Max Weber's "Politics as a Vocation:" The Concluding Paragraph

Max Weber: 1864-1920

 The following quote is the concluding paragraph of Max Weber's lecture (and later essay), “Politics as a Vocation,” first delivered in Munich in 1918 as fighting in the Great War had drawn to a close. This essay is one of the most important and stimulating reflections on political life that I know of. I return to it on occasion for perspective. The entire essay is less than 30 pages. I commend it to you. 

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 heroesmust 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.

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.) 

Comparing the Thought of Hannah Arendt with That of R.G. Collingwood: Some Surprising Similarities--Part 1

[N.B. This is a work in progress, shared at this point to focus my thinking and, I hope, to elicit suggestions and criticisms. When circumstances allow (I hope no later than mid-July), I plan to return to this essay and continue the exploration in more depth.]

Hannah Arendt (`906-1975)

R.G. Collingwood (1889-1943) 

The focus of this blog post is to explore the similarities and differences (to a lesser extent) between the thinking of Hannah Arendt and R.G. Collingwood. Collingwood died before Arendt gained her fame as a political thinker and before she'd published anything of significance in English (if anything at all). In all likelihood, Collingwood had no acquaintance whatever with Arendt, and he didn't engage directly with her mentors Heidegger and Jaspers. Neither have I found Arendt engaging Collingwood, although I'd be surprised if she was not aware of his posthumously published work The Idea of History (1946), which became the most important work about the philosophy of history in her lifetime. Her peers, such as Leo Strauss, reviewed Collingwood's The Idea of History. But as yet I've found no reference by Arendt to Collingwood's work. But despite their lack of direct engagement, I contend that these two thinkers, informed and prompted by the Great War, the Crisis Years (1919-1939), and the Second World War, share a great deal in common, especially in their understanding of politics and related matters, such as the importance of thinking, freedom, action, speech and other topics within the sphere of politics and life. It's my intention in this post to begin this exploration and then in later posts drill down into their similarities---and differences--as they become apparent. This initial blog includes some background about both thinkers that readers may already know.

I offer this summary of points of similarities between these two thinkers that I intend to explore in this post and one or more later posts:

1. Background
1. Both report an early interest in Kant that led to an interest in philosophy in general.
2. Both exhibited a deep desire to understand from an early age.
3. Both pursued an early interest and aptitude for learning Greek and Latin that resulted in profound knowledge of classical culture.
4. Both displayed an early interest and commitment to thinking.
5. Both thinkers report that they were prompted to action in response to the political turmoil caused by the rise of fascism in the 1930s,
6. Both shared deep and perceptive readings of Marx, although neither was a Marxist.
7. Both thinkers were deeply steeped in the Western philosophical tradition.
2. Mature thinking 
1. Both thinkers placed an emphasis on action.
2. Both thinkers placed an emphasis on freedom, especially freedom as exhibited in thought and action.  Collingwood often refers to action as res gestae. 
3. Both thinkers placed an emphasis on the importance of speech.
4. Both thinkers placed an emphasis on the political community (Collingwood preferred the term "society" but he uses it in a sense quite distinct from Arendt's formulation of the term).
5. Both thinkers placed a premium on thinking.
6. Both thinkers placed an emphasis on practice informing theory.
7. Both were critical of traditional Western metaphysics.
8. Both opposed illiberalism (with liberalism understood in its original sense of emphasizing individual liberty and dignity, the rule of law, etc.).
9. Both acknowledged the importance of the state.
10. Both were outspoken in their profound critiques of fascism. 
3. Miscellaneous topics
1. Both were critical of psychology as a field of study and of psychoanalysis in particular.
2. Both wanted to separate "economics" from politics, although Arendt is much stricter in her desire for separation, while Collingwood seems to want only to emphasize the distinctness of the two fields. 
3. Both often sprinkled their texts with ancient Greek and Latin words and phrases, which can prove daunting for the reader. (Query: why doesn't Kindle have a translator function at least for Latin?)
4. Both were wary--and at times downright dismissive--of academia and academic discourse. 
5. Neither of these thinkers founded a school of thought in any traditional sense, although both had (and have) those who've hailed and extolled their work. Neither thinker seems to have desired to found or foster any unique school of thought, nor did either of them adhere to any particular school. In short, both thinkers are unique. But neither founded a school, unlike some of their illustrious processors, like Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Kant, Hegel, or their peers, who promoted schools of thought like phenomenology, logical positivism, pragmatism, and such. 

[N.B. You can skip the next two paragraphs if you choose, these simply recount my path to these two thinkers and how I now see each in light of the other. In other words, it's a "how I got here" narrative. I (sometimes) appreciate a writer's personal narrative about how she or he came to a topic and the path of the writer's inquiry, but you may not.]

As an undergraduate student in political theory, I developed an intellectual crush on Hannah Arendt. I become quite enamored of her thought, even to the point that in a class in which her work was only one of many considered, the instructor had to remark on my final evaluation that he'd have preferred that I'd not focused my interest so markedly on Arendt. And while you might say that I outgrew my intellectual crush, her thought continues to inform my thinking about politics (and law) over the years. The advent of Trump and his despotic, authoritarian bent--perhaps we might even say his fascism--sent me back to thinking about Arendt and referencing her insights. 

