Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains
It makes no sense to put your faith in Man, as I argue in a 2021 Substack entry.
Top o' the Stack.
Now this you should read. Excerpt:
If I’m right, Beijing’s chief reason for floating a balloon over North America was to see whether it would elicit a response from the U.S. government and military, as well as from the American people.
And so it did, judging from the subsequent uproar in the press and on social media. Advantage: Xi Jinping & Co.
Now China will use what it learned about American psychology to sharpen its “three warfares” strategy. Three warfares refers to China’s all-consuming effort to shape the political and strategic environment in its favor by deploying legal, media, and psychological means. This is a 24/7/365 endeavor, and it’s in keeping with venerated strategic traditions.
After all, Mao Zedong—the Chinese Communist Party’s founding chairman and military North Star—instructed his disciples that war is politics with bloodshed while politics is war without bloodshed.
In the Maoist worldview, in other words, there is no peacetime. It’s all war, all the time for Communist China.
"War is politics with bloodshed while politics is war without bloodshed." Strongly reminiscent of von Clausewitz: "War is politics by other means." Both exemplify Realpolitik. What does Realpolitik exclude? It excludes any politics based on otherworldly principles such as Christian principles. Does it not?
The exclusion is implied in this passage from Hannah Arendt ("Truth and Politics" in Between Past and Future, Penguin, 1968, p. 245):
The disastrous consequences for any community that began in all earnest to follow ethical precepts derived from man in the singular — be they Socratic or Platonic or Christian — have been frequently pointed out. Long before Machiavelli recommended protecting the political realm against the undiluted principles of the Christian faith (those who refuse to resist evil permit the wicked "to do as much evil as they please"), Aristotle warned against giving philosophers any say in political matters. (Men who for professional reasons must be so unconcerned with "what is good for themselves" cannot very well be trusted with what is good for others, and least of all with the "common good," the down-to-earth interests of the community.) [Arendt cites Nicomachean Ethics, Book VI, and in particular 1140b9 and 1141b4.]
"Aristotle warned against giving philosophers any say in political matters." Nietzsche says something similar somewhere in his Nachlass. I paraphrase from memory. (And it may be that the thought is expressed in one of the works he himself published.)
The philosopher is like a ship with insufficient ballast: it rides too high on the seas of life for safe navigation. Bobbing like a cork, it capsizes easily. The solid bourgeois, weighted and freighted with the cargo of Weib und Kind, Haus und Hof, ploughs deep the waves and weathers the storms of Neptune's realm and reaches safe harbor.
The philosophers who shouldn't be given any say in matters mundane and political are of course the otherworldly philosophers, those I would dub, tendentiously, the 'true philosophers.' There are also the 'worldly philosophers' discussed by Robert L. Heilbroner in his eponymous book, such thinkers as Adam Smith, Karl Marx, and John Maynard Keynes.
The 'true philosophers,' which include Plato and his opposite number Nietzsche, have something like contempt for those who would occupy themselves with the human-all-too-human alone.
Here are some half-baked thoughts that perhaps Vito C. and Ed B. can help me formulate. The new global-capitalist woke leftism (GCWL) is very different from the old socialist-humanist leftism (which I take to include both the Old Left and the New Left). I want to understand the similarities and the differences.
GCWL versus SHL
1) Both are secular and anti-religion. Since 1789 the Left has been virulently anti-clerical and anti-religious. Nota bene: an ersatz religion is not a religion! So stop calling leftism a religion, Dennis Prager.
2) Both target the middle class.
3) Both are internationalist and anti-nationalist.
4) The main difference seems to be that SHL is humanist while GCWL tends toward the erasure of humanity and humanism via anti-natalism, paganism, nature-idolatrous environmentalism, misanthropy, Orwellian subversion of language, and leukophobic ethno-masochism and much else besides.
So that's a start. Inadequate, no doubt. Come on boys, help me out. Why do I have to do all the work?
An important 1984 essay by Sidney Hook.
Related: The Trial of Kyle: The Show Trial Comes to America
See also:
If Pelagianism is the false belief that man can save himself without help ab extra, then Marxism is a latter-day secularized form of Pelagianism. Among the central pillars of Marxist and indeed all leftist delusion is the conceit that human beings are fundamentally good. The blood-drenched attempts at the remaking of humanity in the image of this destructive doctrine are the clearest proofs of its falsehood.
This is a re-thought and much improved version of a post that first appeared on this weblog on 15 May 2012.
