Surveys the 20th century, narrating political events while elaborating a case for structural forces – without a comprehensive framework. During the 1900s, the pace and scale of change accelerated. At the start of the century, religion was sufficient for categorizing humanity. By the conclusion, the expansion of personal wealth and ‘lifestyles’ driven by personal choice, women’s liberation, the rise of mass communications (including the Internet), and most important the belief that human happiness can be obtained on earth came to the fore. Windy social chapters at the start and end surround socioeconomic and political events grouped into pre-1914, interwar, and Cold War. Personnel changes rarely cause decisive shifts, according to the author. World War I and II combined to the end of European dominance, although its culture continued to resonate; the interwar era was less a triumph of fascism than a recession of democracy; the second world war saw the defeat of the ‘greatest challenge to liberalism’. Nationalism was the greatest political force of the century. In India and China, nationalist movements (loosely clothed in Western garb) were conscious of self-determination as a means to their own ends. However, Africa’s failures following Ghanaian independence in 1957 – 12 wars and 13 assassinations in 27 years – demonstrate fragile self-governance. Roberts routinely understates the tyranny of Soviet Russia and Maoist China, skipping past Ukrainian Holodomor or postwar repression in Eastern Europe (although acknowledging Soviet industrialization based on slave labor). The Cultural Revolution was as a ‘exercise in modernization’. The fall of the Soviet empire and the emergence of the European Union is also shortchanged; oddly, the UK is blamed for a late entry, but de Gaulle’s role is omitted. A new skepticism of science (i.e., the conquering of nature) arose in the 1970s and 80s. Roberts chronicles the rise and fall of Freudian psychoanalysis, but overlooks social relativism. In looking for deeper meaning in social trends, Roberts forgets history of democracy is the self-conscious choices of people. His shallow portrayal of tyranny leaves him unable to pick out liberalism’s high points and the true effects of statesmanship.
Book abstracts
21. Aristotle, Rhetoric (2 November 2021)
Rhetoric is the art of deploying possible means of persuasion, of ensuring the stronger case prevails. The objective is audience conviction, which distinguishes rhetoric from logic or analysis, which assess validity; in rhetoric there is proof but no certainty. In both rhetoric and dialectic, the line of pursuit follows premises the listener has already accepted. This grounding, as well as the interest in the superior argument, separates rhetoric from morally dubious sophistry. Aristotle conceived it as a skill of civic participation, in 3 types: deliberative (typically regarding the future, debated in assembly), judicial (the past, in adversarial courts), and epideictic (mostly the present, in setpiece speeches focused on virtue and vice). Enthymemes, the deductive, more important form of proof, demonstrate that when some thing are the case, the conclusion will be something new, a departure from the premises; in inductive proof, premises point to similar outcomes. Both premises and conclusions of enthymemes are not necessary or universally true, but are for the most part, are readily accessible. The premises should be few, the audience will supply supplements. In identifying topics and motions, Aristotle shows mechanics for buying common views bear on particular decisions.
Notable specifics:
• The practitioner must know and show what is possible or impossible, since both induction and deduction proceed from known premises
• The legislator should know his country’s past and also the systems of comparable states
• Credibility stems from practical intelligence, virtue, goodwill
• Praise displays the extent of virtue – achievements reveal disposition
• Greatness stems from opportunity, age, timing, location – conditions out of the ordinary, for a good result transcends what others are capable of in the same circumstances
• Equity is justice outside the written law
• Accidents are inexplicable action not resulting from moral flaws; mistakes are explicable; crime is explicable and immoral
• We want to be friends with rivals for the sharing of common interests – what is the best way to proceed
• Enthymemes comprise probability, example, evidence, sign (indication)
• Demonstrative enthymemes infer accepted conclusions, refutative enthymemes demonstrate something that is not accepted
• Maxims are useful for enthymemes but there are several kinds and so should be carefully chosen
• State the case, then supply the proof. Argument is proof, language, arrangement
• Argument is refuted by counterargument or insurmountable objection
• Metaphors are most effective when sensible but not obvious
• Amplification omits connectives – the cascade creates momentum
8. Gray, Isaiah Berlin (17 Apr 2018)
