tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-70211648776622254632024-02-08T07:48:09.111-06:00Muss es sein?Occasional musings on daily life, politics, philosophy, books, and ideas.SocraticFuryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11556202787301724963noreply@blogger.comBlogger13125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7021164877662225463.post-56562425275108894842020-07-01T17:56:00.000-05:002020-07-02T10:58:55.694-05:00Review of Corey Robin's The Reactionary Mind (2nd edition)<br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">The political Left today is
resurgent, led by a newly galvanized Black Lives Matter movement in the wake of
George Floyd’s death on Memorial Day.</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">
</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Massive protests erupted across the country (perhaps because COVID-19
had canceled most people’s summer vacation plans), including Seattle, where
protestors faced down police and claimed the Capitol Hill section.</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Leaders at some of the country’s most prestigious
universities have fallen over themselves to issue statements condemning racism
and affirming that black lives matter (sometimes with capitalization).</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Princeton University announced that it would
rename the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs as well as
Wilson College (Wilson served as president of Princeton University from
1902-10), and the American Political Science Association is considering
renaming the award that bears his name (Wilson served as president of APSA from
1909-10), due to Wilson’s “<a href="https://www.princeton.edu/news/2020/06/27/president-eisgrubers-message-community-removal-woodrow-wilson-name-public-policy" target="_blank">racist thinking and policies</a>.”</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">NASCAR has banned the flying of the
Confederate flag at its races.</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">In a sign
of how drastically the political mood has shifted in just over a month, Mississippi
has removed the Confederate emblem from its state flag.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">The changed mood can especially be
felt on social media.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On May 28, three
days after Floyd’s death, David Shor, a political data analyst, <a href="https://nymag.com/intelligencer/amp/2020/06/case-for-liberalism-tom-cotton-new-york-times-james-bennet.html" target="_blank">tweeted a summary of a paper by Princeton professor Omar Wasow</a>, which found that violent
protests in the aftermath of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination decreased
Democratic vote share in surrounding counties, whereas nonviolent protests
increased the Democratic vote share.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For
this, he was accused of “anti-blackness” and “minimizing black grief and rage”
by Ari Trujillo Wesler, who proceeded to tag Shor’s boss, and instructed him,
“Come get your boy.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The next day, Shor
tweeted, “While I strongly admire [Omar Wasow’s] work, it’s clear that I have
not been, due to both my background and words, an effective messenger of his
findings about the power of non-violent protest.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I regret starting this conversation and will
be much more careful moving forward.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It
was not enough.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He was fired shortly
thereafter.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This was but one of the
first instances in what is now <a href="https://thefederalist.com/2020/06/11/if-you-dont-support-black-lives-matter-youre-fired/" target="_blank">an identifiable trend</a>.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">On my own feed, I have read that
anyone who criticized the riots without talking about what led to them, or who
made it a point to publicly support police, or who is doubling down on their
support of Trump and/or Republicans, or who is unwilling to “do the work” to be
an “ally,” is a racist or, at minimum, is acquiescing to racism.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Since most of the people guilty of the
aforementioned sins are politically conservative, the criticism amounts to accusing
many conservatives of being racist or culpably passive in the face of racism.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">The idea that there is a link or
affinity between conservatives/conservatism and racism is not new.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the preface to the second edition of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Reactionary Mind</i>, Corey Robin<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kang/Documents/Review%20of%20The%20Reactionary%20Mind%20(version%203).docx#_ftn1" name="_ftnref1" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn1;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">[1]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> speaks of “the
characteristics we have come to associate with contemporary
conservatism—racism, populism, violence, and a pervasive contempt for custom,
convention, law, institutions, and established elites” (xi) as a matter of
established consensus, at least among his first person plural.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The book’s central claim, that conservatism
is “a meditation on—and theoretical rendition of—the felt experience of having
power, seeing it threatened, and trying to win it back” (4), is the sort of
argument one frequently hears from those leftists who reduce all social
relationships to power struggles.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I find
them one-dimensional and tiresome.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Nevertheless,
these arguments seem to be increasingly influential, and therefore should be addressed.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Let me say straightaway that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Reactionary Mind</i> puts Robin’s wit
and intelligence on full display.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
book is organized in three parts: the first part sets forth what Robin sees as
the defining features of conservatism, and the next two parts consist of case
studies of European and American conservatives, ending with Trump.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The third part, where Robin discusses the
American scene, is the strongest.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Let me
begin at the end, with the chapter on Trump.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>While many on the left have decried Trump as authoritarian or fascist
(it would appear most of them use the two terms indiscriminately), and someone
who endangers the United States by recklessly escalating tensions with other
countries, Robin notes that “[f]or all the apparent violence and statism of
[Trump’s] rhetoric, what’s remarkable about Trump’s political vision is how
economistic it can be” (260).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Robin
quotes from Trump’s book: “China is our enemy,” and “the military threat from
China is gigantic.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Therefore, the
answer must be to proportionally beef up our own military, right?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>“We need a president who will slap the Chinese with a 25 percent tax on
all their products entering America if they don’t stop undervaluing the
yuan.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The closest Trump gets to
violence is threatening to “slap” China where it hurts: its pocketbook.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">As Robin observes, Trump’s favored
instruments of state power are those familiar to him as a businessman: leaving
the bargaining table and filing a lawsuit (262-63).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Indeed, for all the fear that Trump poses a
threat to the independence of the judiciary or the rule of law, his primary
mode of opposing court rulings has been … to appeal those rulings” (263).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He has worked within the constraints of the
American system of checks-and-balances without seriously challenging that
system.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Crucially, he has not
consolidated state power to clear the political field of opposition and dissent
(cf. 265).<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kang/Documents/Review%20of%20The%20Reactionary%20Mind%20(version%203).docx#_ftn2" name="_ftnref2" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn2;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">[2]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Tweeting a storm at your political opponents
is not exactly the mark of a political strongman.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Commendably, Robin does not allow his disgust
of Trump to drive his analysis of Trump.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span><u><span style="font-size: 12pt;">What Makes a
Conservative?</span></u></span></h2>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">As the chapter on Trump shows,
Robin can be perceptive.</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">But it is one
thing to produce perceptive case studies; it is another to offer a
comprehensive, unifying account of conservatism.</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">The former could fall within the purview of
political journalism; the latter falls squarely within the province of
political theory.</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Robin, being a
self-described political theorist “whose method is close reading and historical
analysis” (xiv), endeavors to offer just such an account in the first three
chapters of his book.</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">On his telling,
the divisions within conservatism, “so often emphasized by scholars and
pundits” (29), are but improvisations on a single theme (32).</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">According to Robin, conservatism is
“the most consistent and profound argument as to why the lower orders should
not be allowed to exercise their independent will, why they should not be
allowed to govern themselves or the polity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Submission is their first duty” (7-8).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">hoi polloi</i> have their
place, should know their place, and should stay in their place.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Moreover, because “the real subject” of
political deliberations is “the private life of power” (10), “[t]he priority of
conservative political argument has been the maintenance of private regimes of
power” (15).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The political is
personal.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Indeed, the “animating
purpose” of conservatism is its “opposition to the liberation of men and women
from the fetters of their superiors, particularly in the private sphere”
(16).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Robin admits, “Such a view might
seem miles away from the libertarian defense of the free market” (16).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“But,” he proclaims, “it is not” (16).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because “[w]hen the libertarian looks out
upon society, he does not see isolated individuals; he sees private, often
hierarchical, groups, where a father governs his family and an owner his
employees” (16).<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">If conservatism is “the most
consistent and profound argument” against power sharing, then that means it is
not the only such argument.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
conservative argument is distinguished, above all, from the traditionalist
defense of inherited power and privilege.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The distinction consists in the fact that conservatism “<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">invariably</i> arises in response to a
threat to the old regime or after the old regime has been destroyed” (44,
emphasis added); it is inherently reactionary and its ideas “are a mode of
counterrevolutionary practice” (17).<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kang/Documents/Review%20of%20The%20Reactionary%20Mind%20(version%203).docx#_ftn3" name="_ftnref3" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn3;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">[3]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Robin points out a “surprising and
seldom-noticed” element of conservatism: an “antipathy, bordering on contempt,
for the old regime they claim as their cause” (41), for the revolution itself
is proof of “the weakness and incompetence” of the traditionalists (18).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This means that, unlike traditionalism, <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">the
reactionary imperative presses conservatism in two rather different directions:
first, to a critique and reconfiguration of the old regime; and second, to an
absorption of the ideas and tactics of the very revolution or reform it
opposes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What conservatism seeks to
accomplish through that reconfiguration of the old and absorption of the new is
to make privilege popular, to transform a tottering old regime into a dynamic,
ideologically coherent movement of the masses.<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kang/Documents/Review%20of%20The%20Reactionary%20Mind%20(version%203).docx#_ftn4" name="_ftnref4" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn4;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">[4]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">The conservative’s defense of power
and privilege, then, is directed against <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">both</i>
the revolutionaries <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">and</i> the
pre-revolutionary old guard,<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kang/Documents/Review%20of%20The%20Reactionary%20Mind%20(version%203).docx#_ftn5" name="_ftnref5" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn5;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">[5]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> which frequently causes
the traditionalist to “mistake the counterrevolutionary for the opposition”
(93).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Conservatism is the counter-resistance,
adopting the tools and techniques of the resistance against the resistance,
including above all (reactionary) populism and, closely connected to that, the
politics of grievance (50-57).<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">The “wildness and extravagance”
(41) of conservatism as a counterrevolutionary practice points to a deep
affinity between conservatism and violence, shown superficially in the support
among self-identified conservatives for the death penalty, torture, and war,
and on a deeper level in the arguments of writers like Burke, especially in
their descriptions of the rejuvenating effects of violence (ch. 3, esp. 72-77).<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">On the basis of the foregoing
account of conservatism, it is not surprising that Robin views Trump as
“entirely legible as both a conservative and a Republican” (xi).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>However, a not insignificant number of
conservatives, including the Never-Trumpers, do not consider Trump a
conservative.<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kang/Documents/Review%20of%20The%20Reactionary%20Mind%20(version%203).docx#_ftn6" name="_ftnref6" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn6;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">[6]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>More broadly, few conservatives would
