Faith & Reason: Essays in the philosophy of religion by R.G. Collingwood. Edited with an introduction by Lionel Rubinoff

 

Early Collingwood on religion & philosophy

The essays in this book focus on pieces written by Collingwood early in his career. It borrows extensively from his first two books, Religion and Philosophy (1916) and Speculum Mentis (1924). The essays included were also written during this time period.

 
Rather than attempt an exposition of Collingwood’s thoughts manifest in this collection, I’ll simply proffer some observations. Having completed this collection, I’m now diving into Religion and Philosophy, which is the only work of philosophy by Collingwood that I haven’t yet read. My excuse for my tardiness is that it was an early work that commentators have generally slighted. However, my first observation is that it presages many of the themes that Collingwood will go on to explore in greater depth throughout his career. The several portions of Religion & Philosophy included in this collection reveal Collingwood’s concern with “forms of consciousness;” the mind as its activity; the importance of thought; distinctions between disciplines (art, religion, natural science, and history); and the relation of those disciplines to philosophy. We are also introduced to Collingwood addressing idealism and “the Absolute” more directly than what I recall in his later works. (“Realism,” on the other hand, while mentioned in these snippets from Religion and Philosophy and Speculum Mentis, gets a more consistent (critical) treatment throughout his career.)

Now for some more random observations and questions.

1. Collingwood reveals a significant depth of knowledge and appreciation of Christian theology in his writings. How much of this did he receive at Oxford in classes and seminars, and how much of it came from his reading on his own?
2. In reading Collingwood, one obtains the sense that these matters are not strictly a matter of professional interest and curiosity. And from probably the best single introduction to Collingwood now available, Fred Inglis’s History Man, we know that young Collingwood made a deliberate entry (Baptism and Confirmation) into the Anglican fold while a student at Rugby. I suspect this religiosity drives his formidable intellect in addressing the issues of God, existence, Atonement, the Absolute, and other theological and philosophical terms he considers in these selections.
3. Collingwood addresses philosophical idealism more directly here than in any work I’d read previously. In the late 1930s, Collingwood bristled at being labeled an idealist by Gilbert Ryle. (The accusation really riled up Collingwood.)
4. Collingwood refers to “the Absolute” on various occasions in this collection of works. It seems to me that the Italians, Croce, Gentile, and De Ruggiero, display their greatest influence on Collingwood during this early period. So far as I can discern, talk of “the Absolute” as a working term fades from Collingwood’s vocabulary after the early 1920s.
5. Collingwood’s reluctance to be caught up in dichotomies is revealed early in his career. Although it's not until Speculum Mentis that I think that he overtly references a dialectical method for this thinking, I find the seedlings of this attitude are on display here. Yet, while he avoids easy dichotomies, he also reveals his penchant for sharp distinctions. For instance, distinctions between thought and feeling; will and thought; art, religion, science, and history; and so on. Collingwood wields his logical scalpel to reveal distinctions, without intending to sunder relationships that constitute the reality he’s investigating. Collingwood uses anatomy to enhance our understanding of the more important physiology.

I will stop here, as I’ve already begun my plunge into Religion and Philosophy for a complete, careful reading. I intend to provide a more careful consideration of Collingwood’s ideas set forth in that book (and then, I think, back for a second reading and consideration of Speculum Mentis). Before closing, I should say that Rubinoff has done an important service by providing this introduction to Collingwood’s early work at the intersection of religion and philosophy. This collection and commentary enhances our appreciation of Collingwood’s life-long project, and it provides deep insights into philosophy, religion, and Christianity.

The Paranoid Style in American Politics by Richard Hofstadter: An Appreciation & Reflection for July 4, 2022

 

From a piece first published in Harper's in 1964

I like to celebrate July 4, Independence Day, by reading ( or most often re-reading) a great work in American history. This year, I re-read Richard Hofstader's essay "The Paranoid Style in American Politics." Now whatever might have led me to choose this particular essay for this time, you might ask--if you've been living in a cave far from any inkling about contemporary American politics. And note the original publication date: 1964. This date might not mean much to you, but for me, it marked the start of a political coming of age story. In that year, my father, a life-long Republican party loyalist got in the midst of the battle for the soul of the Republican Party. He was a "moderate" Republican in the year when Barry Goldwater and his more radical (so-called "conservative") supporters sought to gain the Republican presidential nomination and take over the party. My dad took a leave from his regular job (in a public opinion research firm) to work for the campaign of Gov. William Scranton (R-PA), who became the leading moderate candidate after the collapse of Gov. Nelson Rockefeller's campaign for the nomination. As a result of his position with the Scanton campaign, my dad went to San Francisco to the Republican National Convention, and he took my mom and I with him. My mom had lived and worked in San Francisco during and after the war before returning to her small hometown in Iowa to marry and raise four kids, thus, this was a great treat for a wife and mother. And me? As the oldest of their four kids, it was really a part of an ongoing apprenticeship in politics. And, in the course of the education, I learned a bit about Goldwater, Phyllis Shafley (Not a Choice But an Echo), and John Stormer's None Dare Call It Treason. Not that I read these books (I was neither that nerdy nor that bright), but I had a sense of how whacky these folks were. Yet, in the spirit of full disclosure, I must inform you that my dad, as a loyal Republican, worked on behalf of the Republican ticket that year in which LBJ crushed Goldwater. (Goldwater only carried his home state of Arizona and the Deep South.) I, as the young apprentice, debated on behalf of the right-wing Goldwater against a classmate for a mock election in my 6th-grade class. LBJ crushed Goldwater in our mock election even worse than in the national popular vote--in a town and county that Goldwater carried! An inauspicious start to my career in advocacy, to say the least. In sum, it's all very personal. 

