Standouts

1. Beevor, The Battle for Spain (10 Jan 2008)

by kurto

Chronicles the Spanish Civil War, a rich and hotly contested field that is a rare example of history dominated by the loser’s point of view. Pre-1930s Spain was so splintered and polarized that the combination of inept government, labor agitation in straightened economic circumstances, and conspiring generals (aided by the Church) led to rapid mobilization and then open warfare. Republican forces began with Madrid and Barcelona as well as the strategic edge; but primes inter pares Franco consolidated rightist forces and made fewer mistakes — particularly as the right was not beholden to propaganda. Both sides treated the opposition and civilians wantonly, and the fighting was both a microcosm and a proving ground for Europe (including Soviet Russia). Though focused on personal leadership and ideological conflict (particularly among Barcelonan leftists), Beevor skillfully depicts daily fighting. A worthy followup to

    Stalingrad

.

17. Bailyn, Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (26 August 2022)

by kurto

The American Revolution’s ideology centered on individuals escaping the oppression of corrupt monarchical government, as established by pamphleteers popularizing the views of Hanoverian Whigs, and the Constitutional settlement enshrined ‘a revolution not made but preserved’ by solving the question of acceptable national power. At least 50 years before the conflict, merchants, ministers, lawyers had established a common view of safeguarding liberty and political rights. They were keenly aware of not only the Glorious Revolution, which relocated sovereignty to Parliament (as Blackstone laid down), but also the fall of the Roman republic, an example of moral and political virtue decayed. Their rhetoric was didactic, explanatory not theoretical, popularizing the theories of Locke as well as Cicero, Montesquieu, and the Philosophes. Originating with the Radicals of the English Civil War, who held the monarch corrupts parliament by luring MPs with favors – or more broadly, the power’s necessary victims are liberty, law, right – the writings of learned New England Puritans softened over the course of the 17th century into the 18th century’s mainstream; Burke’s Reconciliation is a contemporary validation.
In America, where to relocate sovereignty? State charters once seen as aggressive became statements of right, bulwarks of liberty based not on natural law but providing for common law, and prohibitions of arbitrary power. Representation and consent, constitutions and rights, were vital but ultimately superseded by sovereignty, the source of legitimate power. Popular sovereignty emerged from 150 years of local design and administration of law and order. Then, after 1769 the debate shifted from specific questions of administration and tax to conceptualizing an American political science. Bailyn identifies ‘elements of liberty’. ‘Slavery’, the negative counterpart, meant more than chattel ownership; it was symptom and consequence of political disease following from loss of freedom, independence, from spread of corruption. Religion entailed tolerance of dissidence. Democracy meant the result of a radicalism looking not to solve economic inequality or social stratification but corruption (in the executive). It meant common rights and responsibilities not based on heredity. Thus the focus shifted from socioeconomic orders to the balance of power within government.
Turning to the constitution, Bailyn observes the problem of conciliating men now trained to question, specifically to mistrust national power. The Anti-Federalists were the true successors of the Whigs, the Federalists more forerunners of 19th-century liberalism (archaically, classical republicans or civic humanists). The most important matter was surmounting Montesquieu’s view of small territories being best suited for universal participation, by establishing the state (in the Senate) to be large enough to defend itself yet small enough to preserve civic freedom. Madisonian ‘factionalism’ was based in extent not counterbalance, Bailyn asserts.
Coda: ‘Because if one has a right to disregard the laws of the society to which he belongs, all have the sme right; and then government is at an end’ (p. 312)

15. Strauss and Cropsey, History of Political Philosophy (14 August 2021)

by kurto

An anthology of essays on the most influential of political philosophers, shaped by the characteristic views of Leo Strauss. The discovery of nature divided physics (i.e., the natural) and nomos (law, convention). Then followed the question whether political things are natural or conventional: the Socratic ‘what is?’.

Thucydides:
• Human nature will always overthrow the restraints of law and justice when given the chance, as demonstrated by the depravity of the Peloponnesian War
• Carrying strength of observation through to a full understanding demonstrates Thucydides’ tenacity, which enabled him to portray the course of the war, its horrors, and its humanity in ways that indeed lessons for the modern era

Plato:
• Justice is dedication to the city-state’s common good; taken to the extreme it’s communism
• The

    Republic

does not aim at the best regime but the nature of the city. The

    Laws

looks at the practice application of government
• The ‘art of justice’ reflects the view of knowledge as virtue. Citizenship in the just city is craftsmanship of some kind – men are different by nature, and so there is accommodation to actual circumstance. Justice is therefore moderate
• The city and its elite are attached to the noble lie, whereas the philosopher replaces opinion with knowledge
• The contemplation of ideas is the work of the philosopher; the artisan imitates the process in his work; Nietzsche thought poets, searching for virtue, are imitating the ‘work of ideas’ and therefore valets of derivative morality

Xenophon:
• Accepts Socratic pursuit of the best way of life if not that philosophy is the answer. Agrees justice if the primary problem of political thought
• Also follows Socrates in accepting the radical limits of knowledge
• In seeking honor from friends and retiring from Cyrus and public life, he sought deeper pursuit of knowledge. In seeking to rehabilitate Socrates, he veered from knowledge is virtue to discipling one’s self to the task at hand

Aristotle:
• The philosophic life is best for those capable, but it doesn’t follow it’s the best political outcome or that all must participate in politics. Just as war is for the sake of peace and occupation for leisure, so politics is for well-ordered life in the city. Thus the best regime makes possible lines of pursuit for many virtues
• The regime is not only institutional arrangements but also intent – a view similar to Marx or modern sociology
• Equity is not grounded in natural law but prudence; friends have no need of justice but only concord to achieve fairness
• Aristotle’s pioneering use of the mixed regime is to blunt conflict between rich and poor

Cicero:
• Philosophic inquiry increases the probability of knowledge but skepticism, taken to the extreme, is disastrous. The statemen who discover the best measures for promoting virtue are superior to the wisest philosopher
• Cicero praises respect for convention and custom, to a point, but thinks one or several men could be prescient; the statemen’s task is not dispelling myth but refracting practical truth into chosen policy. Burke’s later veneration differed in observing that the best ways were not always the product of known reason.
• The mixed regime captures both talent and popular opinion.
• Holds to natural law – justice is not entirely dependent on continent circumstance. Both reason and justice must make accommodation for practical politics