recognize the doctrine<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kang/Documents/Review%20of%20The%20Reactionary%20Mind%20(version%203).docx#_ftn7" name="_ftnref7" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn7;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">[7]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> they espouse in Robin’s
characterization.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Robin’s burden, then, is
to demonstrate that he, a non-conservative, has understood conservatism better
than conservatives themselves have understood it.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">That difficult task is made
unnecessarily more difficult by a muddle at the heart of his argument.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Conservatism, like all political doctrines,
has both a theoretical dimension (the idea or ideal of conservatism) and a
practical dimension (conservatism in action).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Robin admits that the theoretical and practical dimensions of
conservatism do not always cohere; at one point, he refers to “the failure of
the conservative politician to follow the lead of the conservative theorist”
(63).<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kang/Documents/Review%20of%20The%20Reactionary%20Mind%20(version%203).docx#_ftn8" name="_ftnref8" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn8;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">[8]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He nevertheless proposes to “treat the right
as a unity, as a coherent body of theory and practice” (28-29), and to “read
the theory in light of the practice (and the practice in light of the theory)”
(29, footnote).<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Why does Robin insist on treating
conservatism as a coherent body of theory and practice even as he points to a
rupture?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I believe it is because he is
caught between two realizations which he does not quite know how to harmonize.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He realizes that he cannot simply collapse
the theoretical and practical dimensions into one another, but also, those two
dimensions are dimensions <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">of</i>
conservatism.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Something makes
conservatism cognizable as such.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That
“something” is what renders our everyday political discourse intelligible (see
34-35, footnote).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Robin has a particular
conception of that “something.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It seems
to him “a necessary condition of intelligent discussion that we agree that
there is something called the right <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">and
that it has some set of common features that make it right</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That, at any rate, is the assumption of this
book” (36, footnote, italics added).<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">I think Robin’s assumption that
there must be “some set of common features” that conservatives share, that
there is a single theme unifying all of conservatism, is mistaken.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The search for a definitive set of features
(or beliefs) common to all conservatives will tend to exclude some people who
are generally recognized as conservative, include some people who are generally
not recognized as conservative, or both.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And this is precisely the type of problem we encounter in Robin.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">For example, libertarians do not
fit his characterization; no libertarian baldly avows that “the lower orders
should not be allowed to exercise their independent will.”<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kang/Documents/Review%20of%20The%20Reactionary%20Mind%20(version%203).docx#_ftn9" name="_ftnref9" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn9;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">[9]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Robin is aware of this issue.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I quoted him above as saying, “When the
libertarian looks out upon society, he does not see isolated individuals; he
sees private, often hierarchical, groups, where a father governs his family and
an owner his employees” (16).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That
sentence is accompanied by a footnote, which quotes Milton Friedman and Richard
Epstein, and cites (but does not quote) additional sources.<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kang/Documents/Review%20of%20The%20Reactionary%20Mind%20(version%203).docx#_ftn10" name="_ftnref10" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn10;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">[10]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Neither quotation, however, supports Robin’s argument,
because neither concerns who ought to rule and who ought to obey. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“[H]ierarchical groups, where a father governs
his family and an owner his employees,” is what <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Robin</i> sees, not what Friedman or Epstein see.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But even if Friedman and Epstein see the same
thing as Robin when they look out upon society, Robin does not offer any
evidence that Friedman or Epstein support those things any more than Robin
does.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He adduces no compelling evidence
that libertarians share the beliefs that, according to him, make a
conservative.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">To take another example, Robin
criticized a well-known twentieth-century conservative theorist by saying,
“Oakeshott’s view of the conservative … is not an insight; it is a conceit”
(44).<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kang/Documents/Review%20of%20The%20Reactionary%20Mind%20(version%203).docx#_ftn11" name="_ftnref11" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn11;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">[11]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Well, that is a convenient way to brush aside
any conservative thinker who does not fit his schema, which Oakeshott does not.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It certainly is not clear why Robin’s view of
the conservative is any less of a conceit.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">A better approach than trying to
identify a set of common features (and then force-reading those features into
authors one is inclined to treat as conservative) would be to employ the idea
of family resemblance made famous by Wittgenstein. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On this approach, conservatives share no one
thing or set of features in common, but they are related to one another via a
complicated network of overlapping and criss-crossing similarities.<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kang/Documents/Review%20of%20The%20Reactionary%20Mind%20(version%203).docx#_ftn12" name="_ftnref12" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn12;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">[12]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This has the virtue of allowing the
theoretical and practical dimensions to diverge significantly without seeking to
impose a spurious unity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It has the
additional virtue of being more faithful to natural language, because we use
“conservative” in both casual and technical/analytical senses, and while those
senses are related, they are far from identical.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A satisfactory account of conservatism must
simultaneously make it possible for us to understand why Hayek is frequently
labeled a conservative as well as why Hayek himself declined the label.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A Wittgensteinian approach allows this;
Robin’s does not.<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kang/Documents/Review%20of%20The%20Reactionary%20Mind%20(version%203).docx#_ftn13" name="_ftnref13" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn13;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">[13]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Moreover, this Wittgensteinian
approach is compatible with Robin’s use of the “theme and variations” imagery
(xvi), if he does not insist on there being a single, unifying theme to
conservatism.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is also compatible with
his saying that “there is an underlying affinity that draws these differences
[on the right] together” (32) and his invocation of “metaphysical pathos” (29,
footnote), so long as these things are understood in the right way.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Instead of saying, “These are the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">definitive</i> features of conservatism,”
Robin could have said, “These are some recurring themes within conservatism
that conservatives don’t like to talk about.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>That would have made his point, and been more defensible.</span></span><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></div>
<h2 style="line-height: normal;">
<u><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Misreading Burke: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Reflections on the Revolution in France</i></span></span></u></h2>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Classification issues aside, my
biggest issues with Robin are textual/interpretive.</span><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">He consistently plays on ambiguities, omits
qualifications, and subtly distorts texts to make the text support positions
that are not the author’s.</span><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Let me take
an early passage in </span><i style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">The Reactionary Mind</i><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">
where he quotes from Burke’s </span><i style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Reflections
on the Revolution in France</i><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">:</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: .5in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">What
the conservative sees and dislikes in equality … is not a threat to freedom but
its extension [to the lower orders] … Such was the threat Edmund Burke saw in
the French Revolution: not merely an expropriation of property or explosion of
violence but an inversion of the obligations of deference and command.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“The levellers,” he claimed, “only change and
pervert the natural order of things.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 1.0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">The
occupation of an hair-dresser, or of a working tallow-chandler, cannot be a
matter of honour to any person—to say nothing of a number of other more servile
employments.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Such descriptions of men
ought not to suffer oppression from the state; but the state suffers
oppression, if such as they, either individually or collectively, are permitted
to rule.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: .5in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">By
virtue of membership in a polity, Burke allowed, men had a great many rights—to
the fruits of their labor, their inheritance, education, and more.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But the one right he refused to concede to
all men was that “share of power, authority, and direction” they might think
they ought to have “in the management of the state.”<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kang/Documents/Review%20of%20The%20Reactionary%20Mind%20(version%203).docx#_ftn14" name="_ftnref14" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn14;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">[14]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">First, some context.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The sentence about the levellers changing and
perverting the natural order of things is preceded by this sentence: “In all
societies, consisting of various descriptions of citizens, some description
must be uppermost.”<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kang/Documents/Review%20of%20The%20Reactionary%20Mind%20(version%203).docx#_ftn15" name="_ftnref15" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn15;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">[15]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A little later on occurs the passage from
which Robin pulls his block quote:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 1.0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">The
chancellor of France at the opening of the states, said, in a tone of oratorial
flourish, that all occupations were honourable.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>If he meant only, that no honest employment was disgraceful, he would
not have gone beyond the truth.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But in
asserting, that any thing is honourable, we imply some distinction in its
favour.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The occupation of an hair-dresser, or of a working tallow-chandler,
cannot be a matter of honour to any person—to say nothing of a number of other
more servile employments.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Such
descriptions of men ought not to suffer oppression from the state; but the
state suffers oppression, if such as they, either individually or collectively,
are permitted to rule.</i><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In this you
think you are combating prejudice, but you are at war with nature.<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kang/Documents/Review%20of%20The%20Reactionary%20Mind%20(version%203).docx#_ftn16" name="_ftnref16" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn16;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">[16]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 1.0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">At this point, Burke drops an
important footnote, where he cites four verses from Ecclesiastes, all of which
make the point that political engagement requires leisure.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is the lack of leisure which makes the
working class unfit for politics, and not any sort of intrinsic unfitness.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is certainly an elitist conception of
politics, but such a conception is hardly confined to conservatives.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Moreover, Burke’s elitism is qualified in a way
Robin chooses to ignore.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Immediately
after the passage just quoted, Burke says:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 1.0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">I
do not, my dear Sir, conceive you to be of that sophistical captious spirit, or
of that uncandid dulness, as to require, for every general observation or
sentiment, an explicit detail of all the correctives and exceptions, which
reason will presume to be included in all the general propositions which come
from reasonable men.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You do not imagine,
that I wish to confine power, authority, and distinction to blood, names, and
titles.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No, Sir.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There is no qualification for government, but
virtue and wisdom, actual or presumptive.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Wherever they are actually found, they have, in whatever state,
condition, profession or trade, the passport of Heaven to human place and
