Language can corrupt thought. Since thinking and speaking are the central tasks of politics, language can also corrupt governance.

The Linguistic Equivalent of War

by Tim Rice

Today’s progressives are heirs to a long tradition of abusing words to advance their policy goals.

A day before an ISIS attack killed 13 Marines in Kabul, President Joe Biden declared cybersecurity “the core national security challenge we are facing.” Cybersecurity is critical. But with the Taliban retaking Afghanistan after being routed by the U.S. military two decades ago, calling it the “core” national security challenge of our time was bizarre. Still, Biden’s August comments were an improvement from June, when the president declared climate change the greatest threat to American security.

You would think that the commander in chief responsible for one of the biggest foreign policy blunders in decades would choose his words more carefully. But that’s not how his party tends to operate these days. George Orwell warned of the dangers of imprecise political speech in his seminal essay “Politics and the English Language.” The problem, in Orwell’s telling, is that “political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible.” Political speakers reach for muddled, vague language to sell the public on their indefensible policies. This is bad enough, but it presents a broader issue because “if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.”

Orwell’s diagnosis is as true in America today as it was when he wrote those words 75 years ago. And while both political parties are guilty of indulging in bad rhetoric that corrupts policy, Democrats are the more frequent and more serious offenders, largely because linguistic manipulation is central to so many progressive political ideas.

Twentieth-century progressives, for example, were enamored with philosopher William James’s idea of “the moral equivalent of war.” In his 1964 State of the Union address, President Lyndon Johnson declared “an unconditional war on poverty,” inaugurating an era of U.S. leaders declaring war on concepts. More than a decade later, President Jimmy Carter directly quoted James in a speech calling the energy crisis the “moral equivalent of war.” By now, we’ve seen the fallout of the twentieth century social policy’s moral crusades. As Charles Murray shows in Losing Ground, poverty rates began climbing in the 1970s, despite the expansion of government power and spending inaugurated by Great Society antipoverty programs. Medicare, another campaign in the War on Poverty, is projected to run out of money by 2026.

Democrats today don’t speak in such martial terms as their mid-century predecessors, but the broadness of their vision and goals—and the language they use to describe them—is a contributing factor in spreading already-ineffective federal agencies even thinner. In addition to a resurgent Taliban and the global challenge presented by an increasingly aggressive China, the Department of Defense must tackle climate change. With inflation rising, members of the congressional Squad want the Chairman of the Federal Reserve to focus “on eliminating climate risk and advancing racial and economic justice.” And the Centers for Disease Control, whose botched coronavirus response shows that it can barely handle its core mandate, was temporarily given power over rent and evictions nationwide.

Orwell was right to point out that  When all hot-button issues become the purview of every facet of government, pesky considerations like specialization or separation of powers fall by the wayside.

Intentionally or not, Democrats’ political rhetoric is moving us closer to rule by total bureaucracy. Congress will soon vote on a $3.5 trillion “human infrastructure” bill, Biden’s plan to launch Great Society 2.0. Lumping together everything from free college to electric-vehicle subsidies and tax hikes under the “infrastructure” label, the package exemplifies the blurring of crucial distinctions.

We needn’t proceed down this path. Rather than blend all our priorities together into an expensive, unaccountable policy monolith, politicians should get specific. Let the Defense Department work on national security and leave climate change to the EPA. Let the CDC focus on infectious diseases and leave rental-assistance matters to the Department of Housing and Urban Development—or, better yet, to state governments. Our leaders won’t solve all the country’s problems by speaking more clearly about policy issues. But they won’t make much headway until they do.

Tim Rice is the associate editor of the Washington Free Beacon.

Source: City Journal (read here)

The task to renew and preserve Western culture is not merely political — it is first moral and spiritual.

 Flannery O’Connor on Sin and Politics

By Darrell Falconburg

August 2nd, 2021

Flannery O’Connor understood that what is wrong with the world is not our failure to adhere to a certain political or economic program, as important as these may be. Instead, what is wrong with the world is sin. And so, the task for those of us who want to renew and preserve Western culture is not merely political — it is first moral and spiritual.

Introduction

It has been often repeated that The Times of London once sent an inquiry to famous authors, asking them the question, “What is wrong with the world today?” When G.K. Chesterton received this inquiry, he had an interesting yet unsurprising response. He did not blame the world’s dysfunction on some external problem — not on a president, an economic program, a political party, or anything else. And, on top of that, he did not take the opportunity to put his political or economic views into the pages of the Times. He knew that the dysfunction of the world runs far deeper than politics. What is wrong with the world, he knew, is sin. Chesterton therefore responded rather simply: “I am.”[1]

I was recently reminded of Chesterton’s response while reading my way through parts of The Complete Stories of Flannery O’Connor. Much like Chesterton, Flannery O’Connor understood that what is wrong with the world is not our failure to adhere to a certain political or economic program, as important as these may be. Instead, what is wrong with the world is sin. Therefore, if we are to reform society through politics, it is first essential to reform ourselves. O’Connor conveys this in her short story “Everything That Rises Must Converge.” The reformer must realize that he, not someone else, is the only source of evil in the world that he can control. Then, upon realizing that he is the only source of evil that he can control, the reformer must begin the journey of personal reform that must precede the reform of those around him.

