So such affirmations (we will not apologize) were parts of the speech that I warmed up to. It seems to me that such rhetoric (especially when coupled with the very striking: “these things are old, these things are true) implicitly affirms a certain particularity of our national existence that cannot be reduced to the Machiavellian-Kantian project. To be sure, Mansfield has been very discreet, perhaps too discreet, concerning the connection between this elevated view of the constitution and other things that Americans have looked up to (like God, just to take an example). In this he may be described as pursuing a kind of Tocquevillean strategy, one that lets Americans keep their philosophy of enlightened materialism (“self-interest well understood”) while encouraging institutions and practices that cannot be explained by that philosophy. This contrasts of course with Patrick’s recommended “real change” towards the “inculcation of virtue.” And Patrick may be right; it may be that the Tocquevillean moment has passed, and that there is no way to stop, slow down, or even inflect our hurtling Machiavellian-Kantian progress without publicly and explicitly affirming the priority of virtue to freedom. I’m inclined to believe that our rapid progress towards the abolition of marriage, for example, might well be enough to make Tocqueville himself take another view of democratic Providence. But just how to be a post-Tocquevillean (and in that sense postmodern) constitutionalist – now there’s a tough one.
Thursday, January 22, 2009, 12:24 PM
Mr. Deneen’s take (post just before this one) on the Inaugural is the most penetrating I’ve seen, or expect to see. The collusion between Kantianism and Machiavellianism is a very important insight, and in fact one that Harvey Mansfield has always seen very clearly (as in his "Moral Reasoning 13" class at Harvard in the 80s – and beyond? – you gotta love the numbering). One way (Mansfield’s?) of responding to this collusion in whose grip we find ourselves (if we ever find ourselves) would be to look for virtue, to assert virtue in the practical space that opens between these alien allies. Both Machiavellianism and Kantianism suppress the question of purpose, and thus suppress the soul, but the soul… happens. Mansfield has thus sought to affirm America’s Constitutional Soul (Johns Hopkins). In this strategy, as far as I understand it, constitutionalism itself functions as a kind of virtue that does not merely serve but that shapes and limits our desires. Thus, when Obama gives rein to a certain spiritedness in affirming the American way of life against its enemies, it is possible to sense in this affirmation something more than pure confinement within the modern project.
January 22nd, 2009 | 12:46 pm
In some respects I think our national existence is microcosmic of modernity as a whole–there is more to what it means to be modern than a combination of Machiavelli and Kant. As Delsol discusses in Unjust Justice ( I book I strongly recommend to anyone who hasn’t read it) once can argue that late modernity is a betrayal of the Enlightenment just as legitimately (maybe more so ) than one could argue that its a proper consummation. (Even Strauss, who usually pitted the ancient in the modern in austerely dichotomous terms seems to suggest as much in the Three Waves of Modernity Essay). I tend to think that Pat’s longing for pre-modern forms of virtue might be borne out of an insufficient appreciation for the historical and philosophical components of modernity that actually support virtue
January 22nd, 2009 | 1:22 pm
“However, the Renaissance, too, had an important and influential witness in Niccolo Machiavelli. To suggest the Florentine diplomat in this context will suprise those who associate him only with Leo Strauss’s classic interpretation. Machiavelli’s crucial contribution to political philosophy, according to Strauss, was the insight that ‘one must lower the standards in order to make probable, if not certain, the acutualization of the right or desirable social order or in order to conquer chance.’ The lowering of standards, Strauss argued, represents a radical departure from the classical teaching with its emphasis on human excellence. Indeed, the view that it is in Machiavelli’s writings where one can see most clearly the break-up of the medieval spiritual order and the beginning of the modern concern with order and science has become widely accepted. While most would agree that Il Principe is somehow about the ‘lowering of standards’, its author’s position becomes far more interesting once one begins to ask exactly whose ‘standards’ are implicated in his writings. If those standards are defined by the anthropological optimism of the Renaissnce preachers of the ‘Golden Age’, i temp aurei, then Machiavelli’s postion appears far more balanced than is usually acknowledged.”
