The words "wild" and "rank" work together in Burke's phrase, "growing wild from the rank productive force of the human mind," to create an idea of the mind as a force of nature, spontaneously generating all manner of life-forms in wild, lush, rough, coarse and indiscriminate profusion. The past is not a garden but a jungle. A statesman, as he amply demonstrates, must also be a historian hacking a path through the tangled mass of historical records and conflicting stories, in order to find a usable path from the past to the present.
Burke was not the only thinker at the end of the 18th century who was thinking new thoughts about the powers of the human mind. There was Kant for instance, who,"shocked out of his dogmatic slumbers" by Hume's reduction of Reason to reasoning, turned the mind into the only creative force in the universe: whatever order we find in it could only have been created by our own minds.
Kant I leave to the philosophers, with the observation that the motives that drove Kant to write the Critique of Pure Reason are relevant to the way we understand that extraordinarily difficult book--just as Burke's motives are relevant to the way we understand his metaphor for the workings of the human mind; both writers have a polemical purpose.
Consider now the following quotations. First, some lines from Wordsworth's poem, "Tintern Abbey" (1798):
For I have learned
To look on nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes
The still sad music of humanity,
Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power
To chasten and subdue. And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man;
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things.
Second, some lines from Wordsworth's "Preface" to the second edition (1800) of his Lyrical Ballads:
For the human mind is capable of being excited without the application of gross and violent stimulents; and he must have a very faint perception of its beauty and dignity who does not know this, and who does not further know, that one being is elevated above another in proportion as he possesses this capability. It has therefore appeared to me, that to endeavor to produce or enlarge this capability is one of the best services in which, at any period, a Writer can be engaged; but this service, excellent at all times, is especially so at the present day. For a multitude of causes, unknown to former times, are now acting with a combined force to blunt the discriminating powers of the mind, and unfitting it for all voluntary exertion, to reduce it to a state of almost savage torpor. The most effective of these causes are the great national events which are daily taking place, and the increasing accumulation of men in cities, where the uniformity of their occupations produces a craving for extraordinary incident which the rapid communication intelligence hourly gratifies.
There's nothing wild or rank about nature for Wordsworth. I remember being impressed by the absence of mosquitos when I visited Wordsworthland (the Lake Country) many years ago. Not only are there no mosquitos in Wordsworth's poems, there are no varmints or predators. Nature, as we can see in the lines I've quoted from "Tintern Abbey," is a pantheistic spiritual presence that is always with him; it is the benign deity that eases the burden of this "unintelligible world" when from time to time he is forced to live in the cites that he hates; it is the muse that makes it possible for him as a poet to do for others what that deity does for him: reverse the numbing, coarsening effects of city-life and popular culture. This makes Wordsworth the first modern poet. No other poet before him, so far as I know, had thought of his mission in these terms.
By the way, Wordsworth was--at first-- very unthusiastic about the Revolution in France; The Terror, and Burke's Reflections changed his mind.
Sunday, March 9, 2008
Wednesday, March 5, 2008
"Growing wild from the rank productive force of the human mind"
This wonderful phrase takes us straight to the heart of Burke's political morality.
If you'll go back to that long quotation from Burke, in my last posting, you'll see what he's talking about: the vast array of monastic institutions, with real estate and clergy, that France had inherited from the so-called middle-ages. By the late 18th century, these institutions, along with the feudal social structures and politics that supported them, oh yes and religious beliefs too, had become, shall we say, 'obsolete'-- a word that could only have come into use with modernity. The Revolution was, in large part, a rebellion against the ancient feudal world with its hierarchies, ranks, privileges, beliefs--the whole thing to be swept away, root and branch, including Christianity and the Church. No half-measures. So, at one fell swoop, the revolutionaries confiscated all the Church real estate and sold it on the open market, the proceeds going to pay off the national debt AND provide backing for the new national (paper) currency call the "Assignat." This was, of course, a hare-brained scheme and as Burke predicted, created pure financial chaos.