Flannery O’Connor on Sin and the Human Heart

As a Roman Catholic, Flannery O’Connor did not believe in John Calvin’s doctrine of total depravity. She did, however, emphasize man’s sinfulness throughout her stories. Man is fallen, believed O’Connor, and he is capable of great wickedness. Any serious Christian writer must therefore make the reality of man’s sinfulness a bedrock of their story. O’Connor writes:

“The serious writer has always taken the flaw in human nature for his starting point, usually the flaw in an otherwise admirable character. Drama usually bases itself on the bedrock of original sin, whether the writer thinks in theological terms or not. Then, too, any character in a serious novel is supposed to carry a burden of meaning larger than himself. The novelist doesn’t write about people in a vacuum; he writes about people in a world where something is obviously lacking, where there is the general mystery of incompleteness and the particular tragedy of our own times to be demonstrated, and the novelist tries to give you, within the form of the book, the total experience of human nature at any time. For this reason, the greatest dramas naturally involve the salvation or loss of the soul. Where there is no belief in the soul, there is very little drama.”[2]

A fundamental truth about man, especially modern man, is his sinfulness. This flaw in human nature is, for O’Connor, a common theme in all of her stories. As Jessica Hooten Wilson notes, O’Connor’s characters are often confronted with the flaws of their human nature by becoming aware, however painful it might be, of what they lack. And what these characters often lack is the self-knowledge that they are prideful and self-righteous, that they are sinners. In this regard,

O’Connor conveys something true and timeless in her stories: that we humans are contaminated by sin and, as a result, must come to a self-knowledge about what we lack.[3]

According to O’Connor, the Christian novelist understands sin as a reality of human nature. Sin is neither a mental illness nor a consequence of one’s environment. Instead, it is a deliberate choice of offense against God that has real and eternal consequences. As O’Connor puts it:

“The Christian novelist is distinguished from his pagan colleagues by recognizing sin as sin. According to his heritage he sees it not as sickness or an accident of environment, but as a responsible choice of offense against God which involves his eternal future. Either one is serious about salvation or one is not.”[4]

This recognition about human nature has implications for reform in the political arena. What is wrong with the world is not, as many assume today, our failure to adhere to some political program. Despite the assertions of ideologies that have dominated the West since the Enlightenment, it is not true that the problems of the world stem from our failure to adhere to a particular political program. The utopians of the modern world want to change and perfect society and human nature, but this is not possible. Politics may be important, to be sure, but our problem runs much deeper. The problems of the world are not something that we can fix overnight with protesting, sloganeering, or even passing new laws. Instead, the woes of the world have a deeper spiritual aspect. Modern man has rejected God, and in doing so he has rejected the most fundamental truths about himself — about the soul, sin, judgment, and redemption.[5]

Implications for Political Reform

This insight about our sinful human nature and its implications for political reform is conveyed in Flannery O’Connor’s 1965 story “Everything That Rises Must Converge.” In this story, the reader meets Julian, a recent college graduate who wants to be a professional writer. He lives with his unnamed mother, a widow who worked hard to feed, clothe, and put Julian through college. For a variety of reasons, Julian hates his mother. He is selfish, angry, resentful, and prideful. Most of all, he is sickened by the fact that his mother embodies the racism of the South during the pre-civil rights era. Although she is a complicated character, Julian sees nothing good in his mother. He is disgusted by her and wants to “teach her a lesson.”[6]We contemporary readers will agree with Julian that the fight against racism is a praiseworthy and noble pursuit. But it is clear that Julian’s motives are not praiseworthy and noble. He suffers from a deeply entrenched intellectual pride and anger toward his mother, both of which are motives for his anti-racism.

Julian correctly realizes that his mother does not know what she lacks. She is a racist and snobbish woman living in a time of immense cultural change. Grasping onto older notions of southern gentility and social decorum, she does not realize that she holds onto rejected perceptions of society and racial equality. Yet, at the same time, Julian does not realize that he does not know what he lacks either. Instead, Julian views himself as better than those around him, especially his mother. He does not realize that he is like everybody else in his society — imperfect and fallen.

Julian and his mother are on a public bus along with a black woman and her young son. All four characters get off at the same bus stop when Julian’s mother unknowingly makes an offensive gesture. That is, Julian’s mother tries to give the young boy a penny. Offended, the black woman pushes Julian’s mother to the ground. Not realizing that his mother is having a stroke as a result of the attack, he insults his mother and tells her that she deserved what she got.

Suddenly, however, Julian realizes that something is wrong and that his mother is having a stroke. At this moment Julian shows compassion for his mother for the first time in the story. But at this point, it is too late. Julian’s mother is unable to understand where she is at, and she is on the brink of dying. O’Connor writes:

“‘Mother!’ He cried. ‘Darling, sweetheart, wait!’  Crumpling, she fell to the pavement. He dashed forward and fell at her side, crying, ‘Momma, momma!’ He turned her over. Her face was fiercely distorted. One eye, large and staring, moved slightly to the left as if it had become unmoored. The other remained fixed on him, raked his face again, found nothing and closed.

