Libertarians without chests: Or, formalism no foundation for freedom

What C.S. Lewis and Ayn Rand both saw eludes many self-styled “Libertarians”

In his classic essay “Men without Chests” C.S. Lewis entertainingly explained how all judgements on matters of truth, goodness, and beauty are inextricably bound to human passions and emotional commitments. Likewise, Gene Rodenberry and his scriptwriters for the original Star Trek were not able to make Mr. Spock into a believable character until it was painfully revealed how his absence of emotion was only a Stoic mask concealing a deep current of repressed instinctual drives. Emotions are an integral part of what makes us human, and even what would make a Vulcan a Vulcan, were such creatures to exist. None the less, that Star Trek trope reveals a fundamental prejudice which has characterized the upper registers of Western civilization, at least from the time of the Enlightenment, the notion that reason and the emotions are more often than not in a state of contradiction. Of course sometimes they are as illustrated by the psychoanalytic nomenclature of id, ego, and super-ego, and their mutual tension.

This antithesis even shows up in the world of political economy, notably among those theorists who call themselves libertarians, especially Libertarians of the big-L variety. At the risk of oversimplification, it seems the minds of such libertarians are haunted by a primal scene in which there are only two alternatives, rational actors who strive after clear-cut goals in life and take responsibility for their actions, and emotional, ineffective people who botch their lives and wind up relying on some collective group, and ultimately the state, to sustain them both physically and psychologically. According to the mythos, these are the individualists (rationalists=good) and the collectivists (emotion-driven=evil).

In spite of her contempt for the term “libertarian” the person who usually gets the blame for this dual psychology in so far as it manifests in libertarian theory, is Ayn Rand. Here I am going to buck the consensus view and regard Rand as a friend of the emotions. I realize that this seems to fly in the face of Rand’s maxim “emotions are not a tool of cognition” but like any thinker, Rand has to be appreciated critically, not in a cult-like fashion. Furthermore in the case of Rand it seems to me that she botched a presentation of her world-view (so clearly presented in novels and essays) by attempting to become a systematic philosopher, something that surpassed her time and resources.

Astounding though it might seem, Ayn Rand, by the standards set by C. S. Lewis, should probably be reckoned as a “man with a chest”! In a time of woke weirdness this is apt to be misunderstood, so let me hasten to add that Rand loved being called a man because she felt the term ought to indicate essential humanity rather than male gender, and of course having a chest means “having a heart in one’s chest” not just bosoms. In short, below superficial statements in which she seemed to indicate the opposite, Rand felt that emotions were indeed tools of cognition.What is even more surprising is to find two figures as theologically opposed as C. S. Lewis and Ayn Rand, agreeing on a fundamental premise with wide-ranging consequences in epistemology, psychology, and ethics. I am not trying to reconcile these two thinkers, who were both vastly influential on 20th century conservative thought, at least in America, but simply to highlight how isolated doctrinaire Libertarians are from a common sense shared across a broad philosophical spectrum. By doctrinaire Libertarians I mean those who default to the non-aggression principle (NAP) as the solitary criteria of ethics. The NAP-sola (a.k.a. non-aggression principle exclusive) Libertarian is indeed a person “without a chest” in the sense intended by Lewis. Why is this important? And furthermore, why is “having a chest” so difficult for libertarians in the context of post-modern ideology.

The vacuity of formal (in contrast to material) ethics

NAP-sola Libertarian ethics may be considered a particularly sharp and rigid version of formal ethics. The forerunner and flagship of ethical formalism is Immanuel Kant’s categorical imperative, according to which one should only act in such a way that you could likewise approve of anyone else acting in the same way. As a general standard this maxim is appealing to most people, bearing a strong family resemblance to the famous “golden rule.” However precise ethical standard it is not free of complications, and a vast literature devoted to its criticism has been generated among ethicists. Kant lies out of the present discussion, however it is interesting to note in passing Rand’s detestation of Kant, which is circumstantial evidence that (in spite of surface formulations which seem very Kant-like) she was, though not admittedly, a “chest” person in contrast to the purer intellectualism of Kant. She also despised those who I am calling the NAP-sola Libertarians.

The NAP states that the sole rule of ethics is whether or not aggression has been committed by one person or group of persons against another person or group of persons. In the case of right-Libertarians, those who are under discussion here, the NAP is combined with a Lockean theory of property rights, in which posterior to original production “by mixing labor with the land” right of possession and/or alienation is absolute. Hence violence to persons and theft of property are the two crimes recognized by NAP-sola libertarians. Again, like the categorical imperative, there is much here which appeals to most people’s sense of justice, at least those who might identify themselves as lovers of freedom, or “lower-case” libertarians. The problem with the NAP is not its correct assertion of the inviolable nature of persons and property in any just system of law. Rather, the problems of the NAP are those which it shares with any system of purely formal ethics. Formal ethics, whether those of Kant, or those of NAP-sola Libertarians following the lead of Murray Rothbard, are essentially intellectual formulations detached from concretes. In the case of specifically human ethics, such formulations fail to take account of the person as the fundamental source of all values. One may, of course, take exception to persons being the fundamental source of all values, and I have no capacity to argue the case here. If one wants a systematic investigation of personalist value-ethics the classic presentation is to be found in Max Scheler’s Formalism in Ethics and Non-Formal Ethics of Values (1916). Here I am only trying to suggest that in moral terms it might make more sense to heed those with chests than those without them.

Of course, when I mention the absence of “chests” I am not trying to make an ad hominem claim against the NAP-sola Libertarians. Everybody who was involved with the American libertarian movement in the late 20th century knew what a wonderful, if perhaps cantankerous, personality Murray Rothbard was. Rather, here we are speaking of an ideology which, like Venus on the half-shell, has sprung bloodlessly from the mind of Zeus. The identity of the ultimate “Zeus” will be discussed presently, but the salient point here is the “bloodlessness.”

Are “rights” self-subsisting essences or are they an attribute of persons?

Once the question is asked, the answer becomes apparent. The human rights to life and property reflect the value subsisting in persons. The exact definition of a person is a knotty problem, but here let us assume that it is human beings who are under discussion, not abstractions or legal fictions as suggested by the expression “corporate persons.” The inviolable nature of a right is derived from the objective value of (human) persons, not vice versa. This was well understood by Ayn Rand, and at least tacitly understood by Murray Rothbard, who’s occasional reference to his position as “atheistic Thomism” would seem to acknowledge the limitations of formal (in contrast to substantive) ethics. “Man with a chest” that he was, Rothbard’s passion was hostility to the state. To that end, the clear-cut formalism of the NAP was a handy sword to grab in defense of liberty. The state, as monopolist of power, is the prime agent of aggression in society, and aggression, in accordance with the NAP is manifest crime. Case closed!

However, divorced from Rothbard’s brilliant rhetorical case for liberty, the NAP is apt to take on a life of its own. In a general sense, all people of good will are inclined towards the NAP when it is considered in isolation. Once it comes to concrete application however, the distinction between initial aggression and the right of retaliation suffers the endless iteration of competing subjective viewpoints. In spite of its ready comprehension as a rule of thumb, the NAP cannot bear the weight of a total system of ethics. Even as political and judicial principle it is too abstract to facilitate the resolution of disputes where both sides claim to be the victim.

A poignant illustration of this was a recent debate between two prominent libertarians on matters of Middle Eastern politics. She was championing the rights of the suffering people of Gaza, he was proclaiming the right of retaliation against the terrorists who had attacked Israeli citizens on October 7, 2023. Both were erudite exponents of the Rothbardian philosophy. Both understood and concurred with the NAP, yet there was no resolution in the debate, it was a literal “he said, she said.” None the less, even if the debate had no winner, it displayed a tragic irony. After all, is it not odd in the extreme to see anyone who claims the anarchist mantle of Rothbard defending a state military action, in this case, the State (Heb. medinat) of Israel?

Here the question is not whether this or that libertarian has lost their moral compass in the passionate advocacy for a particular cause. To be passionate, what I am calling, in line with C. S. Lewis “having a chest”, is to be human, to be forgiven. Rather the danger is in the opposite direction. If one attempts to base a comprehensive system of ethics on a single axiom such as the NAP then one runs afoul of the problems inherent in any formal ethics. Ethics don’t subsist in a vacuum, they must pertain to something substantial. Otherwise one is liable to deduce an infinite regress of abstractions from abstractions. It is like the skeptic who asked an old lady why she believed the world was supported on the back of a giant turtle. When asked what supported the turtle ,she replied “Fool! Don’t you know its turtles all the way down!”

What gives the NAP its prestige in the Libertarian movement?

While the NAP has been billed as the basic principle of Libertarianism, at least since the era of Murray Rothbard, it is only a tool serving the fundamental libertarian cause of anti-statism. Rothbard, who started out as a free-market conservative, came to base his latter arguments for anarchism on the NAP. Within free-market (non-collectivist) libertarianism there have always been a wide variety of theories regarding the justice and/or necessity of the state. These can be all be regarded as “anti-state” in the broad sense of seeking to limit or eliminate the power of national government over some or all areas of society. However it was only beginning with Rothbard that a large number of libertarian intellectuals started styling themselves as anarchists. Those who dissented from this trend were termed, through a terminological back-formation, “minarchists.” It was the rhetorical salience of the NAP which gave intellectual hegemony to the anarchist wing of the movement. If all coercion is evil, as maintained by a strict construction of the NAP, then it would seem that the state, as the primary instrument of coercion in society, ought to be abolished. Hence minarchists (i.e., limited government advocates) with no better ideological foundation than the NAP, find themselves at a loss to counter the consistency of the anarchists. The NAP wins every time, but in doing so it thrusts the libertarian movement into the abstract, bloodless, world of formal ethics.

Rothbard’s turn from a substantial anti-statism to a formal anti-statism

While I am not a close student of Murry Rothbard’s biography, from well known facts his general intellectual development can be easily sketched. His development from a classical liberal (in American terms “conservative”) into an anarchist, was not, as per Copernicus or Kant, any sort of “turn” but rather a fairly straight linear development. As he continued his study of economics in the Austrian tradition of Ludwig von Mises, he came to realize how in sector after sector of government intervention into society was counter-productive to the well-being of the citizenry. Conceptually, this meant that the legitimacy of successive layers of the welfare state were stripped off as either inefficient or immoral or both. Eventually he would propose privatizing even the core state functions of defense, police, and justice.

