Characterizes Epicurean, Stoic, Platonic, Aristotelian, and Christian philosophy, seeking to demonstrate the latter encompasses the best traits of the first four. The Epicurean view is to look for happiness in one’s appetites and passions, to find pleasure in what you’ve got. Its shortcoming is the greatest pleasures come from enduring struggle: there’s no development of character. Stoicism resolves to control temperament no matter the external effects. It founders on the suffering of others (i.e., the problem of evil). Further, the Stoic tends to be concerned with the universal rather than the local, where altruism ought to begin. Platonism seeks the perfection of virtue through subordinating parts to the whole, the lower to the higher. Appetites are to obey reason, spirit to be steadfast but secondary to the ruling of right reason. Family and property are subordinate to character development and the state’s role in creating virtue. Half of the Republic is given to education, outlining lifelong pursuit of proper subordination. Platonism fails in supposing universals are obtainable by all. The Aristotelian approach emphasizes sense of proportion, the ‘golden mean’, which is relative to context, and so locates personal virtue in the ability to choose the best alternative. One develops by displaying the courage of resolve, resilience in failure, and progress toward the objective: these are the basis of physical skill, mental power, moral virtue, and personal excellence. Friendship, based on shared interests, is the ideal evidence of virtue obtained. Aristotle failed, however, in blithely excluding more than half the populace (i.e., slaves) and was also too austere. The Christian exhibits love for everyone, universal fellowship, which is both a more exacting standard and also more realistic because it promotes focus on sympathy for those below. Over half of Hyde’s work is given to a refined ‘muscular Christianity’. There is no discussion of the distinction between philosophy qua philosophy and religion as philosophy; thus there is no discussion of the consequences of theology, mystery, or ceremony for Christian life.
Book abstracts
19. Pappin, Metaphysics of Edmund Burke (12 Oct 2019)
Burke’s political thought, while lacking a complete metaphysics, tracks the Aristotelian-Thomist tradition even though he is fundamentally an English empiricist. His foremost contribution is a theory of change within a hierarchic, teleological universe: ‘By preserving the method of nature in the conduct of the state, in what we improve, we are never wholly new; in what we retain, we are never wholly obsolete’, he wrote in Reflections. The best synthesis is in Thoughts on Our Present Discontents: ‘It is the business of the speculative philosopher to mark the proper ends of government. It is the business of the politician, who is the philosopher in action, to find out the proper means towards those ends, and to employ them with effect’. Pappin begins by dismissing claims of Burke’s utilitarianism as language for rhetorical effect; elsewhere, he denies Burke is an existentialist or a reactionary, for his views are neither a ‘swirl of abstraction’ nor premised on defending an unchanging order. The balance of the book sketches the metaphysical principles of Aristotle, Aquinas, and to a lesser degree Jacques Maritain (i.e., Collingwood’s absolute presuppositions). Action follows nature; action and existence require structure and essence; growth is essential for the subject to reach its teleological ends; wisdom perfects the intellect as virtue the will. For Burke as for Aquinas, social (secondary) nature is shaped by habits and customs that naturally emerge from man’s primary nature. In Economical Reform, ‘It would be wise to attend upon the order of things, and not to attempt to outrun the slow, but smooth and even course of nature’. In a volume of his writings, ‘Man is made for speculation and action, and when he pursues his nature he succeeds best at both’. Where contemporary philosophers posit the rejection of metaphysical essence liberates man, Burke unites change and constancy, possibility and structure. Thus man’s place is within the social community, not bound but prudentially circumscribed in his behavior. Ultimately, Burke distinguishes between abstraction and universal / absolute and so contends that society’s proper ends are realized according to unique characteristics of the epoch. Pappin asserts Burke should have given more thought to metaphysics but concedes his primary purpose was political. The work is carefully organized and helpfully illustrates metaphysical concepts, but the prose is choppy. While the natural law view of Burke is often referenced, where is Harvey Mansfield? Coda: another Burke quote: ‘All men have equal rights but not to equal things’.