‘Wait here, wait here!’ he cried and jumped and began to run for help toward a cluster of lights he saw in the distance ahead of him. ‘Help! Help!’ he shouted, but his voice was thin, scarcely a thread of sound. The lights drifted farther away the faster he ran, and his feet moved numbly as if they carried him nowhere. The tide of darkness seemed to sweep him back to her, postponing from moment to moment his entry into the world of guilt and sorrow.”[7]

Julian realizes for the first time what is wrong with the world. The problem with the world, he realizes, is not the politics and prejudices of his mother. To the contrary, the problem is himself and his own sinfulness, and such a problem cannot be easily remedied by politics. In this tragic event, Julian begins a process of personal reform that must precede political activism.

Again, we see the principle that the reformer must realize that it is himself, not someone else, who is the only source of evil in the world that he can control. The reform of oneself must precede any sort of political activism. If the reformer is not first striving after virtue, then he will not be able to have a positive impact on the larger society. This point is made by Henry Edmonson in his collection of essays A Political Companion to Flannery O’Connor. As Edmonson puts it:

“To expect, then, that an individual will improve himself before, or at least as, he attempts to reform those around him, is not just the proper order of things, it is also a safeguard. It introduces a measure of humility and self-doubt in the reformer’s psyche, which cannot help but blunt the dangerously sharp edge of zeal, while hopefully not enervating the reformer’s moral energy.”[8]

As O’Connor once remarked in a book review for Eric Voegelin’s Order and History, Plato is right that the “diseases of the soul are carried over into society.”[9]And as Eric Voegelin himself pointed out, we moderns are fundamentally mistaken in assuming, usually without much thought, that political activism can come before personal reform. The traditional view of the world holds that “society is man written large.” This is the wisdom of thinkers like Aristotle and Plato in the ancient world as well as St. Augustine and St. Thomas in the medieval. It is, indeed, one of the most fundamental insights of the great tradition of Western politics. The modern view, in contrast, mistakenly holds that “man is society written small.”[10]O’Connor wisely held to the traditional view. She understood that without an inner order of the soul there cannot be a well-ordered society, and she conveyed this timeless truth in her story.

Conclusion

Flannery O’Connor has much to tell us about human nature and political reform. Flannery O’Connor calls each of us, before we begin the difficult work of reforming society through politics, to reform ourselves. And so, the task for those of us who want to renew and preserve Western culture is not merely political — it is first moral and spiritual. If we do not reform ourselves, if we do not confront the moral and spiritual dysfunction within us, then we will never be able to “redeem the times.” Like Julian, our intentions will be darkened by pride and self-righteousness. We will risk being no better than the ideologues and radicals who, unwilling to seek order in their own souls, imprudently tear to pieces the delicate fabric of the social order.

The Imaginative Conservative applies the principle of appreciation to the discussion of culture and politics—we approach dialogue with magnanimity rather than with mere civility. Will you help us remain a refreshing oasis in the increasingly contentious arena of modern discourse? Please consider donating now.

Notes:

[1]G.K. Chesterton is also the author of the 1910 book What’s Wrong with the World.

[2]Flannery O’Connor, “The Novelist and the Believer,” in Mystery and Manners (1963: Reprinted; New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1970), 167.

[3]Jessica Hooten Wilson, “Flannery O’Connor: Truth Shocks the System,” Fixed Point Foundation, April 19, 2018, educational video and interview, 15:45 to 17:20, https://youtu.be/uomKyHRnp0k. Within these pages, Dr. Wilson also has a short essay on this topic. For more, see Jessica Hooten Wilson, “Everything That Rises: How Flannery O’Connor Can Heal Out Fractured Politics,” The Imaginative Conservative (August 25, 2017), online.

[4]Flannery O’Connor, “The Novelist and the Believer,” 167.

[5]Indeed, modern man and even many modern Christians think in a way that is similar to O’Connor’s character Hazel Motes in Wise Blood: “‘Listen, you people, I’m going to take the truth with me wherever I go,’ Hazel called. ‘I’m going to preach it to whoever’ll listen at whatever place. I’m going to preach there was no Fall because there was nothing to fall from and no Redemption because there was no Fall and no Judgment because there wasn’t the first two. Nothing matters but that Jesus was a liar.’” Flannery O’Connor, Wise Blood, second edition (1962; reprinted New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux Publishers, 2007), 101.

[6]Flannery O’Connor, “Everything That Rises Must Converge,” in The Complete Stories of Flannery O’Connor (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1971), 414.

[7]Ibid, 420.

[8]Henry Edmonson, “He Thinks He’s Jesus Christ: Flannery O’Connor, Russell Kirk, and the Problem of Misguided Humanitarianism,” in A Political Companion to Flannery O’Connor (Lexington, Kentucky: University of Kentucky Press, 2017), 260.

[9]Flannery O’Connor, “A Review of Eric Voegelin’s Order and History, Volume 3, Plato and Aristotle,” in The Bulletin, May 2, 1959.

[10]Of course, this view is not unique to Voegelin, but O’Connor here used Voegelin to make this point. See Eric Voegelin, “On Classical Studies,” found in The Great Tradition: Classic Readings on What it Means to Be an Educated Human Being, edited by Richard M. Gamble (ISI Books: Delaware, Washington, 2007), 654.