But to return to the point, Hofstader's essay is not just informative, but it takes me back and allows me to appreciate the fact that the "paranoid style in American politics" is nothing new, although now it has now developed into an acute, life-threatening variant. Can we learn something from the foray into American history? Indeed we can. 

(N.B. I will quote liberally from Hofstadter's essay: he makes his case better than I can explain it, and given that most readers won't go read the entire original, you can at least get the Cliff Notes version here (with more quotes that Cliff Notes can print). 

Hofstader opens his essay with these terms and observations: 

Behind such movements [referring to the "far right wing" in 1964] there is a style of mind, not always right-wing in its affiliations, that has a long and varied history. I call it the paranoid style simply because no other word adequately evokes the qualities of heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy that I have in mind. . . It is the use of paranoid modes of expression by more or less normal people that makes the phenomenon significant. . . .In the paranoid style, as I conceive it, the feeling of persecution is central, and it is indeed systematized in grandiose theories of conspiracy.

I trust that from these three opening quotes you can appreciate the reason that I find this topic and this essay so pertinent to today. In short, what we're experiencing currently isn't so unique, though I have to say that the threat from the paranoid right is much greater then it was even then. 

[T]here is a vital difference between the paranoid spokesman in politics and the clinical paranoiac: although they both tend to be overheated, oversuspicious, overaggressive, grandiose, and apocalyptic in expression, the clinical paranoid sees the hostile and conspiratorial world in which he feels himself to be living as directed specifically against him; whereas the spokesman of the paranoid style finds it directed against a nation, a culture, a way of life whose fate affects not himself alone but millions of others. (Location 58)

Indeed, clinical paranoia is an individual phenomenon; political paranoia is a political phenomenon. The greatest question, in either instance, is the source of this disorder. Is it deeply rooted in all humans and only waiting to emerge, or is it an emergent phenomenon that is dependent upon circumstances and perceptions? I'd venture (and I don't believe that Hofstader would disagree) that it's a combination of both human "nature" and the human situation.

Style has to do with the way in which ideas are believed and advocated rather than with the truth or falsity of their content. (Location 68) [Emphasis added.]

In other words, and as Hofstader states specifically, the paranoid style can be found on both the extreme right and the extreme left. It's a style, not a substance; or at least not a substance that's an articulated political stance anchored in a coherent rational argument.

[T]he paranoid style has had a consummatory triumph [that] occurred not in the United States but in Germany. It is a common ingredient of fascism, and of frustrated nationalisms, though it appeals to many who are hardly fascists and it can frequently be seen in the left-wing press. The famous Stalin purge trials incorporated, in a supposedly juridical form, a wildly imaginative and devastating exercise in the paranoid style.

(Location 94)

Thus, regardless of its place on the political spectrum from left to right (if we choose to use this popular but limited metaphor), the paranoid style can emerge. Again, it's not a set of beliefs so much as a style.

A distorted style is, then, a possible signal that may alert us to a distorted judgment, just as in art an ugly style is a cue to fundamental defects of taste. What interests me here is the possibility of using political rhetoric to get at political pathology. One of the most impressive facts about the paranoid style, in this connection, is that it represents an old and recurrent mode of expression in our public life which has frequently been linked with movements of suspicious discontent and whose content remains much the same even when it is adopted by men of distinctly different purposes. (Location 83) [Emphasis added.]

As I emphasized in the quote, Hofstadter finds the "political pathology" revealed in the "political rhetoric." In the course of the essay, Hofstader will range widely over the history of the Republic to identify and explore instances of this pathology. Without directly saying so, Hofstadter demonstrates the old adage that history never repeats itself, but it often rhymes. Or in the words of the Bible, there's nothing new under the sun. ("The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun. Is there any thing whereof it may be said, See, this is new? it hath been already of old time, which was before us." Eclessiastes 1:9-10 (KJV).) This is why we read history: not out of mere curiosity, but out of a need to understand ourselves; for self-knowledge, collectively and individually.

The following quote, drawing upon the insights of his American contemporary, the sociologist Daniel Bell, captures the essence of what we're seeing today from the radical right:

But the modern right wing, as Daniel Bell has put it, feels dispossessed: America has been largely taken away from them and their kind, though they are determined to try to repossess it and to prevent the final destructive act of subversion. The old American virtues have already been eaten away by cosmopolitans and intellectuals; the old competitive capitalism has been gradually undermined by socialist and communist schemers; the old national security and independence have been destroyed by treasonous plots, having as their most powerful agents not merely outsiders and foreigners but major statesmen seated at the very centers of American power. Their predecessors discovered foreign conspiracies; the modern radical right finds that conspiracy also embraces betrayal at home. (Location 320) 

Hofstadter goes on:

For the vaguely delineated villains of the anti-Masons, for the obscure and disguised Jesuit agents, the little-known papal delegates of the anti-Catholics, for the shadowy international bankers of the monetary conspiracies, we may now substitute eminent public figures like Presidents Roosevelt, Truman, and Eisenhower, Secretaries of State like Marshall, Acheson, and Dulles, justices of the Supreme Court like Frankfurter and Warren, and the whole battery of lesser but still famous and vivid conspirators headed by Alger Hiss. (Location 329)

Of course, the choice item in this list is Alger Hiss, whom we now know, upon the opening of the Soviet archives, was in a fact an active Soviet agent. In short, Whittaker Chambers and Richard Nixon were actually on to something, which goes to show you (forgive me), but even paranoids have enemies. But as the list above indicates, Joe McCarthy, Robert H. Welch, Jr. and his John Birch Society and their ilk were off their rockers.

