Standouts

4. Smith, Reading Leo Strauss (27 Jan 2018)

by kurto

Surveys the German-American political philosopher’s primary teachings:

On political philosophy
• Political philosophy, which aims to replace opinion with knowledge, paradoxically pits the organic wisdom against rational inquiry
• The terrible truth of philosophy is there’s no objective need for it – the only critical necessity is intrinsic to its practice
• One of Strauss’ most enduring themes is Athens vs Jerusalem: Each is obligated to open itself to the other’s challenge. The two sides agree the need for morality, which is core to justice (and thus law). Athens is steadfastly moral; Jerusalem is alive to the possibility of revelation
• Jewish political thought evidences the particular rather than the universal. The Jewish state is modified exile. Strauss showed outward fidelity to Israel, inward commitment to philosophy, in order to combat atheism while preserving truth in knowledge
• Political thought is the first of the social sciences because human experience is practical, borne of action for a purpose (i.e., to preserve or to change). Political opinion presupposes a structured way of life, codified by law, underpinned by a theory of governance
• Justice is a mixture of freedom and coercion, or virtue and persuasion
• Straussian ‘esoteric reading’ is not a doctrine but a process. The emphasis on close reading, which may reveal hidden ideas and emphases, was taken from Heidegger. Politics is implicit in every text because texts are sure to be read in their social context
• Strauss avoided ontology, the nature of being. Not everything is permissible – thus political philosophy, not ontology, is the bedrock of humanity
• It’s safer to understand the low in light of the high (i.e., the ideal), in order to appreciate the best of man’s political traditions
• The experience of history and daily affairs cannot override evidence of simple right and wrong, which is the bottom of natural right. The problem of justice in every context persists
• The distinction between philosophy and ideology is the regard for permanent conditions of human nature – which makes some things insoluble
• Statesmanship is the highest non-philosophical pursuit: the pursuit of freedom and justice through prudence transcends lawyers, technicians, visionaries, and opportunists
• The cultivation of friendship (with one’s opposites) is imperative to practicing the craft

On the history of ideas:
• Like Burke, Strauss sided with the ancients because political thought is closest to the political community
• Classic political thought derives directly from the experience of newly conscious political society. Subsequent political philosophy was tempered by the traditions borne of the political context (i.e., the choices society made)
• According to the classics, honor is secondary to virtue and wisdom. Initiated by Machiavelli, the concern with virtu is shared by Strauss and also the ancients; but Machiavelli omitted the concern with moderation
• Plato’s Laws, Machiavelli’s Discourses, Montesquieu’s Spirit of the Laws put issues of ‘political education’ front and center, in an ‘institutional’ or regime-based approach
• Machiavelli broke with the ancients in 1) abandoning the concern for morality in society and justice in government, 2) elevating politics’ concern for security and consumption over ideals, and 3) positing nature (i.e., the environment) as something to be exploited by technology
• Machiavelli’s view that the means justify the ends eliminated morality and paved the way for tyranny. The modern American concern for freedom runs counter to Machiavelli
• Property unbounded from classic, medieval limits to acquisition is at the core of modern capitalism. Initiated by Locke, this was a big change in natural law: the central value of labor shifted the moral center of property from nature to creativity
• There are three waves of modernity: 1) Hobbes and Locke grounded politics in passion and self-preservation; 2) Rousseau, Hegel, and Marx shifted to historical processes, which are fixed (in contrast to malleable passions; 3) Nietzsche and Heidegger introduced radical historicism so as to reintroduce theology into politics. But the ‘accidental advantage’ of the ‘dead god’ enables the recovery of idealism
• The elasticity of Heidegger’s thought accommodates very bad political philosophy, ideology such as Nazism. Concern for being, versus for humanity, lead to indifference to tyranny. Thus Heidegger had dismissed ethics from the center of philosophy
• Strauss returns to the primacy of politics as a basis for criticizing Heidegger. Both held the West to be in crisis, Heidegger for its loss of culture – the spiritual decay facing Germany – Strauss because Western liberalism was being undermined by relativism and historicism
• Strauss recovered Plato as a source of modern liberalism, by showing Plato denied the possibility of a completely just city and by showing the dialogue as a vehicle of authorial intent – it’s the content that counts
• Natural Right and History seeks to restore natural right, in response to the inroads made by Heidegger’s relativism, to shore up liberalism’s defenses against tyranny. Natural right itself points toward admiring the excellence of the human soul for its intrinsic value, without regard for material conditions
• Strauss has been criticized for his focus on the end of a just society, which implies hierarchy (i.e., political inequality)