The featured image is a photograph of a bus terminal town site in Tennessee, circa 1948, and is in the public domain, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Source: The Immaginative Conservative (read here)

La société juive fracturée sur le cas « Zemmour »

Salomon, vous votez Zemmour?

par Noémie Halioua

Un futur président juif en France ? Un juif qui en plus, n’aime pas qu’on le saoule avec des histoires de juifs, et que certains qualifient d’extrême droite ? Il ne manquerait plus qu’il soit new-yorkais, pour se croire au cœur d’une nouvelle de Philip Roth !

Non, ici l’affaire n’est pas romanesque, mais elle n’en passionne pas moins la société juive à qui l’histoire a appris à garder un œil sur les bouleversements de l’époque. L’histoire lui a façonné un instinct naturellement inquiet, qui frise parfois avec la paranoïa et qui l’enjoint à constamment s’inquiéter de sa sécurité. Or depuis que les indices se multiplient en faveur d’une candidature du trublion à la magistrature suprême, la communauté se déchire. Est-ce bon pour « nous », se demande-t-elle. Et bien entendu ce « nous » se divise sur la réponse. La communauté s’affronte par le biais de courants antagonistes, selon une logique résumée par cette blague bien connue qui dit qu’avec deux juifs émergent trois avis différents.

Depuis plusieurs semaines, à la fin de la prière dans les synagogues consistoriales, la confrontation des idées tourne à l’affrontement voire à l’insulte. Au « T’as pas honte ? Tu veux voter pour un pétainiste ?! » s’oppose un « Zemmour est notre sauveur, celui que Dieu a mis sur notre route pour nous défendre ! ». Un renégat pour certain, un Totem pour d’autres : choisis ton camp camarade. 

Un espoir pour les Juifs des quartiers «sensibles»?

Pour beaucoup de juifs séfarades issus des milieux populaires, ceux qui vivent dans des communautés de banlieues bunkérisées et pour qui l’antisémitisme arabo-musulman n’est pas une abstraction, Zemmour incarne « la dernière chance » avant l’exil. Un rempart à la disparition, la perspective d’une vie nouvelle possible qui vaut bien de fermer les yeux sur quelques excès. Avec un homme comme lui au pouvoir, la fuite en Israël ne serait plus un horizon indépassable, y compris pour ceux qui n’ont pas les moyens d’emménager dans des quartiers huppés parisiens. Par son constat implacable de l’islam intolérant, le « Z » s’en prend par ricochet au principal vecteur d’antisémitisme en France : l’islamisme.

.....

Zemmour, le juif anti-communautaire  

Ce soir-là, je suis dans l’assistance avec un carnet de notes. Issu d’une famille juive algérienne, d’une classe populaire, Zemmour croit en l’émancipation par la culture.  Il réaffirme son affiliation à la tradition de l’« israélitisme » née dans le sillage de la Révolution, qui prône l’alliance des valeurs de la République et du judaïsme, celui qui permit de faire émerger des générations de juifs patriotes au service de l’Etat français : c’est selon cet idéal que tant de juifs sont morts pour la France pendant la première guerre mondiale. Elle affirme que l’on assimile des individus et non des peuples selon la formule célèbre de Clermont-Tonnerre, c’est-à-dire que les appartenances peuvent être intimes et personnelles, mais pas communautaires.  A l’heure de la société de la transparence, il croit encore en la distinction entre la sphère publique et privée et la religion pour lui est une affaire privée. Sur le plan religieux, il se définit comme pratiquant mais pas croyant, fidèle à cette religion typique de l’orthopraxie qui met la pratique au cœur du lien avec le divin, plutôt que la foi comme dans le christianisme. 

A lire aussi, Aurélien Marq: Le Z et l’hologramme

...

Alors Zemmour, est-il un rempart ou une tache sur l’image des juifs de France ? Ce qui est certain, c’est que ses racines lui seront toujours rappelées. Si aux yeux de certains il n’est pas suffisamment juif, pour d’autres il ne restera à jamais que cela. Lors de son déplacement à Nice pour rencontrer son public, une poignée d’antifas ont scandé « Zemmour, sioniste, rentre dans ton pays », comme le rapportent des témoins sur place. « Sioniste », lui qui prend toujours soin d’éviter de parler d’Israël, la formule a de quoi faire sourire et réfléchir.

Source: www.causeur.com

Setenta manuscritos de Dante Alighieri - on line

VATICANO: LOS LIBROS DE DANTE

https://youtu.be/2NfKq9tasp4

Con motivo del heptacentenario del fallecimiento de Dante Alighieri (1265-1321), la Biblioteca Apostólica Vaticana ha digitalizado los setenta manuscritos que atesora del autor de la Divina Comedia, y permite visitarlos en una exposición on line, Viajar con Dante.

Leer más aquí (fuente: https://www.religionenlibertad.com/)

Les grands penseurs des pays foudroyés par l’occupation communiste et, pour plusieurs,par deux totalitarismes l’un après l’autre...

