The Glorious Revolution settled the two-part question of supremacy in English political and religious matters by compromising: Whiggish views of the monarchy and Tory high church preferences prevailed. The ultimate winner was Coke and Selden’s view that the king is chief servant but not master of the law. Like 1660’s restoration of Charles II, the revolution of 1688 ended lawless rule by restoring time-honored customs. Had James II submitted to Parliament, the scope of legal change would have been greater, for the monarch would have been circumscribed, but the hierarchy would have been less clear cut. (The subsequent independence of judges themselves was one of the broadest formal changes.) Writing with verve, Trevelyan shows it to be the decisive event in English constitutional history through the 20th century. Economic prosperity and geopolitical hegemony consequently followed. Although compromise prevailed in England, the victory was one-sided in Scotland and Ireland. To the north of the border, Catholics became Jacobites while Cavaliers opposed the Argyles and Whiggish ministers, especially after Holyrood acceded to Westminster. Across the sea, Protestants dependent on England emasculated native leaders save for Catholic priests, choking off the possibility of reform. Indeed, although the 18th-century English understandably favored institutional conservatism, and did effectively channel working-class and Radical sentiment into a system headed by Parliament, it was late in responding to the industrial economy and delivering the Reform Act.
Standouts
5. Babbitt, Democracy and Leadership (20 Mar 2021)
Humanistic disciplines teach man to control his will, for as Burke observed, the less control within, the more without. Forsaking the fostering of individual character and sociopolitical standards risks civilization. Not reason but imagination holds the balance of power between lower and higher nature of man. Criticism must aim for centered judgments, an abiding unity, above the shifting impressions of individuality.
In the long run, democracy will be judged by the caliber of its leaders, effectively a judgment on their vision and imagination. Rome and early 20th-century America alike display ‘psychological imperialism’ – the will to power. Should the aristocratic principle of merit give way to egalitarian denial of principled leadership, parliamentary government will likely fail.
Western decay primarily traces to Bacon (utilitarianism), Rousseau (naturalism), Machiavelli and Nietzsche (imperialism; individual license transformed into will to power), with an assist to Descartes’ substituting demonstrable science (mechanism) for higher will (transcendence) as the definition of reason, and Freud’s corrupting ethics by asserting to refrain is automatically bad. The way back is Socrates (definition), Aristotle (habit), and religion (humility).
Rousseau, Babbitt’s bete noire, flattered mankind by asserting man is naturally good and corrupted only by his institutions. He taught that to pity is to exercise morality and so virtue, and glorified the instinct, the irrational. He denied personal liberty in the Social Contract’s civil religion. Rousseau inspired to violent revolt versus civilization: anarchy today, social despotism tomorrow. By result, since the 18th century Western leaders have increasingly pursued the ‘idyllic imagination’.
The English utilitarians, following Bacon, sacrificed ethics to progress. They identified progress as simple movement toward undefined, far-off events, a projection of idyllic imagining. Ridding politics of theology, as Machiavelli did, entails dispensing with ethics: men cannot be ruthless statesmen and moral exemplars. Nietzsche extended the license of Machiavelli’s prince to all.
The net result is imperialistic leadership, the will to power toward the idyllic. Yet the modern sensibility wishes to be anti-institutional but also enjoy the benefits of religion and humanism. ‘The implication of unity in diversity is the scandal of reason’ – the point of politics is to abstract unity from diversity: e pluribus unum.
The first reply to human torments is not perfect theory but developed character. The problem is to be self-reliant, to develop personal standards, the freedom to act on them, and humility (i.e., will, intellect, imagination in right relation). Greek philosophy failed to adequately address the problems of right conduct guided by higher will. Subordinating the ordinary to the higher is common to all religion. Humility, which came into the West via Christianity, made control of will more important than primacy of the intellect, but the church was less concerned with mediating metaphysics than following Aristotle’s golden mean. In dispensing with pride of intellect, the Christian tended to dispense with reason altogether, whereas the Orient showed little antagonism between the two. Karma (spiritual strenuousness) is to work on one’s highest calling. The Asiatic emphasis on humility as preceding emotion or intellect was a superior approach.
The Socratic thesis is knowledge is virtue, the Baconian that it is power. Confucius was the master of those who will act on will. Burke saw humility as the first of virtues, that tradition is a mechanism for individuals to achieve superior social standards. But he underestimated utilitarianism.
True liberty lies neither in society or nature, but inside: self-control makes one free. Expansive emotion cannot substitute for higher will. To act according to ethical will is to limit. Standards are a matter of observation and common sense; the absolute is a metaphysical conceit. Kant’s freedom to do does not address freedom to refrain.
The highest virtue of social order is justice. To collectively work toward a just order is a higher sense of work; but it is a gathering of individualized work, not minding one another’s business – contemporary ‘social justice’.
Moral realism is refusing to shift the struggle between good and evil from the individual to society. The chimerical equality of social justice is incompatible with liberty, the inner working according to standards, to higher will. That is, equality clashes with humility. Mere humanitarian ‘service’ can’t ward off the will to power. The failings of social justice are the undermining of individual responsibility, the obscuring of practical sense – as evidenced by the use of government power.
The conflict between the liberty of the unionist and the idyllic equality of the Jeffersonian is core to American history. In response to evil, the Puritan begins with inner reform, the humanitarian regulation.
20. Collingwood, Essay on Metaphysics (27 Oct 2019)
Metaphysics is the study of absolute presuppositions which underpin contemporary scientific inquiry. Invented by Aristotle, who erroneously conceived it as a science of being (‘ontology’ to Collingwood), the subject’s birth simultaneously gave rise to science: for to think scientifically is to answer a question; questions require presuppositions; and all such questions and presuppositions must somehow be grounded. (Propositions seek to answer ‘is it true’ or similar queries; facts, from Bacon onward, are things that answer questions.) All metaphysical questions are historical questions: what was the contemporary view?
Mistaking the certainties of one’s age for the certainties of all ages is a fundamental error. It is religion’s role to promote the development of absolute presuppositions. Thus Collingwood concludes the Christian church has been the guarantor of Western science. He shows how the doctrine of the trinity corresponds with modern science, which rests of absolute presupposition of nature as once, 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.