The next stop on the BUILDING BETTER THAN THEY KNEW TOUR is Assumption College in Worcester, MASS. I’ll be giving a conference keynote talk Friday night at 7:30 in the auditorium of La Maison. The next day will feature presentations by some genuinely legendary figures–such as Dan Mahoney, Philippe Beneton, Hank Edmundson, and Ralph Hancock. The conference is about the influence of French, Catholic thought on America, and it’s fine title is “Reintegrating Man.” Googling will quckly alert you to many additional details. Here are some of my projected introductory remarks:
I’ve concluded that there’s no better way to keynote this wonderful conference on the large and beneficial influence of French Catholic writers on America but by giving a talk all about me–someone who’s not at all French, can’t comfortably speak French, and is only ambiguously a writer. There’s no better way to assess the reach of this influence but to find it in someone who’s really not particularly French, not particularly literary, and in truth pretty narrowly American.
So nobody’s better situated than ME to assess objectively the merits of modern French Catholic writers. Because I’ve often used Alexis de Tocqueville, Pierre Manent, Chantal Delsol, and other French, Catholic political thinkers to call attention to the limitations of the theory of the American founding, I’ve been accused of being anti-American. Not only that, I’ve sort of figured out that Alexis de Tocqueville, author of the best book on America, thought that the French Catholic Pascal taught the truth about who we are, and that the psychology of Pascal more than the History of Rousseau (or the ambiguously natural/Historical Locke) explains to us best of all who we are. The best American Thomist, the philosopher-physician-novelist Walker Percy, agrees that the Americans, who really are Cartesians who’ve never read a word of Descartes, need Pascal to understand that their legendary pursuit of happiness is mostly a diversion about what they really can’t help but know about themselves.
Our pursuits, as Tocqueville says, are feverish and often insane. Percy adds, inspired by both Tocqueville and Pascal, that we’re quite literally deranged. We certainly can’t explain our strange and wonderful human behavior with our Lockean and Cartesian theory. Just beneath the happy talk pragmatism of our pop Cartesian experts Tocqueville and Percy hear the howl of existentialism, which is really, as Pascal, explains, an expression of the misery of man without God. But Tocqueville and Percy also follow Pascal in not confusing restlessness with hopelessness. They see in the restlessness of the Americans reason for a glimmer–or maybe much more than a glimmer–of hope.
So I plead guilty to being unduly influenced by French Catholic thought and by Americans who has been particularly open to French Catholic influence, such as Percy but also the American Catholic agent for today’s French Catholic political thinkers in America, Dan Mahoney, and the American Mormon Thomist dissident Straussian Francophile Ralph Hancock.
That doesn’t mean I’m anti-American. One way I use to defend myself against that charge is, quite humbly, to compare myself with Socrates. Socrates must have been happy with Athens, as the Laws say in THE CRITO, because he never left that place. He was quite the stay-at-home. I too never leave America or at least our Hemisphere (rightly claimed as ours by President Monroe) except on business. I’ve never even had the European Vacation made famous by Chevy Chase.
Our friend Jim Ceaser is famous for unreservedly defending American foundationalism against our European critics. But he prances off to France every chance he gets. As a college professor, I’ve been blessed by living in abundance with very little real work, but I haven’t used my leisure to be a voracious consumer of French culture, as our libertarians or bourgeois bohemians might have predicted. I’d admit freely to being influenced by alien currents of thought, but I use them to make our place better.
Tocqueville, everyone knows, wrote about the Americans for the benefit of the French, by showing the French that we’re both better and worse than they are. When I write about the French, I think mostly about what’s best for America. I certainly haven’t made any big effort to get my work known in France. And in that lack of effort I’ve succeeded almost completely.
There are various ways Americans today relate to French thought. The first, characteristic of many conservatives (such as the so-called West Coast Straussians and students of Fox Professor of Tea Party Studies Glenn Beck), is to proudly proclaim that we don’t need no (to quote the unmatched eloquence of our vice president) bleepin’ foreign aid. American has a flawless Founding and was later messed up by the German influence on the Progressive Era and the French envy of the Obama Era.
One flaw in this account of our founding innocence of all things French or German, to begin with, is that our philosopher Locke was basically a Cartesian, and Descartes was French.. Another is that Tocqueville really does understand ourselves better than we understand ourselves, showing us that our pragmatism and progressivism aren’t really so much alien intrusions but indigenous expressions of the American, democratic mind.
