Recommend Books on This Thread

Thoughts Wednesday 14 Jun 2017

H. L. Mencken: A Portrait from Memory by Charles Angoff (1956).
Ebook link.

This is a keystone semi-biography of the late H.L.M. by one of his long time, semi-autistic American Mercury writers who conversed with him over meals and the like, and gives a good summary of his worldview (about aristocracy, race, etc.). On the other hand the author takes the view that HLM is more of a "satirist" than thinker, due to the way he exaggerated everything. Oddly, neo-liberal biographers of Mencken think this account presents a "negative" picture, when in fact the only 'negative' portions of it are about purely non-political issues (which are confirmed by external sources): but in terms of the entire policial and social views[*] which occupy most of the space, this account is identical to the picture presented in the Mencken Chrestomathy : about aristocracy, the lower races, democracy, U.S. presidents, 'inferior' art forms, stamp-collecting as the only real science, metaphysics and religion as the biggest dangers, etc. Except here you get (despite exactly the same views) much juicier "quotes".

p.134-135:

"Both British and French are liars, confused, sick, dying races. The British are probably the worse culprits, because they manage to get more people to fight their battles, and always for high moral purposes, such as democracy and rubbish like that. The French will be extinct in less than a hundred years. They are corrupt, lazy, incompetent, immoral, dirty -- did you ever see the swill that even the French President calls a good dinner? -- and they have no sense of honor." The Italians "aren't worth a second thought. Just banana peddlers." The Spanish and Portuguese are "the dregs of mankind, mixtures of British, French, niggers, and Arabs, and maybe some chinks, too." The Scandinavians are "pretty good in bed, I hear. George Nathan recommends them, and they are fine as drinkers, that I know, but look at Gustav V -- ever see a monkey like that? He's got such big nostrils you can almost see what he's thinking about -- and when you see it, it's nothing. No Scandinavian ever had one good idea in his head." The Russians are "barbarians, all their literature is rubbish, they're a race of natural slaves, good for heavy work in the fields, in mines, and so on." The Germans -- "they're different." In fact, "they're the most civilized, perhaps the only truly civilized race in Europe, and if you look deep into the history of European art, you will find telltale signs of German origin everywhere."

p.42:

I pointed out that he believed in atoms, though he couldn't see them. At this he let out a roar. "Like hell I believe in atoms, and one of these days I'm going to write an editorial in the Mercury exposing this nonsense. Physics is going too far, getting to be just like theology. I tell you the world is going crazy, and all on account of the theologians. They're ruining everything. I read in the papers that Millikan and some others claim there is no conflict between science and religion. Now, think of that! No conflict! Science is after the truth, and religion is hogwash. No conflict! Thomas Henry Huxley must be rolling in his grave with agony. Bosh! What all scientists need is to spend some time in a newspaper office to get all that nonsense out of their systems."

p.141:

[*] It is surprisingly easy to generate "Menckenesque" opinions about anything by: (1) Taking some component of something which is more well-established or more simple compared to the other parts, (2) Dismissing the rest as fake, (3) Upon further questioning, claim that certain obstacles are impossible (or too dangerous, will lead to religion and metaphysics). I sometimes do this to troll people in RL, which has improved my trolling technique.

Jargon Wednesday 14 Jun 2017

Reminds me of this:

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/embed/yoVgQ82QcXY

Recently I read Noel Stock's Biography of Ezra Pound, Gustavus Myer's History of the Great American Fortunes, Michel Houllebecq's Whatever (short, overly depressing, some good political monologue, recommend).

The Pound book I was prepared to read expecting that the biographer would start to be dismissive / belittling of him in his later years for spiraling down into conspiracism, which is exactly what he did. There was little treatment of Pound's thoughts here aside from the half-dozen -isms necessary to give a cursory summary of his political worldview. But it also did seem that the man went insane. The question is whether it was justified or not. Monomania on the money question right at the time that world usury put Europe to the sword is understandable in my opinion. The shame is that the more urgent the situation, the more urgent the advocate, and urgent advocacy to the ignorant / disinterested can only appear to be madness.

Myers I wanted to read because his history of industrial consolidation is often used in conspiracy literature to illustrate the closeness of networking at the top of the world. It's a good read but repetitive (but business criminality is so repetitively unpunished). Probably necessary to read to gain an understanding of property relations in the budding liberal state. Reading it, one gets the impression that nothing nice has ever happened.