However Rothbard was more than an economist, he was a political philosopher. No rational thinker is likely embrace the ethically challenging moniker “anarchist” without grounding their position on a solid moral basis, and Rothbard was, if nothing else, rigorously rational. One can be a free market economist purely on the basis of social efficiency, but efficiency is not a sufficient, albeit surely a necessary, element in the constitution of a community. Here there is no linear progress from critique of the welfare state, to a rejection of the nation-state as such. Rather an ideological quantum-jump is required. Naturally there were intellectual influences other than Austrian economics which encouraged Rothbard to embrace anarchism.

It seems that there were several lines of anti-state thought which came to Rothbard’s attention, however the most influential were probably those associated with Henry George and fellow-travelers of the Single-Tax movement such as Alfred J. Nock. Yet even these radical proposals for limiting government coercion didn’t amount to a comprehensive theory of state, its nature, and its origin in history. This was provided by the theory of Franz Oppenheimer (not to be confused with the American nuclear physicist Robert Oppenheimer) a Weimar Republic doctor-turned-sociologist who later emigrated to Israel to found an anarchist kibbutz.

While it is clear that the young Rothbard was influenced by Oppenheimer’s analysis of the state, what is important in the context of this article is to note the concrete and historical nature of the German sociologist’s theory. Oppenheimer made a very clear distinction between government and the state. Tribes, families, and other natural communities were indeed governed, but the state only arose when a cast of predatory warriors arrived to institute a permanent system of oppression against a local population. Oppenheimer’s system of thought, while not purely Marxist, does bear a strong family resemblance to Marxism. Be that as it may it must have appealed to the young Rothbard’s sense of justice. None the less, note how Oppenheimer’s historical state differs from the purely theoretical view that Rothbard adopted in his maturity, i.e., that a state is any agency which enjoys a monopoly of force over a given territory.

If, as per what is being argued here, there is a difference in ethics (including political ethics) between those systems grounded on substance and those grounded in form, we can draw a significant contrast between Oppenheimers anti-statism and the anti-statism which Rothbard endorsed in his maturity. The former may be considered a substantial and the latter a formal theory. If furthermore, as circumstances seem to indicate, Rothbard was first persuaded of anarchism by Oppeheimer’s theory, why did he subsequently reformulate his anti-statist arguments on purely formal grounds, specifically the NAP? No doubt one reason for a free-market economist to distance himself from Oppenheimer’s theory was its quasi-Marxist historical assumptions which run counter to the idealized account of the origin of private property found in Lock. However this doesn’t explain Rothbard’s turn from substance to form in ethics.

Perhaps a clue to this turn is the early Rothbard’s involvement with the Ayn Rand circle. Like Rand, Rothbard was searching for an integral philosophical world view which would establish the rights of the individual on a deeper foundation than economic utility. I inclined to defend Rand as a philosopher “with a chest” using reason to discover those noble passions which make human life meaningful. It seems to me that she was on the right path, and yet a path fraught with dangers, much like the dangerous passions which confronted the companions of Socrates as depicted in Plato’s Symposium. Unfortunately “Mrs. Reason” devolved into a hysteric who ran a personality cult from her New York apartment. This development was profoundly disturbing and perhaps even psychologically damaging to the youthful Rothbard. Just as he had distanced himself from Oppenheimer’s sociology, Rothbard needed to disengage himself from Rand’s philosophy in order to consolidate an independent identity, both for himself and for the budding libertarian movement. It seems to me that it was the latter rather than the former break which motivated Rothbard’s turn to formal ethics.

Rothbard himself was, by all accounts, a true “man with a chest”…a man of wit, conviviality, and common sense who could launch into acrimony if provoked. Although a person of many talents he never claimed to be a systematic philosopher with independent notions regarding epistemology or ontology. Rand did, and in order to avoid the image of a groundless eclecticism, something the Rand’s followers would likely pounce on, Rothbard made a gesture of covering his metaphysical bases by adopting the oxymoronic label of an”atheistic Thomist.” In reality he gave up any substantive ontological investigations in quest of a philosophy which might be able to rival, or to complete, that of Rand. This meant that for Rothbard, the sciences, and especially the sciences of interest to him (economics, politics, and history) could be investigated without any integral connection to philosophy.

Perhaps the methodological autonomy of the separate sciences is a defensible notion. However their total independence of philosophy contravenes the ideal, not just espoused by Rand but by many others, of an integral world-view founded on human values. In lieu of this Rothbard picked up on the notion of value-freedom which he got from Ludwig von Mises, who in turn got it from Max Weber. Yet since one cannot motivate a political movement with value-freedom, some basic principle of ethics must be invoked. The declaration his personal independence, and that of economics and politics as disciplines, from value-theory (at least in its Randian form) compelled Rothbard to chose some version of formal ethics as a rallying cry for libertarianism. Not one for half-measures, Rothbard chose the most simple and rhetorically potent of all formal standards, the Non Aggression Principle.

However in making this turn, Rothbard lost the ability to differentiate the state from all other forms of governance, a difficulty which Oppenheimer’s theory, whatever its other weaknesses may have been, was able to avoid. If one simply defines the state as a monopoly of coercion over a specific territory, the concept of a state losses most of its meaning. By this definition Bismark’s Prussia and the island of “Swiss family Robinson” would both constitute states. Indeed, some leftist-anarchists would be happy to condemn familial, traditional or localized forms of authority as morally equivalent to state coercion, but this was hardly Rothbard’s intention. None the less, in his aversion to the historicism required to differentiate the state from other social forms, and in his enthusiasm for applying a unified moral standard of judgement to a free society, he was led into ethical formalism. The state is immoral not because it is a monopoly (monopolies being a possible market outcome) but because they are coercive, which leads back to the primacy of the NAP in Rothbard’s ethics.

If the rightness or wrongness of all human actions is to be judged by the NAP and only the NAP, problems arise for non-state social institutions, many of which practice some sort of coercion. Of course Rothbard understood that this was problematic, and he tried to reinstate the legitimacy of traditional institutions by universalizing the notions of right and contract into an explicit moral standard. Notably, he proposed that children have an obligation to obey their parents because they are trespassing on the parent’s territory. Unfortunately, one would not be surprised to hear such a standard adopted by a court in, say, a contemporary custody dispute. However such a criteria based on the legitimacy or otherwise of using force obviously falls short of how most people would define the essence of family relationships. None the less, to condemn such a criteria as legalistic misses the point, for in law one must use legal definitions.

The problem is not mere legalism, but the more inclusive problem of ethical formalism. In ethical formalism, ethics are separated from ontology, and rights are apt to become floating abstractions, separated from the people, actions, and things to which they obtain. Rights and duties within, say, a family are not conferred merely by the state, but neither are they conferred by some sort of hypothetical contract. In a well functioning society, defining people in accordance to their rights would be only be resorted to under conditions of conflict, and would not reflect the essence or basic quality of human relations under most circumstances. Rothbard, as a person of common sense, understood this kind of thing intuitively, but his passion for liberty led him to simplify the problem of mutually just human relations under the rubric of the NAP.

During Rothbard’s lifetime this radical simplification of ethics allowed him to consolidate a political movement which was able to steal the thunder from rival forces on both the right and the left. With a single blow, it could be argued with geometrical precision how peace and free markets were inextricably joined. This had many good effects, but the one frequently bad effect was an increasing divorce of theory from reality. Subsequently, there has been a tendency among libertarians (at least those who follow Rothbard’s line of thinking) to deduce all law from the NAP, and to reduce all sociology, if not to the NAP, at least from the theory of human action (i.e., Praxiology) which Rothbard, among others, inherited from von Mises. Mises, it should be noted, was a Kantian, which is to say a formalist.

The takeaway, or rather, the Zeus of libertarianism revealed at last

Today Libertarianism, and more specifically libertarian theory is in crisis. Unlike prior periods when classical liberalism believed itself to be fighting against a clear opponent, the unitary state, the situation has become vastly more complicated. The Leviathan state not only still exists but has grown many more heads, most of them semi-private or private, and under the water line lurk many invisible entities, deep states, rogue states, and false opposition elements. Some even wonder if Libertarianism itself has become a form of false opposition. To be sure the expression “Beltway (a.k.a. Washington area) Libertarian” often evokes reactions ranging from skepticism to disgust. What is the true libertarian to do, except perhaps clutch at the form of the NAP and utter a pox on all their houses?

To be sure, a world in which the substance, not necessarily the form, of the NAP ceased to exist, would not be a world most people would want to live in. For that substance is nothing other than liberty of life, person, and property. But the mere formulation has not been successful, at least of late, in preserving the substance inviolable. A rethinking of libertarianism, perhaps on the basis of value-theory, is in order. In the meanwhile the movement is saddled with the NAP which was bequeathed to it by Murry Rothbard. A beautiful principle to be sure, but one which, being value-neutral in regards to anything other than aggression, cannot resolve any substantial social issue. Predictably, todays libertarians can be found each side of every significant political issue. This may be a tribute to principled individualism, but it hardly fulfills the requirements of a political movement.

And who, one might wonder, did Rothbard get the NAP from? Not from Oppenheimer, not from Rand, and not from all those wonderful, colorful eccentrics who emerged out of the Old Right, from the time of Taft to the time of Goldwater. No, the NAP comes directly from that dour and rather sinister fixture of 19th century British thought, Herbert Spencer. So we should let Spencer have the last word. Rights are important to be true, but rights are not what the human project is really about. The human project is about evolution, and evolve we must. That is the message. It is not a particularly comforting message, since human rights are likely to be trampled underfoot in the stampeed of evolution. But if you are a Beltway Libertarian, it is certainly a great star to hitch up with your ideology. After all, ideologies may not have the truth value of a philosophy, but they can have plenty of cash-value. One might suspect indeed that evolutionary ethics is even more inadequate than formal ethics, but in case of conflict it has a tendency to win out over formalist scruples. Indeed, are not evolutionary ethics a case of men without chests sitting on dead men’s chests?

