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James Poulos

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Rousseau, Pascal, Tocqueville, Delsol, Scott etc.
Friday, February 3, 2012, 10:00 AM

I appreciate Carl’s post below that explains why Lawler must be correct.

It calls to mind stuff I wrote a long time ago, but remains right even now.

It’s natural to want to speak of human nature–instead of the human condition–because of the Rousseau/existential or “Historical” implications of the latter. The human condition suggests that man makes himself over time out of the nothing that he is by nature. Human=Historical etc.

Because of the decisive influence of Pascal, Tocqueville doesn’t believe THAT.

For Tocqueville, Rousseau’s HISTORY=Pascal’s PSYCHOLOGY. Our restless discontent etc. that Rousseau believes we accidentically acquire over time are constant features of who we are. So they can be called NATURAL. NATURAL here doesn’t mean the social qualities we share with the chimps. It incorporates what distinguishes human beings, distinctions that can be traced to our “hardwiring” as the beings with language or speech open to the truth about all things. So it is natural for us–as natural persons, so to speak–to be miserable without God.

Tocqueville says straight out that the undeluded human experience is to be stuck for a moment between two abysses. That’s straight Pascal. He also says there’s nothing more MYSTERIOUS–although not completely mysterious–and nothing more WONDERFUL than the GREATNESS and MISERY of the being with such consciousness of his personal and contingent existence. That truthful experience (so characteristic of the relentless thinker Pascal himself) is free from the PROUD distortions of the aristocratic (including classical philosophical) consciousness and the TECHNO-MATERIALISTIC distortions of the democratic consciousness. The unsustainability of that purely truthful experience, in Tocqueville’s minds, comes from the fact that it’s basically anxious or pleasure-free. Pascal, he reports, thought himself to death. And the excessive self-consciousness or self-obsessiveness of democratic restlessness is also self-destructive in particular cases, although that truthful experience can’t be completely experienced by human effort. Pantheism, for Tocqueville, is a degrading but ultimately a failed self-help program, as is even bureaucratic despotism. Self-help that works are the pleasures of political life, which are partly truthful and partly diversions (here Tocqueville partly dissents from Pascal–no time to explain now).

So Tocqueville’s account of who we are is not HISTORICIST–and that’s why he’s not full of the extreme hopes and fears of the historicists (the Marxists, the Nietzscheans, even some Straussians). But his view of WHO we are according to NATURE differs from the DARWINIANS and the ARISTOTELIANS (and many Straussians). Many Straussians think Tocqueville is an HISTORICIST because they think they is no ground in nature for the greatness and misery of the WHO (as opposed to the impersonal necessitarianism of the WHAT).

I would like to say more, have a real job, please read Carl and Delsol as the Tocquevillians closest to ME, although Delsol wasn’t even influenced by me!


I Care About What You Care About. Whatever That Is.
Thursday, February 2, 2012, 7:41 PM

Okay, so most of us have heard Romney’s comment about how he “not concerned about the very poor. We have a safety net there. If it needs repair, I’ll fix it.  I’m not concerned about the very rich, they’re doing just fine. I’m concerned about the very heart of the America, the 90, 95 percent of Americans who right now are struggling and I’ll continue to take that message across the nation.”

I want to focus on one problem with that statement.  It doesn’t just make Romney look like an inept politician.  It makes Romney look like an inept unprincipled politician.  You can almost see the thought balloon over Romney’s head as he tries to manipulate his listeners.  I think the Romney thought balloon would look a little something like this:

Well, the vast majority of Americans describe themselves as middle-class and those who describe themselves as “very poor” (I need to remember to work the “very” in there) probably have low voting rates.  So I should position myself as the defender of the middle-class rather than the very poor.  I should also throw in something about not representing the very rich.

There is just something so oily about how Romney goes about some of his panders.  I think the single biggest part of his blunder isn’t that it creates a sense that he doesn’t “care” about the poor.  I’m not sure a lot of persuadables are ready to believe that Romney wants the poor to suffer.  This is a guy who tithes.  The biggest part of the blunder is that he comes across like he is trying to hustle people who consider themselves middle-class.  A more effective response by Romney would have been something like:

Those punished most by the wrong turns of the last three years are those unemployed or underemployed tonight and those so discouraged they’ve abandoned the search for work altogether. And no one’s been more tragically harmed than the young people of this country, the first generation in memory to face a future less promising than their parents did.