Herr Gundolf Thursday 15 Jun 2017

Jargon said: ↑

The Pound book I was prepared to read expecting that the biographer would start to be dismissive / belittling of him in his later years for spiraling down into conspiracism, which is exactly what he did. There was little treatment of Pound's thoughts here aside from the half-dozen -isms necessary to give a cursory summary of his political worldview. But it also did seem that the man went insane. The question is whether it was justified or not. Monomania on the money question right at the time that world usury put Europe to the sword is understandable in my opinion. The shame is that the more urgent the situation, the more urgent the advocate, and urgent advocacy to the ignorant / disinterested can only appear to be madness.

Pound's moneymania singly and multihandedly destroyed his Cantos. The first section is immaculate poetry. The rest is dross: there are a few reprieves, especially in the Pisan Cantos, some beautiful lines or bunches of lines, then a mass of trash. The last section, and the unfinished stuff, contains some of the most beautiful lines in the language. Someone with good taste is obligated to amend the thing. Such beautiful lines, where they are, should not go to waste. Then one might have something one could recommend to anyone who isn't a dumpsterdiver, graverobber, or librarian.

squf Thursday 15 Jun 2017

has anyone read this yet / can recommend it to me, i keep putting it off even though it seems worthwhile. i'm not familiar with this author.

[IMG]

Jargon Thursday 15 Jun 2017

I got a copy of it right after I finished the bio and waiting to start it now.

Herr Gundolf Thursday 15 Jun 2017

I am only hard on it because I think Pound was probably the best poet in the language at the time.

Jargon Thursday 15 Jun 2017

Reading Stock's biography of him, it seemed that he doubted his talent as a poet but respected him more as a scholar, friend, "ideas man", and organizer. We'll see if he's wrong about that ( I hope and suspect he is ; Pound musn't be allowed to be a great poet for same reasons Wagner musn't be allowed to be a great composer ).

Herr Gundolf Thursday 15 Jun 2017

That is something commonly said. I think his earlier verse disproves this, which are very Roman, and not "Poetic," but polished pieces of art. One who goes into poetry expecting Keets probably will be disappointed. I would recommend T.E. Hulme's essay Romanticism and Classicism if one wants to get the ethos of that period of poetry, which is starkly against Romanticism. (One often conflates Romanticism with poetry itself; sometimes the word poetic merely means German or like Hugo). This is the essay: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/resources/learning/essays/detail/69477
Rightly or wrongly, Hulme associates Romanticism with liberalism. One wanted a new classicism (modernism) at the time as an antidote. Early modernism was associated with the people from L’Action Française, the "protofascists."

Roody Saturday 17 Jun 2017

This is a fantastic book. I can't recommend the book and its author enough.

It's an historical and sociological analysis of Western politics boiled down to the essential element of power. Since you're on Salo, the trends de Jouvenel describes might not be news to you (i.e., centralization of power, both horizontally and vertically), but the historical details that support his argument make the book worth reading anyways. The book is not a jeremiad, and it doesn't contain any sort of positive program. He just looks at history, observes trends, and suggests the practical causes and mechanisms of power that underlie the trends.

There are two follow-ups: Sovereignty , which is really political philosophy and also quite good, and The Pure Theory of Politics , which I haven't read yet. Interestingly, de Jouvenel was a big fan of Dumezil.

Here's a more thorough review:

Restraining Leviathan
libertylawsite.org /2012/03/22/restraining-leviathan/
By Kevin Honeycutt3/22/2012
We have seen previously that individual liberty for Bertrand de Jouvenel involves saying “No.” If a life of civic liberty potentially involves resistance, then we should be careful lest we resist in vain. The point of departure for any robust and deep theory of liberty cannot be mere moral outrage or unreflective gainsaying; it must instead flow from a sustained commitment to understanding. We cannot effectively resist concepts or processes that we choose to ignore or misunderstand. It is one of the oldest of philosophical tropes: those who choose not to rule themselves by knowledge will in time come to be ruled by someone, or something, else.

What remains, thus, is to understand what is at once Jouvenel’s most renowned and most problematic idea—Power ( Pouvoir ).

I.

On Power is Jouvenel’s most famous work. At the same time, it is perhaps the most difficult to understand; it is replete with fantastic images and sweeping speculations, and it purports to construct a “political metaphysic.” Understandably for so ambitious an effort, its reception was mixed. Thinkers of the caliber of Hannah Arendt and Eric Voegelin praised it highly, while others, such as Charles Merriam and Hans Morgenthau, rendered decidedly frostier judgments.