honour.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Woe to that country which would
madly and impiously reject the service of the talents and virtues, civil,
military, or religious, that are given to grace and to serve it … Woe to that
country too, that passing into the opposite extreme, considers a low education,
a mean contracted view of things, a sordid mercenary occupation, as a
preferable title to command.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Every thing
ought to be open; but not indifferently to every man.<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kang/Documents/Review%20of%20The%20Reactionary%20Mind%20(version%203).docx#_ftn17" name="_ftnref17" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn17;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">[17]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">In other words, Burke is open to
hairdresser commanders—something a reader of Robin might never guess—but they
will be the exception, rather than the norm.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The basis of his elitism is the conviction that the social environment of
what we today call “the disadvantaged” limits opportunities for learning and
achievement—something that every leftist and liberal should find agreeable
(even if Burke’s conclusions are not)—including developing an aptitude to rule.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The hierarchy in the “natural order of
things” is established by accident, not by intrinsic merit.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">I now turn to the final part of
Robin’s explication of Burke, already quoted above:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: .5in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">By
virtue of membership in a polity, Burke allowed, men had a great many rights—to
the fruits of their labor, their inheritance, education, and more.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But the one right he refused to concede to
all men was that “share of power, authority, and direction” they might think
they ought to have “in the management of the state.”<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kang/Documents/Review%20of%20The%20Reactionary%20Mind%20(version%203).docx#_ftn18" name="_ftnref18" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn18;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">[18]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Here, Robin has completely missed
Burke’s meaning.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What Burke actually
says is, “But as to the share of power, authority, and direction which each
individual ought to have in the management of the state, that I must deny to be
amongst the direct original rights of man in civil society … It is a thing to
be settled by convention.”<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kang/Documents/Review%20of%20The%20Reactionary%20Mind%20(version%203).docx#_ftn19" name="_ftnref19" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn19;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">[19]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Burke’s point here is that the issue of who
gets to participate in government is not a matter of right at all, because (so
he argues) men give up their right to self-governance when they enter civil
society.<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kang/Documents/Review%20of%20The%20Reactionary%20Mind%20(version%203).docx#_ftn20" name="_ftnref20" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn20;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">[20]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In other words, Burke argues that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">no man</i> has a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">right</i> to participate in government.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Instead of speaking of “the one right [Burke] refused to concede to all
men” (as if Burke had conceded that right to some men), Robin should have
spoken instead of “the one right [Burke] refused to concede to any man.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>By selectively quoting this passage
immediately after the passage regarding hair-dressers, Robin gives the
impression that Burke reserves the privilege of participating in government to
a certain class of men.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Such subtle
distortions are typical of Robin’s hermeneutical style.<span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><a href="file:///C:/Users/Kang/Documents/Review%20of%20The%20Reactionary%20Mind%20(version%203).docx#_ftn21" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn21;" title=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">[21]</span></span></a></span></span></span></span></div>
<h2 style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><u><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Misreading Hayek: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Constitution of Liberty</i></span></u></span></h2>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">In chapter 6, Robin makes an
arresting and intriguing argument: that the Austrian marginalists, including
above all Hayek, were bolder, far bolder, than the outspoken Nietzsche in
imagining how to recreate a world hospitable to greatness, for it was they who
founded “Nietzschean economics,” where the market is “the proving ground of
aristocratic action” and “the very expression of morality” (164, 157, 149).</span><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">The question with which Nietzsche and the
Austrians wrestled concerned the nature, origin, and creation of value in a
disenchanted world.</span><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Robin argues that
Hayek, like Nietzsche, believed that the legislation of values is a prerogative
reserved for the greatest among us.</span><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">“In </span><i style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">The Constitution of Liberty</i><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">, Hayek
developed … a full-blown theory of the wealthy and the well-born as an
avant-garde of taste, as makers of new horizons of value” (157).</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Robin introduces his exposition of
Hayek with the following passage, which also serves nicely as a <span style="background: white; color: #222222;">précis</span> of his argument: <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: .5in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">The
distinction Hayek draws between mass and elite has not received much attention
from his critics or his defenders, bewildered or beguiled as they are by his
repeated invocations of liberty.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yet a
careful reading of Hayek’s argument reveals that liberty for him is neither the
highest good nor an intrinsic good. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It
is a contingent and instrumental good (a consequence of our ignorance and the
condition of our progress), the purpose of which is to make possible the
emergence of a heroic legislator of value.<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kang/Documents/Review%20of%20The%20Reactionary%20Mind%20(version%203).docx#_ftn22" name="_ftnref22" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn22;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">[22]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Hayek does indeed distinguish between
the mass and the elite.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is also fair,
within limits that Robin does not always observe, to claim that “[d]eep inside
Hayek’s understanding of freedom, then, is the notion that the freedom of some
is worth more than the freedom of others” (159).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Finally, it is true that “Hayek’s argument
for freedom rests less on what we know or want to know than on what we don’t
know, less on what we are morally entitled to as individuals than on the
beneficial consequences of individual freedom to society as a whole”
(159).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yet, despite all that Robin gets
right or mostly right about Hayek, his argument remains fundamentally flawed.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Robin’s failures are twofold: first,
his account of the value of liberty for Hayek is misleading, and, second, he
misunderstands the role of the avant-garde.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The first failure results from not giving Hayek’s views on necessity and
contingency their due.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Whereas Robin
speaks of the “happenstance of our ignorance” (159), Hayek speaks of the
“fundamental fact of man’s unavoidable ignorance,” “the inevitable ignorance of
all of us,” and our “necessary ignorance.”<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kang/Documents/Review%20of%20The%20Reactionary%20Mind%20(version%203).docx#_ftn23" name="_ftnref23" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn23;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">[23]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Our ignorance is not a “happenstance” for
Hayek any more than our mortality is.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because
our ignorance is irremediable, the value of liberty is not contingent upon “the
condition of our progress;” we will never progress to a condition where liberty
is dispensable.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Indeed, much more than
liberty itself is at stake, for “liberty is not merely one particular value but
… the source and condition of most moral values.”<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kang/Documents/Review%20of%20The%20Reactionary%20Mind%20(version%203).docx#_ftn24" name="_ftnref24" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn24;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">[24]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Liberty may not be the “highest” good (presumably
happiness or satisfaction is<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kang/Documents/Review%20of%20The%20Reactionary%20Mind%20(version%203).docx#_ftn25" name="_ftnref25" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn25;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">[25]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>) but it is the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">sine qua non</i> for most moral goods; it
may be an instrumental good, but for Hayek all moral values “are instrumental
in the sense that they assist mainly in the achievement of other human values.”<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kang/Documents/Review%20of%20The%20Reactionary%20Mind%20(version%203).docx#_ftn26" name="_ftnref26" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn26;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">[26]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Liberty is valuable to the extent it enables
us to achieve “our ends and welfare;” “the case for individual liberty rests
chiefly” upon how well it allows us to achieve those ends.<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kang/Documents/Review%20of%20The%20Reactionary%20Mind%20(version%203).docx#_ftn27" name="_ftnref27" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn27;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">[27]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">For Hayek, it is crucial that there
be a class of the privileged few with large fortunes so that they can explore
and promote new and better ways for us to achieve our ends, as well as innovate
new ends.<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kang/Documents/Review%20of%20The%20Reactionary%20Mind%20(version%203).docx#_ftn28" name="_ftnref28" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn28;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">[28]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Robin sees that clearly.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But he goes too far in saying that the
purpose of liberty is to “to make possible the emergence of a heroic legislator
of value.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That is like saying that the
purpose of courage is so that we can produce generals.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Furthermore, the avant-garde are not “heroic
legislators of value.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I realize this is
a rhetorical turn of phrase, but it is a telling one.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It pushes Robin’s worldview of a powerful
group dominating and commanding a powerless group. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The model of legislation does not give the
masses a choice; they are the passive recipients of the law, to which they
simply owe obedience.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Regardless of whether that view is
accurate or not, it is not Hayek’s view.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>For Hayek, the avant-garde are pioneers of leisure and new ways of life.<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kang/Documents/Review%20of%20The%20Reactionary%20Mind%20(version%203).docx#_ftn29" name="_ftnref29" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn29;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">[29]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They function more like scouts than like
legislators; we are free not to follow where they go, without threat of
punishment.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Indeed, he explicitly says a
member of the avant-garde “must not arrogate to himself the position of a
‘leader’ who determines what people ought to think.”<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kang/Documents/Review%20of%20The%20Reactionary%20Mind%20(version%203).docx#_ftn30" name="_ftnref30" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn30;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">[30]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The avant-garde are what Malcom Gladwell and
others call “innovators” or “early adopters.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Gladwell shows that all kinds of innovations fail because they don’t
capture the imagination of a critical mass of the public.<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kang/Documents/Review%20of%20The%20Reactionary%20Mind%20(version%203).docx#_ftn31" name="_ftnref31" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn31;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">[31]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Far from <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">legislating</i>
to the masses, the avant-garde <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">caters</i>
to the masses by translating new ideas into something that captures the popular
imagination.</span></span></div>
<h2 style="line-height: normal;">
<u><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Confronting
Conservatism</span></span></u></h2>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">While Robin did not ultimately
persuade me of his thesis, he did persuade me that the image of conservatism
popularly expounded and defended by conservatives is a distortion.</span><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Conservatives would like to ignore White House
chief of staff H.R. Haldeman noting that Nixon “emphasized that you have to face
the fact that the whole problem is really the blacks. </span><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">The key is to devise a system that recognized
this while not appearing to” (48, internal quotation marks omitted).</span><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">They want to downplay Republican strategist Lee
Atwater saying, “By 1968 you can’t say ‘nigger’—that hurts you. </span><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Backfires.</span><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">
</span><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">So you say stuff like forced busing, states’ rights and all that stuff….