Augustine:
• Chiefly opposed classical thought’s failure to deliver a just society, not classical thought itself: temporal law requires higher, divine law
• His attack on pagan virtue set the path for the fallen view of Rome during medieval ages
• His treatment of Donatists set the stage for medieval persecution of heretics
• Augustine’s solutions to religious and civil society were unsatisfactory in that imprecision led to real harm. Classical philosophy limited itself to classical elites; Christianity, which as a faith (not a divine law such Judaism or Islam), addresses all and therefore ought to solve for society

Al Farabi:
• First Muslim to address classical political thought, relaying Aristotle and also Plato’s Republic to the Western tradition, but also for possibility of conjoining rationality and revealed law – which al-Farabi would later reject
• Aristocracy is the most virtuous regime: its citizenry is concerned with divine law as well as properly harmonized natural (rational) knowledge. There are two powers of intellect for understanding God: by imagination and by rational faculty
• At the summit is the philosopher-king, who engages in rightly guided prophesy; who also defends laws established by ‘true princes’ and conducts artful jurisprudence
• Man is peaceful. Because war is violent, only defensive war is justified

Maimonides:
• Law should be absolute, universal in its prescription even though it doesn’t (can’t) address all possible cases
• Like Islam, in Judaism prophesy plays the important function of elucidating divine law. Kings are below prophets

Thomas Aquinas:
• Christians favored Aristotle’s Politics, Jews and Muslims Plato’s Republic and Laws, by dint of sociocultural tradition. Consequently the former are more amendable to political thought shaping the city; the latter seek to square laws with revelation
• The best (by knowledge and virtue) should rule; the city defines the regime
• The choice of progressing from means to ends is derived from common sense (i.e., prudence); but the end itself of man as a moral being is assigned by nature and is predetermined
• The main issue between Aristotle and Aquinas is whether moral principles change. Aristotle says natural right varies, Aquinas seeks categorization so as to fix some elements consistent with Christian theology. The most general principles (i.e., the Decalogue) are not relative to society

Marsilius:
• An Aristotelian who opposed the papacy, Marsilius favored the many over the few or the one, which are guarded by religious institutions
• The ‘sect’ is constituted by divine law, escaping philosophy as philosophy, a concept also found in al Farabi. It points to the priesthood as society’s teachers of afterlife, rather than rulers or judges of the here and now
• Pointed the way to Machiavelli: when anticlericalism advances to questioning supremacy of philosophy (i.e., contemplation of knowledge), then political thought breaks with the classical tradition

Machiavelli:
• Lowered the goal of best regime from virtue to the practical
• A ruler who seeks to be loved depends on other, but who aims at fear is self-sufficient. Recovery of ancient (i.e., Roman) virtue lies in reimposing fear that once made men good. To be effective, the prince must have the public sphere to himself. Religion, an alternate public authority, must be completely supplanted by the prince
• Machiavelli’s innovations, like many modern discoveries, were well known to the ancients but appear fresh by his narrowing of scope

Luther & Calvin:
• Luther held reason is insufficiently aware of man’s fallen nature; the recourse is scripture, which sets limits to the guidance of history, traditional, rationality. For Calvin, scripture is a source of action, making him the more radical
• The ‘dual citizenship’ of every man creates a frontier in each man. Reason is incapable for valid teleology. For Luther, the formal frontier is circumstantial, for Calvin the church must conform to scripture
• Opposing Anabaptism, each held for the necessity of civic government; opposing the papacy, each for the autonomy of the state under God; against princes, the autonomy of God within the church
• Luther believed depraved man was best ruled by the monarch; whereas Calvin thought monarchs too were men and should be checked, but injustice or tyranny was no cause for civil disobedience
• The law of the state is for maintenance of ‘outward’ morality. It is related to divine / natural law but not deducible from it because of circumstance

Hooker:
• English Puritans, Knox, and French Huguenots departed from Calvin’s acceptance of reason in ways which undermined their philosophic consistency. Hooker attacked these ‘degraded’ works for their resort (i.e., refuge) to scripture
• Eternal law is not arbitrary but reason, since rationality stems from God

Bacon:
• Men love fame or wisdom: the former is achieved by the later. The highest wisdom comes from teleological progress
• Bacon’s scientific method of progress is meant to pertain to all fields including political thought
• Bacon denied the best political order could be known prior to progress in conquering nature. Yet philosophers are superior to experts, who are superior to the public

Grotius:
• Exemplifies the work of a jurist (i.e., positive law) applied to the political sphere, rather than philosophic origin
• Man is rational and social: men act justly (pace Cicero, Seneca) when in conformity with attraction to society
• There is no right to revolution: peace is always better for society
• Whoever metes punishment must have been injured or have responsibility for one who’s been attacked

Hobbes:
• Following Machiavelli, separated natural law from the ideal of man’s perfection
• Man’s thoughts (rationality) are subordinate to his passions
• There are three causes of conflict among men – competition, distrust, glory – which drive the natural state of war. Reason acts to intensify fear of death, seeks comfort
• Aristotle’s view of some men being more fit to lead is false. Men enter society only as equals; justice must be equally extended
• Leviathan is the all-powerful state which all must enter for government to succeed. The decisive questions regard technical administration. Statute law is supreme, supersedes canon law

Descartes:
• Perhaps the founder of modern philosophy but not modern political thought, he followed Bacon in favoring useful knowledge over knowledge for its own sake
• In the contest between virtue and passion, the latter prevails. The science which leads to happiness does not end in the good of the soul (or theology) but the good of the body: the good of man is material
• No teaching relevant to natural law or rights. Reason services the passions, a la Hobbes. Descartes seconded Machiavelli’s critique of natural reason, which led to the need for method and thence mastery of nature via science

Milton:
• The free commonwealth depends on an aristocracy of the middle class, men trained in civic virtue by public-spirited education
• Christianity, like the aristocracy, is to be preferred on its tradition not current merit, for liberty of religion or politics is the goal of public life (even if not universally sought). But liberty is to be virtuous not licentious
• The free commonwealth honors pursuit of knowledge, educates citizens to pursue it and to exercise Christian liberty. It depends not only on institutions but men who can rule themselves

