Metaphysic, Method and Politics: The Political Philosophy of R.G. Collingwood by James Connelly

 

Early in this book Professor Connelly (now Emeritus),  makes an important point, remarking that this work doesn't replicate the territory covered by David Boucher's earlier work, The Social and Political Philosophy of R.G. Collingwood. I'd already read Boucher's work less than a year ago, and I found it quite useful. When I purchased Connelly's work, I must admit a bit of trepidation that it would in fact cover the same ground as Boucher's. Mind you, both men are two of the most important contemporary scholars addressing Collingwood, especially Collingwood's politics (Giuseppina D'Oro also deserves a shout-out.) In fact, according to Connelly's website, he and Boucher have collaborated on a new edition of Collingwood's Speculum Mentis (1924), Collingwood's first mature work and one that sets the terms for his future philosophical investigations (and a book that, according to Louis Mink in his Mind, History and Dialectic: The Philosophy of R.G. Collingwood, provides the key to understanding Collinwood's entire project.)* Thus, I hope that you get a sense of both my enthusiasm for the work of these two established scholars yet my not wanting to simply have them both write books on the same points. But in fact, Connelly was correct in his contention, and his work is indeed different from Boucher's; of course, there is some overlap, but Connelly approaches the topic from a different perspective and maintains a different approach throughout the work. 

Connelly begins his work by demolishing the contention by some, including T.M. Knox and Alan Donegan, that there was a sharp break in Collingwood's thought late in his life, sometimes blamed on Collingwood's declining health. Connelly carefully dismantles these arguments by a thorough review of Collingwood's life-long philosophical project. Of course, there were changes in Collingwood's thought and different shadings over time, but nothing approaching a break, just development. Also, Connelly rightly claims Louis Mink arrived at the same conclusion, and I concur. After establishing the "unity of Collingwood's philosophy," Connelly goes on to discuss Collingwood's ideas about philosophical method and metaphysics that Connelly argues are essential to understanding Collingwood's "political philosophy of civilization." He also visits Collingwood's concept of "absolute presuppositions" as the underpinnings of any metaphysics. It is only after addressing these issues, which comprise the whole of Part One of this book before he turns to Collingwood's political and legal thought. 

In Part Two, Connelly turns to topics such as "the theory, practice, and forms of action," "political action," "civilization and barbarism," and "the dimensions of civilization." Of course, in addressing these topics Connelly's work inevitably overlaps with Boucher's early work, but one still notes the differences. Boucher's work is like a guided tour of the museum, the museum, in this case, is limited mostly to Collingwood's New Leviathan, his most explicitly political book and the last one published during his life, along with some references to other published books. Connelly's work, on the other hand, is more like a talk at the museum that expounds upon the most important displays. Also, Connelly, publishing in 2003, has an advantage over Boucher, who published in 1989, because many of Collingwood's papers were made available to scholars by Collingwood's daughter, Teresa Smith after Boucher's publication. For instance, Collingwood's "Man Goes Mad," an exceptional analysis of the political and cultural predicament of the time was available to Connelly, and he used it and other unpublished drafts to good effect. 

Collingwood described himself as a "European liberal," which, so far as I can tell, provides an accurate description of his political outlook throughout his life. But with Collingwood, little is simple or obvious (although he writes delightfully refreshing prose for a philosopher). His "three laws of politics" considers the reality that in any liberal society there will be rulers and the ruled. Today, I might prefer the terms "elites" or "leaders," but under any terms, he sees that politics will have those at the head and those who follow. But he makes a couple of additional points: First, that there should be a continuous, open influx of membership in the leadership (ruling) group. Second, what the leaders (rulers) do will be mimicked in large measure by the followers (ruled). In other words, example counts; one leads by example. In the contemporary U.S., this observation seems especially important and a lesson hard-learned. 

Connelly's book provides a deep but comprehensive view of Collingwood's thought about politics, law, and civilization, and along with Boucher's book, one could not ask for two more capable books on this topic. And yet despite their impressive and admirable efforts, it seems to me that Collingwood's thought about politics, his political theory, remains underappreciated and under-explored. I came to Collingwood's work as a student of history. But I am also someone deeply interested in political thought, and here is where I received my happy surprise. Once I began reading Collingwood, I was hard-pressed to find a topic about which he wrote that I didn't worthwhile (with the archeology of Roman Britain providing the exception, although I'm sure there are nuggets in those writings as well.) Now it seems to me that a new generation of Collingwood scholars can and should explore and expand Collingwood's political thought. Our age is not so different from his, which experienced the rise of authoritarian regimes in the wake of the Great War and the Great Depression. We have now experienced a growing proto-fascism and authoritarianism in liberal democracies. Also, we face an ecological crisis (climate change and much more) that will greatly tax our political, economic, and social institutions in ways that I'd venture to believe Collingwood would not find surprising. For myself, because I've been updating my acquaintance with the work of Hannah Arendt, I've come to see significant similarities between these two philosophers turned political theorists. Although Arent was about a generation younger than Collingwood, she too was deeply affected by the Great War and rise of fascism and communism. (She was a Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany beginning in 1933.) Their  similarities and differences are quite intriguing and have sparked my enthusiasm for more deeply exploring their stances and deploying them in our time of troubles. I hope others (including Boucher and Connelly) will use Collingwood's insights and those of his contemporaries to help us make sense of our current predicament toward the end of more effective political action. 

