The true nature of the Enlightenment is best demonstrated by 18th-century Britain, where such concepts as nature, liberty, reason, rights and truth were most fully adumbrated in the concern for the ‘moral sense’. The thesis is revisionist, for the French philosophes have been considered to embody the paradigm, and only the Scottish (but not Burke!) have been understood as members of the canon. But British writers from Shaftesbury through Smith and on to the great Anglo-Irishman, along with the practical example of John Wesley’s Methodists, demonstrate the fundamental predilection to see dignity in all men. Not so the philosophes, preoccupied with the ‘ideology of reason’, as were the British Dissenters, or the Americans, focused on the politics of liberty. So Britain’s ‘sociology of virtue’ makes the strongest claim to the Enlightenment’s essence; however, each country’s subsequently development bears something of the others. A bibliography worth exploring, and worth revisiting for its brilliance and clarity.
Political thought
1. Oakeshott, Rationalism in Politics (20 Jan 2020)
Politics and philosophy are categorically different: addressing ends, the former seeks to create, preserve, and generally adapt as it can; the latter seeks to understand for its own sake, and cannot be reduced.
Rationalists insist ideology or technocracy must guide politics, and cannot expect to reach their predefined goals. To the Rationalist, there’s no value in mere existence – nothing should be unscrutinized. Reform is wastage – it’s better to start over – and change must be induced. The customary and traditional is wrongly seen as changeless. Drawing on Bacon and Descartes (Pascal having avoided Cartesian certainty with his doctrine of probability), they see technical knowledge as the only kind of practical, genuine knowledge. Oakeshott sees early history of the US as Rationalist: pioneers were given to self-confident experimentation upon abstract ideals at the expense of tradition; but he overlooks their predominance from the 1900s.
There is no science of society. Social custom and arrangements must be seen as precursors to politics, since there indicate how societies go about their business. It’s necessary to define and understand political knowledge and education in order to improve the caliber of politics. A community’s politics is no less individual than its language and must be pursued more lore or less equal proficiency. Rationalism has misapplied philosophical writings to politics. Resolution of a given matter lies in actual arrangements, not in the greater or less application of a theory or system. The successes of government lie in orderly, peaceable routines, not in manifesting religion or theory or philosophy – all searches for truth or perfection.
Politics is a proper subject of history not because of history’s intrinsic concern with past events but as it reveals detail of concrete application – how affairs were handled. Equally it’s important to understand what was said about past events for understanding of contemporary process. Political machinery is not so much apparatus fit in advance for a purpose but the manners of behavior which fail without context from which they came. Contra Mill, who held representative government proper to any society which reached a certain level of civilization, arrangements reveal agreed approaches to unknown results – not best practices. Political philosophy is not accretive, does not increase the likelihood of success, but is redolent of history, ability to espy good or bad precedents.
The historian is scientific in looking at matters not as they affect but as they are in themselves. Freeing oneself from influence of the past (i.e., ‘relevance’) is harder still – the not understanding the world in our present interests. Events are not ‘necessary and sufficient’ but only intelligible; there aren’t ‘origins’ which implies Whiggish, but only trends and causes.
Civilisation is a conversation of manifold activities: science, art, politics, etc. The way to learn a given endeavor (e.g., history) is not to study ‘historical method’ but particular aspects (e.g., civil war) to which method is a way to understand.
The characteristic of a profession or trade is knowledge of how to decide questions and problems, not a set of propositions. Consequently reason is using knowledge, not ascertaining the validity of propositions. In politics the doctrinaire is the man who falls back on knowledge of other activities while supposing such knowledge is independent of any activity. Concrete activity is knowing how to (morally) act; no action is ex ante rationale; it is rational only as to what has gone before. See also the legal standard for reasonable care, which depends on circumstances.
There are three kinds of education: school, vocational, and university. The study of politics has come to be vocational, using current idiom of explanation but not in the search for knowledge in a philosophic sense. Justice is divided into explanatory ‘texts’ making them prescriptive and thus vocational. Academic study is suitably only when activity is isolated and richly illuminated (e.g., government in France, but not China or Soviet Russia). Politics is very difficult to study because idiom takes over, converting from knowledge of what’s being (been) done to ‘how it’s done’.
Political discourse in modern Europe is distinguished by clannish vocabulary: the beliefs behind such idiom are axioms for constructing polemic, but are unable to prove their premises, instead relying on ‘generally helds’. This condition stems from Plato and Rousseau but is a false process because it does not admit competing claims. More specific to Marx, explanatory ‘laws’ of social change cannot entail political deliberation for arriving at correct decisions, or even proofs of correct and incorrect. It is the great failure of the 20th century. Yet the project continues in social sciences, the study of social and political organizations and governments of various types. No recognition of ideal types can solve distinct matters; granting axiomatic status to opinions is vice. Worse, it discourages the only solution of matching conditions to the first principles of the state.
