Saturday, December 01, 2007
“Knowledge is power”
He might not be a young-Earther, but he’s not at all happy with the modern age. Pope Benedict XVI’s latest encyclical - “‘SPE SALVI facti sumus’ - in hope we were saved” - earns him a front page report in today’s Irish Times. The report identifies the key theme in the encyclical, which ploughs a familiar furrow, “Man cannot be redeemed by science”. Benedict points the finger of blame for, among other things, the French Revolution, Marxism and the Russian Revolution at “the foundations of the modern age” which “appear with particular clarity in the thoughts of Francis Bacon [added link]” - and, in particular, Bacon’s ‘New Instrument for Rational Thinking’ - Novum Organum, published in 1620.
As a supernaturalist it isn’t a surprise that Benedict seeks redemption in terms of the “salvation of the soul” but, I’d suggest, it is the threat to those supernatural beliefs, through the use of Bacon’s New Instrument for Rational Thinking which leads him to argue that
“In order to find an answer to this we must take a look at the foundations of the modern age. These appear with particular clarity in the thought of Francis Bacon. That a new era emerged—through the discovery of America and the new technical achievements that had made this development possible—is undeniable. But what is the basis of this new era? It is the new correlation of experiment and method that enables man to arrive at an interpretation of nature in conformity with its laws and thus finally to achieve “the triumph of art over nature” (victoria cursus artis super naturam). The novelty—according to Bacon’s vision—lies in a new correlation between science and praxis. This is also given a theological application: the new correlation between science and praxis would mean that the dominion over creation —given to man by God and lost through original sin—would be reestablished.
Anyone who reads and reflects on these statements attentively will recognize that a disturbing step has been taken: up to that time, the recovery of what man had lost through the expulsion from Paradise was expected from faith in Jesus Christ: herein lay “redemption”. Now, this “redemption”, the restoration of the lost “Paradise” is no longer expected from faith, but from the newly discovered link between science and praxis.”
And, as highlighted in the Irish Times, he goes on to argue
“Francis Bacon and those who followed in the intellectual current of modernity that he inspired were wrong to believe that man would be redeemed through science. Such an expectation asks too much of science; this kind of hope is deceptive. Science can contribute greatly to making the world and mankind more human. Yet it can also destroy mankind and the world unless it is steered by forces that lie outside it.”
However, Francis Bacon himself had a view on such thinking, from Novum Organum
“Finally, if anyone objects that the sciences and the arts have been perverted to evil and luxury and such like, the objection should convince no one. The same may be said of all earthly goods, intelligence, courage, strength, beauty, wealth, the light itself and all the rest.”
And Bacon also added an argument which, if Benedict did not seek to criticise that which followed - The Enlightenment - could have seen him call for a return to Bacon’s original ideas.
“Just let man recover the right over nature which belongs to him by God’s gift, and give it scope; right reason and sound religion will govern its use.”
But perhaps the criticism of Bacon is also down to some of his other thoughts.. and their clarity.
“Idols of the cave have their origin in the individual nature of each man’s mind and body; and also his education, way of life and chance events. This category is varied and complex, and we shall enumerate the cases in which there is the greatest danger and which do most to spoil the calrity of the understanding.
Men fall in love with particular pieces of knowledge and thoughts: either because they believe themselves to be their authors and inventors; or because they have put a great deal of labour into them, and have got very used to them. If such men betake themselves to philosophy and universal speculation, they distort and corrupt them to suit their prior fancies.”
Pete Baker @ 02:45 PM
You may be aware of an expression doing the rounds of the conservative blogosphere and talk radio ciruit in the US, it refers to “Kool-Aid drinkers”. Now I appreciate Garibaldy that you are far from a Kool-Aid drinker because I have read a lot of what you post here and I know you are not some blind follower of ideology but I think the Kool-Aid analogy is apposite to the French Revolution.
It refers of course to the Reverend Jim Jones founder of the his own religion in the US. He preached a very liberal, attractive ideology of racial and political equality and attracted many hundreds of people who were alienated from mainstream society to his beliefs. As time wore on his religion turned into little more than a personality cult of his own creation in which he claimed himself to be the Messiah and anyone who opposed him to be heretical and therefore deserving of extreme punishment.
Fairly rapidly Jones’ activities became clear to others outside his church and dissenting members very quickly disseminated tales of how Jones was merely a despot who was brainwashing his followers. US senators went to his colony in Guyana to investigate these claims and were murdered by several of Jones’ more paranoid followers whereupon Jones himself organised the collective suicide of his cult by means of his poisoned Kool-Aid.
