May 8, 2011
A Reply to My Critics?
I’ve not much time for blogging these days, as on balance I find reading novels and cycling are far better ways to waste my life.
Nonetheless, it has come to my attention that I am rather unpopular with some sections of the Cambridge activist community. Apparently I have the wrong views about political violence, the nature of capitalism, the inevitable proletarian-student revolution, or something.
I thought I might do a post drawing on some of the finer thinkers of the 18th century. Specifically David Hume, Adam Smith, Edmund Burke, and the problem of political “enthusiasm”. Or as we would now call it, fanaticism.
The manner in which self-righteous, self-assured political conviction so easily takes hold over people’s minds. And then drives them to do terrible, murderous, destructive, and often outright evil things. Because enthusiasts are convinced that they have all the answers. And that everyone else is either too blind, or too morally twisted, to see their truths.
Or as Max Weber put it, describing a very similar thing:
“One cannot prescribe to anyone whether he should follow an ethic of absolute ends or an ethic of responsibility, or when the one and when the other. One can say only this much: If in these times, which, in your opinion, are not times of ‘sterile’ excitation–excitation is not, after all, genuine passion–if now suddenly the Weltanschauungs politicians crop up en masse and pass the watchword, ‘The world is stupid and base, not I,’ ‘The responsibility for the consequences does not fall upon me but upon the others whom I serve and whose stupidity or baseness I shall eradicate,’ then I declare frankly that I would first inquire into the degree of inner poise backing this ethic of ultimate ends. I am under the impression that in nine out of ten cases I deal with windbags who do not fully realize what they take upon themselves but who intoxicate themselves with romantic sensations.”
But I have neither the time nor the heart for such exertions. And indeed, political philosophy is perhaps an unfruitful place to start. I gather that English Literature is the modern revolutionary’s Oxbridge degree of choice. Several thousand years of cumulative wisdom – helpfully captured in books now available at paperback prices – from the most intelligent people to have walked the earth, is all irrelevant. Art and deconstruction will fuel the revolution, which is itself unquestionably a good thing. Or so I’m told.
So let’s instead start from some putative common ground. Philip Roth is surely one of the great literary figures of the 20th century, and perhaps America’s finest novelist in the post-war era. For what it’s worth (basically nothing), I think that if we’re going to be political litterateurs, then we should begin with Roth’s blindingly brilliant I Married a Communist.
Here’s a short passage, from the culmination of a genuinely profound work:
“You control betrayal on one side and you wind up betraying somewhere else. Because it’s not a static system. Because it’s alive. Because everything that lives is in movement. Because purity is petrification. Because purity is a lie. Because unless you’re an ascetic paragon like Johnny O’Day and Jesus Christ, you’re urged on by five hundred things. Because without the iron pole of righteousness with which the Grants clubbed their way to success, without the big lie of righteousness to tell you why you do what you do, you have to ask yourself, all along the way, “Why do I do what I do?” And you have to endure yourself without knowing.”
If you don’t understand what that short passage is saying, the rest of the book will explain. I would recommend it as seriously worthwhile reading for anybody who is particularly sure of their convictions.