The problem begins with the subject matter. What is the book really about? At issue is the appropriate level of abstraction; at least half of the book concerns the rise of the French nation state, but it is important to ask whether the development of this concept is the point of the text or whether this is merely a case study, merely an exegetical prolegomenon for a larger, or at any rate, deeper theoretical concept.

A complete argument is beyond our scope. Here I can only assert rather than demonstrate that Jouvenel’s principal concern, perhaps surprisingly, is neither the French nation state nor the modern state taken more generally. As Dennis Hale has rightly remarked, “The ‘Power’ of the title is the force that creates the centralized state, but the force itself may be found in a number of settings, from a primitive village to the national offices of a modern trade union.” Jouvenel himself says this: “Rousseau meant by ‘prince’ the totality of the components of government; it is what in this book I have called Power” ( On Power , 42 n37).

As I suggested in the previous essay , what Jouvenel discovered in his subsequent work is that all public authorities, i.e. all Powers, emerge in the role of the rex , the guarantor of order. So construed, Power’s role is to protect the fixity of the frame and to guard folkways and customs. The problem is that, over the course of its lifespan, Power is not content to remain a rex ; it has a natural tendency to become increasingly dux -like, to become increasingly intrusive. This outcome tends to occur regardless of the identity of ruler, ruled, or even time and place; Power is a more universal phenomenon than France or even modernity. And it is an outcome that may not be visible unless one moves beyond a practice of typifying regimes as “democracies” or “tyrannies.” As Jouvenel puts it, the face of Power changes but its nature does not.

The modern state on such an interpretation is as a result not unique; it is just a particularly vicious and unrestrained political form of Power. Addressing this problem in its modern guise, then, cannot simply be a return to some prior political form; there is no solution in political form for the instinct of despotism.

II.

An attention to political scale, or at any rate political perspective, is required for a proper appreciation of and response to this danger. I have suggested that, for Jouvenel, social and political groups are generated through a two-step process: an instigator bidding for compliance in a political enterprise; and the subsequent success (or failure) at soliciting a response from his fellows. These groups may be additive (short-term) or aggregative (long-term). Over time, they may attain a robust status such that they become what Jouvenel calls “independent social authorities”, “established sectional interests,” or “makeweights” ( contre-pouvoirs ). These corporate bodies—which are in principle all groups formed by initiation and response but which include among their number such notable groups as the family, the church, and even the nobility—act as buffers against the natural tendency of Power’s trajectory. Though these intermediary institutions can be morally problematic and dysfunctional (as if governments cannot be!), their primary function is protection.

They are not merely protectors, however; they are our homes. We can be true members of only a limited apparatus; it is only on a small scale that human beings can flourish, can receive lessons in living from family and friend. Terms like “teams of action” and “aggregates” may ring blandly and academically in the ear, but what Jouvenel ultimately means by them is that they are the schools of moral and political virtue. It is notable that this idea runs deep in certain strains of American self-understanding, e.g., early American constitutional theory that insisted that federal citizenship be derived only from membership in a smaller body, a state. It is a recognition that we are primarily shaped by our day-to-day experiences with our fellows rather than by our ideological attachment to abstract propositions or concepts.

But the self-understanding of the participants in a political group or tradition is one thing; the raised, skeptical eyebrow of Power is another. Insofar as these things impede the progress of Power, these things are problematic; these things, in a word, are factions. This is why an appeal to the “common good” is insufficient and perhaps even incoherent in such disputes; internally, participants in political enterprises see themselves oriented toward a common good, but externally they appear to Power to be oriented only toward a particular good.

What Jouvenel saw is that the lifeblood of any society springs from individual initiative; that all groups flow from the process of bidding and compliance; that society is what Hayek called a kosmos , i.e., the constant, complex interaction of various individuals and groups. Theoretically, the state in such a society should only be a rex . It should protect against external threats and it should uphold the social and moral traditions that have emerged over time as that particular society’s reservoir of self-understanding. It should allow reasonable individual and corporate goods to be born out. It should simply attend, in Oakeshott’s language, to the general arrangement of things; it should leave the work of intention to duces .

We have seen previously that this theoretical account is not quite born out by practice. The question is why.

III.

