With a little help from Aristotle, Machiavelli, and Hannah Arendt. Substack latest.
By the way, I learned that Arendt had ten books by Carl Schmitt in her library. We will have to look into their relationship.
Is that a cigarette holder she's using? A Randian touch. It would not be fair to call Ayn Rand a hack, but she comes close, and is nowhere near the level of Arendt. A is A!
A Substack sermon.
Who said it? A post-liberal, an anti-liberal, Carl Schmitt?
Blood rises up against formal understanding, race against the rational pursuit of ends, honor against profit, bonds against the caprice that is called 'freedom,' organic totality against individualistic dissolution, valor against bourgeois security, politics against the primacy of the economy, state against society, folk against the individual and the mass.
According to Carl Schmitt, Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty, University of Chicago Press, 1985, p. 56:
All significant concepts of the modern theory of the state are secularized theological concepts not only because of their historical development—in which they were transferred from theology to the theory of the state, whereby, for example, the omnipotent God became the omnipotent lawgiver—but also because of their systematic structure, the recognition of which is necessary for a sociological consideration of these concepts. The exception in jurisprudence is analogous to the miracle in theology.
The presidential power of pardon strikes me as an additional example of this secularization process whereby originally theological concepts are brought down to earth and acquire a political and social meaning. (Does Schmitt discuss the pardon power somewhere? He 'must.' Where?)
The U. S Constitution grants a near-plenary power of pardon to the president. Does this extend to convicted mass murderers such as Timothy McVeigh? (McVeigh, of course, was not pardoned, but executed.) It does so extend, if I understand the matter:
The power to pardon is one of the least limited powers granted to the president in the Constitution. [. . .] The only limits mentioned in the Constitution are that pardons are limited to offenses against the United States (i.e., not civil or state cases) and that they cannot affect an impeachment process.
The theological roots of the pardon power seem obvious: what we have in the presidential case is a secular analog of the old theological problem of justice and mercy. This is, however, at best a close analogy, not an identity. The theological problem of how God can be both just and merciful is not identical to the problem of how a head of state, a president, for example, can be both just and merciful when he grants a pardon. That should be obvious. If not, I will explain.
God is absolutely sovereign. In the divine but not the human case, sovereignty implies omnipotence. The absoluteness of divine sovereignty might be taken to imply that God's omnipotence is his ability/power to do anything at all, including what is logically impossible and morally impermissible. If so, divine power would not be limited in any way, and God would be sovereign not only over the natural order, which he obviously is on any account of omnipotence, but also over every order including the logical and moral orders.
Leaving logical order aside, consider the rule of law as it pertains to right and wrong, crime and punishment. The rule of law is not a particular law but a meta-principle pertaining to all laws. The rule of law requires that particular laws be applied equally, and that like cases be judged in a like manner. So if justice demands the death penalty in one case, then likewise in all relevantly similar cases. What room could there then be for an arbitrary (free) exercise of mercy in any given case? To get a fix on the problem, suppose Tom and Tim are morally indiscernible twins: they share every moral attribute. They are both loyal, and to the same degree. They are both courageous and to the same degree. And so on. But they are mafiosi hit men with no qualms about committing murder for money. God consigns Tom to hell for all eternity, but shows mercy to Tim. How could a good God do such a thing? Surely that is offensive to our human sense of justice.
Simply put, the theological problem is: How could a good God be both just and merciful? Justice and mercy are both divine attributes, but they appear to us to be logically incompatible. The theologians have proposed solutions. This is not the place to review them. For present purposes we assume that the problem is soluble in the divine case. In the human case, however, things look very different.
To make the question concrete, compare Bill Clinton's pardoning of Marc Rich with his pardoning of Patty Hearst. Many of us will consider the latter to be a justifiable, and perhaps even an admirable tempering of justice with mercy. (The poor girl, pun intended, was suffering from Stockholm Syndrome, etc.) But few will fail to consider the former pardon anything other than a moral outrage. But why an outrage? (If you don't think the Rich pardon an outrage, choose one you think is: the illustrious Joe Biden has given us several to choose from.)