Isaiah Berlin’s liberalism, premised on liberty to choose from among incommensurable goods, yields to pluralism as the irreducible condition of humanity. Straddling Enlightenment rationalism and Romantic will, albeit favoring natural law and so closer to the latter, Berlin’s work shows choice is the essence of human nature, and that philosophy can help think about dilemmas presented by competing ideas; but it cannot solve them. Man’s nature is a result of choices, and so is malleable. On the Enlightenment side, Berlin sees Kantian freedom consisting of obedience to rational will. But it is a negative liberty: if positive freedom were true, conflict could be a symptom of disorder. Instead self-creation (not autonomy) gives value to freedom. Thus he rejects a universal worldview or perfect life: goods cannot be hierarchically assembled or ranked. Contra Plato and Aristotle, Berlin contends human truths are competitive, not unifying. Turning toward the Romantic, which is also the author’s preference, laws of historical development are indefensible while Berlin asserts choices are ‘inherently intelligible’ to others and so deserving of respect. Gray revisits Berlin’s contention that the German Romantics, especially Herder, shattered prototypical Enlightenment rationalism. The author then extends Berlin’s work, contending his ‘agonistic liberalism’ is what remains of rational, moral characteristic of humanity once pluralism is established. But the ground does not hold, in Gray’s view: a choice derives from recognition there is no universal authority. (Grey asserts the Romantics ironically defend Liberal liberty more completely than the Philosophes.) The impression is Gray has enlisted Berlin for postmodernism, as a bridge from respectability to radical claims. As to Berlin himself, it seems he is willing to prove the philosopher’s claim that we don’t know much – and then stops trying. Berlin searches for answers instead of revising the question in the modern context. Perhaps he abandoned philosophy because pluralism is inconsistent with the search for knowledge? Separately, it is annoying that Berlin is perpetually running down Burke as a forerunner to radical nationalists, defined as group choice premised on folkways. (In correspondence with Conor Cruise O’Brien, published in the latter’s Great Melody, Berlin says he doesn’t understand Burke very well!) A strangely enjoyable book, for all its political baggage, because it clarifies the left’s worldview.
9. Berlin, Crooked Timber of Humanity (11 Jun 2018)
A series of essays in the history of ideas which reveals Isaiah Berlin’s leading philosophical precepts. These include pluralism’s triumph over classical ‘monism’; historicism is the inevitable product of choice, which forms a malleable human nature; and the best humanity can hope for is a society which heads off moral ‘intolerables’. To further cluster some of Berlin’s writing:
• The Western intellectual tradition presumes a single answer which can be rationally discovered and what constitutes a coherent whole. Also, in the West, knowledge includes values. Machiavelli first pointed up the possibility that values and ideals may not be aligned. More concretely, Germans disgruntled with French Enlightenment culture promoted self-conscious localism, through prototypical Romanticism. Berlin concurs: men are not created but born into ‘streams of tradition’; ironically, these streams enable new creations, new traditions but nevertheless do not sustain singular ideals. The Romantics shattered European unity of thought: the 19th and 20th centuries evinced conflict of universal ideals versus Romantic will to power, particularly in nationalist corruption (i.e., the leader embodying ‘folkways’ and the highest-value will).
• Vico fathered cultural pluralism, the view that ideals can be incommensurable. He disputed the ideal of progress or even comparability. But he was not a relativist: what (choices) men have made, others can understand. Berlin assets two types of relativism. The first attacks all objectivity. The second lets empirical matters (i.e., science) off the hook. This is the notorious fact-value distinction. At any rate, 18th-century thinkers were not relativists. The construct began only with Hegel.
• English traditionalists (e.g., Burke) and German Romantics saw mankind benignly. Joseph de Maistre saw sin and malic, attacking Enlightenment rationality and returning to the ‘early’ logic of Saint Thomas. However, he effectively anticipated another outcome of Romanticism – the coalescence of the will around the (20th-century) nation-state and especially the dictator. De Maistre said evolutionary social science is trumped by the group which most fervently believes it’s right.
• The core value of the Romantic is making his own choices. When obsolete, community tradition should be disposed. Men ought not be sacrificed to abstract or objective ideals. The Existentialists succeed the Romantics. The glory of man is to choose: the act of choosing is in fact human nature. To repeat, this is not relativism but acknowledgement of incommensurability and skepticism of human progress. The Romantics shattered the unity of European telos, and also paved the way to rationalism and the Existentialists. Berlin says existentialism (and implicitly their successors, the Postmoderns) are in fact a return to natural law or at least ‘Kantian absolutism’ (wherein the moral worth of an act depends on its being freely chosen), on the grounds that to choose is the irreducible essence of human nature, albeit without the metaphysics of theology. Science cannot control the Romantic will. Therefore the best we can do is to steer clear of intolerable outcomes.
Berlin is more of an apologist than a relativist. His work led him to a dead end in the Western tradition. But he did not lose faith, unlike those who glory in the willful ‘subversion’ of postmodernism.
