How to judge History without Self-Righteousness

Frequently in my social relations I find people that practice ethical and normative judgments on history. From a retrospective point of view, i.e. from today toward the past, it seems reasonable to speak of the errors, mistakes and crimes of our ancestors (because when we criticize the past, we inevitably criticize our ancestors).  This is commonly done by establishing a more or less universal conception of the good and justice, assuming that today is closer to the realization of that conception than the past was. It assumes that we know better than our ancestors did. In few words, the conceptions that we use to criticize our present and our immediate past are logically transferred to pass judgment on the far past. I am a strong advocate of our capacity to judge our present (and by present I include our immediate past and our immediate future). Because only through this capacity, which is always relative to our vantage point, can we participate in the public realm through speech viz. violence. 

Now, if we do not accept that our capacity to judge is always relative to our vantage point, it follows that we claim an absolute truth, and the possibility to speak with those that dissent from us becomes impossible. In the realm of logical arguments we cannot exchange truth for falsehood. Whereas in politics there is no truth or falsehood but simply vantage points. This is why I reject any political speech that claims universality. They are antidemocratic, because democracy demands exchange of arguments, and this is only possible when arguments are relative. This regards to our capacity to judge our present.

But when we speak about our far past things change. We no longer participate in the public debate that belonged to our ancestors. We cannot fully understand their context from and within which they acted. Hence our capacity to judge morally is out of context. This means that our moral claims regarding the far past are simply irrelevant. This is common knowledge among historians today. But not among people outside the field of history, many of whom are very fond of passing judgment on the far past, even though they are completely out of context. For many of them, passing judgment on the far past justifies their normative conceptions that they use to judge today's world. For example, when many say that colonialism is bad, and they use this principle to argue that NATO states should stay out of the Middle East, it follows that the Unites States should have stayed out of the western regions of North America, that the Spanish should have stayed out of the Americas back in the 16th century, that the European knights should have never gone in pilgrimage to the Holy Land back in the 11th and 12th centuries, and so forth (these as very frequent examples). Moreover, it follows that the Mongolians should have never invaded half of Eurasia, that the Roman Republic should have never invaded its Italian and Mediterranean neighbors, that the Persians should have never crossed the Hellespont, that Thutmose III should have never invaded Canaan, and so forth. In few words, history should have never been, following the principle that some people use today to judge NATO's involvement in the Middle East. This is a reductio ad absurdum that shows how ridiculous it is to use the present conceptions of our capacity to judge when judging the far past. I say that we should only use them in a conversation when judging our present.

I think many are afraid that, because they do not consistently apply their present normative conceptions to the far past, their conceptions might be erroneous. I also think that this structure of reasoning is based on the arrogant will to present arguments of universal validity. When some people are engaged in an intellectual conversation they need to believe that what they claim is somehow universal, so that it makes sense to them that they are defending it in the first place. They fail to realize that public arguments are always relative, and that it is perfectly fine that it should remain that way. When they have a problem with the relativity of public argumentation, they also fall in the arrogant discourse of passing moral judgment on the far past, as it would be logically consistent. Unfortunately logic is the most authoritarian form of discourse that there is, and for what regards to democracy, this form of speech is unwarranted, and it remains solely in the realm of classrooms of eminent professors. This is a major difference between academia-street and main-street.

However, as a follower of Humanism, I do not pretend to be neutral when talking about history and the far past. I am aware that I am constantly passing judgment. But it is of a completely different sort that when passing judgment on current affairs. Instead of consisting of normative claims, my way of judging the far past is aesthetical; i.e. it focuses mainly on the resonance of historical facts, on the basis that I like some stories and I dislike others. It is not about what I think it should have been, but what I find to be impressive, spectacular, worthy of honor and respect, independently of my normative conceptions that I use to judge today's world. In this way I can admire both the Spanish conquistadores as well as the beauty of the Aztec civilization. Both are amazing to me, and I find the tragedy of their confrontation a wonderful story. Because for me tragedy is not inherently bad but an entelechy of human history. I study history as the best spectacle of all. Just as people don't judge morally the content of the works of Shakespeare, nor they think that Macbeth should have never happened, I think of history in the same exact way. The fact that I think killing is morally bad does not obstruct my reasoning in appreciating Julius Caesar's murder, Urban II's call for the First Crusade, Cortés conquest of Mexico and Cuauhtémoc's last stand, Robert E. Lee's brave defense of the Confederate States of America, or Lenin's revolutionary genius. For me all historical actors always commit moral wrongs. But I do not pay attention to the moral elements in their actions, but just the resonance of their deeds. And that is what makes them spectacular and worthy of respect. All history should be appreciated.

This is the difference between our capacity to judge current affairs, and our capacity to judge our ancestors. They are of two different kinds, and if we do not separate them, intellectual problems arise. The first one is the reductio ad absurdum that follows if we think history should have never been when we use our normative conceptions to judge the far past, and the second is the moral nihilism that denies good and evil when we use the same aesthetical form of judgment applying it to the present.