*Connelly's website (https://jamesconnellly.academia.edu/cv) indicates that Oxford University Press will issue this new edition of Speculum Mentis this year (2021) edited by Connelly and David Boucher. In addition to making the original text widely available, the new addition will include additional shorter works by Collingwood that haven't been previously published, at least if they follow precedents of previous works of Collingwood that they've edited along with other colleagues. Collingwood left behind a treasure trove of unpublished works that have been gradually published over the course of the last thirty years or so that have proven a boon for students of Collingwood's work and that have helped bring his published works into sharper focus. Good news indeed! (And as a further teaser, the same website indicates that Connelly's biography of Collingwood is scheduled for publication in 2022.) 

Ecology & the Politics of Scarcity Revisited by William Ophuls & A. Stephen Boyan, Jr.

Published in 1992 but still worth the time.

The first question to ask about this book is why anyone would want to read a book that was originally published in in 1977 and then revised in 1992 about topics such as the environment and ecology, about which we've gathered so much new data and written so much in the intervening years.  Haven’t things changed a great deal since then?  Won’t the information contained in this book prove ridiculously out of date?  The answer to these questions is both yes and no, but the gist of the book remains remarkably pertinent to our current situation.  My intention in reading this book was to further mine the insights of its primary author, William Ophuls.  I have already read the five books that Ophuls has published since Ecology and the Politics of Scarcity Revisited (1992), but I’m eager for more.

In this work, which is an updated version of his 1977 original, Ophuls and coauthor A . Stephen Boyan, Jr. continue the original project that Ophuls undertook: to come to terms with the implications of the science of ecology and the environmental degradation that had gained public and political attention in the 1960s and 1970s.  I’m not aware of any other work that so directly addresses the political implications of adopting an ecological mode of thinking and our need to confront our environmental sins.  Ophuls comes to the project with a doctorate in political science from Yale, but he’s done his homework in the science of ecology as well.

The first part of the book addresses the premises of ecological thinking and the current state of our environment.  As Ophuls himself notes in his Afterward to this updated edition, facts and circumstances have both changed and not changed. However, the fundamental dilemmas remain virtually unaltered since 1977 (when his work was first published) and even since the “revisit” of 1992. I  believe that in the 27 years since the publication of this book—although the particulars have changed—the fundamental dilemmas remain and have become starkly apparent.  One benefit of reading Ophuls’s book is that it takes my mind off of the increasingly frightening realities of climate change. It forces me to appreciate that we face a host of other environmental dilemmas that include pressing issues of scarcity and pollution.  And when one thinks systematically about these issues, the number of challenges that we continue to face—no doubt even more compelling than in 1992--leaves me with a sense of foreboding.  Ophuls never glosses over problems or provides comforting bromides or easy solutions.

So the first part of the book remains useful, although particulars are different today than in 1992.  The second part of the book addresses the political implications of ecological scarcity. The political analysis and vision that Ophuls provides are the hallmarks of his work, and these insights make the price of admission (time and money) well worth the expenditure. This book and Requiem for Modern Politics (1997)  provide insights that his later works, Plato’sRevenge (2011), Immoderate Greatness (2012), and Sane Polity (2013), and Apologies to the Grandchildren (2018) don’t address as thoroughly, such as the realities of American politics. The later works explore the need and the possibilities of a new political order, while Ecology and the Politics of Scarcity spends more time on current political realities. (Sadly, those realities remain as real now as they did then—albeit in worse shape.) Thus, even as many of the factual particulars at the beginning of the book are dated, the book is worth reading to receive the benefit of Ophuls’s understanding of American politics and the degree to which our politics depends on an economy of abundance and growth.  As we move toward the 2020 election cycle, we can see that the underlying premise of American political life hasn’t changed, although it is badly frayed by new realities. Candidates must talk about economic growth and expansion—it’s a much easier and comforting sell then talking about the stark realities of climate change and environmental degradation. But if the economic pie can no longer expand (and will likely shrink), what will happen to American politics?  Even vexing national issues, like the role of labor unions, civil rights, and women’s rights were resolved (in some measure) via a tacit understanding that the national economic pie would expand. This frame allowed more groups into the American dream of material abundance without impinging significantly upon those who already hold wealth and power.  But as the decline of the white working-class has continued, we see the politics of fear and desperation coming to the forefront. How can we channel our whole enterprise in a completely new direction?

 In this early work, Ophuls provides the first draft of an alternative politics that he believes the realities of ecological scarcity and limits will impose upon us.  And as we see in his later works, Ophuls draws much of his inspiration and insight from some of the great names in the Western political tradition: Plato, Hobbes, Rousseau, and Burke, and from the American tradition, Jefferson and Thoreau. (He also draws, although to a lesser extent, on the Asian traditions.)  From his references to these thinkers and others, we readily discern that Ophuls’s thinking defies any current popular categories of political thought.  He is at once conservative, liberal, reactionary, and anarchist if one would attempt to classify him. Ophuls’s project is not so much about new political institutions as the need for a whole new political culture and consciousness.  Ophuls uses that Gospel term, “metanoia,” which indicates a change—or conversion—of the heart-mind of a person; to wit, a complete reorientation of values.  Ophuls argues that our entire culture needs to undergo a metanoia that will involve a  new way of experiencing the world ( ecological) and a new way of acting in the world that will replace the dominant paradigms of modernity, including those of upon which our economy and our politics currently operate.  