Also, while an undergraduate, I was exposed to the thought of R.G. Collingwood in a philosophy of history class. That exposure didn't take. I believe that I read the assigned piece taken from Collingwood's The Idea of History, but it didn't sink in, and I came away with only a name in the back of my head. Now fast-forward from my undergraduate days at the University of Iowa in 1974 to 2012, when I took up residence for about a year in Jaipur, India. Not far from where we lived in Jaipur was an Oxford University Press bookstore with relatively cheap "South Asia" editions of many titles, including Collingwood's The Idea of History (rev. ed.). I bought it, knowing that it was a classic in the field of thinking about history. Politics and history are two topics that had intrigued me since I was a kid (the law came later). I bought a copy. I didn't really dig into the book until we were living in China in 2014-2015, but when I (finally!) read IH for the first time, I was quite taken with both the book and with Collingwood. I've been reading and re-reading Collingwood since then, delving into his work not only about history, but also his work in moral theory, politics, art, religion, anthropology, and metaphysics. (He published widely in Roman history and archeology as well, but the prior topics are quite enough for me.) If Arendt was a youthful crush, Collingwood has proved a late summer romance. (I don't want to admit to autumn just yet.)

This spring, under the cover of the pandemic, I returned to Arendt via a Virtual Reading Group sponsored by the Hannah Arendt Center at Bard College. Thus, I've been reading Arendt along with Collingwood (primarily his The New Leviathan, his volume dedicated to thinking deeply about politics), and I've been struck by the many similarities in their thinking. Thus, I propose in the remainder of this post to explore some of the similarities (and differences) that I've noticed. I'll start on the surface and then work my way down into some of the particulars of the intersections of their thought.

R.G. Collingwood was born in the Lake Country in northern England near Connistan Lake in 1889. He was "home-schooled" until he departed for Rugby School at age 13. Collingwood describes his schooling in his Autobiography:

UNTIL I was thirteen years old I lived at home and was taught by my father. Lessons occupied only two or three hours each morning; otherwise he left me to my own devices, sometimes helping me with what I chose to do, more often leaving me to work it out for myself. It was his doing that I began Latin at four and Greek at six; but my own that I began, about the same time, to read everything I could find about the natural sciences, especially geology, astronomy, and physics; to recognize rocks, to know the stars, and to understand the working of pumps and locks and other mechanical appliances up and down the house. 

Collingwood, R. G., An Autobiography. Read Books Ltd., Kindle Edition. 

Here is one particular event that struck young Collingwood and that stuck with him. He reports the incident and reflects upon its effect:

My father had plenty of books, and allowed me to read in them as I pleased. Among others, he had kept the books of classical scholarship, ancient history, and philosophy which he had used at Oxford. As a rule I left these alone; but one day when I was eight years old curiosity moved me to take down a little black book lettered on its spine ‘Kant’s Theory of Ethics’. It was Abbott’s translation of the Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten; and as I began reading it, my small form wedged between the bookcase and the table, I was attacked by a strange succession of emotions. First came an intense excitement. I felt that things of the highest importance were being said about matters of the utmost urgency: things which at all costs I must understand. Then, with a wave of indignation, came the discovery that I could not understand them. Disgraceful to confess, here was a book whose words were English and whose sentences were grammatical, but whose meaning baffled me. Then, third and last, came the strangest emotion of all. I felt that the contents of this book, although I could not understand it, were somehow my business: a matter personal to myself, or rather to some future self of my own. It was not like the common boyish intention to ‘be an engine-driver when I grow up’, for there was no desire in it; I did not, in any natural sense of the word, ‘want’ to master the Kantian ethics when I should be old enough; but I felt as if a veil had been lifted and my destiny revealed. 

There came upon me by degrees, after this, a sense of being burdened with a task whose nature I could not define except by saying, ‘I must think.’ What I was to think about I did not know; and when, obeying this command, I fell silent and absent-minded in company, or sought solitude in order to think without interruption, I could not have said, and still cannot say, what it was that I actually thought. There were no particular questions that I asked myself; there were no special objects upon which I directed my mind; there was only a formless and aimless intellectual disturbance, as if I were wrestling with a fog. [Emphasis added.]

Collingwood, R. G., An Autobiography. Read Books Ltd., Kindle Edition. 

In this extended quote, make a mental note of Kant, understanding, thinking, and solitude.

Collingwood went on to Oxford before The War and then to the Admiralty during The War (because of a bad knee). Collingwood completed his undergraduate work (before the War) with flying colors. Classicist Mary Beard describes Collingwood's educational experience at Oxford:

But it is surely crucial that [Collingwood] was a product of the old Oxford ‘Greats’ (that is, classics) course, which focused the last two and a half years of a student’s work on the parallel study of ancient history on the one hand, and ancient and modern philosophy on the other. Most students were much better at one side than the other, and most stories tell of the desperate attempts by would-be ancient historians to cram enough Plato, Descartes and Hume to get their high-flying pass in the final exams (or alternatively of desperate attempts by would-be philosophers to remember enough of the Peloponnesian War or Agricola’s campaigns in Britain to do the same). In the context of Greats, Collingwood was not a maverick with two incompatible interests. Given the educational aims of the course, he was a rare success, even if something of a quirky overachiever; his combination of interests was exactly what Greats was designed to promote.

Later, Collingwood would hold not only the Waynflete Chair in Metaphysical Philosophy but also positions in Roman history and archeology. Collingwood spent many summers working at archeological sites around Britain.  The takeaway here: Collingwood was extremely well versed and active in classical studies.