20. Collingwood, Essay on Metaphysics (27 Oct 2019)
Metaphysics is the study of absolute presuppositions which underpin contemporary scientific inquiry. Invented by Aristotle, who erroneously conceived it as a science of being (‘ontology’ to Collingwood), the subject’s birth simultaneously gave rise to science: for to think scientifically is to answer a question; questions require presuppositions; and all such questions and presuppositions must somehow be grounded. (Propositions seek to answer ‘is it true’ or similar queries; facts, from Bacon onward, are things that answer questions.) All metaphysical questions are historical questions: what was the contemporary view?
Mistaking the certainties of one’s age for the certainties of all ages is a fundamental error. It is religion’s role to promote the development of absolute presuppositions. Thus Collingwood concludes the Christian church has been the guarantor of Western science. He shows how the doctrine of the trinity corresponds with modern science, which rests of absolute presupposition of nature as one, and therefore science as one in corresponding to law.
‘Antimetaphysics’ is an irrational, unscientific view of life, to which Collingwood ascribes various personas. Deductive metaphysics is a constellation of absolute presuppositions which are without conflict, like coherent mathematics; but metaphysics (i.e., history of ideas) is never without internal tensions. Logical positivism, which seeks to prove presuppositions (and all else) as fact, is the most prominent example of the pair of enemies of metaphysics; in actuality it treats fact in a medieval manner.
By targeting metaphysics, positivism continues the 18th-century attack on classical Greek thought. Separately, psychology, which purports to be the science of how we think, cannot claim dominion over metaphysics because it does not uniquely do so (so too does logic) and since it makes no recourse to truth and falsehood and thus to self-criticism which is the end of thinking (i.e., was my thought successful?). Theoretic thought is logic, practical thought is ethics. Psychology in actuality is not cognitive (as the ancients thought); it is the science of feeling; lacking not only self-criticism but also a science of the body and also an understanding of truth, it is no science at all. Psychology is a pseudo-science which cannot supplant metaphysics and other sciences because it ignores procedure: it is the propaganda of irrationalism, which is not a conspiracy but an epidemic undermining the scientific pursuit of truth.
Elsewhere, Collingwood treats the sequence of physics from Newton (all events have causes) to Einstein (all events are governed by laws, but most have no cause). Physicians escaped the anthropomorphic problems of the 19th century – nature causing things – by concluding there are few causes only behavior according to law. But philosophers and positivists alike extended Kant’s view that every event has a cause. Kant himself considered metaphysics as ‘god, freedom, immortality’. Of his categories of modality – possibility, actuality, necessity – possibility (i.e., something that could be) is a major stumbling block for positivism. The scholastics considered that pagans ended Roman civilization, but it was really the loss of faith in Latin absolute presuppositions.
21. Kelly, March of Patriots (22 Nov 2019)
Prime ministers Paul Keating and John Howard extended Alan Hawke’s reform program, albeit for different reasons and in contrasting ways, positioning Australia for a tranquil prosperity in the 21st century. The pair shared a working-class heritage though the Labor man was egalitarian by ideology, the Liberal by creed. Kelly describes the outcome as ‘Aussie exceptionalism’, the transition from a protected to a global economy while preserving pragmatic, socially egalitarian features and avoiding ‘US style’ laissez-faire (or neoliberal) features.
a Then-Liberal party leader Alan Hewson should have won the 1993 election, but his Fightback platform provided Keating a target to distract from a deep Labor recession; this year, not 2007 ended ‘neoliberalism’ in Australia. Despite winning Keating blamed Hawke for not relinquishing power in 1988. His income tax cuts (combined with raising gas and tobacco surcharges) were cynically designed to make the Hewson’s GST proposal unworkable, and would force his finance minister to resign soon after delivering his first budget. Nonetheless, despite 10 percent unemployment he stood by the 1980s reforms, breaking tradition of responding to downturns with higher tariffs. The introduction a central bank and abandoning the wage award system would set the stage for low inflation. As a cultural warrior, Keating was anti-British (a la Manning Clark) and a radical nationalist (i.e., anti Federation), exemplified by his attack on the flag. Prone to overreaching, he required faith in his ideological, ‘redemptive’ positions on the market economy, republicanism, Aboriginal reconciliation, and Asian détente. Keating held the Mabo decision allowed for ‘coexistence’ of native claims and pastoral title, allowing the former a seat at the negotiating table; but the outcome was judicial administration and so tanglement. Ultimately he failed to graft Mabo, Asian détente, republicanism, and multiculturalism onto modernization.