all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a
by-product of them is blacks get hurt worse than whites” (48, internal quotation
marks omitted).</span><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Conservatives, like
everyone else, suffer from self-delusion or self-ignorance. </span><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">It is good and right that they be forced to
confront their own hypocrisy or willful ignorance. </span><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Unfortunately, Robin’s image of conservatism merely
mirrors the self-distortion by conservatives.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Right now, the Left is ascendant. Many conservatives see in this current moment the
fall of the Republic. They may well be correct. But the fall of the Republic may be a
reckoning long in coming, induced by the Right.
It may be true, in a sense quite other than Haldeman’s or Nixon’s, that “the
whole problem is really the blacks.”</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;">
<br /></div>
<div style="mso-element: footnote-list;">
<!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><br clear="all" />
<hr align="left" size="1" width="33%" />
<!--[endif]-->
<br />
<div id="ftn1" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kang/Documents/Review%20of%20The%20Reactionary%20Mind%20(version%203).docx#_ftnref1" name="_ftn1" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn1;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%;">[1]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>
After I finished reading <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Reactionary
Mind</i> two years ago, I emailed Professor Robin, asking him for a list of
what he considered the best reviews of his book, along with any responses he
made.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He generously took the time to
respond to my query.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For that, I am
thankful.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I hope he does not think I
repay him poorly with this review.<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn2" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kang/Documents/Review%20of%20The%20Reactionary%20Mind%20(version%203).docx#_ftnref2" name="_ftn2" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn2;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%;">[2]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> In
the summer of 2016, while arguing against people labeling Trump a fascist, I
said that even if Trump wants to further expand executive overreach in
unconstitutional and undesirable ways, that does not make him a fascist.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At that point he had made no statement (and
to this point, he has taken no steps) to suspend or abrogate the forms of
democratic republican governance.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He did
not threaten to disband Congress.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He did
not threaten to fundamentally alter the Supreme Court.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The question, now as then, is whether one
thinks, when faced with legislative or other opposition to his policies, Trump
will undertake to destroy those institutional loci of resistance.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the final leg of his current term, it is
clear that he has no stomach for that whatsoever, even with COVID-19 providing
him the perfect cover to do so.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In <a href="https://www.jacobinmag.com/2020/04/coronavirus-democracy-trump-civil-liberties" target="_blank">Alex Gourevitch’s</a> words, Trump “relates to power as a way of acquiring and
concentrating attention on him, not as a means of imposing his will on the
world and taking responsibility for that imposition.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Trump is vain, not power hungry—or, rather,
he seeks power only to satisfy his vanity.<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn3" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kang/Documents/Review%20of%20The%20Reactionary%20Mind%20(version%203).docx#_ftnref3" name="_ftn3" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn3;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%;">[3]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> <span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Conservatism
“is about power besieged and power protected.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>It is an activist doctrine for an activist time” (33).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is the “deliberate, conscious effort to
preserve [better: rejuvenate] or recall ‘those forms of experience which can no
longer be had in an authentic way’” (23, internal quotation from Karl
Mannheim).</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn4" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kang/Documents/Review%20of%20The%20Reactionary%20Mind%20(version%203).docx#_ftnref4" name="_ftn4" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn4;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%;">[4]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Reactionary Mind</i> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">(2<sup>nd</sup> ed.)</i>, p.40.<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn5" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kang/Documents/Review%20of%20The%20Reactionary%20Mind%20(version%203).docx#_ftnref5" name="_ftn5" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn5;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%;">[5]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>
“Unlike the feudal past, where power was presumed and privilege inherited, the
conservative future envisions a world where power is demonstrated and privilege
earned” (34).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“To the conservative,
power in repose is power in decline” (33-34).<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn6" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kang/Documents/Review%20of%20The%20Reactionary%20Mind%20(version%203).docx#_ftnref6" name="_ftn6" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn6;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%;">[6]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> As
Robin notes, Trump is not the first to have his conservative credentials
questioned.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Over the last two decades,
various writers and journalists have claimed that conservatism went into
decline when Trump, or Palin, or Bush, or Reagan, or Goldwater, or Buckley, or
someone took it off the rails” (40).<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn7" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kang/Documents/Review%20of%20The%20Reactionary%20Mind%20(version%203).docx#_ftnref7" name="_ftn7" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn7;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%;">[7]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>
Both Robin and I recognize that there are people who take the position that
conservatism is not so much a doctrine as an attitude.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That distinction can be overlooked for my
current purposes.<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn8" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kang/Documents/Review%20of%20The%20Reactionary%20Mind%20(version%203).docx#_ftnref8" name="_ftn8" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn8;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%;">[8]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>
Earlier, when discussing Left politics or what he calls “the politics of
emancipation” (while I find Robin’s conception of “the politics of
emancipation” problematic and self-serving, I think contrasting the politics of
emancipation against the politics of hierarchy can be a useful heuristic;
wherever there have been people trying to dismantle hierarchy and privilege,
they have been opposed by the defenders of hierarchy and privilege), he
similarly raised the issue of “[w]hether the politics conforms to the
postulate” (9).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>See also pages 60 (where
he says that he is primarily interested in conservatism as a theoretical
tradition rather than as a political practice) and 65 (“Whatever the
relationship between theory and practice in the conservative tradition …”).<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn9" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kang/Documents/Review%20of%20The%20Reactionary%20Mind%20(version%203).docx#_ftnref9" name="_ftn9" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn9;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%;">[9]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>
This is true even of those libertarians who are deeply elitist, such as Ludwig
von Mises, who did <a href="https://mises.org/library/ludwig-von-misess-letter-rand-atlas-shrugged" target="_blank">baldly distinguish between superior and inferior men</a>.<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn10" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kang/Documents/Review%20of%20The%20Reactionary%20Mind%20(version%203).docx#_ftnref10" name="_ftn10" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn10;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%;">[10]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>
Robin’s footnote begins thus: “‘The ultimate operative unit in our society is
the family, not the individual.’<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Milton
Friedman, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Capitalism and Freedom</i>
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962, 1982, 2002), 32 [should be 33];
also see 13.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>‘It would be a mistake of
major proportions to assume that legal rules are a dominant force in shaping
individual character; family, school, and church are much more likely to be
powerful influences.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The people who run
these institutions will use their influence to advance whatever conception of
the good they hold, no matter what the state of the law.’<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Richard A. Epstein, ‘Libertarianism and
Character,’ in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Varieties of Conservatism
in America</i>, ed. Peter Berkowitz (Stanford, Calif.: Hoover Institution
Press, 2004), 76.”<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn11" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kang/Documents/Review%20of%20The%20Reactionary%20Mind%20(version%203).docx#_ftnref11" name="_ftn11" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn11;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%;">[11]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>
Oakeshott is treated rather unfairly by Robin.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Robin says, “Oakeshott argued that conservatism ‘is not a creed or a
doctrine, but a disposition’” (44).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But
Oakeshott makes no such argument.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In
fact, Oakeshott begins his essay on conservatism by saying that he disagrees
with those people who believe that it is either impossible or unpromising to
derive explanatory general principles from conservative conduct.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He says merely that such an analysis “is not
the enterprise I propose to engage in here.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>My theme is not a creed or a doctrine, but a disposition…. And my design
here is to construe this disposition as it appears in contemporary character,
rather than to transpose it into the idiom of general principles.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Essentially, Oakeshott says, “I’m only going
to be considering conservatism as a disposition,” and then Robin comes along
and says, “Oakeshott argues that conservatism is only a disposition!”<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn12" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kang/Documents/Review%20of%20The%20Reactionary%20Mind%20(version%203).docx#_ftnref12" name="_ftn12" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn12;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%;">[12]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>
See Ludwig Wittgenstein, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Philosophical
Investigations</i>, paragraphs 65-66.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Wittgenstein uses the example of games, and concludes that there is
nothing common to them all, but instead “similarities, relationships, and a
whole series of them at that.”<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn13" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kang/Documents/Review%20of%20The%20Reactionary%20Mind%20(version%203).docx#_ftnref13" name="_ftn13" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn13;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%;">[13]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>
Robin would no doubt dispute this.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>See
his reference to Hayek’s essay on p. 93.<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn14" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kang/Documents/Review%20of%20The%20Reactionary%20Mind%20(version%203).docx#_ftnref14" name="_ftn14" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn14;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%;">[14]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Reactionary Mind</i> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">(2<sup>nd</sup> ed.)</i>, p.8, footnotes
omitted.<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn15" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kang/Documents/Review%20of%20The%20Reactionary%20Mind%20(version%203).docx#_ftnref15" name="_ftn15" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn15;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%;">[15]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>
Edmund Burke, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Reflections on the
Revolution in France</i> (Stanford: Stanford University Press), p.205.<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn16" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kang/Documents/Review%20of%20The%20Reactionary%20Mind%20(version%203).docx#_ftnref16" name="_ftn16" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn16;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%;">[16]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Id</i>. at 205-06 (italicized text is the
text quoted by Robin).<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn17" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kang/Documents/Review%20of%20The%20Reactionary%20Mind%20(version%203).docx#_ftnref17" name="_ftn17" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn17;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%;">[17]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Id</i>. at 206.<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn18" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kang/Documents/Review%20of%20The%20Reactionary%20Mind%20(version%203).docx#_ftnref18" name="_ftn18" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn18;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%;">[18]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Reactionary Mind</i> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">(2<sup>nd</sup> ed.)</i>, p.8, footnotes
omitted.<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn19" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kang/Documents/Review%20of%20The%20Reactionary%20Mind%20(version%203).docx#_ftnref19" name="_ftn19" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn19;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%;">[19]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>
Edmund Burke, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Reflections on the
Revolution in France</i> (Stanford: Stanford University Press), p.218.<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn20" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kang/Documents/Review%20of%20The%20Reactionary%20Mind%20(version%203).docx#_ftnref20" name="_ftn20" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn20;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%;">[20]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> A
man who enters civil society “abdicates all right to be his own governor.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Id</i>.