Homage to Jacques Ellul, the truest prophet of our times

A the true prophet is one who sees Reality, not a fortune-teller

Like the prophets of the Hebrew scriptures, Jacques Ellul made men (i.e., humans) see beyond the surface of events and into the basic trajectory (teleology) of history. We know that the pre-exilic Hebrew prophets were true because Israel went into went into exile, a historical fact. We know that Jacques Ellul’s 20th century analysis of modernity as technical hegemony is true because in the 21st century we live in a technocracy, also a historical fact. True prophecy is critical, not normative or fatalistic. Behind a prophet (Heb. navi) there must be an ethical teaching (torah) which transcends that flow of time which we call history. There is no hope to be expected from the powers which seemingly control history. Hope only comes from taking a critical attitude outside of history, and in having faith in a transcendent principle which liberates men from tyranny.

This is the prophetic anarchism of Jacques Ellul, a refusal to accept the narrative of modernity as morally valid, while acknowledging its temporal hegemony. Naturally it is not what most people think of as anarchism, and during his lifetime Ellul himself was constantly having arguments with incendiary anarchists, syndicalists, communists and assorted others on the left. On the other hand neither was he a fan of the bourgeois complacency that calls itself conservatism, but is in effect a form of quietism in the face of state capitalism and fascism. He had a strong sense that most militant and victim-oriented movements did little more than to provoke dystopian outcomes. As someone once said, “The kingdom of God breaks out upon the Earth, and the violent bear it away.”

If not through violence, then how did Ellul, the prophet, seek to promote the kingdom of God? Through criticism, in the conviction that light would drive away the darkness. He saw technocracy coming and he warned us against it. He knew that the warning would probably not be heeded, but he issued it anyway, knowing that it would stand as a witness against time and history. An integral part of his message was that men love machines, which they mistakenly call technology. However Ellul was not a science fiction writer who proposed that machines, in and of themselves, would become lords of the Earth. Rather he pointed out that it is a mistake to equate machines and technology. On the contrary, it is we, the human beings, who are the technology. Our social organization and our information systems, steadily centralize the human race around the ideal of efficient technique, at the expense of human values. The system is totalitarian, and there is no hope from within its parameters.

Thus the prophecy of Jacques Ellul recapitulates the Hebrew prophets who saw no hope against Babylon, let alone reform of Babylon. Hope comes from outside the system, from a voice in the wilderness, declaring the gospel of the God of Freedom. At this point one must ask whether or not, even if Ellul were a true prophet, if his message really is helpful, or is he just another prophet of doom. To be sure, there are both helpful and unhelpful aspects within Ellul’s thought. Let’s look at the unhelpful side first.

The Rhetoric of Anarchism

To begin with, Ellul resorts to the term anarchism as a descriptor of his overall political view, which is somewhat misleading. In this sense he is not alone. Murray Rothbard, the most important American libertarian philosopher, and almost exact contemporary of Ellul, used the same problematic term with even less justification than Ellul. In the case of Rothbard the term is even more misleading, since he, as a free-market individualist rejected neither legal nor social order, but rather a political monopoly on the enforcement of social order. Much could be said regarding the wisdom, or otherwise, of Rothbard’s political terms, but it is clear that Ellul, given his affinities to the European left, has a better claim to “anarchism” as the term is generally understood. He claimed both Marx and Proudoun as intellectual forebearers, a fairly normative stance for a French political activist. However it is not clear, at least to me, how much of his opposition to the political order carried over to the social order as such. Indeed, his salient criticism of technocracy might be described as conservative in the non-political sense. After all, it is the deformation of pre-industrial social organization by technics and the state which constitutes the bulk of his historical criticism, not a detestation of bourgeois or even aristocratic norms.

The heart of Ellul’s revolt against political authority is not a hatred for order as such, but rather a love for regional community in the fight against national and global standardization. A patriot of Bordeaux before being French, let alone European, he is alleged to have been the one who coined the adage “Think globally, act locally.” Yet there was an even deeper, spiritual, root to his thinking which in some way makes his thought resonate better with American conservatives and libertarians than with the European left. This was his notion of freedom being based on a religion which is in itself a revelation of freedom.

Ad fontes and the Religion of Freedom

Naturally Ellul comprehended all the iterations of throne-alliances throughout European history, but his emphasis was on the capitulation of church organizations, of whatever confession, to modern propaganda. He understood that this subordination, even under the rubric of “separation of church and state” effectively rendered them agents of the secular power. Here again we his the prophetic office validated by the closing of churches during the Covid crisis , a phenomenon which would have shocked any representative 20th century believer, but not Ellul.

Ellul’s faith was based on principles deeper than the dogmas of the churches. It went even deeper than the revered principle of “sola scriptura” albeit Ellul was affiliated with the Reformed branch of Christianity. Rather, he engaged with both the Hebrew and Greek scriptures the way the humanists of the Renaissance did prior to the fossilization of creeds during the Reformation and counter-Reformation. This is the ad fontes approach, a kind of intellectual archeology, which seeks to uncover the deepest level of meaning implicit in revelation. It might be considered an application of Higher Criticism, albeit the emphasis is not on debunking fictitious narratives, but on discovering the buried nuggets of truth.

Discarding traditional hermenutics and looking at the Bible as set of historical documents, Ellul discerned a consistent narrative of freedom, the story of a Divine power which frees the willing from the shackles of all Earthly powers. This narrative can only be seen as an integral message if one begins with the Hebrew scriptures, notably with the liberation from Egypt. It is this fundamentally libertarian message which underlies the allegedly legalistic provisions which safeguard the freedom of the people. To be sure, it is a people which is liberated, a collectivist notion which would resonate better with the European left than the American right. Individual liberty tends, in the Bible and elsewhere, to speak Greek. None the less, whether at the Passover or in the Sermon on the Mount, it is a single Voice which Ellul hears, a Voice who shepherds His people to freedom.

As it turns out, Ellul’s anarchy is less political than theological. The powers of Earth seem to have us locked into a chain of technologically determined events. Yet there is something beyond their control, something unpredictable, something which wants to show us a better way than what the Earthy powers are offering us. Granted, we always seem to have our backs against a wall. Like the tribes who Moses led to the banks of the sea we are a people perplexed, but there faith that whatever happens, it will not be a simple protraction of present linear trends.

Recommended works by Jacques Ellul

The Technological Society Vintage Books,Knopf; New York, 1964

Propaganda Vintage Books, Knopf; New York, 1965

Anarchy and Christianity Wipf and Stock; Eugene OR, 1991

Something else America can ill afford: Political Theology

A little religion unites society, but a lot is sure to divide it

Prior to the death of the well-meaning and intelligent Charlie Kirk, a seemingly coherent notion had seized the high ground of conservative, populist, and even libertarian thinking in America. The woke left had clearly become a kind of religion, and the best way to combat a false religion is with something better. The desideratum was what Americans call a “great awakening” or what Oswald Spengler termed “the second religiosity” which would restore the lost faith-based civilization which existed in the West prior to the 18th century Enlightenment . Since Kirk’s death, which made him a martyr, many Americans have indeed returned to some sort of personal religious faith, something hardly to be gainsaid. However subsequent events have displayed increasing polarization within the right and highlighted the role of religious doctrines in the formulation of national policy. This surfacing of divisions has drawn back the curtain of secularism and revealed an alarming specter, the specter of political theology. Yes, America must return to religion, but which religion? This is the juncture at which the political theologians draw out their knives, or rather pens and keyboards wielded with divisive consequences.

The origin of term “political theology” is problematic, being coined out of Politische Theologie the work and words of a German jurist named Carl Schmitt (1888-1985). Unlike a similar, shameful but ineffectual, adherence of Martin Heidegger, Schimtt’s alliance with German national socialism proved highly consequential in giving Hitler a mandate to impose a dictatorship. Disturbingly, since it resembles the drift of American constitutional law, the German dictatorship never abolished the form of Wiemar governance, but rather augmented the centralization of power through judicial interpretation. Consequently one would assume that American thinkers who relish being classed as”political theologians” would be few and far between. Yet even if doctrinaire Schmittians are still a rarity, if we construe political theology in the broader sense of basing political practice on religious doctrines, then America today is dangerously awash in such ideologies. This is toxic to the American system, which was never intended to be subjected to a uniform religious creed and discipline. Obviously, since America is diverse in many ways, notably religion, attempts at uniformity result in the opposite, i.e., division. Does this mean that “atheism divides us least”? Quite the contrary! The orthodoxy which is forcing a uniform creed on the American people today is woke left-wing secularism. All the movements of the American right are effectively “dissenting churches” against the state-sponsored “church” of secularism. For a long time this underdog status kept factionalism within the right in check.

Then the tide began to turn, or so it seemed. With the unifying voice of Charlie Kirk silenced, the pundits began carving up the empire of conservative ideals and policy like the generals of Alexander dividing up portions of Africa, Europe, and Asia after the young hero’s demise. Superficially this seemed like a clash of egos. In reality, the egos were just actors manifesting fundamental divisions within American (and more broadly Judeo-Christian) religious history. The deepest convictions of the conservatives (and to some extent populists and libertarians) are usually religious, and hence their application to worldly affairs is easily conflated with some sort of political theology. What kind of politics based on which theology? This is where sectarianism rears its ugly head. The words most commonly mooted about are “Christian Nationalism” and “Christian Zionism.” There are many rivals to these, even if we subtract the left-wing theologies which dominate mainstream Protestant and Catholic churches. However there is a salient faction opposed to Christian Nationalism/Zionism on the conservative right, which generally goes unnamed, unless it willfully misappropriates the phrase “political theology” as its own descriptor. On the contrary, I think it is more useful to reserve the term political theology as a general term for any political policy determined by sectarian religious principles. At the risk of being arcane, I will label this main alternative to Christian Nationalism/Zionism, on the right “Ultramontanism.” Originally a word for the faction of French Catholics who’s allegiances lay outside (i.e., beyond the mountains) of the French state during the 17th century, it can be used as a gloss for those who reject the civic traditions of America for more transcendent principles. So there you have it, the three most powerful and problematic political theologies in contemporary America. On the left, secularist progressive ideology, a theology in itself. On the right, Christian Nationalism/Zionism on the one hand and Ultramontanism on the other. The first rationalizes its current institutional hegemony on the grounds that it is not a theology and that the principle of the separation of church and state must be interpreted in the most literal possible fashion. The second gives lip service to the principle of separation, but is attempting to institutionalize theology-driven policies on the basis of an imagined consensus of “the American people” or at least of American Christians. The third outright rejects separation of church and state, and in effect demands a new, theology-based constitution. Are any of these three any good, and is there some other alternative.

