A comment on the opening of War and Peace

This is going to be, probably, the first of various comments I will be writing about Tolstoy's masterwork War and Peace. Of the many things that can be said of the hardly first one hundred pages, I will focus on one of the elements that I found strikingly interesting; the social stratification within the Russian nobility. But before moving on, a note for those that have not read the novel is warranted: I will abstain from spoilers that might ruin the story.

The first paragraph already hints the historical background of the entire novel: Bonaparte's threat to the European society of absolute monarchies. The first events take place in a social gathering at one of the Empress' favorites, and we already feel the meaning of the novel's title; the frivolities of the nobility's daily life, with their gossiping and mundane chatter, mingled with the ever present long of some to fall in politics and war. We can tell that the Russian high society is between the denial of events, and stupefied by the terror coming from the West. But the two topics stand in parallel, isolated from each other. Mundane chatter becomes almost like a refuge from the discomfort caused by the threat of war. In this, almost superficial, shift from gossip to fear, the first pages of the novel fill us with both the lightness of good life, and the burdensome weight of serious matters. The environment of private relations, with their characteristic touch of pretense and socially enforced good manners, is where our main and second characters are introduced. All of them are noble by birth; but sooner than later we realize that they are not of the same status.

The novel begins as Prince Vasily Kuragin enters Anna Pavlovna's (the Empress favorite) soiree at her mansion. She greets him by chiding him for not taking actions against Bonaparte's France. Tolstoy makes the reader feel just like Prince Vasily when entering the house; surprised by an unexpected attack! (An amazing beginning by the way) The first paragraph hasn't finish and the reader (just as Prince Vasily) is already at war, not wit Napoleon, but with the warmongers. Peace is being threatened from the first sentence of the more than one thousand pages novel. Quickly, and almost like a slap, Anna Pavlovna changes the subject to mere gossiping. The main topic is, naturally, marriages and families, one of the main social institutions that work specifically for the purpose of asking and paying favors in high society. Both of these characters stand as the highest of nobility; i.e. both are extremely rich, and both have influence with the throne. Prince Vasily as a high officer to the Tzar, and Anna Pavlovna with the Tzarina, of whom she speaks with the greatest veneration (I will get back to this topic).

Soon we get introduced to more obscure members of the high society. Princess Anna Drubetskoy attends Anna Pavlovna's soiree uninvited (already a sign of social disgrace), for the specific purpose of talking with Prince Vasily into pulling the strings for her son Boris into getting a higher post in the armed forces. The princess is poor (interesting, isn't it?) and after the death of her husband, she lost most of his connections in St. Petersburg. Prince Vasily acknowledges in order to get rid of her (the reader realizes that this princess is irrelevant). But, contrary to modern plebeian civil servants whose words must be bought with money or influence, Prince Vasily is a noble; and honor is one of the nobility's central virtues. He gave his word, and even though he can lie to her, he would never do so. This nobility's honor is one of the many things at stake in the war against Napoleon's progressive ideas. As a matter of fact, this honor was lost with the revolution. In its place, the substituting bourgeoisie's ethics that rests on hard work and money, looks more like a caricature.

The first thing to note in this conversation at Anna Pavlovna's soiree is that, Prince Vasily and Princess Drubetskoy, belonging to the same superior caste, stand at different levels. The prince, powerful and rich, treats the poor and unknown princess with contempt; however not without courtesy, something that a nobleman can never avoid from doing! Courtesy for the sake of it doesn't seem to be widely practice by the plebeian castes in the courts of the bourgeoisie and the working class. But Princess Drubetskoy doesn't lack friends either. At Moscow, the Rostovs are a prosperous and happy family of counts. The countess is the princess best friend, and helps her out with some money. But the Rostovs are nothing else but rich; they don't seem to be particularly influential in the high politics of St. Petersburg (after all, they live in Moscow).

Another character that plays an important role in the first chapters without actually participating in any action is the old and dying Count Kirill Bezukhov, who is immensely rich. He has no immediate inheritors except his favorite bastard son, the young and impetuous Pierre (the character with which I feel identified so far). The inheritance is in dispute, and all the gossip and chatting gathers around this fact. Prince Vasily has also rights to claim the inheritance, and Princess Drubetskoy is trying to get a peace of the action by the fact that her son Boris is the Count's godson (one of many, one presumes). But the most interesting aspect of the dying Count is the heroic aura that surrounds him; he was among the most powerful men during Catherine the Great's reign. To his wealth, this heroic aura accompanies him. Tolstoy divides Russian nobility into the following:

a) Count Bezukhov with his immense wealth, accompanied with the tales of his life during the reign of Catherine the Great, which makes him highest among the highest.
b) Prince Vasily, who is rich and very influential in the court.
c) The Rostovs, who are rich but have no important influence in the court.
d) Princess Drubetzkoy who is not even rich, and has no influence in court, and who depends on the sense of honor of those above her.

I cannot finish this brief survey of Tolstoy's picture without addressing the crowning figures of this entire society. The Tzars do not show their faces in the first chapters, but are addressed by the different characters as the source of all nobility. Theirs is an omnipresence in the minds of the main characters. The veneration to these figures of such a high birth, imagined almost like demigods or saints, owners of the highest virtues, is almost alien to the Western mind, who always took the monarchs' absolute power with a touch of skepticism. This aura of supreme sanctity that surrounds the Tzars is one that must be taken to heart when understanding the Russian spirit, that Tolstoy so masterly portrays.

As a conclusion it is not spurious to talk about the mujiks; i.e. the Russian peasants, who have such a minor, if not negligible role in the early pages. However, we see them in their anonymous roles as waiters, maids, messengers, carriage drivers, etc. The nobility's power rests on these men and women that obediently carry on their orders. But their presence goes almost unnoticed. Maybe the biggest and most important difference between noble and low birth lies in this noticing-ness of the nobility and the anonymity of the private life of the peasant, the workers and the bourgeois. One hundred years ahead of our story, they become the tragedy's main characters during revolutionary times.

The Russian nobility, at the down of the 19th century, stood between invisible forces. From above, the sainthood of the Tzars, the source of all their glory. From below, the anonymity of the populace, the base of all their real power and dominance. From outside, the threatening West with its ideas and technologies. This, almost neurotic, historical and social place, is the background of Tolstoy's novel War and Peace.