<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn21" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kang/Documents/Review%20of%20The%20Reactionary%20Mind%20(version%203).docx#_ftnref21" name="_ftn21" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn21;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%;">[21]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>
Robin similarly misreads and distorts Burke’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">A Philosophical Enquiry into the Sublime and Beautiful</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Since that misreading is not as damaging to
the argument it is used to support, I will gloss over it in this footnote.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I quote from Robin’s exposition on pp.61-62
in the following paragraph, with my comments interspersed in square brackets:<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpFirst" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: .5in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">The
Sublime and the Beautiful</span></i><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"> begins on a high note, with a
discussion of curiosity, which Burke identifies as “the first and simplest
emotion.” … Curiosity “exhausts” itself.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>[Burke says that it “soon exhausts the variety which is commonly to be
met with in nature” (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The</i> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sublime and Beautiful</i> [hereafter SB], p.
79); he does not even hint that curiosity would exhaust the variety of
artificial contrivances.]<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Enthusiasm and
engagement give way to “loathing and weariness.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>[Burke says they <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">would</i> give way to loathing and weariness if we were not affected by
other passions (SB 79).]<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Burke moves on
to pleasure and pain … Any kind of pleasure “quickly satisfies; and when it is
over, we relapse into indifference.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>[Robin omits the qualification, “or rather we fall into a soft
tranquility, which is tinged with the agreeable colour of the former sensation”
(SB 82).]<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Quieter enjoyments, less
intense than pleasure, are equally soporific.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>They generate complacency; we “give ourselves over to indolence and
inaction.” [Burke says almost the opposite: nature has formed us in such manner
that we do not take any real pleasure in life or health, “lest satisfied with
that, we should give ourselves over to indolence and inaction” (SB 88).]<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Burke turns to imitation as yet another force
of outward propulsion…. But imitation contains its own narcotic.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Imitate others too much and we cease to
better ourselves.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>[Imitation is one of
three “social” passions described by Burke; Robin omits sympathy and ambition;
the latter spurs us beyond merely imitating others.] … Curiosity leads to
weariness, pleasure to indifference, enjoyment to torpor, and imitation to
stagnation…. Suicide, it seems, is the inevitable fate awaiting anyone who
takes pleasure in the world as it is.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>[Except the pleasures of society are such that “death itself is scarcely
an idea of more terror” than a life without such pleasures (SB 90).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Also, “whilst we are creatures vehemently
desirous of novelty, we are as strongly attached to habit and custom” (SB
138).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is true that we are much more
affected by pain at the loss of these things than joy at their possession.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>However, this effect cuts both ways:
familiarity deadens not only pleasure but also pain (SB 138-39).]<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpLast" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Robin is
especially enthralled by Burke’s description of the sublime as a way to avoid
being wearied of life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For reasons known
only to himself, he chooses not to explore the many other avenues Burke
identifies to avoid this weariness.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Robin rightly observes, “it is clear from <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Sublime and the Beautiful</i> that if the self is to survive and
flourish it must be aroused by an experience more vital and bracing than
pleasure or enjoyment” (65).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He spends
two pages describing how the sublime, according to Burke, provides that more
rousing experience.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At the end of that
discussion, he abruptly says, “The question for us, which Burke neither poses
nor answers, is: What kind of political form entails this simultaneity of—or
oscillation between—self-aggrandizement and self-annihilation” (67)?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Why exactly is this a question that needs to
be raised?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Why would anyone think to
choose a form of government based upon the existential experiences of the self?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I might go so far as to suggest that there is
a lesson for Robin to contemplate in Burke’s not posing that question.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At a minimum he owes his reader an
explanation for why he singles out the experience of the sublime as a
touchstone somehow for conservative politics.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn22" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kang/Documents/Review%20of%20The%20Reactionary%20Mind%20(version%203).docx#_ftnref22" name="_ftn22" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn22;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%;">[22]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Reactionary Mind</i> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">(2<sup>nd</sup> ed.)</i>, p.158.<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn23" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kang/Documents/Review%20of%20The%20Reactionary%20Mind%20(version%203).docx#_ftnref23" name="_ftn23" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn23;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%;">[23]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>
Friedrich A. Hayek, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Constitution of
Liberty</i> (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1960), pp.22, 29.<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn24" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kang/Documents/Review%20of%20The%20Reactionary%20Mind%20(version%203).docx#_ftnref24" name="_ftn24" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn24;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%;">[24]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> Id</i>. at 6.<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn25" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kang/Documents/Review%20of%20The%20Reactionary%20Mind%20(version%203).docx#_ftnref25" name="_ftn25" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn25;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%;">[25]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>
The distinction between happiness and satisfaction is drawn from Hegel.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>According to him, “world-historical
individuals” set themselves an arduous task or end, which they accomplish “only
by dint of arduous labors.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They knew how
to obtain satisfaction and to accomplish their end … Thus it was not happiness
that they chose, but exertion, conflict, and labor in the service of their
end.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>G.W.F. Hegel, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Lectures on the Philosophy of World History: Introduction</i>
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), p.85.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Nietzsche indicates the same difference when
he has Zarathustra say, “What does happiness matter!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I have long ceased striving after happiness:
I am striving after my work.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Thus Spoke Zarathustra</i>, Part IV, chapter
1.<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn26" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kang/Documents/Review%20of%20The%20Reactionary%20Mind%20(version%203).docx#_ftnref26" name="_ftn26" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn26;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%;">[26]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i>Friedrich A. Hayek, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Constitution of Liberty</i> (Chicago:
The University of Chicago Press, 1960), p.67; see also p.152.<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn27" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kang/Documents/Review%20of%20The%20Reactionary%20Mind%20(version%203).docx#_ftnref27" name="_ftn27" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn27;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%;">[27]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Id</i>. at 29.<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn28" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kang/Documents/Review%20of%20The%20Reactionary%20Mind%20(version%203).docx#_ftnref28" name="_ftn28" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn28;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%;">[28]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Id</i>. at 125-26, 35.<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn29" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kang/Documents/Review%20of%20The%20Reactionary%20Mind%20(version%203).docx#_ftnref29" name="_ftn29" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn29;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%;">[29]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Id</i>. at 129.<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn30" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kang/Documents/Review%20of%20The%20Reactionary%20Mind%20(version%203).docx#_ftnref30" name="_ftn30" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn30;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%;">[30]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Id</i>. at 114.<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn31" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/Kang/Documents/Review%20of%20The%20Reactionary%20Mind%20(version%203).docx#_ftnref31" name="_ftn31" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn31;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%;">[31]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>
Malcom Gladwell, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Blink</i>, ch.6.<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
</div>
<br />SocraticFuryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11556202787301724963noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7021164877662225463.post-17462866751474053142013-01-20T13:52:00.000-06:002013-01-20T13:54:30.190-06:00From "Mandate" to "A Country Divided"A post apropos of Inauguration Day.<br />
<br />
Last month, Hendrik Hertzberg<span style="color: yellow;"> </span><a href="http://www.newyorker.com/talk/comment/2012/12/03/121203taco_talk_hertzberg" target="_blank"><span style="color: yellow;">pointed out</span> </a>that after the 2004 election, the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB109953513161964526.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: yellow;">congratulated George W. Bush </span></a>for "what by any measure is a decisive mandate for a second term." This past election, the Journal's board <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204349404578102971575770036.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: yellow;">described Obama</span></a> as "eking out a second term." In 2004, the Journal was quick to say, "Just because an election is close doesn't mean it isn't decisive." In 2012, the Journal intoned gravely about a country "divided" and "polarized." Apparently, when your side wins narrowly, the results are a "decisive" vindication of how right you are, but when the other side wins narrowly (but still by more than you did the last time around), it still doesn't mean you're wrong. I especially liked how the Journal commented on how Obama was able to win re-election "even as he lost independents and won only 40% of the overall white vote." Ah, now I understand why the most recent election results were not "decisive": it's because the white folks haven't bought in! Say what you want about the Journal, but it knows its constituency.<br />
<br />
Hendrik did not mention the following: in 2004, the Journal noted:<br />
<br />
***Referendums opposing gay marriage went 11 for 11 on Tuesday, winning even in
Oregon where the 57% to 43% landslide was the smallest majority among the 11.