Labor’s contesting the 1996 election on terms of concealed budget deficit cost the party a decade. Workchoices, Howard’s effort at labor (industrial) deregulation, not only raided the opposition’s turf but also sought to demonstrate growth did not result in inequality (but shared gains). Howard could not have succeeded Hewson, but followed Alexander Donner because Kevin Costello was prepared to wait his turn. He had changed since his first term as Liberal leader, moving beyond the party divisions of the 80s to fuse a Burkean conservatism with Smithian economics. Labor’s reform model comprised financial deregulation, tariff cuts, moves to counter inflation (i.e., the central bank), privatization, and enterprise bargaining; Howard added tax (GST) reform as well as fiscal and labor measures – unusually conceding credit to Labor for the effects of financial and tariff changes. Unemployment was not conquered until the 2000s, but the Liberal PM renewed the country’s sense of personal responsibility, moving it further away from (social) protection. He was disinterested in religion as a political objective, and dropped opposition to ‘multiculturalism’, but held his ground on citizenship and immigration and contested Mabo and the 1996 Wik case, which implicated some 40 percent of the land. Kelly writes Howard missed his opening vis-à-vis Aboriginal reconciliation. He loved talkback radio and laid claim to a generation of ‘battlers’, the Aussie Reagan Democrats.
The passage of GST was opened by a court ruling stopping New South Wales from taxing tobacco; monies were to go the states. The newly floating currency enabled the country to weather the Asian crisis, while underlining Howard’s confidence in its Western ties. Under Howard, Australia’s plan was not détente but world deputy (e.g., Afghanistan) and regional leader (Timor independence). By the end of his term, relations with Tokyo, Dew Delhi, Jakarta, and Beijing were at a high point; Howard skillfully drew closer to China while immediately supporting America in its war on terrorism (having been present in Washington on September 11, 2001). Hanson was a noisy, worrisome, and ultimately flawed challenger. As to an Aussie republic, Howard agreed with Keating a popular presidential mandate would overturn the Westminster system, and exploited uncertainty whether it meant the country would no longer have a British head of state or should become a direct democracy.
After the debacle of Seattle 1999, Howard had sought a bilateral trade deal with America, sealing the arrangement with instinctive show of support after 9/11: Howard immediately understood the attack as a threat to the West. (Ironically, the economic downturn of the Howard’s second term, punctuated by the 2000 introduction of the GST, a landmark to his tenacity, broke the common assumption that Australia was tied to the US economy, the Antipodean slump being unrelated to tech.) The Tampa incident demonstrated both determination to control Australia’s borders and response to judicial activism. Australians agreed with Howard the executive branch should be responsible immigration, regardless one’s party affiliation. Post-reform Australia was not prepared to accept judicial activism as an alternate policy mechanism.
Full of contemporaneous and post facto interviews, Kelly is Australia’s answer to Bob Woodward, himself an establishment figure if not quite so biased. Though sometimes repetitive, and the introduction is something of a flying start, the book is clearly the starting line for academics.
22. Jones, Burke and the Invention of Modern Conservatism (22 Oct 2017)
A problematic monograph studying Edmund Burke’s establishment as founder of British conservatism. Burke’s supple yet vociferous politics left the Georgian / early Victorians to decide whether he was a great statesman and who were his heirs: neither the Whigs nor the Tories could claim the whole of him, Peel and Disraeli making no overt appeals to his legacy. So too were they unsure of his Irish heritage. By mid century, however, in part because his contrasting the English constitution with French tumult, he was seen as a conservative genius — the author ignores Blackstone or Bagehot! — while Matthew Arnold and others acclaimed him a literary prodigy. Later, he became generally fashionable as an aphorist, a kind of Mark Twain. Amid constitutional reform of the 1860s, Liberals couldn’t accept his prior opposition; however, revisionist appraisals by Leslie Stephens and especially John Morley helped bring him into the Irish Home Rule debate of the 1880s. Gladstone was his foremost Liberal supporter, but the Liberal Unionists used him the most. The author asserts Irish conflict, in combination with the Unionists transition to the Tories, was the turning point. When it became evident the Liberals would not reconcile, the question of who truly succeeded Burke reach its final phase, ironically echoing the split between Fox and Burke over the French Revolution. Yet there were two additional dynamics at work. Burke’s oeuvre was reduced to body of political theory, notably by Hugh Cecil, son of Lord Salisbury, in which he was recognized as a pioneer of applying historical method in deriving just politics. Separately, he was widely studied in schools as a paradigm of English rhetoric as well as the English state (in contradistinction to the French Revolution). Sensibly organized but poorly written and occasionally conceptually muddy, the work is irredeemably undermined by both a rushed ‘epilogue’ citing a David Bromwich quote as evidence Burke is not in fact at conservative at all, and more importantly failing to deliver on the title’s promise, British political conservatism being nowhere treated in the whole.