Spinoza:
• Politics is scientific not Socratic. Man is defined by the base, the end is mastery of power
• All sciences are built on the mathematical model: teleology is banished. Thus comprehending political events differs from political action based on consensual understanding
• Power equals rights. Spinoza emphasizes freedom of institutions not of individuals; institutions check the irrationality of the multitude (i.e., the heterogeneity of the state of nature). But he deviates from Hobbes in a more nuanced view of self-preservation, and monarchy is replaced by conservative democracy (i.e., aristocracy) which supports freedom of philosophy
• Religious freedom is action only: it bears no claim to truth. Indeed since the best regime expresses morality, religious piety is obedience to the political order
• Evidences that freedom is imperiled when love of speculation is absent or repressed

Locke:
• Government is by consent of the governed because all are born free. The basis of the law of nature is the strongest desire within humankind: thence to life, liberty, property
• Money changes the basis of human interaction, promoting greater protection of property. The central theme is the effect of increase within society. Property is the catalyst for need of common judgment: property explains the transition to civil society
• Contra Hobbes, under tyranny, man has not left the state of nature. The good prince and the tyrant are difficult to distinguish: both go beyond the law; the answer is not theoretical but the people’s practical judgment, which implies the right of resistance. Political life is an unending struggle from backsliding into the state of nature
• There is no freedom from arbitrary power without laws, the business of channeling basic desires. Government is powerless to change human nature – those that try must end in terrorism
• The ancients thought passions were tyrannical of individuals and reason alone could subdue them. Locke upended this view, seeking to use passions to promote civic freedom

Montesquieu:
• Statesmanship requires treatment of particulars, which are intelligible only in light of historical understanding, both proximate and ultimate (i.e., philosophic)
• Every government has a nature and a principle which is the foundation of its laws
• Aristotle and Montesquieu differently distributed government powers: the former’s deliberative (executive) prescription was narrower than the latter. More important, extensive liberty is less important to Aristotle than to Locke or Montesquieu
• In England the liberty of impassioned merchants guarantees that of the thoughtful few – the postponing of social breakdown in a way that doesn’t require virtue. Indeed the revival of commerce encouraged the renaissance of philosophy in Europe: commerce and knowledge ended the Middle Ages
• The ancients thought the good man and the good citizen rarely coincided. Montesquieu thought vice underpinned good civic order, a view taken from Machiavelli

Hume:
• Ideas are derived from impressions. One cannot think what one hasn’t seen; we cannot have certain knowledge of fact, only the relations of ideas. We are obliged to doubt whatever cannot be affirmed
• Moral cognition is not separable from action (or aversion to it). The virtuous is what one is compelled to pursue. Virtue and vice constitute sentiment. Moral judgments are not reasoned from passion, they are passions
• Toleration reduces fervor, promotes civil society; but when authority is challenged, it should be preferred for the sake of order. Government is founded on custom (not ‘contract’). Time will naturally strengthen political institutions

Rousseau:
• Admired Sparta for its simplicity – only the simple republic can thrive. The development of arts and sciences is inherently corrupting to mankind’s morals
• Man is not directed to an end, he needs ‘history’ to point the way, and history shows he is plastic (not primarily political or social). There is no natural law
• Man’s freedom opposes / is independent of moral rule but paradoxically is the source of morality. Virtue is not the end but the means to freedom. Manners are more important than formal institutions, because they give practical force
• Education and punishment are instruments of ‘forcing one to be free’, of enforcing the general will
• In large societies, delegation is required; delegates are to effect the general will (no Burkean representation). But this diminishes freedom by curtailing participation
• Government is the source of inequalities of rank (rather than the capstone of communal cooperation). When the state withers and equality of persons is established, inequality of property becomes suspect
• Did not hold to a philosophy of history nor neglected the importance of politics. Rousseau completes the Machiavellian-Hobbesian break with antiquity; and anticipates Hegel and Nietzsche; but his grasp of humanity was more subtle than this 19th- and 20th-century successors on the left

Kant:
• Political thought reduces to republican government and international organization. The pivot is the tension between deterministic Newtonian science and Rousseau’s moral conscientiousness – phenomena and noumena (reason attaining freedom from conditions). Deeply indebted to Rousseau, he favored the practical over the theoretical, moral over intellectual, common folk over scientists; but Kant fills in structural support for liberalism and democracy missing from Hobbes, Locke, even Rousseau
• Science of nature is a priori understanding, versus the receptivity of the senses. Experience supplies rules. But morality is ‘ought’ not ‘is’. Good will tends to be identical with justice. Yet legal duties take precedence: first rights, then happiness
• Philosophy of history surmounts disjunction of morality and politics (i.e., justice). Kant believes in moral progress (the ratchet of history). Moral reason liberates man from theoretic or scientific reason – fellow men are ends not means – but in turn society is continually progressing, so there is no discord between virtue and happiness, morality and nature, or politics, duty and interest.
• More optimistic than Rousseau about the effects of tension between individual and society – history reconciles with morality
• Philosophy of history entails reconciling amoral politics (a la Machiavelli) and supermorality not of this world. Politics does not admit of perfect solutions: man needs a master, but his master is himself. The highest problem of philosophy of history is to grasp moral bearing of progress in culture, society, and law and channel into education of the individual
• Good constitutions derive not from people’s morality but instead moral education from the constitution. Laws lose force as government gains in extent – soulless despotism decays into anarchy
• Morality, nature, and history take turns in progressing toward Kant’s eternal peace.
• Civilization (lawfulness) precedes morality; the decision to act on morals (the ‘moral step’) cannot be effected by appeal to egoism; it is duty to the categorical imperative. Philosophy of history mediates but cannot erases gaps between evil, good, and ego-morality

Blackstone:
• Chiefly concerned, despite appearances, with natural law versus conventional (common) law of England, though not a political thinker per se
• Where there is tyranny, mankind will not be reasoned out of humanity or liberty
• The origin of duty (convention) ultimately lies in the preservation of equality and rights. But convention bears only so much scrutiny – one defaults to natural law