O.k. What Burke was objecting to was not, simply, the economic stupidity of this 'reform' nor (like Maistre)) did he object on religious grounds; Burke's objection are more like those of an ecologist today who is forced to watch, appalled, as the vast botanical and zoological resources of the Amazon river basin (for instance) are squandered to make room for soy-beans and beef-cattle. Human institutions are human inventions,"the rank productive force of the human mind,"
growing naturally in rank profusion in the soil of human cultures. The grow, they evolve 'organically,' like plants or mushrooms, fertilized by history. Designed for one purpose, they take on others. Or they become obsolete. But there they are, a resource or 'power', to be used by intelligent, imaginative statesmanship. There are all sorts of useful purposes that the monastic institutions of France could have been put to. Once destroyed, these things can never be recreated. What a waste.
Burke is a conservative but in a way that preserves or conserves the connection, often lost, between conservatism and conservation. The question is, to bring this down to the politics of today, two hundred years later, what does it mean to be a conservative now, in the U.S. of A.? Or anywhere else, for that matter.
If you'll go back to that long quotation from Burke, in my last posting, you'll see what he's talking about: the vast array of monastic institutions, with real estate and clergy, that France had inherited from the so-called middle-ages. By the late 18th century, these institutions, along with the feudal social structures and politics that supported them, oh yes and religious beliefs too, had become, shall we say, 'obsolete'-- a word that could only have come into use with modernity. The Revolution was, in large part, a rebellion against the ancient feudal world with its hierarchies, ranks, privileges, beliefs--the whole thing to be swept away, root and branch, including Christianity and the Church. No half-measures. So, at one fell swoop, the revolutionaries confiscated all the Church real estate and sold it on the open market, the proceeds going to pay off the national debt AND provide backing for the new national (paper) currency call the "Assignat." This was, of course, a hare-brained scheme and as Burke predicted, created pure financial chaos.
O.k. What Burke was objecting to was not, simply, the economic stupidity of this 'reform' nor (like Maistre)) did he object on religious grounds; Burke's objection are more like those of an ecologist today who is forced to watch, appalled, as the vast botanical and zoological resources of the Amazon river basin (for instance) are squandered to make room for soy-beans and beef-cattle. Human institutions are human inventions,"the rank productive force of the human mind,"
growing naturally in rank profusion in the soil of human cultures. The grow, they evolve 'organically,' like plants or mushrooms, fertilized by history. Designed for one purpose, they take on others. Or they become obsolete. But there they are, a resource or 'power', to be used by intelligent, imaginative statesmanship. There are all sorts of useful purposes that the monastic institutions of France could have been put to. Once destroyed, these things can never be recreated. What a waste.
Burke is a conservative but in a way that preserves or conserves the connection, often lost, between conservatism and conservation. The question is, to bring this down to the politics of today, two hundred years later, what does it mean to be a conservative now, in the U.S. of A.? Or anywhere else, for that matter.
Monday, March 3, 2008
Conservation or Conservatism?
Napoleon coined the word 'ideology' and he did so contemptuously. A philosophical theory becomes an ideology when it is used to justify a grab for power. Napoleon didn't need an ideology because he had the guns and he happened to be at the right place at the right time (timing is everything): "a whiff of grape-shot" was all it took (as Edmund Burke had predicted) to end the Revolution and make the ideologues shut up.
'Ideology' is another word, like 'reactionary' and the paired opposites 'left' and 'right', that we owe to the French Revolution.
The 20th century was an ideological century and we have the scars to prove it.
Whenever Burke is referred to nowadays, which is not often, it is as a 'classic conservative' which is about right, I guess, but not very helpful. Burke is a classic in the same way that great museums are classical institutions: they select and preserve the most perfect objects of each particular type or class. Unfortunately, the qualities that make Burke a classic make him a little tough to read: the 'thickness' of his knowledge of history, government and political institutions, tends to complicate his style in a way that is similar though not exactly comparable to the complications we notice in the style of Henry James.