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I once heard a prominent conservative tell an ideological opponent that he was 'on the wrong side of history.' This question I want to raise is whether this is a phrase that a self-aware and self-consistent conservative should use. For if there is a 'wrong side,' then there must be a 'right side.' 'Right side of history,' however, suggests that history is moving in a certain direction, toward various outcomes, and that this direction and these outcomes are somehow justified or rendered good by the actual tendency of events. But how could the mere fact of a certain drift justify or render good or attach any positive normative predicate to that drift and its likely outcomes? For example, we are moving in the United States, and not just here, towards more and more intrusive government, more and more socialism, less and less individual liberty. This has certainly been the trend from FDR on regardless of which party has been in power. Would a self-aware conservative want to say that the fact of this drift justifies it or renders it good? Presumably not.
'Everyone today believes that such-and-such.' It doesn't follow that such-and-such is true. 'Everyone now does such-and-such.' It doesn't follow that such-and-such is morally permissible. 'The direction of events is towards such-and-such.' It doesn't follow that such-and-such is a good or valuable outcome. (If a mountaineer is sliding into the abyss and fails to self-arrest, would you say that he is headed in a salutary direction?) In each of these cases there is arguably if not obviously a logical mistake. One cannot validly infer truth from belief, ought from is, values from facts, desirability* from the fact of being desired, or progress from change. Progress is change for the better. But that a change is for the better is not validly inferable from the change qua change.
One who opposes the drift toward a socialist surveillance state, one in which 'equity' (equality of outcome) is enforced by state power, a drift that is accelerating, and indeed jerking under President Biden, could be said to be on the wrong side of history only on the assumption that history's direction is the right direction. Now an Hegelian might believe that. Marxists and 'progressives' might believe it. Alexandre Kojève reads Hegel as claiming that the master-slave dialectic in the Swabian's Phenomenology of Spirit (ch. 4, sec. A) is the motor of history, which, I note, clearly anticipates the opening paragraph of the Communist Manifesto:
The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles. Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.
Logically prior to the question of what the motor of history is, is the question of whether it has one. If history has a motor, it lies deeper than the succession of events and any empirical regularities the events display; it lies deeper as the driver of these events and the ground of their patterns and regularities. The Hegelians and the Marxists, despite their important differences, have their answer: there is a motor but the motor is immanent, not transcendent, and the end state will be attained in the here and now, in this material world by human collective effort, and not hereafter by transcendent divine agency. Crudely put, the 'pie' is not in 'the sky' but in the future. This is what is meant by the immanentization of the eschaton.
For Kojève and his fellow travellers, 'right side of history' has a legitimate use: you are on the right side if you are hip to, and in line with, history's internal 'logic,' dialectical to be sure, a logic driven by a spiritual Logos in Hegel, which is a secularization and immanentization of the triune God of Christianity, but in Marx arguably the same except stood on its head and materialized. You are on the 'right side' which is also the left side if you march in step with the beat of the internal 'drummer' toward the immanent eschaton whereat all alienation and class distinctions will be at an end, a state in which the State will have withered away (V. I. Lenin), all coercion will cease, a state in which all will be free and equal, mutual recognition and respect will be universal and humanity will realize itself fully als Gattungswesen, as species-being, and embrace this life, this world, and its finitude, making it so beautiful and so satisfying that there will be no hankering for the nonexistent hinter worlds of the metaphysicians and the religionists. The friends of finitude will achieve such a rich state of self-realization that their finite lives, albeit extended somewhat by technological means, will suffice and there will be no longer any craving for nirvanic narcotics or religious opiates.
So while the mere fact of a certain empirically discernible drift of events does not justify or render good the drift and its probable outcomes, a drift driven by a hidden motor might. This brings us to the theocon, the theistic conservative.
Many if not most conservatives are theists and theists typically believe in divine providence. God provides and he fore-sees (pro-videre). God created the world and he created it with a plan in mind. The teleology is built in and not up for decision by such frail reeds as ourselves. He created it for a purpose and in particular he created us for a purpose. For theists God is the hidden motor, the Prime Mover, and First Cause, both efficiently and finally. God is Alpha, Omega, and everything in between. He caused the world to exist ex nihilo and he gave it its purpose which in our case is to share in his life and to achieve our ultimate felicity and highest good thereby. A theistic conservative, then, has a legitimate use for 'right side of history.' You are the right side when you submit to the divine plan and live you life in accordance with it. You are on the wrong side when you don't, in rebellion and glorifying your own miserable ego.