As Republicans, our first concern is for those waiting tonight to begin or resume the climb up life’s ladder. We do not accept that ours will ever be a nation of haves and have-nots. We must always be a nation of haves and soon-to-haves.

That is from Mitch Daniels’ response to Obama’s State of the Union.  Daniels and Romney are both smart guys, but Daniels has a big advantage when it comes to talking.  Daniels really believes in a set of limited government, pro-effective government, pro-upward mobility, pro-growth policies, and Daniels is focused on explaining his beliefs to open-minded listeners.  Romney is stuck pretending to believe whatever he imagines the average voter wants to hear. 

Run Mitch Run


Human Condition v. Human Nature: My Response to Chantal Delsol
Thursday, February 2, 2012, 9:26 AM

In the thread below, Chantal Delsol graciously responded to my observation that her more recent book had dropped the occasional references to human nature used in earlier books. While still utilizing the term “natural” to reference to certain biological determinations, she affirmed that she prefers, and now more strongly than in her earlier books, a term like “human condition,” because a) it is very difficult to distinguish what is natural to humans from what is cultural or historical, b) human nature can be used simply as an excuse for limitations preferred by one’s convention or interest, and c) because we often need “social and political evolution” as much as we need respect for human determination. “Human condition” is “also a determination, but linked to a cultural situation.”

I agree with commenters (and friends) Sara and Paul that Delsol’s position is consistent, I understand these are fine distinctions, and with a thinker as wise as Delsol my typical inclination is to err on the side of greater intellectual docility, but I think we could all benefit from my voicing my hesitations here.

My first hesitation with this “abandoning” of the human nature terminology is that it could burn bridges, ones which (for pomocons, although I suppose Delsol deals with similar academic geography) do have a tactical aspect but which are fundamentally philosophical, with natural law theorists. There are many pages in a thinker like Yves Simon that acknowledge and deal with the possible misunderstandings of the term “nature.” Perhaps there is not enough dealing with the problem of culture and history, but if we are going to say, as Peter Lawler often does, that what thinkers like Percy and Tocqueville ultimately endorse can be spoken of as partially Thomist, then it appears we are assuming that, with the historical and cultural qualifications added, we too believe in human nature. Believe that God created it and knows it, even if we can never know it fully.

My second hesitation is perhaps identical, but comes from my scholarship on Tocqueville. In my dissertation, after pages of dealing with the case for Tocqueville actually being a (Rousseau-infused) historicist, after pages of looking at the many instances of his using the terms “nature” or “natural” to describe various human traits (Cheryl Welch’s book on Tocqueville collects most of these instances), here was my summary view of the question—yeah, Lawler enters into it, but note the italicized portion particularly:

“…Lawler’s interpretation [found here] must be correct.  Not only does Tocqueville not follow Rousseauian anthropology, but his Pascalian anthropology actively opposes it.  True, the constant features of human distinctiveness are subject to various sorts of historical development, whereby certain features become more or less highlighted.  Such compositional flexibility suggests that humans can move very far toward a final extinction of self-consciousness posited by the most extreme vision of mild-despotism, <i>but the non-severable sinews of the human composition and the irreducible nature of each of its elements make its final realization impossible,</i> contrary to Rousseau.

At the risk of self-flattery, I present that as a way of speaking about human nature while still giving it the necessary qualification.

But of course, I can’t help but noting that I found myself talking in the other key as well…more as a fitting ending I stumbled upon than as a portentous Straussoid literary device, the final words of my dissertation were: “human condition.”

Are there other hesitations one should have?


Masters of Atlantis by Charles Portis: How to Create an American Cult
Wednesday, February 1, 2012, 5:10 PM

Literature-wise, for me the last year has been the year of Jane Austen and Charles Portis. My present Austen re-reading kick is due to my own idiosyncratic reasons, but my discovery of Portis is entirely due to seeing the Coen Brother’s version of True Grit…and I imagine I’m not the only one led by that film to the great pleasure of reading his books for the first time.