The second American way of relating to French thought, characteristic of many liberals, amounts to French envy. We need to get less Puritanical and more French. That means we have to stop being sexually repressed, gun toting, workaholic, religious nuts. We have to transform our greedy brutal capitalism into a European social democracy so that we can switch over to that near oxymoron, the French work ethic. And that means we’ll have all the leisure we’ll need to be appreciative enjoyers of French culture–sitting for example, for hours in cafes in squares graced by cathedrals that were built based on beliefs that no sensible person has anymore.
There’s a second kind of French envy that’s much less common: It is found among certain very admirable American traditionalist Catholics, many of whom are shaped in some measure by the “after virtue” philosophy of Alasdair MacIntyre. Only the most individualistic currents of European thought, beginning with the Protestant dissenter Puritans, got to America. So from the very beginning America lacked what it takes to have genuine political or spiritual community. And then America morphed into being the most imperial of the modern nation-states–out to dominate the world with its particularly brutal form of capitalism. Lately we’ve been unjustly invading countries to protect our oil and to make everyone become democratic individualists just like us. There’s little to no hope for America. But Christendom–the way of life that existed in the Europe prior to the nation-state–might rise from the ruins of Europe. There’s even hope, in Europe, in what’s left of the Christian Democratic parties and in the universalistic, postnational aspirations of the EU.
There are some curious convergences in the trendy left and seemingly traditionalist forms of French envy, beginning with exaggerations–really, caricatures–of American individualism as it exists right now in our relatively unsophisticated heartland. But more important is willful ignorance of the fact that, by Tocqueville’s standards, Europe is generally speaking much more individualistic than America right now. Individualism, remember, is, according to Tocqueville, a kind of heart disease, an emotional withdrawal into the confines of one’s own puny self based on the mistaken judgment that both love and hate are more trouble than they’re worth.
My view of Europe today isn’t of course based on firsthand observation. I’m not that kind of social scientist. But I’ve listened to the criticisms of Europe from the best French, Catholic political thinkers, beginning, of course, with Pierre Manent. These criticisms are BOTH French and Catholic. According to Manent, the nation is the modern form of the ancient polis, the place where people can and should find a political home. The nation is a body, with definite territorial limits. It’s a real place with customs, traditions, and political institutions.
Human beings, the Catholic adds, are more than citizens, though; they have another and higher home than their political one. And that fact is represented by the universal church. But the universal church isn’t meant to and can’t really displace the particular nation. So today Europe is making two fundamental errors: It’s abolishing the nation and denying that all particular nations exist under the universal church. Much of today’s Europe is in the thrall, the emphatically French and Catholic man Manent explains, of a kind of post-political, post-familial, and post-religious fantasy. People have so withdrawn into themselves that they aren’t even making enough babies to secure their political future. They hate their bodies, Manent shows us, because they’ve become so sure that they’re nothing more than bodies. The eros of Europeans is less and less aroused and shaped by the familial, political, and spiritual responsibilities given to beings like us.
We can also learn much from Tocqueville or Manent or Beneton about the excesses of our individualism, about our inability to keep Locke in the Locke box, about the horror that is Roe v. Wade and the mean womyn side of our feminism, and about the more narcissistic and laughably risk-averse elements of our creeping and sometimes creepy libertarianism. And as Orestes Brownson, the 19th century American thinker most influenced by French, Catholic currents of thought first explained, the Americans–with their merely contractual understanding of the origin of political authority–never have had a proper theoretical understanding of the political or national virtues of loyalty and gratitude.
Still, Manent admits that, following the example and much of the analysis of Tocqueville, we are, comparatively speaking, better off because the family, the nation, and religious belief remain stronger here. Thanks mainly to our observant religious believers, we’re still having enough babies to keep ourselves going. And we, more generally, are doing what it takes to defend ourselves politically. We even still think that the old and the disabled are mainly still the responsibility of particular families and not some impersonal state. Not only that, we still practice the virtue of charity as particular persons in big numbers and often on a grand scale.