After completing a tour of American history with examples of the paranoid style, Hofstadter provides us with a summing-up:

LET US NOW ABSTRACT the basic elements in the paranoid style. The central image is that of a vast and sinister conspiracy, a gigantic and yet subtle machinery of influence set in motion to undermine and destroy a way of life. One may object that there are conspiratorial acts in history, and there is nothing paranoid about taking note of them. This is true. All political behavior requires strategy, many strategic acts depend for their effect upon a period of secrecy, and anything that is secret may be described, often with but little exaggeration, as conspiratorial. The distinguishing thing about the paranoid style is not that its exponents see conspiracies or plots here and there in history, but that they regard a “vast” or “gigantic” conspiracy as the motive force in historical events. History is a conspiracy, set in motion by demonic forces of almost transcendent power, and what is felt to be needed to defeat it is not the usual methods of political give-and-take, but an all-out crusade. The paranoid spokesman sees the fate of this conspiracy in apocalyptic terms—he traffics in the birth and death of whole worlds, whole political orders, whole systems of human values. He is always manning the barricades of civilization. He constantly lives at a turning point: it is now or never in organizing resistance to conspiracy. Time is forever just running out. Like religious millenarians, he expresses the anxiety of those who are living through the last days and he is sometimes disposed to set a date for the apocalypse. . . . .

The apocalypticism of the paranoid style runs dangerously near to hopeless pessimism, but usually stops short of it. Apocalyptic warnings arouse passion and militancy, and strike at susceptibility to similar themes in Christianity. Properly expressed, such warnings serve somewhat the same function as a description of the horrible consequences of sin in a revivalist sermon: they portray that which impends but which may still be avoided. They are a secular and demonic version of adventism. . . . Since what is at stake is always a conflict between absolute good and absolute evil, the quality needed is not a willingness to compromise but the will to fight things out to a finish. Nothing but complete victory will do. Since the enemy is thought of as being totally evil and totally unappeasable, he must be totally eliminated—if not from the world, at least from the theater of operations to which the paranoid directs his attention. This demand for unqualified victories leads to the formulation of hopelessly demanding and unrealistic goals, and since these goals are not even remotely attainable, failure constantly heightens the paranoid’s frustration. Even partial success leaves him with the same sense of powerlessness with which he began, and this in turn only strengthens his awareness of the vast and terrifying quality of the enemy he opposes.

This enemy is clearly delineated: he is a perfect model of malice, a kind of amoral superman: sinister, ubiquitous, powerful, cruel, sensual, luxury-loving. Unlike the rest of us, the enemy is not caught in the toils of the vast mechanism of history, himself a victim of his past, his desires, his limitations. He is a free, active, demonic agent. He wills, indeed he manufactures, the mechanism of history himself, or deflects the normal course of history in an evil way. He makes crises, starts runs on banks, causes depressions, manufactures disasters, and then enjoys and profits from the misery he has produced. The paranoid’s interpretation of history is in this sense distinctly personal: decisive events are not taken as part of the stream of history, but as the consequences of someone’s will.

Hofstader goes on the identify the importance of converts who have defected from the side of the enemy--the Free Masons, the Catholics, the Communists, and have converted to the side of righteousness. Hofstadter comments

Another recurring aspect of the paranoid style is the special significance that attaches to the figure of the renegade from the enemy cause. The anti-Masonic movement seemed at times to be the creation of ex-Masons; it certainly attached the highest significance and gave the most unqualified credulity to their revelations. Similarly anti-Catholicism used the runaway nun and the apostate priest, anti-Mormonism the ex-wife from the harem of polygamy; the avant-garde anti-Communist movements of our time use the ex-Communist. In some part the special authority accorded the renegade derives from the obsession with secrecy so characteristic of such movements: the renegade is the man or woman who has been in the secret world of the enemy, and brings forth with him or her the final verification of suspicions which might otherwise have been doubted by a skeptical world. But I think there is a deeper eschatological significance attached to the person of the renegade: in the spiritual wrestling match between good and evil which is the paranoid’s archetypal model of the world struggle, the renegade is living proof that all the conversions are not made by the wrong side. He brings with him the promise of redemption and victory. In contemporary right-wing movements a particularly important part has been played by ex-Communists who have moved rapidly, though not without anguish, from the paranoid left to the paranoid right, clinging all the while to the fundamentally Manichean psychology that underlies both.

Thus, for instance, the infatuation of the anti-Communists with someone like Whittaker Chambers and the loathing of his evil doppleganger, Alger Hiss (who really was of the devil's party).

Hofstader next turns to the elaborate "proofs" undertaken by those working in the paranoid style:

One of the impressive things about paranoid literature is precisely the elaborate concern with demonstration it almost invariably shows. One should not be misled by the fantastic conclusions that are so characteristic of this political style into imagining that it is not, so to speak, argued out along factual lines. The very fantastic character of its conclusions leads to heroic strivings for “evidence” to prove that the unbelievable is the only thing that can be believed. Of course, there are highbrow, lowbrow, and middlebrow paranoids, as there are likely to be in any political tendency, and paranoid movements from the Middle Ages onward have had a magnetic attraction for demi-intellectuals [e.g., Steve Bannon]. But respectable paranoid literature not only starts from certain moral commitments that can be justified to many non-paranoids but also carefully and all but obsessively accumulates “evidence.” . . . .

The typical procedure of the higher paranoid scholarship is to start with such defensible assumptions and with a careful accumulation of facts, or at least of what appear to be facts, and to marshal these facts toward an overwhelming “proof” of the particular conspiracy that is to be established. It is nothing if not coherent—in fact, the paranoid mentality is far more coherent than the real world, since it leaves no room for mistakes, failures, or ambiguities. It is, if not wholly rational, at least intensely rationalistic; it believes that it is up against an enemy who is as infallibly rational as he is totally evil, and it seeks to match his imputed total competence with its own, leaving nothing unexplained and comprehending all of reality in one overreaching, consistent theory. It is nothing if not “scholarly” in technique. McCarthy’s 96-page pamphlet McCarthyism contains no less than 313 footnote references, and Mr. Welch’s fantastic assault on Eisenhower, The Politician, is weighed down by a hundred pages of bibliography and notes. The entire right-wing movement of our time is a parade of experts, study groups, monographs, footnotes, and bibliographies.