Let us now turn to the background of Hannah Arendt. Arendt was born in 1906 in Hanover, Germany, making her almost a generation younger than Collingwood. Arendt lost her father at a young age, and she was raised in Konigsberg, Germany, the lifelong residence of Immanuel Kant. She was raised in an assimilated Jewish family, although she reports "I did not know from my family that I was Jewish. My mother was completely a-religious." (Arendt, Hannah. Essays in Understanding, 1930-1954 (p. 6). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition). Yet she became aware from an early age--because of anti-Semitic comments made at school--that her Jewish background made her "special" in some ways. As to her education and interests, Arendt reported the following in an interview on German television with Gunter Gauss broadcast in 1964:

GAUS: You studied in Marburg, Heidelberg, and Freiberg with professors Heidegger, Bultmann, and Jaspers; with a major in philosophy and minors in theology and Greek. How did you come to choose these subjects?
ARENDT: You know, I have often thought about that. I can only say that I always knew I would study philosophy. Ever since I was fourteen years old.
GAUS: Why?
ARENDT: I read Kant. You can ask, Why did you read Kant? For me the question was somehow: I can either study philosophy or I can drown myself, so to speak. But not because I didn’t love life! No! As I said before—I had this need to understand.… The need to understand was there very early. You see, all the books were in the library at home; one simply took them from the shelves. [Emahasis added.]

Arendt, Hannah. Essays in Understanding, 1930-1954 (pp. 8-9). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. 

Later, to complete her graduate studies under Karl Jaspers, Arendt wrote her dissertation about the concept of love (caritas) in St. Augustine, which she continued to revise even after her emigration to the United States. (This book was translated and published in English in 2014 as Love and Saint Augustine.)

Finally, I should note that Arendt reported that "I have always loved Greek poetry. And poetry has played a large role in my life. So I chose Greek [as a topic of study] in addition [to philosophy and theology]. It was the easiest thing to do, since I read it anyway!" Id. (p. 9).

Collingwood's education at Oxford in the pre-war period, in addition to his work in "the Greats," was overseen by professors who came to be labeled the "Oxford realists," who had displaced the British idealist tradition of Green, Bosanquet, and Bradley from the summit of British philosophy. Collingwood later came to sharply criticize the Oxford realist school of philosophical thinking. Collingwood taught himself Italian to read Dante in the original, and his fluency in Italian allowed him to be greatly influenced in his early years by the contemporary Italian philosophers Benedetto Croce (whom he translated), Guido De Ruggiero, and Giovanni Gentile (although Collingwood came to distance himself from Gentile's work, which turned overtly fascist after The Great War and the rise of Mussolini). After the War, Collingwood took up teaching at Oxford, and he eventually ascended to the Waynflete professorship in 1935. But despite his long tenure at Oxford and the prominence to which he rose there, he issued some sharp criticisms of academia. And despite his pleasant demeanor and popularity as a lecturer, Collingwood remained a philosophical lone wolf. Starting in the 1920s and growing in the 1930s, British philosophy was marked by the rise of logical positivism and linguistic analysis with the likes of Bertrand Russell, G.E. Moore, Wittgenstein (early and late), J.L. Austin, A.J. Ayer, and Gilbert Ryle starting to come to the fore and establish schools of thought that took the main stage. And the philosophy of history, one of Collingwood's long-running topics of investigation, was shunted to the side by followers of the new mainstream of thought. Collingwood had many readers and admirers, but no followers or successors in the sense that there is a Collingwoodian tradition in philosophy.

While Collingwood was establishing himself in Oxford in the 1920s, Hannah Arendt was beginning her collegiate education. Her education included studying with some of the biggest names in German thinking at the time: Heidegger, Jaspers, Bultman, and Husserl, along with a cohort of exceptional peers. She was matriculating through the German academic system until the Depression arrived in 1929 when a new round of anti-Semitism wouldn't allow a young Jewish woman to gain an academic position. The 1933 Reichstag fire sealed her fate. She was arrested but released after eight days. She fled Germany and went to Paris. There she became active in a Zionist organization, although she herself was not a Zionist. With the successful invasion of France by Germany in 1940, Arendt escaped France and proceeded to the U.S., where she lived and worked for the remainder of her life. Upon settling in the U.S., she turned her attention to the politics and realities of totalitarianism and published The Origins of Totalitarianism in 1950, which brought her into the limelight. After the events in Germany in 1929 and the early 1930s, she abjured the label "philosopher," and she came to call herself a "political theorist," although her last work, The Life of the Mind, which was published after her death in December 1975, seems to have marked a return to philosophy. At no time in her life did she hold a tenure track professorship, keeping her distance from the formalities and practicalities-- and what she believed to be the pitfalls--of academia.

The final surface similarity that I want to touch upon is perhaps the key one; that is, the impingement of events upon these two individuals from the rise of fascism in Europe in the 1930s and the outbreak of war. In Arendt's case, the effect upon her is obvious and easily understood: a young Jewish woman fled the Nazi regime in 1933 after her arrest, becoming a refugee in France before fleeing (one may say in a nick of time) to the U.S.  Arendt's young life was totally upended and altered by the course of political events in Europe in the 1930s and 1940s. That she should turn to political action (especially in France before the war) and then to political theory to understand what happened is not surprising.