So we’ve read the studies, often written in the spirit of Tocqueville, that American conservative Christians are distinguished by their philanthropic generosity and their voluntary care giving, and their churches, at their best at least, are attentive to the whole lives of particular persons. We learn from today’s French Catholic writer, Chantal Delsol, that the virtues most slighted in our high-tech and exceedingly productive world are those displayed through care giving, although it’s care giving far more than productivity that displays to us the depths about who we are. The Catholic principle of subsidiary, while officially extolled everywhere in Europe today, is at least somewhat more alive, as Tocqueville explained, in the virtuous voluntary activity relatively prevalent in our country, in the virtue displayed, for example, in THE BLIND SIDE.
More to come…
April 6th, 2010 | 2:07 pm
As the French say, ce chevalier qui part d’un bon pas. (Loose translation: Kudos to this American knight who kicks off his Francophiliac talk in such studly fashion.)
April 6th, 2010 | 2:46 pm
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Ken Glenn. Ken Glenn said: How and Why We Should Listen to the French: I'm not that kind of social scientist. But I've listened to the critic… http://bit.ly/bsK0ag [...]
April 6th, 2010 | 5:40 pm
Now, let me get this right.
We Americans need to listen to the French, because after all, they’re so much more pious and virtuous than we are. And, of course, they are so DEEPLY EXISTENTIAL!
So, for the past 200 years, the French have provided the world models of moral, religious, and political excellence, while we Americans have wallowed in our piggish decadence.
Do you really believe this?
April 6th, 2010 | 6:44 pm
“The first, characteristic of many conservatives (such as the so-called West Coast Straussians and students of Fox Professor of Tea Party Studies Glenn Beck), is to proudly proclaim that we don’t need no (to quote the unmatched eloquence of our vice president) bleepin’ foreign aid.”
This characterization of Glenn Beck is both accurate and inaccurate. It is accurate in linking him with the Straussians (though not the West Coast) and inaccurate in its analysis of his exoteric denunciation of Continental thought. His critique is much subtler. Interested readers may examine the new blog devoted to Glenn Beck’s Socratic Discourse: http://beckstudies.blogspot.com/
April 6th, 2010 | 7:49 pm
I’m a bit surprised that in all the Francophilia (great word Mr. Seaton) in the post, the one Frenchman who has had the most influence on the American Founding is left out: should we not be reading our Montesquieu as well? :)
April 7th, 2010 | 12:18 pm
I think we need to get beyond the ‘(insert proper name)’ is good* model of political writing and focus more on ‘what is’ type commentary. Tocqueville wanted to explain what America (and above all what modern democracy) was. Only marginally was he nterested only marginally in ‘praise or blame.’ Note also that this does not entail surrendering to the obtuse ‘fact/value distinction’ and characteristic merits and flaws do emerge in such characterizations. This model of speech and writing is represented most of all by Glenn Beck, unnecessarily maligned by the otherwise wise Professor Lawler, at least since Beck’s recent “Socratic turn.”
April 7th, 2010 | 1:10 pm
I don’t understand. Are you suggesting that Pascal, the biggest defeatist of all time, laid down the moral compass upon which all of our restlessness should be guided by? You make a distinction between restlessness and hopelessness, yet you claim one is founded on the other … i mean how else are we supposed to overcome restlessness than by being hopeful? I think that Pascal is one of the worst guides, and I think this is what Arnhart is suggesting, as he believes our natural instincts are a better compass whose ability can rightly be compounded by religion. I find this of course contradictory as a neo-Nietzschian, and find that our instincts or restlessness should not be ignored, but rather recognized as evidence for the eternal recurrence, that is becoming (epitomized in the electron). This is confusing, but for good reason.
April 7th, 2010 | 1:32 pm
Mr. Arnhart,
Perhaps I’m misunderstanding, but I think Dr. Lawler’s point is not that the French are a wonderful, virtuous, and enlightened people whom we should be modeling, but that they have given us the gift of Tocqueville, who has done what no American has ever managed to do well (as I found to my dismay the first time I taught an “American Political Thought” course): think philosophically about America.
Or am I misreading this whole post?
April 7th, 2010 | 3:00 pm
Coyle of course is right. My love of the French is pretty much of countercultural figures, and not many of them. Montesquieu doesn’t fit into the French, Catholic theme of the conference. Larry, I appreciate your post, but you may have shown again that Darwinian irony is an oxymoron. Ben, you actually make a decent point. Eventually I will get to explaining that Percy, Tocqueville etc. aren’t really Pascalians. And on this Beck “Socratic turn” website; I have to admit I didn’t laugh as much you guys might have hoped. Still, I don’t deny for a moment that GB invites and deserves that kind of mocking.