          . . . .  

What distinguishes the paranoid style is not, then, the absence of verifiable facts (though it is occasionally true that in his extravagant passion for facts the paranoid occasionally manufactures them), but rather the curious leap in imagination that is always made at some critical point in the recital of events.

            . . . . 

What is missing is not veracious information about the organization, but sensible judgment about what can cause a revolution.

            . . . . 

The singular thing about all this laborious work is that the passion for factual evidence does not, as in most intellectual exchanges, have the effect of putting the paranoid spokesman into effective two-way communication with the world outside his group—least of all with those who doubt his views. He has little real hope that his evidence will convince a hostile world. His effort to amass it has rather the quality of a defensive act which shuts off his receptive apparatus and protects him from having to attend to disturbing considerations that do not fortify his ideas. He has all the evidence he needs; he is not a receiver, he is a transmitter.

What triggers the paranoid style. Hofstadter weighs this question and ventures an answer after having noted Norman Cohen's The Pursuit of the Millenium, which documents extreme religious and political movements in medieval times: 

The recurrence of the paranoid style over a long span of time and in different places suggests that a mentality disposed to see the world in the paranoid’s way may always be present in some considerable minority of the population. But the fact that movements employing the paranoid style are not constant but come in successive episodic waves suggests that the paranoid disposition is mobilized into action chiefly by social conflicts that involve ultimate schemes of values and that bring fundamental fears and hatreds, rather than negotiable interests, into political action. Catastrophe or the fear of catastrophe is most likely to elicit the syndrome of paranoid rhetoric. (Location 522) 

Are we now in fear of catastrophe? For different reasons and with varying degrees of probability, we are (and in some instances should hold such fears).

As much as I've quoted from Hofstadter's essay, there's a good deal more to it (although it's not very lengthy). Reading and reflecting on this essay reinforces my intuition that it would prove relevant (if I may use that 60s term) to our own times.

. . . .

. . . .

 

Thoughts on the Law, the Legal Process, Constitutional Interpretation, Rhetoric & Evidence, Originalism, and Dobbs

Some thoughts: 

1. Law is a set of codes & standards of conduct enacted through speech. 

2. To be effective, the law must have legitimacy; to wit, people must recognize the validity of the courts & the state in promulgating & enforcing the laws. Of course, force becomes the final arbiter, but every regime needs to economize on the use of force. 

3. In order for a system of laws to be effective, they must be seen as (in some measure) legitimate, just, & predictable (non-arbitrary). 

4. Courts at all levels write opinions or speak from the bench seeking to justify their decisions (at least in American courts). All of these statements seek to justify a decision, from small claims to the Supreme Court. 

5. Decisions must be justified by reference to the evidence in the case (testimony and non-testimonial exhibits) and application of the law(s) to the particular case; i.e., what is the appropriate law to apply. 

6. Our laws come from acts of the legislature (Congress, state legislatures, city councils, etc.) and from judicial precedent (common law). 

7. Every decision requires an “interpretation” of the law to the circumstances; sometimes it's quite simple because the law (precedent or statute) is quite specific, and sometimes the law is frustratingly vague. But each decision requires an act of interpretation and application of the relevant law. 

8. And while there are some principles & maxims about how to interpret & construct the laws, they are few & not often binding; and this is especially so in matters of constitutional law. 

9. In arguing a legal position, a lawyer or judge is constrained only by the rules of sound rhetoric. The judge or lawyer can call upon precedent, logic, experience, common sense, intuition, or other considerations that the decision-maker (the judge or jury for the lawyer; the parties & the public for a judge) considers legitimate and persuasive. 

10. The consequences of a decision always play a role in the decision-maker's final decision; sometimes those consequences are acknowledged and apparent; sometimes consideration of the consequences is sub-silentio. And consideration of the consequences goes beyond the parties to the lawsuit and considers the public and posterity as well. (E.g., What precedent does this set?) 

11. “Originalism” in constitutional law is an interpretive and rhetorical conceit.  Originalism seeks to fix the meaning and application of a constitutional provision to the meaning and intention claimed to have been held by the original drafters of the provision. In some instances, there is no contention about such a provision; for instance, in order to qualify to serve as president, a person must be at least 35 years of age and born in the U.S. The statement of this provision is precise, concise, and utterly unambiguous. As to “right to bear arms,” “due process of law,” and “cruel and unusual punishment,” to take three familiar examples, the issue becomes more complex. 

12. My preferred argument against an originalist-only interpretation and application of the more ambiguous terms in the Constitution (e.g., “due process” and “cruel and unusual punishment”) is that the Framers—and those who later amended the Constitution—were not so foolish as to believe that their words were not open-ended and therefore would need constant interpretation and application. Would they not have known and even encouraged those coming after them to revise, refine, and further elucidate those concepts? Indeed, would they not consider posterity utterly foolish if posterity did not continue the project of building and refining a constitutional order? The ink was barely dry on the original Constitution before Madison (its primary author) drafted a bill in Congress to amend the document (the Bill of Rights). And Chief Justice John Marshall in the early 1800s went about refining and elucidating the Constitution through Supreme Court decisions. To think that the Framers and their progeny, especially the Reconstruction Congress that drafted and sent to the states the 14th Amendment, wanted us to freeze their concepts in time in an insult to those individuals, an unmerited insult. (The 14th Amendment applies “due process” and “equal protection” provisions to the states.) 

15. In fact, for law in general, and for constitutional jurisprudence in particular, there is no definitive mode or method of interpretation and application of constitutional provisions. The standard is one of persuasiveness within the legal and political community and with the public, as well. (The length of Justice Alito’s majority opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson is indicative of the importance and difficulty of justifying the Court’s decision to overrule Roe and Casey. 