10. Beer, Modern British Politics (23 Jun 2018)
Traces the development and practice of British politics from the late 19th century to the 1950s, highlighting the consolidation of government and economic production and consumption in the ‘collective era’. Beer first describes four premodern mindsets: old Tory (hierarchic, corporatist), old Whig (which transposed executive power to the cabinet), liberal, and Radical. The Enclosure Acts of the 1700s indicated the introduction of group politics (albeit aristocracy, the balanced constitution, and mercantilism remained dominant), in a long-term transition from patronage to party. In the 1800s, the primary distinction between liberals and Radicals lay in the theory of representation, one favoring liberty to act one’s conscience (the ‘masterless man’) and the other the ‘will of the majority’; Radical politics nonetheless incompletely utilized party to express class and ideological ends, according to later Socialists. The collective era, which reached its height in the 1950s, introduced or reified corporatist forms of a managed economy in combination with the welfare state. Beer then analyzes the workings of the Labour Party since the 1890s. Socialist doctrine held that party program reflects class interest, and all important decisions were to be taken before reaching Parliament. In 1907, the party formally voted itself power to instruct its MPs, although Radical views of the state’s role in alleviating evil and creating good persisted until the 1920s. The miners union’s joining the Trades Union Congress in 1909 was initially seen as a setback, until its commitment to nationalization during World War I. In 1917, Labour broke with David Lloyd George; in 1918 it committed to state ownership of the means of production, a which was unchallenged until 1951. Beer writes that Labour had to do so to differentiate itself after the ‘entente cordial’ with Liberals in 1907. On taking power as a minority government in 1929, Ramsay MacDonald faced the choice of ideology or pragmatism. Needing Liberal support, he along with Snowden, Thomas, Henderson, and Webb chose the latter. By 1931, absent a clear answer to the depression, MacDonald was forced to accede to 10 percent cut in unemployment benefits in order to win loans from New York banks. Allowed to play a large role in Churchill’s wartime government, Atlee executed the Socialist nationalization program over 1945-51; however, pressed by increasingly negative balance of payments and simultaneous demand for domestic goods, the party-government determined to steer workers into export trades or production of popular goods. The problem became closing the ‘manpower gap’ and reducing volatility of demand, finance being secondary. But after the TUC’s 1946 opposition to wage restraint, Hugh Dalton was replaced by Stafford Cripps, who returned from physical controls to market manipulation – a shift which included manufacturers accepting reduced prices and profits. The deal fell apart in 1950 (following 1949’s devaluation of sterling), at which time the unions asserted a measure of independence from Labour, in order to directly participate in collectivist bargaining. This was crucial in forging the new social contract, the paradigm of the managed economy, which Beer dates to 1940 (not 1945, because it was then workers accepted sacrifices to win the war). Henceforth, class was again not inherently political and determinist. In the 1950s, commitment to nationalization and its residual class image came to hurt Labour (Beer notes that 1/3 of the working class consistently voted Conservative throughout), presaging party change. The Fabians counterattacked but the Parliamentary leadership along with the TUC, which provided more than 50 percent of party revenue, prevailed. Turning to the Conservative party, Beer revisits the old Tory and Disraeli’s ‘Tory democracy’ mindsets: belief in hierarchy; that society is an organic unit with a traditional (not rational) social ethic; that politics isn’t the highest calling but rather is an obligation in service of society; that the governing class leads by virtue of talent; that voters choose leaders, not policy, because of the leadership’s being in tune with changing circumstances, tradition, interest groups, and of course electoral calculation. Thus, in the 1930s the less ideological, more adaptable Tories converted to monetary expansion, mercantilism, and industrial and agriculture ‘rationalization’, thereby abandoning gold and free trade. Tariff ‘reform’, headed by Chamberlain, was an important step toward the managed economy. Trade associations, rising in response to unions (and in contrast to US antitrust doctrine), were the gateway to producer group representation. By the 1950s, the Conservatives too were ready for collectivism, in which 1) the managed economy relied on bargaining with producer groups and 2) the welfare state accommodated consumer interests, as represented by party-government bidding for votes. In the collective era, government couldn’t be separated from production and consumption: ‘consumer sovereignty’ trumped popular sovereignty, Beer concludes. Yet differences remained: Labour focused on equality of outcomes, the Tories, who presumed inequality because of hierarchy, on distribution of power. Thus the question of morality – the just distribution of power to rule – persisted: voluntarism, the view that human wishes are the basis of legitimacy, conflicts with rationalism, a theory of fair ends. Apart from Beer’s framework, collectivism was upended by the reemergence of supply-side economics, that prices communicate demand and so the allocation of resources and rewards.
