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?