This new (best case) political order will call upon ways of decision-making that will realize Rousseau’s “the general will” as opposed to “the will of all.” I've been exposed to writers (such as Robert Nisbet) who attribute Rousseau’s “general will” and his injunction that men must be “forced to be free” as the root of hideous modern tyrannies. Thus, these references caused me to pause. But Ophuls never posits a position on the assumption that we humans will become angels--although we’d find ourselves much better off if we learned to curb our appetites. Ophuls’s position, following Rousseau, addresses fundamental issues of game theory that any collective undertaking must resolve to reach some level of success. Given the extreme anti-“collectivist” feeling in the U.S. (and the attendant immiseration of public goods and services that we experience), we realize what a long way we will have to go if we are to achieve the best-case scenario that Ophuls promotes.

For me, going back into this first effort by Ophuls to bring the issues of ecological thinking and environmental realities was well worth the time and effort. It’s not comforting—little that Ophuls writes is reassuring—but it’s good to know the enemy. And through reading Ophuls, we have met the enemy. And it is us.

The Reckless Mind: Intellectuals in Politics by Mark Lilla

Published in 2001, new 2016 afterword

I'm going to do what a good reviewer probably shouldn't do, but life is short and sometimes its good to cut to the nub. Below you'll find the concluding paragraphs of this book by Mark Lilla, and if you read nothing else beyond these paragraphs, you'll have gained a significant value from the book--or at least I did. The topic of the book, generally speaking, is about political thinking by intellectuals in the 20th century, and more specifically, those who in the author's opinion (and mine), took a wrong term. But without further palaver, Lilla's concluding paragraphs:

There is certainly no reason to be nostalgic for the old ideologies and their Jesuits. But that is not to say that the problems they addressed were imaginary or beyond human reckoning. The grand systems were to be resisted because in the end they were inadequate to the task they took up, not because their ambition was wholly misguided. Their failures revealed the need for a more demanding ambition: to understand the present without self-deception. They did not signify the will to make sense of it is futile.

Yet that will has unmistakeably withered since this book was first published [2001]. It has been replaced by a soft dogma for which we have no adequate name. This dogma begins with basic liberal principles like the sanctity of the individual, the priority of freedom, and the distrust of public authority, and advances no further. It is politically democratic but lacks awareness of democracy's weaknesses and how they can provoke hostility and resentment. It promotes economic growth with unreflective faith in the cost-free benefits of free trade, deregulation, and foreign investment. Since it presumes that individuals are all that count, it has next to nothing to say about collectivities and their enterprises, and the duties that come with them. It has a vocabulary for discussing rights and identities and feelings, but not class or other social realities. (The fact that race is now largely conceived as a problem of individual identity and not one of collective destiny requiring sacrifices to reach a common goal, as it was by the American civil rights movement, is significant.) 

This dogma is at once anti-political and anti-intellectual. It cultivates no taste for reality, no curiosity about how we got here or where we are going. It has no use for sociology or psychology or history, not to mention political theory, since it has no interest in institutions and has nothing to say about the necessary and productive tension between individual and collective purposes. It is simplicity itself. This explains why people who otherwise share little can subscribe to it yet draw very different conclusions from it. Small-government fundamentalists on the American right and anarchists on the European left, absolutist civil libertarians and neoliberal evangelists of free markets—the differences between them are superficial. What they share is a mentality, a mood, a presumption—what used to be called, nonpejoratively, a prejudice.

Ideologies inspire lies. But what is a lie? It is a pretense to speaking truth about the world—and thus betrays a recognition that people are after it. Dogmas inspire instead ignorance and indifference. They convince people that a single idea or principle is sacred and all they need to know in order to act in the world. Maintaining an ideology requires work because political developments always threaten its plausibility. Theories must be tweaked, revisions must be revised, evidence must be accounted for or explained away. Because ideology makes a claim about the way the world actually works, it invites and resists refutation. A dogma does not. It kills curiosity and intellectual ambition by rendering them pointless. Our unreflective creed is little different from Luther’s sola fide [by faith alone]: give individuals maximum freedom in every aspect of their lives and all will be well. And if not, then pereat mundus [perish the world].

An ideology gives people the illusion of understanding more than they do. Today we seem to have renounced trying to understand as much as we can. We suffer from a new kind of hubris unlike that of the old master thinkers. Our hubris is to think that we no longer have to think hard or pay attention to look for connections, that all we have to do is stick to our “democratic values” and economic models and faith in the individual and all will be well. The end of the cold war destroyed whatever confidence in the great modern ideologies still remained in the West. But it also left us incurious and self-absorbed. We have abdicated.

And so we need reminding, of many things. Reminding that the problems of capitalist democracies today—the hollowing out of the middle class, the erosion of family and community, the rage against the elites, the eclipse of political parties, widespread indifference to the public interest— cannot be grasped or addressed by focusing single-mindedly on individuals and their rights. Reminding that dealing with people outside our enchanted garden requires more than toleration and concerns with individual human rights. Reminding that we need a much deeper understanding of their histories and psychologies, free from idealization and fear and attentive to the explosive political power of pride and resentment. Reminding, finally, that the lure of tyranny is not the only force that pulls intellectuals off course. Self-deception has countless forms. Today, a decade and a half after its publication, my hope is that The Reckless Mind still serves as just such a reminder.