On liberalism and tyranny:
• The regime is core to classical political philosophy, both in a factual and a normative sense
• The completely open society will exist on a lower level than a closed society aiming at perfection
• Moral behavior arises from obligations to others, felt needs and strong attachments, not arbitrary commitments
• The Counter Enlightenment was an effort to save morality from determinism of reason. Divesting religion of its public character was a victory for the Enlightenment
• Liberal education is a ladder from mass democracy to ‘democracy of everybody’, but it is elitist and not egalitarian
• Liberalism entails a public-private divide. To abolish the liberal framework would be to pave the way to tyranny
• The contrast between core defense of personal liberty and agnosticism of personal liberty is symptomatic of the crisis of the West. The root problem is attenuated understanding of liberalism, triggered by Nietzsche and Heidegger, and refracted by Berlin
• From Carl Schmitt, Strauss learned to see politics defined as ‘friend or enemy’. A world without conflict would be conformist. When man abandons what is (seen to be) right in favor of comfort, he forsakes human nature
• Evil is ever present. Ideals require moral fervor but also political prudence. The revolutionary’s goal, post-Enlightenment, is to fix it now. The crisis of the West can be treated by prudence, by recourse to liberalism
• Social scientists haven’t recognized fascism and communism as modern tyranny
• The so-called fact-value distinction is at root of nihilism. Social science which can’t distinguish tyranny has no value
• Not only ideology but also science and technology (the conquest of nature) are instruments of social control. The path was blazed by Machiavelli, who sought to connect ‘virtu’ with the ancients albeit without moderation

5. Strauss, Rebirth of Classical Political Rationalism (21 Feb 2018)

by kurto

In a series of lectures / essays addressing the history of Western ideas, as well as the interplay of philosophy and religion, Strauss makes the case for the primacy of political thought as a bulwark against tyranny and argues the main threat is liberalism’s crisis of confidence. Strauss also recurs to the practice of political philosophy itself.

On practice of philosophy:
• Philosophy begins when the quest for origins is to understood in light of nature, not myth. The gods are the engine by which man believes he can control chance. By contrast, Christian religion prompts one to search inside oneself
• Philosophy is the highest end of political life, for it seeks to answer the question of what is virtue? and to supply practical references; however, the philosopher has to understand things as they are understood in the political community. It has no independent justification
• The poet imitates the legislator in seeking justice, but acts the valet, according to Nietzsche. Plato, to the contrary, says the poet possesses genuine knowledge of the soul. In this sense philosophy is psychology; however, modern psychology and sociology (which do not seek to distinguish between the noble and the base) cannot articulate a higher purpose for life. Thus philosophy, which works by logic, and poetry, which acts by demonstration, are more similar, seeking a solution to the problem of happiness. But philosophy is concerned with all things (the whole); poetry (especially as tragedy) prepares men for the philosophic life
• Aristocracy is the form of government in which the virtuous don’t have to compromise with democratic predilections for common behaviors
• Socrates is the philosophic model, the ‘loving skeptic’. The Socratic dialogue is the main vehicle for classical ideals of civic virtue and justice, the Socratic model is the highest possibility of liberalism
• Dialectic is skill in conversation: Socrates used ‘what if?’ when contradicted, proceeded to general opinions when unchallenged, each in pursuit of consensual agreement (if not truth)
• Rational philosophy is guided by the distinction between objective (true) and subjective. Existentialism says what was objective is superficial and problematic (debatable), and what was subjective is profound but not demonstrable. It rejects a return to metaphysics
• There may be many ways to understand an author, but only one way to understand him as he understood himself

