As I awoke this morning I was treated to a most light-hearted remembrance of Bastille day on NPR. Nothing is so merry, it seems, as stringing up a few “aristocrats” from light poles. Not that the jovial announcers at NPR are particularly to blame; their casual notice of what could be considered the political beginning of radical modernity is thoroughly typical of the complacency of our late modernity: an unquestioned secular rationalism, but without bearing any of the weight of reason’s responsibility. At least Lenin, a very conscious heir of the Jacobins, had some sense of the gravity of the decision by human beings to take over the sovereignty that had belonged to God. Now, however, reason rules with unbearable lightness.
Here are some thoughts I framed long ago, for the occasion of the 200th anniversary of the taking of the Bastille:
…The disconcerting suggestion that arises from a comparative reflection on the theoretical cores of the two Revolutions is the idea of human rights that informs the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen of 1789 cannot be altogether severed from the logic of the Terror. The potential for unlimited radicalization seems to exist from the moment the rights of man are extracted from a framework defined by the laws of nature and nature’s God and made to stand on their own as assertions of human autonomy. The germ of the Terror, the dream of the regeneration of humanity by political means, may already be present in the radically modern idea of sovereignty that informs the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen. The political denial of an authoritative realm of meaning beyond politics appears barely separable from the absorption of all meaning into the political realm. Hobbes’ radical materialism, which accompanies his rejection of the priority of natural law to human rights, invites Rousseau’s idealism, or his craving for a comprehensive moral order not grounded in nature but created by human beings. If politics is all there is, then politics must be everything, it must hold the key to fulfilling not only the ordinary needs but even the deepest longings of humanity.
Those who propose to liberate human beings by reducing them to their naked individuality and destroying the bonds that connect them with principles understood to reside beyond human power risk arrogating to themselves the right to forge new and tighter chains. If there is no Truth above the People, then the People are led to create their own truth – in effect, of course, some revolutionary elite must create it in the name of the People, whatever the human cost. The violence of the Terror appears thus to spring from a theoretical violence to human nature…
On this 220th anniversary, I can still ask, is this violence still at work beneath the surface of our merry, easy-going late modern rationalism?
July 14th, 2009 | 11:44 am
Very true about the alienation of so much “liberation.” True human progress must be subordinate to a human purpose of virtue in the natural existence and development of social settings, places where the kinships of association flourish. To idolize an individual, government planning, technical or scientific progress, or an abstract idea of human organization outside the context of custom and history – as the French revolutionaries did – is to defy a delicate possibility of common good.
July 14th, 2009 | 12:26 pm
The answer to the final question of the post is of course: yes. Its name is abortion.
July 14th, 2009 | 12:31 pm
[...] our Postmodern Conservative blog Ralph Hancock shares some thoughts on Bastille Day. Ralph’s not a fan: As I awoke this morning I was treated to a most light-hearted remembrance [...]
July 14th, 2009 | 2:08 pm
Certainly. But, look! Bread and circuses are getting cheaper!
July 14th, 2009 | 3:40 pm
Succinctly – No.
Or at least, no, not really.
The mass violence of the 14th of July was of course nothing new in itself – and as we look back on mass action in history, there are a few roughly similar causes, such as tax relief or religious issues. The salient feature of the Bastille, the early 15th C. Hussite rebellion, aspects of England’s Glorious Revolution, and many Communist Revolutions is that popular leaders assumed the mantle and interpretation of mass action – because the mass action itself is the most consistent source of political authority, in practice, but the blob does not shape itself. All energy and no matter, so to speak.
Though it’s hard to say what they were thinking, the Bastille stormers very unlikely had any thought of the Terror or the execution of the king or even the Declaration of the Rights of Man. The significance of the Bastille was probably in the fact that mass action was explicitly, though subsequently, accepted as the basis for authority, due to the the influence of Rousseauean philosophy.
However, it was accepted, and the full throes of revolutionary philosophy were born. Logic was extended from logic was extended from logic. The radicalism born of this logic – that is, a logic shorn of reference to human nature/natural law – could only continue to live as it was institutionalized, since the energy of a crowd everywhere and always dissipates. Which is why revolutionary governments always end up despotic – the people stop being all that revolutionary, and they cannot help but live their lives in reference to a practical, chthonic reality.
So while the “violence” of political rationalism has indeed become institutionalized, and therefore continues to frame our thought, but the practical reality of people’s lives does not (and will never) measure up to the philosophy as well. Enlightenment rationalism is necessarily top-down because it is all articulation and no experience, and will therefore have its weakest grasp where “isms” claim to have their most effectual interpretations – contact with the real world.
My point is this – The violence of the rationalism is strongest when there is a crowd subject to articulation by elite, or when the elite can set it up in a coercive hegemon.
The violence of rationalism is broadly pervasive but only vaguely invasive, mixed with people’s accepted ways of life – meaning tradition, natural conservatism, etc.
July 14th, 2009 | 10:39 pm
It seems that we all want to be number “ONE” and if we truly were all made in the image of God, this certainly would cause a great deal of problem in any society, don’t you think?
Would that make any sense in the real world? Now what about the spiritual world of souls and spirit? :)
Peace
July 16th, 2009 | 6:44 am
The Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen was one of the most admirable documents published in the history of Man. For the first time ever Man was seen as possessing rights as a result of its human condition. Natural law may have given the first step, but the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen made it a lot clearer to everyone. Terror had nothing to do with it. Terror was the product of Robespierre’s twisted sense of “virtue”, which led him to think that virtue had to be imposed on the basis of fear, because people were not ready to accept it without compulsion. Terror was the very negation of human rights.
We are unfortunately prone to use the exception as an argument against things we don’t like. Some people abuse social security, thus social security is bad. Some people don’t know how to use their voting rights, thus democracy is wrong. Some critics of Israel are antisemites, thus criticizing Israel is wrong. Some people who say they support human rights actually oppress their felowmen, so human rights are wrong.
Revolutions bring many nasty things to the fore, but they are necessary when the oligarchies of the day make any change in the status quo impossible. The American Revolution was necessary, but so was the French Revolution and the Russian Revolution. Probably we are in need of a new revolution, if – as is to be expected – the present oligarchy is unable or unwilling to correct the system which originated the present financial and economic crisis.
July 16th, 2009 | 6:59 pm
Under the right conditions, yes, but there will always be those who refuse to participate in violence. I don’t believe man has changed as much as fashions in thinking have changed.
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