D Parker, I appreciate your overview here. I hope you keep this thread of thought alive.
One of the challenging questions is how exactly can left-liberals become self-critical? How can they see into how the early original insights and power of liberalism, the awareness and valuing of diversity, of individual differences, devolved into a Marxist influenced, intolerant, activist, collectivist, ‘progressive’ mindset?
I’ve seen liberals I talk with assume that a critique of current liberalism implies some immediate adoption or acceptance of conservatism. I take pains to make clear that that is not the case, that inquiry into ideology, a transcendence/awareness of the nature of ideology, is now in eclipse by the modern outlook that presumes to already know what man is and what the truth is. And why Pierre Manent’s question in his ‘The City of Man’ is so crucial: “How do we inquire into what we presuppose?” (We can transcend ordinary political opposition, how to do this would include reading the same classic works combined with contemplative reading, a process of inquiry, and a referring in discussion to classic works. We are fragmented, awash in ‘new’ reports everyday, deeper insights get displaced, media platforms do not in their structure retain a method for readers to follow to deepen their understanding).
Left-liberals speak of, and assume, any critique of liberalism, implicitly implies a ‘going back’ to an inferior, less advanced, time. The traditional time and culture, that believed in and sought universal knowledge, and sought a ‘standardization of life’, is believed irredeemably corrupt and false. And they believe there is NO value to be found there.
As the current internal failings within left-liberalism become more undeniable liberals are in a tough spot. Liberals have a left-liberal problem they neither admit nor understand. And so increasingly they NEED a demon, a negative, like Trump, that explains why their Utopia is not yet reality. And of course EVERYTHING associated becomes the many headed beast: the patriarchy, anything traditionally masculine, toxic masculinity, white racism, colonialism, capitalism, Republicans, MAGA, xenophobes, homophobes, trans-phobes, with Trump and MAGA as the largest heads focusing their sights for destruction and concentrating their “save the world from evil!” rhetoric.
Left liberals, and current so-called liberals, believe they have the ONLY correct answer. And they think they know, but in actuality do not know, how they arrived at their current left-liberal ‘truth and certainty’. Here is where true free thinking people can raise the question: what exactly, and fundamentally speaking, is this ‘answer’? And how exactly did it come about?
An indispensable classic, ‘The Great Chain of Being’ (1931), by Arthur Lovejoy can assist in penetrating to the ground of our current crisis, to the philosophic grounds of the left-right difference and opposition.
Lovejoy’s entire book is essential, but to get started I can suggest reading the introduction, chapters I, X, and XI.
We need an equivalent to the sign above Plato’s academy door, “Let no-one ignorant of geometry enter here”:
“Let no-one ignore Arthur Lovejoy’s ‘The Great Chain of Being’ as they enter upon the effort to defend and nurture Western civilization.
The parallel to geometry is fitting as Arthur Lovejoy’s classic work also deals with fundamentals. It is at once the study of the history of the idea, that the world is an ordered and intelligible whole, a ‘Great Chain of Being’, that dominated the West for two millennia, and it’s eventual collapse, and what arose in its place, and a revealing of the basic rational terms underlying this history which are forever relevant because they are coincident with reason itself.
Our ignorance of these elements of reason is always our starting point. If we are to avoid being footnotes, or footnotes to footnotes to Plato (GCB p.24) and repeat and cover the same ground, we need to return to inquiry into what is fundamental. We need to rely upon the best efforts made to penetrate the features that constitute our being as rational beings. Any effort at reform, for finding common ground in discussions and debates, should in it’s details have reference to the origin of our problems as based in consciousness, in the efforts to satisfy what reason requires. It will become clear that our problems are deeper than politics.
Arthur Lovejoy concludes his Chapter X of ‘The Great Chain of Being’ with homage to William James. Therein we can find instruction and hint for the remedy to our cultural ills and to the degradation of the university.
William James, Lovejoy writes, “was in himself an embodiment, in a just and sane balance, of the two elements in the ideal of which I have been speaking.” These two ideals (roughly) being ‘universality of mind’ (the belief in and pursuit of universal truth, universal standards) and “a constant sense that other people have, as he (William James) put it, “insides of their own,” often quite different from his”. The exploration and discovery in one’s self, and in others, of the ’two elements in the ideal’ Lovejoy wrote about, is what more elevated political discourse, and university culture, essentially should be fostering.
Renewal, and renewed efforts at inquiry, have to incorporate knowledge of our crisis and dysfunction. Lovejoy’s classic work illuminates the terms at work within us that also shape our world and culture and history. For those who make the effort to read and reread his book the meaning of illumination, as opposed to mere understanding of information, will be self evident.
References:
‘The Great Chain of Being’ (1931) by Arthur Lovejoy.
See the great 20th century moral and political philosopher Aurel Kolnai’s essay ‘High-Mindedness (1931) in his ‘Politics, Values, and National Socialism’.
See also his classic essay ‘The Meaning of the “Common Man”’ (1949) in his ‘Privilege and Liberty and Other Essays in Political Philosophy’. This essay reveals the collectivist, destructive, and stultifying effect of left-liberal ideology.
D Parker, I appreciate your overview here. I hope you keep this thread of thought alive.
