How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love thee to the depth and breadth and height My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight For the ends of being and ideal grace. I love thee to the level of every day’s Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light. I love thee freely, as men strive for right. I love thee purely, as they turn from praise. I love thee with the passion put to use In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith. I love thee with a love I seemed to lose With my lost saints. I love thee with the breath, Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose, I shall but love thee better after death.
‘Scruton is at his best in Central Europe, when conducting his vivisection of the Institute for Social Research, a.k.a. the Frankfurt School, a.k.a. the cultural Marxist — an intellectual movement which must rank alongside monetarism and supply side economics as one of the most astonishingly successful of the 20th century.’
As previously posted-
A buzz fills the Melissa J. Winthrop learning annex. Enthusiasm is high. After some coffee and light refreshments, an assistant begins taping a curtain over a window.
‘That’s funny.’
‘Is Judy still Treasurer?’
‘Has anyone seen Judy?’
A light commotion rustles amongst the Ladies Of The Sacred Modern Art(s). A second assistant joins the first, and they are definitely covering all of the windows, one by one.
‘Ladies and Gentleman, please welcome your new Chair(W)oman, Katherine Maher’
Two young men, thin as beanstalks, fill in quickly to the emergency exit doors. The loud thunk of a chain is heard…
========
Some favorite quotes, as often repeated.
“The moral world has no particular objection to vice, but an insuperable repugnance to hearing vice called by its proper name.”
Carlo Lancellotti, on the works of Italian political thinker, Augusto Del Noce.
Full piece here, which could have some explanatory insight:
Del Noce’s emphasis on the role of Marxism in what I called the “anti-Platonic turn” in Western culture is original, and opens up an unconventional perspective on recent cultural history. It calls into question the widespread narrative that views bourgeois liberalism, rooted in the empiricist and individualist thought of early modern Europe, as the lone triumphant protagonist of late modernity. While Del Noce fully recognizes the ideological and political defeat of Marxism in the twentieth century, he argues that Marxist thought left a lasting mark on the culture, so much so that we should actually speak of a “simultaneous success and failure” of Marxism. Whereas it failed to overthrow capitalism and put an end to alienation, its critique of human nature carried the day and catalyzed a radical transformation of liberalism itself. In Del Noce’s view, the proclaimed liberalism of the affluent society is radically different from its nineteenth-century antecedent precisely because it fully absorbed the Marxist metaphysical negations and used them to transition from a “Christian bourgeois” (Kantian, typically) worldview to a “pure bourgeois” one. In the process, it tamed the Marxist revolutionary utopia and turned it into a bourgeois narrative of individualistic liberation (primarily sexual).’
‘Quit talking bad about women, homosexuals, and preferred social minorities, and you can say anything you want about people who haven’t been to college, manual workers, country people, peasants, religious people, unmodern people, old people, and so on.’
‘They are, in fact, idealists: and idealism is a cast of mind that Conrad questions even more than he questions radicalism. The logical end of radicalism, in his view, is terrorism; but idealism is the mental aberration that allows terrorism to be brought about. Conrad’s originality was to see that a new tyranny could be generated by people who thought that their rebellion against the old tyranny was rational. Thus his writings seem prescient about what was to happen in the Soviet Union. He didn’t predict the Nazi tyranny because he had underestimated the power of the irrational to organise itself into a state. But then, nobody predicted that except its perpetrators; and anyway, mere prediction was not his business. His business was the psychological analysis made possible by an acute historical awareness. Under Western Eyes is valuable not because it came true but because it rang true even at the time, only now we can better hear the deep, sad note.’
‘Outrage supposedly felt on behalf of others is extremely gratifying for more than one reason. It has the appearance of selflessness, and everyone likes to feel that he is selfless. It confers moral respectability on the desire to hate or despise something or somebody, a desire never far from the human heart. It provides him who feels it the possibility of transcendent purpose, if he decides to work toward the elimination of the supposed cause of his outrage. And it may even give him a reasonably lucrative career, if he becomes a professional campaigner or politician: For there is nothing like stirring up resentment for the creation of a political clientele.’
—
Ken Minogue framed it thusly:
‘Olympianism is the characteristic belief system of today’s secularist, and it has itself many of the features of a religion. For one thing, the fusion of political conviction and moral superiority into a single package resembles the way in which religions (outside liberal states) constitute comprehensive ways of life supplying all that is necessary (in the eyes of believers) for salvation. Again, the religions with which we are familiar are monotheistic and refer everything to a single center. In traditional religions, this is usually God; with Olympianism, it is society, understood ultimately as including the whole of humanity. And Olympianism, like many religions, is keen to proselytize. Its characteristic mode of missionary activity is journalism and the media.’