To conclude, I see two ways of attaching a legitimate sense to the expressions 'right side of history' and 'wrong side of history.' One is theistic, the other atheistic, as above.
I now refer you to Malcolm Pollack's effort in a similar direction. We pretty much agree, except that he doesn't credit the atheist option which is a secularization and immanentization of the theistic. I am a theist myself, for the record.
Is the secularization a betrayal, a fulfillment, or a disaster which is the inevitable consequence of the false Judeo-Christian starting point?
Before logging off, I would like to recommend to Malcolm and the rest of you Leo Strauss, On Tyranny, which includes the Strauss-Kojeve correspondence and a very clear and informative introduction.
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*Note the ambiguity of 'desirable' as between 'worthy of being desired' and 'able to be desired.' I intend the former.
Here is a review of Geoffrey Roberts, Stalin's Library: A Dictator and his Books. Excerpts:
He was also an avid reader. Roberts’s book begins as an analysis of the personal library Stalin left behind, scattered around his various dachas and offices. It comprised some 25,000 volumes, covering a wide range of subjects including Marxism, political and military history, economics, biographies and classic works of Russian literature. Some surviving books have found their way into the archives, to be studied by scholars for insights into the dictator’s mind.
But this is no dry examination of dusty texts. Roberts takes us through Stalin’s life and shows how his reading molded his actions. Books transformed the bright seminary student into a ferocious revolutionary, prepared to sacrifice family, friends and a vast array of enemies — capitalists, kulaks, fellow Bolsheviks, imperialists, Trotskyist deviationists and millions of ordinary Soviet citizens — on the altar of his rigid dogmas.
[. . .]
Roberts emphasizes throughout that Stalin was an intellectual, whose firm belief in Marxism was grounded in a deep study of the subject; that his actions, however cruel, cynical and misguided, stemmed from the conviction that he was building the world’s first socialist state, which would be a model for the rest of humanity. By insisting on Stalin’s seriousness, and his profound faith in Marxism as modified by Lenin and the experience of revolution in Russia, Roberts perhaps downplays the fearful cost in human suffering involved. As a result, the book can seem to gloss over the gruesome awfulness of Soviet society — not to mention the serious mistakes for which Stalin was personally responsible, including his refusal to believe that his ally Hitler would attack him until he actually did.
The Babbitts of the world heap scorn upon philosophy because it "bakes no bread," to which my stock reply is: "Man does not live by bread alone." Matthew 4:4 has Jesus saying as much, and continuing, "but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God." While not disagreeing with Christ's words, this philosopher says that man does not live by bread alone but also by ideas the implementation of some of which will ameliorate and the implementation of others of which will devastate, securing bread for some and denying it to others.
Ideas matter. They matter most when they are enmattered by men of power who bring them from the heaven of ideas to this grubby earth of blood, sweat, and tears. Whether they work weal or woe will depend on their truth, assuming that there is truth in William James' dictum that the true is the good by way of belief.
But why should (the knowledge of) truth be conducive to human flourishing? Must it be? This is an important and unavoidable question, one that itself testifies to the importance of ideas. I mention it only to set it aside. For now.
Addendum (4 March 2022). Dmitri D. comments:
Hardly anyone knew Stalin better than Sten. Stalin, as we know, received no systematic education. He struggled to understand philosophical questions, without success. And then, in 1925, he called in Jan Sten, one of the leading Marxist philosophers of that time, to direct his study of Hegelian dialectics. Sten drew up a program of study for Stalin and conscientiously, twice a week, dinned Hegelian wisdom into his illustrious pupil. Often he told me in confidence about these lessons, about the difficulties he, as a teacher, was having because of his student's inability to master the material of Hegelian dialectics. Jan often dropped in to see me after a lesson with Stalin, in a depressed and gloomy state, and despite his naturally cheerful disposition, he found it difficult to regain his equilibrium…The meetings with Stalin, the conversations with him on philosophical matters, during which Jan would always bring up contemporary political problems, opened his eyes more and more to Stalin's true nature, his striving for one-man rule, his crafty schemes and methods…As early as 1928, in a small circle of his personal friends, Sten said: "Koba [a nickname for Stalin] will do things that will put the trials of Dreyfus and Beilis in the shade."
Substack latest.
On 20 August 1940, the long arm of Joseph Stalin finally reached Trotsky in exile in Mexico City when an agent of Stalin drove an ice axe into Trotsky's skull. He died the next day. The Left eats its own.