Burke understood that government and the rule of law are human inventions that have evolved (in a Darwinian sort of way) over many centuries to meet changing human needs. Religion, for instance, is one of those needs. Though Burke himself is or at least presents himself as a religious man, his understanding of the way the Church of England functions, politically (in a broad sense of that word), is entirely secular. Thus, it is not for theological but practical reasons that he criticizes the revolutionary government in France for destroying the institutions and the clergy of the Catholic church. The following will give you a pretty good idea of the nature and flavor of Burke's conservatism:
There are moments in the fortune of states when particular men are called upon to make improvements by great mental exertion....A politician , to do great things looks for a power, what our workmen call a purchase [i.e., a place where it is possible to apply leverage]; and if he finds that power in politics as in mechanics he cannot be at a loss to apply it. In the monastic institutions [of France], in my opinion, was found a great power for the mechanism of politic benevolence. There were revenues with a public direction; there were men wholly set apart and dedicated to public purposes, without any other than public ties and public principles; men without the possibility of converting the estate of the community into a private fortune. Men denied to self-interests, whose avarice is for some community; men to whom personal poverty is honor, and implicit obedience stands in the place of freedom. The winds blow as they list. These institutions are the products of [religious] enthusiasm; they are the instruments of wisdom. Wisdom cannot create materials; they are the gifts of nature or of chance; her pride is in the use. The perennial existence of bodies corporate and their fortunes, are things particularly suited to a man who has long views; who meditates designs that require time in fashioning; and which propose duration when they are accomplished. He is not deserving to high rank, or even to be mentioned in the order of great statesmen, who, have obtained the command and direction of such a power as existed in the wealth, the discipline, and the habits of such corporations, as those which you [the French] have rashly destroyed, cannot find any way of converting it to the great and lasting benefit of his country.... To destroy any power, growing wild from the rank productive force of the human mind, is almost tantamount, in the moral world, to the destruction of the apparently active properties of bodies in the material. It would be like the attempt to destroy (if it were in our competence to destroy...the power of steam, or of electricity, or of magnetism....
Lao Giao's comment on the word 'ideology' is relevant here: I'm not sure what Napoleon was up to when he coined the word "ideology," but political philosophers who took power would have to include the Founding Fathers, whose success antedated Napoleon's conquests. Madison's Constitution was a beautiful ideological work that has served us well for more than two centuries. Any takers?
'Ideology' is another word, like 'reactionary' and the paired opposites 'left' and 'right', that we owe to the French Revolution.
The 20th century was an ideological century and we have the scars to prove it.
Whenever Burke is referred to nowadays, which is not often, it is as a 'classic conservative' which is about right, I guess, but not very helpful. Burke is a classic in the same way that great museums are classical institutions: they select and preserve the most perfect objects of each particular type or class. Unfortunately, the qualities that make Burke a classic make him a little tough to read: the 'thickness' of his knowledge of history, government and political institutions, tends to complicate his style in a way that is similar though not exactly comparable to the complications we notice in the style of Henry James.
Burke understood that government and the rule of law are human inventions that have evolved (in a Darwinian sort of way) over many centuries to meet changing human needs. Religion, for instance, is one of those needs. Though Burke himself is or at least presents himself as a religious man, his understanding of the way the Church of England functions, politically (in a broad sense of that word), is entirely secular. Thus, it is not for theological but practical reasons that he criticizes the revolutionary government in France for destroying the institutions and the clergy of the Catholic church. The following will give you a pretty good idea of the nature and flavor of Burke's conservatism:
There are moments in the fortune of states when particular men are called upon to make improvements by great mental exertion....A politician , to do great things looks for a power, what our workmen call a purchase [i.e., a place where it is possible to apply leverage]; and if he finds that power in politics as in mechanics he cannot be at a loss to apply it. In the monastic institutions [of France], in my opinion, was found a great power for the mechanism of politic benevolence. There were revenues with a public direction; there were men wholly set apart and dedicated to public purposes, without any other than public ties and public principles; men without the possibility of converting the estate of the community into a private fortune. Men denied to self-interests, whose avarice is for some community; men to whom personal poverty is honor, and implicit obedience stands in the place of freedom. The winds blow as they list. These institutions are the products of [religious] enthusiasm; they are the instruments of wisdom. Wisdom cannot create materials; they are the gifts of nature or of chance; her pride is in the use. The perennial existence of bodies corporate and their fortunes, are things particularly suited to a man who has long views; who meditates designs that require time in fashioning; and which propose duration when they are accomplished. He is not deserving to high rank, or even to be mentioned in the order of great statesmen, who, have obtained the command and direction of such a power as existed in the wealth, the discipline, and the habits of such corporations, as those which you [the French] have rashly destroyed, cannot find any way of converting it to the great and lasting benefit of his country.... To destroy any power, growing wild from the rank productive force of the human mind, is almost tantamount, in the moral world, to the destruction of the apparently active properties of bodies in the material. It would be like the attempt to destroy (if it were in our competence to destroy...the power of steam, or of electricity, or of magnetism....