Stefan Rossbach, Gnostic Wars: The Cold War in the Context of a History of Western Spirituality, Edinburgh, 1999, pgs.186-7.
January 22nd, 2009 | 2:00 pm
Thanks, Ralph, for these reflections and probing questions. I would take issue with one – perhaps fundamental – underlying assumption in your posting, namely that our confrontation with a world defined by liberty unmoored by virtue represents the necessity for post-Tocquevillian thought. It seems to me that Tocqueville was amply conscious of this prospect – and that his “providential” view of democracy was darker than you let on here. After all, in his “Author’s Introduction” to _Democracy in America_ he speaks of the providential – might one even say inevitable – success of the egalitarian democratic ethos sweeping across the panorama of early modern Europe, yet nevertheless concludes that the sight of the “ruins” it has left in its wake filled him with “une terroir religieuse.” This is hardly what might be expected from a pious man witnessing the providential hand of God in history – yet still Tocqueville fears the course of modern democracy.
I would suggest that we are firmly within the fruition of the Tocquevillian moment. While Tocqueville appreciated that Americans have an intuitive understanding of “self interest well-understood” (doubtless one of the sources of Ivan’s and Peter’s confidence about the resiliency of virtue in modernity), Tocqueville pointed out in those chapters that Americans tend toward explaining _everything_ in terms of self-interest, even altruistic or noble acts. “They do more honor to their philosophy than to themselves,” he noted – recognizing our fundamental Lockeanism. Over time, self-explanation becomes self-fulfillment, leading to a cramped view of self and other. For this reason, among others, Tocqueville commended the activity of “the arts of association” – local investment in civic and political life – as well as the staying power of religion (of a more formal type than tends to be increasingly popular – less “spiritual” than “religious,” to reverse the contemporary trope). His commendation of these two practices are no less relevant, even if they are seen as less and less relevant and desirable by each passing generation.
Ivan continues to express confidence in the resources generated by modernity against modernity. But, if Tocqueville is right, there is no such thing as a “mixed regime”: a regime becomes more and more itself over time. Liberal democracy becomes more and more itself – and thus, more and more the modern regime marked by monadic and willful individuals seeking self-satiation. As such, Ivan’s confidence may well rest instead upon a pre-modern inheritance that modernity has actively depleted but has not renewed.
I will grant this much to “postmodern conservatism”: in no way am I calling for a “return” to some idyllic pre-modern condition. I am not confident that any such condition everyexisted in any such idyllic form, although I will grant that the philosophic and theological resources, as well as habituated practice of a number of virtues, were immensely richer than we now have available at hand. Like Tocqueville, I believe “a new science of politics is necessary for a world quite new,” and that our pre-modern inheritance needs to be consciously and, where possible, unconsciously shored up in what will often be new and unpredictable forms. One area where I see some possibility – otherwise reviled by most “conservatives” – is the contemporary turn to “environmentalism,” a misnomer that should and could actually mean a return to a deep reflection upon nature. Well-tutored, this contemporary urge contains promise of a renewal of some forms of self-government in accordance with an understanding of natural law and our place within the natural order. On today, this anniversary of Roe v. Wade, we might do well to consider how this purportedly liberal commitment to the “environment” could be used to encourage more expansive and extensive forms of responsibility, fecundity and eschewal of unconscious reliance upon technology – in short, the renewal of virtue. If this is a post-modernism that recreates a form of the pre-modern for our time, then I’m writing for the right “blawg.”