Portis is perhaps our greatest 20th-century comic novelist—any of you who liked Confederacy of Dunces or who go for P.G. Wodehouse will likely love Portis. I earlier reported on one of his two comic road-trip books, Norwood, and have recently also read Gringos and Masters of Atlantis. Both of these books reveal a fascination in, well, kooks and the distinctive shape of American kook-ery. UFO experts, hippie devotees of Mayan mystagogy, budding alchemists, feuding Masons, potential Nation of Islam converts, Portis is interested in them. And not just for comic purposes.

Masters of Atlantis is the deadpan account of how a young American Lamar Jimmerson becomes convinced in 1918 that he has been given the charge of bringing the teachings of Gnomonism, the true Pythagorean science esoterically passed down over the ages from the survivors of Atlantis, to his fellow Americans, and of how he actually gathers a significant following of believers, with the help of the Great Depression and some all-American promotional methods. It has something of the flavor of the Elijah Muhammad story(best told here and here), without of course the racial/political agenda and motivation, and without the real content of Islam. Think: Masonry, but a bit stranger. For about the first hundred pages, you’re sometimes asking yourself, “This is kinda funny and ingenious, but why am I reading about these weirdos?” and “Why does Conan O’Brien endorse this book with a blurb that says it’s one of the most out-loud laughter-causing books he knows?” but eventually, as the characters are put into place, things are set up for one incident after another of hilarious absurdity, always all-too-true to certain aspects of the American character. An unforgettable comic crescendo is the result, entirely true to Conan’s endorsement.

In Gringos some of the kook-characters actually begin to take full shape, revealing themselves as capable of real villainy or real heroism, and not so unlike the rest of us. In this book, however, the account of kook-ery, i.e., the story of American Gnomonism is more for the sake of a comic tour-de-force, an attempt to structure a novel for maximum eventual comedic impact. Still, real insights into the sorts of kook-ery our culture is particularly susceptible to are there, and Portis manages to develop our sympathy for even some of the most deluded characters. While we can all agree that the creation and career of a cult is a in many ways sad story—there is nothing ultimately funny about real people getting caught up in the coils of Masonry, UFO-abduction-insanity, or the Nation of Islam—Masters of Atlantis is not simply a case of a comic writer lightening everything and using absurd bits of Americana for the sake of laughs. There is a way, even when things are as light as can be, in which the life-wasting potentialities of cult-dom are never lost sight of, and in which we wind up rooting for our cult-creators to find some semblance of happiness amid the absurd wreckage of life they’ve unleashed. The strangely sweet ending of the book, that is, the strangely motherly instinct it draws out from us, reminds us that more has been going on than laughs.


Chantal Delsol Has a Blog
Wednesday, February 1, 2012, 4:12 PM

Here. How do I know? She actually clarified a key point about her thought in Carl’s thread below! Please come back and visit often, Chantal!


The Loss of the Creature
Wednesday, February 1, 2012, 9:55 AM

Here’s Ari’s whole MOVIEGOER thesis.


Is Newt Finished? Is Santorum Finished? Romney Isn’t Finished
Tuesday, January 31, 2012, 9:12 PM

Both the result in Florida and Mitt’s little speech were, at this point, quite predictable. The polls show that the overwhelming FL sentiment was get behind the guy who can beat Obama.

Positive evidence for the other guys: Newt is still tied with Mitt nationwide, and Romney remains stuck in the twenties. Polls posted today out of Missouri and Ohio show Gingrich, Romney, and Santorum in close to a three-way tie. (Romney isn’t leading in either case.) Will Santorum poll significantly better in the ethnic, Catholic, more industrial states of the Midwest? Certainly possible. Could a protracted campaign keep anyone from getting a majority of the delegates? Unlikely but not impossible. Let’s say Mitt could very easily lose Missouri and Minnesota in February, and not win Michigan by much. On Super-Tuesday, he could lose both Ohio and Georgia.

All this is more possible if Newt gets his newt back. It is, of course, irresponsible to hope for THAT.

I’m sticking with a one chance in three it’s not over on Super-Tuesday or before.


Romney In Florida Tonight
Tuesday, January 31, 2012, 8:51 PM

The speech wasn’t as aggressively awful as his Iowa Caucus night speech, but his reworked stump speech still isn’t much good.  He is trying to run as human placebo.  He needs to kill a couple of lines that he has fallen in love with.  I’m talkinng about lines like:

1.  The one about restoring rather than transforming America.  It was obnoxiously passive-aggressive when Glenn Beck was selling this line.