Lao Giao's comment on the word 'ideology' is relevant here: I'm not sure what Napoleon was up to when he coined the word "ideology," but political philosophers who took power would have to include the Founding Fathers, whose success antedated Napoleon's conquests. Madison's Constitution was a beautiful ideological work that has served us well for more than two centuries. Any takers?
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Maistre's God, Maistre's Politics
Though Maistre is a dogmatic Catholic, it is not at all clear that his god is a Christian god. Maistre's is a vengeful, punishing god. The revolution is both crime and punishment, all rolled into one.
The Revolution, says Maistre, is a force beyond human control, "an overwhelming force that bends every obstacle...a whirlwind carrying along like light straw everything that human force has opposed to it." To what end? Why has Providence deigned to inflict such a catastrophe on the French people? To punish the guilty,of course. And who are the guilty? Just about everyone, it seems: All those who laboured to free the people from their religious beliefs, all those who opposed the laws of property with metaphysical sophisms, all those who said 'Strike, so long as we win something', all those who counselled, approved, or favoured the use of violent measures against the king, etc., all these willed the Revolution, and all who willed it have very justly, even according to our limited insight, become its victims. These are the crimes for which the French people are being punished: thought crimes.
Toward the end of the St. Petersberg Dialogues, we learn if we have not already guessed, where Maistre is leading us:
Do you realize, gentlemen, the source of this flood of insolent doctrines which unceremoniously judge God and call him to account for his orders? They come to us from that great phalanx we call "intellectuals" and whom we have not been able in this age to keep in their place, which is a secondary one. At other times there were very few intellectuals, and a very small minority of this small minority were ungodly; today one sees nothing but "intellectuals"; it is a profession, a crowd, a nation; and among them the already unfortunate exception has become the rule. On every side they have usurped a limitless influence, and yet if there is one thing certain in this world, it is to my mind that it is not for science to guide men. Nothing necessary for this is entrusted to science. One would have to be out of one's mind to believe that God has charged the academies with teaching what he is and what we owe him. It rests with the prelates, the nobles, the great officers of state to be the depositaries and guardians of the saving truths, to teach nations what is bad and what good, what true and what false in the moral and spiritual order: others have no right to reason on this kind of matter. They have the natural sciences to amuse them, what are they complaining about? As for those who talk or write to deprive a people of a national belief, they should be hung like housebreakers.... What folly it was to grant everyone freedom of speech! This is what has ruined us. The so-called philosophers have all a certain fierce and rebellious pride which does not compromise with anything; they detest without exception every distinction they themselves do not enjoy; they find fault in every authority; they hate anything above them. If they are allowed, they will attack everything, even God, because he is master. See if it is not the same men who have attacked both kings and the God who established them....
So, you may well ask, Why Maistre? Because there was a time in the 19th and early 20th century when he was taken very seriously by those who were violently opposed to what I am calling modernity. Joseph de Maistre is the first reactionary; he virtually defines that word.
One might also ask, Why this interest in the French Revolution? That was more than two hundred years ago; what's it to us or we to it? How could those events of long ago and the controversies they aroused, be of any interest or relevance NOW? And why should we take any interest whatsoever
in a fellow like Maistre, whom nobody reads anymore?