On the sequence of political thinking:
• The ancients were not addressing intelligent men but decent men, and sought to settle controversy in a kind way for the good citizen. No intellectual effort is required to grasp ordinary morality, which consists of doing, whereas the highest morality – virtue – is knowledge
• After Socrates, history exemplifies the precepts of political philosophy. And history remains political history because statesmanship and legislation are the one thing needful. Politics is not the highest but is first (i.e., most urgent), because human things are close to the nature of all things
• By understanding the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides presents the highest ascent of Greek civilization (i.e., politics) and the fragile character of ancient Greek justice, as against barbarians. The Thucydidean speeches are meant to enlarge the character of the speech, to fill the space between the talk (essence) and deeds (wisdom) of the actors. By understanding Periclean Athens we understand the wisdom of moderation: wisdom cannot be said, only practiced. In the act of pursuing wisdom, Plato qua philosopher emphasizes individual choice (i.e., nature) while Thucydides qua political historian points up fate (i.e., events are too big)
• But contrary to Plato, Thucydides sees virtue as a means. He sees unrest, barbarism, war as the norm, where Plato seeks rest, Greek civilization, peace. Thucydides’ highest is unknown, Plato’s highest is nature’s highest. Thucydides’ cause of Periclean Athens is Periclean Athens, Plato’s Periclean Athens is a condition not the cause. For Thucydides, the highest is fragile, for Plato it is the strongest.
• Plato suggested three parts to the soul: reason, spiritedness, desire. Spirit is deferential to reason whereas desire revolts. Strauss says spiritedness thus links the highest level of man to the lowest, but spirit arises from desire’s being rechanneled
• The Middle Ages was the first era to foster the dialogue between philosophy and religion
• Philosophy is more precarious in Islamic and Jewish society than the Christian West. In these cultures religion is law, and does not admit of science; philosophy is highly private, as it was among the ancient Greeks. This explains the collapse of philosophy in Islam after the Middle Ages
• Aristotle says the paramount requirement of society is stability. The classic of the Christian world was Aristotle’s Politics, in the Jewish world Plato’s Laws and Republic, featuring the prophetic philosopher-king. Nor is there Roman thinking or the natural law is the Islamic and Jewish traditions
• Hume viewed man as the reference to unchanging nature. Logical positivism followed the ‘discovery of history’, which emerged from Kant’s distinction between validity and genesis
• Classical political philosophy did not need to demonstrate the essence of courage, justice, kindness, virtue: it knew these were good. Hegel rejected the ancients for lack of demonstrability
• Heidegger defined ‘to be’ as to exist as man, whereas the ancients saw it as perpetual existence. His sein (‘being’ or ‘essence’) replaces knowledge as the goal of the virtuous life
• There is no universal hermeneutics, no semiotics; all dialogue is localized to context, and rhetoric is further individualized
• Sophistry is related to classical political philosophy as the French Revolution to German idealism, as exemplified by Hegel (?)
• Modernity sees philosophy not in service of truth and good but of society and its ethics. Modernity is unusually quick to dismiss the clams to truth of previous eras
• Modern science is more powerful than ancient science but incapable of suggesting how to use this power because of its aversion to values. It can’t speak of progress but only of change. It no longer aspires to perfection
• Rational conduct means to choose the right means for the right ends. Relativism, because it requires unequivocal causality, is actually a flight from reason. Thus the modern flight from scientific reason is a consequence of science’s flight from reason
• Political science is concerned with the normative, while political philosophy regards the best. The former obsesses over method, the latter umpires competing claims to good and justice. Legislation is the architectural skill of the latter
• The problem with social sciences is not abstraction per se but abstraction from the essential things of human society. Social science is concerned with regular behavior, whereas classical politics is concerned with good government
• Political history supposes freedom and empire as manifestations of power, as mankind’s great objective, but history is now seen to be broader. Philosophy can be seen as mankind’s effort to free himself of the binding premises of civilization or culture, so history now threatens philosophy; historical sequences teach us nothing about values
• The acceptance of the past (the return to historical thinking) is different from unquestioned continuing on the current path – the so-called discovery or engine of history (p233)

On the decline of the West
• Existentialism is historicism rooted in Nietzschean relativism: life-giving truth is subjective; it cannot be the same for all men, all ages. Existentialism is the attempt to break free of Nietzsche’s solution to relativism – ‘relapsing’ to metaphysics or recourse to nature. Existentialism belongs to declining Europe, for it is unsure of its absolutes
• Modern philosophy is anthropocentric, as compared with Biblical theology or Greek cosmography, and tends to regard the human mind. In the 17th century, virtue itself came to be seen as a passion; freedom then took the place of virtue. The good life does not correspond to universal truth but consists of creating an original pattern.
• The rediscovery of classical times points up that Athens and Jerusalem have never been harmonized; but the commonality remains justice-morality-divine or natural law. The spring of Western vitality is the irresolvable tension between philosophy and religion, Athens and Jerusalem
• To combine exactness and comprehensiveness, start at the strategic points
• The well-being of the city depends on law and its observance. Justice is primarily a political goal. The wise rule indirectly through the law; the rule of wisdom is diluted by consent
• The difference between progress, which is a moral claim, and change, which makes no claim to improvement, is a major compromise of the modern West. Good and evil were replaced by progressive and reactionary in the 19th century. This substitution failed once it became obvious there is no motor of history; facts don’t teach anything about values; social sciences can only rationalize; the values of barbarism are as defensible as those of civilization
• The impossibility of Irving Berlin’s grounding the case for liberal freedom (‘inviolable boundaries’) indicates the crisis of liberalism as it moves from an absolutist claim to relativism
• The counter to Heidegger’s nightmarish world society is the individuated, the noble, and the great, which are cultural (i.e., explicit to the nation-state)

