The core problems of political philosophy are largely the same as those considered in the Classical age: our contemporary issues are most intelligible when viewed through the lens of democratic-minded masters from Socrates to Tocqueville. That is, the field is not progressive (additive) and certainly not historicist. The main issues deal with law and justice; authority and order; who should rule (what is the statesman)?; what is the best regime, and what is its relationship to the actual (current) regime?; what is a good citizen, and what is the relationship to the ideal (virtuous or perfect) person? The primary subject of political judgement is decision making. The conclusion departs from its study of towering figures to assert the national and the cosmopolitan (i.e., the ideal) each have a role to play is shaping the patriot. The answer depends mightily on the ethos of the people.
Political thought
13. Hamburger, Macaulay and the Whig Tradition (12 Jul 2017)
Thomas Macaulay, conventionally seen as a Whig, was in fact a trimmer, primarily concerned to reconcile opposing politicians in order to preserve civil order. Danger lay both in ultra Tory reaction or democratic or religious radicalism. Macaulay followed Burke in holding that respect for tradition creates a political environment safe for debate. ‘Noiseless’ revolutions point to correct decisions, and to be too late to make generous concessions is a cardinal policy error. To productively transform a ‘conjuncture’ (i.e., a revolutionary situation) into reform is high statesmanship. Macaulay gained notoriety for interpreting the Great Britain’s constitutional struggles of the 17th and 18th centuries, so as to make them a common (i.e., public) possession; however, his intellectual glosses and programic reading of history reduced his academic stature. Further, his temperament was unsuited for trimming, and although a believer in induction, he also held the progressive’s belief in ends justifying the means. History has no intrinsic use, but ought to be mined for precedent and instruction; more particularly, contra Burke revolution ought to be judged by the consequences, not the substance of events.
22. Jones, Burke and the Invention of Modern Conservatism (22 Oct 2017)
A problematic monograph studying Edmund Burke’s establishment as founder of British conservatism. Burke’s supple yet vociferous politics left the Georgian / early Victorians to decide whether he was a great statesman and who were his heirs: neither the Whigs nor the Tories could claim the whole of him, Peel and Disraeli making no overt appeals to his legacy. So too were they unsure of his Irish heritage. By mid century, however, in part because his contrasting the English constitution with French tumult, he was seen as a conservative genius — the author ignores Blackstone or Bagehot! — while Matthew Arnold and others acclaimed him a literary prodigy. Later, he became generally fashionable as an aphorist, a kind of Mark Twain. Amid constitutional reform of the 1860s, Liberals couldn’t accept his prior opposition; however, revisionist appraisals by Leslie Stephens and especially John Morley helped bring him into the Irish Home Rule debate of the 1880s. Gladstone was his foremost Liberal supporter, the Liberal Unionists used him the most. The author asserts Irish conflict, in combination with the Unionists transition to the Tories, was the turning point. When it became evident the Liberals would not reconcile, the question of who truly succeeded Burke reached its final phase, ironically echoing the split between Fox and Burke over the French Revolution. Yet there were two additional dynamics at work. Burke’s oeuvre was reduced to body of political theory, notably by Hugh Cecil, son of Lord Salisbury, in which he was recognized as a pioneer of applying historical method in deriving just politics. Separately, he was widely studied in schools as a paradigm of English rhetoric as well as the English state (in contradistinction to the French Revolution). Sensibly organized but poorly written and occasionally conceptually muddy, the work is irredeemably undermined by both a rushed ‘epilogue’ citing a David Bromwich quote as evidence Burke is not in fact at conservative at all, and more importantly failing to deliver on the title’s promise, British political conservatism being nowhere treated in the whole.
4. Smith, Reading Leo Strauss (27 Jan 2018)
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
7. Machiavelli, Prince (18 April 2022)
In the most famous example of Machiavelli’s modern, ‘scientific’ approach to government, the Florentine observes there are leaders with the means of forcing the issue and those who must rely on persuasion: the former leverages either fortuna or, better yet, prowess (skill). The prince must understand and even foresee circumstances and boldly, opportunistically match his behavior to the times: the ends justify the means, and certainly the people will judge him on results. (He must know how to act the lion and also the fox, and to seize the womanly fortuna.) His foremost skill should be in warfare. Regarding the populace, men worry less about a ruler they love than one they fear – punishment is worse than dishonor – but he should not be hated. he prince rewards those who increase the city-state’s prosperity, and devises ways to promote the citizenry’s acquiescence and dependency. Governing according to an ideal of how people should live is dangerous to a ruler who must solve for how they actually do live (p.50). Men, especially councilors, will behave badly unless forced to do otherwise (p.77). On the surface, Machiavelli’s realism is no longer shocking and he is well described as the father of sociology; on the other hand, it is clear break with Christian Aristotelianism and the embarkment of modern political philosophy.