The French Revolution--or Explosion--was touched off when the French government was forced by extreme financial pressures to call a meeting of the French Parliament, the Estates General, for the first time in about 175 years. During that time, a modernizing economy and culture had been blocked by the structures and assumptions of the ancient, feudal world. Unlike England, France had no experience of Parliamentary government to fall back on when the problems and hatreds that had been fermenting for almost two centuries began to thrust themselves upon the attention of inexperienced parliamentarians. Naturally, under the circumstances, those men who had thought about history and politics were listened to. These were men who knew all about The Rights of Man, the state of nature and the origins of political culture in the abstract, having been educated by reading Rousseau, Condorcet and Voltaire. The rest, as we say, is history--an extraordinarily bloody history indeed, as it turned out, that settled nothing and proved nothing, and became therefore a source of further conflict. The First World War and the Russian Revolution are both rooted in the French Revolution. Maistre's reflections became gospel for all those who had been disinherited or marginalized by the Revolution and by the seemingly irresistible pressures of modernity in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
No one reads Maistre anymore, but that could change should it ever become obvious that modernity can no longer deliver the goods. Who do you think the people will blame when or if the balance of nature turns against us?
I should like to turn my attention, now, to Edmund Burke who like Maistre found in the Revolution the occasion that he had, perhaps, been looking for, to set forth his deepest reflections about human nature, politics and history. It will be immediately obvious, to anyone who reads Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France that he is a deeper thinker and writer than Maistre, with a much 'thicker' understanding of human nature and human societies. So Burke's conservatism is still relevant, unlike the reactionary politics of Maistre.
The Revolution, says Maistre, is a force beyond human control, "an overwhelming force that bends every obstacle...a whirlwind carrying along like light straw everything that human force has opposed to it." To what end? Why has Providence deigned to inflict such a catastrophe on the French people? To punish the guilty,of course. And who are the guilty? Just about everyone, it seems: All those who laboured to free the people from their religious beliefs, all those who opposed the laws of property with metaphysical sophisms, all those who said 'Strike, so long as we win something', all those who counselled, approved, or favoured the use of violent measures against the king, etc., all these willed the Revolution, and all who willed it have very justly, even according to our limited insight, become its victims. These are the crimes for which the French people are being punished: thought crimes.
Toward the end of the St. Petersberg Dialogues, we learn if we have not already guessed, where Maistre is leading us:
Do you realize, gentlemen, the source of this flood of insolent doctrines which unceremoniously judge God and call him to account for his orders? They come to us from that great phalanx we call "intellectuals" and whom we have not been able in this age to keep in their place, which is a secondary one. At other times there were very few intellectuals, and a very small minority of this small minority were ungodly; today one sees nothing but "intellectuals"; it is a profession, a crowd, a nation; and among them the already unfortunate exception has become the rule. On every side they have usurped a limitless influence, and yet if there is one thing certain in this world, it is to my mind that it is not for science to guide men. Nothing necessary for this is entrusted to science. One would have to be out of one's mind to believe that God has charged the academies with teaching what he is and what we owe him. It rests with the prelates, the nobles, the great officers of state to be the depositaries and guardians of the saving truths, to teach nations what is bad and what good, what true and what false in the moral and spiritual order: others have no right to reason on this kind of matter. They have the natural sciences to amuse them, what are they complaining about? As for those who talk or write to deprive a people of a national belief, they should be hung like housebreakers.... What folly it was to grant everyone freedom of speech! This is what has ruined us. The so-called philosophers have all a certain fierce and rebellious pride which does not compromise with anything; they detest without exception every distinction they themselves do not enjoy; they find fault in every authority; they hate anything above them. If they are allowed, they will attack everything, even God, because he is master. See if it is not the same men who have attacked both kings and the God who established them....
So, you may well ask, Why Maistre? Because there was a time in the 19th and early 20th century when he was taken very seriously by those who were violently opposed to what I am calling modernity. Joseph de Maistre is the first reactionary; he virtually defines that word.
One might also ask, Why this interest in the French Revolution? That was more than two hundred years ago; what's it to us or we to it? How could those events of long ago and the controversies they aroused, be of any interest or relevance NOW? And why should we take any interest whatsoever
in a fellow like Maistre, whom nobody reads anymore?