                                                                                                                --Paris, June 2016 

The Reckless Mind: Intellectuals in Politics (with a New Afterword) pp. 225-227

Mark Lilla's book is a collection of essays about 20th-century intellectuals who ventured into writing and thinking about politics, often with distressing implications. Each chapter was written as a review of the works of the chapter subjects (the first chapter involves three thinkers, the rest address only a single thinker), but the collection works thematically. In brief, some very prominent European thinkers were either very wrong (or ineffective) about politics. Martin Heidegger and Carl Schmitt made camp with the Nazis (although Heidegger backed away, he never recanted his venture). Walter Benjamin and Alexandre Kojeve both skirted with radical politics and with unorthodox thinking. Although Kojeve held significant posts in the French government after his time as a lecturer on Hegel, he never acted overtly to implement a particular program consistent with his more radical thinking. Lilla also discusses the work of Michael Foucault and Jacques Derrida, neither of whom contributed directly to political theory, although became influential about political thinking indirectly. But both followed the French intellectual fashion of commenting on contemporary politics, with sometimes embarrassing conclusions (the same may be said of Sartre, by the way).

I write none of the above to necessarily denigrate some aspects of the thinkers that Lilla discusses. With all thinkers, one gets both wheat and chaff (although too many are long on the latter). The fact that Hannah Arendt championed Heidegger (even late in life) and Benjamin gives us an indication of the value of their thought even as she would remain hostile to some of their political thought and action.

Lilla's essays provide an effective inoculation against taking in the speculations of philosophers-- especially politically naive philosophers--without a lot of critical judgment. Politics is informed by thought, but it consists of innumerable calculations of interest and belief that will continually defy easy schemes or remedies. As Lilla points out in the quote at the beginning of this review, it's easy to slip into either dogma or ideology when considering politics. I think he would agree with Hannah Arendt (and me) that political thought and action requires thinking--making judgments in the midst of the nitty-gritty stuff of everyday reality as experienced in the public sphere.

An excellent book.

After Utopia: The Decline of Political Faith by Judith Shklar

Judith Shklar: 

The state of the world today encourages the growth of unhappy consciousness. It is now the most prevalent of all intellectual conditions, and the one to which the most imaginative and subtle spirits are drawn. And who is to say that they are "wrong"? To be sure, they can offer no coherent account of nature, man, history, or society. They do not even try, for the defeat of the spirit lies in just this: that everything has become incomprehensible. But, then, the strange as this of “the world" is constantly pressed upon us. The romanticism of defeat is the simple submission to the "otherness" of nature and society. All that the unhappy consciousness can do now is preserve its own integrity against the encroachments of a hostile world. Its shortcomings, both practical and intellectual, are obvious enough, but one question remains. Is anything else possible?  163

This edition costs $36.99. Mine cost $2.95. Those were the days my friend!

One of the fun things about having a lot of books (and I do) is that you are subject to a degree of serendipity when you choose one, having so many that I’ve not yet read. Also, many of my books are packed in a hot, dark, crowded storage unit which I can now access at best once a year, and even then with a limited amount of time to ponder selections of what to pack to take to our next venue. So when I unpacked here in Bucharest, many of the selections came as a bit of a surprise. My goal was to grab a lot of my books on 20th-century European history (we had moved to Europe). I guess that it was with this in mind that I tossed in Judith Shklar’s After Utopia: The Decline of Political Faith (1957). I recalled the book because I read it before, in the fall of 1975. John Nelson assigned it for his class on “Contemporary Political Theory.” I’m not sure what I thought of it then, and enough time had passed that loved it or hated it, I would be like a new book to me. (I read a whole lot that semester, which is another story for another time.) Whatever I thought of it then, I can say now that I quite admire it.

Shklar’s aim is to explore the decline in political faith after the Enlightenment, which, roughly speaking, was right after the turn of the French Revolution into a blood bath that eventually brought Europe the figure of Napoleon. Of course, the Enlightenment had critiques before then, such as Rousseau, but the reaction to it reached full bloom after Rousseau and Napolean--each in his own way--critiqued it. So while the Enlightenment had great faith in the power of human reason, after the revolt against the Enlightenment, many elites began to doubt the ability of reason to construct a political system that capable of achieving its ends. While the Enlightenment movement was marked by optimism, intellectualism, and anarchism—in short, Reason—its heyday didn’t last long. Romanticism developed as a counter to Enlightenment, with individuality as its highest aim. But the movement was also marked by a sense of despair at the course of human events. Hegel dubbed this the “unhappy consciousness,” and he also provided us with the idea of the “alienated soul.” This trend continued throughout much of the 19th and into the 20th-century, with attitudes of pessimism and despair marking the work of many artists and thinkers. Some tried to buck the trend, but the list of prominent thinkers and artists who fit into these categories is a who’s who of leaders in thought and the arts. Of course, some tried to defy the trend, and as Shklar notes, because of these efforts, “today we have excessively intellectual poetry and philosophy that calls for more life.” (On the poetry end, try some Jorrie Graham is you don’t believe her.) Terms like “pessimism” and “fatalism,” “mass” and “crowd” come to the forefront of discourse. 