16. Strauss, What is Political Philosophy? (24 August 2021)

by kurto

A series of essays and reviews elucidating characteristic elements of Leo Strauss’ political thought. Political thought considers humanity’s greatest objectives, freedom and government, those matters which lift men above their normal, daily concerns. It complements actual practice but stands above the here-and-now because philosophy is a neutral manner of consideration, firstly interested in the best regime and only then in contemporary circumstance.

The pursuit of truth entails value judgements, honestly derived. Contemporary political science, sociology, etc., seek to proscribe subjective criteria but admit judgments via assumptions or conceptual frameworks. Better to acknowledge we must first address what is or should be political, a question that is dialectic or pre-scientific, that is common sense. Philosophy rejects the ‘charms of competence’ (e.g., math) or ‘humble awe’ (meditation on the human soul and its experience): it is a matter of intellectual courage and moderation. Whereas positivism inevitably becomes historicism, which rejects the question of the best society and contends the fundamental questions cannot be answered once for all.

Whereas most philosophers have considered the combination of what is best with what is possible in given circumstance, the historicist insists that circumstance entails a determinative ‘historical conditioning’. But the necessity of all doctrine being related to a particular setting does not preclude the doctrine’s truth or utility. Political thought does not become obsolete because times have changed. Historicism believes in continuous progress, however, that we are necessarily ever closer to the truth. The nature of contemporary politics is superseded by trends, the question not of what is just but what should forthcome.

In political thought, the fatherland is the substance, the regime the form, the latter higher because it is compared to the best form. Virtue emerges through education in the form. Universal education requires technology free of moral or political control, something the ancients would not have countenanced. Moderns are not entitled to say they were wrong that such control would lead to dehumanization.
Machiavelli commenced the shift from government forming character to trust in institutions that deliver justice, implying belief that man is plastic. But the new prince may easily be a bad man disguised by public ambitions. Machiavelli lowered standards to increase the probability of the ‘success’ of the social order. Locke substituted acquisition for virtue as the individual’s goal. Montesquieu, contrasting the Roman republic with English political liberty, seconded the effect, substituting trade and finance for virtue. Rousseau represented the second wave of Machiavelli, wherein the criterion of justice is the general will. Democracy is government by the ill-educated; Rousseau taught that sufficient knowledge stems from conscience, the preserve of simple souls, that man is already equipped for the good life. German idealism sought to restore classicism but replaced virtue with freedom, which required an engine of history, an actualization of the right order which occurs from selfish behavior. Nietzsche commenced the third wave of modernity, characterized by individual will to power, the conquering of nature and chance, the renouncing of ideals and eternity – evidencing radical historicism.

Also:
• High ambition – hard problems – plus the question for wisdom defines philosophy. Ethics is the study of virtues, politics the study of man’s temporal ends. The philosopher ceases to be when he adopts subjective certainty of a solution that surpasses recognizing the problems / challenges to the solution. Similarly, detachment from human concerns regarding the eternal questions degenerates into provincialism
• The classic political philosopher is not a mediator but a neutral. Political science is transferable from one community to another, a teacher of legislators. It is concerned not with the purpose of the nation-state or foreign policy, for these are givens, but with the best political order
• Compared with classical political thought, all subsequent treatments are derivative, estranged from these primary issues. There is an important distinction between independently acquired knowledge and inherited knowledge. Special effort is required to discern what is true of the latter. Lessons must always be relearned if their vitality is to persist
• The law of nature is based on the distinction between the nature of being and the perfection of being
• Classic political thinkers sought the best way; Hegel demanded neutrality; thus thought became theory
• For Hobbes, justice does not exist outside of human institutions. Yet there is no basis but natural law for following the sovereign, so he resorts to disqualifying civil disobedience, but is nonetheless upended by the nature of charity and thus justice
• Locke denies knowledge of natural law by nature, says understanding must come from god. But: proof of the first mover does not prove natural law
• Both Hobbes and Hegel view human society as based on a humanity which lacks awareness of sacred restraints, and is guided by nothing other than thymos (i.e., desire for recognition).
• Spinoza championed pantheism and liberal democracy, running against his era, but was rehabilitated by the philosophes; yet he was surpassed in the 20th century by Hobbes (atheism, Leviathan) due to the work of Hegel and Nietzsche
• The historian is unlikely to know the philosopher’s intention better than the original, no matter the benefit of hindsight. By invading one’s privacy, the historian does not know the subject better but ceases to see the subject as an individual
• Originality or invention of system does not equal depth or true perception, understanding

