Thoughts for the Day: Tuesday 15 September 2020

Speculum Mentis

R. G. Collingwood

To be a monad, as opposed to an atom; to be a world in itself unconnected with an indefinite number of other such worlds, each windowless and ignorant of a whole whose parts they nevertheless are—this is to be a work of art.

The Presence of the Infinite

Steve McIntosh

Comparing Aristotle’s three modes of persuasion with the premises of the evolutionary method, we can detect the influence of goodness, beauty, and truth on his overall categorical scheme. Specifically, ethos is most closely connected to the virtue or goodness of the speaker; pathos employs style or beauty to move the audience; and logos is about the actual message content or truth of the communication itself.

How to Think Like Leonardo Da Vinci

Michael J. Gelb

Long-term studies by Dr. Martin Seligman and many others show that the critical determinant of success in business and life is resilience in the face of adversity. Awareness, deep contemplation, and a sense of humor are your best friends in attempting to learn from difficult experiences.

A Thousand Small Sanities

Adam Gopnik

Burke’s horrified reaction to the killing of the French king and queen helps point us toward another, far fiercer right-wing critique of liberalism. That assault finds in liberalism a fatal overreliance on reason. It shares Burke’s sense of the chaos that could follow from the belief that society should be remade all at once on the basis of a big idea, with tradition and custom annihilated.

And for the finale:

Essays in Understanding, 1930-1954

Hannah Arendt

[W]eapons and fighting belong in the realm of violence, and violence, as distinguished from power, is mute; violence begins where speech ends.

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. 

James Hillman on "Prestige" Apropos of Some Figures Today

Hillman refers to "masks" below, and I just couldn't resist

Here are some quotes from the chapter on "Prestige" taken from James Kinds of Power: A Guide to Its Intelligent Uses (1997). Its just seems apropos today, but read for yourself to decide if this is so.

When the idea of office loses its foundation in service, we are left with office seekers who want the external trappings of office for the power they bestow: prestige. And office seekers are a raging hungry pack.

Prestige in psychological language is the vanity of narcissism— to be admired and therewith to shore up one’s shaky sense of worth. Notice that prestige is not to be worthy of admiration or to earn it, but simply to be assured of personal worth by external approbation given by the office.

Recognition from others is part of communal feedback. In part, we always are as others see us. A great reward of power comes from outside ourselves. Prestige, however, wants only to impress, neither to influence, to dominate, to control, nor to have agency of any sort unless it adds to the impression one makes. In fact, the risks entailed by doing something and failing at it may cost prestige and may keep the person who is intent on prestige from doing much at all. When prestige is the motive, the less you actually do, the more likely success. For you have risked nothing that might detract from your prestige. To maintain prestige, job performance is measured mainly in terms of being present among the important players in important situations.

Again we find that the word gives away this secret. Prestige comes from praestigia, delusion, illusion like a juggler’s trick, leading to the meanings of deception and imposture. We have the illusion of power without substance; not charismatic magic but manipulation. So to uncover where prestige is ruling, look for juggling, deception, pomp and trappings, a desperate fervor to seize and hold office, and not much real risk. But it’s power all the same.

How can power reside in shallow, self-centered caution? How can someone without inner integrity be honored with prestige? Answer: by means of the trappings of office, the role of leadership, the stance of authority—that is, by wearing the mask of power prestige employs the power of the mask.

Early cave paintings, aboriginal facial markings, Greek and Japanese drama each show that the mask retains and emanates effective agency. Surrounding the hollow personality of the prestige-driven person lies the archetypal aura of the mask. By means of the mask something more than human is present, a higher drama is being played and greater powers are being invoked. These powers come through the stance and voice and advice of its wearer, enlarging his stature and bestowing importance. Inside this persona there may be no one at home, or only a weak comedian playing the Wizard of Oz; even if seen into and seen through, the person retains a position of power acquired only by prestige.

The main method for acquiring prestige is not the imitation of leadership or authority, but rather having a keen nose for what and who is important. Someone with prestige gathers followers simply by following what’s in the wind, which way it blows, when to trim sails, shift weight, reverse course, take cover. Since they are inwardly empty, they are utterly under the influence of outer forces. Therefore they can sense immediately the matter of importance in the air. His conversation will drop names; hers will remark on events others missed. All along they will indicate how well “up” on things they are and where the “major moves” are taking place.

Hillman, James. Kinds of Power (Kindle Locations 1332-1339). The Crown Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. Original publication 1997. 

Collingwood on Magic, Tools, and Power

R.G. Collingwood 

In the following quote, Collingwood furthers his discussion about how tools are more than something of utilitarian value. Tools provide status and protection, whether it’s a housewife’s [sic] Hoover or a man’s new, fast motorcar. Here he goes into the employment of others as “tools” and its relation to power. By the way, I put one sentence in italics for emphasis. I trust you’ll know whom I had in mind when I read that. 