Thesis on Marx

Everything begins with arms. Even the ownership of the means of production requires the material means to enforce such ownership. And this enforcement dependts on the relations that spring from the distribution of the means of coersion. The accumulation of the means of production is absolutely spurious if it is not backed by the appropriate means of coersion. The form of government emerges out of the social relations produced by the distribution of the means of coersion available in a society. In politics it is of little relevance who is rich and who is poor, but who wields the weapons. Even if we acknowledge that the means of coersion are produced in the realm of the economic, the one that ultimately controls, holds and wields them is the one who is politically dominant.

Response paper to Amartya Sen’s Development as Freedom, Ch. 1

“Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.”

Wittgenstein

I want to make some remarks on Amartya Sen’s notion of freedom, i.e. what he calls “substantive freedom.” The purpose is to demonstrate how easily his notion can be proved to be fallacious and nonsensical. Independently of the good intentions of a theory, if the logical structure of what is being uttered makes absolutely no sense, the truth is that what is happening is that nothing is being actually said. In this sense Amartya Sen thinks he is saying something important about freedom when in fact he is just uttering senseless noise.

He says of “freedom: the ability to survive rather than succumb to premature mortality. This is obviously a significant freedom, but there are many others that are also important. Indeed, the range of relevant freedoms can be very wide.” (p. 24) In few words, there are many freedoms that are not the same thing, so freedom is not equal to freedom, which of course, makes no sense. If there is freedom it must have a core meaning to which everything else converges. If not, the concept is meaningless. Here Sen says that freedom is survival, as opposed to death. Interestingly enough we are all condemn to die some way or the other, so freedom has become an impossible enterprise. Moreover, no one can predict if by chance tomorrow I am going to be stroke by a lightning bolt and die, so there must be a freedom not to be killed prematurely by lightning bolts. Otherwise, what is the difference between dying prematurely by starvation, by being murdered in the middle of the night, by an unpredictable flood, by the explosion of a gas leak in your kitchen, by slipping on the floor and breaking your neck; all of them are premature deaths (and that is assuming that we can have an intelligible meaning for the adjective "premature"). This is a reductio ad absurdum.

When talking about quality of life, (Ibid) (a notion that is linked to historical and cultural contexts, and cannot be detached from them without losing any tangible meaning) Sen uses Aristotle, and his famous ethical theory of eudaimonia (good life). Interestingly enough Aristotle never speaks about freedom, or never makes his ethical life a function of freedom. Freedom and liberty are notions developed by the later Roman republican tradition, and especially among historians and not philosophers, at least not in Ancient times. Sen’s use of Aristotle’s ethics to make a defense of individual freedom strikes us as alien. The latter Aristotelian tradition of freedom was interpreted by the late Romans, and especially in the early Modern Europe as self-government. Never as the freedom of personal fulfillment, and especially never as individual freedom that, after Locke, is tantamount of the sovereignty of the individual over his own body. Sen’s reading of Aristotle is outrageous.

Then Sen addresses the notion of market freedom (p. 26) that, somehow, is the inheritance from the Hobbesian notion of negative liberty. So far so good, until he makes the connection between this logically coherent concept with the Aristotelian idea of personal self-fulfillment that not only Hobbes, by recently Berlin, considered to be contrary to what they were talking about when uttering the word freedom. He actually goes as far as to criticize economists that have moved from this notion of development as linked to freedom and prefer talking about utilities (p.27) when in fact this move is logical; because consumption is a different act than the phenomenon we call freedom. They might be related, but they cannot be considered to be the same without making both concepts nonsense.

He also addresses the problem of dictatorship and slavery as a problem for freedom, which is completely reasonable. However these are the problem addressed by the Neo-Roman/Republican notion of freedom as absence from a relation of servitude. Sen doesn’t seem to tell the difference, nor understand why these different notions are logically incompatible. Three concepts of liberty: (a) the Hobbesian negative liberty of non interference, (b) the Aristotelian-inspired positive liberty of self mastery and, (c) the Machiavellian liberty of non domination. Logically speaking one of them is correct, or all are incorrect, but the three of them in conjunction cannot be correct without rendering all of them nonsensical. Sen is not a logician, but the field considers his opinion to be one of high standing, when in fact , in this case, is corrosive of the academic debate. He is concerned about economic development, which is one of the original concerns of economists. But he takes concepts from the fields of ethics, political science and history in a way that destroys their intelligibility; an approach that is offensive for the scholars in these respective fields.

A praise of Political Severity

I've added to the list of prominent men that I admire the Roman Emperor Septimius Severus. Many might know by now that when regarding to Rome I focus on the republic, and by the name Rome I always mean the republic. Consistent with this vision I consider everything that happened after Julius Caesar to be a tragic story of tyranny and slavery. I do not depart from this vision, but my recent immersion into Machiavelli's thought has given me the extraordinary tool to twist and change my vantage point according to necessity and fortune, something that is essential, if not mandatory, to understand anything that has to do with politics. In this new approach, now that I'm rereading the Prince, I've been impressed by Machiavelli's high praise of the Roman Emperor Septimius Severus, a man famously recognized for his unscrupulous political actions. Like any other emperor, he was a tyrant. But when we leave the republic and its freedom behind, and we set our play in the realm of absolute and long-lasting tyranny, our value judgments and normative claims must shift, something in which Machiavelli was extraordinarily skillful at.

Machiavelli writes that "because of what Severus did was remarkable and outstanding for a new prince, I want to show briefly how well he knew how to act the part of both a fox and a lion, whose natures, as I say above, must be imitated by a new prince" (P XIX). Interestingly enough the nature of both the fox and the lion were the beastly natures that the humanist tradition, the inheritance of Cicero, would condemn as unworthy. Machiavelli would turn this tradition upside down, being his praise of Severus one of the turning points of this break with the humanists (Skinner, 1981, 40). This led me to Herodian of Antioch, the source from which Machiavelli draws his portrayal of the Roman Emperors in chapter 19 of the Prince.

Of Severus Herodian says that "he was surely the most accomplished of all men in pretending to pledge his good will, but he never kept his sworn word if it proved necessary for him to break it; he lied whenever it was advantageous to him, and his tongue said many things which his heart did not mean" (History of the Roman Empire, II). He ruled for almost eighteen years, his son Caracalla succeeded to the throne successfully and he brought peace and stability in a moment in which the empire's structure of political authority was about to collapse after Commodus deserved death. What does this say about the ancient Ciceronian and today's Kant/Mill-liberal moralities and their relations to politics? Maybe that they don't worth a penny when the chips are down, and that the true nature of political power is tested precisely in these moments of emergency. Recently this vision of politics was exposed by Carl Schmitt, who might be blameworthy of his Nazi allegiance, but whose political insight and sincerity cannot be denied. So with Machiavelli.