9. Berlin, Crooked Timber of Humanity (11 Jun 2018)

by kurto

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.

14. Manville, Origins of Citizenship in Ancient Athens (28 Aug 2018)

by kurto

Traces the evolution of Athenian citizenship in the late seventh and early sixth centuries. The Kleisthenian reforms catalyzed Attica’s transformation to a powerful democratic state. The author begins by sketching Aristotelian concepts of the polis and democracy: justice is the essential condition of the state, and citizens are shareholders in a company whose purpose is moral excellence. Poetry, archaeology, and other remnants of Ancient Athens demonstrate these ideas, but citizenship lacked precise, shared understanding. Kylon’s attempted coup d’etat in 630 provoked aristocratic defense of privilege, as well as Drakon’s subsequent codification of customs such as penalties for killing Athenians (versus foreigners). But interstate warfare played a greater role than socioeconomic factors; scarcity of land was more important in undermining tribal affiliations. The reforms of Solon initiated more precise ideals of membership, inheritance, immigration; he also canceled debt, thus ending the possibility of citizens being sold into slavery, which won many different adherents. Further, several of Solon’s laws transformed formerly private concerns such as marriage, orphanage, weights and measures, and public festivals into public concerns. Yet his foremost concern was the process of justice: the well-ordered society is the just society. His controversial policies, particularly the cancellation of debt, led to tripartite factional warfare and the dictatorship of Peisistratos. The overall effect of his 25-year rule was positive for democratization (a la Pinochet or Kirkpatrick). Then followed 510’s diapsephisis, the judgment of fitness for citizenship on the basis of tribal descent. Kliesthenes’ rise to power dispelled this reign of terror; further, good order became equal order. He revised definitions of citizenship and enhanced participation in the legal system, and his reforms benefitted from foreign threats. Citizens were encouraged to work together domestically and in warfare. The inclusion of anthropology elongates the study, relegating some interesting material to the footnotes. In all, a useful historical work.

17. Davis, Crucible of Command (15 Oct 2018)

by kurto

A dual biography of Robert E. Lee and Ulysses Grant which serves to portray the primary military campaigns of the Civil War. Lee, 15 years older, sought to prevail by making Northern opinion give up, albeit through winning a Napoleonic, climactic battle; Grant, the most offensive-minded of Northern commanders, was tasked to win in the Confederacy’s spiritual homeland. Defeating Lee helped Grant become ‘second to Lincoln’ as man of the century. Both were Whiggish West Pointers, Lee the scion of a Revolutionary War hero who was forced to become head of the household, and was made by the Mexican War. Grant was hard-working but left the army to become an indifferent businessman. Although Lee was a prized recruit to the Confederacy, because of rivalries and state sovereignty, he didn’t become primes inter pares until May 1863 – months before his failure at Gettysburg. Grant worked his way up through Mississippi Valley wins at Fort Donelson, Shiloh, and Vicksburg, shrugging off a reputation for drunkenness and officer rivalries. Both Lee and Grant preferred surprise, indirect moves, and forceful follow-ups. In summer 1863, as he was charged to clear western Tennessee of Southern cavalry, he grasped the broader potential for destroying Southern resource base in Alabama and Georgia. His planning along with his successes made it inevitable he would be brought east to face Lee (which happened in April 1864). Also that summer, Grant came to appreciate the need to abolish slavery, though he was generally minded to avoid politics and in fact left the niceties to George Meade. When asked by politicians in March 1865 to recommend surrender, Lee declined; a month later he conceded to Grant’s generous terms at Appomattox. Swept to the presidency in 1868, he suppressed the KKK and was the first two-term president to display a modern approach. Lee, elected president of a struggling Virginian college, helped a Republican become governor of the state, thus enabling the Old Dominion to regain admission to the union in 1870 and side with Reconstruction (the only Southern state to do so). Lee, a fatalist, believed God’s intentions practically eliminated risk since events were preordained. Grant, the late bloomer, was prepared to take the good with the bad, to live life all over again.