2. Carlo Rovelli, Seven Brief Lessons on Physics (2 February 2022)
Humanity’s understanding of the universe and its physics changes our conceptual ideas and natural philosophy. The author commences explaining the transition from Newton to Einstein, from mechanical laws to general relativity, the idea that space is not distinct from matter. Space ‘curves’ where there is matter, such as waves at seas, and it expands and contracts (e.g., oscillating universe and the collapse of stars into black holes), R describing its energy. In the rival quantum mechanics, however, which dates to Max Planck and Walter Heisenberg, electrons (and other constituent particles) jump from one atomic orbit to another, also supplanting Newtonian mechanics. No object has a definite, fixed position; the periodic table indicates proclivities. Reality is the interaction of quanta as explained by the Standard Model, effectively but not so eloquently as general relativity. The two paradigms conflict.
Next, the presence of heat indicates the future will be different from the past. Heat transfers to colder elements, it indicates friction. However, it transfers not by law but by probability, again demonstrating the relational character of nature. Consequently, physicists and philosophers have concluded the present is an illusion, the flow of time a failed generalization, humanity’s experience of memory is really built on statistical phenomena. Acknowledging the gap between relativity and quantum mechanism makes for considerable uncertainty, the author places much faith in future discovery. The heat present in black holes could be a Rosetta stone which would elaborate the combined workings of quantum, gravitational (i.e., relative), and thermodynamic phenomena. There could be a connection between time and heat.
Heidegger, skeptical of the discipline for such conclusions, is loosely castigated. So too German idealism is criticised for holding man as the summit of nature, conscious of itself. Nature is not conscious of humanity’s special status, the author writes. The bien pensant emerges in full cry – nature does not care about the human species, whose life is likely to be short and further curtailed by its own choices.
But where else does one find rationality, not simple probability, save in the deity or perhaps artificial intelligence (which is artificial)? What role does the empiricism of common sense play? Heidegger is onto something; philosophy shouldn’t slavishly copy physics.
11. Kaplan, Silicon Boys (17 Jul 2018)
A brisk, sometimes adoring treatment of the tech industry’s rise, circa 1970-2000. Kaplan often traverses the boundary running along technological vision and advancement and business gain and rapacity. Venture investors such as John Doerr receive individualized treatment to rival regulars such as Robert Noyce, Bill Gates, or Steve Jobs. There’s also a useful treatment of the Microsoft antitrust case. But although well researched and written, the book fails to address why so many talented people have dedicated their careers to the field.
12. Fetter, Taking on the Yankees (1 Aug 2018)
Surveys continuity and change in the business of baseball, 1903-2003. The New York Yankees, the first to operate as a corporation rather than a lifestyle business, have set the standards for commercial operations and, accordingly, on-field success. From the 19th century, although the game was played nationwide, the Major Leagues were confined to the Northeast and Midwest, owners pruned weaker teams and behaved as a cartel as regards player employment via the reserve clause. Revenue depended on daytime attendance; Sunday games, which enabled the working public to attend, fully arrived only in the second decade of the 20th century; the ‘Chicago rule’ ensured one team in a two-team town was always on the road. 1903’s consolidation abandoned the southern frontier cities of Baltimore, Washington, and Louisville, leaving Cincinnati and St. Louis as the outposts. This geographic arrangement worked well for the first half of the century. The Yankees’ rise past the Boston Red Sox and the Giants was based on management’s willingness to reinvest in the team, and also exemplifies the contemporary ‘managerial revolution’, or administrative hierarchy as a source of performance and durability. (1960s-era ownership by CBS demonstrated limits to corporate efficiency.) St. Louis and Branch Rickey sought to overcome New York’s edge via a network of emerging players, but the farm system was ultimately ineffective: the Cardinals rose and fell with Rickey’s judgment, and the Yankees continued to predominate the World Series. Problems in established markets, rather than visionary expansion, prompted relocation of Boston’s Braves to Milwaukee, St. Louis’ Browns to Baltimore (renamed the Orioles), and Philadelphia’s Athletics to Kansas City. The Dodgers and Giants also left New York for domestic reasons, although Los Angeles and San Francisco were new markets. Walter O’Malley is portrayed as unwilling to compromise on Flushing Meadows, where the Mets were born, while the Giants panicked in moving by result of their cross-town rivals’ departure. As is true elsewhere, too much time is spent on intramural New York affairs, and not enough on the decision making in the Californian cities. Integration brought exciting new players into the game, following the Dodgers, most often in the National League sides; but New York continued to predominate in the 1950s, particularly the Dodgers. Baseball’s business model began changing with the debut of radio and then television. But the game missed an opportunity to equalize ‘small’ and ‘big’ market teams, underscoring its tendency to react than to plan for major junctures. Not Curt Flood by Jim ‘Catfish’ Hunter and Andy Messersmith – not the reserve clause but free agency – set off the player salary escalation which reshaped baseball. In the face of predictions that big market teams would collect the best talent, parity emerged while the Yankees fell to consecutive losing seasons. But there began 25 years of labor strife. While concerned with New York – the author notes the Mets and the Yankees took decade-long turns in winning the metropolitan attendance battle, roughly corresponding with the teams’ playing success – the author omits discussing the abandonment of the first and second divisions in favor of East and West, and then into three groups as well as the introduction of inter-league play. Fetter’s treatment of the 2000 ‘blue ribbon’ panel on baseball is unconvincing; he does not understand equality of opportunity. The conclusion is tepid. An interesting book that does not quite deliver.