I've been warning of this for years. Ed West, America has become its own worst enemy. Excerpt:
Communists saw their political beliefs as so all-encompassing that even science was political: if science contradicted the goals of communism, it wasn’t science. In today’s United States the slow death of liberalism has resulted in the blatant politicisation of science, to the extent that as in Russia, scientists teach things which are obviously untrue because it supports the prevailing ideology. Then there is the media, much of which parrots the party line with almost embarrassing, “Comrade Stalin has driven pig iron to record production” levels of conformity. Once again, if you want to hear the truth, go to the BBC (until the young people who run the website take over).
America, once the most trusting of societies, is heading in the direction of Russia, one of the least trusting. Most disturbing of all is that, formerly the most demographically vibrant of western countries, today the United States has suffered a spectacular collapse in fertility. This is mostly down to stagnant wages among the middle class, who can no longer afford a family with one breadwinner, and a rapid decline of religious faith. But maybe people have also lost belief in themselves, and the ideals of their country.The Soviet Union broke into 15 different pieces, and the transition was, as CNN might put it, mostly peaceful — although Gorbachev’s old dacha is now in Russia once again after some local unpleasantness.
Today it is the United States where people talk of secession, escaping a crumbling superpower ruled by geriatrics. This seems very unlikely to happen, more clickbait than reality, because why would you leave what has been for more than two centuries the richest, most impressive state on earth? But then a generation ago few would have foreseen the Soviet Union crumbling in a haze of alcoholic despair.
Commentary by Rod Dreher here.
Rod Dreher raises the question. The video is less than ten minutes long.
"The eighty-year-old mystery of the murder of Sheldon Robert Harte, Leon Trotsky’s most controversial bodyguard."
Jean van Heijenoort was another of the Old Man's bodyguards. I met van Heijenoort in the mid-70s when he came to Boston College on the invitation of my quondam girlfriend, Charaine H., a student at Brandeis University where van Heijenoort taught. I had arranged for Robert Sokolowski to come and read a paper on Husserl. Comrade Van attended the talk. By then, however, the political enthusiasms of his youth were a thing of the distant past. He had given up politics for logic and love. My entry tells the tale of his murder by a crazed lover in Mexico City where Lev Davidovich Bronstein met his grisly end.
Moral? Stick to logic if you want to play it safe. But there is more of life (and death) in politics and love.
A comment from Joseph:
I regularly read your blog, but I never comment because I do not know how. Anyway, I wanted to send a note about the Monsignor — what an incredible man. He is one of my personal models for how an academic should be. He is not only brilliant but also patient with students not so gifted (99.99% of them) — and he has quite a knack for teaching to several levels simultaneously. He is also funny (and not just for a priest). I'm glad that you have had the chance to meet him.
On this date in 1940, the long arm of Joseph Stalin finally reached Trotsky in exile in Mexico City when an agent of Stalin drove an ice axe into Trotsky's skull. He died the next day. The Left eats its own.
The tragedy of Trotsky is that of a man of great theoretical and practical gifts who squandered his life pursuing a fata morgana. His was not the opium of the religionists but the opium of the intellectuals, to allude to a title of Raymond Aron's. The latter species of opium I call utopium.
First, truth is not a left-wing value. As I have said and written ever since studying communism and the left in graduate school at the Columbia University Russian Institute, truth is a [classically] liberal value and a conservative value, but it is not a left-wing value. However, destroying opponents by destroying their reputations is a left-wing value — whether it's charging Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh with multiple rapes, preoccupying the country with the fake charge that Donald Trump's presidential campaign colluded with Russia to manipulate the 2016 election, or the charges such as those made against me.
Second, smearing opponents is not only a left-wing value; it is the left's modus operandi. And the reason for that is: The left does not win through argument. It wins through smear. If you differ with the left, you are, by definition, sexist, racist, bigoted, intolerant, homophobic, Islamophobic, xenophobic, fascist and/or a hater. The proof? You cannot name a single opponent of the left who has not been so labeled.
True, but we need to go deeper. Why don't leftists value truth, and why do they smear their opponents? The most obvious answer is that leftists are just not good people. Prager has said in the past that leftism turns good people bad. I see it the other way around: some if not most of the people who embrace leftism in the first place do so because they are morally defective specimens of humanity blind to their defects because of their absurd conceit that people are basically good. It's paradoxical: believing humanity to be good at bottom and held back by contingent socio-economic arrangements, leftists see their way clear to the commission of the most horrendous crimes. Communists, using the power of the state, murdered some 100 million in the 20th century alone.
They broke a lot of eggs, but where's the omelet?