The Price of Peace by Zachary Carter & The Time of the Magicians by Wolfram Eilenberger

One of the best books of 2020

 Normally I don't review two books in the same article. And on the face of it, these two books would seem to create an odd tandem. The Price of Peace: Money, Democracy and the Life of John Maynard Keynes centers on the life and work of John Maynard Keynes and his intellectual progeny in economics, while The Time of the Magicians: Wittgenstein, Benjamin, Cassirer, Heidegger, and the Decade that Reinvented Philosophy deals with the work of four German-speaking philosophers during the period from 1919 to 1929: Ludwig Wittgenstein, Martin Heidegger, Walter Benjamin, and Ernst Cassirer. There is some overlap of personages: Keynes, as a Cambridge intellectual and would-be philosopher makes an appearance in The Time of the Magicians as an acquaintance of Wittgenstein via their shared Cambridge connections and Keynes was scared off (as it were) from philosophy by his encounter with Wittgenstein's Tractatus logico-philosophicus, published in 1922, after Keynes has served as a courier to get the draft into the hands of Bertrand Russell for publication in Britain. The other common figure is (at least to me) a little known Italian economist named Piero Sraffa, who collaborated with Keynes for many years and who also understood Wittgenstein--according to Wittgenstein--and who influenced the shift in Wittgenstein's thinking from that of the Tractatus to that of his Philosophical Investigations. But other than these coincidental overlaps, what ties these two books together in my mind? 

In short, both books begin at the end of the First World War--the Great War. Carter does begin his portrait with Keynes with the financial panic in Britain at the outbreak of the war and with Keynes's life as a Cambridge Apostle and then as a charter member of the Bloomsbury group that focused on aesthetics and---by the standards of the time--uncommon sexual mores. But it's not until his participation in the Versailles Conference and his subsequent appraisal of the Conference in his book The Economic Consequences of the Peace, that Keynes hits his stride as a public intellectual and as an influential (although often ignored) influence on government policy. Keynes and his intellectual legacy arose during the inter-war period that was so marked by economic and political turmoil. Keynes became an economist dedicated to preserving the liberal, market-oriented democracies. His focus becomes overwhelmingly practical, even when he delves into more esoteric topics, like theories of probability or ancient monetary regimes. 

Before moving on to The Magicians, let me pad this review with some further quotes from The Price of Peace. Not a cool move for a reviewer, but still, to bring this to a conclusion and to add some spice, I'll share them: 

"The real struggle of today…is between that view of the world, termed liberalism or radicalism, for which the primary object of government and of foreign policy is peace, freedom of trade and intercourse, and economic wealth, and that other view, militarist, or, rather, diplomatic, which thinks in terms of power, prestige, national or personal glory, the imposition of a culture, and hereditary or racial prejudice. . . . The great threat facing liberalism was not socialism but the thirst for military domination. “Soldiers and diplomatists—they are the permanent, the immortal foe.” (John Maynard Keynes, “On the Way to Genoa: What Can the Conference Discuss and with What Hope?,” The Manchester Guardian, April 10, 1922; CW, vol. 17, 373.)

The Price of Peace (p. xvii-iii). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. 

Keynes was a philosopher of war and peace, the last of the Enlightenment intellectuals who pursued political theory, economics, and ethics as a unified design. He was a man whose chief project was not taxation or government spending but the survival of what he called “civilisation”—the international cultural milieu that connected a British Treasury man to a Russian ballerina

Id.(p. xviii). 

[S]o the manuscript Keynes had helped salvage from a POW camp in Cassino, Italy [Wittegenstein's Tractatus], pushed Keynes out of the philosophy business. A Treatise on Probability was debated avidly by the leading lights of Cambridge philosophy but quickly fell out of favor. Wittgenstein’s work, meanwhile, became the foundational text of analytic philosophy—a school of thought that still dominates English-speaking philosophy departments, in which language itself is understood to be the source of all truths that philosophers can uncover.

Id.(p. 116). 

Price instability undermined the public’s faith in its government and its institutions; failing to control it would, Keynes told the Treasury, “strike at the whole basis of contract, of security, and of the capitalist system generally.”

Id. (p. 129). 