16. Originalism is a fig-leaf that seeks to conceal the pre-determined result position in the case of Dobbs v. Jackson. Overall, originalism is a tool that works to roll back the expansion of constitutionally guaranteed rights established by the Supreme Court in the 20th century. 

The Making of a Counter Culture: Reflections on the Technocratic Society and Its Youthful Opposition (1969)

 

1969 publication; my first reading spring 1972

I first read this book in the spring of 1972 for a course entitled "Introduction to Political Philosophy" (or "Theory" or "Thinking"). The line-up of reading was what you'd expect: Plato's Republic, Machiavelli's The Prince, Marx (Basic Writings, Feuer), Mill's On Liberty, and one that didn't fit the mold: Roszak's The Making of a Counter Culture. All the readings were stimulating and enlightening, but it was Roszak's book that most intrigued me. I was a freshman in college (University of Iowa) from a small town in Iowa. I grew up with parents active in Republican politics, and I'd been to two Republican national conventions by the time I was 16 years old. I knew a lot about American politics and current events, but I'd never thought deeply about the underpinnings of politics and political thought, nor about the roots of what I was beginning to see around me at the University of Iowa. Most of what I knew of the wider world--and the disruption going on within the U.S. and elsewhere--had come to me via television. Roszak's book gave some shape to the hippies, the counter culture, and the politics going on around me. However, Roszak doesn't spend much time addressing politics in his book; Richard Nixon gets little (if any) notice, but neither does Tom Hayden, the SDS, or the Port Huron statement. Instead, it focused upon "technocracy," the "myth of objective consciousness," and thinkers that were critical of the American main stream in which we lived. Heady stuff. 

Earlier this spring I happened upon a copy of the Anchor mass-market paperback and decided to pop for it at the princely sum of $4. Now I've read it, and I now have a sense, reaching back exactly 50 years ago, of why it captured my attention. Roszak doesn't spend much time on the sociology of hippiedom or youth culture. He concentrates on the intellectual foundations upon which this counter-culture was based. Thus, I was introduced to the work of Herbert Marcuse and Norman O. Brown and the "dialectics of liberation;" Allen Ginsberg and Alan Watts and the "journey to the East . . . and points beyond;" Timothy Leary (and others; but no Ram Dass) regarding "the counterfeit infinity and the use and abuse of psychedelic experience;" and Paul Goodman and the "visionary sociology" of "exploring utopia." In addition, in briefer considerations and notes, I was introduced to Jacques Ellul and Lewis Mumford, among others. In discussing all of these thinkers and others, Roszak deals an even hand: he provides a careful and considered exposition of their thinking before undertaking any critique. His eye is at once appreciative and critical. 

In his final two chapters, "The Myth of Objective Consciousness" and "Eyes of Flesh, Eyes of Fire," Roszak lays out his underlying critique of "technocracy" and "the myth of objective consciousness." In a nutshell, the culture that puts an emphasis on efficiency, nuclear deterrence (and thus armament), objectivity, rationality, bureaucracy, and technology is one that stunts the human personality, the complete human. Thus, Roszak's critique points to those who seek to escape this one-sided and ill-formed culture: starting with his quote of Blake and then considering others. But the final two chapters are mostly Roszak's essay that riffs on the thinkers listed above and others like them. 

Does this book still resonate with me? Yes, indeed it does. Early this year I embarked upon Iain McGilchrist's masterwork, The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World, and as you may discern from the title, it deals with many of the same issues as does Roszaks book: how we perceive the world, interact with it, and mold it. Indeed, when Roszak wrote this first book our greatest threat was that of instantaneous nuclear annihilation. Of course, we still experience that threat, but now we've added the threat of slow civilizational death from climate change and other degradations of the environment. And politically, we've gone from having a man in the White House who had the grace to attempt to hide his crimes that attempted to undermine democracy, unlike the recent one who blatantly trumpeted his crimes. Thus, we live in world where authoritarianism isn't a threat that emanates from a monolithic communist block but is one that arises in the U.S. and elsewhere from indigenous sources. And because all politics lies downstream from culture, we may deduce that our technocratic culture has failed us. We appear as deer in the headlights: frozen, unable to move as multiple threats bear down upon us. The call went out back in the 1970s from Roszak to William Irwin Thompson and others and continues with the likes of William Ophuls and Iain McGilchrist, among the many who have critiqued and warned--indeed, prophesied--as to where we we're headed. Going back to this source of my journey has proven worthwhile. It reminds me that so much remains to be accomplished. 

Electrifying The Titanic: The Shipwreck of Industrial Civilization by William Ophuls (2021)

2021 coda to Apologies to the Grandchildren

This booklet (50 pages) is vintage William Ophuls. Brief, pungent, to the point. In fact, it’s probably best seen as a coda to Apologies to the Grandchildren: Reflections on Our Ecological Predicament, Its Deeper Causes, and Its Political Consequences (2018). I recommend reading Apologies first, but then I’d recommend reading his entire body of work. So, start where you will, but start. 

In Electrifying the Titanic, Ophuls breaks no new ground. His theme throughout his books, especially those published in this century (beginning with Plato’s Revenge) share a common theme: our industrial civilization is destined for a reckoning, and the reckoning will not see the survival of industrial civilization. The causes are many, including some causes suffered by civilizations in the past. Our civilization is outrunning its resources, including the resources needed to address its “waste.” Of course, it’s become obvious to all but those most determined to remain obtuse that we no longer are looking at the reality of climate change as a reality ahead of us; we are in the midst of it. And to allow the human project to survive, we will need to see a complete change in our ecological, economic, social, and political systems. Entire worldviews need to change. 