Now, whom do you blame for this appalling tragedy? Jones, the megalomaniac leader of his brainwashed cult who led his followers to their deaths in their hundreds, or the government officials and dissenters who accurately predicted how, despite Jones’ fancy egalitarian rhetoric, the whole shebang was going to end up?
To take your own “slave” analogy, if the slave resists his recapture (as at Valmy) then I have no problem and indeed salute him, but if the former slave then goes on to rape and pillage his neighbours well I have no problem in ascribing blame to the former slave and saluting the efforts of the local constabulary in restraining him.
However your entire thesis is flawed, the people of pre-Revolutionary France were no more slaves than any other European nation, and the emergence of liberal democracy was not conducive upon Revolutionary Terror.
I point out the nations of Canada, New Zealand and Australia, all societies which regularly feature in the top ten nations on earth for freedom and tolerance (not to mention the Bahamas and India whose boring ‘English’ parliamentary democracies have produced far more stable societies than their neighbours China and Cuba who followed the ‘French’ model). They managed to achieve this through Burkean, evolutionary principles and without the need for five republics, two empires, a “regime”, a “directorate” and several variations of monarchist rule.
Who knows what sort of global super-power and force for good France and so much of the rest of Europe would be today if only they had eschewed the siren call of Revolution. Benedict’s right on this one.
Posted by on Dec 02, 2007 @ 02:52 PMAlternatively Harry, we would have had a Europe made up of Tsarist Russias well in the 19th and possibly into the 20 centuries.
The problem with your Jones analogy is that in the Revolution’s case, Burke and his cohorts were actively organising and promoting counter-revolution both within and without France, unlike the US government in this case. There were reasons internal to France and to the Revolution and its supporters why it ended up the way it did, but equally the reason the darker side came out was because of counter-revolutionary resistance at home and abroad.
As for the slave analogy. Perhaps a better one would be The Matrix. Where those who are not freed from the influence of The Matrix will kill to defend it, and unfortunately have to be treated as enemies.
Posted by on Dec 02, 2007 @ 03:06 PMYou keep coming back to the defence of “our wee Johnnie’s a great wee fella and the reason that he slaughtered those other wee’uns with an axe was because they made him do it”.
At what point do you accept that it wasn’t the opponents of Revolutionary terrorism but the revolutionary terrorists themselves who are to blame for the cataclysm unleashed on France and Europe in 1789?
Czarist Russia had been defeated by a middle class bourgeois reformist party in 1917, had they been allowed to continue in government who knows what peace and stability Europe might have enjoyed in the coming century. Instead Lenin’s foul bacillus infected Russia with all the horrific consequences of revolutionary terror, genocide and total war and to this day the world is only just recovering from his loathsome theories.
What is it about stable, evolutionary, peaceful, liberal, tolerant, democratic development that you find so objectionable Garibaldy?
Posted by on Dec 02, 2007 @ 03:17 PMStream of consciousness time:
Reaction 1: As per Mrs Doyle on Dec 01, 2007 @ 05:00 PM.
Reappraisal 2 (Yesterday was a l-o-n-g and liquid day) Who’d win a fight between
a sharkBacon anda polar-bearRatzinger?Mature reflection 3 (the 134 bus grinds slowly through Kantish Town and Euston): Could this be developed as a game of Metaphysical Top Trumps?
This would, obviously, award the 10 points for spirituality to Ratzinger, though William Blake (see other thread) would score strongly, too, in this category. Bacon would get the 10 for intellect.
Where the prototype game ran into difficulty was on life-style. Obviously Ratzinger does well on accommodation (Vatican, Castel Gandolfo) and on wardrobe, while Marx has the boils-on-the-bum problem and lice. However, if we lump Marx-and-Engels together, which is philosophically logical, the combo now scores on sex-life.
Umm. I think I need help here.
Posted by on Dec 02, 2007 @ 03:26 PMThe late Francis Bacon, Viscount St Albans @ 02:26 PM:
Sorry: that one should be blamed on me.