Romanticism cultivates an anti-politics that seeks to defy any social controls. Shklar argues that this morphs into the existentialism of Sartre and others like him: philosophical self-transcendence, historical despair, and aesthetic anarchism are existentialism’s inheritance from the “Romanticism of defeat.” Of course, in the political realm, nothing could prove less promising. As Shklar observes, “at first sight, nothing could seem less promising than an attempt to devise an ethic of isolated individuals.” She goes on: “[E]xistentialism has in its preoccupation with victimhood come to deny the reality of all those human relationships upon which systems of morality is explicitly or implicitly based.” (134) Although to be fair, this is much more true of Sartre than of Heidegger and some others associated with existentialism. (This shortcoming applies as well, I think, to a sympathetic critic and proponent of a more upbeat existentialism like Colin Wilson, who, so far as I can tell, seems to have largely ignored the social and political implications of our existential situation.)

Shklar also explores what she terms “Christian fatalism,” and those who developed “Christian social theory,” which, in short, holds that society and polity are failing because religion (specifically Christianity) has fallen out of favor in Europe (virtually all of the thinkers that she considers are European). But these thinkers provide thin fare, lacking any real explanatory power to back up their contentions. In the face of fascism and totalitarianism, merely alleging a decline of religious faith and practice doesn’t provide a satisfactory account. (She mentions Reinhold Niehbur briefly in a footnote, and I would have liked to have learned more about her perception of this work, which seems to me to go beyond that of the “Christian social theorists.”)

In all of this, even liberalism and socialism lose much of their drive. Shklar briefly discusses Tocqueville, Mill, and Acton, but on the whole, she doesn’t find much optimism in the liberal project, or the socialist alternative, either. (She is perceptive, however, in identifying the Mount Pelerin Society of Hayek, Friedman (Milton), et. al as a platform for promoting a traditional liberal politics and capitalism.) Her treatment of “conservative” liberalism is dated; when she writes this, Bill Buckley is just launching National Review, and of course, things have spun from that starting point in startling ways.

Shklar provides a description of liberalism that is worth pondering:

Liberalism is a political philosophy, romanticism is a Weltansuang, a state of mind which can adapt itself to the most divergent types of political thought. The basic problem of liberalism is the creation of an enlightened public opinion to secure civil rights of individuals and to encourage the spontaneous forces of order in society itself. It has nothing to say about defying convention, except to extend legal protection. The liberal sees the rights of individuals is based on justice or utility. The romantic makes a virtue of self-expression as an end in itself, and sees individuality as necessarily involving an opposition to prevailing social standards. The liberal fears majorities, because they may be too powerful to be just, and too ignorant to be wise. The romantic is revolted by their docility, their indifference to genius, their undistinguished emotional life. The liberal sees only the dangers of power abused. That the state may not interfere with society is a concept of an entirely different order than the idea of a man's first duty is to develop an original personality. Majority rule and minority rights are two central themes of political thought; the unique individual and his enemies, the masses, never enter its considerations. The romantic does not offer society anything but his defiance. Liberalism, on the other hand, attempts to regulate the relations of the individual to society and the state, and of these two to each other, by law. 231-232.

In the end, Shklar seems a bit despairing, but her concluding words betray a sense of what thinking and acting politically should entail. (N.B. She published this work before her fellow Jewish refugee from the Holocaust, Hannah Arendt, published her groundbreaking re-thinking of the possibilities of political life, The Human Condition (1958), which takes a positive view of politics.) Shklar writes:

The fact is that a curious situation exists in which everyone talks about or around politics, but no one really cares – at least, no one is sufficiently concerned philosophically to be capable of renewing the traditional political theory. Yet everyone is perfectly aware that it is in the realm of political life that our present condition and future life are largely determined. Politics impinge upon every moment of our existence, and yet we are incapable of synthesizing our experience into a theoretical picture. It is not only the civic consciousness of the Enlightenment but the entire tradition of political theory that is it at a standstill. 269.… The fact is that intellectually there is no escaping politics. Romanticism is surely not political in its initial inspiration, yet ultimately it too is forced to concern itself with questions of politics, even if only to exploit or to bewail. Indeed, the disgust with omnipresent political activity is the greatest incentive to romanticism.

Yet, despite her bleak assessment, it seems to me that she closes on a faint note of optimism, or perhaps it’s just determination,  a sense that we can find our way out of this predicament, which, although written 60 years ago, rings all too familiar: 

The answer to the quasi-politics of despair would be a new justification of some form of politics as culturally valuable and intellectually necessary. Yet such a thing is beyond us, even after all the countless failings of Christian fatalism and romantic despair--the two most extreme expressions of much general opinion--have been demonstrated. . . .  Paradoxically the fact remains that many people could never be satisfied by despair or by gloomy contemplation of the apocalypse. To a great extent the success of these attitudes is due to the absence of a satisfactory secular social philosophy. 270-271.
  . . . . 

The grand tradition of political theory the began with Plato is, then, in abeyance. A reason skepticism is consequently the sanest attitude for the present. Even skepticism is politically sounder and empirically more justifiable than cultural despair and fatalism. For neither logic nor history is in accord with these, and this even when no happier philosophies flourish. 271-272. 