13. Will, Statecraft as Soulcraft (15 Aug 2018)
America’s founders underestimated civic virtue. Government is more likely to do justice if it aims to promote a moral citizenry. By ignoring ancient precepts of the Western political tradition, the US focuses on individualism to the detriment of society. Will surveys political philosophy and mid-20th century intellectual currents before making the positive case that ‘statecraft as soulcraft’ is necessary for the community’s cohesion. In the first regard, Will observes that Aristotle thought human nature provided a moral compass, which workings pointed to an orderly society. To accept natural law is to hold that individuals reach better decisions through common judgment. Decision making is a source of cohesion. Hobbes and Locke asserted the privacy of self-interest, rooted in human passions; Hobbes said reason is but a ‘spy’ for passion (contra Kant). In this view, decisions are a source of tension; society is held in check by tolerance; government is a referee. So oriented, moderns have further refocused natural law away from virtue and perfection toward regularity, away from duty toward rights. Turning to contemporary thought, Will demonstrates the leveling characteristics of Freudian psychology, relativism, the academy, and so on, while working his way back to Madison’s founding precept for the Constitution – factions holding one another in check as the ‘defect of better interests’. Madison was one-dimensional, in Will’s view, in thinking that passion trumped all. He shows that if rights rest on convention rather than natural law, then changes in opinion can change these rights. FDR, a social democrat, and Reagan, a Manchester liberal, were each moderns. Burke was the greatest contemporary to side with the ancients. The argument for soulcraft is overtly made with the assertion that the basic goal is not self-government but good government. Neither popularity nor tradition is by itself a guarantee of effectiveness; as regards the latter, this is the distinction between conservatism and reaction. Government promoting virtue is not a question of what to think but how to think. This points up the difference between soulcraft and (Nazi) totalitarianism, of natural law versus the Romantic will to power. But teaching cannot regard all outcomes as equal. Some questions (e.g., slavery) ought to be above the enthusiasms of popular sovereignty. Learned and soundly constructed, but suffers from too many asides and seeming changes of direction, which undermine concentration and depth. As an example, the observation that Plato thought Thucydides failed the first test of statesmanship, to improve the citizenry, ought to have featured in the conclusion, not early on.
1. Ward Farnsworth, Classical English Style (15 January 2022)
The selection of words, the arrangement of sentences, and cadence are primary determinants of classical English style. In contrast to catechism which seek to avoid mistakes via brevity, the author outlines patterns which create forceful prose.
• English is an amalgam of multi-syllable, formal Latin words and shorter, ‘common sense’ Saxon ones. Contrast is therefore readily achieved. Latin is frequently better for complex sentiments, Saxon for plain truth – particularly at the end of sentences. Alternately, Latinate for the false, Saxon for truth
• Express concrete metonyms (surrogate images) in Saxon, the associated abstraction in Latin. Again, movement between the two arrests attention
• Sentences expand ‘to the right’ when detail follows the predicate, and to the left when detail precedes. Expanding to the right creates a crush of action, to the left tension, mystery, surprise. Sometimes the preamble is the main point after all. Branching too can be paired for effect
• So too varied sentence length. One long sentence can support a succession of shorter ones. Also, sentences without adverbs will call attention to those with
• Rhetorical power is created by opposition and movement between poles; simplicity is overrated
• The passive voice gets the narrator / author ‘off the stage’
• Inviting the reader to try something (‘look for’, ‘show me’) enlists him in the author’s project
• Cadence, premised on the pattern of weak and strong syllables, is a way of training the reader’s expectations. A strong ending is decisive, a weak one can be a flourish, and so on
• Detail can add verisimilitude to hyperbolic claim or intent