 Chantal Delsol : La vie de l’esprit en Europe centrale et orientale depuis 1945

23 avril 2021

En ce mois d’avril 2021 paraissent deux ouvrages dirigés par des membres de l’Académie dans le cadre de travaux  scientifiques ayant l’un et l’autre bénéficié du soutien de la Fondation Simone et Cino Del Duca : L’irrationnel aujourd’hui par Jean Baechler (voir article) et La vie de l’esprit en Europe centrale et orientale – dictionnaire encyclopédique, par Chantal Delsol et Joanna Nowicki.

La Vie de l’esprit en Europe centrale et orientale depuis 1945 (Paris, Éditions du Cerf), ouvrage collectif codirigé par Chantal Delsol et Joanna Nowicki, professeure en sciences de l’information et de la communication à l’université de Cergy-Pontoise, est un dictionnaire encyclopédique des intellectuels de « l’autre Europe », élaboré par 150 spécialistes, qui entend « rétablir les ponts rompus par la méconnaissance pour en finir avec les préjugés réciproques et réinstaurer un indispensable dialogue ».

Les deux directrices de l’ouvrage ont placé une pensée de Jules Michelet au seuil de leur introduction : « L’Europe n’est point un assemblage fortuit, une simple juxtaposition de peuples, c’est un grand instrument harmonique, une lyre, dont chaque nationalité est une corde et représente un ton. Il n’y rien là d’arbitraire ; chacune est nécessaire en elle-même, nécessaire par rapport aux autres. En ôter une seule, c’est altérer tout l’ensemble, rendre impossible, dissonante et muette, cette gamme des nations. » (Légendes démocratiques du Nord, PUF, 1968, p. 12).

Cette somme encyclopédique de 1 000 pages se donne le projet ambitieux d’étudier la vie des idées depuis 1945 dans ce groupe de pays intermédiaires qui se trouvent entre l’Europe occidentale et la Russie, tous proprement et fondamentalement européens, c’est-à-dire marqués par la culture de liberté issue du judéo-christianisme et de la révolution des Droits de l’homme et qui, au XXe siècle, ont été foudroyés par l’occupation communiste et, pour plusieurs, ont été écrasés par deux totalitarismes l’un après l’autre.

Force est de constater que les grands penseurs de l’Europe centrale restent insuffisamment connus du public français et que leurs textes ne sont que partiellement disponibles en traduction. Pire, alors que les milieux intellectuels s’étaient portés avec chaleur à la rencontre des « dissidents », les retrouvailles n’ont pas eu lieu, ni après la chute du mur de Berlin – en dépit du grand nombre de publications qui l’accompagnèrent, tel Le Messager européen -, ni après l’élargissement de l’Union européenne. Les pays d’Europe de l’Ouest qui, en travaillant à l’élargissement, avaient le sentiment de faire rentrer dans la mère-patrie des périphéries qui deviendraient enfin heureuses en se ralliant à leur manière de penser, en ont été pour leurs frais. Les pays d’Europe de l’Est, qui se savent petits mais ne se considèrent pas comme des provinces attardées, ne se sont pas montrés prêts à se mettre en posture d’élèves obéissants.

A l’occasion de la parution de l’ouvrage, dans une tribune publiée mercredi 15 avril dans Le Figaro (Vox), « En Europe centrale, la modernité exerce aussi ses effets mais ne règne pas sans partage », Chantal Delsol déplore que l’Europe de l’Ouest continue de manifester à leur égard une condescendance teintée d’ignorance. Ce désintérêt pourrait tenir à une divergence de perspectives : là où nos sociétés, bercées par les Trente Glorieuses, ont pris l’habitude de chérir la liberté comme une promesse de bonheur facile à acquérir, les sociétés d’Europe de l’Est, grandies dans l’expérience du totalitarisme, ont développé un ethos grave, voire tragique, et une certaine crainte des perversions de la modernité (le communisme n’étant, pour Havel, que la caricature de la modernité et non son envers). En outre, la tradition romantique à laquelle ces sociétés, comme l’Allemagne, se rattachent, les oriente vers une modernité  circonspecte, apte à éviter le piège de la raison toute puissante. Au train où vont les choses, le modèle enviable de l’ivresse d’une liberté individuelle sans responsabilité s’imposera-t-il partout ou bien l’Europe centrale restera-t-elle « un pôle romantique apte à nous faire réfléchir sur nos propres dérives ? ».

En déposant l’ouvrage sur le bureau de l’Académie en séance, le lundi 31 mai 2021, le chancelier Gabriel de Broglie a rappelé le message frappant que les académiciens de l’Est avaient exprimé lors de la rencontre des Académies européennes qu’il avait organisée pour la première fois en 2007 : il leur était plus difficile d’accepter leur mission dans le grand mouvement de libération désordonné que sous le régime communiste. Et il avait conclu : « Ce livre n’est pas un livre qui se lit, mais qui se consulte pour la réflexion, la compréhension, les propositions et l’action de tous ceux, chercheurs, experts, diplomates, qui participent à la construction de la nouvelle Europe et à l’évolution des relations internationales.« 

Télécharger le rapport du Chancelier de Broglie prononcé en séance le 31 mai 2021

Source: Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques

¿Cómo sucede la libertad?

