the people will judge him on results. (He must know how to act the lion and also the fox, and to seize the womanly fortuna.) His foremost skill should be in warfare. Regarding the populace, men worry less about a ruler they love than one they fear – punishment is worse than dishonor – but he should not be hated. he prince rewards those who increase the city-state’s prosperity, and devises ways to promote the citizenry’s acquiescence and dependency. Governing according to an ideal of how people should live is dangerous to a ruler who must solve for how they actually do live (p.50). Men, especially councilors, will behave badly unless forced to do otherwise (p.77). On the surface, Machiavelli’s realism is no longer shocking and he is well described as the father of sociology; on the other hand, it is clear break with Christian Aristotelianism and the embarkment of modern political philosophy.
Coda: intelligence may lie in understanding things in their own right, in what others will understand, or in neither(?).
5. Strauss, Rebirth of Classical Political Rationalism (21 Feb 2018)
In a series of lectures / essays addressing the history of Western ideas, as well as the interplay of philosophy and religion, Strauss makes the case for the primacy of political thought as a bulwark against tyranny and argues the main threat is liberalism’s crisis of confidence. Strauss also recurs to the practice of political philosophy itself.
On practice of philosophy:
• Philosophy begins when the quest for origins is to understood in light of nature, not myth. The gods are the engine by which man believes he can control chance. By contrast, Christian religion prompts one to search inside oneself
• Philosophy is the highest end of political life, for it seeks to answer the question of what is virtue? and to supply practical references; however, the philosopher has to understand things as they are understood in the political community. It has no independent justification
• The poet imitates the legislator in seeking justice, but acts the valet, according to Nietzsche. Plato, to the contrary, says the poet possesses genuine knowledge of the soul. In this sense philosophy is psychology; however, modern psychology and sociology (which do not seek to distinguish between the noble and the base) cannot articulate a higher purpose for life. Thus philosophy, which works by logic, and poetry, which acts by demonstration, are more similar, seeking a solution to the problem of happiness. But philosophy is concerned with all things (the whole); poetry (especially as tragedy) prepares men for the philosophic life
• Aristocracy is the form of government in which the virtuous don’t have to compromise with democratic predilections for common behaviors
• Socrates is the philosophic model, the ‘loving skeptic’. The Socratic dialogue is the main vehicle for classical ideals of civic virtue and justice, the Socratic model is the highest possibility of liberalism
• Dialectic is skill in conversation: Socrates used ‘what if?’ when contradicted, proceeded to general opinions when unchallenged, each in pursuit of consensual agreement (if not truth)
• Rational philosophy is guided by the distinction between objective (true) and subjective. Existentialism says what was objective is superficial and problematic (debatable), and what was subjective is profound but not demonstrable. It rejects a return to metaphysics
• There may be many ways to understand an author, but only one way to understand him as he understood himself
On the sequence of political thinking:
• The ancients were not addressing intelligent men but decent men, and sought to settle controversy in a kind way for the good citizen. No intellectual effort is required to grasp ordinary morality, which consists of doing, whereas the highest morality – virtue – is knowledge
• After Socrates, history exemplifies the precepts of political philosophy. And history remains political history because statesmanship and legislation are the one thing needful. Politics is not the highest but is first (i.e., most urgent), because human things are close to the nature of all things
• By understanding the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides presents the highest ascent of Greek civilization (i.e., politics) and the fragile character of ancient Greek justice, as against barbarians. The Thucydidean speeches are meant to enlarge the character of the speech, to fill the space between the talk (essence) and deeds (wisdom) of the actors. By understanding Periclean Athens we understand the wisdom of moderation: wisdom cannot be said, only practiced. In the act of pursuing wisdom, Plato qua philosopher emphasizes individual choice (i.e., nature) while Thucydides qua political historian points up fate (i.e., events are too big)
• But contrary to Plato, Thucydides sees virtue as a means. He sees unrest, barbarism, war as the norm, where Plato seeks rest, Greek civilization, peace. Thucydides’ highest is unknown, Plato’s highest is nature’s highest. Thucydides’ cause of Periclean Athens is Periclean Athens, Plato’s Periclean Athens is a condition not the cause. For Thucydides, the highest is fragile, for Plato it is the strongest.