22. Kirk, Edmund Burke: A Genius Reconsidered (29 Nov 2019)
Narrates the life and elucidates the political legacy of Edmund Burke, whose views on constitutional government, political party, and sociopolitical reform are fundamental to Western civic heritage. Though lacking the élan of Rousseau or Johnson, Burke’s wisdom pertains in the mid-20th century. Drawing on numerous Burke scholars, Kirk makes particular use of Peter Stanlis’ summary of Burke’s objectives:
- To maintain the structure of the British state
- To define the limits of British monarchy
- To extend the role of the House of Commons
- To expound the role of the political party
- To extend civil rights and economic opportunities to all citizens, including throughout the Empire (according local custom)
- To defend the historical traditions and order of Europe (i.e., Greco-Christian West) versus the Enlightenment
- To solve problems (i.e., to do justice) with an eye to custom (often ‘prudence’) and equally the ethics of prevailing legal norms
As early as 1746, Burke worried that decadent Western elites would succumb to leveling rationalism. As a parliamentarian, his initial impact owed to advocating self-government in Ireland and America, restraint of the British monarch (‘economy’) and simultaneously promotion of the political party, and social justice in India. His moral imagination and literary genius revealed his approach: ability to reform, disposition to preserve. Thoughts on Our Present Discontents first propounded the role of party harnessed to national interest (i.e., accountability to the public), because rising ‘popular interests’ would no longer abide conventional monarchy or aristocracy; but party needed to surmount the taint of faction. Burke always opposed arbitrary power and so the turn to opposing Jacobinism evidenced his recognizing rationalism’s inciting a European civil war. Reflections on the Revolution in France demonstrated the natural ends of Enlightenment government: the destructive energy of all radicals and the insistence on absolute submission to will. Contesting the notion that Burke ‘gave to party what was intended for mankind’, Kirk shows Burke’s political philosophy in fact formed the initial and most enduring defense of Western civilization. Meanwhile, the defection of the Old Whigs to the Tories created the first and oldest political party (contra Jones, Invention of Modern Conservatism). Elsewhere Kirk is concerned to demonstrate Leo Strauss’ misreading, in Natural Right and History, of fatalism: though seeming to concede he could do no more, in fact Burke’s works during the 1790s anticipate Churchill in locating perseverance in the English public and rallying them to it. Valuable as one of the clearer biographies, Kirk settled the debate over whether Burke was a conservative.
13. Fradkin, Sagebrush Country (6 August 2021)
Characterizes era of land use in southwest Wyoming, northwest Colorado, and northeast Utah over 1850-1990, leading to the contemporary emergence of ‘colonial’ administration: external control of the land and its resources. Conflict began among Indians, trappers, (Mormon) settlers, and miners; featured railroaders and ranchers in the late 19th century; and in the 20th century has pit locals (especially land- and water-hungry ranchers and latter-day miners) against progressive conservationists and absolutist environmentalists, the latter two being coastal elites. The locals’ enduring fault has been to settle for get-rich-quick schemes, creating boom-bust cycles. They have also lacked foresight, for example those late 19th-century stockmen who might have bought land for pennies per acre but instead pursued free grazing, partially by ignoring early regulation. The set-asides created by federal legislation in 1891, 1897, 1907, and finally the Taylor Gazing Act of 1934 – Harold Ickes’ ‘magna carta’ of conservation, which claimed 140 million acres plus Indian reservation and much of Alaska for the public domain – solved the tragedy of the commons by establishing Washington’s preeminence, and triggered bureaucratic rivalry: the Bureau of Land Management on behalf outgunned ranchers, the Park Service for John Muir’s environmentalist heirs, and the Forest Service for successors to Gifford Pinchot’s progressives. The blockage of Echo Park dam, a campaign evidencing the influence of Bernard DeVoto and Eastern media, demonstrated the prevalent postwar dynamic. The author acknowledges but ultimately skips past the Reagan-era Sagebrush Rebellion.