Smith:
• To understand a market-oriented society, one must understand how Smith revised Locke. Smith’s moral philosophy is Humean: virtue stems from approbation (not innate qualities); sympathy from imagination. This view demonstrates a changed outlook of commercial gain, from property to service for others. The recognition of private and common good on a voluntary basis was novel
• Nature’s end is advanced by sentiment more than reason, but where the classics allowed for relaxing morals to serve the higher good, Smith was ambivalent because the higher good’s exceeding moral virtue (praiseworthy acts) was questionable. Smith mitigated Hobbesian ferocity and completed the Lockean view by turning to economics. But in reducing man to his affections, he implied duties (e.g., social contact) as well as rights (self preservation). Hence the best order of society was free, prosperous, tolerant – but imperfect because of the nature of individuals
• The Marxist critique understandably exploited these tensions, but relied on philosophy for resolution, which is alien to individuality

Federalist:
• Exhibits a very high degree of conjoining practical and theoretic matters, specifically the best functioning of republican government, and argues for restrictions on pure democracy (i.e., government by country in a representative body) without resort to monarchical, aristocratic, or mixed forms
• The dangers are usurpation by elected representatives, tyranny of the majority, and/or the populace acting foolishly. The distance between the people and representatives is intended to promote dispassionate government (progressivism in the extreme or best form)

Paine:
• Though he felt government’s role was limited to the ‘few cases’ in which society was not ‘conveniently competent’, he is important for foreshadowing the welfare state

Burke:
• Theorists of the French Revolution wrongly based their work on extreme cases – generalizing from the outlier leads to wanton destruction, since at the edge natural affections are abandoned. Humanitarianism is trimmed by ruthlessness, hardening hearts even while claiming to be freedom
• But for attacking Rousseau’s usage by Revolutionary leaders, he avoids theory and instead contends on grounds of practical action. He is therefore more theoretical than statesmen-politicians, and more practical than political thinkers
• Prudence in the statesman is superior to morality but needs imprimatur. Aristotle viewed statesmanship as the comprehensive legislative art; Burke saw lower and higher orders. The British constitution guarantees both ‘sovereignty’ and morality by giving prudence superior claim over a theory of virtue. Smith also favored prudence but didn’t so exalt the constitution; Montesquieu was somewhere in the middle
• The ruling principle of Burke’s political thought is avoiding the clash of theory and practice: he shunned the making of constitutions from whole cloth, favoring adjustment. The founding was unimportant compared with timely reform. The constitution embodies the mechanism for growth and progress
• Neither Thomist (the soul’s natural inclinations are fulfilled in politics) nor Aristotelian (man is a political animal) Burke thought man was a religious animal
• Prescription is Burke’s special contribution to political thought, defined as long accustomed usage, formerly reserved to property, transformed into part of man’s natural rights. Prescription mellows the inevitability of change into acceptance
• Though siding with Cicero (against Hobbes) that man cannot make any law which he pleases, and having spent little energy establishing the substance of original justice, Burke’s prescription makes it a guide for applying natural law. It is more the means than the ends
• Prejudice is allied with reason: untaught wisdom. His thinking is aligned with Aristotle: organic society is not rational
• Manliness is courage and prudence combined so as to be open to public inspection, but is not subservient to public opinion
• He sought to fortify the rule of the few, resulting in the 19th century in the philosophic immobility of conservatives and trusting liberals with a poor grasp of the mechanics of reform – ironic evidence of political imperfection

Bentham:
• Asserted the greatest good for the greatest number; legislators who can succeed in one country can succeed in any; historic circumstance cannot veto ‘scientific’ progress.
• Progress versus custom is the essential characteristic of political debate. Bentham argued for immanent social improvement via judgement (i.e., best guesses) at consequences. That is, a collective self-interest trumps public regardingness, the Socratic ruler’s seeking for orienting the soul toward the divine
• Law inhibits freedom, but overall happiness is enhanced by collective observance. Bentham brought a modern understanding of government to the fore
• Opposed Socratic humility which concedes that philosophy must acknowledge political circumstance and decision making, thereby (adversely) demonstrating the difference between a philosopher and a philosophe

Hegel:
• The state is the primary political actor. The concern is the state as it ought to be understood, not ought to be
• The Greeks lived for the polis – there was no further conscience, no right of subjective freedom. The French Revolution was a breakthrough for putting reason at the heart of the state, for prioritizing liberty as an individual goal – but overdrawn individualism crowds out the role of government
• Hegel sought to resolve / to fuse classical and Christian-Kantian morality (duty), the politics of Plato (virtue, reason), and politics of modernity (the emancipation of passion). The decisive characteristic of the Protestant mind is free thinking. The philosophy of history is the means of synthesis
• The modern state requires rational laws, government, morals (public sentiment). Society leads to the state at the center. War shows the primary of the state, superseding lower goals of security of person and property. War also cleanses the national soul of putrid Kantian ideal of perpetual peace. The state resolves conflict of morality, politics – war is the final arbiter.
• Hegel’s state of civil servants, though seeking ancient-modern fusion, must ultimately settle on the latter

Tocqueville:
• In democratic societies, equality trumps liberty. Therefore resolving popular sovereignty requires finding a place for individual excellence, public virtue, greatness. The New England settlers had reconciled liberty and religion
• Equality of conditions is compatible with tyranny as well as freedom. The majority assaults the few, a new phenomenon in history. Further the majority, fearing to lose influence, turns to government for support. The antidote is plurality of associations
• Tocqueville rejects the classic concern with justice as the foremost goal – justice demands natural rights, which derive from equality

Mill:
• In political thought, the purpose is not only to know what should be done in the present, but also to reach the next phase of history. Mill accepted Tocqueville’s view that the move to democracy indicates necessary progress, and also that equality carried too far undermines justice, individual excellence. Rule by experts, chosen by the people’s representatives, is two stages removed – experts govern but are to be controlled by the elected officials
• Most things are done better by individuals than government since individual action promotes individual education while government threatens liberty

Marx:
• Marxist practice is fundamentally opposed to Western rule of law – it is not simply rhetoric
• Marx denied political economy as the science of allocating scarce resources. He denied timeless essences – only historical events (and becoming) which demonstrate power
• Materialism (i.e., state of need) means mankind must be alienated from political society. It supersedes self-interest, ending in a social prescription (from each, to each…) grounded in nothing
• Dialectical materialism is premised on material conditions of production being primary; the most important conflict is the dialectic stemming from irresolvable conflict of class. The view contrasts with the idealist dialectic, Hegelian dependence on reason
• Property is to classical political economy as constitutional government to political theory
• The labor theory of value is assumed to be self-evident. Marx thought surplus value was unfairly captured
• Rousseau questioned the goodness of both civil society and property; Marx followed on by asserting they were not good and not final. The withering away of the state is naught but Rousseau’s resolution
• Philosophy, the reason of man which is unequally distributed, is to be replaced by philosophy of history, or historic reason. This engine requires the perfectibility of human nature. Then mankind will be ready for politics and religion to be replaced by society and economics

