Esolen on the permanent things
Wednesday June 18, 2008
Categories: Decline and fall
Anthony Esolen is even more gloomy-and-doomy than Your Working Boy. Excerpt: I have had, in the last couple of days, a deeply disconcerting experience. I'm reading the book above by Russell Kirk, an erudite and tightly reasoned set of essays...
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About Crunchy Con
Rod Dreher is an editorial columnist for the Dallas Morning News, and author of "Crunchy Cons" (Crown Forum), a nonfiction book about conservatives, most of them religious, whose faith and political convictions sometimes put them at odds with mainstream conservatives. The views expressed in this blog are his own.
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"... the frankly fanatical belief, mingled with a hunger for power, that one can build a society from the abstract ideals spun out of one's own spidery mind."
Michael Oakeshott is, of course, the master at critiquing this belief in politics (see "Rationalism in Politics").
In renewing themselves, conservatives need to return to Kirk and Oakeshott.
Crickeys! More Chicken Little and the sky is falling???
Esolen and "Various" ought to get out more often and get a life. "The End of Democracy!" "The Wolves are at The Door!" "Armageddon is Upon Us!"
Where's Jim LaHaye, for cryin' out loud? Has he joined Hal Lindsey yet on the dustheap of old, recycled apocolypsisms?
Oh, shoot. We're doomed again!
There's a word that pretty well describes what Kirk was talking about, and it's an ancient word, going back to the Greeks. The word is hubris. Paul Tillich, in his theology, did a good job of describing the full extent of hubris
LOL. I must say I enjoyed that piece by Esolen more than usual. It was quite enjoyable to watch him struggle and squawk in the sticky webbings of his own spidery mind.
My attention was caught by the phrase "natural aristocracies." As always, I wonder just what he could be talking about here. Who are the "natural aristocrats" of America? Please tell me. Is it the DAR? Those folks who used to populate the old Main Line before they let the riffraff in? Old East Coast money? But how old does it have to be? Have the Rockefellers been around long enough to be aristocracy now?
They couldn't possibly be talking about someone like Russell Kirk, could they? The man was born in Plymouth, Michigan, near the railroad yard where his father worked. I have been to Plymouth, Michigan, and senator, there are no aristocrats in Plymouth, Michigan.
But wait a minute . . . Bob Seger was born in Dearborn, which is not all that far from Plymouth. I'll make you a deal--you can give the self-anointed Sage of Mecosta a ducal coronet if I get to place a tiara on rockin' Bob as well. For my money, he's as much a natural aristocrat as any right-wing essayist with delusions of grandeur.
"...apocolypsisms..."
I free associated that to "a pack of lip-synchers".
;-D
I raise my nose at aristocrats, and sneeze in their general direction. It seems like the natural thing to do...
"...belief... that one can build a society from the abstract ideals spun out of one's own... mind."
If you take out the negative slant on the abstract, the first thing that comes to mind is Plato. How's Plato so screwed up?
"... the frankly fanatical belief, mingled with a hunger for power, that one can build a society from the abstract ideals spun out of one's own spidery mind."
and
"There's a word that pretty well describes what Kirk was talking about, and it's an ancient word, going back to the Greeks. The word is hubris."
Exactly. History, tradition, the common law, all mean precisely zero because "we know better." Thomas Sowell calls this modernist fantasy "the vision of the anointed." God save us from this macrocephalous do-gooder's paradise.
Is it "the end of democracy" or simply a view adopted by most Americans that Mr. Esolen doesn't care for?
But on the question of the novel, a review of a Gore Vidal collection in the Los Angeles Times today included a great quote from him about that art form, which echoes the above. It won't make Mr. Esolen feel any better, probably, but maybe it should.
"Our lovely vulgar and most human art is at an end, if not the end. Yet that is no reason not to want to practice it, or even to read it. In any case, rather like priests who have forgotten the meaning of the prayers they chant, we shall go on for quite a long time talking of books and writing books, pretending all the while not to notice that the church is empty and the parishioners have gone elsewhere to attend other gods, perhaps in silence or with new words."
There's a word that pretty well describes what Kirk was talking about, and it's an ancient word, going back to the Greeks. The word is hubris.
Seems to me it would apply at least as well to neotraditionalists and champions of particular religious, cultural, and racial superiorities.
Is it "the end of democracy" or simply a view adopted by most Americans that Mr. Esolen doesn't care for?
What view is that? That the Supreme Court (and other oligarchies) has final say and we have no recourse even when 61% of the California public does not agree with their opinion?
"Seems to me it would apply at least as well to neotraditionalists and champions of particular religious, cultural, and racial superiorities."
Of course...we've grown up out of hierarchical thinking. Which notion is just another example of said hubris.
One cannot really be a hubristic tradionalist, unless one's hubris concerns his own traditionalism. But then, that's not really hubris, just old-fashioned error.
As the ramifications of the California Supreme Court ruling on gay marriage are elaborated over time, what we will see is an evisceration of civil liberties in this country that will make George W. Bush seem like an ACLU lawyer in retrospect. We should prepare ourselves to say goodbye to any vestigial attachment we may have to separation of church and state -- the wall between the two is coming down. What we will be left with is a church regulated by the state. The only forms of religious expression that will be allowed to flourish will be those which are in accordance with standards ordained on the basis of whatever whims that secular elites are subject to at some particular time. In the short term, said secular elites will have much to crow about and crow they will. However, to employ another bird metaphor, chickens have a way of coming home, and when these roost, secularists will pine for the good old days of a religious right that will seem positively Unitarian in retrospect.