The Thoughts of Man

The Bible reiterates in many places that the thoughts of man (including of course the thoughts of women) are vain. Of course people must think to survive. The condemned vanities are are not necessary ethical and practical principles of human action. Rather, vain are illusory historical and cosmological world-views, which the Hebrew prophets condemned as idolatry , the modern analogue of which would seem to be our vaunted political theologies. We hardly need to speculate on what the ancient prophets would have thought of secular progressive ideologues, but what of their conservative opponents, are they not vain as well?

Indeed, not only vain, but possibly evil. Certainly Christian Zionism is highly problematic, since it, like Trotsky’s Marxism, is an “accelerationist” ideology where the core idea is to increase the amount of evil in the world so that good will triumph in the shortest span of time. The moral, and logical, falseness of this should be patent. Certainly there are many variations of accelerationism vexing the world today, from leftist to techno-utopian, but Christian Zionism is especially noxious since it is so obviously in contradiction to the spirit of the faith. Israeli nationalism (a.k.a. “Zionism” so-called) is bad in so far as all nationalisms are bad and tend towards fascism when provoked. However Christian Zionism is gratuitously bad. In contrast to Israeli nationalism, which at least seeks self-preservation at whatever injury to others, Christian Zionism is nihilistic in principle. Nihilism in this case means attempting to bring about the messianic kingdom through the acceleration of warfare. However a messianic kingdom is only an idea until it is actualized by its messiah. Using intentional policy to accelerate the coming of a kingdom which is merely potential implies sacrificing flesh-and-blood human beings for a state of affairs which is, at present, purely imaginary. This would seem to be the very definition of idolatry. At the very least, it is vanity.

In contrast to the cosmic nihilism of the Christian Zionists, the ambitions of the Ultramontaine right are relatively modest. They only wish to abolish the United States and roll back Western civilization to its legal status prior to the Enlightenment of the 17th and 18th centuries. Like the left, the Ultramontaine right’s diagnosis of America’s political ills centers on a critique of neo-liberalism. If neo-liberalism means monopoly capitalism or state-sponsored capitalism, then critical voices on both the left and the right are making valid points. The Ultramontaine tendency is to extend this critique into a fundamental rejection of liberalism altogether. For example D. C. Schindler in his learned tome Freedom from Reality characterizes John Locke’s philosophy as diabolical. Not that he is accusing Locke of sorcery, but rather of splitting abstract rights from concrete realities, and hence introducing duality (Gk. “dia-“) contrary social and moral integration (Gk. “syn-” together) who’s descriptor would be the antonym of diabolical, i.e., symbolical. Schindler is just one of the more articulate among a growing movement of intellectuals found chiefly in traditionalist confessions (Roman Catholic, Anglican, Orthodox etc.) whom I am characterizing as Ultramontaines. Granted, John Locke’s empiricism seems naive in the clarity of philosophical hindsight, but what is the real take away here? Surely not a technical criticism of Locke’s epistemology and ontology, but rather an attack on the liberal conception of rights, as in e.g., the Bill of Rights. Ominously, this right-wing attack on abstraction in the name of concreteness has a strong family resemblance to left wing philosophies and theologies which voice the same concern. Historical evidence indicates that canceling the abstractions of liberalism results not in the concreteness of participatory democracy but to dictatorship of either the left or right.

It would almost seem that the manifest absurdities of both these conservative political theologies, Christian Zionism and Ultramontanism, have been devised to scare the electorate back into the fold of the left. After all, it is the political theology of the left which still dominates America’s institutions (educational, media, finance, the arts etc.). The social tyranny of the left is the tyranny that people have become increasingly comfortable and familiar with. The majority of Americans who still hold to a basic moral consensus are unlikely to be convinced that either Christian nationalism/Zionism or Ultramontanism represent an authentic revival of the ethos which made their nation both virtuous and free. Is there any alternative to these three political theologies, left, right, and ultra-right? As a matter of fact, yes, because once upon a time America had a national religion. It was not a state religion or a state church, but rather a tacitly accepted national consensus. Can we return to it? Before it can be returned to, we must at least remember what it was.

Deism-naturalism and the virtuous nation

The consensus ideology of America’s founders was deism. In private they all harbored sectarian beliefs of one sort or another, however the lowest common denominator of their collective conscience was deism. This was not just a “lowness” in the sense of minimal, impoverished or simple, but like a mathematical denominator useful for equating various sums and coming to the solution of problems. This is not to say that in late 18th and early 19th century there was nothing resembling political theology in the United States. However this political theology, if we wish to call it such, was much more circumspect than analogous trends in contemporary policy forums. Strictly speaking, there was no such thing as Christian Nationalism, let alone Christian Zionism, during that period. What did exist was a kind of Christian regionalism, specific to New England, where established churches persisted in Massachusetts and Connecticut well into the 19th century. From the beginning it was clear that a continental federation could afford no religious bond more rigorous than ethical monotheism. Conversely, for the sake of minimal moral uniformity, something which is being lost today, it could suffer nothing less than deism and the binding precepts of natural law. These latter were summarized, however inexactly, by what in English are called the Ten Commandments.

These commandments convey a minimal but requisite world-view which can be distilled down to two salient points. First that there is a universal ethics, embodying personal and family rights, which all viable human societies must adhere to, at least in a general fashion. Second, that the origin of this ethics are not conventional, they can not be altered or abolished in historical time by kings, dictators, or democratic majorities. Two further observations can be made about the law written on the two tablets of Moses (here we are not talking about other laws in in the Bible or oral traditions). Overall they mainly embody what ethicists call negative rights, the “thou shalt not…” mode which modernists are apt to consider noxious or primitive. Yet these seemingly primitive prohibitions lay at the root of the liberal systems of law and society upon which the West’s prosperity and security once flourished.

More relevant to the subject at hand, it can be observed that the Mosaic Tablets, as usually edited, are surprisingly free of theology. I know this is a shocking assertion, but keep in mind that here “theology” means a speculative science about the existence and essence of the Creator, and the nature and purposes of creation. In the context of Christianity, the Tablets contain a great deal of tacit theology. More fundamentally, this is even true in Judaism. When Moses Mendelson argued that there is no such thing as Jewish ideology (i.e., theology), only Jewish law, he was pandering to an audience of 18th century intellectuals. However those 18th century intellectuals in Germany, France, England and elsewhere were the driving force creating a new liberal order, which today we call the Enlightenment. Their Mosaic Tablets were an edited and streamlined version (light on the Sabbath, heavy on do not kill or steal) tacitly adopted from the Judeo-Christians and repackaged as the rights of man. Need we reiterate here that “man” always implied and some day would be confirmed as woman as well?

This is deism. Love it or hate it, it is the only faith which, short of a coming messiah, has the potential to unite the human race. It drives the political theologians, with their apologetic tomes, eschatological schemes, and plans for theocracy, crazy. Atheists hate it too, since it means that neither humanity nor nature are putty in the hands of an elite for shaping as desired. I believe that most people of good will would like to see society grounded on the kind of individual rights and justice which the 18th century deists advocated. Atheistic ethics is sub-minimal, and reduces humanity to one animal species among many, and subject to any condition from experimentation to extinction. Without a minimum consensus on theistic norms, the very existence of society is threatened.

One might be justified in questioning the adequacy of theological minimalism for the spiritual life of the individual. Indeed, here we are only speaking sociologically. In a just society run according to deist-natural law principles there would be nothing hindering the individual from deepening his or her spiritual insight. Theology, provided it did not fester into a hegemonic political theology, could be as elaborate, precise, and maximalist as required by the consciences of any individual, family, or denomination. Wasn’t this always the American way in matters of faith and society?

Restoring the decidedly non-dogmatic “faith of the founding fathers” as the basis for America’s institutions will hopefully sound like little more than common sense to insightful readers of this essay. The seemingly radical nature of the proposition is highlighted by a recent episode from a mainstream news outlet. A commentator was scandalized by the words of a politician who made casual reference to the “God given rights of the American people.” She seriously questioned, “Isn’t this putting God above the Declaration of Independence?” Of course anyone who has read the Declaration understands that it puts the Creator above itself. Such a commentator, if they are an American citizen, need not be scandalized but rather educated. After all, as the Bible says “the people perish for lack of knowledge.”

Yet who will be the educator? The specter of political theology bodes ill for conservative and libertarian causes in today’s America. Where will the citizen, alarmed by the prospect of social disintegration, turn for answers? The Christian Zionist holds out the prospect of Armageddon, while the Ultramontaine’s scholastic subtleties seem to hint at some future iteration of the Spanish Inquisition. The alarmed citizen is likely to reject either variant of political theology with the shout of “a pox on both your houses.” And with no sustaining faith at all that is where the agnostic citizen is likely to wind up, with the pox, with lock-downs, with left-wing institutional hegemony, and ultimately techno-tyranny.

Surely somewhere there must be a more generous theology, a theology which is less theological than ethical, more sustaining than apocalyptic, more faithful and less political. The faith of the fathers. Ethical monotheism and natural law.