Sounds too much like Chicken Little’s warning that the sky is falling? I wish that I could believe that, but I fear—yes, fear—that Ophuls is on to something. We seem destined to keep our heads in the sand as long as possible to extend the status quo that's melting (literally) before our eyes. We have leaders who acknowledge the problem, but who are unable to move the procrastinators, gamblers, and Pollyannas. We need to slam on the brakes before we collide head-on with reality. Of course, if this seems too harsh, too “alarmist,” then don’t read Ophuls. Ophuls writes with the voice of an Old Testament prophet or (as he apparently is), a Buddhist master who brooks no excuses.  I believe that Ophuls is a Buddhist meditation teacher as well as a leading thinker in the field of ecology, civilization, and politics. His book on Buddhist meditation is aptly titled Buddha Takes No Prisoners. So if you’re looking for solace and encouragement, go elsewhere. On the other hand, if you’re willing to hear a prophetic voice, listen up! 

Again, this isn’t the place to start reading Ophuls, but still, he covers some basics. In short, we can’t continue to consume at the rate that we have been. Much of our efforts will now have to go into preserving what we have, not expanding our capabilities. A replacement bridge, for instance, adds to GNP but it doesn't expand our capabilities. Much of what we do to keep our economic machine humming along involves piling complexity onto complexity in an effort to solve, or more often, simply to postpone resolving our problems. At some point—forced by circumstances—we’ll have to reduce and simplify. Unfortunately, our path of development has kicked the lower (simpler) rungs of the ladder out from beneath us, which will cause a sudden fall and preclude a climb down. When all is said and done, Ophuls believes that we humans will once again become primarily an agricultural species. (In an earlier work, borrowing, I believe, from William Irwin Thompson, Ophuls hopes for something like “Bali with electronics.”)

But is a dignified retreat or realignment of our civilization possible? Ophuls isn’t optimistic. He notes that the American constitutional system doesn’t fit well in our contemporary world. Indeed, he describes the U.S. constitutional regime as “antiquated.” Also, the civil society upon which Tocqueville saw American democracy based has declined precipitously. We lack an “authoritative standard of virtue.” And addition to the disorder of our current political regime, we have “thermodynamic debts” as a result of “degradation, decay, and disorder." All of these factors bode a “time of troubles” ahead. 

Recognizing that our political regime is likely to fail the current challenges, the best advice that Ophuls has to offer is the practice of Machiavelli’s virtu; that is, strength of heart and mind in the face of daunting fate. We will live again in the world of Thucydides, in which the strong will prey upon the weak. We will need Machiavelli’s ethics—a willingness to use evil in the pursuit of a higher good—even more in the future than we have in the past. 

Is the analysis of Ophuls correct? Over the course of his books that I’ve read, I find his case convincing. I’d love for him to be proven wrong; but I fear he’s being proven right. If I could wave a wand and awaken the world to our plight; make the human race utterly sensible; and make politics truly functional for the greater good, I would happily do so. But I can’t do this; no billionaire can do this (and even those hoping to do so). All we can do is muddle through, hoping that we act before our situation deteriorates too much further, as indeed it is deteriorating—despite improvements—by the minute. Truly, Ophuls is a prophet crying in the wilderness hoping to turn the people from their folly, their idolatry. But prophecy is neither fortune-telling nor mere forecasting. It's a call to create the future via an appreciation of the consequences of our choices. 

We’d all be wise to weigh the words of this prophet. 

The Great Delusion: Liberal Dreams and International Realities by John J. Mearsheimer

 

Mearsheimer's most recent (2018) book

John Mearsheimer: controversial IR theorist, especially viz. Ukraine-Russia

John Mearsheimer, a professor of international relations at the University of Chicago, has been in the news of late. Such notoriety seems unlikely for what would otherwise be an obscure professor (outside the world of academia and government). But Mearsheimer is a proponent of what he terms “offensive” and “structural” realism as the best understanding of how nations behave toward one another. In short, a conceptual framework that attempts to gauge whether we will enjoy peace or suffer war. Among Mearsheimer’s opinions, based on his conception of realism, has been a long-standing series of warnings about NATO expansion toward Russia and about the West becoming too involved in the status of Ukraine. This concern about NATO expansion and Ukraine, in particular, is not recent. He wrote about the topic extensively in 2014, when Putin grabbed Crimea from Ukraine and began his effort to eventually grab the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine. But Mearsheimer’s concern with Ukraine goes back even further. In 1993, Mearsheimer published an article in Foreign Affairs arguing that Ukraine should retain the nuclear weapons that fell into its hands with the collapse of the Soviet Union. (“The Case for a Ukrainian Nuclear Deterrent.”) In this piece, Mearsheimer presciently argues:

A nuclear Ukraine makes sense for two reasons. First, it is imperative to maintain peace between Russia and Ukraine. That means ensuring that the Russians, who have a history of bad relations with Ukraine, do not move to reconquer it. Ukraine cannot defend itself against a nuclear-armed Russia with conventional weapons, and no state, including the United States, is going to extend to it a meaningful security guarantee. Ukrainian nuclear weapons are the only reliable deterrent to Russian aggression. If the U.S. aim is to enhance stability in Europe, the case against a nuclear-armed Ukraine in unpersuasive. (p.50-51.) 

Mearsheimer continues: 

A war between Russia and Ukraine would be a disaster. Great power wars are very costly and dangerous, causing massive loss of life and worldwide turmoil, and possibly spreading to involve other countries. The likely result of that war? Russia's reconquest of Ukraine would injure prospects for peace throughout Europe. It would increase the danger of a Russian-German collision, and sharply intensify the security competition across the continent. 