Reading about how Severus managed to take over the empire by using the cunning of the fox in bamboozling everyone into his own scheme, and then defeating his enemies with the ferocious strength of the lion, produces nothing but awe and admiration (the charm of evil). But the most interesting contrast regards the unsuccessful attempt by the previous Pertinax to establish his imperial authority by the "strength" of moral convictions and reasonable arguments, in a lame attempt to imitate Marcus Aurelius, which led him to be butchered by his own praetorian bodyguards, thereby ending his less-than-three-months rule. His incompetence to understand politics could have sunk the Roman Empire into long-lasting anarchy, if it weren't because of the skillful and vigorous intervention of Severus. Which lead me to my conclusion: those that want to hold their moral integrity at all cost in the face of impelling necessity, at least in the realm politics, can be the most irresponsible actors of all; because instead of weighting the good of the community as the main reason of their historical position, they prefer the maintain their conscience clean, i.e. the paradoxical conclusion that acting morally can be utterly selfish.

This is so obvious, so common sense, that hearing the self-righteous liberals and left-wing socialists speak about justice, fairness, equality and progress makes so much noise in a world of wretched human beings. John Stuart Mill praised Marcus Aurelius as the most glorious and virtuous Roman Emperor. And he is right in doing so, because under his rule the Empire enjoyed the peak of its accomplishments. But he is deceived in believing that Marcus Aurelius example can be taken to be a fixed rule in a world of ever-changing conditions, not to speak of the almost silly discourse of modern Kantianism.
Septimius Severus, 21st Emperor of the Roman Empire (14 April 193 – 4 February 211)

Machiavelli will prevail

And in the end, when all the self-righteous moralists, when all talks of justice and fairness, of universal rights, peace and progress, meet their doom, when we reach the final moments of the Western civilization, Machiavelli will prevail.

"I conclude, therefore, that as fortune is changeable whereas men are obstinate in their ways, men prosper so long as fortune and policy are accord, and when there is a clash they fail." (The Prince, XXV)

Beyond Good and Evil: Aphorism 14

Returning to old debates (but on the opposite side of the isle) rereading Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil I cannot but to quote in its entirety the 14th aphorism of the book. This I dedicate to all my friends and acquaintances that still believe in progress and in the inglorious and pitiful virtues of our times. This was published in 1886, which shows unsurprisingly the almost sibylline nature of Nietzsche's thought.

"14. It is perhaps just dawning on five or six minds that physics too is only an interpretation and arrangement of the world (according to our own requirements, if I may say so!) and not an explanation of the world; but in so far as it is founded on belief in the senses it passes for more than that and must continue to do so for a long time to come. It has the eyes and the hands on its side, it has ocular evidence and palpability on its side: and this has the effect of fascinating, persuading, convincing an age with fundamentally plebeian tastes — for it instinctively follows the canon of eternal, popular sensualism. What is obvious, what has been 'explained'? Only that which can be seen and felt — thus far has every problem to be scrutinized. Obversely: it was precisely in opposition to palpability that the charm of the Platonic mode of thinking, which was a noble [aristocratic] mode of thinking, consisted — on the part of men who perhaps rejoiced in even stronger and more exacting senses than our contemporaries possess, but who knew how to experience a greater triumph in mastering them: which they did by means of pale, cold, grey conceptual nets thrown over the motley whirl of the senses — the mob of the senses as Plato called them. This overcoming and interpretation of the world in the manner of Plato involved a kind of enjoyment different from that which the physicists of today offer us, or from that offered us by the Darwinists and anti-teleologists among the labourers in physiology, with their principle of the 'smallest possible effort' and the greatest possible stupidity. 'Where man has nothing more to see or grasp he has nothing more to do' — that is certainly a different imperative from the Platonic, but for an uncouth industrious race of machinists and bridge-builders of the future, which has nothing but course work to get through, it may well be the right one."

This is pretty much a complete statement of the industrial and post-industrial world and all its obsession with technology, the economy, its heroes and its geniuses; the result of which is nothing but crude mediocrity. When are our liberals (and conservatives) in the academia of today going to start reading Nietzsche?

Why I support "Occupy Wall Street"

A recent friendly discussion has left me startled. I think this is the reason: I not only like, but support and defend the American form of government as it is established by the US Constitution. That is, I believe in the spirit and principles that it contains, and I do not think that the constitution is just a function of any capitalist/bourgeoisie dominating class. One of the virtues of the US Constitution is that it has given the populace-citizens the opportunity to actively interfere in the affairs of government and letting their voices be heard. Agreed, it is not always effective and economic elites, the American bourgeois, have been historically privileged in their access to representation in the government (especially at the Federal level, whilst at the local level the populace seems to have more control). But it cannot be denied that since Jeffersonian republicanism, Jacksonian democracy, Lincoln's republicanism and the 20th century civil rights movement, democracy (the rule of the populace) has always remain a part of the American form of government. And as a consistent follower of Machiavelli, I do not think that a republic without elites on one side and the populace on the other can remain free. The communist dream of a classless society has been proved to be tantamount to totalitarianism. The republic is formed by upper and lower classes and the chances of both segments to participate and check on each other. This philosophy is alive in the US Constitution thanks to different mechanisms.

The interesting thing is that, according to inherited rigid concepts from the 20th century Cold War, if you are not a left-wing revolutionary, you must be a right-wing reactionary that stands on the side of the bourgeoisie. Well, I disagree with such generalization, not only because it is updated, but because it has always been inaccurate. Not because we defend the American form of government we are friends and allies of big business and corporate interests. Wall Street today has become almost like the ideological headquarters of the American oligarchy that has been trying to take over the republic for decades. And not because one opposes them one must be a communist, not to say a Marxist. I would go even further and say that a person that truly stands for traditions (a true conservative) is an obstacle to the development of capital in the form of big business; because it is that same big business the one that is destroying traditional lifestyles and grassroots movements that are so important for a healthy republican form of government. Democracy requires the populace-citizens fighting on the public space against the pretensions of the economic elites to overrun their political rights, and extort them through unemployment, lower wages and overworking; the same maladies that destroy traditional lifestyles in America.

I support "Occupy Wall Street" because, even though there is no clear cut agenda, it is proving a point: America is going in the wrong direction. And what is this direction? An economic system that excessively favors the rich by giving them the chance to become richer, while leaving the populace-citizens on its own to deal with a market that is destroying their lifestyles and future prospects. This undermines the populace-citizens capacity to participate in politics and check on their representatives, while giving the rich the upper hand in having access to representation and forcing their interests in the legislatures and the different levels of civil bureaucracy. The maladies of America are both represented by Washington's labyrinthine bureaucracy and Wall Street pervasive economic predominance. The so called libertarians, in their naive approach, do not realize that when they sacrifice only government, they heed big business and help the development of an oligarchic form of government which can be more repressive than an all expanded civil bureaucracy, precisely because it hurts the populace-citizens private lives.