5. Barraclough, Crucible of Europe (18 Apr 2019)

by kurto

Narrates the emergence of dynastic (neo-nation state) and church institutions in France, Italy, and Germany during the 9th and 10th centuries, contrasting the post-Carolingian order with Anglo-Saxon England. Several persevered into the pre-modern era and later. With the fall of Italy to the Lombards and Spain to Islamists, the center of a truncated Europe had moved north. The lasting importance of the Carolingian Franks lies in the spread of government and civil administration through the northern lands including Poland and Bohemia. In this era the allied Catholic Church became a force to be reckoned with (rather than merely the hallmark of a religious society). Carolingian learning, notably the copying of manuscripts but also innovative epistemology, set down the height of erudition and specifically the legacy of the Latins until the 12th century. The settlement of 812 crowned Charlemagne as a western emperor, fusing two kingdoms in his own right and separating them from the Byzantine lands. But Frankish rule was built on conquest and had already begun to sputter; relying on feudal vassals and missi dominici was too much for contemporary government especially in Lombardy, Bavaria, neo Hungary, and Saxony – even though later peoples would look back upon it as an idealized unity when forging their new state forms. The Danish, Saracen, and Magyar invasions acted as a solvent on the Carolingian state, which was partitioned under Louis, whose legacy is the establishment of the new nation-states as well as primogeniture. In this time, Nicholas I built up the independent role of the papacy.

The raids brought depopulation, agricultural decline, and people seeking protection from local strongmen. They hit hardest in France, hastening retreat to the country castle. Here the tendency to revert to pre-Carolingian traditions was most pronounced, here the author contends we most see the Carolingian breakup did not produce separate countries, but rather they were borne of different regional responses to anarchy. In France, it took more than two centuries for territorial and social restoration of order. Contra Wickham, there was no ‘caging of the peasant’: people willfully surrendered freedom from security from Viking raids. The criterion of nobility was ability to bear arms, not birthright. Vassalage lost stigma of servitude, gaining an ethos of common service and serving to demarcate the political classes. The ca 850 edicts of Charles the Bald required men to choose their lord, sanctioned the vassal’s oath, and sanctioned hereditary succession to the local fief. Thus the country would emerge into medieval feudalism, with 55 counties, up from 27 at the start of the 10th century. But the French rulers’ continued concession of lands to win the support of nobles all but bankrupt the Carolingian and Capetians: the monarchy did not regain really independent strength until 1100. Again the author contends feudalism did not produce anarchy but was an organic reaction. Its principles spread throughout Europe via the Spanish Reconquista, the Norman invasion of England, adoption in Germany and eastward; and would remain the basis of order down to 1789.

The history of post-Carolingian Italy is the struggle for control of the Lombard plain among two Frankish families, from Spoleto and Friuli, and one from Lucca.  As the raids in Italy were piratical, the towns continued to develop, under the tutelage of bishops; the role of counties weakened. Order was restored comparatively earlier, by the German Otto I in 961-62.

The Germans were the first to recover from anarchy, being less impacted by the raids and more inclined to retain elements of Carolingian government including a loyal aristocracy. Henry I prevented the breakup of eastern Frankish lands, his successor Otto I sought not to break the dukes but reasserted control over the royal demenses and the church in the duchies, so as to ally the church with the crown. Vassalage remained an onerous condition, marking another contrast with France. Otto’s crowning by the pope in 962 marked a turning point in progression to dynastic order in German lands under the Saxon dynasty, but its middle-term decline was germinated by its retroactive character.

England did not dissolve by result the Viking raids, as in France, but produced a more coherent, forward-looking response then the Germans: local government via the hundreds and the shires and a single monarchy from several pre-raid kingdoms. Alfred reorganized the military even while on the defensive, forging a mobile, unified force (i.e., not a local levy), a network of forts (burhs), and a navy for forward response. The forts became the basis of civil authority, as in Lombardy, France and to a lesser degree Germany; the hundreds extended the forts in promoting social order (e.g., responses to crime). By assuming responsibility for peace, the monarchy created a machinery for order where none had existed; this was extended beyond the Norman conquest.