Collingwood's case, however, is more complicated. Through most of the 1930s, Collingwood was deeply engaged in his work as a philosopher at Oxford. Like Britain as a whole, many in the community at Oxford were not keen to become involved in international affairs or to push Britain into a more active role in opposing the rise of Hitler. But by 1937 both the affairs of the world and Collingwood's health were declining. Collingwood suffered from uncontrolled high blood pressure, and the only recognized treatment at the time was "the rest cure," which Collingwood undertook by sailing and also taking a long voyage to Indonesia. Despite these steps, he began to suffer a series of increasingly serious strokes. Collingwood traveled in addition to his seafaring, visiting Catalonia and the Mediterranean in the 30s and seeing first-hand the effects of the civil war in Spain and the rise of fascism in Italy. But the public didn't learn of his thoughts about the crisis in Europe until he published his An Autobiography in 1939 (written in 1938). In that remarkable work, Collingwood wrote about his upbringing and education and his thoughts about philosophy and philosophers. He also revealed his newfound political ardor. In his Autobiography, he frames his new political consciousness as a part of his effort to reconcile theory and practice. He writes:

I can now see that I had three different attitudes towards this survival [of the medieval distinction between contemplation and action]. There was a first R. G. C. who knew in his philosophy that the division was false, and that ‘theory’ and ‘practice’, being mutually dependent, must both alike suffer frustration if segregated into the specialized functions of different classes.  

There was a second R. G. C. who in the habits of his daily life behaved as if it had been sound; living as a professional thinker whose college gate symbolized his aloofness from the affairs of practical life. My philosophy and my habits were thus in conflict; I lived as if I disbelieved my own philosophy, and philosophized as if I had not been the professional thinker that in fact I was. My wife used to tell me so; and I used to be a good deal annoyed.

 But underneath this conflict there was a third R. G. C., for whom the gown of the professional thinker was a disguise alternately comical and disgusting in its inappropriateness. This third R. G. C. was a man of action, or rather he was something in which the difference between thinker and man of action disappeared. He never left me alone for very long. He turned over in his sleep, and the fabric of my habitual life began to crack. He dreamed, and his dreams crystallized into my philosophy. When he would not lie quiet and let me play at being a don, I would appease him by throwing off my academic associations and going back to my own part of the country to address the local antiquarian society. It may seem an odd form of ‘release’ for a suppressed man of action; but it was a very effective one. The enthusiasm for historical studies, and for myself as their leader in those studies, which I never failed to arouse in my audiences, was not in principle different from the enthusiasm for his person and his policy which is aroused by a successful political speaker.

 Collingwood, R. G., An Autobiography. Read Books Ltd., Kindle Edition. 

Collingwood continued his reflection by noting his enthusiasm when reading Marx:

The third R. G. C. used to stand up and cheer, in a sleepy voice, whenever I began reading Marx. I was never at all convinced either by Marx’s metaphysics or by his economics; but the man was a fighter, and a grand one; and no mere fighter, but a fighting philosopher. His philosophy might be unconvincing; but to whom was it unconvincing? Any philosophy, I knew, would be not only unconvincing but nonsensical to a person who misunderstood the problem it was meant to solve. Marx’s was meant to solve a ‘practical’ problem; its business, as he said himself, was to ‘make the world better’. Marx’s philosophy would necessarily, therefore, appear nonsensical except to a person who, I will not say shared his desire to make the world better by means of a philosophy, but at least regarded that desire as a reasonable one. According to my own principles of philosophical criticism, it was inevitable that Marx’s philosophy should appear nonsensical to gloves-on philosophers like the ‘realists’, with their sharp division between theory and practice, or the ‘liberals’, such as John Stuart Mill, who argued that people ought to be allowed to think whatever they liked because it didn’t really matter what they thought. In order to criticize a gloves-off philosophy like that of Marx, you must be at least enough of a gloves-off philosopher to think gloves-off philosophizing legitimate. 

Id.

Collingwood interrupted the recounting of his newfound creed by reporting that

My attitude towards politics had always been what in England is called democratic and on the Continent liberal. . . . I thought that no authoritarian government, however strong, could be so strong as one which rested on a politically educated public opinion. As a form of government, I thought its essence lay in the fact that it was a nursery-garden where policies were brought to maturity in the open air, not a post office for distributing ready-made policies to a passively receptive country . . . . I did not think that our constitution was free from faults. But the discovery and correction of these faults was the function of governments, not of individual voters. For the system was a self-correcting one, charged with amending its own faults by legislation. . . . 

The whole system, however, would break down if a majority of the electorate should become either ill informed on public questions or corrupt in their attitude towards them: by which I mean, capable of adopting towards them a policy directed not to the good of the nation as a whole, but to the good of their own class or section or of themselves.

Id.  

Collingwood continued his account by discussing changes in British politics during his lifetime and the rise of socialism and fascism on the continent. Collingwood looked favorably upon socialism in its striving for the "collective good," but he disdained fascism:

The great exponents of Fascism have been specialists in arousing mass-emotion; its minor adherents, tacticians and plotters.

Id.

He moved to a discussion of the Spanish Civil War and arrived at the conclusion that

The Spanish civil war was a straight fight between Fascist dictatorship and parliamentary democracy. The British government, behind all its disguises, had declared itself a partisan of Fascist dictatorship. 

Id. 

Collingwood concluded his work with these words:

Fascism. I know that Fascism means the end of clear thinking and the triumph of irrationalism. I know that all my life I have been engaged unawares in a political struggle, fighting against these things in the dark. Henceforth I shall fight in the daylight.  

Id. 

More of the same attitude and an even deeper look at politics came from Collingwood's The New Leviathan: Or Man, Society, Civilization and Barbarism (1942), the last work published during his lifetime. (Collingwood died in January 1943.) The New Leviathan furthers the intent laid down in the Autobiography to gain a greater understanding of political life. In the preface to The New Leviathan Collingwood states:

My own book [in distinction from Hobbes's work] is best to be understood as an attempt to bring the Leviathan up to date, in the light of the advances made since it was written, in history, psychology, and anthropology. The attempt was undertaken, and the writing of the book begun, almost immediately after the outbreak of the present war; when first it became evident that we did not know what we were fighting for, and that our leaders were unable or unwilling to tell us. 