 Sobre el deseo

Por Glenn Hughes (*)

Debido a que hemos aparecido, emergido, en una situación, es que podemos pertenecernos a nosotros mismos, al cosmos y al fundamento del ser. Corporalmente fui concebido, gestado y salí del útero: en un tiempo y en un lugar. Soy un continuo físico con el mundo; y soy una unidad física discreta dentro de ella misma. El mundo a mi nacimiento fue floreciendo vivo a mis sentidos, ligero, frío y aromático; luego lo recibí a través de líquidos y sólidos. Y fui haciéndome más grande.

Siendo humano, crecí hacia y en la comprensión.

Desde el principio se fue extendiendo mi cuerpo, en esa combinación de exigencia física y curiosidad que nos define, un alcance que siempre fue sucediendo en relación: en relación con el resto del cosmos físico, pero más importante en relación con otras personas, otros sujetos. Como diría Heidegger, ser humano es siempre un "ser-con". Y como un “ser-con”, desde el principio anhelaba que mi físico fuera tocado, visto y amado—en mi repentinamente discreta separación como cuerpo— de modo de poder encontrarme cómodamente adaptado a mi vida humana.

Siendo humano, crecí también en y hacia la comprensión.

Debido a que un ser humano es corporal y tiene una ubicación, algunos pensadores de mayor o de menor nivel, llegan a la conclusión de que el comportamiento de un individuo está absolutamente determinado. Agregue usted todos los impactos de la ubicación, afirman, y todos los comportamientos se producen inevitablemente. Pero la verdad extraordinaria es que llega a desempeñar su parte en el drama individual de cada uno, a medida que nos vamos desarrollando, la libertad genuina —la libertad de atención, de reflexión, de elección. Así que me doy cuenta, en algún momento del camino, que formarme me corresponde a mí, que la historia de mi vida no está ya establecida, no está ya predestinada, sino que es también autodirigida. Como escribe Martin Buber: el destino más la libertad es igual al destino.

¿Cómo sucede esta libertad? No me refiero en el sentido de su "fundamento" (la inimaginable libertad de la que toda libertad ubicable se deriva), sino en términos de su aparición en mí, la libertad que uno podría decir: ¿es el crucial y supremo “yo”?

Esta es una forma de pensarlo. Ya de niño una iluminación está presionando en mí hacia la percepción de las cosas: un deseo de comprender y conocer las cosas, que es diferente de la experimentada por cualquier animal que sea meramente animal. Este deseo, incluso en el infante, es ya una noción incipiente de la realidad, del ser. Quiero desde el principio el tipo de descubrimiento que es la aprehensión de los significados. En la curiosidad más temprana del niño este ya tiene instinto de conocimiento; la potencia de descubrir ya está presente en el infante. Y durante mucho tiempo, mientras soy joven, la maravilla de la comprensión me impulsa hacia adelante. Bien podría estar afligido, disuadido e incluso a veces castigado por los descubrimientos; pero sigue alimentando el deseo de comprender la alegría nativa de ser una participación creada en una luz aún no creada.

Sin embargo, ¿qué hay de todos los demás deseos, empezando por los de las necesidades corporales y emocionales, sobre las cuales es mucho más fácil de discutir que acerca de nuestro deseo de aprehender significados? Un ser humano es una multitud sumamente compleja de deseos precisos, muchos de los cuales nos llevan a la comunión con lo verdaderamente bello y lo verdaderamente sublime, cumpliendo la trayectoria de los objetivos sensoriales y emocionales. Sin embargo, el deseo distintivamente humano de convertirse en una historia personal y humana, que se despliega junto con nuestros otros deseos, es el deseo de comprender; ese es el anhelo que conduce a la comprensión y que se sigue constantemente para buscar una mayor comprensión. Los miedos y las atracciones, los impulsos, los sentimientos de todo tipo son humanos sólo porque se refractan en el prisma de la comprensión (aunque sea levemente). Es encontrar y hacer significados en lo que consiste el métier humano.

Los significados se acumulan para nosotros, conforman nuestro mundo humano, y como todos saben, cuanto más significados llegamos a conocer, más significados reconocemos que están más allá de nosotros. En nuestra orientación más pura y atenta a aquello en lo que estamos situados, el cosmos, deseamos que todo tenga sentido, queremos comprender qué es el ser, qué es ese todo del que estamos hechos. Después de todo, ¡sólo conociendo el significado del todo, podría conocer el significado de la parte del todo que soy yo mismo!

Preguntémonos: como forma distintiva de participar en el todo, ¿qué es este querer saber todo sobre todo aquello que me define como humano? Convertirse en todo lo que la mente toca a través de la comprensión es una potencia. "Convertirse" aquí no es una metáfora. La mente humana se convierte, de hecho, en aquello que comprende. 

Para nosotros esta extraña verdad de la cognición, primero articulada sistemáticamente por Aristóteles, ha sido oscurecida por varias influencias. Primero, la del cartesianismo simplista; segundo por las lúgubres consecuencias de cada variedad del Departamento del Reduccionismo Materialista, y tercero, por la propensión -por todos y en todas partes- de imaginar que cualesquiera sean los objetos sobre los que el sujeto podría estar investigando y se está preguntando, estos mismos por el otro lado se enfrentan unos a otros como objetos físicos en el espacio. 