The reestablishment of settled government broadened agriculture (notably in Italy), economic exchange, and indeed the purview of civilized northern Europe, most recently centered on Charlemagne’s Aachen but now more dispersed among Hungary and England. Monastic reform, another response to anarchy, also served to extend social order and played a related role in breaking down regional differences; but the church loosed sociopolitical forces which were to challenge the Saxon monarchy in the mid-11th century. Aristocratic hostility to Salian (successor to Saxon) reforms undermined royal authority. After a half century of struggle, a new order in central Europe emerged in 1122.

19. Caldwell, Age of Entitlement (1 October 2021)

by kurto

Contemporary incivility demonstrates a hidden civil war between adherents to the de jure constitution of 1789 and woke proponents of the de facto regime which has grown up since 1964. The latter has captured the establishment and is winning.

Brown vs. Board of Education (1954) undermined the First Amendment’s freedom of association; Griggs vs. Duke Power (1971) next authorized government to address racism where there was no obvious intent; Bakke vs. Univ. of California (1978) sanctioned aspirational ‘remedies’ for hidden racism (i.e., diversity). Extralegally, rioting was part and parcel of the civil rights movement from the late 1960s, while feminism held lieutenancy of the aggrieved cohorts, now led by the homosexual lobby.

Postwar government and society had modeled itself on the military, but the Vietnam War’s unpopularity shifted credibility to the Baby Boomers, also buoyed by demography. Reagan arranged a truce between the new left and Americans unwilling to finance the Great Society via taxation, by converting its basis to debt, thereby handing away the fruits of the 1970s counterinsurgency. But social peace frayed anyway as entitlements grew. Clinton’s repeal of Glass-Steagall, which had acted to preserve capital in local banks, transferred debt financing to the credit markets, ushering government regulation (e.g., Community Reinvestment Act, ESG measures) into the marketplace.

Under the shadow constitution, postmodernism and fellow travelers in the media delegitimize tradition and political institutions; woke institutions champion new orthodoxies on behalf of subversive-cum-favored minorities; and working-class whites see New Deal / union economic benefits reallocated. Once-Republican plutocrats have recast their (inevitably) minority status as one sympathetic to the civil rights protagonists, embracing lobbying via foundations to thwart democratic majorities – a phenomenon which FDR resisted for the very reason. (Caldwell describes he subset of Internet titans as oligarchs of digital natives who cannot opt out.) The Tea Party and Trump reject this arrangement.

Speaking of the Russian Revolution, Rosa Luxembourg observed revolutionary tactics are the way to democratic majorities, not democratic majorities the conduit to revolution. The civil rights partisans supplant popular sovereignty with mandate: ‘biases’ are held to be unconscious, and so government is justified in overriding them. (At the time of Brown, Strauss was among those who observed liberal society ought to condone ‘discrimination’.) Caldwell raises the possibility that the American experiment with democratic self-government has already ended.

Compelling but occasionally careless of fact (e.g., 1986 immigration pact, pace Vin Cannato). A very good first draft of the progressive influence on political thought and government circa 1960-2020.

8. Bagehot, English Constitution (2 Jun 2019)

by kurto

Studies British Parliamentary government, setting aside theory for normative analysis of function and drawing favorable contrasts with the American presidential system. Constitutions have dignified and efficient parts, the latter often more important than formal allocation of power. These gain stature through passage of time, even though yesterday’s conventions are not necessarily best suited for today’s affairs. The efficient secret of the British constitution is close union of the legislature (i.e., Commons) and the executive (the prime minister and responsible cabinet). Relations between the PM and Parliament are incessant, unlike the needlessly divided president and congress, and cabinet ministers further are better supervisors of the bureaucracy because they provide fresh views while being accountable to Commons. That is, English party government exposes the leadership both to functionaries and the requirement of maintaining a working majority. The USA’s splitting of sovereignty, by contrast,  is particularly troublesome in times of crisis; Bagehot observes it’s well the Americas are law abiding. There are also valuable takes on political affairs: so long as there’s an uneasy class which lacks just power, the agitators will rashly believe all should have equal power; gross appearances are great realities; bureaucracy conflates substance of government with process, thereby overdoing quantity at expense of quality; in early societies more important for law to be fixed than good. A surprisingly resilient analysis.

20. Collingwood, Essay on Metaphysics (27 Oct 2019)

by kurto

            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.