Paul Auster's Leviathan and the End of American Liberty

This morning I was about to finish the second novel I’ve read from Paul Auster, and I must admit that I was afraid that it would disappoint me as the previous one (City of Glass) did. Not that City of Glass (1985) is a bad novel. I enjoyed it a lot and I think it’s terrific. But the ending just blew it off. Today I want to make a short comment on Leviathan (1992). Not only is the beginning really grasping, but so is the ending

The book’s title is already curious. Leviathan is a Biblical monster, especially prominent in the books of Job, and Jonah, but it’s also the title of Thomas Hobbes’ groundbreaking political treatise of 1651. This should be kept in mind because, even though the main plot seems to have barely any relation to the origin of the name leviathan, it becomes the word around which Auster brings together various notions that are originally separate.

Auster’s Laviathan is a story told by a novelist called Peter Aaron, who recounts his friendship with another writer, Benjamin Sachs, who at the book’s very beginning is accidently killed by a bomb in a deserted road in northern Wisconsin. The entire novel is, then, the explanation of how and why Ben Sachs died that way. The story goes around how they met their respective wives, their respective divorces, their respective lovers, and the respective coincidences that entangle most of their relations, and so forth. It would be a quite conventional story if it weren’t because the reader knows that the main character ends up blowing himself when the bomb he was building detonates by accident. And the shadow of this horrible death is cast all over the novel. You just want to know why he ends up like that, and, in the meantime, many interesting things happen, basically because Paul Auster is an outstanding storyteller.

Sachs’ first book is called The Big Colossus, and the name is a very important detail that the perspicacious reader will not overpass. First, it’s a reference to the Statue of Liberty (which plays a major role in the story), given that it’s a huge statue at the entrance of an important sea port, just as the Colossus of Rhodes was back in the times. And second, because at the moment of his death, Sachs had left an unfinished novel he wanted to call Leviathan. Both are names of gargantuan-size beings, which means Auster is implying a relation between both names. Thanks to this we can grasp the Freudian aspect of Auster’s character buildup. For example, by the middle of the novel Sachs starts becoming more and more depressed as he becomes conscious of his insignificance in the world. He had been in jail (where he wrote his first novel) for opposing conscription during the Vietnam War. He was a man of ideals; left-wing ideals. And as the Reagan era moves forward (the story takes place mostly during the 80’s), with patriotic Americanism and chauvinism reigning everywhere in the political environment, men like Sachs become less prominent, and ultimately ignored. There is a point of the story in which Sachs hides himself in a bookstore and finds his novel, The Big Colossus, piled among other irrelevant titles completely forgotten, for the humiliating price of five bucks. This was the turning point where he decided that he wanted to be a radical activist and stops writing, which is the main decision that led to his death. The immense emptiness he feels makes him leave his adorable wife and drop from the world, and it was due to his ego being absolutely hammered by his surroundings. This is the book’s psychological dimension.

But the richness of Leviathan spreads to mystical and symbolic levels. There is a traumatic episode in Sachs childhood that took place when he was visiting with his mother the Statue of Liberty. Inside the statue, his mom had a panic attack that became a painful memory that might have been the unconscious motive for targeting years later smaller replicas of the statue all over the United States. A very famous passage of Jonah (1:17) says: “But the LORD provided a great fish to swallow Jonah, and Jonah was inside the fish three days and three nights.” The “big fish” is a translation of the Hebrew word “dag,” which is also traditionally translated as “leviathan”. In few words, Auster makes the episode inside the Statue of Liberty analogous to the Biblical episode in Jonah 1:17, where the statue plays both the role of a monstrous creature as well as the hero’s savior. This leads to my final interpretation.

All of this is set on a political background that never takes the front stage until the novel’s final moments, when Sachs drops writing and becomes a radical anarchist. In his rather insane quest to fight the government, he finds himself fighting a gigantic monster, which is the same symbolic image Hobbes makes of the modern state in his Leviathan of 1651. But the Statue of Liberty, as Auster explicitly mentions, is not a controversial symbol like the American flag. Everyone agrees with the ideas it represents, whether they be real or fantastic. But when Sachs sets on this personal mission to destroy this national symbol all around the U.S., he is making the point that what his country used to stand for, liberty, is being destroyed. It doesn't exist anymore. It has been swallowed by the leviathan state, if you wish. The statue itself, the one in Liberty Island in New York City, was a monstrous structure that had swallowed him in his childhood. Its external appearance and immensity only hides a inside shallowness. Hence the main question Auster’s book presents: Has American liberty being swallowed by the monstrous Federal Government?

The conclusion of the book is particularly pessimistic. But as my usual readers might be aware of, I like that.