This is not a message of intolerance toward gays; it is a rebuke to those
liberals who insist that courts impose their values on venerable American
institutions.***<br />
<br />
In 2012, the news that voters (not courts) in Maine, Maryland, and Washington approved same-sex marriage prompted the Journal to respond with -- complete silence. I just think that's funny.SocraticFuryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11556202787301724963noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7021164877662225463.post-82658068909059510752013-01-02T16:41:00.001-06:002013-01-02T16:41:30.833-06:00Don't Mess With Texas: Football and FaithI wrote this piece a while ago but didn't post it b/c it's rather incomplete. I'm posting it now despite its incompleteness as I tidy up in the new year:<br />
<br />
<br />
It being football season, I pretty much am listening to sports radio all the time these days. Earlier this week, the talk show hosts mentioned <a href="http://www.khou.com/news/High-school-students-embroiled-in-a-controversy-over-the-separation-of-church-and-state-170429846.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: yellow;">a dust-up at Kountze ISD</span></a>, where the superintendent forbade the cheerleaders from displaying Biblically, and specifically Christian-inspired messages, on paper banners through which the football team ran through before each game. One cheerleader said, "We're fighting for God's word. We're not fighting for our rights or anything, we're fighting for God." I'm pretty sure that even as a prepubescent, I would have found that distinction less than fully compelling. But let's not pick on cheerleaders.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
One parent said in a different segment, "I don't see a problem with it, I don't understand. If you don't like it, don't look." This is an interesting comment because it could reflect at least two attitudes that shade into one another but I think deserve to be differentiated. The comment might reflect the attitude, "This happens to be something I agree with so I don't care that you disagree with it," or the attitude of indifference. That attitude can normally be challenged with the norm of fairness or reciprocity (as survey research makes abundantly clear). <br />
<br />
But it can also mean, "I don't see the harm." We can call this the attitude of "no harm, no foul" or "live and let live." I am sympathetic to this attitude. In case my blogger profile doesn't make it apparent enough, I am no Christian. But it doesn't bother me when people open a ceremony or event with a prayer. I once attended a hearing in a rural county in Texas where the judge recited a prayer before conducting the business of the court. I was amused rather than offended. Even in my high school days, when I was a virulent atheist, I wouldn't have cared about some Christian banners being paraded around. Like the Kountze parent, I also find it hard to understand why anyone, including athesists, would get all worked up over a prayer. Where's the harm?<br />
<br />
But though I am sympathetic to that attitude, it is not one I share. I just said that I don't really get the harm in letting the religious express their convictions. However, that's because religion is not important to me. Therefore, the benefits and harms that other people experience from expressing or not expressing their religious beliefs, or being subjected to the expression of other people's religious beliefs, are not entirely transparent to me. I acknowledge that defect in my understanding and hence take a tolerant attitude. But precisely for the people for whom such expression is important, one would think that they would understand why believers of a different stripe (and atheists are believers in this sense) might take offense and rebel against said expression. The same reasons that make religious expression highly cherished to the one group make it anathema to the other group.<br />
</div>
<div>
I think what the parent is trying to express is actually more directly articulated by the football player who said, "The one parent that did complain, it's just one--you know, if you don't like it don't come to our games." The young man's "if you don't like it don't come" langauge captures the parent's "If you don't like it, don't look" language. However, willy or nilly, the student ties that sentiment to something else: the principle of majority rule. Perhaps being a football player, being part of a greater whole, a collective whose good may not completely coincide with his own, has attuned him to this aspect. Now we begin to approach the constitutional issue: the issue of the conflict between the free exercise clause and the anti-Establishment Clause.</div>
<div>
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Clearly there are limits on free exercise. The majority cannot go so far as to establish an official state religion. The question is how far the majority <em>can</em> go, and when expression in a public sphere turns into state endorsement or establishment. The cheerleaders' lawyers craft the controversy as a free exercise issue, naturally. However, the cheerleaders' lawyers have to admit that the school, being public, is an extension of the State. They therefore have to admit that there are at least Establishment concerns. They seem to want to ignore that aspect of the case, which, I think, is very poor legal strategy, even if it is a winning political strategy. Justice Kennedy, writing for the majority in <em>Lee v. Weisman</em>, 505 U.S. 577 (1992), declared, "What to most believers may seem nothing more than a reasonable request that the nonbeliever respect their religious practices, in a school context may appear to the nonbeliever or dissenter to be an attempt to employ the machinery of the State to enforce a religious orthodoxy."</div>
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Now perhaps you are one of my Texas neighbors, in which case you are likely to think, "Well, but that's Kennedy, and his conservative credentials are highly suspect." Let us turn to someone whose conservative credentials are well-nigh unimpeachable, then. Here now Scalia, writing in dissent in the aforementioned case: "I ... concede that our constitutional tradition, from the Declaration of Independence and the first inaugural address of Washington, quoted earlier, down to the present day, has ... ruled out of order government-sponsored endorsement of religion ... where the endorsement is sectarian." Even Scalia would have to admit that there is an <em>issue</em> regarding Establishment in Kountze, even if in his judgment there is ultimately no state endorsement. What amazes me is how blithely my neighbors in Kountze ignore or brush aside the Establishment concerns. And this from people most eager to avow their dedication to the Constitution. Perhaps my Kountze neighbors should, along with boning up on the Constitution, call to mind those Biblical passages that address hypocrisy. It is worth remembering that the Biblical condemnation of hypocrisy is one flip side to its high praise of humility, and that humility tends to support Christian charity and the brotherhood of men in Christ. Something for my Christian neighbors to keep in mind, if they wish, as they undertake to spread the Word of God.</div>
SocraticFuryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11556202787301724963noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7021164877662225463.post-53557478688118458352012-09-19T18:48:00.003-05:002012-09-19T18:54:16.310-05:00The Thing about SurveysEveryone knows that there are lies, damned lies, and then there are statistics. Nowhere is this more obvious than when interpreting survey results.<br />
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In a March essay on America's political polarization in <em>The New Republic</em>, <a href="http://www.tnr.com/article/the-vital-center/103394/polarization-norm-ornstein-republicans-democrats#" target="_blank"><span style="color: yellow;">Bill Galston noted</span></a>:<br />
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above and beyond their ideological disagreements, conservatives and liberals have come to understand the practice of politics differently. In a survey taken right after the Republican sweep in the 2010 midterm elections, 47 percent of American said that it was more important to compromise in order to get things done, versus 27 percent who thought it was more important for leaders to stick to their beliefs even if little got done. Liberal Democrats weighed in on the side of compromise, 58 to 16, moderate Democrats by 64 to 17. But conservative Republicans (the overwhelming majority of their party) favored sticking to their beliefs by 45 to 26. Ten months later, after the debt ceiling fiasco, an outright majority of adults favored compromise, including 62 percent of Democrats and 63 percent of liberals. But pluralities of Republicans and conservatives continued to favor leaders who stuck to their beliefs.</blockquote>
Republicans disdain compromise more than Democrats. This is not surprising to anyone who has any familiarity with American politics. There is, for example, no corresponding term for RINO on the left. Republicans are much more concerned with ideological purity than Democrats. Republicans tend to prize clarity and certainty more than Democrats.<br />
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But while a full 20% more Americans thought it was more important to compromise to get things done (a testament to Americans' once vaunted pragmatism), if you <a href="http://www.gallup.com/poll/144359/democrats-republicans-differ-views-compromise.aspx" target="_blank"><span style="color: yellow;">actually go to the USA Today/Gallup Poll survey</span></a>, you find that 49% of these same respondents wanted Congress to have more influence over the direction of the country, while 41% wanted President Obama to have more influence over the direction of the country. Now, the sampling error is +/-4%, which means this is almost a statistical dead heat, but that's not the point. The point is that while Americans want our politicians to compromise, we also want to give more influence to the party that we ourselves perceive to be less inclined to compromise! Galston's omission of this detail in his description of the survey results is misleading. I know that politicans pick and choose the facts they use to score political points, but the aims of scholars should be different, even when they put on the pundit's hat.<br />
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Now the survey results do not necesarily mean that Americans don't know what they want, or want mutually incompatible things. They could be the result of careful consideration of competing political values such as the value of the spirit of compromise as a political virtue against the prerogatives of institutional authority and separation of powers concerns. I leave it to you to decide which is more likely.SocraticFuryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11556202787301724963noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7021164877662225463.post-44524519998491294932012-09-17T19:25:00.000-05:002012-09-17T19:25:13.160-05:00"The half-life of love is forever."Junot Diaz is coming to Houston next week to read from his <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1594487367/ref=s9_simh_gw_p14_d2_i1?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=center-3&pf_rd_r=0W8XDPSAV4JKTJ6N02YR&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=470938811&pf_rd_i=507846"><span style="color: yellow;">latest collection of short stories</span></a>. Several weeks ago, his short story "The Cheater's Guide to Love" was published in <em>The New Yorker</em>, with the line, "The half-life of love is forever." In an <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2012/07/this-week-in-fiction-junot-diaz-1.html"><span style="color: yellow;">interview</span></a>, Diaz said that he wanted to write a story about "those heartbreaks that never seem to leave us—that stay in us like radiation—those heartbreaks where getting over it becomes an epic battle with ourselves." Of course, there are different ways of battling oneself. One could say that the very struggle to overcome heartbreak is a battle with oneself. But more interesting are those situations when we are ourselves are in some way the cause of our own heartbreak.<br />