It is extremely important that "Occupy Wall Street" does not become a monopoly of left-wing radicals, something that would automatically kill its prospects of being an authentic and positive movement. It must be a front of average citizens that, struggling with such an unfair economic system, make the government understand a sensible point: that reform in both the political and the economic system is required in order to enhance democracy, i.e. empower institution that would allow the populace-citizens to have more control over governmental decisions and legislation, as well as severely punishing the rich in their stubborn quest to impoverish the rest of the country. The rich are no "job creators"; that concept is the paramount ideological sham of our generation. The rich are wealthy bank account accumulators. What they want is to be more rich at all cost, even if it will send honest and hard working citizens into unemployment. Wall Street is incredibly skilled at doing that. The rich is the embodiment of avarice, a capital sin in Christian theology. If "Occupy Wall Street" is a spontaneous movement of disenfranchised young against the unchecked avarice of the rich, then I strongly support it.

NOTE: I wonder why in America banks get bailed out while universities get cut down.

Faith, Knowledge and Ideology

This was written as a note in my Blackberry phone in a lonely and long travel inside the New York subway; they are only sketchy ideas based on reflections caused by a recent argument I had with a professor in class. As such not much can be demanded from them.

The problem of ideology is urgent in social sciences. What we take to be ideological will set the limits and boundaries for the possibility of truthful knowledge. We assume that "ideological knowledge" is contrary to our idea of what knowledge is. Knowledge aims at truth while ideology is the mask of falsehood. But, is this true? Hasn't recent philosophy challenged the assumption that links knowledge with truth? I think us to be deceived if we don't agree with Nietzsche in his rejection of modern rationalist philosophy's pretensions. This leads us straight the dead end of yielding to the pessimist conclusion that any kind of knowledge must be ideological. But hasn't modern sciences proved many facts of the natural and social worlds to be true? So, there must be a connection between scientific knowledge and facts known to be true. These facts cannot vanish as fantastic representations just because we become skeptics of man's rational capacities.

What I conclude from this (which is, by no means, a novel conclusion at all) is that scientific knowledge only deals with truthful facts; that can only be its object. This calls for a statement of humility, because it implies that knowledge cannot grasp the Truth in its universal significance. Such thing as the Truth cannot be fully rationally apprehended. Because a thing like the Truth demands full knowledge of the totality of the object, and this cannot be reached, then we have to adjust to concrete and limited truthful facts. Ideology becomes the boundary of knowledge when we recognize that any rational knowledge that aims or pretends in reaching a final and absolute truth must be ideological and must be betraying the initial quest for truthful knowledge. This have been the pervasive spirit of many modern theories, particularly in social sciences; however not infrequently natural scientist fall in the same error.

Here faith comes into our problem. The object of faith is the Truth in its whole meaning. Whatever aims at reaching a discourse that deals with the totality of the whole truth must be an act of faith. Here we must attempt the next set of boundaries: the difference between faith and ideology, or if there is no difference at all.

The problem with faith is that it cannot be rationally explained without losing the inherent meaning of what it is, i.e. rational knowledge cannot know faith. One of the problems of many intelligent men that lack any sense of faith is that they cannot understand it without attaching to it an ideological origin. This was the problems men like Voltaire, Feuerbach, Marx, Einstein, Russell (however not Nietzsche) were condemn to have. Because the object and content of faith is the absolute Truth, whatever it might be, and because knowledge cannot reach that level of understanding under any circumstance, they use different rational explanations to give content and reason to what really is an abyss of in-comprehension and ignorance on their part. The knowledgeable atheist man doesn't have the experience of faith (I will later explain how I think they do but under ideological forms); ergo for them it is as hard and insufferable to give it credit just as it is hard and insufferable for the brutish and ignorant man to understand knowledge and coherent reason, or for the born blind the concept of color.

The relation between faith and knowledge is analogous to the relation between knowledge and ideology. Faith sets boundaries for knowledge, as knowledge sets boundaries for faith. In this sense it is naïve, or awkward to have a faith that challenges well known truthful facts, just as it is naïve and arrogant to deny the human experience of faith in a universal Truth using limited, concrete and short-sided truthful facts. This division was already exposed by St. Paul in theology and explored by Kant in philosophy. In this sense faith and knowledge can be both allies, or at least respectful opponents in man's heart and mind. By understanding that factual knowledge is limited, however truthful, and that faith does not have to disclaim factual knowledge but give meaning and sense to human life, a man can both have faith and respect reason's discoveries, as the 17th century European scientists and philosophers seem to have done.

However we cannot be over optimistic; faith, just as knowledge, has a relation to ideology, and in the past it has been the source for a lot of ideology. But the boundaries between these two cannot be clearly seen. To what extend faith in an omnipotent God does not derive in submission to an absolute monarch, or in a vicious devotion to a priestly caste? The problem is not easy to solve, because at first sight it appears to give knowledge the upper hand in claiming that faith is ideological by necessity. A first good approximation to such a complex subject might be through St. Paul in Hebrews 11. There, a radical schism is posed between things of God and things of this world, because everything that pertains to God is not seen (that is, never perceived through the body senses); hence it can never fit as a truthful fact, nor subject to knowledge. But the many examples of prophets given by St. Paul show one thing: trust. Man's capacity to trust, to accept something without proofs of it (as when a man accepts a promise from a friend) lies in the heart of the matter. If we take our relation to God to be a friendly relation (even more, the ultimate friendly relation), then we trust in his promise, and because of this we have faith, i.e. without knowledge. We take this promise to be the supreme Truth, without which the truthful facts would seem like ghosts and shades in a world without purpose. In this particular sense faith gives food for knowledge, as it makes the absolute Truth the spring of all other factual truths. So that when Pilate asked Jesus "What is truth?" (John 18:38), Jesus silence makes sense out of the impossibility of proving with rational speech what can only be grasped by faith. Jesus had already given the answer before Pilate asked him: "Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice" (John 18:37); Jesus is the truthful fact of the universal Truth, and only faith can grasp that apparently incoherent notion. This explains Jesus' silence. Pilate's business was administering justice according to the Roman law; that is, according to the most rationally codified legal system of the times in the Mediterranean. Precisely because Jesus truth was a universal statement, it did not deal with the truthful facts that a judge like Pilate can accept in a court; the reason of why he says to the Jews "I find no guilt in him" (John 18:38).