I'm still mulling over the concept of "natural aristocracies," Rob G. So here's a question for you and anyone else who cares to answer it. A traditionalist considers himself to be part of an eternal hierarchy of some kind, isn't that right? So, who would you consider to be your legitimate superiors--the aristocracy that you reverence and submit to? I suppose it goes without saying that Pope is at the top of the heap, but who else? I'm still trying to figure out who conservatives think these "natural aristocrats" are.
I'm still trying to square the reverence for tradition with the most radical and revolutionary break with tradition, even its own, that history has ever known, Christianity.
I guess if the new improved tradition makes you feel better than the old school tradition it replaced it's a better tradition. Of course it also helps if you can place all responsibility for the change of traditions with God. That way, any inconsistencies are his problem, and we can just putter along as carefree followers of someone else's orders, changing traditions when we're told to before turning around and defending tradition itself against change. Non-falsifiable situations are always a big winner.
It is very simple. The traditionalist believes that he should be eating in restaurants in Paris while everyone else lives in mud huts.
I'm still trying to square the reverence for tradition with the most radical and revolutionary break with tradition, even its own, that history has ever known, Christianity.
You're assuming that Anatolian and European paganisms were actually replaced by Christianity, rather than blended in and its pieces given a Christian façade. If you lived in rural Europe, the latter would strike you as more plausible than the former.
The English word 'God' even derives from the pagan deity 'Gaoth' who was worshiped in lands along the western shore of the Baltic Sea, and whose name remains attached to various islands, pieces of land, and bodies of water.
Respectfully, Jillian, the derivation of God from "Gaoth" has no more significance than the adoption of the word "kleenex" as the generic term for any facial tissue. In Latin mass they say "Deus" or "Dei". Along that line, I'm a pagan who has lived nearly all of his life in an urban center. My modern faith bears no resemblance to the literal meaning of "paganus".
As for the mutual assimilations that took place between Christians and pagans in various eras, I recommend A History of Pagan Europe, Jones & Pennick, Barnes & Noble ISBN 0-7607-1210-7. It attempts (and succeeds, IMHO) to present a balanced picture of the Christian "conquest" of the pagan tribes, clans and nations. You might find it in the history section of most B&N stores.
The natural aristocrats are the ones giving the orders and receiving the taxes/tribute - simple, eh?
Not sure what Marc means by his reference to 61% of the California public. If it's gay marriage; well, those of us out here will have a chance to vote on that in November. Sounds pretty democratic to me.
But look, none of us are always going to agree with the court, any court, and sometimes these disagreements can be profound -- Dred Scott, anyone? Was the United States not a democracy when slavery was legal? If not, was it ever a democracy? Did it become a democracy after Lincoln freed the slaves? If it did, did it lose that status with Roe v. Wade or the recent gay marriage ruling? What about Bush v. Gore? Is the United States not a democracy because Gore won the popular vote but lost the election?
I'm not trying to trivialize the point, but philosophically speaking this question of justice over time is a real conundrum. The rule of the people is hugely imperfect, especially when the people themselves tend to be poorly educated, guided by sound bites and television images, and misled by demagogues. Despite all this imperfection, to claim that we live in some sort of dictatorship because we don't like this ruling or that ruling seems self-aggrandizing and a little ludicrous to me.
California Proposition 22 (2000) Defense of Marriage Act passed with 61% in favor, and that's what the California Supreme Court just invalidated. It will be on the ballot again in November as a Constitutional amendment. The court also overturned the definition of marriage which goes back more than 2000 years (see Ancient Roman marriage).
"... the frankly fanatical belief, mingled with a hunger for power, that one can build a society from the abstract ideals spun out of one's own spidery mind."
This is a strain of thought with which I have some sympathy. However, I don't really know where you can stop. Certainly, the US Constitution is just such a web. Communism in some ways was merely the natural result of the Enlightenment - as the European Catholic Right (the Altar-and-Throne crowd) used to say during the Cold War - the USA and USSR resemble each other more than they differ.
So, what should a conservative American do? Reinstall the British monarchy? (which one? the current crowd, or the Stuart claimant, a German princeling?). Acknowledge that the Treaty of Tordesillas is still valid, and the rightful ruler of N America is the Carlist pretender? Give the land back to the Indians?
I can't help thinking that what most of the West needs is more of the Enlightenment, not less - it's certainly France and the USA that seem to make the best job of dealing with indigestible minorities. Some sort of more or less libertarian approach should be taken with gay marriage. I might be wrong, though.
On the other hand, maybe the Enlightenment only works in conditions of high and increasing prosperity. The end of oil could mean the new middle ages, in which case all our discussion about these niceties is moot. Jared Diamond mentions the Pueblo Indians saying to him that they were there long before the whites and they will be there long after them - quite a lot of communities (including many in Europe) feel a bit like that.
Another point: A thoroughgoing "revere-the-given" perspective would tend more towards Paganism than Christianity.
Rombald, would you please expand on your "revere-the-given" statement? I don't see the connection to paganism, and I'm a pagan.
Franklin: I mean that, if you go the whole way with these hyper-Burkean ideas about society and politics being so complicated that one cannot tinker with them or design them in any way, but just have to sort of sit back and revere them, well, that is more in tune with ancestral-pagan values - the gods of the tribe, reverence for the god-king, that sort of thing.
Thanks, rombald. I see it now. There is a strong component in some paleo-paganisms that is very conservative in the functional sense as well as the philosophic sense. Reverence for ancestors can (but not always) be analogized with preserving the status quo. It's applicable to simpler scenarios as well as being a result of complexity prohibiting change.
It's a significant issue amongst those modern pagans who come under the broad category of "reconstructionism". They work hard to regain ancient traditions and practices, and hit a brick wall with it on a regular basis. ;-)
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