Governments would find themselves forced to choose between maintaining a stable exchange rate and a stable price level. When the choice came, Keynes argued, there should be no hesitation: Keep prices stable, and adjust exchange rates. It might be true that “over the long run,” rashes of inflation and deflation would burn themselves out. “But this long run is a misleading guide to current affairs,” Keynes observed. “In the long run, we are all dead. Economists set themselves too easy, too useless a task if in tempestuous seasons they can only tell us that when the storm is long past the ocean is flat again.” (A Tract on Monetary Reform (London: Macmillan, 1924, p. 80.)

Id. (p. 130). 

Money existed to be spent on finer things: the pursuit of Apostolic “good states of mind.” From his undergraduate days to his deathbed, Keynes believed that these were not exclusive goods. One man living a good life did not detract from another’s ability to live well any more than one person’s enjoyment of a painting would ruin another’s ability to appreciate it.

Id. (p. 146). 

[A] snapshot of Keynes’ view of economics in the hierarchy of intellectual pursuits. Ethics—by which Keynes meant the elements that made up a good life—were a more important consideration for public policy than economics, the field that had made Keynes famous. The remains of his early reverence for Edmund Burke is evident in the note’s distinct modesty of ambition. Even when imagining the “ideal future of society,” Keynes could only envision striking a balance between what was “tolerable” and what was “not intolerable.” Keynes had in truth already been working on his political theory project for some time.

Id. (p. 149). 

He was forging a new set of philosophical foundations for twentieth-century society. He announced the program across the top of the page: “Prolegomena to a New Socialism—The Origins and End of Laissez-Faire.” Keynes had an ambiguous relationship with the word socialism. Sometimes he deployed it as an epithet; in other moods, he used it to describe a progressive ideal.

Id. (p. 149). 

The Time of the Magicians, on the other hand, deals with four thinkers who made their mark on post-war culture in ways that are, on the whole, quite apart from politics. Wittgenstein spent his time in an Italian POW camp (he was an Austrian soldier) writing the Tractatus, which attempts to resolve some of the most vexing issues of philosophy by his analysis of propositions. Heidegger, on the other hand, after his service in the German military, sloughs off his prior train of thought and delves into what he labels Dasein, our "being-there" in this world. Despite its immediate impact and its concern with human placement, his thought--like Wittgenstein's--held no immediate political implications. (But more on this later.) Benjamin was an itinerant (meaning often broke and without a position) scholar who wasn't a systematic thinker but who made penetrating (according to some) observations about intellectual topics that he investigated. Again, no immediate political implications arise from his work. Finally, Ernst Cassirer is the oldest, most established, and most "bourgeois" of these four. He, too, was a philosopher obsessed with issues surrounding symbols, language, art, and such, but he pursued his project within the context of Neo-Kantianism, then the reigning school of philosophy in Germany. In this period (1919-1920) he didn't write directly about politics (although after the Second World War he published The Myth of the State). But while none of these four directed their thinking toward politics, all three deeply influenced the course of philosophy and high culture during this period and beyond. 

I would be remiss, however,  to suggest that the only impetus for a new philosophic perspective represented by The Magicians arose only from the War and the consequent social, economic, and political dislocation that it wrought. Even before the war, the world of Newtonian physics had been crumbling under the weight of Einstein's new theories of relativity, which were soon followed by theories of quantum mechanics. In philosophy itself, there was a strong movement, such as found in the Vienna Circle and via Moore and Russell at Cambridge, to anchor philosophy in science and logic and to jettison the rest of traditional philosophy, such as metaphysics and ethics. And the arts, which had experienced profound changes before the war, continued down new and often disorienting experimental roads. Change was happening in all walks of life, and The Magicians were responding to these changes. 

Both books are exceptionally fine and important works of intellectual history. Thinkers who worked and struggled with the realities of the inter-war years, such as those listed above, and others, like R.G. Collingwood, Hannah Arendt, and others, have a renewed value today as we experience democracy under attack and the world haunted by irrational spirits among the people. History doesn't offer answers, but it does provide lessons, hints about the future, that we ignore at our peril. 