11. Clarke, Mr. Churchill’s Profession (26 Jun 2021)
Narrates the interplay of Winston Churchill’s profession as amateur historian and Parliament pursuits, focusing on the writing of the History of English–speaking Peoples (HESP). Taking to journalism and authorship as cheaper than the military and yet sufficient to finance his aristocratic lifestyle, Churchill sought for fame to improve his negotiating power. At the outset, he was unconcerned with scholarly treatment of Anglo-Saxons contra Normans and the broader questions English-speaking nationalities, favoring family biographies or expected best-sellers. He composed all of his material; his stylistic influences Gibbon, Johnson, Burke, and Macaulay (ironic in the latter’s opposition to the Duke of Marlborough); but he belonged to no historiographic school. One effect of writing of his father’s biography was to persuade himself of abandoning the family Tory connection. In the interwar cabinet, moreover, he was anti-American. Out of office, he turned to HESP but often took on interim projects for revenue. Clarke recurs to the peculiarities of contemporary taxation and Churchill’s accounting. HESP was largely written, with the assistance of a committee of professionals, in 1938-39, save for volume 4 (which treats of the white dominions), completed in the 1950s. Yet its themes were manifest in wartime rhetoric: men who fight tyranny and barbarism deserve history’s plaudits; freedom and law, individual rights, and the subordination of government to society are the characteristic qualifies of English-speaking nationalities. HESP’s judgements often reveal Churchill’s contemporary politics: Clarke accuses Churchill of Whiggish history, not considering the conservative statemen’s preference for tradition. But he is diligent enough to quote Isaiah Berlin: ‘the single, central, organizing principle of his moral and intellectual universe’ was ‘an historical imagination so strong, so comprehensive, as to encase the whole of the present and the whole of the future in a framework of a rich and multi-coloured past’. (See Mr Churchill in 1940.) Chatham is Churchill’s hero; Clarke wonders why the dictatorial Cromwell doesn’t get the same adulation?! There is a persistent tone of professional jealously, and little recognition of Churchill’s statesmanship.
14. Spencer, Battle for Europe (19 Jun 2020)
A brisk monograph treating John Churchill’s (later Duke of Marlborough) daring 1704 German campaign, culminating in the defeat of Louis XIV and Marshal Tallard at Blenheim, effectively ending French designs on the Holy Roman Empire for most of the 18th century. The predatory Louis, unbeaten for 40 years, had unwittingly forged William of Orange’s Grand Alliance by promising James II restoration to the English crown. Yet the Dutch primarily wanted security, the British parliament seethed of the Glorious Revolution’s partisan aftermath, and imperial commander Prince Lewis of Baden was innately conservative. Escaping capture in 1702, Marlborough, seen as the scheming son of a penurious royalist, and his great ally Eugene of Savoy, another aggrieved aristocrat, seized on Count Wratislaw’s suggestion to relieve Vienna by marching up the Danube. Well financed, the Allies paid for supplies while campaigning, the French relied on confiscation; but Marlborough terrorized the Bavarian countryside to punish Maximillian Emmanuel. The allies won at Schellenberg in July, placing themselves between the French and Vienna. In the August battle, Spencer asserts Tallard ought to have defended the Nebel river with cavalry as Marlborough’s infantry sought to gain a foothold. Yet the French horse almost simultaneously lost a skirmish, shockingly and in view of the garrisoned town, just before the main battle. For this reason, the author asserts Tallard should not have given battle but retreated. In the successful assault, fought over 3 fronts, the Allies suffered 12,500 casualties including 300 of the 700 British officers; the French lost all but 250 of 4,500 officers and some 40,000 troops. The shock of the result was French surrender and the capture of Tallard. Bavaria was knocked from the war, which despite the French being driven from the Low Countries after Ramillies in 1706, persisted until 1714. Spencer asks why Blenheim isn’t remembered with same warmth of Agincourt, answering that partisan opposition to Marlborough’s character, as well as that of Swift and Macaulay, has diminished the affair. Accessible and well illustrated.
