andie nachgeborenen wrote:
>
> but I think
> Chritopher Hill was right and CS Lewis wrong about the sort of
> Christian he was. He was no Leveller, no Winstandley, perhaps, but he
> saw the Good Old Cause as bringing the Kingdom of Goid to Earth, and
> necessary for it.
I too admire Hill greatly. And I don't think your perspective on Milton is incompatible with the perspective that triggered my post. It's partly a matter of agreeing on a shared definition of "individualism," but I won't wrestle with that now. It's more fun to quote Milton anyhow:
. . . till one shall rise
Of proud ambitious heart, who not content
With fair equalitie, fraternal state,
Will arrogate Dominion undeserv'd
Over his brethren, and quite dispossess
Concord and law of Nature from the Earth;
Hunting (and Men not Beasts shall be his game)
(12. 24-30)
or
. . .As new wak't from soundest sleep
Soft on the flourie herb I found me laid
In Balmie Sweat, which with his Beames the Sun
Soon dri'd, and on the reaking moisture fed.
Strait toward Heav'n my wondring Eyes I turnd,
And gaz'd a while the ample Skie, till rais'd
By quick instinctive motion up I sprung,
As thitherward endevoring, and upright
Stood on my feet; about me round I saw
Hill, Dale, and shadie Woods, and sunnie Plaines,. . .
(i. 253-262
Villainous tyrant or new-created Man, Milton's characters come from nowhere, "entering upon an unknown life," free of entangling "ensembles of social relations."
>
> I'd
> like to see Carrol's critique of Hill, though.
My post was of course rather condensed. I don't really have a critique of Hill, whose Milton makes a lot more sense than C.S. Lewis's. But Hill was focusing on Milton's direct responses to the world he lived in. Given that, my focus in labelling him a "radical individualist" is on his spontaneous ways of looking at the world, prior to concrete responses. And he saw it (as no writer before him quite had, I think) as a collection of "abstract individuals" commanded to form social relations which did not exist until brought into existence by an act of will (or choice).
>
> As for Tolstoi, anyone who was a contemporary of Marx and indeed of
> Lenin has no excuse for "historical limitations" of the sort Carrol
> evokes.
I've suggested myself (perhaps only in fragments I've never pulled together) that the generation born in the 1770s (Ricardo, Austen, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Hegel, Beethoven) was the last to really have such an excuse -- i.e., to legitimately assume that "there has been history but no longer is any." And in only a slightly younger generation, Byron was able to say after Waterloo that he was damned sorry (or something like that). And whatever we think now of Napoleon, I think we can say for Byron that he might well have seen Napoleon as an icon at least of historical possibility. (Some unnamed character in the Cantos says of Napoleon, "Thank god such men be few, but he kept up human courage." Quoted from memory.)
Still, I think we can give Tolstoi some slack. And if I recall correctly, Lenin had some good things to say about him, and what Lenin can forgive I guess I can. :-)
Carrol