H

The Myth of the State by Ernst Cassirer

 

Cassirer's last book, published in 1946 shortly before his death

For how I came to this book and some of my (all too brief) history with Cassirer, you might begin with my review of Language and Myth (here). I can now add to that history that I'm amazed by what I had missed. Cassirer's work here is an impressive history of myth and Western political thought. He begins at the beginning: considering myth and mythological thought, and he then takes the reader forward in time through to the rise of modern mythologies. I was deeply impressed by not only the scope of Cassirer's work here--from the deep past into the near present, but also by the depth of his analysis. His chapters on Plato, Machiavelli, and Hegel provide some of the most succinct but insightful commentaries on these pivotal thinkers that I've encountered. His observations about Machiavelli and Machiavellian are among the best I've encountered. Machiavelli, to me at least, is a profoundly intriguing figure, and far too many commentators seem not to have gotten beyond the stereotype of the "evil Machiavel" laid down by Shakespeare; and on the other side, there are those Machiavellians who sing his praises unreservedly, failing to see the contradictions and nuances of Machiavelli's thought. Cassirer is both a scholar and an original thinker and his work here, along with his briefer but similarly valuable considerations of Plato and Hegel, is exemplary. 

Cassirer begins his book (Part I), as I noted above, with consideration of myth, its origins and functions. This section is more or less an abbreviated recapitulation of his work that I cited above, Language and Myth, but not less valuable (and perhaps more valuable) because of its brevity. After reviewing some of the most important works on language and mythology, Cassirer arrives at conclusions of his own. He writes: 

Here we grasp one of the most essential elements of myth. Myth does not arise solely from intellectual processes; it sprouts forth from deep human emotions. Yet on the other hand all these theories that exclusively stress the emotional element fail to see an essential point. Myth cannot be described as mere emotion because it is the expression of emotion. The expression of a feeling is not the feeling itself--it is emotion turned into an image. This very fact implies a radical change. What heretofore to was dimly and vaguely felt assumes a definite shape; what was a passive state becomes an active process.

To understand this transformation it is necessary to make a sharp distinction between two types of expression: between physical and symbolic expressions.

The Myth of the State, 43.  

Cassirer goes on to state that "generally speaking, human responses belong to quite a different type. What distinguishes them from animal reactions is their symbolic character…. Linguistic symbolism leads to an objectification of sense-impressions; mythical symbolism leads to an objectification of feelings." Id. 45.  This characteristic of humans leads to "no mere exteriorization but condensation. In language, myth, art, religion our emotions are not simply turned into mere acts; they are turned into "works." These works do not fade away. They are persistent and durable." Id. 46. Cassirer notes that these works are not aimed at individual experience (at least until Plato) but at social existence. Cassirer observes that "genuine myth does not possess philosophical freedom; for the images in which it lives are not known as images. They are not regarded as symbols but as realities." But these "images" provide "uncivilized man" with "an interpretation of life the life of nature and of his own inner life." Id. 47. Cassirer disagrees with the contention that myth and religion are merely the products of fear (and ignorance); he contends that myth and religion provide a "metamorphosis" of fear into something that humans can grasp and thereby contend with. 

In Part II "The Struggle of Myth in the History of Political Theory," Cassirer addresses the effort to move beyond mythical thinking as reflected in the ancient Greeks; the battle between mythos and logos as best exemplified by the struggle between Socrates and the Sophists and their different ideas about the value of myth. This debate also entailed the difference between "the many" and "the One." Of course, out of this came Plato and his transformation of the Socratic quest into his own intellectual edifice. And while I won't discuss it here, Cassirer's chapter on Plato's Republic is as concise, insightful, and valuable as any such effort of comparable length that I can think of (at least viz. politics). From Plato, Cassirer moves on the Augustine and the development of the medieval theory of the "legal state," which draws greatly on Roman law as well as Christian ideas. The next three chapters deal with Machiavelli and his legacy. And as I remarked above, this section, too, proved revelatory about a  topic upon which there's been a lot of misguided commentary. If one were diving into Machiavelli for the first time, this might be the best place to start. This section concludes with chapters on "The Renaissance of Stoicism and "Natural Right" Theories of the State" (Ch. XIII) and "The Philosophy of the Enlightenment and Its Romantic Critics" (Ch. XIV). I have to admit that the role of Stoicism in the "natural right" tradition and upon a view of equality arising within society was something I'd not appreciated before. 