2.  The one about the Obama administration being a “detour not a destiny.”  It isn’t a clever way to make the point that we can do better.  It isn’t even an improvement over just saying we can do better.

The thing is Romney is much better when he has something to say.  He was pretty good at giving us actual reasons why Gingrich should not be nominee or president.  A focused, specific, Romney is a much better Romney.


Has Anyone Seen the Coriolanus Film Yet?
Tuesday, January 31, 2012, 6:12 PM

Those of you in the big markets, do go out and see this new adaption, by Ralph Fiennes, of the classic Shakespearean presentation of republican manliness and its tragic pitfalls.

Here’s a brief Christian meditation on the film.

And here are my somewhat pessimistic expectations for it that I aired some time ago. But do go see it, and do tell me what you think if you have.


Chantal Delsol’s Development: A Farewell to Human Nature?
Tuesday, January 31, 2012, 3:32 PM

The new book on contemporary French (and Catholic) political philosopher Chantal Delsol, Lucid Mind, Intrepid Spirit: Essays on the Thought of Chantal Delsol is now out. It features essays by Peter Lawler, Paul Seaton, Lauren Hall, and yours truly, as well as translated tid-bits from what Seaton presents as likely her most important book:  Qu’est que l’homme? Cour familier d’anthropologie, which came out in 2008 but remains very regrettably un-translated into English as a whole.  I’ll be talking about the book in several posts, but I’d like to first note, on the basis of the first and last chapters of Qu’est que l’homme? that Delsol seems to have taken a less affirmative stance towards the concept of human nature since writing her 1996-2000-2004 trilogy of broadly sociological zeitgeist investigation, translated into English as Icarus Fallen, The Unlearned Lessons of the 20th Century, and Unjust Justice respectively.

Here, for example is a quote from Unlearned Lessons, circa 2000:

The norms of a given time and place build upon the essential determinative traits of the human condition: by nature man is a sexed being; by culture, he institutes the matriarchal or patriarchal family. Late modernity rejects these various natural and cultural determinations, either because it still clings to the utopian idea that humanity has no inherent shape, or because it rejects previous cultural models because they are all relative.

And now, from the 2008 book, we find–thanks to the chapters translated in the new book–Delsol speaking this way:

Here I am interested in what I call “the universal representation of man” found in all cultures, hence his existential “figure” or defining characteristics. Whether he is a combination of matter, a dream, or a fallen deity, it is the reality of his life here on earth that matters. …The human condition is describable, and is not subject to our arbitrary caprices. In saying this, I do not base myself upon any particular metaphysics, or any ideological dogma, nor any religion. I address myself to all readers, no one has to have faith, only good will. It should be said at the outset, however, that each of the human traits I am going to speak about can only be exhibited indirectly by its converse, that is, by the indignation and the feeling of deprivation and misfortune that accompany its being effaced. In times like ours, when we lack all former religious, ideological, and metaphysical certainties, only the pain and suffering caused by its absence can indicate the reality of a trait. We can know that man possesses a given set of characteristics, a distinctive figure, because we do not accept seeing him disfigured.

This is not entirely a surprise—for example, on the basis of her 1996-2004 trilogy, my essay emphasizes that Delsol believes that “man, even if he does always retain certain characteristics, is a metamorphic rather than a static species.”  That’s quoting Delsol, and here’s my comment on it:

Delsol does not think…that human nature may be grasped once-and-for-all and then expounded in an authoritative body of natural laws or natural rights. Rather, it can only be dimly understood, only through the distorting lenses of clashing customs and politicized human events. Her model is Montesquieu. He represents an openness to and a respect for the different approaches to the key human questions utilized by different communities, but in a manner that she insists is not relativistic. …In Unjust Justice, she poses his example explicitly against today’s trans-nationalist champions of international justice and human rights, but I think also implicitly against those conservatives who would seek to force a choice between “relativism” and natural law narrowly-understood.

I was thinking of our good academic and political ally Robert George most of all when I wrote that.

Still, it looks like Delsol now wants to stop speaking of human nature altogether, and entirely turn to the “figure” vocabulary she learned from her teacher Julien Freund, and to the “human condition” vocabulary of Arendt and such.

Delsol-readers, what do you make of that shift? Or is it a shift?

And if you aren’t a Delsol reader yet, well, get crackin’! If you’re blessed with adequate French, here’s her blog.

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