The unclear but present mystery of our times: The Empire and the Enclave, a Quadralemma

“The analogy of man to the Creator endows all creatures with their substance and their stamp, on which depends fidelity and faith in all nature.” –J.G. Hamman Asthetica in nunce

The present world-situation can be laid out according to the following four opinions:

There are those who say that the Empire is good and the Enclave is evil. These are those who seek glory. There are those who say that the Empire is evil and the Enclave is good. These are those who seek justice, others say they lust for revenge. There are those who say the Empire is good and the Enclave is good. These are the skeptics and the relativists. There are those who say that the Empire is evil and the Enclave is evil. This is the attitude of the misanthropes and the saints.

Commentary on the enigma.

The official motto of the Empire is “the end of history” whether that means the maximization of freedom, equality, or power. These things are not always compatible, and could be interpreted as either the fulfillment of the dreams of mankind or the end of the human race. In a plutocracy, as wealth and technology increase the interests of the rulers and the people diverge. Only glory and the purity of sacrifice unite them, for the rulers in their imagination and for the people in action. The Empire contains priceless treasures from past ages, from the ages of religion, from the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, the Magna Carta and the Bill of Rights. The people glory in these treasures, and rightly so, even as they are being relegated to the status of museum pieces. On sworn affection for these, the Empire is rendered good.

Global in scope and ambition the empire none the less requires opposition, if only for self-definition. This implies war, and in war reality and rhetoric are likely to become completely inverted. The present Enclave against which the Empire is defining itself is, astonishingly, exactly what the Empire itself claims to be, a democracy. Adding paradox to paradox, the Enclave eschews the status of a democracy, and claims the higher title of theocracy. How this happened is a thousand and a half year long story and far beyond the scope of this riddling essay. The only question we raise is whether the Enclave is good or evil. If democracies are good, then so is the Enclave. It is a democracy in reality, although it does not claim to be one. It may be usefully compared to Israel, its antagonist, which both claims to be a democracy and is a democracy in fact. However, another paradox, Israel should not be a democracy, it should be a theocracy, and until it becomes a theocracy in fact there will be no justice in the world.

The correctness of the above observations hinge on the following definition of a democracy. A democracy is “three wolves and two sheep voting on what to have for dinner.” In this this respect the Enclave has shown itself to be solidly democratic. Whether one is pleased with the situation or not, the regime seems to have the support of the majority, a support which is only strengthened by outside pressure on the state. As for minorities, whether religious, ideological, ethnic, or demographic, their fate in the Enclave has been pretty much what one would expect from the definition of democracy offered above.

Today everyone is talking about an “off ramp” to the prospects of war and economic devastation. In terms of our perennial quadralema the most comfortable “off ramp” would seem to be the opinion of those who deem the Empire to be good and the Enclave to be good as well. As a temporary fix, this is what we should all be hoping and praying for. If the Empire hypocritically grants legitimacy and goodness to the Enclave, then the Enclave will hypocritically grant legitimacy and goodness to the Empire. In terms of survival, this is imperative, in terms of the human spirit it is somewhat problematic. The assumption here is that in an increasingly interconnected world political societies will not only be able to maintain administrative autonomy, but an autarky of values. Even in the past this created cognitive dissonance, a non-trivial example being how in the America of 1860 there were some people who believed firmly in slavery, and some who firmly opposed it, but nobody could be fooled into thinking it was wrong north of, and right south of the Ohio river. In the contemporary world of ubiquity, the idea of sensory and informational contact with remote others, devoid of any universal and objective moral standards creates not-so-subtle spiritual dangers. Moral relativism may dull one to the plight or pain of someone in a setting which is deemed “exotic.”

Finally there is the opinion of those who deem both the Empire and the Enclave to be evil. The Bard gave this a wicked twist when he wrote, “A pox on both your houses!” Certainly we have had enough pox already without wishing more on others. Slightly more measured was the attitude of the old Andalusian who described human beings as beasts of prey whom a prudent philosopher would only consort with in order to provision the necessities of life. Yet the same tune is played on a higher octave by the saint. The saint acknowledges that both the Empire and the Enclave are evil, but does so without bitterness but in expectation that these are two false alternatives and that there is something better beyond. This requires more than the solution to a quadralemma, it requires cutting through its Gordian entanglements by an act of faith.

The Spirtual as the efficient cause of the Material

The new alliance of Faith and Science on the origins of civilization

It has been pronounced among the wise, or perhaps the cynical, that either a self-consistent materialism, or a self-consistent spiritualism can adequately explain the observable world. As to which direction the causal arrow points, there are those of us who would be satisfied, in perfect faith (Heb. enumah) to believe that the material is nothing more than the entropic residue of the spiritual. Conversely there are the increasingly popular, but decreasingly evidence-based, materialists who once could boast a tidy scheme of civilizations progressing through time as the subsistence base was increasingly able to support a highly complex superstructure.

This is now debatable. In recent decades archeological excavations in south-eastern Turkey have discovered sophisticated megalithic structures which clearly predate any significant development of agriculture. The concept of a Neolithic revolution, an essential link in the narrative of so-called “cultural evolution” has imploded. The lithic has turned out to be embarrassingly neo, and if there was any revolution it seems to have been a spiritual rather than an economic one.

To begin with, the notion of civilization resulting from a regional singularity is both more elegant and more in accord with the oldest written documentation of human origins, including but by no means limited to what is now called “the Bible.” An epicenter in the eastern Turkey/Armenia area with subsequent diffusion worldwide presents a more coherent narrative than the rise of independent civilizations in the Nile, Euphrates/Tigris, and Indus valleys. Yet without further scientific evidence this would just be a neat hypothesis. However it has now become clear from the archeological sites in question, that the megalithic structures date back to the 10th millenium prior to the common era. This in itself might put in doubt the multiple origin of civilizations, but it would have no conclusive bearing on the status of “cultural materialism” as a default hypothesis.

However what the recent discoveries have disclosed are, 1) that the megalithic structures are clearly ceremonial and symbolic in nature, and further 2) that there is no evidence of significant agricultural development in proximity to the structures. None the less, at a somewhat later date, this same area (i.e., the “highland Middle East”) did witness the world’s earliest widespread development of a grain economy, albeit the previous existence of megalithic ceremonial centers renders the term “Neolithic revolution” for this phenomenon somewhat of an oxymoron. This seems to reverse the causal arrow, with expressions of thought, emotion, and meaning preceding the economic means for creating material abundance. It is as if the ceremonial centers were somehow drawing down blueprints for adaptation to the material environment, intentionally adapting means to higher ends.

The spiritual epicenter of human origins

To those influenced by the history of pop culture (and who isn’t) this line of thought only too readily calls up the image of primates gingerly pawing at the alien monolith from Stanly Kubric’s classic 2001: A Space Odyssey. None the less, without going off on a tangent about hominid origins, it seems we can hypothesize something fundamental about the primacy of human spirituality over the artifacts produced by human action. The present consensus theory is that humans, as a biological species, originated in the east African region. None of this has any bearing on the development of civilization in the highland Middle East, or the more fundamental question of when and how human beings were endowed with the cognitive/emotional potential to develop complex civilizations. What is remarkable about recent archeology in that region is that it tends to validate a spiritual “endowment” (of whatever sort) which in time opened the possibility of urbanization, literacy, and commerce. This flies in the face of the previous default understanding, in which a gradual and painstaking accumulation of economic surpluses generated, as if through osmosis, the higher arts of civilization.

More suggestively the region where the recent excavations have taken place remained a kind of spiritual “hot spot” up through historical times. This was the region of Harran, the city of Abraham, and Urfa, known as Edessa in classical times. It is a region sacred not only to Jews, Christians, and Muslims, but even in recorded times to astro-theological cults which may echo the practitioners of the megalithic sites themselves. The evidence may be buried in the layers of the tumuli, but it witnesses to the primacy of the spirit over matter, and even today the spirit has not been quenched.

The axiological advantage of Donald J. Trump, and why it both amazes and appauls

Aesthetics over Ethics

It is a secret hidden in bold sight. A golden ballroom, lovely women, and a presidential signature which seems to be modeled after that paradigm of architectural esthetics, the Manhattan skyline. When it comes down to the philosophical trinity of Truth, Beauty, and Goodness, it is obvious which divine attribute is typically on the mind of America’s 47th president. Trump-haters will be only too hasty to conclude that an eye for beauty (rather than, say, social justice) is hardly the hallmark of a statesman. Indeed, the so-called “liberals” of the 21st century have the same excuse for censuring the Donald as 19th century conservatives had for dismissing Oscar Wilde, in spite of obvious differences between the two men, since, after all, its scandalous to rank esthetics above ethics.

Scandal or no scandal, Donald Trumps basic value orientation is directed towards the maximization of beauty. Following the late libertarian psychologist Nathaniel Branden we might call this Trump’s “psycho-epistemology” or in more strictly philosophical terminology we could call it the apex of his axiological (i.e., “value”) hierarchy. Trump is more congenial to thinking out problems using the beautiful/ugly antithesis than the good/evil antithesis.

Theoretically, this should be a formula for disaster, like having Wilde become prime minister of Victorian Britain. Or if in some fantasy world ruled by artists, perhaps benevolent but absurd, as if the Spanish civil war could have been decided by a contest between Salvador Dali and Pablo Picasso. Yet Trump has survived, flourished, and succeeded to the point where he has received multiple nominations for the Nobel Peace Prize. How is this possible in the real world, if Trump’s mind, perhaps only subconsciously, is devoted to the idealization and maximization of beauty? Many such men exist, but they seldom make any progress beyond the narrow precincts of bohemia and academia. Yet arguably Trump has become the most powerful man in the world.

Trumps admirers frequently liken his brilliant wins to playing a game of five dimensional chess. However this analogy misses the novel perspective opened up by prioritizing aesthetics. Trump may be playing on the same two dimensional chess board as his opponents, but instead of just repeating the rounds of play, he is evaluating the beauty of the pieces and bidding up their prices as objects of art. This transforms a war game into meta-game based on economics, for which the advantage is two-fold. First, it throws the opponent off-guard since it changes the nature of the game mid-play. Second, and more fundamentally, it transforms a zero-sum game into an open-ended venture which holds out the possibility of mutual, albeit unequal, advantage.