Part III is entitled "The Myth of the Twentieth Century" and it opens with a chapter on Thomas Carlyle. I had to pause and ask myself, "Thomas Carlyle, the early Victorian historian and essayist, the author of the "The Hero in History," of whom I know very little and whom I'd never seen included in a history of political thought?" Yes, the same. And yet, here again, Cassirer impressed me with his careful scholarship and insightful overview about Carlyle, a key figure in Cassirer's consideration of the myth of the state. But Carlyle's value comes not from anything he had to say about the state, but because of his best-known work,  The Hero in History. Cassirer patiently examines Carlyle's outlook and the particulars of his idea of the hero and its connection with a style of thought that looked outside of more quotidian views of culture and politics. From Carlyle, Cassirer goes directly on to Gobineau, the late nineteenth-century French writer who wrote a treatise on the superiority of the "white man." As with Carlyle (a much more respectable figure), Cassirer treats Gobineau with respect and a thorough consideration of his work, although Cassirer no doubt agrees with Gobineau's friend, Tocqueville, that he is "utterly opposed to these doctrines. I think them probably false and certainly pernicious." By the way, the title of this chapter is "From Hero Worship to Race Worship" and one section is titled "The Theory of Totalitarian Race." A chapter is also dedicated to Hegel, a notoriously difficult thinker. Suffice to say that again the treatment is thorough and considered. In short, Hegel spawned followers on the radical right and the radical left. The common bond: the significance of the state as an historical actor. 

The final chapter is "The Technique of Modern Political Myths," and Cassirer opens the chapter with these observations: 

If we try to resolve our contemporary political myths into their elements we find that they contain no entirely new feature. All the elements were already well known. Carlyle's theory of hero worship and Gobineau's thesis of the fundamental moral and intellectual diversity of the races had been discussed over and over again. But all these discussions remained in a sense merely academic. To change the old ideas into strong and powerful political weapons something more as needed. They had to be accommodated to the understanding of a different audience. For this purpose a fresh instrument was required --not only an instrument of thought but of action. A new technique had to be developed. This was the last and decisive factor. To put it in the scientific terminology we may say that this technique had a catalytic effect. It accelerated all reactions and gave them their full effect.  While the soil for the Myth of the Twentieth Century had been prepared long before, it could not have borne its fruit without the skillful use of the new technical tool. Id. 277.

Cassirer goes on to note the extraordinary challenges of the post-WWI period throughout the world, especially in the Germany of the Weimar Republic, which suffered from both unemployment and depression. "In desperate situations man will always have recourse to desperate means--and our present-day political myths have been such desperate means." Id. 279. Indeed, as he notes, even in primitive societies where myth and magic still prevail, members of those societies have recourse to magic when empirical, quotidian ways of solving a problem fail to do so. (Cassirer cites the work of Malinowski). Thus, both more modern, "rational" societies and more primitive societies follow the same pattern of recourse to the magical and mythical when social challenges become too great. In the Europe of the inter-war years, the rational mode developed over the centuries succumbed to a reversion to more primitive ways.

[I]n politics the equipoise [between rationality and myth] is never completely established. What we find here is a labile rather than a static equilibrium. In politics we are always living on volcanic soil. We must be prepared for abrupt convulsions and eruptions. In all critical moments of man's social life, the rational forces that resist the rise of the old mythical conceptions are no longer sure of themselves. In these moments the time for myth has come again. For myth has not been really vanquished and subjugated. It is always there, lurking in the dark and waiting for its hour and opportunity. This hour comes as soon as the other binding forces of man's social life, for one reason or another, lose their strength and are no longer able to combat the demonic mythical powers.  Id. 280.

 Or he might have quoted Yeats, writing in 1919: 

The darkness drops again; but now I know   

That twenty centuries of stony sleep

Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,   

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,   

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

So no matter how rational humankind may think it is in contemporary societies,  we are still given to extreme and often violent passions that yield to "the most irrational impulses." Id. 281. (January 6, anyone?) And while "modern man no longer believes in natural magic, he has by no means given up the belief in a sort of "social magic. If a collective wish is felt in its whole strength and intensity, people can easily be persuaded that it only needs the right man to satisfy it." Id. Cassirer notes that Carlyle's theory of "hero worship made its influence felt." Id. And in this situation we see a new type of political myth and politician emerging

[W]hat we find . . . is a blending of two activities that seem to exclude each other. The modern politician has had to combine in himself two entirely different and even incompatible functions. He has to act, at the same time, as both a homo magus [man of magic] and a homo faber [man as craftsman and artisan found in the "age of technics"]. He is a priest of a new, entirely irrational and mysterious religion. But when he has to defend and propagate this religion he proceeds very methodically. Nothing is left to chance; every step is well prepared and premeditated. It is this strange combination that is one of the most striking features of our political myths. 