Collingwood, R. G., The New Leviathan. Read Books Ltd., Kindle Edition. 

I will not go into further detail about that book here except to say that it lays out a very complete statement about non-social and social (political) life. (If you're worried about his selection of Hobbes as a role model, please take a look at my recent review, where I quote Collingwood about his selection of a role model, which he addresses in his Preface.)

[End of Part 1. Because of my commitments over the next couple of weeks or more, it will probably be a week or more into July before I can return for another post that will drill down into the particulars of each thinker's ideas about politics in general and particulars such as thinking, understanding, freedom, and so on.]

Despots or Tyrants, Thought & Action; Laziness or Sanity

Contains my subject essay

Perhaps it’s a sign of advancing age, or perhaps it’s merely the continuation of a nearly life-long infatuation, but certain persons and events of the 1930s fascinate me. 

As a Baby Boomer, I became aware of the Second World War, and to a lesser extent the First World War, while in early grade school. Perhaps this exposure along with an innate desire to make sense of events and persons--at least their chronology--that I imagine first spurred my fascination with history in general. But as I grew older and more sophisticated in my historical understanding (even to a modest degree), the war as war--as a military struggle--held less interest for me than the events that led up to the war, the political decisions, cultural trends, and ideas that led to the great conflagrations of the twentieth century, the First and Second World Wars. How could (presumably) rational people get into such horrific situations? What accounts for all of this folly? Who can make sense of it? 

In addition to a fascination with the players and events leading up to the Second World War, I also find myself drawn to thinkers who wrote between the wars. A few of them have resonated deeply with me. Max Weber’s “Politics as a Vocation,” was written in 1919, at the close of the First World War (the installment of the Long War that ran hot and cold between 1914 and 1989). This essay became one touchstone of my thinking about politics. Among other topics, Weber wrote about the “ethic of moral conviction” and the “ethic of responsibility,” a fundamental and sometimes tragic contrast between two ways of approaching political decisions. One of Reinhold Niebuhr’s works from the 1930s, Moral Man and Immoral Society (1932) sets forth an Augustinian (Christian) political realism for the twentieth century by looking at the trends afoot in the world around him in the early 1930s. Niebuhr was at once a Christian and a hard-headed realist. Another compelling source from this era, although she didn’t publish her major works until after the war, is Hannah Arendt. Her earliest published book is The Origins of Totalitarianism (1950) and was written and published after the war. But its inception is grounded in the time leading up to the war. And my most recent “discovery,” R.G. Collingwood, the Oxford philosopher, published significant reflections on political and cultural developments in the waning years of his life (d. 1943). He increasingly turned his attention to political developments in the 1930s while continuing his formidable (non-political) philosophical writing. I've already posted extensively about another Collingwood essay from this period, "Man Goes Mad" (1936). (Part 1-13 of quotes with commentary).

It is to Collingwood again to whom I want to turn, to share his brief but suggestive essay about politics that he wrote sometime around 1941. Returning to my opening theme, Collingwood’s words are rooted in this pre-war and early war era, although, as he often does, he draws heavily upon Plato and the Greek tradition. But the most salient points of the quotes below drew my attention because these words strike me as eerily prescient as I write this in 2019. My nation and much of the world have rekindled a romance with the worst sort of leaders and politics. I believe we can all learn from reflecting on Collingwood’s essay. 

The essay I’m referring to is entitled “The Three Laws of Politics,” and it’s included in Essays in Political Philosophy by R.G. Collingwood, Edited with an Introduction by David Boucher (Clarendon Press, Oxford 2004), 207-223. Collingwood drafted the essay as his Hobhouse Lecture to the London School of Economics. Collingwood, because of his declining health, was unable to deliver the lecture in person. In addition, he adopted the lecture from the larger project he was working upon at the time, The New Leviathan (1943), the final book that he completed before his death in January 1943. (Chapter 25 of the New Leviathan is entitled “The Three Laws of Politics,” but it isn’t as comprehensive or persuasively written as the Essay.) Below is an extended set of quotations from near the end of the essay that struck me. After the quotes, I offer my reflections on Collingwood’s argument. 

Collingwood’s Words

Sec. 4 The Third Law of Politics
Whatever qualities are thus exhibited [by the ruler] in the course of ruling are exhibited as models for imitation. The ruler as pathfinder is the ruler as setter of examples.. . . . I think that nobody will deny that the position occupied by a ruler is such that the characteristics displayed by him in the course of his activity of ruling will in fact tend to be imitated by those over whom he rules; that the tendency will be stronger in proportion as the bond between ruler and subject is closer; and that the fact of this imitation, which in any case will to some extent occur even unconsciously, will be replaced in proportion as the ruler becomes master of his trade by his deliberately offering examples intended to be worth following.  