El sujeto es imaginado estar "aquí" (en algún lugar de la cabeza), y a todo lo demás se lo imagina como estando "ahí fuera", o con respecto a los objetos que de alguna manera también están "dentro" del yo, como estando "también en aquí." Todo este tipo de pensamiento está basado en la suposición de que la mente y todo lo demás son simplemente objetos espaciales que existen uno al lado del otro, uno fuera del otro.

Pero la realidad respecto de la mente y sus operaciones es por el contrario sorprendente, divertida y emocionante. Aristóteles planteó la cuestión de manera sucinta: la inteligencia en acto y lo inteligible en acto son una y la misma cosa. ¿Por qué? Porque un objeto comprendido (ya sea una manzana, un hecho o una emoción), en la medida en que de hecho se comprende, constituye un patrón de significado inteligible; lo que posee la inteligencia a través del discernimiento es ese mismo patrón de significado; y esta "forma" (como la llamaron Platón, Aristóteles y Tomás de Aquino) es idéntica en el entendimiento y en lo entendido. Así se actualiza el potencial de la mente para convertirse, digamos, en la manzana. La manzana material existe sobre la mesa; pero la forma de la manzana no es menos real en mi mente que en ella, y una forma es idéntica a la otra. Nada de esto es incompatible con la independencia real de la manzana física respecto de mi concepción de ella.

Entonces: ¿qué quiero finalmente llegar a ser a través de la comprensión? Todo. Ese es el deseo natural de toda persona. Y este anhelo irrestricto no carece de emoción. Es un anhelo , un cuestionamiento saturado de anhelo, que se manifiesta más libremente en los ojos del infante y en el desenfrenado entusiasmo del niño pequeño.

El flujo corporal de "otros deseos" —impulsos, instintos, posesividad, compulsiones, tiranías de la lujuria por el placer y la comodidad, el retroceso de los miedos y las repulsiones— todos estos rodean, contextualizan e interfieren con el deseo de comprender. Pero estos otros deseos también se encuentran entre los animales. Aunque es solo humano el deseo de comprender y conocer, y luego amar conscientemente —el proyecto más elevado y el propósito último del conocimiento, de todo conocimiento—. Su presencia es la personalidad, y su cumplimiento, en su incrementalidad, es la realización del espíritu.

Usando el término en este sentido, ¿es el "espíritu" —siempre en marcha como el flujo de un cuestionamiento irrestricto basado en mi ser situado corporalmente— lo que es más que nada el “yo mismo”? ¡Ciertamente! ¿Qué soy yo"? ¡Soy un espíritu individual situado!

El resurgir de mí mismo como espíritu, sin embargo, no fue obra mía. La personalidad humana, aunque soy yo mismo, es también la base del ser mismo, emergente dentro del desbordamiento del ser creado, a la búsqueda consciente de sí mismo.

Esta búsqueda, tal vez sea innecesario decirlo, puede extraviarse. Los deseos descarriados pueden alejarme de la personalidad. (Es decir: se puede decir que son deseos “descarriados” los deseos que me alejan de la personalidad). Para ser más específico: hay deseos que permito que me alejen de la comprensión, del conocimiento, de la elección bien y del amor. Cuando sucumbo a tales deseos, ¿es esa "mi" elección? ¿Estoy convirtiéndome en “yo” también a través de ellos?

La respuesta es complicada. Digamos simplemente que el espíritu puede elegir la falta de espíritu. Y lo hace.

Glenn Hughes es profesor de filosofía en St. Mary's University en Texas. Es autor de varios libros, entre ellos Trascendencia e Historia (Missouri, 2003); Una pregunta más hermosa (Missouri, 2011); y coeditor, con Charles Embry, de The Eric Voegelin Reader: Politics, History, Consciousness (Missouri, 2017).

(*) Traducción de Pablo López Herrera

Leer más aquí (Fuente: https://voegelinview.com/)

How does it happen, this freedom?

On Desire

by Glenn Hughes 

We can belong to ourselves, to the cosmos, and to the ground of being because we have appeared—emerged—in a situation. Bodily I was conceived, bodily I gestated, and bodily came from the womb: timed and placed. I am a physical continuum with the world; and I am a discrete physical unity within it. The world at my birth flowered alive to my senses, light and chill and aromatic; then I received it in liquids and solids. I grew larger.

Being human, I grew also toward and into understanding.

My body from the beginning reached out, in that combination of physical demandingness and curiosity that defines us, a reaching out that was always happening already in relationship: in relationship with the rest of the physical cosmos, but more importantly in relationship with other persons, other subjects. As Heidegger would say, being human is always a “being-with.” As a being-with, from the start—in my suddenly discrete separateness as a body—I longed for my physicality to be touched, seen, and loved, so that I could find myself comfortably adjusted for my human life.

Being human, I grew also toward and into understanding.

Because a human being is bodily and situated, some high thinkers, and low, draw the conclusion that an individual’s behavior is utterly determined. Add up all the impacts of situatedness, they claim, and all behaviors inevitably follow. But the extraordinary truth is that, as we develop, genuine freedom—freedom of attention, of reflection, of choice—comes to play its part in my individual drama. So it dawns on me, somewhere along the way, that it is up to me to set about shaping myself—that my life story is not just established, not just fated, but also self-directed. As Martin Buber writes: fate plus freedom equals destiny.