Myth has always been described as the result of an unconscious activity and as a free product of imagination. But here we find myth made according to plan. The new political myths do not grow up freely; they are not wild fruits of an exuberant imagination. They are artificial things fabricated by very skillful and cunning artisans. It has been reserved for the twentieth century, our own great technical age, to develop a new technique of myth. Henceforth myths can be manufactured in the same sense and according to the same methods as any other modern weapons--as machine guns and airplanes.  Id. 282. 

If you have difficulty conceiving an image of what Cassirer is arguing, go watch Leni Riefenstahl's film "Triumph of the Will" or a video of a Donald Trump rally.  

Cassirer contends this mythical environment alters even the nature of human language. Human language has always involved "two entirely different functions. . . the semantic and the magical use of the word." Id. But in our time, we've experienced "not only a transvaluation of all our ethical values but also a transformation of human speech. The magic word takes precedence of the semantic word." Id. 283. Cassirer goes on to describe the creation of new rites to supplement the new use of magical words, rites that lull the critical mind into a form of trance or waking sleep (my description, not his). 

Cassirer moves his argument into the issue of freedom and the Kantian legacy that describes freedom as an interior condition defined by autonomy. But "freedom is not a natural inheritance of man. In order to possess it we have to create it. Id. 288. And "under extremely difficult conditions man tries to cast off this burden. Here the totalitarian state and political myth step in." Id. 

Cassirer also notes that divination also appears again in contemporary political myths: "The politician becomes a sort of public fortuneteller. The most improbable or even impossible promises are made; the millennium is predicted over and over again." Id. 289. Cassirer sees this function melded with "the rebirth of one of the oldest mythical motives. In almost all mythologies of the world we meet with the idea of an inevitable, inexorable, irrevocable destiny. Fatalism seems to be inseparable from mythical thought. " Id. 290. 

One has to wonder if Trump and his like-minded ilk around the world didn't have a secret book club in which they share ideas about how to refine their dark arts--they sometimes seem to have taken their cues directly from Cassirer! 

Cassirer also addresses the work of two German thinkers whom he contends reinforce these myths of inevitability and fatalism: Oswald Spengler and Martin Heidegger. In remarking on these two contemporaries, he cautions 

I do not mean to say that these philosophical doctrines had a direct bearing of the political ideas in Germany. Most of these ideas came from quite different sources. They had a very "realistic" and not a "speculative" purport. But the new philosophy did enfeeble and slowly undermine the forces that could have resisted the modern political myths. Id. 292.

A remarkable contention that bares further contemplation. 

Cassirer concludes his chapter on an ambiguous note. 

It is beyond the power of philosophy to destroy the political myths. A myth is in a sense invulnerable. It is impervious to rational arguments; it cannot be refuted by syllogisms. But philosophy can do us another important service. It can make us understand the adversary. In order to fight an enemy you must know him. That is one of the first principles of a sound strategy. . . . We should carefully study the origin, the structure, the methods, and the technique of the political myth s. We should see the adversary face to face in order to know how to combat him. Id. 296

And the concluding sentences of the book: 

 [T]he mythical monsters were not entirely destroyed [by rationality]. They were used for the creation of a new universe, and they still survive in this universe. The powers of myth were checked and subdued by superior forces. As long as these forces, intellectual, ethical, and artistic, are in full strength, myth is tamed and subdued. But once they begin to lose their strength chaos is come again. Mythical thought then starts to rise anew and to pervade the whole of man's cultural and social life. Id. 298.

My conclusion: this book is a stunningly deep and revealing examination of Western political thought that begins at the beginning--myth, It then traces the course of thought and culture toward increasing rationality until the twentieth-century experiences of a return of the dominance of myth. And its relevance to the twenty-first century? 

Thoughts of the Day: Thursday 22 April 2021

 

2020 novel of ideas about addressing climate change & other forms of environmental degradation

The Ministry for the Future

Kim Stanley Robinson

The current rate of extinctions compared to the geological norm is now several thousandfold faster, making this the sixth great mass extinction event in Earth’s history, and thus the start of the Anthropocene in its clearest demarcation.