One of the challenging questions is how exactly can left-liberals become self-critical? How can they see into how the early original insights and power of liberalism, the awareness and valuing of diversity, of individual differences, devolved into a Marxist influenced, intolerant, activist, collectivist, ‘progressive’ mindset?
I’ve seen liberals I talk with assume that a critique of current liberalism implies some immediate adoption or acceptance of conservatism. I take pains to make clear that that is not the case, that inquiry into ideology, a transcendence/awareness of the nature of ideology, is now in eclipse by the modern outlook that presumes to already know what man is and what the truth is. And why Pierre Manent’s question in his ‘The City of Man’ is so crucial: “How do we inquire into what we presuppose?” (We can transcend ordinary political opposition, how to do this would include reading the same classic works combined with contemplative reading, a process of inquiry, and a referring in discussion to classic works. We are fragmented, awash in ‘new’ reports everyday, deeper insights get displaced, media platforms do not in their structure retain a method for readers to follow to deepen their understanding).
Left-liberals speak of, and assume, any critique of liberalism, implicitly implies a ‘going back’ to an inferior, less advanced, time. The traditional time and culture, that believed in and sought universal knowledge, and sought a ‘standardization of life’, is believed irredeemably corrupt and false. And they believe there is NO value to be found there.
As the current internal failings within left-liberalism become more undeniable liberals are in a tough spot. Liberals have a left-liberal problem they neither admit nor understand. And so increasingly they NEED a demon, a negative, like Trump, that explains why their Utopia is not yet reality. And of course EVERYTHING associated becomes the many headed beast: the patriarchy, anything traditionally masculine, toxic masculinity, white racism, colonialism, capitalism, Republicans, MAGA, xenophobes, homophobes, trans-phobes, with Trump and MAGA as the largest heads focusing their sights for destruction and concentrating their “save the world from evil!” rhetoric.
Left liberals, and current so-called liberals, believe they have the ONLY correct answer. And they think they know, but in actuality do not know, how they arrived at their current left-liberal ‘truth and certainty’. Here is where true free thinking people can raise the question: what exactly, and fundamentally speaking, is this ‘answer’? And how exactly did it come about?
An indispensable classic, ‘The Great Chain of Being’ (1931), by Arthur Lovejoy can assist in penetrating to the ground of our current crisis, to the philosophic grounds of the left-right difference and opposition.
Lovejoy’s entire book is essential, but to get started I can suggest reading the introduction, chapters I, X, and XI.
We need an equivalent to the sign above Plato’s academy door, “Let no-one ignorant of geometry enter here”:
“Let no-one ignore Arthur Lovejoy’s ‘The Great Chain of Being’ as they enter upon the effort to defend and nurture Western civilization.
The parallel to geometry is fitting as Arthur Lovejoy’s classic work also deals with fundamentals. It is at once the study of the history of the idea, that the world is an ordered and intelligible whole, a ‘Great Chain of Being’, that dominated the West for two millennia, and it’s eventual collapse, and what arose in its place, and a revealing of the basic rational terms underlying this history which are forever relevant because they are coincident with reason itself.
Our ignorance of these elements of reason is always our starting point. If we are to avoid being footnotes, or footnotes to footnotes to Plato (GCB p.24) and repeat and cover the same ground, we need to return to inquiry into what is fundamental. We need to rely upon the best efforts made to penetrate the features that constitute our being as rational beings. Any effort at reform, for finding common ground in discussions and debates, should in it’s details have reference to the origin of our problems as based in consciousness, in the efforts to satisfy what reason requires. It will become clear that our problems are deeper than politics.
Arthur Lovejoy concludes his Chapter X of ‘The Great Chain of Being’ with homage to William James. Therein we can find instruction and hint for the remedy to our cultural ills and to the degradation of the university.
William James, Lovejoy writes, “was in himself an embodiment, in a just and sane balance, of the two elements in the ideal of which I have been speaking.” These two ideals (roughly) being ‘universality of mind’ (the belief in and pursuit of universal truth, universal standards) and “a constant sense that other people have, as he (William James) put it, “insides of their own,” often quite different from his”. The exploration and discovery in one’s self, and in others, of the ’two elements in the ideal’ Lovejoy wrote about, is what more elevated political discourse, and university culture, essentially should be fostering.
Renewal, and renewed efforts at inquiry, have to incorporate knowledge of our crisis and dysfunction. Lovejoy’s classic work illuminates the terms at work within us that also shape our world and culture and history. For those who make the effort to read and reread his book the meaning of illumination, as opposed to mere understanding of information, will be self evident.
References:
‘The Great Chain of Being’ (1931) by Arthur Lovejoy.
See the great 20th century moral and political philosopher Aurel Kolnai’s essay ‘High-Mindedness (1931) in his ‘Politics, Values, and National Socialism’.
See also his classic essay ‘The Meaning of the “Common Man”’ (1949) in his ‘Privilege and Liberty and Other Essays in Political Philosophy’. This essay reveals the collectivist, destructive, and stultifying effect of left-liberal ideology.
ὁ δὲ ἀνεξέταστος βίος οὐ βιωτὸς ἀνθρώπῳ