January 22nd, 2009 | 3:02 pm
Thanks, Patrick — and I don’t think we disagree much, certainly not about Tocqueville. (As you know, I’m all about the dark side in Tocqueville, the collapse of moral analogy, pantheism, and all that.) But let’s find out what, if anything, it is that we’re disagreeing about. I would never countenance being post-Tocquevillean in the sense of dispensing with the frenchman’s indispensable insights into America’s virtues and the risks they run. The only question, then, is whether liberal democracy has “become more and more itself” to the point now that we can no longer afford (as Tocquevile did) to let Americans honor their philosophy more than themselves — whether the core theoretical thrust of liberalism has to be addressed and countered on the level of principle. This sounds radical, and I’ve taught myself to distrust radical impulses (including my own), but the ongoing, almost complete undermining of the family brings me to wonder whether there’s any way to stop the train of liberationism (modern liberty having left its nourishing pre-modern virtues behind) except by making the question of the priority ofliberty to virtue in some way a direct public question (not necessarily in those words, of course). This, in my reading, is what Tocqueville studiously avoids doing (in part because he must avoid setting off his aristocratic, re-actionary, anti-modern European contemporaries). Rather, as you say, he characteristically encourages those practices that in a way secrete virtue, but without naming it. And I am more than open to your suggestion that concern for the environment might be one area in which the renewal of virtue could find public articulation.
January 22nd, 2009 | 3:31 pm
Ralph, it would seem that we disagree on little – perhaps only that I’ve long since concluded that it’s a necessity to question explicitly, and to challenge “on the level of principle,” basic presuppositions of liberal philosophy. I wonder if one effect of the contemporary atomization of society – represented on the frontal assault on the idea of family that you rightly bemoan – will cause conservatives to re-read, or differently read, Tocqueville. I believe that there has been a Cold War conservative reading of Tocqueville that emphasized Tocqueville’s concerns about a levelling egalitarianism and the rise of the “vast, tutelary State.” (Similarly, there has been a Left, communitarian reading that stresses his criticisms of individualism). What has largely been lacking is a full and integrated reading of Tocqueville – one that finds it possible to decry _both_ levelling equality and individualism, both the rise of the centralized State and the “restlessness” of modern commercial man. Indeed, I would submit that what our current economic crisis may permit is the realization that Tocqueville predicted that the rise of the “vast tutelary State” would come about as the result of ever-greater _individualism_, not political philosophies of collectivism (I’ve never encountered a conservative who has acknowledged this part of Tocqueville’s analysis). As social fabric frays – as local “lumpiness” is whisked away by the mobility of modern democratic society, individuals will be thrown ever more on their own powers and resources. When confronted by blows of fate or accident, they will have only the “vast tutelary State” to which to turn. An ever-growing State is one of the consequences of our ever-greater freedom and liberation, Tocqueville predicts. It is indeed a “dark” book, and suggests that the remedy to this modern dynamic is not a direct assault on either the centralized State or individualism, but the difficult effort to shore up, sustain, or re-create the “lumpiness” of society, wherever and whenever possible.
January 22nd, 2009 | 4:20 pm
But then doesn’t it seem (now that the Drs. Hanock and Deneen are all united) that Tocqueville may indeed be unhelpful, at least in the sense that he seems clear regarding our inability to confront the directly the broad (providential) moves of history? His “new science” is a science of deflection, channelling, shaping, not revolt. Aren’t you both calling for something quite different? Or am I misunderstanding things here?
January 22nd, 2009 | 4:25 pm
One more thought: perhaps one way of thinking about one’s stance toward liberalism depends in part on one’s reading of Strauss’s “Three Waves of Modernity” referenced by Ivan, above. Strauss argues that of the three waves of modernity – “liberalism” represented by Hobbes and Locke, “progressive historicism” represented by Rousseau, and “nihilism” represented by Nietzsche – that modern friends of liberty need to recognize that it is the first wave (liberal democracy) that has the closest connection with, and draws some sustenance from, ancient philosophy and Christian theology. Conservative liberals – many of them Straussians, such as the recently referenced Peter Berkowitz – have thus found liberal democracy to be the best and most defensible regime in modernity. It is based more than its subsequent counterparts on a realistic understanding of human beings – one that is built on the “low but solid ground” of self-interest, and is not premised upon overcoming this fundamental aspect of human nature (as was commended by Rousseau, Marx, and other progressive liberals).