The Case for Keto

Gary Taubes

Some who need to lose a dozen pounds to attain what they perceive as their ideal weight and health might do fine just by cutting back on the more obviously fattening foods and the carbohydrates they contain—for instance, sugary beverages, beer (“shun beer as if it were the plague,” wrote Brillat-Savarin), desserts, and sweet snacks. These folks will do fine eating slow carbs, with their complement of fiber to slow digestion and absorption and keep insulin levels low. Rigid abstinence will not be necessary for them.

Revolutionaries of the Soul

Gary Lachman

The first step in developing our capacity for Faculty X [Colin Wilson's concept of a melding right & left brain functions for a more complete appreciation of reality], then, is to create a sense of optimism—not about anything in particular, but a general sense that life means well by us, what Jean Gebser called “primal trust.” And this leads naturally to the next step, developing a sense of purpose. After we stop sending our right brain messages of doom, the next step is to foster a sense of interest. Mystics and poets tell us that we live in a fascinating universe, a cosmos of such complexity that it seems unthinkable anyone could be bored in it. Yet this is exactly what happens.

Language and Myth

Ernst Cassirer

The same may be said of any symbolic form, of language, art, or myth, in that each of these is a particular way of seeing, and carries within itself its particular and proper source of light. The function of envisagement, the dawn of a conceptual enlightenment can never be realistically derived from things themselves or understood through the nature of its objective contents. For it is not a question of what we see in a certain perspective, but of the perspective itself.

Crises of the Republic

Hannah Arendt

What really did happen? [Referring to altruistic student movements in the 60s and early 70s for social welfare & in politics.] As I see it, for the first time in a very long while a spontaneous political movement arose which not only did not simply carry on propaganda, but acted, and, moreover, acted almost exclusively from moral motives. Together with this moral factor, quite rare in what is usually considered a mere power or interest play, another experience new for our time entered the game of politics: It turned out that acting is fun. This generation discovered what the eighteenth century had called “public happiness,” which means that when man takes part in public life he opens up for himself a dimension of human experience that otherwise remains closed to him and that in some way constitutes a part of complete “happiness.”

The Life of the Mind

Hannah Arendt

Psychology, depth psychology or psychoanalysis, discovers no more than the ever-changing moods, the ups and downs of our psychic life, and its results and discoveries are neither particularly appealing nor very meaningful in themselves. “Individual psychology,” on the other hand, the prerogative of fiction, the novel and the drama, can never be a science; as a science it is a contradiction in terms.

The Lessons of History

Will Durant and Ariel Durant

It is not the race that makes the civilization, it is the civilization that makes the people: circumstances geographical, economic, and political create a culture, and the culture creates a human type.

Thoughts for the Day: Monday 19 April 2021

 

A Secret History of Consciousness

Gary Lachman

[Henri] Bergson, we remember, argued that the brain's function was essentially eliminative, and by the brain he meant by and large the cerebral cortex.

Language and Myth

Ernst Cassirer

Furthermore, the mythic consciousness does not see human personality as something fixed and unchanging, but conceives every phase of a man’s life as a new personality, a new self; and this metamorphosis is first of all made manifest in the changes which his name undergoes. At puberty a boy receives a new name, because, by virtue of the magical rites accompanying his initiation, he has ceased to exist as a boy, and has been reborn as a man, the reincarnation of one of his ancestors.

The Shape of Ancient Thought

Thomas McEvilley

The goal of ethical philosophy must be to bring personal preferences and aversions into harmony with those of the ruling principle of the universe, variously called “Zeus,” “Reason” (Logos), and “Nature.” As Cleanthes wrote in his “Hymn to Zeus,” “Zeus leads the willing person, the unwilling he drags.”

Ten Lessons for a Post-Pandemic World

Fareed Zakaria

In his ambitious two-volume work, Political Order and Political Decay, Francis Fukuyama writes that the fundamental question for every human society is simple: How do you get to Denmark? “By this I mean less the actual country Denmark,” he writes, “than an imagined society that is prosperous, democratic, secure, and well governed, and experiences low levels of corruption.”

The Idea of Nature

R. G. Collingwood

Kant’s view, then, comes to this: the proper object of scientific knowledge is not God or mind or things in themselves, but nature; the proper method, of scientific knowledge is a combination of sensation with understanding; and since nature is that which we know by this method, it follows that nature is mere phenomenon, a world of things as they appear to us, scientifically knowable because their ways of appearing are perfectly regular and predictable, but existing only in so far as we take up the point of view from which things have that appearance.