The French Revolution--or Explosion--was touched off when the French government was forced by extreme financial pressures to call a meeting of the French Parliament, the Estates General, for the first time in about 175 years. During that time, a modernizing economy and culture had been blocked by the structures and assumptions of the ancient, feudal world. Unlike England, France had no experience of Parliamentary government to fall back on when the problems and hatreds that had been fermenting for almost two centuries began to thrust themselves upon the attention of inexperienced parliamentarians. Naturally, under the circumstances, those men who had thought about history and politics were listened to. These were men who knew all about The Rights of Man, the state of nature and the origins of political culture in the abstract, having been educated by reading Rousseau, Condorcet and Voltaire. The rest, as we say, is history--an extraordinarily bloody history indeed, as it turned out, that settled nothing and proved nothing, and became therefore a source of further conflict. The First World War and the Russian Revolution are both rooted in the French Revolution. Maistre's reflections became gospel for all those who had been disinherited or marginalized by the Revolution and by the seemingly irresistible pressures of modernity in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
No one reads Maistre anymore, but that could change should it ever become obvious that modernity can no longer deliver the goods. Who do you think the people will blame when or if the balance of nature turns against us?
I should like to turn my attention, now, to Edmund Burke who like Maistre found in the Revolution the occasion that he had, perhaps, been looking for, to set forth his deepest reflections about human nature, politics and history. It will be immediately obvious, to anyone who reads Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France that he is a deeper thinker and writer than Maistre, with a much 'thicker' understanding of human nature and human societies. So Burke's conservatism is still relevant, unlike the reactionary politics of Maistre.
Saturday, February 23, 2008
Maistre's god
You could sum up a lot of Maistre by saying that his God has a taste for dramatic irony. He and Maistre delight in the fact that no one ever knows the meaning or consequences of his or her actions, which usually turn out very differently from what one had intended.
Audiences experience dramatic irony when an actor's words and actions have meanings that the character being enacted is unaware of. The equivalent of dramatic irony out in the political world occurs when the words and actions of important people have what we call 'unintended consequences.' It is virtually a law of history for Maistre that god always makes hash of our intentions—and especially the intentions of the men who came to prominence during the Revolution.
The following selections from Considerations on France,which would have been more aptly entitled, Reflections on the Ways of Providence, are strictly intended by me to be illustrative, merely:
It has been correctly pointed out that the French Revolution leads men more than men lead it.... The very rascals who appear to lead the Revolution are involved only as simple instruments, and as soon as they aspire to dominate it they fall ignobly. Those who established the Republic did it without wanting to and without knowing what they were doing....Robespierre, Collot, or Barere never thought to establish the revolutionary government or the Reign of Terror; they were led to it imperceptibly by circumstances... These extremely mediocre men exercised over a guilty nation the most frightfull despotism in history, and surely they were more surprised at their power than anyone else in the kingdom....
All those who laboured to free the people from their religious beliefs, all those who opposed the laws of property with metaphysical sophisms, all those who said 'Strike, so long as we win something', all those who counselled, approved, or favoured the use of violent measures against the king, etc., all these willed the Revolution, and all who willed it have very justly, even according to our limited insight, become its victims.
We groan to see illustrious scholars fall beneath Robespierre's axe. Humanly, we cannot be too sorry for them; but divine justice has not the least respect for geometers or physicists. Too many French scholars were the principal authors of the Revolution, too many approved and gave their support so long as the Revolution...struck down only the tallest heads. Like so many others, they said, 'It is impossible to make a great revolution without incurring misfortunes.' But when a philosopher justifies evil by the end in view, when he says in his heart, 'Let there a hundred thousand murders, provided we are free,' and Providence replies, 'I accept your offer, but you must be included in the number,' where is the injustice? Would we judge otherwise in our own tribunals?
Maistre thinks that his Christian faith gives him unique access to God's intentions and historical truth. He is like a person watching a play, who is in a position to know much more about the world of the play than the characters IN the play, on stage.
So now here's my question: Am I correct in thinking that this is actually a rather modern way of thinking about history? One has only to strip away Maistre's idea of Providence, and of God as the author of the play we call History, to arrive at, say, Henry Adams's insight that history or reality--not Providence--necessarily makes fools of us all; we never understand the larger meaning of our words and actions until later; the law of unintended consequences merely reflects that fact.