Nietzsche:
• The death of god encompasses the death of Platonic forms. Nietzsche hated the banal last man, teaches acceptance of nihilism as the alternate
• To transvalue partisan politics is to equate morals with politics. The will to power subsumes morality; man is no longer rational; will to power asserts (via the doctrine of eternal return) controlling the future is effectively reshaping the past and making man himself his own creator (ubermensch)
• Historicism asserts the overwhelming importance of temporality – man cannot escape his life and thoughts being shaped by his era. Nietzsche initially agreed with Hegel, before breaking away
• Modern education produces specialists but not thoughtful individuals, which corrupts the state
• His is an implicit critique of Marxism: Marxist freedom from want is Nietzsche’s degraded last man
• Re Nazism: a man who counsels living dangerously must be credited with dangerous outcomes

Dewey:
• Sought for a popular understanding of ethics, education, logic, etc. – aiming at pragmatic description of social progress
• Marxism is valuable for establishing economic determinism as fact. Scientific method is applicable to society: a consensus of objectives means measurement is possible
• Growth is the end of philosophic and social development – but an ill-defined goal. In pluralist politics, growth runs against teleology, so the state is judge in its own cause
• Contra fixed, substantive goals for the community, growth is not political (as commonly determined) but instead psychologic and economic. Democracy is not government but a way of life (i.e., the general will)

Husserl:
• The founder of phenomenology, Husserl sought for the ultimate grounds of rationality, so as to foreclose positivist, historicism skepticism. Reason is autonomous (i.e., normative). Reason’s presuppositions must be identified
• Weber and Nietzsche questioned the value (facticity) of reason and knowledge. Husserl showed their doubts stemmed from the basis of their inquires. Reason is indeed the ultimate good; man needs a telos
• Lack of telos is the West’s crisis of confidence – failures of reason are post-Cartesian errors. Husserl opposes nihilism
• Human nature is reason’s relation to the surrounding world. Phenomenology is more thoroughly rationalist than the ancients (i.e., Platonic forms)
• Contrary to scientific reduction to experience (observation, measurement), appearances have immanent logos (i.e., a reason for appearing as they do). When reason is undermined, it’s a disaster for society since human life is based on rational norms. Whereas free scientific inquiry makes science a source of its own decay, as evidenced by positivism and historicism

Heidegger:
• If nothing is fundamentally true, everything is permitted. Metaphysical nihilism is moral nihilism. This misunderstanding of being starts with Plato. It’s necessary to understand being in light of time as we’re understood since becoming conscious of history
• Technology cannot secure freedom because it subdues human nature. Modern conflict results from attempts to refine supremacy of technology, from Cartesian self-consciousness to Nietzschean will
• History makes possible an understanding of place in eternity (i.e., the forms) but as technology undermines nature, leading to nihilism, history falls prey to historicism
• The Greeks’ mistake was to try to answer the incomprehension of being, rather than consider being itself. It is the decisive turn in Western history. Christianity, post-Cartesians diminish the mystery, the wonder of being
• Man cannot surmount nihilism, the genie loosed, but can prepare for the next revelation
• Re Nazism, paraphrasing from Plato’s Last Days of Socrates ‘everything great stands in the storm – stands by virtue of its resistance, difference, persistent victory over oneself’ (Book V: He is like one who, in the storm of dust and sleet which the driving wind hurries along, retires under the shelter of a wall; and seeing the rest of mankind full of wickedness, he is content, if only he can live his own life and be pure from evil or unrighteousness, and depart in peace and goodwill, with bright hopes.)

Strauss
• The crisis of modern political thought (i.e., fact-value disjunction, relativism, historicism) requires a return to the ancients. Understanding modernity requires historicity – we cannot solve matters by accepting presuppositions
• Better to understand the low in light of the high than vice versa
• Assess the author’s own intent, not the post facto understandings of scholars
• Though Machiavelli opposed Christianity, it was his transforming the mode and role of philosophy into a vehicle for controlling (lowering) the path of human thought that marked the turn – natural ends of man (telos) were to be rejected for scientific goals (as later articulated by Bacon, Descartes, etc.)
• Modern natural right was initiated by Rousseau, shifting basis from nature to history; the second wave was inaugurated by Nietzschean nihilism, which asserted history offers no standards
• Ancient and medieval thought was willing to engage dialectically, even with alternative outlooks. Socratic-Platonic though was aware of its ignorance. Socratic dialectical seeks not for universal code (i.e., natural law) but a hierarchy of goals revealed in the exercise of philosophy
• The Socratic voice is lonely, logical opposition identifying the regime’s shortcomings
• Strauss distinguished between what is highest and most urgent: the most urgent need of the democratic state but is not improvement (e.g., Dewey), but rather defense against tyranny of the masses
• Marxism offers a real critique but its positive vision is tantamount to Nietzsche’s last man; further, it undermines lawful freedom, liberalism’s checks on abuse of power. Marxism fails by its own standards to block despotism

7. Paret, Makers of Modern Strategy (6 Nov 2009)

by kurto

Illuminates enduring ideas and uses of military strategy since the 16th century. Leading thinkers and practitioners oscillate between views of strategy (following Clausewitz, the systematic approach to warfare absent one’s foes; tactics incorporate active engagement) as science and artifice. Clausewitz; Smith and Hamilton, who identified economics as a source of power; and Gordon Craig’s study of politicians as emergent strategists are among the most interesting chapters. The rise of German strategy, in various phases and components, inevitably forms a leading theme, given the country’s responsibility for the World War II and oft-presumed culpability for World War I. Cold War nuclear thinking is rather less interesting, particularly as the scholarship predates understanding Reagan. The next frontier is strategy in the era of terrorism, particularly Islamo-fascism. An outstanding collection.