However: by another reading, the image of “waves” suggests that one wave necessarily and inescapably follows another. If this is the case, liberalism is necessarily and intrinsically subject to degradation and corrosion – necessarily cedes to its progressive and nihilistic counterparts. If this is so, then to defend liberal democracy is necessarily to give aid and comfort to those very corrosions. If so, it is ironically our very “conservatives” who are assisting in ushering in subsequent waves of progressive historicism and nihilism.
Most liberal conservatives like Berkowitz – and, perhaps Lawler – believe that liberal democracy can be a bulwark against the incursions of subsequent waves. I am far less sanguine about that prospect, and believe that Tocqueville presciently saw the trajectory and logic of liberal democracy. Like him I am not optimistic about the prospect of halting that trajectory, but only slowing it. If we are in a post-Tocquevillian moment, it may only be because we have reached the culmination of that logic and thus it becomes possible for us to ask – in ways not possible for Tocqueville (lucky for him) – what is next?
January 22nd, 2009 | 5:18 pm
Once Kant argued that all of our inclinations–cultural practices, instincts, traditions, affections, emotions, appetites, etc.–were part of the causal/historical order, and thus not free, the stage was set for a Nietzsche to come along and argue for the rejection of all these things in order to be self-creating, authentic, and free. Until we embrace the “historical self” and start to see and love ourselves as the results of our historical traditions and culture, to see that we are our history, and thus reemphasize the venerable Western tradition of self-discovery as opposed to self-creation, modernist Nihilism will continue.
January 23rd, 2009 | 5:36 am
Okay, so what I say may be too late to tamp down the hysteria of Mr. Deneen. I don’t disagree with what Mr. Hancock and Mr. Deneen say, but they need to reconsider their positions.
Why is the theoretical analysis of executive power given after the election? Where were they in October? They are friends of empire, unless the empire is run by those they do not like. That sounds unfair, but this kind of talk did not exist before the election.
If some sort of weird American realism is the nature of executive power, then some sort of weird Kantianism that can understand its own limits cannot be the answer. Regardless of our moralism, it is always backed up
by bombs that kill thousands all for the sake of keeping our way of life (meaning comfortable self-preservation) stable.
I assume that we have all read Machiavelli. But why do we not speak of the obvious–what it is all about, viz. Hobbes.
This is the main concern–the nature of executive power is nonetheless the
will to be Machiavellian. A necessary action take in the lacunae of whatever is meant by the rule of law. I sound evil, but…
It was true for Jimmy Carter. It was true for Reagan. It was true for Clinton. It was true for GHW and GW Bush. It will be true for Obama. You guys may as well join William Appleman Williams and Noam Chomsky and give up. It is what it is. I find it amusing that all of you speak about abtract right and necessary action without once mentioning Hobbes.
Hobbes defines what is right and what is necessary, and as long as you guys deny it, you reek of defeatism. To quote, “The power of man is his present means to obtain some future apparent good.”
Admit it–this is what you are talking about.
Or rather–is this something you think is wrong? Or is is it something that you think is inevitable. It was true for Bush as it was true for Johnson. Obama too will have to live up to it. So Lincoln is the guide.
What is the guide of Lincoln?
It is the problem of the rule of lawas such. Law is general and abstract. Being so, it requires interpretation and judgment when dealing with the paticulars. One must consider equity.
Add to this–there is always the virtue of prudenace. One has knowledge, but one knows also how to act here and now. One knows the principles, but one knows the circumstances. These two things may contradict each other, but one knows the right thing to do nonetheless.
Being the executive authority for an entire people. This executve power requires acting in ways that Geneva or CNN do not like.