At the end of the introduction to On Power , Jouvenel insists that he is “not setting up as an enemy of the growth of Power and of the distension of the state.” It is a shocking revelation at the conclusion of a preliminary account in which he has spoken of Power as a Minotaur that devours men and of future wars that will be unimaginably devastating. Is On Power , then, a cool and clinical appraisal of impending doom? Jouvenel’s analysis is framed as an investigation of Power’s extent in society, and he discovers that its tendrils have penetrated everywhere. Barbarian invasions would be superfluous, Jouvenel laments; we are our own Huns. As Tacitus remarked of another set of would-be conquerors: they rob, slaughter, and plunder under the false name of empire; they make a desert and they call it peace.

What is important to grasp, however, is that this melancholy is only part of the story. Jouvenel’s understanding of Power is in fact nuanced or, as he puts it, “stereoscopic.” He realizes that Power has a natural tendency to transition from rex to dux because of ambition; he realizes that this tendency is amplified as a defensive response to emergent rivals. Power, he says, is Egoistic. But Power also extends itself throughout society not only to extract resources but to provide for its people; Power is not only Egoistic but Benevolent. In lasting, it becomes social, he says, and it must become social to last.

Institutions operate optimally when they operate unreflectively; thus, it is not surprising that political philosophy, which makes it its particular business to question them, should often be seen in such a dubious light. What Nietzsche calls “the problem of Socrates” speaks to the danger of questioning a society’s foundational values as well as to the typical ways in which societies respond to such interrogation. However, to be fair to philosophers, it may be that philosophy is not a cause but a symptom; Hegel may be right that the owl of Minerva flies only at twilight. It might be that philosophical questioning contributes to or even initiates an institution’s collapse—but might it not be the case, too, that when the function of an institution is called into question, the very questioning is a serviceable indicator that something has already gone awry in the institution itself?

One of Jouvenel’s great insights is that Power does not merely usurp the authority of social institutions through acquisitiveness. Sometimes, it steps in to fill the gap when those institutions are found wanting—when they have in fact failed, either through overextension or through negligence. This may be true even of the previous political regime itself. As Jouvenel admits:

I know well the hopes that men have of it [Power], and how their trust in the Power which shall be warms itself at the fire of the sufferings which the Power that was inflicted upon them.

The desire of men’s hearts is social security ( On Power ), safety and justice ( Sovereignty ), home and hearth ( Pure Theory ). When family, church, sewing circle, trade guild, and aristocracy can no longer provide them, someone must. Power, on Jouvenel’s account, is not merely an acid that burns its way remorselessly through traditional social structures to menace the individual. It is also an institution itself, one that feels that it must step in when the traditional social structures have failed. For it is true that institutions can and do fail; it is true that they can become morally intrusive, odious, and suffocating.

But it is perhaps a mistake to turn over one’s safety wholly to the state; it is perhaps a mistake to ask for the abolition of the family, the church, the aristocracy. When these things are gone, as Benjamin Constant notes, Power is able to flatten individuals like so much sand. When these things are gone, there is no one to resist but the individual. The old buffers have left the scene, and Power was only too glad to hasten their departure at our request.

In the end, only knowledge of the value of intermediary institutions prevents us from asking for their abolition. And this point can be generalized: only knowledge sets the individual free and allows one to resist tyranny. Jouvenel helps us to ask the perennial questions of our own time and place by drawing our attention to the nature of Power. Left to its own devices, Power becomes a parasite on the moral and material consciousness of its citizenry. But by properly understanding Power’s influence, we are able to transcend or at any rate resist that influence. By properly understanding the importance of political entrepreneurship and the groups that it generates, we are able to better understand our world and live in it. And that, as both Jouvenel and Eric Voegelin might say, is the task of philosophy.

Cornelio Friday 14 Jul 2017

Roody said: ↑

This is a fantastic book. I can't recommend the book and its author enough.

It's an historical and sociological analysis of Western politics boiled down to the essential element of power. Since you're on Salo, the trends de Jouvenel describes might not be news to you (i.e., centralization of power, both horizontally and vertically), but the historical details that support his argument make the book worth reading anyways. The book is not a jeremiad, and it doesn't contain any sort of positive program. He just looks at history, observes trends, and suggests the practical causes and mechanisms of power that underlie the trends.

There are two follow-ups: Sovereignty , which is really political philosophy and also quite good, and The Pure Theory of Politics , which I haven't read yet. Interestingly, de Jouvenel was a big fan of Dumezil.

Here's a more thorough review:

Bob Dylan Roof

Recommend Books on This Thread

10 posts