2. Porter, Competitive Strategy (13 Feb 2010)

by kurto

Details techniques for analyzing industries and their component firms, for purposes of making capital-intensive decisions and achieving lasting advantage over industry rivals. Porter postulates five forces driving equilibrated competition: existing rivalries, potential entrants, substitutes, suppliers, and buyers. There are typical positions to take: cost leadership, differentiation, and industry (segment) specialization. Within this framework, the author then identifies ways to analyze market signalizing and competitor movements, dealings with buyers and suppliers, and industry subgroups and evolution. Written in 1980, the book focuses on old-line businesses (e.g., materials or manufacturing), often delving into industry classification by structure or lifecycle (fragmented, emerging, global, etc). The final chapters are more action-oriented, dealing with questions of vertical integration, capacity expansion, and entry into new business. The paradigmatic textbook has recently been challenged on the grounds that no strategy can deliver sustainable advantage.

5. Friedman, Next 100 Years (27 Apr 2010)

by kurto

Projects the major historical events of the 21st century using a determinist geopolitical framework. The US will benefit from centrifugal forces in China and the Russian-dominated Caucasus, and then see off a wartime alliance of Turkey and Japan, which along with US ally Poland will have emerged as major players. (The Islamist challenge will dissipate because it lacks geopolitical mass.) Key trends include population decline (which will vitiate global warming), the American-led militarization of space and its attendant civilian benefits (particularly in energy), new forms of warfare that pull back from the social mobilization of total war, and the impact of America’s 50-year cycles — due in 2030 and 2080. The rupture of 2030 will lead the US to encourage immigration; its space edge (and continued control of the seas) will carry the States through the midcentury war; but the cultural weakness of the Hispanic fifth column in the southwest ‘borderlands’ will prove a liability as the century ends. Strongly informed by a sharp reading of history, but at times almost Marxist in its faith in the inevitability of events. There is little here in the way of political thought.

9. Authers, Fearful Rise of Markets (21 Aug 2010)

by kurto

A concise, effective overview of primary financial phenomena leading to 2008-09’s Global Financial Crisis. Short chapters outlining how index investing undermines diversification, for example, serve as object lessons in how the financial markets came to be dangerously correlated and newly sundered principals (investors) and agents. Many of the early topics (e.g., carry trading, decline of banks / rise of money market funds) benefit from the author’s writings in the

    Financial Times

; some of the latter efforts (e.g., quants or ‘politics and institutions’) are less satisfying. Wisely, the details of the subprime housing collapse and subsequent credit crunch are left to others. Mainly a very fine effort that falls down only in the (perhaps inevitable) diminished historical perspective of some latter parts.

15. Taylor, Struggle for Mastery in Europe (5 Sep 2019)

by kurto

Narrates the foreign policies of Europe’s leading nations from mid-century civil strife through the conclusion of World War I. After 1848, balance-of-power calculation trumped the ideological standoff between conservatives (i.e., monarchists) and revolutionary nationalists. After World War I, Germany’s bid for continental mastery had not only obviated balance-of-power arrangements but also scuttled the system in favor of the 20th-century contest between communism and liberal democracy (Soviet Union vs. United States).

Balance of power was effected by design grounded in realism, not in treaties. Britain saw France as the keystone; Russia wished to push the two German powers into leading the defense of conservativism; Austria wanted Russian support; Prussia clung to traditional allies in Britain and Russia. Palmerstone thought BOP strengthened Germany by giving it a ‘free hand’; Bismarck agreed it was a means of security.

In 1848, the alternative to supporting the besieged Habsburg monarchy was the emergence of Hungary and unified Germany. Russia decided here interests lay in helping to restore Austria. During the Crimean War, Austria and Prussia avoided taking sides because the former was conflicted and the latter uninterested. The real stakes were Italian nationhood and the resolution of Germany. The war proved indecisive in these respects but created options for Napoleon III and then Bismarck. The Treaty of Paris, unlike the Congress of Paris following Waterloo, gave the deceptive impression of peace. (Coincidentally, it was the most successful invasion of Russian since 1800, reducing Russian prestige to the lowest point since 1721.)

Italy was more important to Europe prior to Germany’s industrial revolution; she could not make herself a nation. Austria could retain Italy only by conceding German leadership to Prussia; the basic principle of Habsburg diplomacy was to concede only after defeat; trying to retain both lost her both. Napoleon, meanwhile, bumbled into a policy of asserting ‘natural frontiers’ in aggrandizing Savoy. Italian unification finished Crimean destruction of post-Waterloo order; French ambitions of European hegemony were lost during 1863-66.

In dismembering Poland, Russia was no longer seeking Austro-Prussian unity. Prussia could subjugate the Poles, the Austrians could not. Her truly vital interests were outside the continent. (As an aside: most battles confirm the direction of events; Plevna in 1877-78 confirmed Turkish rule of the Bosporus Straights and Constantinople, giving the Ottoman Empire another 40 years; to this day, Russia remains confined to the Black Sea.)

Diplomacy is an engine of peace for those would have it. Bismarck’s convoluted doings played on European interests. The League of Three Emperors was anti-British, the Triple Alliance was contradictory. He favored Russia, disliked Austrians, and preferred France to Italy but above all sought prudential balance. Metternich’s system had been conservative, Bismarck’s was a ‘tyranny’ of German control, albeit pacific. Proper international order needs common principle, moral views, and treaties – Taylor favors Metternich.

Bismarck saw colonies in terms of European domination; England and Russia wanted to be left out of Europe to pursue empire. The Reinsurance Treacy (1882-83) ensured Germany would face a two-front war unless she abandoned Austria; Russian wanted Germany neutrality in a Habsburg conflict. Cancellation led to the Franco-German alliance, an arrangement unlike the German concord in that an autocratic and a revolutionary power came together. The chancellor’s successors lost the plot of continental domination by diplomacy and so were led toward war. It needn’t have been.

Europe would unite against Britain only when it had a clear champion: the age of African imperialism was merely postponement. During the 1890s the British were indeed isolated, Albion’s traditional Austrian links having faltered in 1894. Amid growing German predominance, the Franco-Russian tie-up unintentionally pushed Britain into Sudan (to protect Egypt vs French interests); the Boer War and the Anglo-Japanese pact underlined her solitude. Tirpitz’s naval buildup, instead of prompting Britain to buy Germany’s friendship, persuaded her to avoid conflict with France or Russia, and to adopt the ‘more than everyone else’ naval standard. Simultaneously, Weltpolitik combined with continental ambitions limited Germany’s options. The Dogger Bank affair’s denouement ended the expected (since Crimea) outcome of Anglo-Russian war.

