Thucydides and Republicanism

"For though it be the part of discreet men to be quiet unless they have wrong, yet it is the part of valiant men, when they receive injury, to pass from peace to war, and after success, from war to come again to composition, and neither to swell with the good success of war nor to suffer injury through pleasure taken in the ease of peace. For him whom pleasure makes a coward, if he sit still, shall quickly lose the sweetness of the ease that made him so" (Thucydides: I: 120).

This might sound an ethic of an eye for an eye, but real political wisdom is at place here. Liberal pacifist ideas are so common these days, and especially among educated middle class young people, that what seems to be the most basic common sense is underestimated as simple chauvinism. War is never good from a moral standing point. But then, politics and morality depart when the most extreme circumstances come at play. When a country is attacked, or humiliated, or some external aggression is inflicted upon it, how can we expect it to lay down? As Thucydides accurately points out, that would be nothing but a cowardly behavior.

Another thing is at play. Peace and prosperity bring pleasure and laziness. Liberal thinking, again, at defending the individual's choice at all cost, render any kind of personal sacrifice (either for country or religion) as irrational, unnecessary or crude fanaticism. The problem of the ease of peace is that, by making men lazy, it makes them cowards; it softens their characters, making them fall in love with their pleasures; and when the time comes that their liberty to be lazy is threatened and the risk of being taken away by tyrants or conquerors, they are overthrown by panic or indolence, which result in crude slavery. Today's liberal ideas (and particularly libertarians'), are nothing but a very complicated set of political and ethical beliefs that are the truest road toward losing any liberty at all and falling into the longest period of slavery.

"And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country" John F. Kennedy, presidential inaugural address, January 20, 1961.

A return to Ludwig Van Beethoven

Last time, I spoke about my favorite writer; a Russian. Now it is the time for me to remember the musician that has kept me in awe since I was a child; a German. I have so long since I heard the 5th symphony, that now that I have retaken it, I cannot but remember clearly the impact that the 1st movement had on me for many years. For my readers: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_4IRMYuE1hI

Beethoven marks a moment in the history of Western music. It puts away all the cute melodies of the Baroque and Classical music, and it sets forth the foundation for a real music of the human spirit. No longer tones for the courts of kings and aristocrats, but a music for human kind. And that specific moment I trace it back to that 1st movement of the 5th symphony that resonates and will resonate through the ages.

Every time I'm hurt, every time I feel with deep emotion, moved by despair, anger or tears, I return to Beethoven. For all passions, all longing and all love, everything is there. All possible nihilism is banished and life acquires a spiritual dimension that can only be surpassed by reading the Bible. I invite every Western soul that ignores this magnificent spectacle of universal music to know Beethoven; to overcome all that shadow of mediocrity and vulgarity that is so characteristic of pop culture and admits the place where we all come from. Beethoven, like Cervantes, is at the opening of our spiritual consciousness. Western man, return to your origins. There is nothing for you in the future but death and decay.

My feelings through Dostoyevsky's words

"To love someone means to see him as God intended him" Fyodor Dostoyevsky.

Every time I read something new from Dostoyevsky I can't but feel touched. Even loose quotes like this one speak the most uncontroversial truth, and any one who both believes in God and has been in love can understand at first glance what this words are all about. And here I speak with the most personal tone; I find in this author food for my own personality, and through his characters I feel myself represented. With all their vices, all their defects, all their profound feelings, me, a Western without hope in our lost civilization, cannot but feel touched. Only love can displace and set apart all traces of bias and ignorance from our eyes when contemplating the work of God in another person.

I read Dostoyevsky over and over again, and I feel pleased. If being in love is our perception of the work of God in a specific person, I tell with utmost certainty that I have seen. And I still see what is part of God in a specific woman today. Among all the millions of souls and minds that walk the populous city of New York, she knows that I'm talking about her.

Modern thinking or Eternal Return?