A conventional war between Russia and Ukraine would entail vast military casualties and the possible murder of many thousands of civilians. Russians and Ukrainians have a history of mutual enmity; this hostility, combined with the intermixing of their populations, raises the possibility that war between them could entail Bosnian style ethnic cleansing and mass murder. This war could produce mil lions of refugees clamoring at the borders of Western Europe. 

In addition, there are 14 operational nuclear reactors in Ukraine that might produce new Chernobyls if left unattended or attacked during a conventional war. The consequences of such a war would dwarf the death and suffering in the Balkans, where more than 50,000 people have died since the summer of 1991. Needless to say, if nuclear weapons were used the costs would be immeasurable. 

There is also the threat of escalation beyond the borders of Russia and Ukraine. For example, the Russians might decide to reconquer other parts of the former Soviet Union in the midst of a war, or might try to take back some of Eastern Europe. Poland and Belarus might join forces with Russia against Ukraine or gang up with Ukraine to prevent a Russian resurgence. The Germans, Americans or Chinese could get pulled in by their fear of a Russian victory. (Doubters should remember that the United States had no intention of fighting in Europe when war broke out in 1914 and again in 1939.) Finally, nuclear weapons might be used accidentally or purposefully against a third state. 

The security environment in Europe would certainly become heated and competitive in the wake of a Russian war with Ukraine. Other great powers would move quickly and sharply to contain further Russian expansion. The Russians would then think seriously for security reasons about controlling their many smaller neighbors. Other great powers would move to check them. Ukrainian nuclear weapons are the only reliable deterrent to Russian aggression. 

One might expect the burden of deterring a resurgent Russia to fall to an American-dominated NATO, in effect, bringing back the Cold War order that kept Europe at peace for 45 years. (p.52-54.) 

I could continue the quote for some length, but I assume by now you have Mearsheimer’s point, and you appreciate the accuracy of his analysis. (I highly commend the entirety of the article to you. And if you want more articles by him, go to his website: https://www.mearsheimer.com/. And be sure and appreciate the faux portrait. ) 

Why all of this background for a review of Mearsheimer’s most recent book, The Great Delusion (2018)? First, I want you to understand why I chose to read this book. Given all that Mearsheimer has stated about Ukraine and Russia, I wanted a deeper background. This book does have some discussion of the situation in Ukraine that meshes with his previous writing on the topic. Also, I’d read his The Tragedy of Great Power Politics near the time of its original publication in 2001, and I found it an accessible and comprehensive guide to Mearsheimer’s thinking about realism. And like The Tragedy, The Great Delusion is a comprehensive, learned, and accessible guide to Mearsheimer’s thought about liberalism in foreign policy. And--spoiler alert--he thinks very poorly of it. 

Before going further with Mearsheimer’s critique of liberalism in foreign policy (especially in contemporary U.S. foreign policy), I should make it clear that Mearsheimer clearly states his preference for a liberal democratic nation-state. But his enthusiasm for liberalism ends at the water’s edge. For in addition to liberalism, two other factors contend with liberalism (and other forms of domestic political arrangements) in guiding a nation’s behavior towards other nation-states: nationalism and realism. And to jump again to a Mearsheimer conclusion: both considerations of nationalism and realism trump liberalism’s aspirations when it comes to issues of foreign policy. This is so even in U.S. foreign policy, despite ongoing U.S. aspirations to establish a liberal hegemony throughout as much of the world as possible. 

Mearsheimer is excellent in providing a taxonomy of contemporary liberalism. He identifies “modus vivendi liberalism, which is essentially classical liberalism defined by primary concerns for negative liberty or “freedom from” and that tends toward libertarianism, and “progressive liberalism,” which is concerned with providing its citizenry with opportunities and promotes conceptions of positive freedom, or “freedom to,” the ability to live in an environment that maximizes opportunities and that uses government to provide such an environment. Mearsheimer also identifies two close relatives of liberalism, utilitarianism and “liberal idealism” (which was very prominent in nineteenth-century Britain via T.H. Green and others). Mearsheimer concludes that “progressive liberalism” is now the dominant variety, with, for instance, the application of Keynesian and monetary economics to smooth economic turbulence. (We saw this in spades with the economic stimulus during the height of the COVID pandemic.) 

But while Mearsheimer expresses no significant reluctance about the practice of progressive liberalism domestically, he finds liberal attitudes inadequate when trying to apply its principles abroad. The reality of nationalism and the structure of the international political arena (anarchical) don't work with liberalism. Here, too, Mearsheimer, thoroughly, fairly, and accurately presents the realities of nationalism and realism. Nationalism, now reflected in the dominance of the nation-state system, is a potent force that all states must reckon with, both domestically and in foreign relations. As Mearsheimer notes, nationalism has overwhelmed ideas of class and ideology in defining relations among nations in ways that both liberal democracies and Marxist regimes couldn’t appreciate. Vietnam fought a war with the French and then the U.S. based much more on nationalism than on commitment to Marxist doctrine. Then after defeating the U.S., Vietnam battled its Marxist neighbors China and Cambodia. I should note (as Mearsheimer does) that Vietnam currently enjoys good relations with the U.S. because the Vietnamese (as good realists) share a common commitment with the U.S. and other nations to check Chinese power in Southeast Asia. This current relationship with the U.S. enhances, not threatens, Vietnamese nationalism. 

In addition to serving as a leading exponent of the realist tradition in international relations (a lineage that can be traced back to the ancient Greek, Thucydides), Mearsheimer is an outspoken critic of U.S. foreign policy as practiced by recent Republican and Democrat administrations. Why? Because, as he argues at length in this book, liberalism doesn’t work as an export. Only in a unipolar world (a world with only one dominant great power) could such a project be undertaken, as it was in the immediate post-Cold War era.  But now, with the rise of China and the residual military might of Russia, we no longer live in a unipolar world. And, as Mearsheimer points out, in any event, U.S. efforts to export democracy to unwilling nations have failed miserably at great cost to the U.S. Iraq and Afghanistan provide only the two most recent and dramatic instances of failure to forcibly export democracy and the rule of law. And for its effort, the U.S. has suffered a decline in its own democratic norms and commitment to the rule of law. 