British conservatives favored Germany, Liberals the Franco-Russian entente. Grey like most of his party repudiated BOP, but thought a scorned France would unite with Germany or Russia: Gallic independence became paramount, BOP came back to the fore, imperial interests which had predominated since 1860 were set aside. Once she had conciliated the other Great Powers to protect her empire, now she conceded imperial interests to defend the balance. Driven by trading and naval rivalry, in spite of tradition, Britain set herself against Germany.

Germany could not directly challenge Britain so long as there were two other independent powers. Abandoning the naval program might have won British neutrality, in which case she would have won the continental battle. The Moroccan crises were the point of no return. (To prove the point, the 1912-14 Balkan Wars, regarding the fate of Turkey in Europe and Asia, reduced Anglo-Russian goodwill, thereby reducing German tensions). These indirectly raised the question of French intentions should a Russo-German conflict break out: Poincare determined it would mean war no matter who started the affair, abandoning France’s a formerly defensive posture. German interests in the Baghdad railway and elsewhere in the Ottoman Empire brought here into direct conflict with Russia for the first time, for the latter needed ‘neutral’ control of the Straights for shipping. Germany required Austria to gain control of the Near East, and so was captive to her weaker partner. Romanian interests, excited by the Balkan Wars, sought to free 2 million ethnic compatriots from Hungary, which was core to the Habsburgs.

Alliances didn’t cause WWI, Taylor says; every country had reasons to hesitate or doubt surety of gains. Even Germany’s primary motivation – whether naval power, Near Eastern interests, continental supremacy – cannot be certainly identified. But the Schlieffen Plan’s adoption, which required a quick-strike win in France to avoid prolonged two-front fighting, since necessitated commitment to action. Germany did not engineer August 1914 but welcomed the occasion, the Balkan Wars having false taught of a quick win.

During the great War, every small-state alliance was a hindrance. For example, but for Italy the Allies might otherwise have severed Austria from Germany. Civilians tried to negotiate, the generals to win outright. Eventually the former were pushed aside for Ludendorff, Clemenceau, Lloyd George. The war ended BOP as a system, the treaty sought to permanently cripple Germany’s Great Power capacity, Russia having fallen to revolution. In 1918 Europe ceased to be the world’s center, though the next struggle was not clarified until 1945, in a new ideological rivalry.

16. Cannon, Governor Reagan (28 Dec 2010)

by kurto

Narrates Ronald Reagan’s rise to and career as governor of California (1966-74), the era when he became an accomplished politician. Reagan’s conservative / populist rhetoric belied pragmatic governance, often made necessary by Democrats controlling the legislature. For example, he raised taxes his first year in office and blocked Eel River development, bucking the establishment. His bipartisan welfare reform also was successful; his record on education reform and the budget (i.e., tax reform) less so. Based on contemporary reporting and augmented by post facto interviews, Canon portrays not only the principal but also the many surrounding figures. Including by a treatment of boyhood, acting, and his presidential campaign, the book adds up to first-rate political biography.

4. Wickham, Inheritance of Rome (14 Apr 2019)

by kurto

Assesses socioeconomic trends in formerly imperial Roman lands over 400 – 1000 AD, describing the collapse as tectonic but not catastrophic: culture especially displayed continuity and evolution if simplification.

The era’s most important event was the Empire’s breakup at the hands of the Vandals in 439, severing Rome’s food supply (i.e., grain and oil), followed toward century’s end by Gaul’s defection to the barbarian powers. These restricted trade, simplified wealth to land ownership, and restricted government (fisc, justice, administration). By 650 every successor kingdom had its own traditions. Islam’s rise further severed Rome from the Byzantine world (which for a time retained control of the Nile valley), completing the end of the Mediterranean regime and prompting two centuries of ferment. Taxation, shifting from commerce toward land, closed off the possibility of successors to Rome, prompting elites to favor military pursuits over luxury.
Roman culture emphasized great cities, which decayed. Medieval Christianity, by contrast, was not subsumed in Roman values: its structures changed the least, its critique of society and government persisted. Secular education gave way to religious inspiration.

Wickham organizes around the Roman West, the rising Islamic sphere, and Byzantium, and emphasizes archaeology, for example the dispersion of clay pots indicating trade, as free of ‘assumed narrative’ found in manuscripts and such traditional evidence.

In the European Common Era, the period 500-800 marks the greatest local autonomy, the least centralization. Population was sparse but not disorderly. There was little inter-regional trade, Francia being more active than its contemporaries (along the Rhine and the Meuse to the North Sea) and Britain less so: wealth maps accordingly. Most housing reverted to wood (until 1200); elites moved into towers as visually claim to leadership and status, the visual (and the miraculous) being more powerful than written word. Gaul and Germany formed under Merovingian customs over the 6th to 8th centuries, though not too far prior to Charles Martel’s ascendance. Visigothic Spain and Lombard Italy elaborated differently, the Spanish retaining greater cohesion until the Islamic conquest and the Italians fracturing entirely. Only the Franks sought empire, only the Spanish Visigoths retained imperial government. All militarized, all lost sophisticated taxation. Court-centered aristocracies persisted, of Roman stock but post-Roman custom. (English and Irish social structures congealed more easily under Anglo-Saxon or Gaelic patterns, the exception being Catholic influence). Though also disrupted, the Church retained its institutional shape – almost one-third of land in France and Italy was church-owned. To varying degrees, bishops (who tended to be aristocrats) held local sway. Literacy declined less than once supposed – government was still based on written instruction – but society’s elites militarized and much land was needed to feed and clothe armies. Europe’s early medieval ages have been seen as Germanic but though societies indeed localized, Wickham holds post-Roman sociocultural practices didn’t change much after 750 and the greater change was militarization. Reduced distribution of wealth (land) determined what the peasantry could and could no longer do. Under the Merovingians, for example, court was most important; some peasants were free, some were serfs, checking broader class solidarity; women were less present publicly than in Rome.

The Byzantine empire separated from Rome over 609-642, being unable to hold back Islamic (Persian) attacks and so losing the productive wealth of Egypt; Constantinople depopulated from 500,000 to ~ 50,000 residents, a much faster decline than Rome two centuries earlier. Byzantines survived by turning to the state.