"In the State of Nature we are free animals but enslaved human beings; in the State of Society we are enslaved animals but free human beings. Christianity has conquered freedom for Mankind; and now Mankind uses that freedom to destroy Christianity." (Winter-Spring 2008).

I wrote this phrases some years ago, and in retrospective I find them very interesting. I was reading Hegel at that moment, who I think inspired me to reach this conclusion. But now I discover that the first part of the statement is absolutely modern in principle. The idea that nature is previous and contrary to human enterprise and that our reason is our spiritual endowment to conquer beastly nature is so a modern idea that we can find it widespread from Descartes to Marx and beyond. There is implicitly a progressive approach of human nature. On the contrary, for ancient thinkers, and especially for Aristotle, nature is not contrary to human industry, but is the foundation of it. We use our rational endowments like language and labor by nature and not contrary to it, as if to conquer it.

But then, to understand the first part of the statement; that humanity and its reason is somehow superior to the State of Nature; we must pay heed to the second part. That the conquest of nature by our human endowments was facilitated by Christianity in particular, and by our Jude moral backgrounds in general, is an idea that I drew from Hegel's historical philosophy, and that is determinant to understand Modern political and ethical thinking. Nietzsche might be the genius in discovering the injustice underlying the Christian struggle against our bodily nature, and the motive why he rises against all Modern thinking. But I think that he might have committed and injustice against Ancient philosophy, and especially against Aristotle if he includes, as I think he actually does, Ancient thought with Christian and Modern thought. His statement in the The Will to Power that Plato is the first Christian might sound plausible, but I think he is wrong. In order to prove this, I would need more than a blog article, but an academic thesis, which is not proper here.

The interesting thing to point out is that it was historically impossible, if not absolutely absurd, for Ancient thought to reach the conclusion that human reason and its endowments were contrary to nature and bound to conquer it, as Modern thinking does. Christianity was missing. Hence, we find no progressive thinking in the Ancients, but cyclical accounts of history. Isn't it the Eternal Return of Nietzsche a very Ancient idea contrary to Modern thought? I think it is. Nietzsche gives us the clue to understand the departure of Modern and Ancient thought that we can trace back to Christianity. Now my question goes: Can we, contemporary minds find a synthesis between Ancient cyclical thought and Christian morality? That, I think, is the challenge posted by today's Postmodernism.

Million faces

This poem is not final, but is the product of a sudden inspiration while thinking on a train. It requires final touches, but it has now the virtue of spontaneity.

Eighteen millions,
the train here comes,
million faces,
the train then goes.
One face there shone,
but the train was gone,
between million faces,
to never return.

Eighteen millions,
how many more?
Shine there I saw,
standing alone,
saw her just once,
but the train was gone,
between million faces,
forever begone.

Eighteen millions,
I was one more,
She goes to Brooklyn,
I to the Bronx.
Saw her at Union,
but the train was gone,
between million faces,
I was just one more.

Eighteen millions,
hours on board,
some on the N,
some on the Four.
I glared her,
but her train was gone.
She goes to Brooklyn,
and I to the Bronx.

Short dialogue on liberal contractualism

The question: How can a political society emerge from a convention like a contract between individuals, if all conventions emerge from a political society in the first place?

Myself: The answer is that there is no such contract, and that human individuals are gregarious by nature, from which, then, conventions as contracts start to exist. Which also lead us to the conclusion that individuals are inasmuch there is a society to live in; hence they must adapt to the conventions and traditions from that society in the first place in order to rationally change them if they want to, always bearing in mind that society stands above the individuals. Contrary to this basic statement of common sense, liberal contractual thinking, in its individualistic fanaticism, is destroying the only base from where any rational human individual can live with dignity: society; by destroying its symbols of community. Examples: family, country and religion through feminism, pacifism and atheism.

Wise opponent: Feminism destroys families? Are you suggesting that misogyny fosters societal feelings?