And:
‘Progress, Communism, and Olympianism: these are three versions of the grand Western project. The first rumbles along in the background of our thought, the second is obviously a complete failure, but Olympianism is not only alive but a positively vibrant force in the way we think now. Above all, it determines the Western moral posture towards the rest of the world. It affirms democracy as an ideal, but carefully manipulates attitudes in a nervous attempt to control opinions hostile to Olympianism, such as beliefs in capital or corporal punishment, racial, and otherforms of prejudice, national self-assertion—and indeed, religion‘
In the moonlight I met Berserk, In the moonlight On the bushy plain. Oh, sharp he was As the sleepless!
And, “Why are you red In this milky blue?” I said. “Why sun-colored, As if awake In the midst of sleep?”
“You that wander,” So he said, “On the bushy plain, Forget so soon. But I set my traps In the midst of dreams.”
I knew from this That the blue ground Was full of blocks And blocking steel. I knew the dread Of the bushy plain, And the beauty Of the moonlight Falling there, Falling As sleep falls In the innocent air.
Each of us requires guidance to absorb dull rules through repetition and practice; even while learning highly subjective activities, like the Arts. There’s a steep curve to getting good at anything, and most people have good reasons to quit before success.
Constructive and destructive criticism at the right time, tends to be the most valuable.
—
Have I got the map right? Unfortunately, copying what works and the basics of a practical education (reading/writing/arithmetic) have been abandoned in favor of a lot of nonsense these days. Ridiculous pedagogies and half-baked theories dot the landscape, regurgitated by the dullest among us. In my experience, we find ourselves living when the strongest currents are those of liberation, pulling towards the feminizing (anti-masculine) and emotionalizing (anti-Reason).
If you find yourself holding a position of skepticism against the postmodern mystic, God Bless your soul.
Sometimes I like to think of the following progression as an arrow through time: Romantic–>Modern–>Postmodern–>what’s happening/coming next. As the arrow flies, Dear Reader, one wonders about the other philosophical/political/ideological/religious problems we’re facing.
Perhaps postmodernism is like a large hole in the ground; an ebbing and flowing convergence of ideas, an ore pit with steep sides. Stroll along the edge and one can hear constant cries of ‘all truth is relative’ or ‘become your best (S)elf’.
Maybe the truth will be found through the bottom, or maybe it’s best to seek the truth by climbing out into the world.
The more one hears (A)rt promoted as spiritual experience, the less it becomes about technique. The more (A)rt becomes a ‘human right’ and ‘educational necessity’ the less it’s just the damned poem, painting, photograph or song in front of you.
Thus, out of the pit, I expect more nihilism; and many shrill cries for the World to conform to the (S)elf. There will be more talk of the arts as a road to glittering new cities and political utopias here in America; the primary source of meaning for (S)elves.
—
Potential upsides/downsides to abstract movements in art(abstracting into the (S)elf outwards to the World..what have you done with your eyes?): Painting’s another matter, but de-coupling the constituent parts of a painting from direct experience of an empirical world out there, and previous traditions, poses challenges.
It turns out you can paint a block of autumn trees and leaves in various shapes and shades of ochre, orange, red and yellow. If you study light, color and surface tension long enough; working for years on a new technique, then you can paint the river in blue, white, yellow streaks in quick strokes; making a painting more than the sum of its parts. There is great beauty and skill to be found in bold innovation, as the Impressionist movement is what painting has popularly become; a worthy heir to much previous Continental tradition.
Closer to nature, and a return to experience?
‘Instead of painting in a studio, the impressionists found that they could capture the momentary and transient effects of sunlight by working quickly, in front of their subjects, in the open air (en plein air) rather than in a studio. This resulted in a greater awareness of light and colour and the shifting pattern of the natural scene. Brushwork became rapid and broken into separate dabs in order to render the fleeting quality of light.‘
Some artists just followed the color/light/shape command to its logical conclusions this past century. I think this helps explain how you end up with the works of Piet Mondrian or Mark Rothko and their triumphs and failures.
I’m nowhere near any of the talent, skill or accomplishment of the artists I’ve mentioned above, but I find a kind of meditative purpose in walking around with a camera. I like arranging real things in the world into a design I find pleasing. I’m surprisingly in touch with my surroundings, and my experiences in the world. It’s also a highly interior activity where you find yourself within your own thoughts out in the world.
“His problem (Plato’s) with the arts was that they operated by images rather than by ideas, and thus that they might cloud the truth rather than clarifying it.”
Yes, and religious traditions, for example, also have interpretations of how one ought to reproduce the image.
“Whatever one thinks of Plato’s solution to this problem, I suggest that this is one of the problems that elicited his proposals for severe censorship of the arts he so obviously loved and had been trained in.”
‘Perhaps the core of rational behavior is the idea of flexibility or resilience. The rational man, seeing his world collapse, will never turn his face to the wall (like a tragic hero) if there is the slightest possibility of accommodation with the force which has overwhelmed him. Hobbes, the uncompromising rationalist, deals with this possibility without attempting to disguise it. Overwhelming force determines the will of the rational man whose primary aim is to stay alive; there is no place for honor or heroism. The importance of flexibility also comes out in the hostility of rational thinkers to the social institution of the oath. One cannot rationally make a promise binding beyond the point where one gains from it, a point which Spinoza, for example, brings out [27] clearly. The oath, in fact, is a feudal institution which seemed to liberal thinkers an attempt to impose more on the human flux than it could bear.’