Essays in Understanding, 1930-1954

Hannah Arendt

What we have called the “bourgeois” is the modern man of the masses, not in his exalted moments of collective excitement, but in the security (today one should say the insecurity) of his own private domain. He has driven the dichotomy of private and public functions, of family and occupation, so far that he can no longer find in his own person any connection between the two. When his occupation forces him to murder people he does not regard himself as a murderer because he has not done it out of inclination but in his professional capacity. Out of sheer passion he would never do harm to a fly.

On Writing

Stephen King

 Good fiction always begins with story and progresses to theme; it almost never begins with theme and progresses to story. The only possible exceptions to this rule that I can think of are allegories like George Orwell’s Animal Farm (and I have a sneaking suspicion that with Animal Farm the story idea may indeed have come first; if I see Orwell in the afterlife, I mean to ask him).

Thoughts for the Day: Monday 5 April 2021

 

Commanding Hope

Thomas Homer-Dixon

“[H]ope that,” which is a passive and timid locution, and “hope to,” which is active and bold— a difference that bears crucially on the issue of our agency as we try to deal with humanity’s problems.

Apologies to the Grandchildren

William Ophuls

All media present an abstract and selective version of reality, but compared to print television is not an informative medium at all, but a dramatic one: it transmits images, not ideas; it evokes emotions, not thoughts; and it arouses passion, not deliberation. Indeed, at its worst, it is frankly inflammatory. . . . [At best], because it portrays the world in ever small “bites” of sound and image, television creates what is tantamount to a cartoon of reality.

The Wedge

Scott Carney

Western psychiatric medicine is often hard to distinguish from pharmacology. Most antidepressants aim to suppress moods—to bring them into a narrow range of experience, removing both the highs and lows. We reduce symptoms of an affliction to make it invisible.

The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness

Reinhold Niebuhr

Alfred Whitehead has distinguished between the “speculative” reason which “Plato shared with God” and the “pragmatic” reason which “Ulysses shared with the foxes.”

Buddha Takes No Prisoners

Patrick Ophuls 

First, the essential aim of all Buddhist practice is to develop undistracted awareness—that is, to arrive at the state of pure presence that the Buddha-to-be first experienced under the rose-apple tree as a child and that later became the key to his awakening.

Breath

James Nestor

But if the body has inadequate time in deep sleep, as it does when it experiences chronic sleep apnea, vasopressin won’t be secreted normally. The kidneys will release water, which triggers the need to urinate and signals to our brains that we should consume more liquid. We get thirsty, and we need to pee more. A lack of vasopressin explains not only my own irritable bladder but the constant, seemingly unquenchable thirst I have every night.

I can attest to the accuracy of this observation based upon personal experience.

Conservatism

Edmund Fawcett

Voegelin fitted into no obvious partisan or intellectual pigeonhole. His underlying point about the hollowed-out middle of liberal-modern society was not original. Tocqueville, speaking a century before as a conservative liberal, had worried about the unhealthy coupling of undue personal liberty and collectivist tyranny. The thought was common currency for midcentury conservatives such as Jouvenel, Kolnai, and, in a quieter vein, Collingwood. Nor was Voegelin’s antipathy to ideology distinctive.

I'm not comfortable throwing Collingwood in with the conservatives. Collingwood was on the whole a classical (European) liberal, more a "conservative liberal" like Tocqueville.

Conservatism

Edmund Fawcett

Exporting maxims from where they worked to where they did not work was the second kind of reasoning Burke proscribed.

Time of the Magicians

Wolfram Eilenberger

[Ernst] Cassirer’s search for the origin of the modern age in The Individual and the Cosmos, as with Benjamin’s and Heidegger’s works, indicates a loss. Cassirer sought to show, equally clearly but in a different way, the location of that loss later in the modern age. Intoxicated by the explanatory and predictive power of the natural sciences in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the physical laws of nature assume an absolute determinative role as the forces behind all cosmic events—including humanity, as a purely material species. The problem of our freedom (of will) could then be solved only by extricating our essence from the world in the form of Cartesian philosophy of consciousness: the human being as a purely thinking entity separated from the body.