Myself: That is not what I'm implying with my example. Family as a social value of good is between radical feminism and irrational misogyny. Feminism today is an attempt to destroy any kind of manly behavior and value (like honor, for example), also as a complete denationalization of femininity. By alienating persons from their gender background, destroying any truthful and sincere possibility of love between a man and a woman, the emotional base for a healthy marriage. In America feminism is against marriage, which is the same as to say, being against family. I'm not talking about feminism theory, but about main street feminism.
In any case, the examples above are only useful in my comment in order to show the consequences of thinking about society in a contractual way between individuals, instead of the real natural inclination toward living in community that all humans share from birth, with community values before and above individual values.
Again thinking in individual as opposed to community is a misleading assumption. Community values always have a certain level of individual values, depending on the case. But the important thing to point out is the prevalence of communion over ego. The other way around risks destruction. No Leviathan can pull it together without real and spontaneous communion.

On Justice as Patriotism

"To have family or a city that is one's own implies the distinction between insiders and outsiders; and the outsiders are the potential enemies. Justice as helping friends and harming enemies is a peculiarly political definition of justice, and its dignity stands or falls with the dignity of political life. Every nation has wars and must defend itself; it can only do so if it has citizens who care for it and are willing to kill the citizens of the other nations. If the distinction between friends and enemies, and the inclination to help the former and harm the latter, were obliterated from the heart and mind of man, political life would be impossible" (Bloom, "Interpretive Essay" in The Republic of Plato, p. 318).

Reading Plato will never be out of date. What makes him a classic is the fact that in his work, particularly in his Republic, he tackles most of the issues regarding the problematical nature of politics. The first book of this work opens with a dialogue between Socrates and three other interlocutors discussing the notion of Justice, which will be the object that the entire work will aim at. For Justice seems, at least in Ancient times, the political good par excellence. The three other main characters of this first book are Cephalus, his son Polemarchus and the irate Thrasymachus.

The quoted text refers to Polemarchus argument on what justice means. He arrives at the conclusion (no without being insistently questioned by Socrates) that Justice as the virtue of making good to your friends, and doing wrong to your enemies. Now, independently of Socrates final arguments, I would like to wonder around this notion, because it seems to be the central argument of patriotism. Starting, this concept may strike us as irrational and cruel, because our Western christianized culture of universal peace and fraternity completely contradict such statement. But let us not be misguided by our liberal illusions of how the would ought to be from our moral view, and lets pay attention to what it says about the nature of politics.

It came to my mind that the contemporary political thinker that defend such an argument in similar language is the German jurist Carl Schmitt. He argues that the relation that determines political phenomena is the friend and enemy relationship. That to presume sovereignty from a political community, it must be capable to delimit who are their friends, either by referring by friends the citizens that form the political body or the external allies, and separates them from a common enemy, which for sure refers to other threatening political communities or internal sentiment of treachery. When a polity is unable to define by itself from any other compelling polity, perhaps would that means that the former enjoys no freedom at all and cannot be really called sovereign state. This ideas, summed with the accidental condition that Schmitt belonged to the Nazi Party in Germany, is viewed today with much precaution or skepticism. Apart from all of that, I do think there is something to be concluded from Schmitt's account of the political, as from Polemarchus' argument on Justice. There is something here that is real, and that all ways has been.

The interesting thing about the entire debate of Justice in Plato is that it appears to be totally detached from the notion of Freedom. A feature that today we Westerns consider quintessential, that Freedom is a necessary precondition for any kind of substantive Justice. Justice, in the Classical tradition, doesn't seems to come by the side of Freedom. Maybe because the state of freedom and slavery for the Ancients was more of an accidental condition than the Modern concept of inherent rights.

In any case, a profound lecture of Plato is all ways a good start to think about our conceptions and ideas from a critical perspective; specially when it appears that all that seems to be debatable about politics was already treated somehow by the Ancient Greeks.