• Plato suggested three parts to the soul: reason, spiritedness, desire. Spirit is deferential to reason whereas desire revolts. Strauss says spiritedness thus links the highest level of man to the lowest, but spirit arises from desire’s being rechanneled
• The Middle Ages was the first era to foster the dialogue between philosophy and religion
• Philosophy is more precarious in Islamic and Jewish society than the Christian West. In these cultures religion is law, and does not admit of science; philosophy is highly private, as it was among the ancient Greeks. This explains the collapse of philosophy in Islam after the Middle Ages
• Aristotle says the paramount requirement of society is stability. The classic of the Christian world was Aristotle’s Politics, in the Jewish world Plato’s Laws and Republic, featuring the prophetic philosopher-king. Nor is there Roman thinking or the natural law is the Islamic and Jewish traditions
• Hume viewed man as the reference to unchanging nature. Logical positivism followed the ‘discovery of history’, which emerged from Kant’s distinction between validity and genesis
• Classical political philosophy did not need to demonstrate the essence of courage, justice, kindness, virtue: it knew these were good. Hegel rejected the ancients for lack of demonstrability
• Heidegger defined ‘to be’ as to exist as man, whereas the ancients saw it as perpetual existence. His sein (‘being’ or ‘essence’) replaces knowledge as the goal of the virtuous life
• There is no universal hermeneutics, no semiotics; all dialogue is localized to context, and rhetoric is further individualized
• Sophistry is related to classical political philosophy as the French Revolution to German idealism, as exemplified by Hegel (?)
• Modernity sees philosophy not in service of truth and good but of society and its ethics. Modernity is unusually quick to dismiss the clams to truth of previous eras
• Modern science is more powerful than ancient science but incapable of suggesting how to use this power because of its aversion to values. It can’t speak of progress but only of change. It no longer aspires to perfection
• Rational conduct means to choose the right means for the right ends. Relativism, because it requires unequivocal causality, is actually a flight from reason. Thus the modern flight from scientific reason is a consequence of science’s flight from reason
• Political science is concerned with the normative, while political philosophy regards the best. The former obsesses over method, the latter umpires competing claims to good and justice. Legislation is the architectural skill of the latter
• The problem with social sciences is not abstraction per se but abstraction from the essential things of human society. Social science is concerned with regular behavior, whereas classical politics is concerned with good government
• Political history supposes freedom and empire as manifestations of power, as mankind’s great objective, but history is now seen to be broader. Philosophy can be seen as mankind’s effort to free himself of the binding premises of civilization or culture, so history now threatens philosophy; historical sequences teach us nothing about values
• The acceptance of the past (the return to historical thinking) is different from unquestioned continuing on the current path – the so-called discovery or engine of history (p233)
On the decline of the West
• Existentialism is historicism rooted in Nietzschean relativism: life-giving truth is subjective; it cannot be the same for all men, all ages. Existentialism is the attempt to break free of Nietzsche’s solution to relativism – ‘relapsing’ to metaphysics or recourse to nature. Existentialism belongs to declining Europe, for it is unsure of its absolutes
• Modern philosophy is anthropocentric, as compared with Biblical theology or Greek cosmography, and tends to regard the human mind. In the 17th century, virtue itself came to be seen as a passion; freedom then took the place of virtue. The good life does not correspond to universal truth but consists of creating an original pattern.
• The rediscovery of classical times points up that Athens and Jerusalem have never been harmonized; but the commonality remains justice-morality-divine or natural law. The spring of Western vitality is the irresolvable tension between philosophy and religion, Athens and Jerusalem
• To combine exactness and comprehensiveness, start at the strategic points
• The well-being of the city depends on law and its observance. Justice is primarily a political goal. The wise rule indirectly through the law; the rule of wisdom is diluted by consent
• The difference between progress, which is a moral claim, and change, which makes no claim to improvement, is a major compromise of the modern West. Good and evil were replaced by progressive and reactionary in the 19th century. This substitution failed once it became obvious there is no motor of history; facts don’t teach anything about values; social sciences can only rationalize; the values of barbarism are as defensible as those of civilization
• The impossibility of Irving Berlin’s grounding the case for liberal freedom (‘inviolable boundaries’) indicates the crisis of liberalism as it moves from an absolutist claim to relativism
• The counter to Heidegger’s nightmarish world society is the individuated, the noble, and the great, which are cultural (i.e., explicit to the nation-state)
16. Strauss, What is Political Philosophy? (24 August 2021)
A series of essays and reviews elucidating characteristic elements of Leo Strauss’ political thought. Political thought considers humanity’s greatest objectives, freedom and government, those matters which lift men above their normal, daily concerns. It complements actual practice but stands above the here-and-now because philosophy is a neutral manner of consideration, firstly interested in the best regime and only then in contemporary circumstance.
The pursuit of truth entails value judgements, honestly derived. Contemporary political science, sociology, etc., seek to proscribe subjective criteria but admit judgments via assumptions or conceptual frameworks. Better to acknowledge we must first address what is or should be political, a question that is dialectic or pre-scientific, that is common sense. Philosophy rejects the ‘charms of competence’ (e.g., math) or ‘humble awe’ (meditation on the human soul and its experience): it is a matter of intellectual courage and moderation. Whereas positivism inevitably becomes historicism, which rejects the question of the best society and contends the fundamental questions cannot be answered once for all.