Sec. 7. The Third Law, continued. . . . 
What I suggest is that, whether or no this is recognized by the accepted or Greek theory of human intelligence, there are two kinds of unintelligence in the world, and these have different functions. There is what may be called negative unintelligence, which is the thing of which Plato says that its proper object is nothing at all; a person in this frame of mind, trying to grab something, grabs nothing; he comes away from all mental effort empty-handed. The other kind of unintelligence is a creative unintelligence, creative of chimeras and nightmares; unintelligence of this kind creates these things more profusely according to its own fecundity; this fecundity being a positive power in so far as it creates, but a mere absence of power in so far as what it creates is nothing at all. The world is in no sense the richer for all its creative efforts. And in this sense it is all one whether you talk about this positive unintelligence or that other negative unintelligence which I mentioned first; in either case there is nothing. 
The question with which we are dealing is this: how can a man, without being intelligent, acquire that mastery over men which the Greek theory of life ascribes to intelligence?
. . . . 
The answer is that there are two ways of being a fool: you may be foolish to stupidity, so that your mental hands grasp nothing of what they try to grasp; or you may be foolish to craziness, so that your mind creates illusions or hallucinations about the things of which you are trying to think. These two kinds of foolishness occur in practice much confused together. The stupid fool, in politics as elsewhere, creates nothing;  the crazy fool creates much although this much, being crazy, comes to nothing. 

But in the meantime, not having been weighed, the crazy fool presents us with the aspect of being a formidable producer. This is in general terms the explanation of things like Nero, of which Tacitus and the whole of Roman history had not a word to give by way of explanation. Small blame to Tacitus; even the greatest brain of Greece had not gone deeply enough into the theory of error to offer him the blueprint of a solution. Plato had an inkling of the truth; but not more than an inkling; Aristotle had not even that. 

The crazy type of fool can pretend to be wise the fertility of his diseased mind gives him an initiative, futile it is true, over his fellow men. He has just as much initiative as a man who is really intelligent; in one sense even more, for he has less to fear. The intelligent man offers himself to an equal wrestling bout of minds; he stands up to all comers, and faces criticism; he does not know from what side criticism is going to come, or that will not prove him to have made a mistake. The crazy type of fool with his psychological hold over his audience will easily convict him of being a fraud which, strange though it may appear, is rather a feather in his cap than a thing to be ashamed of. [Collingwood’s note: “A thing I noticed in Italy in 1939.]. . . . 

 

Sec. 8 The Platonic Tyrant
Plato, in the ninth book of the Republic, has given his readers and memorable description of what he calls a tyrant. By a  tyrant he does not mean what we call a despot, or ruler who rules for personal motives and with considerable display of cruelty, arrogance, and other qualities valuable to him chiefly in their enhancement of his personality. The despot, with all this emphasis on his personality, may have something to emphasize; the laws which he administers with cruelty may be wise and justly administered. There may be a barbaric swagger about him, but it may serve to lend eclat [French: glow] to a genuine political performance.  

The tyrant, on the other hand, puts up no political performance. He is merely so much jetsam, floating on the surface of the waves he pretends to control. His qualities, according to Plato’s scale of values, are not the qualities of a free man, let alone those which would enable him to be the ruler of free men, but the qualities of a slave. He is not the sort of man who can triumph over his own weaknesses; more like the sort of man who would yield to them on every occasion; his progress through the world is a rake's progress supported by burglary, pocket-picking, and other low forms of predatory activity, preparing the way, says Plato, for higher forms of thieving such as robbing temples; or, as we should say, confiscating deposits in banks. His rise to the position of tyrant is consequent on a class movement; it is concurrent with the rise of the lowest social class in the city to the position of gangsters patronized by himself; it is not his own strength or energy that lifts him to a position of tyrant but, so to speak, his low specific gravity. It is in his capacity as so much jetsam that he rides effortless over the waves of politics.

. . . .Sec. 9 The Reversed Action of the Third Law of Politics
The disease works by what I call a reversed action of the Third Law of Politics. Like every other political law, this one does not enforce itself automatically; men must take trouble to obey it. Its direct action begins with a body politic composed of what we call sane men; the result is that they accept the leadership of sane. Where, you may ask, does all this labour go to, all this running to keep in the same place? The answer is: it is the work done by the community in keeping itself sane. It is much easier for any kind of man known to me to doze off into daydreams which are the first and most seemingly innocent stage of craziness. If labour-saving  is what do you want, give up all this trouble about thinking: go mad and have done with it. That is what the tyrant has to offer mankind--an end to the intolerable weariness of sanity. 

The reversed action of the Third Law of Politics is precisely this cessation, on the part of the body politic, of the effort after sanity. The engine has slipped into reverse; and the whole thing, with delicious absence of exertion, is sliding downhill. It is much easier to speak and act and write crazily than to do it intelligently; you just let yourself go, and there you are. This is the first phase of the reverse action. The next phase is the resulting ‘democracy’ (as Plato and Hitler, strangely united for once, agree in calling it) creates leaders for itself, leaders from its own members, leaders of fashion in the temporary freaks of craziness, under whose tyranny the whole body politics lets itself go completely more than ever; for to shout with the mob (that is to obey the tyrant of the moment) is the easiest thing anybody can do. . . . . 
Our relation to the future is not that the future, while it is still future, is to be foreknown by us; the future can be known only when it has become the present; but that it has to be made by us, by the strength of our hands and the stoutness of our hearts. (223) 

Commentary

About whom may Collingwood have been writing? As one can discern from this essay and his other writings, Collingwood was a true classicist and a student of modern history as well (and, as he is best known, one of the foremost voices in the philosophy of history). But Collingwood addresses the political crisis at the time that he writes, so it’s no surprise that Hitler and “Italy” (Mussolini) received specific mention. But as I want to address the political crisis of my time. I could identify a growing number of figures on the current world stage that might fit Plato’s definition of a “tyrant” or that of a despot. But there is one figure who fills my mind because he’s the president of my nation, and he embodies the characteristics of a despot and a tyrant as described by Collingwood. In fact, the first order of consideration is whether we best describe Trump as a “despot” or a "tyrant". 