Posted by on Dec 02, 2007 @ 03:28 PMhttp://youtube.com/watch?v=UY-ZrwFwLQg&feature=related
Posted by on Dec 02, 2007 @ 03:34 PMI have no ojections to peaceful development. I’m all in favour of it. The problem though is that very few supporters of the old regimes have accepted peaceful change, and have tried to reverse it through force. The French Revolution of 1789 was itself virtually bloodless (but only because the people of Paris succeeded in arming themselves before the Royal Army could receive orders to attack). What changed that? Counter-revolutionary plotting and preparations for war abroad, followed by resistance at home. The point being there was NO revolutionary terrorism for several years, and never would have been, had it not been for the counter-revolution. Much the same could be said for Russia. There’s a book called The Furies by Arno Mayer that compares violence in the French and Russian Revolutions that you might find interesting, if infuriating.
Chronology is important when discussing these issues - for example, the Russian Revolution was the consequence of total war, not the progenitor of it as your last post suggests.
Posted by on Dec 02, 2007 @ 03:38 PMHarry
Genocide is not so new.
“2 Thus says the Lord of hosts, ‘I have noted what Amalek did to Israel in opposing them on the way when they came up out of Egypt. 3 Now go and strike Amalek and devote to destruction all that they have. Do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.” (1 Sam. 15:2-3).
Saul’s failure to obey this command cost him his kingship. Note the commentary on this total destruction later by Samuel, when Saul summons him from the dead through a medium:
“16 And Samuel said, ‘Why then do you ask me, since the Lord has turned from you and become your enemy? 17 The Lord has done to you as he spoke by me, for the Lord has torn the kingdom out of your hand and given it to your neighbor, David. 18 Because you did not obey the voice of the Lord and did not carry out his fierce wrath against Amalek, therefore the Lord has done this thing to you this day.” (1 Sam 28)
Posted by on Dec 02, 2007 @ 03:43 PMAny study of the great revolutions of our times will show that there was never a situation where only violent revolution was the answer.
In almost every occasion the ancien regime was already defeated and a new liberal bourgeois alternative was in place before being hijacked by power-hungry megalomaniacs using the excuse of some minor resistance by the old guard to seize power for their own party and then going on to consolidate that power by atrocities that made anything the ‘counter-revolutionaries’ carried out seem limp wristed by comparison.
This was true in France in 1789, it was true in Russia in 1917, it was true in Iran in 1979 and I would even suggest it was almost achieved in Northern Ireland in 1969. I simply don’t know enough about Chinese history but I’m prepared to bet that in 1949 there was a bourgeois, peaceful alternative on offer besides Mao and his Cultural Revolutionaries.
Your approach, Garibaldy, would be like having an apartment with a cockroach infestation and deciding to pour ten gallons of petrol underneath the sink to burn them out and when your neighbours objected you decide to plant half a ton of gelegnite in the buildings foundations to blow the place to smithereens. When anyone complained you’d accuse them of being in the pay of the cockroaches, perhaps secret cockroaches themselves, and after the place was in ruins and your neighbors dolefully tried to rebuild their homes you’d always remind them of how bad it was when the cockroaches were around.
Posted by on Dec 02, 2007 @ 04:01 PMYou missed out Ireland 1912-21
Posted by on Dec 02, 2007 @ 04:05 PMHarry,
Perhaps you might explain how Batista would have been overthrown? Or Vietnam united, after of course the Japanese and French might have been kicked out? China? A nationalist regime that had attacked its former comrades. Not really much chance for peaceful evolution. As for Russia, the nice liberal bourgeois regime not only continued the imperialist war with the 1917 offensive but began to terrorise its opponents, arresting and suppressing them. And if you consider three counter-revolutionary armies and around 20 foreign armies some minor resistance from the old regime, then you’re working on a different scale to me, and I suggest, the rest of us. As for France. You had the monarch resisting the will of parliament, while he and his family plotted counter-revolution both at home and abroad, to the extent of asking for foreign invasion and giving war plans to Austria after the war got under way. Never mind the actions of aristos and priests up and down the country. Not minor either. Far from it.
My approach is simply refusing to see everything as pre-ordained, but rather analyse how things came about through attention to the reasons behind people’s actions. Though I found you cockroach analogy most amusing. And briefly envisioned myself as Tony Montana screaming you’re all a bunch of cock-a-roaches at various aristos.
Posted by on Dec 02, 2007 @ 04:25 PMIt seems rather dishonest to pick the French Revolution as the starting point here. Surely it should be the American Revolution that we look to as the first successful defeat of an Ancien Régime.
Posted by on Dec 02, 2007 @ 05:08 PMIt’s a viable argument Stiofán, but the social conditions in Europe and America were very different. Nor did the American Revolution have anything approaching the impact the French did.