But the answer of the Jews headed by the priests is also enlightening; their religion did not allow them to crucify or execute Jesus, but they found a loop in their beliefs by pressing the Roman law to kill him. Jesus had been preaching against some prominent "interests groups" in Judea, and they wanted to eliminate him from the scene, however unjust. The Jews were being subject to ideology. So what can be the difference between ideology and faith if the Jews' actions were moved by religious devotion? The truth is that religious devotion can turn into ideology when it is used to back particular worldly interests of powerful groups. Faith is the authentic and deeply personal experience of a metaphysical connection with God. This escapes reason, but it cannot be considered ideology because it also escapes ideological worldly purposes.

Just as faith can become the base for ideology, so the same with knowledge. Philosophical and scientific systems that aim at explaining the totality of the human condition are very well used for repressive reasons when it is taken to be the Truth, of which the Marxist ideology seems the most prominent recent case (but also the European divine right of the kings), as well as when it tries to erase man's inclination for faith. The boundaries between the three are never well fixed, because knowledge is always unstable and fallible, faith cannot be apprehended by the pure mind, and ideology hides in its most obscure and mendacious forms.

But what also seems to be true is that men, as long as they live in this world, cannot depart from any of them, because on ideology social and political stability is built, from knowledge every technique and technology is constructed, and only through faith men can have the hope they need to bear the miseries of worldly existence.

The Democratic Tyrant

"...when a people is induced to make the mistake of holding someone in high esteem because he is down on those whom they hold in detestation, and that someone has his wits about him, it will always happen that tyranny will arise in that city. For he will wait until, with the support of the populace, he has got rid of the nobility, and will not begin to oppress the people until he has got rid of it, by which time the populace will have come to realize that it is a slave and will have no way to escape" (Machiavelli, Discourses, I 40).

A quick look at the last twelve years of Chavez regime in Venezuela will show a strikingly similar relation with this statement made by Machiavelli almost five hundred years ago. Venezuela didn't have a nobility but it did have a political party and economic elite. For the most part of his presidency, not to say all, Chavez has moved a strategy to reduce these elites to their minimum expression. Contrary to more autocratic dictators, he hasn't killed his opponents, but limits himself to wield the power he has backed by his popularity to break asunder and isolate "those whom they [the people that holds him in high esteem] hold in detestation".

But again because Chavez is not a prince, but a soft democratic tyrant, the opposition still exists, however negligible and mediocre. This has given his opponents the opportunity to rise a little bit in esteem every once in a while (especially during elections). But Machiavelli's conclusion still applies; once his opponents were reduced to nothingness, the people that had him on such a high esteem are reduced to slavery, for they have no one else to go for succor. Police repression is always stronger when it is used against the poor and the traditional strongholds of the president's popularity. The middle class in Venezuela has a wider freedom to protest, because their actions are made inconsequential by the manoeuvrings of the government. But the real threat to Chavez regime comes from the base of the people, whom loved him for years, that today have little choice but to keep loving him, even though his government is absolutely incompetent in tackling their needs: housing, personal security, water and electricity supply, etc.

Today Venezuelans have no way to escape from him, except by the miraculous act of a sickness. Machiavelli's other overwhelming force in politics, fortune, might be ending, sooner than expected by anyone, the long and exhaustive efforts made by the tyrant to rule for decades.

Open Conservatism

Having the experience of living in the United States, and hearing daily where the conservative grass-root movements stand on issues, has led me to question my identity as a conservative. The first thing that I have discovered is that conservatism is anything but an homogeneous group, or set of political convictions. Starting with me I realized that I can't agree with most of the cantankerous rhetoric coming from the right of the Republican Party. Most of what they say is not possible, showing only political naivete and complete lack of understanding of where we are historically. But also, of most of what is being said on the right I feel almost like an instinctive revulsion. The reason for this is because they show a stubborn and relentless intolerance toward what any other person might say; and that is not how you play the game of democracy.

My first complete divergence with contemporary conservatism lies mostly in their position on economics and fiscal policy. Yes, I agree that a balanced budget and a controlled-size of government bureaucracy are good goals; that rampant spending and growing centralized government might cripple the economy and eventually threaten the republican freedoms. But then, I don't understand why is it that this is called conservatism. What is it to be preserved? A balanced budget and controlled debt has no moral meaning or significance at all. I haven't heard that these can be morally problematic in the texts of any of the classical moral philosophers since Plato. For practical and utilitarian reasons I might agree with the idea of a balanced budget; but why is this conservative? Where is the moral value behind this idea? What original society is being preserved? These questions led me to the conclusion that what they call "fiscal conservatism" is nothing but an euphemism. Sometimes we have to spend, and sometimes we have to safe, depending on the historical context, the need of society and the level of antagonisms of the social classes. Of course we don't want a broke republic; not even liberals want that. So why on Earth calling it conservatism?

There is an answer to this questions: that the idea of a "small government" dates back from an idyllic past in the development of capitalism in which every individual was unhindered to pursue their businesses freely and without government intervention, and that this was a free and happy society. A first look at those years shows that this idea is a fantasy; capitalism grew out of the misery of a lot of people (and it is my impression that misery undermines freedom and human happiness). But it couldn't have been the other way around; wealth on one side and misery on the other is the only way the first accumulation of capital is possible for the next generations to make it grow more. A second and more scientific look: the growth of capital has been parallel with a growth of the government's size, because the amount of wealth created every generation over the previous one is reflected on the augmentation of the government's resources to increase its strength; and also because the government has been the way in which many in the proletariat lines have found the means to avoid utter and humiliating exploitation. As capitalism makes the proletariat grow, the state grows with it.

So far the "fiscal conservative" rests on generalizations and a misconceived look toward history. If we are to defend a balanced budget it is for strict reasons of utility; there is no moral principle behind it. As I said before: sometimes we spend, and sometimes we safe; there is nothing conservative about it.

The real reason why I claim to be a conservative is because I have a somehow romanticized vision of traditions. This is linked with my religious faith expressed through the Catholic Church. In this sense there are traditions that I think are better to be preserved and that the government has a duty to protect and promote, because whether we like it or not, peaceful social interaction between human beings rests more on traditions than on the coercive strength of the state. The latter usually kicks in when the former is disintegrating. And what the "fiscal conservatives" don't understand, and don't want to see, is that it was the growth of capitalism and its method of accumulation which has led to a vast disintegration of traditional life. The growth of government is nothing but a compensation in a society that no longer finds itself in the middle of big business. Both big business and its pursuit of wealth as well as big government and its pursuit of power are nothing but the consequence of that "idyllic small government society" the libertarians are trying to defend. So their position is utterly paradoxical.