Collingwood distinguishes Plato’s “tyrant” from “what we call a despot.” Let me repeat Collingwood’s description of a “despot” as one who

rules for personal motives and with considerable display of cruelty, arrogance, and other qualities valuable to him chiefly in their enhancement of his personality. The despot, with all this emphasis on his personality, may have something to emphasize; the laws which he administers with cruelty may be wise and justly administered. There may be a barbaric swagger about him, but it may serve to lend eclat [French: glow] to a genuine political performance.

The application of this description doesn’t demand a subtle analysis. Trump entered the fray with little hope of winning the nomination, let alone the presidency. Given his history of attempting to buy and curry favor with candidates and officials from both parties, and his lack of any policy analysis or sophistication, to contend that his candidacy and presidency are foremost a vanity project is more than justified. To the extent he has carved out a policy legacy, it’s been in the area of immigration, judicial appointments, and tax cuts for the wealthy. As to immigration and migrants, Trump has promoted gratuitous cruelty within a context of what might otherwise be lawful (even if controversial) processes. But everything that is done within his administration that he can control is done with an overweening emphasis on his “personality.” And to contend that there is a “barbaric swagger” that Trump practices also seems beyond the need for proof here. To suggest that this adds a “glow” to his “political performance” provides an interesting turn of phrase to describe his sense of showmanship cultivated by his apprenticeship in the world of professional wrestling, beauty pageants, and “reality'' TV. But a glow--or radioactivity--he does have. Trump has certainly cultivated a cult of personality, which, combined with a well-earned reputation for intimidating, threatening, or smearing any critic or potential rival, makes him a unique figure in the history of the American presidency. So I’m inclined to say that he’s a “despot,” albeit one checked--at least to some degree so far--by the institutions and norms established by the Founders to check such figures and heretofore honored in the American republic. 

But doesn’t Trump fit Plato’s definition of a “tyrant” as Collingwood describes it? Let’s review Collingwood’s description before we move on: 

The tyrant . . . puts up no political performance. He is merely so much jetsam, floating on the surface of the waves he pretends to control.

I question Collingwood’s contention that a tyrant “puts on no political performance.” Is this possible? Even the most absolute and compelling tyrants of the twentieth century, Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini didn’t forego elaborate shows of public pageantry (although I’m less sure of Stalin’s displays). But perhaps this makes them only despots. Perhaps a tyrant can act behind the scenes as a sort of wizard of Oz. I suppose that this may fit dictators in less-developed nations, where military officers and political insiders can climb to the top of the heap and then rule without much in the way of public acknowledgment. And, as Collingwood goes on to suggest, the tyrant doesn’t seriously attempt to manipulate political tides, although this contention, like the one about no political performance, seems counter-intuitive, at least if judged on an absolute scale. Even the most powerful dictator depends on some fellow elites, even if only a Praetorian Guard, to maintain office and life itself.  

But once we move beyond this element in the making of a tyrant, we see something that certainly rings true of Trump. 

His qualities, according to Plato’s scale of values, are not the qualities of a free man, let alone those which would enable him to be the ruler of free men, but the qualities of a slave. He is not the sort of man who can triumph over his own weaknesses; more like the sort of man who would yield to them on every occasion[.]

In this part of the description, the person who is a slave to one’s desires isn’t a “free man,” but is truly a slave. Given the outsized appetites that Trump exhibits, for sexual conquest, publicity, security, fealty, and food, he fits perfectly for this part of the description of a tyrant. Trump is a poster boy for uncontrolled desires, an embodied antithesis of the classical model. All humans suffer weaknesses, but most of us try to minimize or hide these weaknesses. Trump bares himself to the public, perhaps ingratiating himself to those who believe themselves overcome with such otherwise shameful failures. His very slavishness becomes a part of his public spectacle. 

The complement of the tyrant’s slavishness is the tyrant’s grasp for easy money. Collingwood describes the trait:

[H]is progress through the world is a rake's progress supported by burglary, pocket-picking, and other low forms of predatory activity, preparing the way, says Plato, for higher forms of thieving such as robbing temples; or, as we should say, confiscating deposits in banks.

Trump’s money-making ventures have been marked by bankruptcy, fraud, stiffing contractors, tax fraud, and most recently, stealing money from a charity that he controlled. The degree of continuing and unabated unscrupulousness of this man beggars belief. No one comparable had become a contender--and certainly not president--before his arrival on the political stage in 2015. Of course, Trump would not take money directly from the U.S. treasury because that would alienate the plutocratic elite upon which Trump (in part) depends, all of his faux-populism notwithstanding.  

Now Collingwood turns briefly to the political support that brings the tyrant to power: 

His rise to the position of tyrant is consequent on a class movement; it is concurrent with the rise of the lowest social class in the city to the position of gangsters patronized by himself; it is not his own strength or energy that lifts him to a position of tyrant but, so to speak, his low specific gravity. It is in his capacity as so much jetsam that he rides effortless over the waves of politics.