Posted by on Dec 02, 2007 @ 05:11 PMDidn’t it inspire the French one, Garibaldy?
Posted by on Dec 02, 2007 @ 05:14 PMIf you are looking for proper regicide and military rule surely England 1640-60 is in with a shout.
You could argue that it is the true inspiration for all subsequent revolutions because it showed what happened when the middle class revolution Harry recommends takes place.
Don’t forget that Charles II had the remaining signatories of his father’s death warrant executed by hanging, drawing and quartering. Madame Guillotine was humane in comparison. It did show that the counter-revolution was not to be trifled with.
Posted by on Dec 02, 2007 @ 05:58 PMJoe,
There’s an argument that it did, and doubtless it inspired many among the political class, especially people like Lafayette. However, it’s the dynamic social element of the French Revolution - with mass action by the poor in both town and countryside in pursuit of their own goals - that makes it the more significant of the two. At another level, the sense of involvement Europeans felt with France and the subsequent wars, reorganisation of states and of governments meant that the French Revolution had a much more significant impact on Europe at the time than the American one did.
Posted by on Dec 02, 2007 @ 06:34 PMAlthough the Nazis eventually came out consciously against the ideals of the French Revolution this had more the flavour of an intellectual embellishment to their program than principle. Until the purge of 1934 there was a powerful socialist strand in party thinking. Even more socialistic was Fascist Italy. Hitler never contemplated a genuine reactionary policy such as seeking a return to monarchy and Mussolini, who had at first pragmatically accepted Victor Emmanuel, finally ditched him for a republic after 1943. Neither dictator had any great love for the church. The best example in the 1930s of a rejection of the political theories of 1789 was Franco’s Spain.
In practice left-wing revolutionary governments have used terror and mass murder far beyond what was the required to establish a secure base and have ended up with a paranoid leader enforcing a cult of personality. The pattern has been repeated so many times that one is forced to conclude that it is inherent.
Posted by on Dec 02, 2007 @ 06:58 PMI don’t think anyone could argue against the French Revolution’s impact on Europe being much greater than that of the American Revolution. Given the geography concerned it could hardly have been otherwise.
Posted by on Dec 02, 2007 @ 07:06 PMDavid,
I think you’re mistaking fascist corporatist economic policies - which were based on the idea of an organic society with harmonious interests(Burke anyone?) - for socialistic thinking.
As for the point about the amount of violence/repression used by socialist governments. Again, I point to the strength of reaction.
Posted by on Dec 02, 2007 @ 07:26 PMHarry, I know we have a kind of an agreement not to engage going, but I’m keen to explore the points you’re making so I hope we can keep it civilized :
If you wish to continue to delude yourself that the Revolution was in fact about the furtherance of equality and the pursuit of individual liberty there is little I can do to enlighten you other than to point to the facts of history and the mountains of corpses that the French Revolution produced.
I have a degree of sympathy for this point, as I think that pretty much all revolutions start out from the idealistic desire to spread freedom democracy everywhere, and the result is usually a disappointment to say the least.
Remove the word “French” from the part of your comment I quoted above, and you could be talking about the revolution that occurred in the former British colonies leading to the establishment of the USA - a revolution which preceded, and which probably inspired, the one that took place in France. Where does that fit into your theory that the French were the sole inspiration for all of this ? Lots of people died then. Entire tribes and races of native Americans were utterly and systematically wiped out. Why do you think this suddenly started with the French ?
Regarding concentration camps, didn’t the British start this idea during the Boer war ? Regarding gassing people, didn’t the British (Churchill in particular) come up with the idea of gassing uncivilized tribes to keep them in line ? Famously, Hitler didn’t want to have a war with the British. He admired the way they built their empire and did business. Couldn’t it be argued that some of the fault lies with the British, due to inspiration they provided to the Nazis ?
On the subject of how the Nazis came to power, some may recall that the Catholic Church had a little role in that; namely, for Hitler to be installed as Chancellor he had to get the agreement of Ludwig Klass, who agreed to support his Enabling Act (creating Hitler as a dictator) in return for guarantees of rights and liberties for Catholics. There are many cases throughout history where churches, particularly the RC church, have done dirty deals with very questionable people in order to support their own interests.
I don’t think your opinion that the removal of God by some revolutionaries in France from the equation spawned all of the evil that has occurred. Hitler’s rise to power is based on a relatively complex web of national malaise, the perception of an unfair deal at Versailles, economic problems (exacerbated to a great extent by the catastrophic failure of unregulated capitalism in the USA) and a range of other concerns. I do not see how any of these can be laid at the door of the French.