There is another problem with what we call social conservatism (which I think is the only legitimate conservatism whatsoever). Capitalism, by destroying traditional life, especially in big urban areas, renders much of what is defended by religious faith as obsolete and inconvenient to the growth of capital. Capital doesn't care about sexual orientation, religious beliefs, family background, virtues or vices; it only cares about you doing your job in the time and the fashion expected. But this practical reality has its ideological face in liberalism and its quest to erase inherited traditions that bind the individual.

But then social conservatives have also a taste for the intolerant. They have interpreted their beliefs in moral virtue as the position of those that cast stones on the sinful one, and become nothing but pharisees. But I don't think it has to be that way.

This is the reason why I am defending something that I like to call "open conservatism": that is following and defending policies that aim at preserving and promoting the ancient traditions from which we've come, but never in a way that you should cast moral judgments on those particulars that do not follow our beliefs. This second clause is inherited from Christianity, and the idea that all human beings (individually and not in the enlightened abstraction called humanity) must be loved as you love yourself. The central idea is that we shall cast charity and not judgment on everyone, even those that pursue a life that according to our beliefs is questionable. In many passages of the Holy Scripture this philosophy is expressed. But I shall limit myself to quote John 8:7 in which Jesus prevents a mob from killing a prostitute and says to them "Let whoever is without sin among you be the first to cast a stone on her". The catch is that because none of us is free of sin, none has the legitimate authority to cast the stone of moral judgment on others. Jesus himself teaches how to be an open conservative, first by never denying the Laws of Moses (Matthew 5:17), and second by offering his hand and his love to the sinful (which are, basically, all of us).

Open conservatism can be a polite way of defending tradition by never pretending to trample over the inclinations of others. Our attitude toward the most radical of liberals and anarchists must be that of intellectual disagreement, but also of sincere love for them. If we have to cast our votes, we rather do it for tradition; if we have to claim the truth of Jesus, we will do it without pride; if we have to face another person that thinks and acts contrary to our beliefs, we shall embrace that person as a brother or sister in life. But the contemptuous conservatism that aims at rejecting other people's lifestyles is contrary to the spirit of the teachings of Christianity, and is built on the false assumption that we are the ultimate owners of the truth from which we can judge. Only God has the entire truth and hence just capacity to judge; precisely because we don't have it, we can't make a science out of morality, but simply to have faith in it.

My central point is that we can be conservatives without being pharisees. We can make friendship with those that oppose our ideas radically. We can even spend and enjoy time with them. In this sense tolerance is not enough; tolerance is just polite contempt. What we need is to improve our capacity to love and care about everyone we meet; to debate with them honestly, sincerely, and without traces of hatred and remorse for their different world outlook. And also to invite them to approach our differences in the same way. Conservatism can do this without betraying its convictions and its faith; we just have to take the word of Jesus seriously.

The Iliad and human destiny

I'm rereading the Iliad. The first time I came upon this marvelous poem I was fourteen years old. Eleven years have passed since that great moment where I picked, without knowledge of anything, to read the most human and spectacular work offered by the Ancient world. I did not understand most of it, but I remember that I felt in love with its content. Today I picked it again and now, that I have a deeper understanding of the poem, I cannot help but be touched and inspired by this tragedy.

Many things we can learn from the Iliad, but I would like to focus on one of them which I consider to be essential: destiny. The Ancient world had a deeper and more inwardly felt understanding of that thing called destiny which terrifies the Western mind. The Iliad opens like this:

"Sing, O goddess, the anger of Achilles son of Peleus, that brought countless ills upon the Achaeans. Many a brave soul did it send hurrying down to Hades, and many a hero did it yield a prey to dogs and vultures, for so were the counsels of Zeus fulfilled from the day on which the son of Atreus, king of men, and great Achilles, first fell out with one another.

"And which of the gods was it that set them on to quarrel? It was the son of Zeus and Leto; for he was angry with the king and sent a pestilence upon the host to plague the people..."

It is a God, Apollo, who initiates the chain of events that leads toward the end of the whole tragedy, and the Gods presence is prominent from beginning to end. Every time the heroes try to free themselves from their destiny, the Gods bring them back to the course they cannot avoid. In Shakespeare's brilliant words; "As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods; They kill us for their sport" (King Lear, 4.1.36). The Ancients had a profound faith in destiny, the reason of why oracles where so important in their cults. The idea of deciphering what the Gods had prepared for men was pervasive in their culture, and key to understand their role, not only in society, but in the cosmos as a whole. The Iliad is the greatest achievement, I believe, in this world-feeling.

The West, however, and since the discovery of free will by St. Paul, resists the idea of a destiny. It is unbearable for a Western to admit that his future is sealed by doom. There must be a way out of it, or otherwise he would not deal with the tragic reality of the human condition. He must believe that he is in control of his own destiny. I think that this world-feeling is stronger than anything else in the United States, with its creed of the American Dream. But it took a more radical form in Europe, where Communism (and Hegelianism) became the banner of a promised realm where human individuals will free themselves, at last, from the curse of historical determinism. Liberals from the other side (from Kant and Mill to recently Rawls) want to settle the conditions from which then individuals will become self-fulfilled. The Western project and its progress is a restless struggle to free itself from the unbearable burden of doom.

I must admit that in this particular world-outlook of the Western mind I have departed to rest in the tragic interpretation of the Ancients, at least as well as I remain alive in this world. It is my impression that destiny is a reality that transcends human endeavors. But destiny must be understood properly and we must avoid the simplistic understanding that most people have of it. Destiny is not about a pre-written book that says that you are going to take a step toward the left instead than toward the right on a particular moment. First of all destiny is impossible to defeat in the reality of death. This is the reason why the Ancients cared so much about glory and transcendence in a world of terrifying oblivion; the reason of why the heroes of the Iliad don't fight for mere power and wealth, but for glory and honor, the only possible way to stay alive. In this sense the Ancients can be considered to be much more individualistic than their Western counterparts.