Coda: intelligence may lie in understanding things in their own right, in what others will understand, or in neither(?).
5. Strauss, Rebirth of Classical Political Rationalism (21 Feb 2018)
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)
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
8. Gray, Isaiah Berlin (17 Apr 2018)
Isaiah Berlin’s liberalism, premised on liberty to choose from among incommensurable goods, yields to pluralism as the irreducible condition of humanity. Straddling Enlightenment rationalism and Romantic will, albeit favoring natural law and so closer to the latter, Berlin’s work shows choice is the essence of human nature, and that philosophy can help think about dilemmas presented by competing ideas; but it cannot solve them. Man’s nature is a result of choices, and so is malleable. On the Enlightenment side, Berlin sees Kantian freedom consisting of obedience to rational will. But it is a negative liberty: if positive freedom were true, conflict could be a symptom of disorder. Instead self-creation (not autonomy) gives value to freedom. Thus he rejects a universal worldview or perfect life: goods cannot be hierarchically assembled or ranked. Contra Plato and Aristotle, Berlin contends human truths are competitive, not unifying. Turning toward the Romantic, which is also the author’s preference, laws of historical development are indefensible while Berlin asserts choices are ‘inherently intelligible’ to others and so deserving of respect. Gray revisits Berlin’s contention that the German Romantics, especially Herder, shattered prototypical Enlightenment rationalism. The author then extends Berlin’s work, contending his ‘agonistic liberalism’ is what remains of rational, moral characteristic of humanity once pluralism is established. But the ground does not hold, in Gray’s view: a choice derives from recognition there is no universal authority. (Grey asserts the Romantics ironically defend Liberal liberty more completely than the Philosophes.) The impression is Gray has enlisted Berlin for postmodernism, as a bridge from respectability to radical claims. As to Berlin himself, it seems he is willing to prove the philosopher’s claim that we don’t know much – and then stops trying. Berlin searches for answers instead of revising the question in the modern context. Perhaps he abandoned philosophy because pluralism is inconsistent with the search for knowledge? Separately, it is annoying that Berlin is perpetually running down Burke as a forerunner to radical nationalists, defined as group choice premised on folkways. (In correspondence with Conor Cruise O’Brien, published in the latter’s Great Melody, Berlin says he doesn’t understand Burke very well!) A strangely enjoyable book, for all its political baggage, because it clarifies the left’s worldview.
9. Berlin, Crooked Timber of Humanity (11 Jun 2018)
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.
13. Will, Statecraft as Soulcraft (15 Aug 2018)
America’s founders underestimated civic virtue. Government is more likely to do justice if it aims to promote a moral citizenry. By ignoring ancient precepts of the Western political tradition, the US focuses on individualism to the detriment of society. Will surveys political philosophy and mid-20th century intellectual currents before making the positive case that ‘statecraft as soulcraft’ is necessary for the community’s cohesion. In the first regard, Will observes that Aristotle thought human nature provided a moral compass, which workings pointed to an orderly society. To accept natural law is to hold that individuals reach better decisions through common judgment. Decision making is a source of cohesion. Hobbes and Locke asserted the privacy of self-interest, rooted in human passions; Hobbes said reason is but a ‘spy’ for passion (contra Kant). In this view, decisions are a source of tension; society is held in check by tolerance; government is a referee. So oriented, moderns have further refocused natural law away from virtue and perfection toward regularity, away from duty toward rights. Turning to contemporary thought, Will demonstrates the leveling characteristics of Freudian psychology, relativism, the academy, and so on, while working his way back to Madison’s founding precept for the Constitution – factions holding one another in check as the ‘defect of better interests’. Madison was one-dimensional, in Will’s view, in thinking that passion trumped all. He shows that if rights rest on convention rather than natural law, then changes in opinion can change these rights. FDR, a social democrat, and Reagan, a Manchester liberal, were each moderns. Burke was the greatest contemporary to side with the ancients. The argument for soulcraft is overtly made with the assertion that the basic goal is not self-government but good government. Neither popularity nor tradition is by itself a guarantee of effectiveness; as regards the latter, this is the distinction between conservatism and reaction. Government promoting virtue is not a question of what to think but how to think. This points up the difference between soulcraft and (Nazi) totalitarianism, of natural law versus the Romantic will to power. But teaching cannot regard all outcomes as equal. Some questions (e.g., slavery) ought to be above the enthusiasms of popular sovereignty. Learned and soundly constructed, but suffers from too many asides and seeming changes of direction, which undermine concentration and depth. As an example, the observation that Plato thought Thucydides failed the first test of statesmanship, to improve the citizenry, ought to have featured in the conclusion, not early on.