Audiences experience dramatic irony when an actor's words and actions have meanings that the character being enacted is unaware of. The equivalent of dramatic irony out in the political world occurs when the words and actions of important people have what we call 'unintended consequences.' It is virtually a law of history for Maistre that god always makes hash of our intentions—and especially the intentions of the men who came to prominence during the Revolution.
The following selections from Considerations on France,which would have been more aptly entitled, Reflections on the Ways of Providence, are strictly intended by me to be illustrative, merely:
It has been correctly pointed out that the French Revolution leads men more than men lead it.... The very rascals who appear to lead the Revolution are involved only as simple instruments, and as soon as they aspire to dominate it they fall ignobly. Those who established the Republic did it without wanting to and without knowing what they were doing....Robespierre, Collot, or Barere never thought to establish the revolutionary government or the Reign of Terror; they were led to it imperceptibly by circumstances... These extremely mediocre men exercised over a guilty nation the most frightfull despotism in history, and surely they were more surprised at their power than anyone else in the kingdom....
All those who laboured to free the people from their religious beliefs, all those who opposed the laws of property with metaphysical sophisms, all those who said 'Strike, so long as we win something', all those who counselled, approved, or favoured the use of violent measures against the king, etc., all these willed the Revolution, and all who willed it have very justly, even according to our limited insight, become its victims.
We groan to see illustrious scholars fall beneath Robespierre's axe. Humanly, we cannot be too sorry for them; but divine justice has not the least respect for geometers or physicists. Too many French scholars were the principal authors of the Revolution, too many approved and gave their support so long as the Revolution...struck down only the tallest heads. Like so many others, they said, 'It is impossible to make a great revolution without incurring misfortunes.' But when a philosopher justifies evil by the end in view, when he says in his heart, 'Let there a hundred thousand murders, provided we are free,' and Providence replies, 'I accept your offer, but you must be included in the number,' where is the injustice? Would we judge otherwise in our own tribunals?
Maistre thinks that his Christian faith gives him unique access to God's intentions and historical truth. He is like a person watching a play, who is in a position to know much more about the world of the play than the characters IN the play, on stage.
So now here's my question: Am I correct in thinking that this is actually a rather modern way of thinking about history? One has only to strip away Maistre's idea of Providence, and of God as the author of the play we call History, to arrive at, say, Henry Adams's insight that history or reality--not Providence--necessarily makes fools of us all; we never understand the larger meaning of our words and actions until later; the law of unintended consequences merely reflects that fact.
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
The Executioner and The Soldier
Why, de Maistre wonders, is the executioner abhorred [Abhorson, is the name of the executioner in Shakespeare's play, Measure For Measure] while the soldier is treated as a hero? "The one brings death to convicted and condemned criminals, and fortunately his executions are so rare that one of these ministers of death is sufficient for each province. As far as soldiers are concerned there are never enough of them, because they kill wihout restraint and their victims are always honest men. Of these two professional killers, one is highly honored and always has been by all the nations who have inhabited up to now this planet... but the other has just as generally been regarded as vile." This for de Maistre--and for me as well--is a puzzler. If you think you've got an answer, let me know.
To which Lao Qiao said:
Soldiers, I would guess, are admired because they risk their lives for others. Executioners don't risk their lives but instead go home after work.
The name Abhorson includes both the word "abhor" and the word "whoreson." He really is abhorred, that son of a bitch—or as we say in Chinese, gouniangyangde (raised by a dog's mother).
And I say: That's the obvious answer isn't it? Why then does de Maistre make a such a fuss about it, implying that it's all a big mystery? (And by the way, Shakespeare's Abhorson is not abhorred; actually he's not a bad fellow.
To which Lao Qiao said:
Soldiers, I would guess, are admired because they risk their lives for others. Executioners don't risk their lives but instead go home after work.
The name Abhorson includes both the word "abhor" and the word "whoreson." He really is abhorred, that son of a bitch—or as we say in Chinese, gouniangyangde (raised by a dog's mother).
And I say: That's the obvious answer isn't it? Why then does de Maistre make a such a fuss about it, implying that it's all a big mystery? (And by the way, Shakespeare's Abhorson is not abhorred; actually he's not a bad fellow.