‘Long before the Revolution, then, the disposition of mind of the American colonists, the prevailing intellectual character and habit of politics, were rationalistic. And this is clearly reflected in the constitutional documents and history of the individual colonies. And when these colonies came ‘to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another,’ and to declare their independence, the only fresh inspiration that this habit of politics received from the outside was one which confirmed its native character in every particular. For the inspiration of Jefferson and the other founders of American independence was the ideology which Locke had distilled from the English political tradition.’
Oakeshott, Michael. Rationalism In Politics And Other Essays. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1991. Print. Pg 31.
I have trouble imagining Oakeshott having much sympathy with our founders’ direct experience and developing practice alongside and against King George III and the Redcoats; the slow-rolling revolution these men found themselves within.
‘I’ve noticed that Darwinism seems to support one of the fundamental claims of classical liberalism: natural rights emerge in human history as those conditions for human life that cannot be denied without eventually provoking a natural human tendency to violent resistance against exploitation.’
A deep and interesting argument. Both Thomas Hobbes and John Locke had to deal with a constantly warring, reformation England.
Using quite a bit of German idealism (Hegelian) to get at the problem:
‘While I am complaining, I will also note that Scruton has nothing to say about how several of these figures—especially Žižek and Alain Badiou, along with Jacques Derrida, who is barely mentioned here—have played a role in the so-called “religious turn” of humanistic studies, in which various movements generally called “postmodern” find a significant place for religion in their reflections, if not in their beliefs or practices. This marks a significant departure from the relentless secularism of most earlier forms of European leftism, and that deserves note. Nor does Scruton account fully for Jürgen Habermas’s reputation as a centrist figure in the German and more generally the European context. (Habermas too has spoken more warmly of religion in recent years.’
So, what is all this Nothing-ness about? ‘My view’, says Scruton, ‘is that what’s underlying all of this is a kind of nihilistic vision that masks itself as a moving toward the enlightened future, but never pauses to describe what that society will be like. It simply loses itself in negatives about the existing things – institutional relations like marriage, for instance – but never asks itself if those existing things are actually part of what human beings are. Always in Zizek there’s an assumption of the right to dismiss them as standing in the way of something else, but that something else turns out to be Nothing.’
Who has the moral legitimacy to be in charge?
Quote found here at friesian.com (recovering Kantian idealism through post-Kantian philosopher Jakob Fries):
‘Oddly enough, it is the intellectual snobbery and elitism of many of the literati that politically correct egalitarianism appeals to; their partiality to literary Marxism is based not on its economic theory but on its hostility to business and the middle class. The character of this anti-bourgeois sentiment therefore has more in common with its origin in aristocratic disdain for the lower orders than with egalitarianism.’
John M. Ellis, Literature Lost [Yale University Press, 1997, p. 214]
Some people like this kind of thing. Most others think: ‘Focusing on color and light to the exclusion of content, gesture and anything meaningful isn’t for me.’
I get it. It’s practice, really. Thanks for looking.
‘My point is only that Santayana — the Spanish-born, Boston-bred, Harvard educated cosmopolite — stands out as an unusual specimen in the philosophical fraternity. He wrote beautifully, for one thing, commanding a supple yet robust prose that was elegant but rarely precious or self-infatuated’
and Kimball on Santayana’s interaction with William James:
‘Temperamentally, the two men were complete opposites — James bluff, hearty, the thorough New England pragmatist in manner as well as philosophical outlook: Santayana the super-refined, sonnet-writing, exquisitely disillusioned Catholic Spaniard. In many ways, Santayana was closer in spirit to William’s brother Henry.’
For what it’s worth, I recall a deeply Catholic lament and longing in the Spanish character, which can be combined with a kind of clear-eyed realism and stoicism, but not always. The faith runs deep in St Teresa and her passions, and despite Miguel de Unamuno’s rationalist influences, I remember a general preference for wisdom in the Tragic Sense Of Life.
Something clicked regarding Spain when I finally visited the Escorial outside of Madrid after many months of being in that city. It’s a grand castle of course, but it also struck me as rather plain, barracks-like at times. Very austere. It was explained that the Escorial was both a royal palace and a monastery:
‘Philip’s instructions to Herrera stipulated “simplicity of form, severity in the whole, nobility without arrogance, majesty without ostentation,” qualities clearly illustrated by the long sweep of these facades.’
‘El Escorial was built to honor St. Lawrence, who was burned on a grill. In order to remind the citizens of his martyrdom and sacrifice, the entire building is a grill. Yes, it is shaped like a grill. There are paintings of St. Lawrence on a grill, grills are carved into the doorways, the weather vain is in the shape of a grill, the backs of chairs are supposed to be grills, the list literally could go on forever.’