Christianity offered a way out: the Kingdom of God, the prize gained by those that set in the journey to follow Jesus. The only way death can be defeated is by faith in the Kingdom of God and the Final Judgement. Because of that any attempt to transcend death in this life became folly and stupid. The doom of death was inevitable, but the possibility of eternal life was offered; hence the individual can be free in choosing the path toward that eternal life, and finally having control of his destiny at least after the time of its death. But Modernity and its obsession to take charge of human destiny became so ambitious that denied the promise offered by Jesus, and set on the quest to find freedom and salvation on this earth. The consequence was the greatest defeat our civilization had received. However the dream remains alive in pop culture, when we see all these movies and read all these bestsellers where the heroes manage to triumph over the forces of their environment, and rebel against the Gods in the most contemptuous way without fear of retribution. It is then when I realize how naive and arrogant our society is. The delusion of the man that controls its destiny is one of our greatest weakness, and now that Communism and Capitalism have failed in delivering the promised freedom to us all, we have turn toward technology, a destiny controlled by machines that are dead as rocks; that impress us with their fancy shapes and glittering lights, so that we remain in a state of sopor at our tragic ending: that we never had control of our lives and destinies, and we are already in a world where machines control our movements and our interaction with other human beings, without possibility of return but through holocaust/Apocalypse.

In this future visage of desolation where humans become an appendage of technology I have returned to the Iliad as my personal retirement to find repose in times of heroes and conquerors when I'm surrounded by noise, concrete, metal, electricity and waves.

My Statement on Gay Marriage

The law by virtue of being it I must respect. And it is expected from everyone else in a free society to do the same; because only the law has supreme earthly authority. Even in autocratic regimes the figure of the autocrat is the origin of the law. I will skip the problem of what would be a legitimate origin of the law, and just state as principle that the law, whatever it happened to exist according to the common consent of those being subject to it, remains the supreme earthly authority. But the Church (of Rome) has the monopoly of my conscience, the place where only God reaches. The law can only ask from me to obey it, but it cannot claim my conscience, my self. Recently gay marriage was approved in the State of New York, the place where I presently reside. And for the previous mentioned reasons I respect gay marriage by being sanctioned according to the law of this land, and having supreme earthly authority. But I cannot concede in favoring it in my conscience, because that part of my self belongs to my devoted faith in the Church; and the Church does not recognize as warranted the union of same-gender couples.

However I cannot judge others' love. Doing that is always deeply unchristian. The authority to judge others' love, and weather it is right or wrong, belongs only to God. That is why the inclination of gays is not my concern nor does it demands my opinion on the subject, because simply I cannot know better, because I am no better. My opinion only rests in regarding the institution of gay marriage and it is guided by the Holy Doctrine of the Catholic Church. For that reason I don't support with my conscience what the law forces me to respect nonetheless (and I willfully do respect it): the institution of gay marriage. But the judgment of others' love goes beyond my reach, as it is well explained by the Pauline theology from the teachings of Jesus.

The difficulty in explaining this is that our society has become to fond of judging others, coming from every orientation in politics, ethics and religion. The difference between the judgment of a court of law is that it rests upon the earthly authority of the law. If the law has a moral content, it is not morality which makes the law binding, but the law which makes morality binding. In itself the only moral court where the individual stands is that upon God. But this difference goes completely unnoticed by many who think that an opinion regarding a subject of ethics or morality, almost like by necessity, implies a judgment on those others that break what we consider to be the moral norms. This must be rejected, because there is a difference between a statement of morality, where basically the subject states what he believes to be the frontier between right and wrong, and another one is having the authority to point at some other person and rightfully say "you did wrong". Morality is a claim of the self in the his relation to God, but never to other men. To other men only law and conventions are binding, but the deep meaning of human morality lies hidden inside the conscience to a level that only God can pierce.

To put it more simply; when a person breaches the law, he goes to court. The law is recited to the person, but the person still remains innocent. In order for any judgment to be imposed on the person, it must be shown that the person actually broke the law. The sole speaking of the law does not make the person guilty. What makes the person guilty is the judgment based on the law. As it stands the law is just a statement of will (general will if you may) but it does not finger any guilty. It just creates the possibility and basis for the guilty. But the actual materialization of the guilty emerges from the judgment. And the judgment is only warranted when it has been proven that the person did break the law somehow (if there are enough doubts, it will always be better for the person to walk free). But with morality we face an insolvable problem: it is impossible to prove that inside another person's conscience there has been a real breach in the moral norms. A breach in convention can be proven, as well as with the law; but never a fault in morality, because we have no way of knowing what happens inside the depth of another human's mind (heart, soul, conscience). That is why blaming another for hypocrisy is most of the time a very bold judgment.

Morality does no warrant anyone to judge other people. Christianity teaches so, and the philosophical basis were built by St. Paul already a long time ago. When I state what I think to be right or wrong is a moral statement, but it does not imply a judgment (however many do that, and others interpret it that way). A true Christian morality will always point the difference between right and wrong, but stay there as when the courts of law have still not passed a judgment on a defendant. Because the only and truly possible authority in morality is God, the only force in the universe conceivable to penetrate inside the human heart and know their deepest truths. I think this more than enough to justify and explain my previous statement in gay marriage: why is it possible for me to oppose gay marriage and gay love as concepts contrary to Christian morality and still welcome any person without distinction of sexual inclination, without remorse or judgment upon them. Morality cannot be used as a weapon to judge without losing completely its true meaning, but as the relation between our individual consciences and God. The Church states the maxims of Christian morality, but it has no authority to produce any particular judgment on anyone. So the same with all of us.

1 Corinthians 4

In order to show that Christian religion is not about judging and chastising people for their actions; that the idea of guilt is not a tool to influence and dominate the weak willed by some corrupt priests; and that corrupt priests and clergy as well as hypocrite believers are not inherent of the Christian faith, but part of the sinful nature of the human condition (that is shared by every human being with the only exception of the Virgin Mary), St. Paul's First Epistle to the Corinthians says:

"(1) This, then, is how you ought to regard us: as servants of Christ and as those entrusted with the mysteries God has revealed. (2) Now it is required that those who have been given a trust must prove faithful. (3) I care very little if I am judged by you or by any human court; indeed, I do not even judge myself. (4) My conscience is clear, but that does not make me innocent. It is the Lord who judges me. (5) Therefore judge nothing before the appointed time; wait until the Lord comes. He will bring to light what is hidden in darkness and will expose the motives of the heart. At that time each will receive their praise from God."

"(6) Now, brothers and sisters, I have applied these things to myself and Apollos for your benefit, so that you may learn from us the meaning of the saying, 'Do not go beyond what is written.' Then you will not be puffed up in being a follower of one of us over against the other. (7) For who makes you different from anyone else? What do you have that you did not receive? And if you did receive it, why do you boast as though you did not?"

