Form: Quote Commentary

DUCHESNE ON SPENGLER

–“…the architecture of the Gothic cathedral expresses the Faustian will to

conquer the heavens; Western symphonic music conveys the Faustian

urge to conjure up a dynamic, transcendent, infinite space of sound;

Western perspective painting mirrors the Faustian will to infinite distance;

and the Western novel responds to the Faustian imperative to

explore the inner depths of the human personality while extending outward with a comprehensive view… “–

–“it was not a calmed, disinterested, rationalistic ethos

that was at the heart of Western particularity; it was a highly energetic,

goal-oriented desire to achieve mastery and exploitation of the natural

world. The West was governed by an intense irrational will to transcend

the material limits of existence.”–

–“Farrenkopf thus notes (45) that in contrast to Weber, for whom the West “exhibited an unrivalled aptitude for rationalization,” Spengler saw in the West a distinctive primeval-irrational will to power. I also agree with Farrenkopf that “the existence of profoundly different cultural styles demonstrates, according to Spengler, the diversity, not the unity, of human psychological orientation in civilizational development” (45).”–

–“Farrenkopf, however, makes the persuasive argument that there are

“two Spenglers”: an earlier one who lamented the spreading of bourgeois

philistinism and the exhaustion of Europe’s majestic aristocratic

tradition, and a later one who saw in science and technology a continuation

(for some time) of the vitality and transformative energy of

the West (51).”–

DUCHESNE ON HEGEL’S REASON FOR WESTERN UNIQUENESS

–“What drew Hegel’s attention was the seemingly restless desire of Western reason to become fully conscious of itself as **free activity**.”–

Ok. so you know, this is what I mean. Translate that into operational language and tell me what the hell it means. I mean, I know what it *should* mean.

–“According to Hegel, individuals become what they are potentially – rationally self-conscious agents – when they recognized themselves as free in their institutions and laws. …. the effort of human reason to become what it is intrinsically: the free author of its own concepts, values, and practices. “–

–“The Phenomenology thus exhibits the ways in which diverse but interrelated outlooks held sway and conviction for some time only to be seen as limited in their inability to provide answers consistent with the demands of beings that are becoming more aware of themselves as the free creators of their own beliefs, laws, and institutions”–

You are free when you think freely. But what is the cause? Why isn’t the cause property? The taste for property and status, and the distaste for losing one’s property and status to an authority.

–“The Phenomenology, however, should not be viewed as a strictly

chronological history of the development of consciousness”–

Well, you know, I view intellectual history outside of the sciences as reactive and justificationary. Those justifications are later used as causes, but I don’t see much evidence that our thinkers all that innovative. It seems like we justify as a means of mitigating conflicts. Justifications solve problems for current and later generations. But the problem exists prior to its solution.

So what was the problem or cause? I think that it’s not complicated, that it’s just the warrior tactics and private property. Gimbutas doesn’t reduce it to property, but that’s just because she wasn’t interested in economic institutions.

And I really don’t know a lot of thinkers that have connected instinctual evolutionary morality and property other than myself. But if we start out with that instinctual prohibition against free riding and therefore in favor of some form of property, and we add voluntary associations of men who conduct cattle raiding, who because of risk, retain their stolen assets, and from that we get property and warriors who covet status and property, then we get heroism and individualism from that point forward. I think all intellectual activity is simply an effort to maintain that relationship of sovereignty in the context of current circumstances. It’s certainly the most simplistic explanation. It satisfies occam’s razor.

If we add to the preference for private property, the fact that europe is riddled with waterways that make trade possible and relatively less expensive. If we add to that observation that our economic development was also aided by four seas: the Aegean, the Mediterranean, the North Sea and the Atlantic that both facilitate trade and form barriers to conflict – then we do not have to really account for intellectual history for western character as other than justificationary.

The greeks then are merely improving means of exchanging property. Exchanging property requires objective truth to avoid conflict between sovereigns. And Aristotle (etc) invents science as a consequence of objective truth. (Greeks aren’t actually individualistic but familial but it’s close enough to produce the same outcome: property.)

–“What Hegel suggests to me, albeit in a very general way, is that there

were already in Greece – before the polis – characters unwilling to

submit to despotic rule.”–

–“let me state for now that the polis was created by a pre-existing aristocratic culture whose values were physical prowess, courage, fi erce protection of one’s family, friends, and property, and above all, one’s personal honor and reputation.”–

–“The polis grew out of a peculiar social landscape of tribal republics

in which individual rivalry for prestige and victory had the highest

value, and in which hatred of monarchical government was the norm.

Before citizenship was expanded to include independent farmers and

hoplite soldiers, the Greek mainland was dominated by a warrior aristocracy. This expansive and aggressive aristocracy was the original persona of Western civilization.”–

–“What Hegel criticized was the liberal contractual argument that there

was an “original state of nature” in which man “was in the possession

of his natural rights and the unlimited exercise and enjoyment of his

freedom” (1978: 54). He rejected the assumption that, if all the products

of culture and history were somehow stripped away, one would

fi nd humans living in a state of natural freedom, or in a condition in

which each was the possessor of individual rights. The concept of

right, for Hegel, was not “negative” in the sense that it was free from all

“positive” content, from the weight of social norms and history. Man

“in his immediate and natural way of existence” – that is, in the state of

nature – was not the possessor of natural rights. The freedoms of men

were “acquired and won…only through an infinite process of the discipline

of knowledge and will power” (54). Humans had to acquire the

capacity for self-control to achieve freedom, which was rather difficult

in the state of nature (1971: 175). Hegel thus spoke of the state of nature

in terms of the “primitive conditions” of human existence, as a time

when human relations were “marked by brute passions and acts of

violence.”

*The state of nature, therefore, is rather the state of injustice, violence,

untamed natural impulses, of inhuman deeds and emotions (54).”

Hegel wrote elsewhere, in fact, that “the fight for recognition…can only

occur in the natural state, where men exist only as single, separate individuals”

(1971: 172). The struggle for recognition ceases to be a violent engagement when civil society proper is consolidated. In civil society individuals can achieve recognition peacefully, or in a less capricious manner, by obeying the law and doing what is socially acceptable, pursuing a profession or following a trade.

The state tries to achieve prestige by fighting other states but the state no longer condones violent feuding between citizens.”–

CURT: The struggle for status. The universal availability of status. Limited to organizing or participating in production. (and by consequence the lesser status, and envy of status, of those who cannot engage in production).

–“self consciousness makes its appearance in the decision “of Man” to fight to the death for the sake of recognition. Kojeve explains that “Man” starts to become “truly” self-conscious only to the extent that he “actively”

engages in a fight where he risks his life “for something that does not

exist really” – that is, “solely ‘for glory’ or for the sake of his ‘vanity’

alone (which by this risk, ceases to be ‘vain’ and becomes the specifi –

cally human value of honor” (1999: 226).”–

ONLY FOUR: HEGEL, SPENGLER, WEBER, MCNEIL

–“I can think of only four individuals, two philosophers of history, one

sociologist, and one world historian, who have spoken in a wideranging

way of:

i) the “infinite drive,” “the irresistible trust” of the Occident,

ii) the “energetic, imperativistic, and dynamic” soul of the West,

iii) the “rational restlessness” of the West,

iv) “the deep-rooted pugnacity and recklessness of Europeans”

– Hegel, Spengler, Weber, and McNeill respectively.”– Ricardo Duchesne

Well, I’m in agreement on the last three, and am pretty sure I’ll be forced to agree on Hegel – who gives me a headache. I have a very hard time with conceptual empathy, and he requires it.