April 7th, 2010 | 3:01 pm
And Paul, Thanks. You alone seem to appreciate the exaggerated or manly tone.
April 7th, 2010 | 5:39 pm
Thanks, Peter. In terms of the “voice” or personna you adopted, I did particularly enjoy the way you took your weakness (your oft-alleged (and partially real) American chauvinism) and turned it into a real strength. “If I read the French and find them worth-the-while, they can’t be all bad!” I’d just add to your “countercultural” Frenchmen (and woman) characterization, that each and all of the authors you mention are quintessentially French. You don’t get any more French than Philippe Beneton, Pierre Manent, or Chantal Delsol; and the great Tocqueville is so, so French it goes without saying. So one needs to enlarge one’s understanding of “French” to encompass them. It is a useful exercise, and not just for Darwinian conservatives.
April 8th, 2010 | 5:37 am
Was Tocqueville a Christian?
April 8th, 2010 | 8:11 am
Not a doctrinal one, at least on my reading. But he did have a Christian/Providential worldview that you won’t find in Montesquieu.
April 8th, 2010 | 9:31 am
Tocqueville did not believe in much of Christian doctrine. But he experienced himself as unfortunate not to believe. He also thought (see the chapter on democratic poetry in vol 2 of DA) that the experience of oneself as existing contingently for a moment between both two abysses is both deeply strange and wonderful and deeply truthful. So he managed to be rather Pascalian (while rejecting P’s extremism in dismissing the compensatory pleasures and real greatness that accompany our singular experience of misery) without being Christian. As Mansfield and Winthrop conclude, he was a singularly deep liberal and so dissatisfied with the superficiality of, say, Lockean/Cartesian and Darwinian explanations.
April 8th, 2010 | 12:56 pm
It’s helpful to look at the correspondence between T and Gobineau on the Christian question: there he candidly acknowledges that he’s not a Christian believer but that he has enormous admiration for those who are, thinks a good deal of the Christian moral psychology is true, and argues (contra Gobineau) that modern moral theory is really not all that new and is basically parasitic on Christian categories. At an even more general level, T discusses the basic human religious impulse in DIA as an “invincible inclination” meaning that any project of comprehensive secularization is bound to fail, anticipating the difficulties this or that incarnation of the Religion of Humanity would run into.
April 8th, 2010 | 3:17 pm
Tocqueville seems to have died a Catholic:
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14753a.htm
April 8th, 2010 | 4:00 pm
“Coyle of course is right.”
And I of course will be quoting you on that, both out of context and often ;)
In the spirit of continuing to bring up Frenchmen who aren’t on the list, I’m a bit curious as to whether you’ll be engaging de Maistre? He would seem to fit your category of critical and “countercultural” Frenchmen, though I don’t know how much he wrote about the American Revolution…
April 8th, 2010 | 6:15 pm
So, in other words, Tocqueville was an atheist.
April 8th, 2010 | 7:04 pm
I agree with the suggestion of Lawler and Kenneally that Tocqueville was an atheist.
But he seems to have been uncomfortable with his atheism.
Does that suggest that he was a Nietzschean nihilist who couldn’t give up his transcendent longings?
Is that, perhaps, generally true of the French Catholic existentialists?
April 9th, 2010 | 9:10 am
Coyle,
Your reference to Joseph de Maistre is perceptive.
Wasn’t he the first postmodern conservative?
His attacks on the atheism of modern science (Bacon) and Enlightenment rationalism and his call for a return to Catholic theocratic government would seem to manifest the fundamental message of postmodern conservatism.
April 9th, 2010 | 11:14 am
Larry, I can’t tell if those questions are honest queries/offered-hypotheses, or rhetorical questions.
Assuming the first option, the top Tocqueville scholars, a group that extends beyond Manent, Lawler, and Winthrop/Mansfield, (I’m thinking of the boigraphers here in particular) tend to rather count him as a non-Christian theist, a reticent and perhaps idiosyncratic one. (I’ll let Peter and Ivan speak for themselves on what it is they’re “suggesting.”)
Could you then, assuming now the second option, argue that he was an incoherent theist? Yes, but I don’t see that that gets you to “Nietzschean nihilist,” nor even to “he was an athiest, period.”