Beyond good and evil…sort of

Living in a world where aesthetics is prioritized over ethics is a bold proposition, and one unlikely to prevail in the long run. Yet if the Age of Trump is teaching us anything, it is that an occasional holiday from the rigid presuppositions of egalitarian ideology can be salutary, even to political morality itself. Neo-Friesian philosopher Kelley Ross has noted how morality can invade and invalidate the world of beauty by ascribing the categories good and evil to esthetic experiences which can only be judged lovely or ugly. According to him, the worst offenders are feminist philosophers who judge all erotic depictions of the female body to be pornographic. Given their subordination of aesthetics to morality, it is hardly surprising that radical feminists have been in the vanguard of the Trump-hating club.

Certainly Donald Trump has a notorious appreciation for feminine beauty. This is hardly unique among males, rather what is surprising about Trump is his penchant for framing every issue and event in aesthetic terms. Even something as drearily non-esthetic as a proposed federal budget becomes, in Trumps mind, “The Big Beautiful Bill.”

Of course there are dangers. Subordinating morality to esthetics can never be allowed to marginalize ethics all together. The left has cried wolf so many times that it has lost its credibility through “Trump Derangement System” but there are more thoughtful critics waiting in the wings. Libertarians like Rand Paul and Thomas Massey are rooted in an ethics less dominated by egalitarianism, and hence more likely to tolerate an ethos of esthetic revival. The new Golden Age might seem harbinger a return to sound economic principles, but the enormous increase in federal power and expenditure seems to argue otherwise. Sadly, it would appear that Trumps Golden Age will not be based on any serious study of sound currency by the Donald, but a simple love for the lustrous metal itself, whether for use as jewelry or the ornamentation of ballrooms. Such is the limitation of esthetics.

Parenthetically, it should also be noted that women, when they actually get to know Donald Trump, usually enjoy his company and his friendship. No doubt this has something to do with the fact that women on average, like the very un-average male Donald Trump, tend to evaluate aesthetics above ethics. Those who appreciate Trump also understand that he is not a sociopath. He also has an ethical side to him, even if his life is mainly played in key of aesthetics, it usually harmonizes well with morality. Not always of course. For example, turning Gaza into a glittering Riviera holds out the prospect of relief for the whole surrounding region, but will it really address the moral questions left behind by the conflict?

Bon voyage President Trump

As of this writing, the president is touring Asia, where his desire to find beautiful solutions to the world’s problems will face the toughest tests ever. Apart from women, another group who have a high regard for esthetics are Japanese, even Japanese men. For example when someone does something particularly courageous or benevolent or righteous, in America one might say “that is the right thing to do.” However in Japanese a typical expression complementing the same kind of behavior would be “kako-ii!” literally, “that looks good!” Since Trump will be meeting the first female Japanese prime minister, perhaps he will be able to use his aesthetic magic to arrive at some mutually beneficially outcome. The down side is that when he gets to China I don’t think it will work there. Even before Mao, Confucian ethics sidelined esthetics. There was even a dynasty which prohibited planting ornamental flowers. The reasoning was that it was a drag on the economy and the production of basic necessities. The worldwide adoption of free markets is gradually making beauty and prosperity what they should have been all along, complements not substitutes. That said, its hard to change the minds of dogmatic moralists.

Who is Israel? The tragic conflation of Dispensational theology with Neoconservative policy

The Israel of God

Whether one is a Christian, a righteous gentile, or simply an ordinary mortal trying eek out an existence on planet Earth, one must either accept or reject a fundamental principle embedded in that ancient text known in the English language as “the book of Genesis.” The principle is enunciated as a challenge to all the nations of the world, that they will be blessed, if, in turn, they bless Abraham and his descendants. On the face of it, the descendants of Abraham could include a vast array of ethnic groups, including, but not limited to the world’s Muslim population. However as the story lines of Genesis unfold it becomes clear that special reference is being made to to the descendants of Abraham through Issac and Jacob, the latter of whom is given a new name of spiritual distinction: Israel.

For those holding a rationalist theology, or no theology at all, the whole idea of the Abrahamic blessing is a scandalous embarrassment. As a principle, the blessing implies a sort of historical singularity and discontinuity, but more crucially it introduces a moral asymmetry into the human species. If God is, per Spinoza and others, a sort of geometry-loving dispenser of universal principles, then the whole idea of making moral distinctions among rational beings smacks of primitive prejudice. God made Natural Law and then got out of the way to let us work out the details by ourselves. Frankly, I find this idea rather charming. Furthermore, the kind of people who endorse this theology, or non-theology, are also charming and generally safe people. They aren’t the kind of people who make trouble, and as we all know, there is plenty enough trouble in the world today. Of course they won’t get the blessing either, but that doesn’t bother them, as they would just as soon not find out what the blessing is anyway.

I am not writing this article for such people, or to disturb their dogmatic slumbers. I am writing to the minority who understand that the living God is someone considerably more mysterious than Spinoza’s moral geometer. While the author of reason, He is more than a rationalist, and while defying description, is plausibly closer to what early 20th century philosopher Rudolph Otto called numenous, i.e., a source of awe and wonder. As such we can expect Him to reveal principles such as the Abrahamic blessing which scandalize our common sense notions of historical continuity and moral universality. So I am writing to those who, on the one hand, have made the leap of faith and affirmed the blessing. However affirming the blessing and understanding what it means are quite different things. Much of the political and religious confusion of today centers on different interpretations of the Abrahamic blessing. Here I will try to untangle the various interpretations in the interests of moral clarity and humane political policy. I will try not to be dogmatic, but it will become clear what side of the moral equation I favor. Everything hinges on making a distinction between two world-views which have been equivocated. These are, on the one hand, Dispensationalism, a Christian theology, and NeoConservatism, an American political ideology. I will try to restrict myself to a conceptual analysis of these two lines of thought, avoiding “conspiracy theory” although certainly the popularization, propagation, and implementation of these moral premises was accomplished through the activities of several and sometimes conflicting conspiracies.

Two historicist world-views

The word “historicist” as a problematic term was popularized by Karl Popper. Popper was trying to defend his ideal of science as a fallible and human enterprise against the deterministic ideologies of inevitable progress which already threatened to destroy civilization in the 20th century. Marxism and Freudianism were on the top of Popper’s mind as clear and present historicist dangers. These two ideologies (later combined into various forms of Marxism-Freudianism by Post-modern French thinkers) were and are fashionable views on the left. Even so, Popper acknowledged Hegel, generally thought to be a kind of conservative, as a historicist forerunner.

Dispensationalism, the theology initiated by Nelson Darby in the early 19th century, may be considered a form of Christian historicism. Of course, both Judaism and Christianity see God as intervening in history, often in miraculous and quite unpredictable ways. This doesn’t oblige Christians to be historicsts in the narrower, predictive and deterministic sense intended by Popper. However, there is a sub-set of Christian theologies which are arguably historicist in Poppers sense. Significantly, Darby’s ideas of historical stages within the Biblical record arose in a historical environment in which pre-Darwinian notions of social and moral evolution were all the rage. Apart from Hegel, the most popular of these schemes was the positivist schema of human intellectual evolution proposed by August Compt, in which civilization passed from the mythology of religion to the metaphysics of philosophy and finally to the positive factual wisdom of modern science. Of course Darby’s Biblically based schema of dispensational eras was antithetical to its rival secular systems, but it satisfied the craving of Christians, especially in English-speaking nations, for a mental framework that could compete with “progressive” thought as an interpretation of history. Dispensationalism continues as a strong influence today, especially among American evangelicals. It is a powerful example of the kind of historicism which appeals primarily to conservatives, in contrast to Popper’s paradigmatic Marxism and Freudianism.

The second form of historicism which appeals to American conservatives, is the so-called NeoConservativism. The term, its origins, and definition are highly contentious, but I would maintain that, if nothing else, it is a clear example of what Popper called historicism. Arguably it is a deviation from Trotskyite Marxism, with its ideal of world socialism energized by permanent revolution. The deviation consists in flipping Trotsky on his head, the ideal now being world capitalism, since the NeoConservatives conjectured (rightly) that capitalism was a more effective change agent than socialism. Specifically, the NeoConservatives seek the continued dominance of the world’s political system by the United States. Hence there is an asymmetry in the schema, just as for the communist of Stalin’s day the Soviet Union was “the homeland of socialism” for the NeoConservative, the United States is “the homeland of globalism.” The historicist credentials of this ideology are certified by its unwillingness to acknowledge any alternative schema of human development beyond the kind of technological-managerial society typified by the contemporary Atlantic-centered world. It is stated that this is “the end of history” and that no further developments or deviations will be tolerated. Paradoxically, the spread of this system is held by the NeoConservatives to necessitate continuing and escalating interventions by the American state. I say paradoxically since the original free enterprise roots of capitalism always envisioned the free establishment of a spontaneous and peaceful coexistence.

I consider the NeoConservative ideology to be fundamentally immoral, or perhaps worse, amoral. On the other hand, I feel Dispensationalism as a theology, while deeply flawed, incorporates a significant amount of religious, and perhaps even historical, wisdom. Hence in attempting to disentangle these two overlapping world-views my motivation is to save the honor of Dispensationalism from the political immorality of NeoConservativism. The critical point of intersection between these world-views is the concept of “Israel.” Unless a believer has the courage to ask “What, or who, is Israel?” one risks becoming a cypher of one’s own dogmatism and/or the manipulation of cynical influencers.

Will the real Israel please stand up? Or better…sit down.

The founder of Dispensational theology, renegade Anglican priest Nelson Darby, certainly was an odd duck, with plenty of what are euphemistically called “issues.” On the other hand he scarcely resembled the trigger happy vicarious warriors of the NeoCon elite. I have already mentioned what Dispensationalism and NeoConservativism have in common, that they are both historicist world-views. This makes them compatible in certain contexts, but it does not make them identical. A great deal of Dispensationalist doctrine is bizarre, psychologically destructive, and at variance with more traditional Christian doctrine. None the less, its core principle, which is the distinction between the gentile church and Jewish Israel, is a valid hypothesis. It deserves serious consideration, and such consideration is impossible as long as the geopolitical policies of NeoConservatism are assumed to be sanctioned by the world-view of Dispensational theology. Darby’s recovery of an important hermenutic principle (i.e., that the Church is not Israel) in the early 19th century, doesn’t oblige us to blow up the world with atomic weapons in the 21st century.