Mearsheimer prosecutes a strong case. He makes a persuasive argument. He emphasizes the structural imperatives reflected in realism. In brief, there are the strong and the weak among nations, and there is no 9-1-1 to call in the event of an emergency. Therefore, there’s an imperative to be among the strong, including the use of alliances. All true, I agree. But in weighing threats and the power dynamics behind any threats, Mearsheimer doesn’t address the nature of regimes, at least not directly. He doubts democratic peace theory, economic interdependence theory, and international institutions theory as guarantors—or even as promotors—of peace. But he neglects to consider how regimes contribute to the mix. For example, as he notes, liberal democracies have to jump through more hoops—including pleasing (or cajoling) their voting public—to pursue any foreign adventures. Of course, it's been done; the U.S. provides too many examples. But popular descent can throw sand in the works, unlike authoritarian regimes like Putin’s Russia, where dissent, even internal (intra-government) dissent is quashed.

But more importantly to an argument about the limits of realism, some borders, once hotly contested, have become pacific. In the early nineteenth century the U.S. took the territory it coveted from Mexico, and many in the U.S. had their eyes on Canada during that same period. But now no armies patrol those borders. (In the U.S., border patrols and vigilantes monitor, but that’s because so many in Latin America want to come to the U.S., not because the U.S. covets those territories or the U.S. fears an invasion by the Mexican army.) And could any president to date have gotten the U.S. behind a war to conquer Canada? The imperialist ideology of the nineteenth and early twentieth century might have garnered some support for such ventures (witness the result of the Spanish-American War), but now? I think not. The nature of our regime, including the electorate, has changed. In realist theory, Canadians should perpetually be nervously scanning their southern border: their neighbor to the south is bigger: bigger population, bigger economy, bigger armed forces (including nukes), and it’s more militaristic.  Yet, the Canadians, I don't believe, live in fear of a U.S. invasion. How does realist theory explain this? As far as power dynamics go, is this so different from Russia and Ukraine? 

Let’s consider a hypothetical. Canada remains Canada, but the U.S. falls to an authoritarian regime. A strongman [sic] has taken over. Predictably, except for a privileged few (let’s call them oligarchs or plutocrats if you’re old-fashioned), things are going poorly in the U.S. The economy is a wreck, people are constrained from exercising their traditional rights, and popular discontent is on the rise. Americans have begun looking north to how well Canadians are doing with a government committed to liberal democracy and the rule of law. In fact, the migration of U.S. citizens to Canada has increased dramatically. The U.S. rulers begin talking about how the U.S. and Canada are really much the same, with so many shared traditions. Really, the strongman [sic] argues, the Manifest Destiny of the U.S. (taken out and dusted off) is to encompass the whole of North America. Might a U.S.-Canadian war break out? 

Mearsheimer would suggest the more likely scenario would be if Canada decided to become an ally of China. Then the U.S. would consider war against Canada to stem a Chinese encroachment so close to the U.S. (citing the Monroe Doctrine, no doubt). But while I wouldn’t disagree with Mearsheimer's counter-scenario, I don’t believe that it negates mine, nor would I consider his scenario the more likely. My point is that regimes make a difference. The culture, the political system, the traditions, the discourse, and all the beliefs of those active in a nation-state count toward whether and to what extent a realist paradigm becomes the dominant mode of relations between (or among) various nation-states. The constitutions and cultures of Japan and Germany are different now than they were at the beginning of WWII. Their geography didn’t change, but their regimes did, including the friends they kept (the alliances that they joined). Also, the popular culture in each nation was greatly pacified by the defeat both suffered in the war. These and other factors greatly affected the policies and actions of their decision-makers. Of course, realistic considerations have always played a role in their thinking, and of late, significant trends toward re-armament have gained traction in both Germany and Japan; but even so, they move only slowly and cautiously. 

So is Mearsheimer right that the West is at “fault” for the current war in Ukraine? Let me ask you this: A person enters a neighborhood known for its muggers, and the person knows of this danger. The person has every right to be there and to be free from harm. The person chooses to walk through the neighborhood, and sure enough, gets mugged. Is the person at fault? Does the person who exercised a perfectly legitimate right in a peaceful, non-threatening manner deserve the blame? By the way, the mugger, upon being confronted, defended himself by saying that he didn’t want “their type” in our neighborhood. Besides, the mugger says, the person kept bad friends (hostile to the mugger and his group), and they might have weapons. Again, is the person mugged at fault? Should the cops, who warned the person not to enter this bad neighborhood, decline to act because the person acted foolishly in picking this route? “Rights be damned, you’re a fool, and you have to pay the price,” says the cop standing down. Is this the course the cops should take?

To be clear, Mearsheimer isn’t arguing in favor of Putin’s invasion, nor does he support Putin’s cause. Mearsheimer is only saying that the whole bad situation could have been avoided with the exercise of greater prudence (to wit, a realist analysis of the dynamics of the situation). He has a point, but we're in it now. The cops have arrived (or at least are providing assistance to the person amid the mugging), so how far should they—should we—go? How much should we--the U.S., NATO--risk in defense of Ukraine? Should the mugger walk away with the victim's purse, or even the victim's life, with impunity?

There are no easy, clearly right or wrong answers here. And, however you come down on these issues, Mearsheimer’s analysis provides a bracing tonic against wishful thinking and continuing fantasies. Liberalism, especially U.S. liberalism that seeks export abroad, is called to question in a detailed and knowledgeable exposition that challenges the status quo. We’d all be advised to take heed and govern ourselves accordingly.