I know you want to simplify things in a philosophic manner, and I understand why you want to peg these French Catholics as existentialists, but let me note another terminology problem. Here is a portion of a piece I did on Delsol in Perspectives that is mostly direct quotes. Notice how she resists the tag of existentialism, or at least, that of “contemporary existentialism”:
“[Delsol] offers an alternative to the late-modern approach to life, but one that is not an attempt to return to pre-modernity nor an acceptance of essentialist fundamentalism. It is founded on her development of a philosophic anthropology—to learn about that, one must turn to the trilogy itself, but here we can take a glimpse at the alternative way of life Delsol poses against the indeterminate one. She calls it the “authentic subject,” and models it on the stubborn bravery of East-European dissidents.
‘Such a subject brings his weight to bear on the world in order to change it, risks his being in moral decision-making. …[He] puts himself on the line so that he can demonstrate
that he really is what he is not yet known to be. …[He] accepts the discomfort of his paradoxes. He knows himself to be structured because his being is incomplete. …[I]n contrast to the contemporary individual, the authentic subject knows himself to be not self-founded, but founded on a debt: the culture that has preceded him promises and permits him the status of subject.’(Unlearned Lessons, 116, 120)
He does not see himself as determined, as in pantheism and scientism; as importantly, he does not ‘regard himself as solely the work of the self…as in contemporary existentialism.’ (Unlearned Lessons, 121) Unlike the ‘self-founded subject’ who ‘believes he already possesses everything,’ the authentic subject regards himself as ‘a gift that he himself must complete.’(Unlearned Lessons, 120-21) Ultimately, Delsol suggests that man cannot believe this unless he is open to the possibility of a Giver above and beyond every culture.”
**************************************
I might add that while one can understand why a Darwinian Conservative would fight tooth and nail against the imposition of communism, I fail to see what reason such a conservative, would have for acting as Delsol’s dissident authentic subjects really did under communism already-imposed.
But the main point is, if you want to argue that these French thinkers are incoherent, do so. Guys like me get confused if you’re jumping ahead and applying the label of what they REALLY would be were they not incoherent. Not sure if this is what you’re up to, though.
April 9th, 2010 | 11:18 am
Names, dates, and quotations, Larry, for any postmodern conservative who advocated “a return to Catholic theocratic government.”
April 9th, 2010 | 2:33 pm
So of course Carl is right. And of course Larry is trying to be something like Darwin’s Harry Jaffa–provoking enemies through extreme assertions that we can’t really tell whether he really thinks their true. I guess this is supposed to sharpen debate, although it’s not too close to the method Socrates used. (Although I appreciate the pathbreaking achievements of Darwin the scientist, it turns out be quite the stretch to display him as a great moral or political or philosophical thinker generally.) Larry comes off as dripping with strangely misplaced antitheological ire, which isn’t a good look for anyone who wants to win converts. I do get a good chuckle from thinking that my over-the-top pro-American praise of certain pro-American French gets me called a European reactionary theocrat. I hope our porcher friends notice that in some way to someone I can come off as much more Red Tory than them. And generally Larry has reminded me of the basic two-pronged Darwinian conservative strategy: The Epicurean cure for transcendent longing for the few. And the “political” or “cave” or reintegration into a social whole cure for the many. LOL, as they say. But if I’m a Nietzschean Heideggerian Gnostic existentialist, then I guess Tocqueville is too.
April 9th, 2010 | 5:11 pm
Your ‘comment’ above has a lyrical and or poetic rhythm to it and was, therefore, a delight.
But this, “But if I’m a Nietzschean Heideggerian Gnostic existentialist, then I guess Tocqueville is too.” gave me the vapors!
But, please don’t use LOL,….it’s not becoming.
April 9th, 2010 | 6:06 pm
So, Peter, do you agree with me that statecraft is not soulcraft?
Do you agree with me that moral and religious beliefs and practices should be left up to individual choice as expressed in civil society, in families and social groups?
Do you agree with me that the government should not enforce any particular morality or religion?
Do you agree with me that Catholic theocracy is to be rejected?
So do you agree with me that Locke was right about politics and Aristotle was right about ethics?
If you do, congratulations! You’re a Darwinian conservative!
April 9th, 2010 | 6:27 pm
Carl Scott,
Let’s here from Peter Lawler.
Will he condemn Joseph de Maistre?
Will he say that medieval Catholic theocracy was tyranny?
Will he say that Locke was right in arguing that statecraft is not soulcraft?