I am assuming that in the divine case, justice and mercy are indissolubly one in such a way as to render impossible any differentiation between justifiable and unjustifiable acts of divine mercy. On this assumption no divine pardon is or could be morally wrong. In the divine case, one could not claim that God was violating the moral law by any act of mercy. It is after all false that "no one is above the law"; God is above both the positive law and the moral law inasmuch as he is the source of both. He is the source of positive law inasmuch as he is the creator of the persons who posit the positive law. He is the source of the moral law inasmuch as he is absolutely sovereign and so cannot be subject to anything external to himself. There is a sense in which God is above the law. But no man is above the law.
Now we come to the problem. When a president pardons a convicted criminal is he not violating the rule of law and putting himself above the law? How can that be justified? Surely not by a secularization process whereby the theological unity of justice and mercy gets transferred from God who truly is the unity of justice and mercy to a mortal man, POTUS say, who is obviously not such a unity.
The point I am making is that the secularization of theological concepts must not be confused with the realization in the State of theological realities. Just as the theory of God is not the same as God, the theory of the state is not the same as the State. So if the concepts ingredient in the theory of God are secularized, which is to say, "transferred from theology to the theory of the state," as Schmitt says above, that is not to say that God is being denied and replaced by the State. It is logically consistent to maintain both of the following: (a) "All significant concepts of the modern theory of the state are secularized theological concepts" (Schmitt) and (b) God exists and is not the State.
The question for me, and not only for me, as to what Schmitt believed in the end about these matters remains open. The above is simply a preliminary exercise in understanding what Schmitt is ultimately driving at. He is undoubtedly one of the great political theorists of the 2oth century. His fateful entanglement with the NSDAP from May of 1933 on is no excuse not to study him in detail and in depth. You study Rawls and Nozick but ignore Schmitt? WTF is wrong with you?
But it would have been nice if in retrospect he had accepted and lived by my masthead motto: "Study everything, join nothing."
Why did Schmitt become a Nazi? Reinhard Mehring in his monumental (748 page!) Carl Schmitt: A Biography (Polity Press, 2014, pb 2022, German original 2009, tr. Daniel Steuer, pp. 282-284) lists 47 possible reasons/motives! I schmitt you not.
'Due process' is a term of legal shop talk. Those of us who know something about the law — I know a little — know how to use it correctly. And those of us who think that words ought to be used responsibly in serious discussions should take offense at the 'slop talk' use of 'due process.' Trey Gowdy knows a lot more about the law than I do. But a couple of Sundays ago he asked how much 'due process' Laken Riley's assailant showed her. Sean Hannity is another who has asked this question.
That got me thinking about what sort of 'due process' Ibarra should have shown Riley. "You have the right to plead, to pray, and to protest your upcoming rape and murder; you have in addition the right to avail yourself of the services of any well-armed Good Samaritan who might come along."
What were Gowdy and Hannity driving at? That wide-open borders are a recipe for disaster? That the very notion of legal due process needs to be re-thought? Unclear. Commentators who want to be taken seriously should say what they mean and mean what they say.
Democrats are slop heads in the main; we expect incoherence, inanity, and slop talk from them. Conservatives ought not ape them. Does my use of 'ape' make me a racist? What if I were to use such words as 'niggardly' and 'denigrate'?
The WAPO fentanyl 'mystery' is another good illustration of how contemptibly stupid our political enemies can be. Karoline Leavitt has fun with it. In other news, her intersectional and highly 'wokified' predecessor has quit the Dems, and like 'Fake Jake' Tapper and others will endeavor to tap into the money to be made from telling tales of dementia and dysfunction in high places.
Further examples are easily multiplied beyond all necessity. "Tampon Tim" Walz is a bloody good source of them.
It is rare are among humans, but common in relation to our pets.
About six minutes long. Topics: 2020 election and Jan 6. Tell me who you think 'won' and why.
Related: Three Notes on David Mamet. From 2023. Vito Caiati and Dmitri Dain offer their typically astute comments.