Whereas most philosophers have considered the combination of what is best with what is possible in given circumstance, the historicist insists that circumstance entails a determinative ‘historical conditioning’. But the necessity of all doctrine being related to a particular setting does not preclude the doctrine’s truth or utility. Political thought does not become obsolete because times have changed. Historicism believes in continuous progress, however, that we are necessarily ever closer to the truth. The nature of contemporary politics is superseded by trends, the question not of what is just but what should forthcome.
In political thought, the fatherland is the substance, the regime the form, the latter higher because it is compared to the best form. Virtue emerges through education in the form. Universal education requires technology free of moral or political control, something the ancients would not have countenanced. Moderns are not entitled to say they were wrong that such control would lead to dehumanization.
Machiavelli commenced the shift from government forming character to trust in institutions that deliver justice, implying belief that man is plastic. But the new prince may easily be a bad man disguised by public ambitions. Machiavelli lowered standards to increase the probability of the ‘success’ of the social order. Locke substituted acquisition for virtue as the individual’s goal. Montesquieu, contrasting the Roman republic with English political liberty, seconded the effect, substituting trade and finance for virtue. Rousseau represented the second wave of Machiavelli, wherein the criterion of justice is the general will. Democracy is government by the ill-educated; Rousseau taught that sufficient knowledge stems from conscience, the preserve of simple souls, that man is already equipped for the good life. German idealism sought to restore classicism but replaced virtue with freedom, which required an engine of history, an actualization of the right order which occurs from selfish behavior. Nietzsche commenced the third wave of modernity, characterized by individual will to power, the conquering of nature and chance, the renouncing of ideals and eternity – evidencing radical historicism.
Also:
• High ambition – hard problems – plus the question for wisdom defines philosophy. Ethics is the study of virtues, politics the study of man’s temporal ends. The philosopher ceases to be when he adopts subjective certainty of a solution that surpasses recognizing the problems / challenges to the solution. Similarly, detachment from human concerns regarding the eternal questions degenerates into provincialism
• The classic political philosopher is not a mediator but a neutral. Political science is transferable from one community to another, a teacher of legislators. It is concerned not with the purpose of the nation-state or foreign policy, for these are givens, but with the best political order
• Compared with classical political thought, all subsequent treatments are derivative, estranged from these primary issues. There is an important distinction between independently acquired knowledge and inherited knowledge. Special effort is required to discern what is true of the latter. Lessons must always be relearned if their vitality is to persist
• The law of nature is based on the distinction between the nature of being and the perfection of being
• Classic political thinkers sought the best way; Hegel demanded neutrality; thus thought became theory
• For Hobbes, justice does not exist outside of human institutions. Yet there is no basis but natural law for following the sovereign, so he resorts to disqualifying civil disobedience, but is nonetheless upended by the nature of charity and thus justice
• Locke denies knowledge of natural law by nature, says understanding must come from god. But: proof of the first mover does not prove natural law
• Both Hobbes and Hegel view human society as based on a humanity which lacks awareness of sacred restraints, and is guided by nothing other than thymos (i.e., desire for recognition).
• Spinoza championed pantheism and liberal democracy, running against his era, but was rehabilitated by the philosophes; yet he was surpassed in the 20th century by Hobbes (atheism, Leviathan) due to the work of Hegel and Nietzsche
• The historian is unlikely to know the philosopher’s intention better than the original, no matter the benefit of hindsight. By invading one’s privacy, the historian does not know the subject better but ceases to see the subject as an individual
• Originality or invention of system does not equal depth or true perception, understanding
4. Keegan, Winston Churchill (23 March 2022)
Sketches the life of Britain’s foremost 20th-century statesman, whose wartime leadership merely punctuated his vision and achievements as a journalist and in office. Despite little formal schooling, Churchill mastered English rhetoric and consequently a romantic telling of British history, centering on a patriotism borne of personal freedom, the sanctity of (common law) justice, and limited government. Such principles colored his political leadership. A solder and student of warfare, he never forgot its consequences for the common man. An aristocrat who held to Tory democracy, he is little appreciated for championing the early welfare state (Lloyd George wrongly getting the credit for the People’s Budget). An imperialist, he sympathized with the Boers and Michael Collins’ Ireland but not Gandhi’s India – for the latter did not lead a warrior caste. In the 1930s, Gallipoli, opposition to Indian self-rule and support for Edward VIII, and obnoxious habits kept him from office and influence. Yet rightly seeing the perils of airborne war and Nazi Germany, he set the agenda for World War II and the subsequently the anti-communist Cold War.