Shklar's work is, of course, a history and appraisal of the works of high art and intellect within a mostly European tradition. Against this trend, many others were moved with an optimism fueled by amazing technological changes and increasing wealth. And while some despised politics, others jumped head-long into the fray. Some came away jaded or disillusioned, but others, liberals, Marxists, and all manner of different philosophies and outlooks, did not sit on the sidelines and despair. Of course, some of those who were active became authoritarians, fascists, Leninists and Stalinists, and Nazis. And the "masses"? They went about their lives in the midst of all of this economic, technological, social, and political change, wondering how it worked, but primarily concerned with the immediate circumstances of their own well-being and that of their families. Thus, Shklar's story is only a part of the whole, but it's nonetheless important and well-told, and one that still resonates with the world around us today. 

From Max Weber: Politics as a Vocation

Max Weber (1864-1920)

All of the following excerpts are taken from Max Weber's "Politics as a Vocation". A link to the PDF is here (it's short). It's worth noting that Weber, a very well-known German sociologist, presented this a lecture in Munich, Bavaria (Germany) in the midst of an uprising that led to a brief Marxist government there. A few years later, Munich was the site of a beer-hall putsch that merits consideration when contemplating Weber's words. 

[F]irst of all the career of politics grants a feeling of power. The knowledge of influencing men, of participating in power over them, and above all, the feeling of holding in one's hands a nerve fiber of historically important events can elevate the professional politician above everyday routine even when he is placed in formally modest positions. But now the question for him is: Through what qualities can I hope to do justice to this power (however narrowly circumscribed it may be in the individual case) ? How can he hope to do justice to the responsibility that power imposes upon him? With this we enter the field of ethical questions, for that is where the problem belongs: What kind of a man must one be if he is to be allowed to put his hand on the wheel of history?

 One can say that three pre-eminent qualities are decisive for the politician: passion, a feeling of responsibility, and a sense of proportion. To be sure, mere passion, however genuinely felt, is not enough. It does not make a politician, unless passion as devotion to a 'cause' also makes responsibility to this cause the guiding star of action. And for this, a sense of proportion is needed. This is the decisive psychological quality of the politician: his ability to let realities work upon him with inner concentration and calmness. Hence his distance to things and men.

 'Lack of distance' per se is one of the deadly sins of every politician. It is one of those qualities the breeding of which will condemn the progeny of our intellectuals to political incapacity. For the problem is simply how can warm passion and a cool sense of proportion be forged together in one and the same soul? Politics is made with the head, not with other parts of the body or soul. And yet devotion to politics, if it is not to be frivolous intellectual play but rather genuinely human conduct, can be born and nourished from passion alone. However, that firm taming of the soul, which distinguishes the passionate politician and differentiates him from the 'sterilely excited' and mere political dilettante, is possible only through habituation to detachment in every sense of the word. The 'strength' of a political 'personality' means, in the first place, the possession of these qualities of passion, responsibility, and proportion.

 Therefore, daily and hourly, the politician inwardly has to overcome a quite trivial and all-too-human enemy: a quite vulgar vanity, the deadly enemy of all matter-of-fact devotion to a cause, and of all distance, in this case, of distance towards one's self. 

[The politician] works with the striving for power as an unavoidable means. Therefore, 'power instinct,' as is usually said, belongs indeed to his normal qualities. The sin against the lofty spirit of his vocation, however, begins where this striving for power ceases to be objective and becomes purely personal self-intoxication, instead of exclusively entering the service of 'the cause.' For ultimately there are only two kinds of deadly sins in the field of politics: lack of objectivity and--often but not always identical with it--irresponsibility. Vanity, the need personally to stand in the foreground as clearly as possible, strongly tempts the politician to commit one or both of these sins. This is more truly the case as the demagogue is compelled to count upon 'effect.' He therefore is constantly in danger of becoming an actor as well as taking lightly the responsibility for the outcome of his actions and of being concerned merely with the 'impression' he makes. His lack of objectivity tempts him to strive for the glamorous semblance of power rather than for actual power. His irresponsibility, however, suggests that he enjoy power merely for power's sake without a substantive purpose. Although, or rather just because, power is the unavoidable means, and striving for power is one of the driving forces of all politics, there is no more harmful distortion of political force than the parvenu-like braggart with power, and the vain self- reflection in the feeling of power, and in general every worship of power per se. The mere 'power politician' may get strong effects, but actually his work leads nowhere and is senseless. (Among us, too, an ardently promoted cult seeks to glorify him.) In this, the critics of 'power politics' are absolutely right. From the sudden inner collapse of typical representatives of this mentality, we can see what inner weakness and impotence hides behind this boastful but entirely empty gesture. It is a product of a shoddy and superficially blase attitude towards the meaning of human conduct; and it has no relation whatsoever to the knowledge of tragedy with which all action, but especially political action, is truly interwoven.