Freude, Schöner Götterfunken, Tochter aus Elysium, Wir betreten feuer-trunken, Himmlische, dein Heiligtum! Deine Zauber binden wieder, Was die Mode streng geteilt; Alle Menschen werden Brüder, Wo dein sanfter Flügel weilt.
Joy! A spark of fire from heaven, Daughter from Elysium, Drunk with fire we dare to enter, Holy One, inside your shrine. Your magic power binds together, What we by custom wrench apart, All men will emerge as brothers, Where you rest your gentle wings.
Full text of Schiller's Ode to Joy, in German and English, here.
Relevant portion of the final movement of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony.
I will cite a couple of articles for you to ponder. Malcolm Pollack sends us to one in which scientists find their need for meaning satisfied by their cosmological inquiries. Subtitle: “The stars made our minds, and now our minds look back.”
The idea is that in the 14 billion years since the Big Bang, the universe has become aware of itself in us. The big bad dualisms of Mind and Matter, Subject and Object are biting the dust. We belong here in the material universe. We are its eyes. Our origin in star matter is higher origin enough to satisfy the needs of the spirit.
Malcolm sounds an appropriately skeptical note: "Grist for the mill – scientists yearning for spiritual comfort and doing the best their religion allows: waking up on third base and thinking they've hit a triple." A brilliant quip.
Another friend of mine, nearing the end of the sublunary trail, beset by maladies physical and spiritual, tells me that we are in Hell here and now. He exaggerates, no doubt, but as far as evaluations of our predicament go, it is closer to the truth than a scientistic optimism blind to the horrors of this life. What do you say when nature puts your eyes out, or when dementia does a Biden on your brain, or nature has you by the balls in the torture chamber?
What must it be like to be a "refuge on the unarmed road of flight" after Russian missiles have destroyed your town and killed your family?
Does the cosmos come to self-awareness in us? If it does, then perhaps it ought to figure out a way to restore itself to the nonbeing whence it sprang.
The other article to ponder, Two Paths for A.I. (The New Yorker), offers pessimistic and optimistic predictions about advanced AI.
If the AI pessimists are right, then it is bad news for the nature-mystical science optimists featured in the first article: in a few years, our advanced technology, self-replicating and recursively self-improving, may well restore the cosmos to (epistemic) darkness, though not to non-being.
I am operating with a double-barreled assumption: mind and meaning cannot emerge from the wetware of brains or from the hardware of computers. You can no more get mind and meaning from matter than blood from a stone. Mind and Meaning have a Higher Origin. Can I prove it? No. Can you disprove it? No. But you can reasonably believe it, and I'd say you are better off believing it than not believing it. The will comes into it. (That's becoming a signature phrase of mine.) Pragmatics comes into it. The will to believe.
And it doesn't matter how complexly organized the hunk of matter is. Metabasis eis allo genos? No way, Matty.
Theme music: Third Stone from the Sun.
How 'progressive' is it to be stuck in the past?
Substack latest.
Another in a Substack series.
I'm on a Schmitt jag. Top o' the Stack.
This article covers many of the essential points.
Commenter Ben wrote:
Neighbors are familiar, local. This is in direct contrast to the sort of pablum about being a "citizen of the world" and preferring the plight of the universal faceless stranger over what you owe to your own countrymen . . .
That's right. I'll add that while we are enjoined to love our neighbors, we are also commanded to love our enemies (MT 5:44 and Luke 6:27). Are these enemies familiar and local too and not, say, Iranian Islamists? Do the verses mentioned rule out hating foreigners who pose an existential threat to us? Or do they permit it?
Carl Schmitt has something to say on the question in The Concept of the Political (expanded ed., tr. G. Schwab, U. of Chicago Press, 2007, 28-29):
The enemy is not merely any competitor or just any partner of a conflict in general. He is also not the private adversary whom one hates. An enemy exists only when, at least potentially, one fighting collectivity of people confronts a similar collectivity. The enemy is solely the public enemy, because everything that has a relationship to such a collectivity of men, particularly to a whole nation, becomes public by virtue of such a relationship. The enemy is hostis, not inimicus in the broader sense; polemios, not ecthros. As German and other languages do not distinguish between the private and political enemy, many misconceptions and falsifications are possible. The often quoted “Love your enemies” (Matt. 5:44; Luke 6:27) reads “diligite inimicos vestros,” agapate tous ecthrous, and not diligite hostes vestros.