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There is a long tradition in ethics which holds that men's lives are directed towards the good. What Diaz raises is the possibility that a life could become so broken that such direction becomes impossible, and that this brokenness could result from some relatively minor and trivial thing. Or--let me amend myself--that we do not realize the true importance and weight of things when we do them. And Diaz ties this lack of self-knowledge to our habitual inability or unwillingness to fully recognize another in his/her otherness (in Kant's words, to interact with another as an end in himself rather than as a means), i.e., an ethical deficiency. Diaz speaks of a "typical masculine deficiency:"<span style="color: yellow;"> </span><a href="http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=160252399"><span style="color: yellow;">an inability to see women as fully human</span></a>, but I wonder how much we ever truly experience or treat any other person as fully an end in themselves. Only, it seems, when we love another selflessly and without self-regard, with "the love that overflows." But that, of course, is not the nature of erotic love. At least not at first blush.<br />
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Diaz quotes from Derek Walcott: "Break a vase, and the love that reassembles the fragments is stronger than that love which took its symmetry for granted when it was whole." Hegel taught that man is a perpetual falling-apart-and-coming-back-together-again; man is constantly broken and shattered and must always heal himself anew. Tagore taught that wisdom begins, not indeed in fear, but in abiding sorrow. All of these claims give a central place to personal suffering in the formation of a fully human life. Suffering reminds us of our frailties and vulnerabilities, which we are otherwise too apt to forget. It is a lesson in humility and gratitude.<br />
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We have none of us learned well enough the experiences of others, especially and above all their experiences of us.<br />
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SocraticFuryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11556202787301724963noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7021164877662225463.post-34417180284538996752012-04-03T23:25:00.000-05:002012-04-03T23:25:31.498-05:00Drake, Aristotle, Two French Films, and The Question of Nihilism"Looking for the right way to do the wrong things" --Drake, "Lord Knows"<br />
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"[V]irtue aims at the median. I am referring to moral virtue ... We can experience fear, confidence, desire, anger, pity, and generally any kind of pleasure and pain either too much or too little, and in either case not properly. But to experience all this at the right time, toward the right objects, toward the right people, for the right reason, and in the right manner--that is the median and the best course, the course that is a mark of virtue.<br />
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Not every action nor every emotion admits of a mean. There are some actions and emotions whose very names connote baseness, e.g., spite, shamelessness, envy; and among actions, adultery, theft, and murder.... In cases of this sort, let us say adultery, rightness and wrongness do not depend on committing it with the right woman at the right time and in the right manner, but the mere fact of committing such action at all is to do wrong." --Aristotle, <em>N. Ethics</em>, II.6<br />
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That Aristotle, such a comedian! With his understated style and dry wit, one might almost mistake him for an Englishman.<br />
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I recently watched two French films, L'Auberge Espagnole <span class="title">and Les Poupées Russes. They form a sort of coming-of-age tale, though in this case the coming of age does not end with adolescence but continues into the protagonist's late 20s/early 30s. (It has been said that we live in an age of protracted adolescence. I would say that that is a subject for another time, but there is a sense in which that is the recurring subject in all my messages, antedating this blog). What struck me was the commonness of cheating and affairs in the movies. In my mind, this all goes back to Romanticism and hence to Rousseau. This is not a novel idea; Allan Bloom said as much (with the caveat that the roots really go back to Hobbes and therewith to Machiavelli). It is Rousseau who provides the most forceful argument that, not our intellectual life, but our emotional life, is what makes us essentially human and ourselves, for ideas can be shared in common by everyone, whereas our emotions are all our own. From there it is a small step to the belief that "The sole duty of a man is to follow the inclinations of the heart in everything." That is a maxim that Rousseau himself vehemently opposed, but what Strauss said about Nietzsche and Nazism can be applied to Rousseau and Romanticism: the subtleties of his distinctions are easily lost in the general spirit and tenor of his argument.</span><br />
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I said that the movies follow the form of a <em>Bildungsroman</em>. The defining characteristic of adolescence is that it is a transitional period. I had almost said that adolescence is by definition a time of confusion, of groping one's way toward adulthood. But of course that is not true. Transitions can be orderly and be made with a clear view of one's goal and aspirations. But we residents of modernity have lost that orderliness and clarity, as everyone knows by now. I wonder to what extent this is the result of the clamor of philosophical factions--and, more specifically, of the modern philosophical factions. This question needs to be posed carefully. It may be, as Strauss suggests, that there is something in the substance of modern philosophical doctrines themselves that leads toward nihilism. But another possibility is that philosophical disagreement, even between "classical" doctrines, would still be nihilistic by the mere fact that they occur in the setting of modern times. That is, perhaps the modern world is so constituted that the disagreements between a Plato and a Aristotle without the subsequent history would be as intractable and disorienting today as our disagreements between Heideggerians and Platonists. This is almost tantamount to asking whether modernity is intrinsically nihilistic. The question is further muddled in that one cannot easily separate out the modern world from modern philosophy.<br />
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I have gone far afield; I have gone from two French movies to Romanticism to nihilism to the question of philosophical culpability. But in a sense, I have not gone very far afield at all; I am like the Monkey King in the Buddha's palm: it only appears that I have traveled to the end of the universe, when in fact I never left the Buddha's palm. After all, the juxtaposition of Drake and Aristotle served to implicate all that I've said, in a compressed and allusive manner to be sure. No? Not buying it? Well, let me say this. One might say that Drake, after all, is not nihilistic, because he still apparently believes in the possibility of distinguishing right from wrong, whereas a genuine nihilist would deny the possibility of making any such disticntions in any nonarbitray way. But if nihilism is the situation in which "everything is permitted," and the only issue Drake has is with the how and not with the whether--that is, if morality becomes a nonissue and all that is left is mere prudence, then what is that if not nihilism? I am reminded of what my friend Joe likes to say: one can say anything with words. But that does not mean that one is using words appropriately. I am suggesting that someone who says something like, "Yeah I know it's wrong but I don't care," does not know what she is saying. I am suggesting that you cannot be indifferent to things that you believe to be genuinely wrong. These statements, like almost all general statements of the sort, need to be qualified. Let me leave it at saying that arguments can be made in and through action as well as through speech.<br />
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Oh, but wait, Joe, I just remembered: Socrates said that it is in the nature of things that speech attains to more of the truth than deeds. In this case, I could translate that in a slightly provocative way by asking: what is the truth of nihilism?SocraticFuryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11556202787301724963noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7021164877662225463.post-21901349535635482192011-09-07T00:58:00.000-05:002011-09-07T00:58:29.036-05:00Trading UpSeveral months ago, Simon Rich wrote a humor piece for <em>The New Yorker</em> in which he imagined that <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/humor/2011/05/30/110530sh_shouts_rich"><span style="color: yellow;">boyfriends are traded like ball players</span></a>. The male protagonist of the story is feeling pretty bummed about being traded to a new owner by his ex-grirlfriend when he arrives at his new owner's/girlfriend's apartment. But when his new owner tells him that she engineered the deal because she thought he'd be a "good deal," his spirits lift. Rich ends the piece thusly: "He wrapped his arms around her, laughing with relief. There was nothing like joining a new team; there was nothing like Opening Day." Which prompted me to write in the margin: "the excitement of the new, of possibility; of being desired." And every time I think about our need or desire for another person's desire, I think of Kojeve. And that invariably leads me to revisiting old haunts and setting out on new vistas.<br />
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Begin with our desire to be desired. What is it that we wish to be desired for? Some people have said, We wish to be desired for ourselves, and not for our specific attributes. I wonder if that's true. What does it mean to be desired for ourselves? After all, we are not just an abstraction. We exist (punning on the Heideggerian and non-Heideggerian senses of that word). The people who say that we desire to be desired for ourselves put forward (implicitly or explicitly) the thesis that we are more and other than the sum of our specific attributes. In the words of Simone de Beauvoir, "to love him genuinely is to love him in his otherness and in that freedom by which he escapes." In Heideggerian terms, to genuinely love someone means to love their <em>existence</em>. On this basis, then, one might think to correct the error in Kojeve's statement, "man is <em>loved</em> solely because he <em>is</em>, and independently of what he <em>does</em>," by replacing the "is" with "exists."<br />
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But is it true that we love the existence of others? Is Kojeve altogether wrong in saying that we love the being of others? The father of existentialism, Heidegger himself, had seduced the young Arendt by (mis?)quoting Augustine and telling her, "I want you to be what you are." We can grant straightaway that loving someone to some extent entails loving a mystery, an absence, a remainder, a trace, etc. But to love someone means precisely to love <em>someone</em>, ie, to recognize someone in their particularity. And that recognition is possible only on the basis of something other than "that freedom by which [another] escapes," which characterizes all others and so cannot serve as the basis for differentiating anyone from any other. Ironically, the emphasis on existence renders the beloved into an anonymous One (<em>das Man</em>). Anyone who has loved another creature has loved specific attributes of the beloved, without falling into the error of thinking that the beloved simply was the sum of some specific list of attributes.<br />
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The notion of identity I think nicely fuses the existence and being dimensions, and goes some way to answering what we wish to be loved/desired for. "For ourselves" is indeed the place to start.<br />