 Now then, what relations do ethics and politics actually have? Have the two nothing whatever to do with one another, as has occasionally been said? Or, is the reverse true: that the ethic of political conduct is identical with that of any other conduct? Occasionally an exclusive choice has been believed to exist between the two propositions--either  the one or the other proposition must be correct. But is it true that any ethic of the world could establish commandments of identical content for erotic, business, familial, and official relations; for the relations to one's wife, to the green-grocer, the son, the competitor, the friend, the defendant? Should it really matter so little for the ethical demands on politics that politics operates with very special means, namely, power backed up by violence?

 By the Sermon on the Mount, we mean the absolute ethic of the gospel, which is a more serious matter than those who are fond of quoting these commandments today believe. This ethic is no joking matter. The same holds for this ethic as has been said of causality in science: it is not a cab, which one can have stopped at one's pleasure; it is all or nothing. This is precisely the meaning of the gospel, if trivialities are not to result. Hence, for instance, it was said of the wealthy young man, 'He went away sorrowful: for he had great possessions.' The evangelist commandment, however, is unconditional and unambiguous: give what thou hast--absolutely everything. The politician will say that this is a socially senseless imposition as long as it is not carried out everywhere. . Thus the politician upholds taxation, confiscatory taxation, outright confiscation; in a word, compulsion and regulation for all. The ethical commandment, however, is not at all concerned about that, and this unconcern is its essence. 

[L]et us consider the duty of truthfulness. For the absolute ethic it holds unconditionally. Hence the conclusion was reached to publish all documents, especially those placing blame on one's own country. On the basis of these one-sided publications the confessions of guilt followed --and they were one-sided, unconditional, and without regard to consequences. The politician will find that as a result truth will not be furthered but certainly obscured through abuse and unleashing of passion; only an all-round methodical investigation by non-partisans could bear fruit; any other procedure may have consequences for a nation that cannot be remedied for decades. But the absolute ethic just does not ask for 'consequences.' That is the decisive point. 

We must be clear about the fact that all ethically oriented conduct may be guided by one of two fundamentally differing and irreconcilably opposed maxims: conduct can be oriented to an 'ethic of ultimate ends' or to an 'ethic of responsibility.' This is not to say that an ethic of ultimate ends is identical with irresponsibility, or that an ethic of responsibility is identical with unprincipled opportunism. Naturally nobody says that. However, there is an abysmal contrast between conduct that follows the maxim of an ethic of ultimate ends--that is, in religious terms, 'The Christian does rightly and leaves the results with the Lord'--and conduct that follows the maxim of an ethic of responsibility, in which case one has to give an account of the foreseeable results of one's action. 

You may demonstrate to a convinced syndicalist [radical], believing in an ethic of ultimate ends, that his action will result in increasing the opportunities of reaction, in increasing the oppression of his class, and obstructing its ascent--and you will not make the slightest impression upon him. If an action of good intent leads to bad results, then, in the actor's eyes, not he but the world, or the stupidity of other men, or God's will who made them thus, is responsible for the evil. However a man who believes in an ethic of responsibility takes account of precisely the average deficiencies of people; as Fichte has correctly said, he does not even have the right to presuppose their goodness and perfection. He does not feel in a position to burden others with the results of his own actions so far as he was able to foresee them; he will say: these results are ascribed to my action.  The believer in an ethic of ultimate ends feels 'responsible' only for seeing to it that the flame of pure intentions is not quenched: for example, the flame of protesting against the injustice of the social order. To rekindle the flame ever anew is the purpose of his quite irrational deeds, judged in view of their possible success. They are acts that can and shall have only exemplary value. 

But even herewith the problem is not yet exhausted. No ethics in the world can dodge the fact that in numerous instances the attainment of 'good' ends is bound to the fact that one must be willing to pay the price of using morally dubious means or at least dangerous ones--and facing the possibility or even the probability of evil ramifications. From no ethics in the world can it be concluded when and to what extent the ethically good purpose 'justifies' the ethically dangerous means and ramifications. 

The ethic of ultimate ends apparently must go to pieces on the problem of the justification of means by ends. As a matter of fact, logically it has only the possibility of rejecting all action that employs morally dangerous means--in theory! In the world of realities, as a rule, we encounter the ever-renewed experience that the adherent of an ethic of ultimate ends suddenly turns into a chiliastic prophet. Those, for example, who have just preached 'love against violence' now call for the use of force for the last violent deed, which would then lead to a state of affairs in which an violence is annihilated. . . . Those of you who know Dostoievski will remember the scene of the 'Grand Inquisitor,' where the problem is poignantly unfolded. If one makes any concessions at all to the principle that the end justifies the means, it is not possible to bring an ethic of ultimate ends and an ethic of responsibility under one roof or to decree ethically which end should justify which means. 

You will find war integrated into the totality of life-spheres in the Bhagavad-Gita, in the conversation between Krishna and Arduna. 'Do what must be done,' i.e. do that work which, according to the Dharma of the warrior caste and its rules, is obligatory and which, according to the purpose of the war, is objectively necessary. Hinduism believes that such conduct does not damage religious salvation but, rather, promotes it. When he faced the hero's death, the Indian warrior was always sure of Indra's heaven, just as was the Teuton warrior of Valhalla. The Indian hero would have despised Nirvana just as much as the Teuton would have sneered at the Christian paradise with its angels' choirs. This specialization of ethics allowed for the Indian ethic's quite unbroken treatment of politics by following politics' own laws and even radically enhancing this royal art.