How does it happen, this freedom? I don’t mean in the sense of its “ground” (the unimaginable freedom from which all situated freedom is derived), but in terms of its onset in me, the freedom that is, one might say, the crucial and utmost “me”?

Here is one way to think about it. Already as an infant, an illumination (unlike that experienced by any animal that is merely animal) is pressing in me toward insights: a desire to understand and to know things. This desire, even in the infant, is already an inchoate notion of reality, of being. From the beginning I want the kind of discovery that the apprehension of meaning is. In the earliest curiosity of the infant, the potency of discovery is already present; the infant is already instinct with knowing. And for a long while, while I’m young, the wonder of understanding rushes me forward. Distressed, dissuaded, and even sometimes punished for discovery I may well be; but the native joy of being a created participation in uncreated light continues to nourish the desire to understand.

What about all the other desires, though, starting with those of bodily and emotional needs, that are so much more easy to discuss than our desire to apprehend meanings? A human being is a highly complex multitude of situated desires—so many of which, fulfilling the trajectory of sensory and emotional aims, bring us into communion with the truly beautiful and the truly sublime! Still, it is the desire to understand—the longing that both leads to understanding and constantly follows from it to seek more understanding—that is the distinctively human desire that unfolds together with our other desires to become personal and human history. Fears and attractions, impulses, feelings of every kind, are human only because they are refracted in the prism of (even if slight) understanding. It is finding and making meanings that is the human métier.

Meanings accumulate for us, they make up our human world, and as everyone knows the more we come to know, the more meanings we recognize to be beyond us. In our purest, most attentive orientation to that which we are situated within, the cosmos, we wish to have everything make sense, we want to understand what being is—what this whole is that we are of. After all, only by knowing the meaning of the whole could I know the meaning of the part of the whole that I am!

Let us ask: as a distinctive way of participating in the whole, what is this wanting to know everything about everything that defines me as a human? It is a potency to become whatever the mind touches with understanding. “Become” here is not a metaphor. The human mind becomes, as a matter of fact, that which it understands. This odd truth of cognition, first systematically articulated by Aristotle, has been obscured for us by the influences of, first, simplistic Cartesianism, second, the dismal fallout from every variety of the Department of Materialist Reductionism, and third, the propensity of everyone everywhere to imagine that the human subject who is inquiring, on the one hand, and whatever objects that the subject might be inquiring about, on the other, are confronting each other just like physical objects in space. The subject is imagined to be “in here” (somewhere in the head), and everything else is imagined as being “out there”—or, with regard to objects that are somehow also “inside” the self, as being “also in here.” All this sort of thinking is based on the supposition that mind and everything else are simply spatial objects that exist side by side, each outside of the other.

But the reality regarding mind and its operations is otherwise—startling, amusing, and thrilling. Aristotle put the issue succinctly: intelligence in act and the intelligible in act are one and the same. Why so? Because an object understood (be it an apple, or a deed, or an emotion), to the degree that it is indeed understood, is a pattern of intelligible meaning; what intelligence possesses through insight is that same pattern of meaning; and this “form” (as Plato and Aristotle and Aquinas called it) is identical in the understanding and in the understood. Thus the potential of the mind to become, say, the apple, is actualized. The material apple exists on the table; but the form of the apple is no less real in my mind than in it, and the one form is identical with the other. None of this is incompatible with the physical apple’s real independence from my conception of it.

So: what, finally, do I want to become through understanding? Everything. Such is every person’s natural desire. And this unrestricted longing is not emotionless. It is a longing, a questioning saturated with yearning, which shows itself most freely in the infant’s eyes and the young child’s untrammeled enthusiasms.

The bodily-based flow of “other desires”—impulses, urges, possessiveness, compulsions, tyrannies of the lust for pleasure and comfort, the recoil of fears and repulsions—all of these surround, contextualize, and interfere with the desire to understand. But these other desires are also found among animals. The desire to understand and know, and then to knowingly love—the highest design of all knowing, the ultimate purpose of knowing—is human only. Its presence is personhood. Its fulfillment, in its incrementality, is the realizing of spirit.

Using the term in this sense, is the “spirit”—always underway as the flowing of unrestricted questioning grounded in my bodily situated being—what is most of all “myself”? Certainly! What am “I”? I am individual situated spirit!

The upsurging of myself as spirit, though, was none of my doing. Human personhood, while being myself, is also the ground of being itself, emergent within the overflow of created being in a conscious seeking of itself.

This seeking, perhaps needless to say, can go astray. Wayward desires can bear me away from personhood. (That is: desires that bear me away from personhood may be said to be “wayward.”) To be more specific: there are desires that I allow to carry me away from understanding, from knowing, from choosing well, and from loving. When I succumb to such desires, is that “my” choice? Am I through them becoming “me” as well?

The answer is complicated. Let’s just say: spirit can choose spiritlessness. And does.

Read more here (Source: https://voegelinview.com/)

Glenn Hughes is Professor of Philosophy at St. Mary’s University in Texas. He is author of several books, including Transcendence and History (Missouri, 2003); A More Beautiful Question (Missouri, 2011); and co-editor, with Charles Embry, of The Eric Voegelin Reader: Politics, History, Consciousness (Missouri, 2017).