2. Costigan, History of Modern Ireland (18 Jan 2021)
Narrates Irish politics and society since the 18th century, climaxing with a polemical treatment of independence and civil war that scapegoats the British, credits the Americans, and skips past Irish economic development as well as de Valera’s cynical role. In a long prelude, points up Catholic monasteries made Ireland a European center of learning during the Dark Ages, while and Viking raiders established town life in Dublin, Limerick, Wexford, and elsewhere. In 1156 Henry II of England was authorized to invade by Pope Adrian IV, in order to promote Catholicism, beginning 750 years of oppression. Brechen law was replaced and peasants either enserfed or driven to inarable lands in the west. A second phase of colonization commenced with Elizabethan plantations, prompting the risings of Hughs O’Neill and O’Donnell; revealing tripartite division among a Catholic Kilkenny Confederation allied to Charles I, Ulster Scots Presbyterians, and Dublin-based loyalists; and accelerating with Cromwellian confiscations, which surpassed the 3 million acres previously taken in Ulster and Muster, claiming another 8 million – half the arable land – and driving Celts over the Shannon (‘to hell or Connacht’). Subsequent conversion to pasture meant fewer people could be supported.
Some 150 years later, the American revolution prompted the relaxation of penal laws, allowing Catholics to become landowners and Stormont flourished under Grattan; however, Wolfe Tone’s United Irish and the bungled French invasion of 1798 prompted the 1801 Act of Union. In the 19th century, the anti-colonial campaign turned political. To encourage participation, Daniel O’Connell’s Catholic Association set low dues but efforts to restore parliament neglected the agrarian problem (so too Young Ireland). The famine, which killed 2 million, in combination with 2 rental evictions and 2.5 million lost to emigration, evidences the wretched state of the countryside. From the 1850s, American public opinion and later dollars became a domestic factor, while new political actors continually emerged, such as the Irish Republican Brotherhood (founded 1858) and the middle-class Fenians, which spurred the 1867 rebellion. Michael Davitt’s Land League sought to buy back and redistribute farmland, using the tactic of rent boycotts; Gladstone’s second Land Act to undermine its appeal. All along, England’s intellectuals staunchly opposed and savagely oppressed its neighbor, save alone for JS Mill. But the British arrest of Parnell was more representative of British intention, and Phoenix Park ruined prospects of Victorian Home Rule. Still, the 1904 Land Act increased quadrupled eligibility to buy land, to 300,000, and in all nearly 12 million acres were sold after 1885.
In the final turn, Patrick Pearse and WB Yeats, representative of a literary renaissance that fused pagan and Christian Ireland, served to ally culture with the rising dissatisfactions of Dublin’s slums, evidenced by the strike of 1913. The 1911 Act of Parliament having stripped Ulster’s last line of defense, Edward Carson’s Ulster Volunteers shortly turned to mutiny, Bonar Law’s support ironically contrasting with the derided tactics of suffragettes or labor. It was clear from 1913 that Ireland would be partitioned. Redmond’s agreeing to wartime service mainly suborned the implementation of Home Rule. Even the north opposed conscription, and in December 1918 elections, Sinn Fein swept the balloting and resurrected the Dail. Michael Collins’ campaigning, prompting the introduction of Tans and the Auxiliaries, ultimately turned American opinion against Lloyd George’s penurious England and prompted negotiations (the author states de Valera was in secret contact with the prime minister?). Independence was due to Britain’s postwar decline and the rise of America – domestic events played a secondary role. De Valera could have prevented the civil war. However, upon becoming prime minister in 1932, he repudiated Land Act payments and other Edwardian residuals, prompting a trade war in 1932-38 and exiting the Commonwealth
Coda: although two-thirds of Protestants left Ireland after 1922 and emigration continued throughout the century, exodus reflected the repression of the Catholic Church and Britain’s generous welfare state. In Costigan’s telling, Irish’s citizens qua individuals making social and economic choices count for little.