History of ideas

4. Klibansky and Paton, ed., Philosophy and History (27 Feb 2020)

by kurto

A festschrift for Ernst Cassirer treating philosophy, history of philosophy and history of ideas, historiography, and related pursuits. Author names are given in underline:

    Alexander

: the permanent features of things appear at different times in different forms; it’s permissible to think of forever in terms of now so long as we consider essence not surface characteristics. Novelty is the essence of history, explanation is the work; determinism in history means asserting pre-arranged necessity instead of changes in form over time.

    Webb

: philosophy is different from history, science, etc. in declining to accept precepts; but it may settle on some and proceed from these. Consciousness, such as religious consciousness, is finite. Yet philosophy cannot ignore religious consciousness because of finitude: Athens cannot disprove Jerusalem.

    Gilson (one of the better essayists)

: there is no great scientific discovery dating to the Middle Ages. Science rose in opposition to medieval philosophy and theology. Save the Aristotelian Leibniz, all chose between science or scholasticism. But they are not irreconcilable: scholastic philosophy has only to become true to itself to reconcile with science.
Descartes converted ideas to mathematical models, bereft of discourse, representing reality itself. Scholastic ideals could not be reduced to expressible content; they are something other. His successor was Hobbes: the effects of Cartesian metaphysics spread to proto-sociology. And thence to political philosophy – servitude to all powerful state derived from liberties!
The antinomy of philosophy consists of 1) the irrationality of building the collective (the state) from irreducible individuals versus 2) man is nothing, humanity is everything. Aquinas and Duns Scotus held they are reconciled in the real: the antinomy is manmade. In the other words, the error is Cartesian reduction to science (mathematics), which decrees a priori thee real is the sum of the real.
Aristotle’s mistake was to biologize the inorganic; Descartes’ to mathematize physics, chemistry, biology, metaphysics, and moral theory. Every ‘nature’ requires a formal principle, but not every form is living. Then metaphysics is the science above natural sciences, and its problem of defining existence is superior. For this reason, Christianity cannot allow metaphysics to expire

    Groethuysen

: reflection on the self occurs in different forms: religion, art, philosophy.

    Gentile

: historical fact is not presupposed by history. ‘Ideas without facts are empty; philosophy which is not history is the value’s abstraction’. The truth of the past lies not in facts but in imaginative use of what happened (or was happening). Does this trend toward existentialism?

    Stebbing

: without time there is no causation; without causation there is no time. The possibility of causal order is the sole condition for a time sequence in nature

    Medicus

: the final problem of the Kantian system is the unity of object and subject, of nature and freedom, which is treated in

    Critique of Judgment

. How does it assert itself? ‘Intransferable uniqueness’ is one’s calling, according to Cassirer; an era has it too – but neither are usually well defined – more usually they are in a form of questions. The historian is the servant of a culture’s self-awareness, not in obsequious search of power but truth. ‘The longest view is always from the heights’. For Cassirer, the object of history is the fulfillment of humanity.

    Brehier

: the history of philosophy commenced in the 17th century from Cartesian thought, and circa 1930 needs reworking. Documentary evidence, standing in for tradition, stands in the way of understanding what happened. Historical truth does not involve truth of the thought in question

    Hoffman

: The Platonic idea is behind Augustine’s philosophy of History

    Levy-Bruhl

: Descartes attacked the authority of tradition because it could not be demonstrated by scientific method. History was lumped together with religion

    Saxl

: veritas filia temporis – truth reveals itself over time. Art struggles with abstract concepts such as truth. The scientific age settled the war between the ancients and moderns on the side of the moderns, which admitted no abstract truth.

    Wind

: there are several commonalities at the intersection of history and science. The information which a document reveals requires presupposition of understanding the contents themselves in the first place. The observer of events is an intruder, and the dividing line between observer and participant is difficult to fix. Until recently historians and scientist were cloistered; now their discoveries could be world-changing

    Pos

: Philosophy is never deductive like math. Knowledge is relative in the sense that it’s open to interpretation and permeated by ‘alien’ (unproven) concepts

    Gundolf

: the two predominant objectives of historiography are to preserve the past as it actually was (Ranke) and whether to interpret the past in light of a) providence or b) universal laws.The pattern recurs in German historiography: German practice springs from the philosophically minded Herder, and thence to Ranke

    Ortega y Gasset (another standout)

: the most decisive changes in humanity are those of belief.
Historical reason is more demanding than scientific reason, which does not understand what it’s saying, only that it can be proven true. Science’s loss of the ability to express truths is mortal to civilization. Reason, in modern times degraded to mean the play of ideas, was in Greece and the 16th century understood as being in contact with the order of the cosmos / providence. It was itself a faith.
German idealism represents the attempt to place man before nature, like positivism. Hegel in particular demonstrates the lack of intellectual responsibility, evidencing a bankrupt moral climate.
Philosophy since Kant has been a ‘second apprenticeship’, pursuit of discovering authentic reality. Thought has its own form and projects these onto the real: man cannot escape. We must de-intellectualize the real to be faithful to it. But: nature is a transitory interpretation of what man finds around him. He has no nature; but he has history. Only under the pressure of events (history) do we differentiate between what we are and what we imagine ourselves to be: we become compact, solid.

    Klibansky

: history can be described as a science inasmuch as philosophic precepts (e.g., Kantian regulative principle or Platonic sense of normative pattern from ideas) order its proceedings

1. Himmelfarb, Past and Present (4 Jan 2018)

by kurto

A collection of essays treating giants in the history of ideas from the Victorian era forward, often with a view to present applicability. The underlying theme thus runs against historicism. One of the most enlightening chapters shows how Matthew Arnold’s stance against philistinism (i.e., belief in cultural equality) grounds opposition to the anarchy of multiculturalism. In contradistinction, to democratize culture is not to treat all forms as equal but to make the better forms available to all. William James is praised for observing that truth comes not from logic or science but experience and reflections, building on Lionel Trilling’s view that the search for truth, though likely to fall short, is undertaken as a point of intellectual honor – and the probability that something good may come of it. As to Thomas Carlyle, the role of the prophet is to criticize not to construct. In transition to politics, the author welcomes TA Eliot’s view that the field is more important for the pursuit of moral perfection than physical easement; Einstein’s ‘rationalism’ may have been a scientific triumph but can be shown a political failure. The recovery of morality in politics will entail less government so that value-driven participants can act on their beliefs. At the outset, in a chapter on Strauss, Himmelfarb writes that while Thucydides preceded Machiavelli and Hobbes in seeing politics as struggle for power, contra Plato, his view that justice holds a central place distinguished the Greek historian from the modern political scientist.

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