The use of human labor, hired or servile, gives the same kind of feeling as the use of tools; for, as Aristotle puts it, the slave is a kind of living tool. And this feeling underlies our conviction that having servants to do your work is grand, doing it for yourself undignified. It underlies the fascination of ‘business’, which his not (as the utilitarian rationalization pretends) a mean to getting rich, but a way of achieving power over other men. It underlies the desire for political power and victory in war. Where power over men is inordinately desired, one may be sure that those who desire it are driven by fear of their own weakness, and ready to go to any length in the search for a delusive reassurance. But men are harder to control than machines, having wills of their own,; so, whereas the feebler souls amoung ourselves forget their self-dissatisfaction in the cult of machinery, the stronger do it by becoming kinds of business, political bosses, or dictators. But here again, as in the desire for clothes and tools, the impulse in itself is universal and healthy. It is only when it is disowned by a world of obsessed utilitarianism that it becomes a madness.’ [Emphasis added.]

R.G. Collingwood, The Philosophy of Enchantment: Studies in Folktale, Cultural Criticism, and Anthropology (ed. David Boucher, Wendy James, & Phillip Smallwood) (2005), 215-216. 

Kinds of Power: An Intelligent Guide to Its Uses by James Hillman

James Hillman's Kinds of Power: A Guide to Its Intelligent Uses was first published in 1995. I read it some years ago, probably closer to the time of publication. I re-read it just in the last couple of days. I was prompted to do so after looking at some books on leadership to recommend. In addition to popular books that I pulled from a couple of lists, I added Kinds of Power to Garry Wills's Certain Trumpets: The Nature of Leadership and Leadership and Self-Deception. None of these three books were on the couple of lists that I reviewed, but each is a significant omission, which is not to diss the books that did make the popular lists, such as Delores Kearns Goodwin's Team of Rivals and Daniel Goleman's work on emotional intelligence in leadership. 

Hillman's book has a chapter of "leadership", but it places the issue within the context of power. Hillman was (d. 2011) a prominent voice in the tradition of Jungian psychology, and to my mind, a brilliant and engaging writer. His references range from Greek and Roman myths and etymologies to Michael Jackson and Bill Clinton. Easy to read but deeply thought. In his knowledge of ancient Greek and Roman culture, Hillman matches Wills in this mastery of these cultures and ability to apply those insights to the contemporary world. 

Hillman's work are always thought-provoking. I'm confident readers will find recognizable examples in his many discussions. By the way, Kinds of Power was published by Doubleday/Currency, which is (or was--who can keep up with changes in publishers?) a business imprint that published some unique and worthwhile books. And while Hillman's erudition is staggering, he wrote this as for a business audience, making it accessible to a most readers .

Some samplers:

As in a garden or a marriage, deepening brings ugly twisted things out of the soil. It’s a work in the dirt.

Hillman, James, Kinds of Power (Kindle Locations 596-597)

We become artists only when we enjoy the practicing as much as the performing. Until then we are caught by the limelight rather than the art. . . .  Over and over again, not to get it finally right, not for the sake of perfection, but simply doing it as if for its own sake, freed from having to do it. The work working by itself, mechanically, repetitiously, impersonally. Could this idea of disinterested repetitiveness— one of the highest aims of Zen, mystical contemplation and religious practice, as well as the practice of the arts and sports— transfer to administration, sales, production, accounting?

Hillman, James, Kinds of Power (Kindle Locations 675-681)

Even more curious: why are the conflicts about power so ruthless— less so in business and politics [and I'd add sports--sng], where they are an everyday matter, than in the idealist professions of clergy, medicine, the arts, teaching and nursing. Those embattled in academic struggles and in museum and hospital fights deceive, backbite, threaten and maneuver shamelessly. They will not speak with friends of their enemies. Cabals form. Hatchet men appointed. Revenge plotted. Yet in business and politics [and I'd add the practice of law--sng] competitors for much larger stakes still go off to the golf course, eat and drink together. In business and politics, it seems, there is less idealism and more sense of shadow. Power is not repressed but lived with as a daily companion; moreover, it is not declared to be the enemy of love.

Hillman, James,  Kinds of Power (Kindle Locations 1181-1187)

This last quote really struck home, not just because of its reference to academics and its contrast to politics, law, and sports (in my experience), but it reminds me that one of the nastiest employment situations I dealt with as a lawyer involved a humane society! It became apparent to me that all of the kindness was used up on the animals and none left for the members and employees. It was weird in a way. In this situation and others like it (I've experienced many examples in education as well), the magnitude of the stakes were inversely proportional to the intensity of the emotions. The common denominator was that these were not powerful people--or at least they did not perceive themselves as powerful.

What I've written hasn't done justice to  Hillman's greater project of "psychologyzing" how we view ourselves and our world. To him, we humans and our world have a soul, a way of experiencing the world that is symbolic, feeling, changing, and elusive. We must look at a phenomenon like power through this lens to appreciate its many manifestations and its changing character. And this is what Hillman does brilliantly, avoiding definition and instead providing stories and observations, from the world of the Greek and Roman gods to Mick Jagger and Abe Lincoln. It's a wild ride sometimes, but when I reflected upon it, I realize the deep insights that he as culled from this complex word and phenomena.