Republicanism, which was first applied in a major way in the USA, does have some important ideals that form the root of our present-day Western society; the idea that you can’t just get an army, declare yourself appointed by God, and do whatever the hell you want. As a result we have seen dramatic advances in prosperity, rights, science (medicine is a science) and so on, none of which could have happened had religions and monarches continued to strangle everything. God is very much in the back seat these days, and we’re much better off that way.
Posted by on Dec 02, 2007 @ 07:58 PMYou are of course correct about the corporatist policies of fascism but socialist elements were important. Mussolini began and ended his political career as a proclaimed socialist. As to Hitler, the name of his party contained the word socialist and many members took this sufficiently seriously that they looked forward to a ‘second revolution’ after Hitler came to power and had to be purged.
Posted by on Dec 02, 2007 @ 08:22 PM“Mussolini began and ended his political career as a proclaimed socialist”
I take Mussolini’s to be a socialist about as seriously as I do Bertie’s. As for Hitler’s party’s name, the struggles with the Social Democrats and Communists suggests to me that anyone who thought he was a socialist needed their head examined.
Posted by on Dec 02, 2007 @ 08:51 PMAs for Hitler’s party’s name, the struggles with the Social Democrats and Communists suggests to me that anyone who thought he was a socialist needed their head examined.
The word “socialist” or even “socialist elements” is a bit like the word “God”, so many people use it to describe so many completely different concepts that the word is almost useless as a standalone description of one’s politics. John Hume used to say in his election leaflets “I am a socialist”, but I’m sure he didn’t mean that he intended to introduce five-year plans and burn out the kulaks of North Antrim.
Posted by on Dec 03, 2007 @ 12:58 AMCS I am not claiming that Naziism was inspired by the French Revolution solely on the Revolution’s murder rate, although that is a pretty heavy weight in the balance against it, but rather on the whole panoply of brutal, paganistic modernism that the Revolution unleashed.
I listed them above; the removal of God and His replacement by ‘Nature’, the mass slaughter of classes of people not as an unfortunate side result but as an avowed policy aim, the elevation of the state above individual freedom, the massive centralisation of power in the hands of state agents and the abolition of tradition and localism, the justification of any action no matter how appalling on the ground’s of “Public Safety” etc etc
These are what the Revolution in France spawned and which were conspicuously absent from the American Revolution which entrusted freedom to its citizens from the bottom up and not from the top down, a huge and pivotal difference I think you’ll agree. The US Revolution specifically granted freedom of religious and political thought and allowed citizens to arm themselves to prevent their government getting too powerful, the French Revolution did precisely the opposite. The result of the American Revolution was the most stable form of democracy in the history of the world and the flowering of science, arts and industry unmatched anywhere in Europe, not bad for a revolution inspired by Christian and specifically protestant ideas on men’s rights and freedoms.
Yes of course slavery is an unfortunate and appalling blight on the story of the American Revolution but not really relevant to the point - as are all the other trite, sixth form issues about Churchill gassing tribes (myth) and whether the British invented concentration camps (they didn’t, the Spanish did).
Posted by on Dec 03, 2007 @ 01:05 AM“How very typical of those favouring religion to claim all moral imperatives spring from there, whilst being completely blind to the evil that it has nurtured.” - TAFKABO
The problem with an objective approach to morality is that it can’t be shown that it is not in the best interests of the individual to act justly toward others. You are left with law in place of ethics as a modifier of human behaviour; and law is deeply flawed for the purpose. The individual will calculate the reward for illegal behaviour against the risks of detection and punishment. In an ethical system that is rooted in religious faith, it is held that g-d sees all violations of the moral system even if the law does not. Ergo, you will be detected and you will be punished - and in some religions, punished eternally. That removes the calculation. Religion also preaches a moral code that operates independently of law, so it encourages behaviour that is just and not simply lawful. Plato used the example of the ring of Gyges (making the wearer invisible) and asking if the invisible person would still act justly toward others, knowing that his unjust acts would not be seen. In short, why would the individual act justly if acting unjustly was more profitable? Plato’s unsatisfactory answer was that the three elements of the soul (emotion, desire, and intelligence) would be in a state of disharmony if the person acted unjustly. Religion solves the problem perfectly.
Posted by on Dec 03, 2007 @ 01:36 AM