An equivocal term is a word which refers to several completely different ideas or objects. For example “hand” can mean the organ of manipulation at the end of a human’s arm, or it can mean a rotating needle indicator on the face of an analogue time-piece. Moses Maimonides delved into equivocal terms in order to combat anthropomorphic misunderstandings of God in his famous Guide for the Perplexed. The political perplexities of today’s Middle East are in large part due to the equivocal term “Israel” and likewise “Zionism.” For traditional Christianity “Israel” was a name for the church, which had superceded another “Israel” which had been the congregation of the Patriarchs and Prophets of the pre-church era. Darby disputed this, and reserved “Israel” as a term for the Jewish people of all ages, past, present, or future.

Mad priest though he might have been, there was a method to Darby’s madness. If the Abrahamic blessing is an axiomatic and timeless principle, how can the church (as Israel) bless itself? Well, certainly there is nothing wrong with an individual believer saying “bless my soul” or a congregation blessing itself corporately. However the context of the Abrahamic blessing as it appears in the various ancient witnesses, clearly points to a relationship between two distinct things. It is an I-you relationship, if not an I-thou relationship. On the one hand there is Abraham and his descendants, and on the other hand there are the “nations” and their descendants.

In so far as the Abrahamic blessing is concerned, and keeping in mind that the word “Israel” is equivocal, it would seem that Darby correctly identified its salient significance. According to this view it would seem that there is an asymmetrical relationship between the nations and the descendants of Abraham, the latter generally presumed to be the Jews. The nations should bless the Jews. As to why this should be, any number of plausible reasons could be ventured. Notably, the gentiles could bless the Jews out of gratitude for giving the world a more accurate understanding of God than anything reason or the mysteries of paganism were able to offer.

Be that as it may, we have still not unraveled all the various meanings of “Israel” as an equivocal term. In the first instance, we have the great divide between the traditional church theology and Darby’s reinstatement of the Jews retaining a timeless heritage. Yet even when we set aside Jews and Jewish civilization throughout history as exclusively “Israel”…it still remains an equivocal term. In today’s world the most commonly accepted thing signified by the term “Israel” is the State of Israel ( Heb. Medinat Israel) in the levantine coast of the Middle East. Is this the descendant of Abraham which the peoples of the world are urged to bless? Is this the Israel of God? Obviously not!

We can say that the State of Israel is not the Israel of God, without taking sides one way or the other regarding its political or ethical status as a state. As everyone knows, there are a wide range of contending opinions on this issue. Some people regard this Israel (the state) as uniquely evil, a kind of apartide regime imposed on a local population, some see it as a bastion of Western-style democracy amid a region of hostile tribes and despots, some see it as the only same refuge for the Jewish people while others see it as a trap, some view it as a proxy actor for great power interests in the Middle East, while others emphasis it as being itself under neo-colonial domination by Washington or London. To reiterate, I am not trying to push one or another of the many conspiracy theories which have been advanced to condemn or promote any particular political entity. Rather, I am attempting a conceptual analysis of who or what would be the plausible recipient of the benediction conferred on Abraham’s. I think the State of Israel is excluded from any such plausible claim, simply because it is a state. To be more specific, it is a modern state, sharing that status with all other contemporary states.

Legally, ideally, and morally the State of Israel is just one of a set consisting of 200 or so members of the international community. In other words it should have a symmetrical relationship to every other member of that set. Here we are not talking about asymmetries of power which are obvious and frequently discussed. As a state Israel might be a rogue state or it might be a state living up to its responsibilities to the international community. Either way it is judged against a standard of symmetrical obligation, just because it is a state. On the other hand, the Abrahamic blessing is essentially a asymmetrical relation between those who bless and the blessed.

There is a further problem with being a state. Symmetry seems to indicate justice and peaceful coexistence. Yet in reality it is those persons and organizations which are members of a common set which, by nature of their similarity, are most prone to conflict. Literary anthropologist Rene Girard highlights this danger in his theory of memetic rivalry, in which the strategems and identities of social actors become increasingly similar through mutual imitation, competing for the same tangible or intangible goods resulting in tit-for-tat retaliation which implies limitless escalation. Such is the nature of states, or at least of the modern Western-style corporate-bureaucratic state. For centuries the Jewish people, whatever their faults and troubles may have been, were spared the moral culpability of being major participants in the system of states, a situation which changed post-1948. Part of the ideal of secular Zionism was to make the Jews like everyone else. The implementation of that ideal attained remarkable success. Today, the State of Israel is a nation like any other modern nation, and conversely, utterly unrecognizable as a “priestly people.”

Ultra-orthodox or Anarchist Orthodox?

So if the church is not Israel, and the State of Israel is not Israel of God, is there an Israel which could plausibly be identified as the just recipient of the Abrahamic blessing? I am not even considering genetic factors, or if everyone who has some inherited marker lurking in his or her chromosomes is part of the blessed inheritance. If we reduce the tribe of Abraham down to population genetics we would get a vast polyglot assembly of Arabs, Kurds, Ethiopians, Persians, Pushto, Maltese and who knows who else. The Abrahamic blessing is obviously something having to with the human spirit, not human genetics. People who don’t recognize spiritual truths would have nothing but contempt for the very idea of an “Abrahamic blessing.” Setting the bar for a community which fulfilled the requirements of the blessing would involve quintessentially spiritual criteria. It would have to be a community separated out for righteousness.

Perhaps there is no such community. However if I had to wager on the question, I would suggest that the communities of orthodox Jews, in or outside of Israel, is a far more likely candidate than the generality of secular Israelis. More narrowly, I would venture that those among the orthodox who reject modern politics as a form of idolatry would come closest, in an imperfect world, to the ideal of an Israel of God. Such people are usually swept together into the marginal category of “ultra-orthodox.” However it might be more enlightening to dub them the anarchist-orthodox. These people don’t espouse any anarchist ideology, whether leftist or libertarian, but their status as a marginal and disaffected group within and outside of Israel makes them, in practice, harbingers of some sort of post-state form of social organization. Furthermore their religion, while not acceptable to Christians in many respects, resonates in fundamental ways with the practices of, though not the name of, Yeshua ben Miram and his earliest disciples. If you feel compelled to bless Israel, I would suggest that these are the “priestly people” who come closest to meriting your blessing.

Divorcing the NeoCons

My suggestion with regard to the anarcho-orthodox is rather beside the point. Whatever you think of it, any Abrahamic blessing on a modern state or its policies is preposterous if not blasphemous. This holds true regardless of whichever side or sides is or are “right” or “wrong” in the conflicts of the Middle East. Christians, and many others who simply want whatever is best for the Jews, have been deceived by the propaganda of the NeoConservative movement which confuses geopolitics and eschatology. The NeoConservatives have their own agenda, derived ultimately from Leon Trotsyk’s ideas of global revolution, and for them even the state of Israel is only a pawn on the chessboard to be moved for maximum advantage. Because people forget that “Israel” is an equivocal term these propagandists are able to influence believers in a Biblical world-view and garner their support for perpetual war. Of course perpetual war is diametrically opposed to the will of He who took no delight in the strength of the horse or the chariot, and who would see swords beaten into pruning forks. Nobody should be obliged to support these globalist adventures on the strength of the Abrahamic blessing. This is even true if the Abrahamic blessing is a true obligation for the pious nations of the world. Indeed, if it is true, its misapplication is even more egregious and tragic!

Ofra Haza would cry!

She wanted Israel to be a normal nation, at peace with her neighbors

The bane of middle eastern politics, is that people, not just in the region, but worldwide, see events through eschatological rather than ordinary vision. The simple quest for Israel to be accepted as a normal nation has floundered on extremist ideology, both Arabist and Zionist. Looking back, it would seem that Israel achieved what might be called “peak normality” in the 1990s, in the wake of the Oslo accords. An appealing symbol of that moment is the woman who sang the peace anthem “Paint Box” at the presentation of the Nobel prize to the supposedly reconciled antagonists, Ofra Bat-Sheva Haza (1957-2000).

Miss Haza was a living embodiment of Israel’s aspiration for integration into the region. The daughter of Yemmenite immigrants who were forced from their homeland after the proclamation of the Israeli state, she was deeply patriotic. In her youth she sported an oversize mogen David pendant, what today might be called a “bling-bling.” By early adulthood she had broken into the Israeli pop scene, and soon thereafter achieved the remarkable feat of world recognition, singing “Chai!” (Eng.,”Alive!”) at the Eurovision 1983 fest. But the real miracle was her ability, increasing as time went on, to gain empathy among non-Israelis and non-Jews for her nation. The music of Ofra Haza provided a different, more human and affectionate context in which life in the Levant, in “Cannan” if you will, could be visualized. It was an alternative to the constant drumbeat and sermonizing of politics and religion, and yet one in which those factors always remained in the background. For the gentile world, this light but passionate psalmody was a new revelation. Indeed, how better to describe such music, in so far as it combined modern concerns with the Biblical resonances of the revived Hebrew language.

Carping critics might dismiss Haza’s popularity with Europeans, Americans and Japanese in the 80s and 90s as a manifestation of Orientalism. Yet the most remarkable aspect of Ofra’s influence was its spread to the Arab world. For many of her fans throughout the Middle East, it was hard to believe that this lovely singer of Yemmenite ancestry and accents was anything but an Arab herself. Of course that was an illusion, but even an illusion can provide the first, tenuous steps in building a mental bridge to those who might remain irredeemable “others.”

A gospel to the non-Hebrews

Israelis are understandably sensitive to outlanders who try to second-guess their politics. But if this outlander had to wager a guess, it would be that the present extremist politics are diminishing the moral capital painstakingly accumulated by generations of Israelis and indeed Judaism itself. In some sense, the world at large is a stakeholder in Israel, just as it has been said that the world at large has an interest in the American experiment in freedom. However there is an important difference, for while America is an experiment within historical time, Israel is, to some extent, a timeless archetype.