Guilt has no meaning in Christianity without forgiveness and redemption. It is not about a faith of self-flagellating people but of humble acceptance of our wrongs and hope in forgiveness through God's (and human) love. Those that believe that they can use Christian faith to judge and chastise others are deeply flawed in their interpretation of the message of Christ, and only give a weapon for those that attack our faith in the name of misconceived ideas of progress and freedom. Christianity is a faith of love and hope, that can only be achieved when we admit and start by our humble position in this life and not boasting at gifts that are given to us by God. St. Paul, with his respective coherence, tells us that even judging ourselves is flawed because only God can penetrate fully within the dark purposes of our spirit. If we don't even know ourselves fully, how do we expect to judge others that we are so far from knowing to heart? Christianity demands full tolerance to the wrongs of others; an extremely difficult feat to achieve; sainthood is the quality of those that reach it.

Luzardo and Barquero: the mirrors of our generation

Reading Doña Bárbara (1929), probably the most acclaimed Venezuelan novel by Rómulo Gallegos, I was touched by a conversation that so vividly portrayed the deep rooted feelings of the Venezuelan spirit. The story takes place in the Venezuelan llanos (or Great Plains): an endless expanse of flat grassland, scorched by the sun in the dry season, and in the wet turned by torrential into fever-ridden swamps and lakes; it is the home of a wild and warlike breed, a racial mixture from Indian, white and black stock, hardened by their savage surroundings and capable of great endurance on horseback. Santos Luzardo (the hero), returns home after years spent in Caracas pursuing his university studies. He has become an urbane man and his ways totally contrast with the wild ways of the llanos. He has a conversation with his elder and only cousin left. His name is Lorenzo Barquero, who also did his studies in Caracas years before, when he was the most promising member of the family; but now he is a drunk, useless and decrepit man living in a tiny, stinking and dirty hut, after losing all his properties to the dangerous woman known as Doña Bárbara. Santos Luzardo is coming back (as his cousin Lorenzo did before him), and is determined to change the savage and semi-barbaric ways of the llanos, with the optimist view of a man of progress. However Lorenzo's state is absolutely disencouraging. Here is part of the conversation between both [the translation is mine]:

Santos: ..."It is necessary to kill the centaur", you said. I, of course, didn't know what a centaur could be and not even could I explain myself why the llaneros carried it inside them... Years after, in Caracas, a handout reached my hands of a speech you had delivered in I don't know what patriotic meeting, and imagine my impression when I found the famous phrase there. Do you remember that speech? The topic was: the centaur is barbarism and, therefore, it must be done with...
Lorenzo: ...Look at me carefully, Santos Luzardo! This specter of a man that was, this human wreck, this carrion that speaks to you, was your ideal. I was that which you said previously, and now I am this that you see. Aren't you afraid, Santos Luzardo?
Santos: Afraid, why?
Lorenzo: No! I'm not asking you for you to answer me! But for you to hear this instead: that Lorenzo Barquero who you have spoken of was nothing but a lie; the truth is this that you see now. You are also a lie that will banish soon. This land does not forgive... I started to realize that my intelligence, that which everyone called my great talent, did not work but while I was talking; as soon as I fell silent the mirage would also banish and I couldn't understand absolutely nothing. I felt the lie of my intelligence and my sincerity. Do you realize? The lie of your own sincerity, which is the worse that can happen to a man... To kill the centaur! He! He! Don't be an idiot, Santos Luzardo! Do you think that that of killing the centaur was pure rhetoric? I assure you that it exists. I've heard it neighing. Every single night it passes by here. And not only here; there, in Caracas, also. And far beyond too. Wherever one of us is... he hears the centaur's neighing. You've heard it too and that's why you are here. Who has said that it is possible to kill the centaur? Me? Spit on my face, Santos Luzardo. The centaur is an entelechy. A hundred years it has galloped over this land and another hundred will pass still. I thought myself civilized, my family's first civilized, but it was enough to be told: "come and avenge your father", for the barbarian inside me to emerge. The same has happened to you... Santos Luzardo! Look yourself in me! This land does not forgive!

I edited the conversation so as to show what I think is more interesting in it. It speaks, I think, about the deepest reality in Venezuelan society (I'm tempted to say Latin America, but it might be too bold). I am of those that think that not infrequently poets and novelists portray the human condition in a more acute and spiritual way than any philosopher or scientist. Rómulo Gallegos might have interpreted the tragedy/comedy of our national experience in the best way possible, in the dialectics between our will to progress (in Santos Luzardo) individually and collectively, and our inclination toward barbarism (in Lorenzo Barquero). Venezuelan history is a constant tension between these two forces; when we seem to be on the right track of what we think (what we like to think) is the road toward perfection, the internal forces of our turbulent and wild spirit, deeply rooted in the memory of our war of Independence, emerges as a destructive force that, cloaked in the disguise of justice and fairness, it immerses us in backwardness. Lorenzo Barquero is a metaphor of all of us, the man that tasted both worlds, that personifies both tendencies.

Our national history is filled with centaurs. The war of Independence produced tons of them. Bolivar was the first one (and also the one that combined Santos and Lorenzo in its greatest expression); Boves, not being a Venezuelan born, was also possessed by it in its most barbaric form. Páez was the first one to carry the name explicitly, and that by the end of his life tried to tame it (successfully as an individual and failing absolutely as the nation's leader). Both 19th and 20th century Venezuela has centaurs ruling and being ruled (in the bodies of the leaders, and the bodies of their followers and enemies alike). The 20th century has the more technocratic expressions. And when we seemed to have taken our leave from this tragic/comedy tradition, the centaur revived again, now in its most gruesome form. All Venezuelans know (once again) how is it like.

The figure of the progressive man in Santos is extremely interesting: a man deceived by the taste of modernity. He is our traditionally tragic hero, whereas Lorenzo has reached the level of our comedy hero. "Wherever one of us is... he hears the centaur's neighing". I can't but totally agree with this statement. I that know the country in which I was raised, and the symbols and feelings that it has produced in my being, I hear the centaur's neighing. And this last lines I write for all of my friends and the Venezuelan youth that today study abroad, many of whom were forced by the circumstances. Santos Luzardo is our mirror. And Lorenzo Barquero might be our destiny. The former we already are; the latter is a matter of choice. I don't believe in progress; everything is in eternal return. Venezuelan history: the eternal return of the centaur. Who wants to be part of this play? And what would be your role in it? Ask yourself these questions and choose. Lorenzo asks "Aren't you afraid, Santos Luzardo?" I would say yes.

"Everything becomes and recurs eternally - escape is impossible! - Supposing we could judge value, what follows? The idea of recurrence as a selective principle, in the service of strength (And barbarism!!)" Nietzsche.