No mention is made of the political enemy. Never in the thousand-year struggle between Christians and Moslems did it occur to a Christian to surrender rather than defend Europe out of love toward the Saracens or Turks. The enemy in the political sense need not be hated personally, and in the private sphere only does it make sense to love one’s enemy, i.e., one’s adversary. The Bible quotation touches the political antithesis even less than it intends to dissolve, for example, the antithesis of good and evil or beautiful and ugly. It certainly does not mean that one should love and support the enemies of one’s own people.
What is Schmitt telling us? The criterion of the political sphere is the Freund-Feind, friend-enemy distinction. (26) But who is the enemy? The main point made above, as I understand it, is that the political enemy is a public enemy who may or may not be in addition a private adversary whom one hates. Suppose you are I are Trump supporters who hate each other. That would be a case of political friendship but personal enmity. Or it may be that you and I are on the same side politically and love each other. That would be a case of both political and personal friendship. (I assume that love includes friendship but not conversely.) A third possibility is realized in many marriages: the partners love each other on the personal plane but are on opposite sides of a political divide. (James Carville and Mary Matalin?)
Now consider Luke 6:27: "But I say unto you which hear, Love your enemies, do good to them which hate you (KJV)." Who are the enemies referred to in this verse? Not political/public enemies, but private enemies, according to Schmitt. The verse therefore allows the hating, and presumably also the killing, of foreign and domestic enemies who pose an existential threat to us, where an existential threat is one not merely to our biological life, but to our way of life.
Is that right?
Can one get tired of Dylan? That would be like getting tired of America. It would be like getting to the point where no passage in Kerouac brings a tingle to the spine or a tear to the eye, to the point where the earthly road ends and forever young must give way to knocking on heaven's door. The scrawny Jewish kid from Hibbing Minnesota, son of an appliance salesman, was an unlikely bard, but bard he became. He's been at it a long, long time, and his body of work is as vast and as variegated as America herself. We old fans from way back who were with him from the beginning are still finding gems unheard as we ourselves enter the twilight where it's not dark yet, but getting there. But it is a beautiful fade-out from a world that cannot last.
Our boy's been covered, and covered some more. Here are some outstanding specimens:
Johnny Rivers, Positively Fourth Street.
Of all the versions of my recorded songs, the Johnny Rivers one was my favorite. It was obvious that we were from the same side of town, had been read the same citations, came from the same musical family and were cut from the same cloth. When I listened to Johnny’s version of “Positively 4th Street,” I liked his version better than mine. I listened to it over and over again. Most of the cover versions of my songs seemed to take them out into left field somewhere, but Rivers’s version had the mandate down — the attitude and melodic sense to complete and surpass even the feeling that I had put into it. It shouldn’t have surprised me, though. He had done the same thing with “Maybellene” and “Memphis,” two Chuck Berry songs. When I heard Johnny sing my song, it was obvious that life had the same external grip on him as it did on me. Bob Dylan, Chronicles
Mary Travers interviews Bob Dylan. Not a cover but interesting to the true Dylan aficionado.
Joan Baez, Hard Rain
Gary U.S. Bonds, From a Buick Six
Peter, Paul, and Mary, Too Much of Nothing
Arlo Guthrie, Percy's Song
Byrds, Chimes of Freedom
Jimi Hendrix, All Along the Watchtower
Stephen Stills, Ballad of Hollis Brown
McGuinn, Harrison, Clapton, Petty et al., My Back Pages
Marianne Faithful, Visions of Johanna
But nothing touches the original. This is the bard at his incandescent best. Mid-'60s. Blonde on Blonde album.
Finally, Bro Inky from my boyhood sends us to Powerline where Scott Johnson offers some excellent Dylan commentary. If you say it is better than mine, I won't argue with you.