Contemporary Europe harbors opposing ‘moralities’ of individualism and socialist ‘mass man’, and so there are two understandings of government objectives. Society finds its purpose in continuity and its principle in consensus. One is free because pursuit of current ends does not deprive one of respect for precedent. Collectivism and individualism are true alternates – there can’t be both. Collectivist government cannot tolerate individual opportunity; paradoxically nor can it abide trade unionism. The freedom of England stems from avoiding the overwhelming concentration of power – man is free because he does have to sacrifice the present to an ‘incalculable future’ nor the future to a transitory present.
On Hobbes: Leviathan is the greatest English-language masterpiece in political thought! Every masterpiece draws a new vision of man’s predicament: Hobbes can be compared to Hegel in creating a political system, a civic philosophy that intends to conciliate politics with the material doctrine of the world. For Hobbes, philosophy is the mirror of reason: civic philosophy is civil reason (order). Reason is chiefly concerned with cause and effects; this is to exclude things eternal, final causes, things cause divinity, and so on – things that are not rationally explainable. The purpose is to determine conditional causes of given effects, or conditional effects of given causes. Thus three contrasts run through Hobbes: philosophy vs theology (reason vs faith), philosophy vs science (reason vs empiricism), and philosophy vs experience (reason vs sense). There is standing tension in Hobbes between science and philosophy: things as they appear conflict with the theory of knowledge. Locke and Kant are similar, in contrast with Bacon and Descartes.
Hobbes begins with sensations because we can be certain of them, and then reasons out to determine what must be. He pursues causes of things not their nature. Therefore his view lies in a conception of the nature of philosophic knowledge, not in a doctrine of the world.
The greatest liberty of civil subjects derives from silences of the law. No distinction can be held between revealed law and natural law. Hobbes commences not with natural law or right but land and obligation, law being the product of reason. He stems from the tradition of Plato, Augustine, Aquinas but decisively breaks in that the sovereign (or sovereign body) is not subject to laws but prioritizes reason of state. For Plato and Aristotle civic association falls short of the best life of contemplation; for Hobbes the best is not common will but release of wills into desire. His opposition to Aristotle is somewhat overstated but nonetheless the latter believe in teleology (ends) while Hobbes though human behavior random. The greatness of Hobbes lies in constructing a political theory reflecting the changes of the 15th and 16th-century theologians, who consider that will, imagination, and passion replaced divine reason.
Bentham exemplifies the philosophe, who is concerned with ignorance but does not admit perplexity (i.e., the unknown); ironically, he is credulous. Either one agrees or is foolish (science or superstition). Generally Bentham is critical of 18th-century rationalism for not extending reason but instead promoting dogma.
14. Bonald, True and Only Wealth of Nations (12 July 2023)
A collection of speeches and essays by Louis de Bonald, a contemporary opponent of the French Revolution, emphasizing sociopolitical gaps created by jettisoning monarchical order including the Catholic Church. Bonald identified three sea changes in the 18th century: in morals, doctrines, and laws whereby aristocrats sacrificed Christian values for rationalism (e.g., physical sciences replacing religious virtue).
A proto-capitalist society in which all depends on individuated agreement and nothing on established order is inherently unstable, and unstructured. Society depends on dedication to higher elements (beyond self-interest); families perform the alchemy of such realization. Bonald echoes Burke in affirming a statesman is capable of improvement and inclined to preservation.
Economic growth, beyond a certain point, entails diminishing returns to public spirit and resources. The wealth of nations is not measured in taxes, which are needs not a product; excess of needs is a sign of distress. Morals and laws are the true wealth of society, family, and nations.
Urban industry enslaves mankind. Man should find subsistence in the family. Government cannot fill the bap because it operates on appropriation.
Marriage is devalued by severing the religious from the civil. Its goal is children; its responsibility is care of the child’s education. To recover the state, Bonald quotes Montesquieu in observing one must regain the family from women and children. Modernity, seeking to evenly distribute power so as to affirm equality, cannot hide from tyranny of authority, that is the role of private interests in the public sphere. It succumbs to weakening of the natural and thus rise of tyranny.
• Men do not invent truths but derive new consequence from those long known.
• One should never obsess with abuses that a part and parcel of good things, nor the advantages of poor things.
• Abstractions are generalizations applying to nothing; morals are generalities pertaining to everything.
As with many, Bonald’s views will sometimes seem anachronistic, but read carefully, they contain true-to-from (i.e., era) answers to age-old problems.