Obama may give all that up. Maybe you guys are so elite that you truly believe that your individual opinions are important for every decision made in the U.S. Which one of you is now foreign policy advisor?
All I know is to try to understand prudence–whether Lincoln or Churchill (two favorites of this web page).
January 23rd, 2009 | 5:32 pm
The darkest thought that emerges from the study of Tocqueville: the very Tocqueville-recommended conservatism that preserves liberal democracy from the forces that bring it to more immediate ruin (i.e, plebs v. patricians, Ceasarism, majority faction, French-style perpetual Revolution, various ‘hard’ despots, 60s foolishness, etc.) allows its inner logic to develop more strongly because more gradually, allows its hold over societies to spread more thoroughly, allows its double-sided coin of individualism/biggvmnt to more and more mint everything in its equal-sized (non-lumpy) shape. Unlike Pat, I don’t blame this all on “Liberalism”…prior to Hobbes n’ Locke, Machiavelli n’ Kant, Plato saw a good deal of the score simply by thinking through the logic of Democracy. Republic book VIII. That is, we humans are inherently inclined to thinking that the freedom-filled “liberal” way is the way…enough of us are always attracted to that idea once we start thinking more about humans in the general sense. In no age have we humans been comfortable with the aristocracy of genuine virute, or, more precisely, with the attempts to locate this aristocracy. Yes, it sounds good in Aristotle. But Aristotle had this student named Alexander, see….and another man by that name many years later had a pretty accurate take on the joys of genuine polis/township liberty for everyone in the ancient days of yore (the first paragraph of Federalist 9).
Genuine aristocracy also sounds good in the (too-neglected) Guizot. If someone says to me, “quick, we gotta reject the key axioms of Lockean liberalism but right now found a decent modern virtue-fostering but liberty-protecting government,” my first instinct might be to turn to Guizot. No state of nature admitted. Priority of Justice and Reason over democratic soveriegnty. Equality of “falleness” not of consent and of vengance-potential. It’s all the true stuff from Calhoun without the slavery.
But, oh yeah, as Tocqueville observed first-hand, Guizotian liberal constitutional quasi-aristocracy failed utterly. Brought on the disaster of 1848. Cultivated an aggressively corrupt “bourgeoise-connections” type of system. And its key failing was not expandomg the franchise quickly enough, i.e., opposing the democratic trends too forthrightly.
So maybe Mansfield has it right, although it remains important to think about what sort of political “soul” the Europeans and others ought to be trying to cultivate. And if Mansfield has it right, then musn’t Pat admit that frontal attacks upon Liberalism will either a) be destructive, b) be misunderstood and ignored? As a practical matter, I can say that the day Americans abandon their belief in the rightness of the Constitution, which a full-scale rejection of Liberalism might lend its weird theoretical aide to,(i.e., for most Americans, such a rejection could only occur for more down-to-earth political reasons, such as could be provoked by ongoing fights over Living Constitutionalism) is essentially the first day of our culture-wars becoming a very drawn-out civil-war/political fragmentation.
But here’s the good news, despite Hancock’s very valid fears about the possible demise of the family (into what Delsol calls a new statist form of matriarchy): Full-scale mild-despotism, in which we humans become fully dehumanized, IS NOT POSSIBLE. NO MATTER WHAT. It was Lawler who taught me to suspect this, but a careful reading of Tocqueville’s theory of mild despotism reveals that he knew it also. That drains a good deal of the darkness out of that darkest possible Tocquevillian thought.
So. We’re stuck with virtue. With culture-war. And yes, Pat, with perpetual attraction to and corruption by Liberalism. While it is very depressing how dehumanized humans might become by individualism/equality/biggvmnt, and I guess, that the “new boss” of the hour may unwittingly be lending his hand to help that, there’s only so low that we can go.
January 23rd, 2009 | 5:38 pm
Oh, and there’s also this thing called Revival.
Links
Blogs
Find Us
Contact