 All religions have wrestled with it [problem of political ethics], with highly differing success, and after what has been said it could not be otherwise. It is the specific means of legitimate violence as such in the hand of human associations which determines the peculiarity of all ethical problems of politics. 

Whosoever contracts with violent means for whatever ends--and every politician does--is exposed to its specific consequences. This holds especially for the crusader, religious and revolutionary alike. Let us confidently take the present as an example. He who wants to establish absolute justice on earth by force requires a following, a human 'machine.' He must hold out the necessary internal and external premiums, heavenly or worldly reward, to this 'machine' or else the machine will not function. Under the conditions of the modern class struggle, the internal premiums consist of the satisfying of hatred and the craving for revenge; above all, resentment and the need for pseudo-ethical self-righteousness: the opponents must be slandered and accused of heresy. The external rewards are adventure, victory, booty, power, and spoils. . . . After coming to power the following of a crusader usually degenerates very easily into a quite common stratum of spoilsmen. 

Whoever wants to engage in politics at all, and especially in politics as a vocation, has to realize these ethical paradoxes. He must know that he is responsible for what may become of himself under the impact of these paradoxes. I repeat, he lets himself in for the diabolic forces lurking in all violence. The great virtuosi of acosmic love of humanity and goodness, whether stemming from Nazareth or Assisi or from Indian royal castles, have not operated with the political means of violence. Their kingdom was 'not of this world' and yet they worked and sill work in this world. 

Everything that is striven for through political action operating with violent means and following an ethic of responsibility endangers the 'salvation of the soul.' If, however, one chases after the ultimate good in a war of beliefs, following a pure ethic of absolute ends, then the goals may be damaged and discredited for generations, because responsibility for consequences is lacking, and two diabolic forces which enter the play remain unknown to the actor. These are inexorable and produce consequences for his action and even for his inner self, to which he must helplessly submit, unless he perceives them. 

Surely, politics is made with the head, but it is certainly not made with the head alone. In this the proponents of an ethic of ultimate ends are right. One cannot prescribe to anyone whether he should follow an ethic of absolute ends or an ethic of responsibility, or when the one and when the other. One can say only this much: If in these times, which, in your opinion, are not times of 'sterile' excitation--excitation  is not, after all, genuine passion--if now suddenly the Weltanschauungs politicians crop up en masse and pass the watchword, 'The world is stupid and base, not I,' 'The responsibility for the consequences does not fall upon me but upon the others whom I serve and whose stupidity or baseness I shall eradicate,' then I declare frankly that I would first inquire into the degree of inner poise backing this ethic of ultimate ends. I am under the impression that in nine out of ten cases I deal with windbags who do not fully realize what they take upon themselves but who intoxicate themselves with romantic sensations. From a human point of view this is not very interesting to me, nor does it move me profoundly. However, it is immensely moving when a mature man-- no matter whether old or young in years--is aware of a responsibility for the consequences of his conduct and really feels such responsibility with heart and soul. He then acts by following an ethic of responsibility and somewhere he reaches the point where he says: 'Here I stand; I can do no other.' That is something genuinely human and moving. And every one of us who is not spiritually dead must realize the possibility of finding himself at some time in that position. In so far as this is true, an ethic of ultimate ends and an ethic of responsibility are not absolute contrasts but rather supplements) which only in unison constitute a genuine man--a man who can have the 'calling for politics.'

 I wish I could see what has become of those of you who now feel yourselves to be genuinely 'principled' politicians and who share in the intoxication signified by this revolution. It would be nice if matters turned out in such a way that Shakespeare's Sonnet 102 should hold  

Our love was new, and then but in the spring,
When I was wont to greet it with my lays;
As Philomel in summer's front doth sing,
And stops his pipe in growth of riper days: 

But such is not the case. Not summer's bloom lies ahead of us, but rather a polar night of icy darkness and hardness, no matter which group may triumph externally now. Where there is nothing, not only the Kaiser but also the proletarian has lost his rights. When this night shall have slowly receded, who of those for whom spring apparently has bloomed so luxuriously will be alive? And what will have become of all of you by then? Will you be bitter or banausic? Will you simply and dully accept world and occupation? Or will the third and by no means the least frequent possibility be your lot: mystic flight from reality for those who are gifted for it, or--as is both frequent and unpleasant--for those who belabor themselves to follow this fashion? In every one of such cases, I shall draw the conclusion that they have not measured up to their own doings. They have not measured up to the world as it really is in its everyday routine. Objectively and actually, they have not experienced the vocation for politics in its deepest meaning, which they thought they had. They would have done better in simply cultivating plain brotherliness in personal relations. And for the rest--they should have gone soberly about their daily work.

 Politics is a strong and slow boring of hard boards. It takes both passion and perspective. Certainly all historical experience confirms the truth --that man would not have attained the possible unless time and again he had reached out for the impossible. But to do that a man must be a leader, and not only a leader but a hero as well, in a very sober sense of the word. And even those who are neither leaders nor heroes must arm themselves with that steadfastness of heart which can brave even the crumbling of all hopes. This is necessary right now, or else men will not be able to attain even that which is possible today. Only he has the calling for politics who is sure that he shall not crumble when the world from his point of view is too stupid or too base for what he wants to offer. Only he who in the face of all this can say 'In spite of all!' has the calling for politics.