Development in the Islamic lands is generally presented as contrasting with the West and Byzantium, rather than in terms of theology. From 630, Arabs sought to remain separate from the lands they conquered; to be on the military payroll was a badge of honor. Consequently Persian and Roman society did not blend. Beginning with late 8th-century Umayyads, administration shifted to viziers and the center of Islamic government commenced a continuous line of caliphs running to the early 16th century. In the 9th century, Baghdad became the cultural center of Islam, led by a community of scholars premised on ulama. (But: the 9th century also saw the Sunni-Shia split.). There were four main schools of law ranging from legal reasoning (interpretation) of caliphal legislation to hadith (premised on Mohammed’s statements). By 900 the latter prevailed – the ‘closing of the gate’ – no new laws promulgated by the caliph or anyone else was considered fixed. Land did not equate to power in medieval Islam, only position within the state, which brought tax wealth. Paradoxically, the succeeding Abbasid empire fell because the state grew too large.

Both Muslims and Byzantines were concerned with representation – what is holy, what is idolatrous. Aversion to the visual was a factor in the Roman-Byzantine schism of 843 (the popes long since having identified as Roman). Both Byzantine and Arab commerce were closely tied to the state: private wealth gave access to the state, which led to more complex ways to accumulate and recycle wealth.

The Byzantine city-state, which saw declining trade over the 7-8th centuries, recovered in the 11th-12 centuries notwithstanding the coming Arab conquest. By the 10th century, the second great Mediterranean trade cycle, including in the following century the Italian ports as well as the Crusade-fueled trade, was underway. But intra-regional trade among Europe, Islam, and Byzantium did not recover.

After 800 the West saw the introduction of moral political practice, exemplified by the Carolingians: the church and state working together. Yet by the period’s end, Carolingian public structures had failed, replaced by the rise of aristocratic power, the exclusion of peasantry from the public sphere (somewhat analogous to the collapse of the caliphate), and the eventual rise of European kingdoms. Charlemagne matches Justinian in advancing basic literacy, religion, socially minded legislation, and participation in assemblies. He patronized scholars but the sociopolitical world of 6-8th centuries pertained into the 9th – a time that matched the French Revolution as a hotbed of education invading politics. Carolingian rulers allowed elites to rise according to intellectual ability, for purposes of promoting Christendom (theology), unlike the Byzantines, who favored tax-funded officials and army commanders. Leaders felt it necessary to moralize their decisions; however, Carolingian initiatives reached local societies via public justice not moral reform measures. The Carolingian era was destroyed by the multiplication of successors; these regional hegemons were more important than the overall rise of aristocrats; its decline undermined the pope’s international stature.

Culturally, Carolingians evidenced the dynamic of kings choosing bishops and bishops correcting kings; Byzantines relied on Roman tradition for assurance; the Abbasids looked to the now-defined ulama. As in Byzantium, in Islam education trained one for statecraft. Solidity came from tax (which was absent in the west), but religion of the elite was not seen to be essential to state survival or that the task of the state to provide for communal salvation. Frankish aristocrats after the Carolingians were less likely to be literate; the church upheld ‘international’ culture.

In the Viking era, southern England suffered no permanent regional breakdown before 1066. Only Dublin and Normandy, plus north Scotland and Ireland, survived as Viking political retains. The rest of Danish settlements were soon culturally absorbed. Aristocratic dominance based on property was more pronounced than the continent; yet the king maintained more political control. Arguably the main political creation was the catalytic of unifying England.
Russia exhibited Byzantine influences, but was too far from Islam, and so developed of internal dynamics. Spain’s government stems from the Visigoths not Francia or Al-Andalus. Sociopolitical systems in ‘ouher Europe’, notwithstanding this diversity, stemmed from solidifying aristocratic power as well as borrowing government mechanisms from neighbors, for example specialized royal officials, top-down judiciary, or military service owed the state. In 400, stable systems stopped at the Rhine-Danube border; by 1000 recognizable polities were evident west of the Volga, albeit in weaker forms than during the Roman era.

Institutional politics were most effective where there was a strong tax (e.g., Rome, Islam, Byzantium), and less secure if dependent on land grants to aristocrats since the metropole was likely to run out of land. The decline of public culture, which was the strongest remaining link to Rome), for example in law, often devolved to private rule (e.g., inside private castles). The land tax which underpinned the Roman fisc continued in simplified form, hurting the peasantry (as well as intraregional trade) since it was not distributed. The 10th century was often like the 9th yet saw substantial changes in public assemblies.

The decline of the peasantry, ‘encaged’ in castles, figures prominently in Wickham’s writing. During the Carolingian and succeeding eras, aristocrats consolidated land ownership though peasants did not. But inheritance became normal only post 1000 (in Francia, post 900), which cramped monarchies. Private castles were a 10th century development, tying aristocrats to regional more than political interests, and leading to division among those who fight, those who work – the so-called feudal revolution. Feudal seignory is not a Carolingian structure writ small but a structural change; but not all aristocrats left court to rule local regions. Peasants in the 9-10th centuries were slowly excluded from the public sphere. Carolingian political economy promoted the demesne, ‘encaging’ the lower classes on the estate: they were dependent on the lords for land to farm and live. By the time they re-emerged after 1000, the Middle Ages were effectively over: villages were spheres of public power, estates of private rule.

The key major trends (shifts) of the era from 400-1000 by chronology are:
1. The breakup of the Roman Empire, which was more economic and fiscal than culture, aided by the rise of Islam severing Rome from the Byzantine world and fueling two centuries of crisis. In this time, governmental changes in the Islamic regions were more dramatic even then Carolingian lands.
2. The introduction of moralistic political practices exemplified by the Carolingian project – the church and state working together.
3. The end of the Carolingian empire’s public structures circa 1000, most obviously demonstrated by the rise of aristocratic power and the exclusion of peasantry from the public sphere. A somewhat analogous trend is evident in the breakup of the Caliphate. In northern Europe, modern kingdoms emerged.
4. Wealth was accumulated via land ownership, and land could be effectively taxed. The peasants suffered, regional exchange increased.
5. Institutionalized politics were most effective if there was strong tax revenue, and less so if the government was dependent on land grants to aristocrats.
6. The development of public culture with the strongest links to Rome was law; the decline to private rule on the estates (in French castles) illustrates the point.

Of note: French historiography has predominated the later Medieval ages, but the Frankish experience was not typical of Europe.