…and the future of liberty:
it is worth pausing to register the medium in which the ideas unfold: English. Nalapat remarks that “The English language is . . . a very effective counter-terrorist, counter-insurgency weapon.” I think he is right about that, but why? Why English? In a remarkable essay called “What Is Wrong with Our Thoughts?,” the Australian philosopher David Stove analyzes several outlandish, yet typical, specimens of philosophical-theological linguistic catastrophe. He draws his examples not from the underside of intellectual life—spiritualism, voodoo, Freudianism, etc.—but from some of the brightest jewels in the diadem of Western thought: from the work of Plotinus, for example, and Hegel, and Michel Foucault. He quoted his examples in translation, he acknowledges, but notes that “it is a very striking fact . . . that I had to go to translations. . . . Nothing which was ever expressed originally in the English language resembles, except in the most distant way, the thought of Plotinus, or Hegel, or Foucault. I take this,” Stove concludes, “to be enormously to the credit of our language.”
Unfortunately, the people in power right now resonate much more strongly with Hegel and Foucault than they do with Locke and Madison. Not to mention Rousseau. And they care little for liberty, preferring instead “social justice,” which means nothing more than “what I want.”
Well, looking through Stove’s reasoning, I see a number of problems with it as well. For example, he gives a list of 40 statements which he considers in error and a 0th statement which is his own claim about the rest (and just as much in error as the rest, perhaps on purpose). And they are all in English.
It seems to me that there really isn’t anything magical about the English language when it comes to common sense or reducing logic and rhetorical errors. The alleged relative rationality of English speakers probably is due to some other cause. Perhaps it is a happenstance of English dominating current scientific discourse, for example. Perhaps, this perceived advantage doesn’t really exist.
Indeed, Karl. If any advantage in analysis exists, beyond having enough categorization from germanic languages to balance the relativism of french and other romance languages, it is in historical forcing of vocabulary. English has had to deal with the consequences of forging world-wide networks, and dealing with them intimately, a bit before others had to do so, along with the pride of having done that forging.
This advantage in describing network perceptions has been something that people in academia have paid attention to reversing. Their insistence on changing vocabulary definitions in ways that fit a more hierarchical society has been a large part of the Gramscian strategy. It has done even more harm outside English than inside it, if the tenor of many European criticisms of US society is any evidence. At least in translation they heavily favor the idea that “who’s on top” is what is important.
One of the ways English is different from all other languages is in it’s dynamism. English has double or treble the number of words of most of the other Western languages. Indeed by Law French is limited to 140,000 words.
English speakers generate new words at an astonishing rate and other English seakers accept and incorporate those words readily.
This has to have some effect on the society.
the people in power right now resonate much more strongly with Hegel and Foucault than they do with Locke and Madison
John Boehner and John Roberts resonate to Hegel and Foucault?
Boehner is in power?
He could singlehandedly end the shutdown by letting the House vote on a clean CR. That’s power.
And Reid could end the shutdown by agreeing to compromise. Funny how you’re unable to see the other side of the equation.
And Reid could end the shutdown by agreeing to compromise.
Doubtful — even with Reid’s support the “compromise” might not pass the Senate, and if it did Obama would veto. But Boehner can single-handedly allow a vote on a clean CR, which is supported by a majority of the House, a majority of the Senate, and the president. No other alternative has that sort of support. It’s only Boehner’s refusal to allow a vote that keeps the shutdown going.
I’ll weigh in as someone possibly more knowledgeable regarding the Anglosphere than most people. Both sides of my family came from the British Isles. Mom’s family was working class. Dad’s? I can claim to be a descendant of John Donne. I think my grandfather was named Charles to honor Charles Dickens, a man who was a leader in democratic reforms in England in the 19th Century.
The inhabitants of England were more independent than other places even back in the times of the Roman Empire. The Romans managed to conquer only part of the island. They lost control after a few hundred years. William the Conqueror was the last person who successfully led a conquest of England. And, as Howarth pointed out in his book 1066: The Year of the Conquest, the English fought back and eventually came back stronger than they were before.
Then there was the English Civil War. While rule by the Puritans lasted only a few years, afterward there were interesting limitation on royalty.
In the 19th Century, the English — for all their faults — picked democratic reform over the kind of violent French Revolution with subsequent dictatorships of that land.
Language has something to do with that. There are, I suspect, other reasons as well. I can read and understand the English of the last few centuries. John Donne’s works have a powerful impact on me especially. Those works have also had a major impact on quite a few people. And Shakespeare? We are still performing his plays today. Isaac Newton’s contributions to physics — only a century later — are still being studied today. That kind of intellectual freedom has strengthened English society.
What’s another reason? Democratic leadership was growing up a thousand years ago. While democracy and freedom have their limitations, those concepts seem to work better than authoritarian rule.
I hope this has made some sense. Now I must go off and contribute to American democracy in some other ways.
Jim’s just trying to divert attention from the Triumvirate, whose worship of Der Staat rivals Hegel.
Jim had to look up the word “liberty” just to participate in this discussion. It’s not a concept he quite “gets.” But seriously . . .
Besides Hegel, one statist theorist whose ideas seem to be making a comback is this guy:
http://faculty.history.wisc.edu/sommerville/367/367-043.htm
Modern “liberals” have just modernized the concept to “the Divine Right of Majorities,” although now they seem to be changing that to “the Divine Right of Obama.”