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
de Maistre's Executioner
It is pretty clear that De Maistre's Executioner is intended, not only to shock and awe but also to put an end to all talk of reason, progress and human perfectibility. The natural wickedness (or, if you prefer, the inherent sinfulness) of human beings means that no society can long endure in a civilized state without political sovereignty and judicial terror.
de Maistre had the greatest respect for David Hume. He clearly admired his History of England and thought that Hume's account of the English revolution, especially the judicial murder of Charles I, in the previous century, offered an almost exact parallel with the revolution in France. But I think his admiration of Hume went deeper than that: both men had concluded, though for different reasons perhaps, that moral judgments are never the result of reason or reasoning; there is no connection, indeed, between reason and morality. For while our moral judgments may have some slight influence over our passions, reason has none. Reason, indeed, is and could only be the slave of the passions. Believers in original sin had always known this; Hume may have worked it out, as he says, scientifically. Here is how he puts it in A Treatise of Human Nature, at the end of Bk 3 (Of Morals), Section 1 (Of Vice and Virtue):
I cannot forbear adding to these reasonings an observation, which may, perhaps, be found of some importance. In every system of morality, which I have hitherto met with, I have always remark'd, that the author proceeds for some time in the ordinary way of reasoning, and establishes the being of a God, or makes observations concerning human affairs; when of a sudden I am surpriz'd to find, that instead of the usual copulations of propositions, is, and is not, I meet with no proposition that is not connected with an ought, or an ought not. This change is imperceptible; but is, however, of the last consequence. For as this ought, or ought not, expresses some new relation or affirmation, `tis necessary that it shou'd be observ'd and explain'd; and at the same time that a reason should be given, for what seems altogether inconceivable, how this new relation can be a deduction from others, which are entirely different from it. But as authors do not commonly use this precaution, I shall presume to recommend it to the readers; and am persuaded, that this small attention wou'd subvert all the vulgar systems of morality, and let us see, that the distinction of vice and virtue is not founded merely on the relations of objects, nor is perceiv'd by reason.
If reason is morally blind and morally impotent--and if the French Revolution proved anything it proved that--does it follow, as de Maistre thought, that law and order can only be based, finally, on brute force and terror? Fear of Hell and/or the executioner? Don't be in a big hurry to answer this one. The jury is still out.
de Maistre had the greatest respect for David Hume. He clearly admired his History of England and thought that Hume's account of the English revolution, especially the judicial murder of Charles I, in the previous century, offered an almost exact parallel with the revolution in France. But I think his admiration of Hume went deeper than that: both men had concluded, though for different reasons perhaps, that moral judgments are never the result of reason or reasoning; there is no connection, indeed, between reason and morality. For while our moral judgments may have some slight influence over our passions, reason has none. Reason, indeed, is and could only be the slave of the passions. Believers in original sin had always known this; Hume may have worked it out, as he says, scientifically. Here is how he puts it in A Treatise of Human Nature, at the end of Bk 3 (Of Morals), Section 1 (Of Vice and Virtue):
I cannot forbear adding to these reasonings an observation, which may, perhaps, be found of some importance. In every system of morality, which I have hitherto met with, I have always remark'd, that the author proceeds for some time in the ordinary way of reasoning, and establishes the being of a God, or makes observations concerning human affairs; when of a sudden I am surpriz'd to find, that instead of the usual copulations of propositions, is, and is not, I meet with no proposition that is not connected with an ought, or an ought not. This change is imperceptible; but is, however, of the last consequence. For as this ought, or ought not, expresses some new relation or affirmation, `tis necessary that it shou'd be observ'd and explain'd; and at the same time that a reason should be given, for what seems altogether inconceivable, how this new relation can be a deduction from others, which are entirely different from it. But as authors do not commonly use this precaution, I shall presume to recommend it to the readers; and am persuaded, that this small attention wou'd subvert all the vulgar systems of morality, and let us see, that the distinction of vice and virtue is not founded merely on the relations of objects, nor is perceiv'd by reason.
If reason is morally blind and morally impotent--and if the French Revolution proved anything it proved that--does it follow, as de Maistre thought, that law and order can only be based, finally, on brute force and terror? Fear of Hell and/or the executioner? Don't be in a big hurry to answer this one. The jury is still out.
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