Will he say that Lockean liberalism is right in arguing that the moral and religious formation of one’s soul is a matter properly left up to civil society?
Will he say that no healthy society can enforce any way of life on all? Will he say that one’s form of life is a matter of individual freedom in civil society?
Will he agree with the American constitutional framers at the Constitutional Convention in rejecting Benjamin Franklin’s proposal for prayers for God’s intervention? Will he agree with Alexander Hamilton that those who wrote the Constitution had “no need for foreign aid”?
April 10th, 2010 | 9:30 am
Random points:
1. I’m somewhat surprised to hear zero mention of Benjamin Constant, who, especially in his later years, was more of a postmodern conservative by a long shot than de Maistre.
2. It’s a tragic error to imagine that the bottom line about French thought is its division into Cartesians and theocrats. Or that this division represents the truth about our final choice as Westerners.
3. I think I’m not imagining things when I think that our most patriotic Americans – including those who seem ‘too patriotic’ – are both extremely loyal and extremely contractarian. “I love my country but I fear my government…”
4. The family is a pretty unique institution in its fusion of production and care – and of the natural and super-natural (with super-natural taking the character both of ‘idiosyncratic personal project’ and something more).
5. This is a great thread.
April 10th, 2010 | 1:49 pm
You know Lawler, it ruins my Saturday Afternoon when I cannot find enough to argue about with you to put a nice rank spit in my eye. I go soft and pacific and it aint in my nature. Perhaps the afternoon drive to a couple meetings will refresh me with a little road rage.
Tocqueville pegged the busily dirty and matter-of-fact engagement of the American. We cared not for perfection at that time. The apodictic was more important because , after all, there aint nothing hypothetical about a Tomahawk between the lights. Perhaps that is why it is called “the good old days”. Our voluntary ignorance has unfortunately gone from an un-assuming naturalism to the highly staged defiance of a non-voluntary ignorance. But we are still quixotic, I am happy to assert. Perhaps this will save us in the end.
Really though, you should doff the Yankee hairshirt and please yourself with a little trip to the sublime and psychedelic Rose window of Sainte-Chapelle. It is a staggering thing, brought even this pagan to sublime wonder .
April 10th, 2010 | 2:09 pm
LOL I don’t agree that you are are a Nietzschian nor existential in any particular usage of the notion. Due to the utter confusion displayed by that verbose usage of terms I’d like to offer some clarity to my original statement which is also a critique of dr. Arnharts “Darwinian conservatism”
first, the problem with being as a state of consciousness is it violates the problem of induction.
Secondly, the inherent notion that is assumed as true cannot actually describe nearly as much as it wants to.
Finally, I cannot get my reason to prove that my instinctual restlessness is anything more than a state of becoming which is eternal in it’s character (this is where my theory of everything comes into play). May I ALSO add that Tocqueville was right to fear the perpetuating and hypeization of individualism as the correct respnse to nihilism since it is once religion is properly negated so hard to overcome. If it is overcome it represents aesthetic stocism and not what lawler or arnhart describe and if I may desperately hide from.
April 10th, 2010 | 4:46 pm
James, welcome aboard. On #1: The conference/this thread aren’t about pomocons, but French Catholic thinkers on, or of relevance to, the good ole USA; Tocqueville’s the theistic exception – but he’s always sui generis, or in his own term “strange”. Constant’s neither a catholic nor a theist. He’s a chastened post-Revolutionary Romantic liberal. Good point #2; the whole point of the French liberal (latu senso) tradition is to critique and avoid the Scylla and Charybdis u lay out between tyrannical reason and tyrannical faith. As for the contrmporary French thinkers Peter invoked, I’d call Manent and Beneton liberal-conservatives and Delsol a conservative-liberal.
April 26th, 2010 | 1:55 pm
I find myself fixed between both Larry and Peter. I think Larry is being a bit agressive, but more in the spirit of Anastaplo than Jaffa.. trying to push an answer when its not forthcoming.
I have liked some of the things Desol has written but she is very much merely footnotes to Tocqueville.. as too with Manent. There is something going on in Tocqueville’s Ancient Regime that has a distinctive historicist cast, the spell of Herder and Fichte, and hence all this priviliging the accidential (aka the nation as political unit) while still working within the frame of modern political thought.
January 16th, 2012 | 11:35 am
[...] this post, Peter Lawler explores the types of Francophobia and Francophilia in America today. For me, admiring [...]
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