It is the archetypal nature of Israel which engenders a peculiar cognitive dissonance worldwide, among non-Israelis as well as Israelis, Jews and non-Jews. From an eschatological point of view, Israel must be either the hero or the villain of history, an attitude which precludes any pragmatic resolution of disputes among mere humans. It is the eschatological/normal antithesis which must be invoked if the problems of the Middle East are ever to be solved. It subordinates all other antitheses, notably the antisemitism/philosemistism antithesis. Tellingly, “philosemitism” isn’t even a word, because many of those who would be happy to own the title are unknowingly, or perhaps even knowingly, driving Israel to ignomy and destruction. The desire to use Israel as an instrument to liquidate the present world order demonstrates terrible insensitivity to human suffering. It is an attitude incompatible with true Christianity, and it also violates the precepts of authentic and orthodox Judaism.

Although the idea that we are living at the end of history seems compelling, it also encourages what economists call “high time-preference” i.e., the mentality of the reckless gambler and spendthrift, and also the debouched statecraft of the 21st century. Would it not be more responsible to adopt, if only as a thought-experiment, the assumption that we are still living in the middle ages of human history? Then we might be able to deal with international disputes on a more pragmatic basis. In such a middling, non-eschatological world we could see the present country which calls itself Israel as a nation among the nations, one who’s legitimacy is balanced by limitations.

Yet even if we can ween ourselves away from eschatology, the archetype of Israel will persist. Perhaps everyone’s Israel will be different, but if we wish to avoid catastrophy it will be necessary to temper our spirituality with realism. Perhaps Ofra Haza’s music is helpful in that regard. For Ofra dreams were of great importance, and indeed the Hebrew word for dream “hallom” iterates throughout much of her songs, or rather in the lyrics provided by Bezazel Aloni and others inspired to write for her. For Ofra Haza the mundane is always in the foreground, demanding human action and attention, but in the background there is always the deep dream of spirituality and tradition. This juxstiposition of the pragmatic foreground and the inspiring background seems especially apt for thinking about Israel in a way that avoids cognitive dissonance. However it is a good attitude to adopt for life anywhere on Earth.

Salvador Dali, Realist and anti-Modernist

A visual Phenomenology

I have previously written about Salvador Dali as a kind of iconographic witness to Christianity, and his basic opposition to the Surrealist movement which he outgrew at an early period in his development. This thesis might be encapsulated as follows. The surrealists sought to destroy bourgeois common sense by driving people mad, in hopes that this random madness would eventually happen upon some utopian state of being. Dali used seemingly chaotic imagery to drive deluded people sane.

That’s the idea, but really not much more than an idea. What specific technique did Dali actually use to enlighten the spiritually blind? If Dali was forcing his appreciators to confront reality, we must assume that, esthetically and ultimately philosophically he was a realist. This seems counterfactual since to the untrained eye Dali’s works seem to be manifestations of the most extravagant fantasy, and not works to realism. Fortunately for Dali-interpreters he wrote a book on technique, entitled 50 Secrets of Magical Crasftsmanship, in which he explicitly demonstrated his realist principles.

Totally Humorous but totally serious

Of course whatever Dali wrote was intended as irony. Whenever his ego seems to get in the way, he deals with the problem by inflating it yet more. The Craftsmanship tome is utterly unusable as a guide for the apprentice artist, but it does give a kind of stream-of-consciousness introduction to what seems to have been going on in Dali’s mind when he set about painting a masterpiece. We learn about his favorite colors, how he made his nude model (his wife) assume exacting postures, and his techniques for suppressing his willful inclinations in order to make automatic, spontaneous brushstrokes, which bears an uncanny resemblance to falling asleep. Along the way we find out which painters Dali respects (Vermeer comes in as number one) and which he finds disappointing. Picasso is just so-so. And so forth an so on, until by the end we find out that nothing really matters and the painter should entrust his whole project to the guidance of his guardian angel. In the case of Dali it is not clear if this is the Virgin Mary or his wife Gallia, or if there is much of a difference in Dali’s mind anyway.

In short, as entertaining as it might be, the 50 Secrets of Magical Craftsmanship keeps the real secret of Dali’s art a secret. To reveal the secret would not be entertaining or clever, in short, unworthy of Dali. He seems to have left that task to lesser and uninspired minds, and in that spirit I will play the drudge and actually try to locate Dali’s art within the context of aesthetics and philosophy. That project is not particularly entertaining, but hopefully it will convince a few scoffers of the importance of this great but still controversial artist.

A phenomenology of Mental/Ocular vision

Dali paints that which human beings actually see, and in that sense he follows the project of the impressionists. However he is more comprehensive than the impressionists, in so far as he is trying to paint a phenomenology of visual consciousness. While the impressionists abstracted out the actual ocular images, Dali introduces several other dimensions into his painting. These include phantasm, intuitions of time and space, and memory, the latter including the personal and the historical.

In short we don’t just see scenes, we have multiple overlapping windows open in our visual awareness, just like on a busy computer screen. The retina of the eye only sees radiation in the form of colors, it doesn’t even see lines. Lines and time are provided by our mental processes, what Kant called “intuitions” (N.B. not what most people mean by intuition). Furthermore, unless one is a skilled yogic meditator, nobody is able to concentrate exclusively on the visual phenomena which are actually impinging on our retina at a given moment. Rather we are in a constant stream of phantasy. For example, I might be walking in a grove of olive trees, but simultaneously my mind is wandering to the image of an attractive woman I met earlier during the day. The dream images which we see during the night continue without interruption during the day, but like the sun which blocks out the stars, our sensory images in well lit places tend to obscure the phantasms which are, none the less ubiquitous and continuous.

A special category of phantasm is memory, which is apt to resurface, frequently in altered form, and this memory is both personal and historical. Of course Dali only presents us with his own, fond and very explicit, memories and obsessions. However there is also a collective and historical dimension to Dali’s works as well. As when he populates his canvasses with images which are tributes, however distorted, of previous artists and their works. As bizarre as it might appear, Dali is presenting us with and account of his own visual phenomenology in his paintings. In doing so he is acting as an egoist in more than a moral sense, he is giving us a window on to the multi-dimensional consciousness of one individual mind. It is a technical egoism more than a moral egoism, since the Dalian visual phenomenology is a particular species of the larger genus of human visual phenomenology.

I hope this shows that Dali, rather than a surrealist, is in fact a hyper-realist, since he portrays the comprehensive vision of the human mind (or at least one human mind!) a vision which includes colors, intuitions of time and space, and phantasms, notably phantasms of memory, both individual and collective. Not only is he a hyper-realist, but he is also a traditionalist, since the collective memory makes visible a historical narrative, albeit the specific historical memory of Dali’s own time and place.

Nations are important, but within the context of the human narrative

A retreat from “Globalism” does not mean a depreciation of Internationalism

Today a specter haunts Europe, and indeed the world at large. It is the specter of populist nationalism. Nationalism has a dubious history, as everyone knows, however the 21st century response to that history, the homogenizing forces of Globalism, bode to fare little better. Globalism has not solved the problems of nationalism, the primary being war, and has added new ills of its own. Taking the “-ism” out of the spotlight, one might ask a simple socio-geographical question, is it beneficial and humane to have the world organized into those social groupings which we call nations? Put so bluntly, the question almost demands an affirmation. It is hard to think of a homogenized human race without different languages, boundaries and customs.

Anti-globalists have also made a strong case for nations as a bulwark against tyranny. In a world-state there would be no place of refuge or exile, no alternative patterns from the monotony of uniform domination. However there are more positive ideas with regard to the nation than just a defense against the worst possible scenarios of globalism. Recently I have been reading Eugen Rosenstock-Hussey, an eclectic and unsystematic thinker whom nobody, certainly not myself, is liable to be in complete agreement with. He offers the positive notion of a human revolution which can only be enacted through the reciprocal contributions of various national polities. The revolution is actually a series of national revolutions which bind universal ideas such as freedom and equality down to specific geographical locations. The boundaries of the nations are, in effect, the high-water marks of the revolutionary movements and their effective range. The bordering nations subsequently come to accept the universal principles contained in the originating nation’s revolution, but only during a period when the originating nation is too weak to force compliance on the surrounding nations, hence allowing for a voluntary acceptance of said principle or principles. For example, Napoleon I was unable to transfer the principles of the French Revolution into Italy and Germany through a victorious force of arms, but they were none the less adopted in both of those countries during the humiliating era of Napoleon III.

This is an odd and asymmetrical idea, but it seems to reflect the essence of much of political history in Europe, if not elsewhere. Today’s resurgence of national populism, which from a Globalist perspective is generally portrayed as a reactionary movement, might better seen as a revolutionary fulfillment of aspirations which were sidetracked by the lowest-common-denominator ideology of “wokism” which resulted from the tacit alliance of oligarchs and leftists. The natural staging ground of these revolutions is the nation, but these national awakenings are not competitive nationalisms, and they do not seem to threaten war between adjacent states. On the contrary, it is the drive towards homogenization of the Globalists which seem more likely to drive the engines of chaos and destruction.

None the less, if the new populisms were indeed moves in the direction of moral autarchy they would be disqualified on Christian, or any other humanistic ground. However the rhetoric of autarchy, and the reality of isolating measures such a tariffs, are likely to run aground on the reefs of reality. In fact, the new populism cannot help but be simultaneously national and international. Nations, at least in the sense defined by Rosenstock-Hussey, have no meaning aside from their participation in a great and evolving Concert of Nations. In such a Concert of Nations a competition for the realization of the highest human ideals might come to substitute for the contest of arms. In Europe there is good evidence that such a dynamic was strong in the period prior to the “Great War” (a.k.a. World War One). In the future there is no reason why it could not be extended to the whole Earth on the basis of moderate and autonomous (not autarkic!) national populism which respected the rule of law, private property, and individual rights. That would be a globe without any “-ism” smacking of tyranny.