Trump certainly rose to power on a “class movement,” although Americans don’t like to think of “class.” And most Americans hold a suspicion of “movements” although popular movements play a huge role in American history (abolitionism, prohibition, women’s suffrage, union organizing, civil rights, gay rights--to name only a few). And while today America we have some of the most significant disparities of income and wealth in our history, the identity of the “class” that brought Trump to power cannot be delineated solely based on income, wealth, or job status. Geography (rural-small town vs. urban-suburban) and educational attainment (scaled from high school or less on up to the doctoral level) must be added to more traditional identities such as age, race, and traditional party loyalties when attempting to understand the current wide rift among American voters. These factors, in addition to the mix of motives and reasons held by each individual voter, provide most of the explanation for the success of Trump. His win (in the Electoral College) doesn't stem from his talents as a politician. (Scott Adams’s “master persuader” argument notwithstanding). In short, as Collingwood and Plato suggest, a tyrant is more a symptom than the disease, and so it is with Trump. Demagogues, would-be tyrants and despots, only flourish in a receptive climate, one where otherwise cautious voters with an innate tolerance for the status quo become willing to take exceptional risks in choosing leaders and office-holders. When conditions become bad enough on a relative scale, that is, a scale based on perceptions of social, political, or economic inequities (and not absolute deprivations), social upheaval becomes a reality wave that can carry someone like Trump into office (with help from a non-democratic electoral college). 

As you read near the beginning of his essay, Collingwood addressed what I will label the twin evils of “unintelligence” delineated as “negative unintelligence” (inability to grasp an idea; some measure of dumb) and “creative unintelligence,” which is the ability to spin-out ideas that have no foundation in reality. It is this latter description (creative unintelligence) that I want to explore more fully, for it seems the defining species of “unintelligence” in our time. To paraphrase the Gospels of Mark and Mathew, the mentally poor will be with us always; to wit, those who don’t have the time or capacity to think deeply about public affairs. Democracies will always need to contend with this shortcoming and seek to alleviate it as best they can. But those who spin fantasies, or who purvey what Princeton philosopher Harry Frankfurt has labeled “bullshit,” are those today who pose the greatest risk to democracy and sound policy. “Fake news” is a concept bandied about today as a weapon, but it’s just a successor to “disinformation campaign,” “dirty tricks,” and propaganda from days of yore. Yet, there is one problem with this “creative unintelligence”  designation that I don’t think that Collingwood addresses; that is, what if it’s an intentional form of thought and action. In other words, some may be misguided, but others are the (intentionally) misleading. 

My thoughts, I must admit, are prompted by watching members of Congress attempting to defend President Trump in regard to his actions concerning Ukraine and the resulting impeachment investigation. I venture into these thoughts (and this entire essay of mine)  with the knowledge that I’m biased against Trump, and for a long time. I see almost everything about him and his administration as confirmation of my earliest perceptions of his as a potential president. (Here, and yes, Plato gets in on it at the beginning.) So I’m at high risk for a bad case of confirmation bias. And with over four decades in the law, I know that sometimes you have to defend a position that doesn’t provide any attractive explanations and that tests the limits of creativity and reasonableness in attempting to defend a client. However, notwithstanding popular perceptions, most lawyers--myself included--follow the rules and don’t suborn perjury or make arguments that we cannot make in good faith. Everybody (should) have limits when arguing on behalf of a client. (Some don’t, and they are rightly prosecuted; e.g., Michael Cohen.) But with these warnings stated, I’m prepared to move forward.

Are Republicans deluding themselves that they have reasonable, colorable (under the law) arguments? As to the ultimate issue, as to whether impeachment is warranted, even if all the facts are as they seem to be that Trump attempted to shake down the Ukrainian government for an unjustified investigation to implicate his chief political rival (at present), I suppose one can make the argument (demur) that this does not merit impeachment. But as to a true subject of Trump’s requested “investigation” of the Bidens or Ukrainian involvement in the theft of Clinton or DNC emails, I can find no substantive basis. I can find no substantive grounds for the bullshit* defenses offered to date by Republican members of the House. The degree of bad faith, of intentional wrongdoing in the sense of promoting frivolous and misleading argument would, in most courts of law would draw a firm reprimand (or worse) from an impartial judge. In short, “crazy foolishness,” as Collingwood describes it, maybe crazy like a fox. The henhouse and not the truth is the object of the venture. And we should note that while none of this “unintelligence” (intentional or no) is either new or unique, it is no less reprehensible. 

Before we close, we should turn one last time to Collingwood’s discussion of the role of the body politic in promoting and tolerating a tyrant or despot. Collingwood attributes a break-down in political judgment to laziness. “Sanity” is an effort, “daydreams” are a breeze. If we don’t want to make the effort, we can take up the tyrant’s offer: “an end to the intolerable weariness of sanity.” Collingwood anticipates the post-war work of Hannah Arendt when he calls upon us to act to shape our future by thought and speech. 

In the throws of the early days of the war against Nazi Germany and after the fall of France, Collingwood offers his readers, his nation, and those who share the values that he promotes, a different path. Collingwood, the great philosopher of history, calls upon us to eschew Hegalian and Marxist fantasies of “scientific laws” that foretell our future. Instead, he calls upon us to be the actors and not mere props in the play of our future: 

Our relation to the future is not that the future, while it is still future, is to be foreknown by us; the future can be known only when it has become the present; but that it has to be made by us, by the strength of our hands and the stoutness of our hearts.

Hannah Arendt on comprehension, resistance, beginnings, and political freedom

Comprehension does not mean denying the outrageous, deducing the unprecedented from precedents, or explaining phenomena by such analogies and generalizations that the impact of reality and the shock of experience are no longer felt. It means, rather, examining and bearing consciously the burden our century has placed on us--neither denying its existence nor submitting meekly to its weight. Comprehension, in short, means the unpremeditated, attentive facing up to, and reisisting of reality--whatever it may be.  

Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951/1976), viii, quoted in Bernstein, Why Read Hannah Arendt Now (2018), 120 

Beginning, before it becomes a historical event, is the supreme capacity of man; politically it is identical with man's freedom.  

Id. 479, quoted in Bernstein, id., 121.