12. Wood, The American Revolution (18 Aug 2007)
Authoritatively summarizes the War of Independence, featuring political and military events plus social and ideological transformation. After sketching colonial America, Wood moves briskly through the conflict. The book is more powerful in discussing the consequences of triumphant republicanism and the course toward the Constitution. Locating sovereignty in the people not only sealed the Federalists’ case but also clinched the defeat of egalitarianism, which was already bested in trade, culture, and religion. The national charter further converted Montesquieu’s assumption that democracy requires small polities into the Madisonian ‘balance of conflict’ model. There are interesting sections on the dysfunctions of state government, notably legislative overreach on behalf of special interests, which extends the normal portrayal of powerless national government. A very useful bibliographic essay.
20. Mancoll, ed., ‘Reassessing Ideological Origins’, New England Quarterly 151(1); (8 October 2022)
A collection of essays addressing aspects of Bernard Bailyn’s
- Ideological Origins of the American Revolution
, on the occasion of its 50th anniversary of publication. The work has stood up quite well, notwithstanding the radical changes in historical fashion.
• Bailyn: the author writes of his continuing interest in those moments when familiar words / constructs take on new meanings, and still holds the Revolution’s primary interest was safeguarding liberty against power and corruption
• Rakove: Bailyn cut the Gordian knot of ideas versus economics as the tumult’s driver by demonstrating attitudes had already changed and how these changes explain actual events
• Slauter: Perry Miller influenced Bailyn to consider Puritan writings along with classical and Enlightenment documents
• Wood: The Patriots were more involved in social revolution than Ideological Origins acknowledges, since in the 18th century society and government were indivisible. (French Revolutionary theorists faced the problem of ‘modern’ private property separate of government power.) He got the political thought right not but the social change. That is, Bailyn’s student is enunciating the thesis of his Radicalism of the American Revolution
• Even if ideas don’t cause behavior, one needn’t entirely concede the impetus to materialist or psychological factors (i.e., hidden motivations)
• Bilder: Bailyn pinpointed the process of America’s discovery the virtue of written constitution
• Nelson: For Burke, the American Revolution was borne not of theory but by practice and consequently of the people’s character
• Political though and political consciousness are distinct. 18th-century America saw the world as it di not because it was an ideological support for its way of life and society but because they were 18th-century Americans
• Pincus: In an interesting comparison to contemporary Irish politics, asserts the upheaval of the 1770s-80s exhibits political discourse very similar to the American Revolutionary era (e.g., corruption, liberty, virtue). Grattan’s failure to push through a Billing of rights in 1780 marked the turning from Stormont to the Volunteers, analogous to the Committees of Correspondence. But Pincus carries too far in suggesting the American process was ‘not exceptional’ – there is no record of 150 years, as in America
17. Bailyn, Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (26 August 2022)
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)
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. Norman, Edmund Burke (29 Dec)
A short, dual-purpose treatment that competently sketches Burke’s life and career and deficiently maps his applicability to modern conservative politics. The profile’s achievement ironically stems from making the context of his political career accessible to 21st-century (British) readers. In an ahistorical, generalized setting, however, prescription without the counterbalance of opportunity costs and other risks loses rigor. Still, an impressive effort for a practicing politician.
12. Levin, Great Debate (28 Oct 2014)
Modern American politics was presaged by the ideological division between Tom Paine’s Enlightenment rationalism and Edmund Burke’s liberalism. Their opposition is primarily evident in competing notions of man’s nature, the sociopolitical role of history, the ideal of justice and social order, generational independence (‘choice’) and obligations, reason, and ultimately the pace of reform. Richly demonstrated by original quotes, particularly from Burke, such that the work is a useful blueprint for the Anglo-Irishman’s thought. (Relatedly, Burke’s thoughts on the sublime and the beautiful are outlined on p57). Levin raises the question whether Burke is more concerned with organic development of social order and decision making, or natural law. Finds its stylistic footing in later chapters.
4. Pangle, Ennobling of Democracy (2 Feb 2015)
A Straussian (i.e., Socratic) argument for resurrecting Classical republican approaches to citizenship and education in America circa 1990. Postmodernist thought is insufficient to the task of civic education because it considers itself in search of a successor to modern rationalism, and so cannot present youth with a certain basis of inquiry and evaluation. (This school of thought, a dying spasm of Marxism exemplified by Jean-Francois Leotard, is indeed likely to never emerge because it corrupts Nietzsche and Heidegger.) The book then turns to an extensive, fast-moving comparison of modern and ancient conceptions of the republic and democracy, finding the dialectic method is necessary to restore American civic mindedness and also the US university; however, Pangle is careful to underline that the dialectic is dangerous for the under-prepared.