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Now let us return to the Rich article. Boyfriends are traded based upon what owners/girlfriends see on the stat sheets (though there is acknowledgement of intangibles such as "attitude" and "effort"). Is this world compatible or incomptaible with being loved "for ourselves"? Discuss. Be sure to include in your answer whether you think ballplayers in the real world are desired "for themselves."<br />
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Just kidding.<br />
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The keyword of modern social relationships is freedom. We have choices today in who to be with that would not have been possible in previous times. But what Rich's article shows is that from another angle, freedom means "commodification." I do not mean that simply in a narrowly materialist sense. Meaningful choice means the opportunity to avail oneself of different alternatives. Where there are differential alternatives subject to choice, there exists a market. In any market, sellers try to differentiate their product. The market for paramours is different today from previous eras in that: (1) there are now different buyers (parents of marriageable-age women versus the women themselves) and (2) sellers can no longer be as certain as formerly that they will, eventually, be able to sell their product (true for both men and women). This has all sorts of implications that have been discussed by various people that you can look up on your own because I need to sleep now.SocraticFuryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11556202787301724963noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7021164877662225463.post-82942585303976460982011-07-18T11:22:00.000-05:002011-07-18T11:31:06.447-05:00Wal-Mart v. DukesYeah, so I've been a little lax in my blogging. Anyway, in the past Supreme Court term, the Court decided that the nationwide class of female employees who filed an anti-discrimination lawsuit against Wal-Mart did not constitute a certifiable class. Dahlia Lithwick at Slate <a href="http://www.slate.com/id/2297364/"><span style="color: yellow;">had the most entertaining line about it</span></a><span style="color: white;">: "</span><span style="color: white;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="color: #f3f3f3;">Wal-Mart, the nation's largest private employer, seems to have figured out that the key to low-cost discrimination lies in discriminating on a massive scale." I express no opinion on the merits of the lawsuit, except to note that, while one may be sympathetic to Lithwick's outrage, the fact of the matter is that employers are generally given the benefit of the doubt in employer discrimination cases. Viewed in the context of employment law as a whole, the ruling is not as outrageous as it might first appear. Again, this is not to say it was correctly (or incorrectly) decided.</span></span></span>SocraticFuryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11556202787301724963noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7021164877662225463.post-67402658365024309192011-05-09T20:59:00.000-05:002011-05-09T21:00:35.632-05:00Zombie ants<a href="http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/05/110509065536.htm"><span style="background-color: black; color: yellow;">Craziness</span></a>.SocraticFuryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11556202787301724963noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7021164877662225463.post-64729922943014565832011-03-31T14:42:00.000-05:002011-03-31T14:42:27.487-05:00War and OilDavid Frum made some <a href="http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2011/03/30/pm-oils-role-in-the-libyan-conflict/" style="color: yellow;">sensible comments about war and oil</a> on NPR, saying, "Countries do not fight wars for oil. That never makes economic sense. You can buy a lot of oil for the cost of even a small war. But countries do care intensely about security of supply." This reminds me of a professor I had who once told us, "I don't ever want to see any of you out there waving one of those idiotic signs saying, 'No war for oil!'" Frum's point is that although countries may not fight wars <i>for</i> oil, they may fight wars <i>over</i> oil. There's a crucial distinction there.SocraticFuryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11556202787301724963noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7021164877662225463.post-22335458975030098742011-03-29T11:06:00.000-05:002011-03-29T11:06:54.887-05:00Legitimate but unreasonableNabil Fahmy, dean of the school of public affairs at American University in Cairo, said of students' demands to ouster Mubarak-affiliated school officials, that they were "<a href="http://www.npr.org/2011/03/29/134928357/egypts-college-campuses-rocked-with-unrest" style="color: yellow;">legitimate, but ... not reasonable</a>." One might think that legitimate demands are demands that ought to be satisfied. One might also think that only demands that pass the bar of reason ought to be satisfied. Curious. So what do we do? How do we weigh these "competing values?"<br />
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Perhaps legitimate demands ought to be satisfied, but people have a duty to be reasonable? I leave the status of the "ought" purposely ambiguous--i.e., whether moral, prudential, or other. Think of those everyday situations when people make understandable but not entirely reasonable demands. Isn't (for example) monogamous marriage itself an understandable if not entirely reasonable demand? Less polemically, don't we often, in states of intense emotion, make understandable but not entirely reasonable demands? Do emotion-based claims have an intrinsic legitimacy? Does it make a difference whether we use the word "emotion" or the word "passion"? I think it does.SocraticFuryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11556202787301724963noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7021164877662225463.post-13924351379271773912011-03-16T17:53:00.000-05:002011-03-17T09:59:39.652-05:00Speaking of Heidegger...Hubert Dreyfus co-authored a <a href="http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/02/28/watson-still-cant-think/?hp" style="color: yellow;">column in the New York Times</a> in which he says (and I agree), "The greatest danger of Watson’s victory is not that it proves machines could be better versions of us, but that it tempts us to misunderstand ourselves as poorer versions of them." However, he also quotes John Haugeland as saying, "The problem with computers is that they just don’t give a damn." The implication is that human caring is what distinguishes us from computers. I think that is not quite right.<br />
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Now, in the source material, i.e., Heidegger, Da-sein cares because Da-sein is being-towards-death. Da-sein cares because Da-sein dies. However, what Kubrick and others present is the possibility of an artificial intelligence that cares but does not die (A.I. is like animals in this sense; animals also do not die, in the Heideggerian sense). This is possible without self-consciousness. It is conceivable to me (and perhaps this is because I know nothing about computers) that a program can be written with a primary directive to "do" whatever is necessary so as to be able to continue doing whatever it is that programs do. If you can make a program capable of self-preservation, then you have made it capable of "caring." But for all that, you will not have made it capable of loving. Heidegger focuses his analysis of "care" upon the things that "concern" us. For Heidegger, that is the primary reason we pay attention to anything; that is the source of meaning and significance. Heidegger does not speak of care as love, of the attention we pay to things simply because we love them. Not by coincidence, Heidegger never speaks of joy, of the joy we feel partaking in an activity that we love. Joy, for Heidegger, must be founded upon a more fundamental care, a care that is not joyful. I am skeptical that you can get to love from Heideggerian care. The problem with "the machines" is not that they don't care; we can make them care easily enough; the problem is that they don't love. I once read an Isaac Aasimov novel where a robot had two primary directives: first was to protect the protagonist; second was to love the protagonist. I am suggesting that the second directive cannot be made intelligible to an AI. Nor, for that matter, to Heidegger (as the women in Heidegger's life could perhaps attest?).SocraticFuryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11556202787301724963noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7021164877662225463.post-44157479428003385362011-03-16T14:23:00.000-05:002011-03-16T14:23:13.489-05:00Time for Eros?Ah, my first blog post!<br />
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I recently finished Anne Carson's <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Eros-Bittersweet-Anne-Carson/dp/1564781887/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1300300749&sr=1-1" style="color: yellow;"><i>Eros the Bittersweet</i></a>. She writes about Lysias' speech of the non-lover in Plato's <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Phaedrus-Agora-Paperback-Editions-Plato/dp/0801485320/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1300301098&sr=1-1" style="color: yellow;"><i>Phaedrus</i></a>, and how that speech derives its power by looking at the love affair not from the moment of inception, but from the moment of or after its dissolution. As she says, "Lysias looks at a love affair from the point of view of the end," but "[n]o one in love really believes love will end."<br />
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Today, I was reading the comic strip <i>Luann</i>, which had Luann telling an Australian foreign exchange student she likes, "There's no point in starting something if you're just going to go back to Australia." Ah, the sober prudence of the American teenage girl, who will not sacrifice her precious adolescent years in pursuit of something that can only be fleeting and temporary, however otherwise pleasant and enjoyable it may otherwise be, when there is not even the possibility of a happily ever after to the story.<br />
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Or is the experience itself, regardless of its temporal possibilities or impossibilities, somehow a necessary part of the story? "There's no point in starting something if you're just going to go back to Australia." Does eros or love have a point? If so, what is it? Does the answer to that question also answer the question whether we have time for eros/love? I can imagine it now: a boy or girl impatiently asking, "Is it time for love yet?", the way you would ask, "Is it time to go yet?" Do we ever have time for eros?<br />
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But let's be real here. Most love affairs, especially between young people, are stories of failure. If eros is, as a Platonic character will suggest, desire for sempiternal possession of the good, then why doom your story from the beginning? Why engage in something that forecloses the possibility of everlasting and permanent union?<br />
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And yet--although eros is self-directed toward eternity--isn't there something fundamentally <i>unerotic</i> about turning away from the simple experience of love, regardless of its temporal possibilities or impossibilities? What exactly is the relationship between time and eros? Perhaps the question can be sharpened as follows: does eros desire its own fulfillment, or its own continuation? Are those alternatives mutually exclusive, and thereby a genuine Either-Or, or is a conjunction possible? Can eros subsist in its own fulfillment? Married readers: answer with care (which brings us, in a double fashion, to Heidegger--who is either a great authority or a great fraud when it comes to matters erotic, depending on whom you ask....).SocraticFuryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11556202787301724963noreply@blogger.com7