[WS:] What is that state? Can you elaborate?
Wojtek
On Wed, Oct 6, 2010 at 10:21 PM, Chuck Grimes <c123grimes at att.net> wrote:
> Here is a fine passage in R.P.Wolff's Memoire:
>
> ``A great work of philosophy always grows out of some core problem, although
> sometimes the author himself cannot identify it or state it clearly. And
> every great work of philosophy has a central powerful thesis driving the
> argument. There will then be an elaborate fretwork of definitions,
> distinctions, criticisms of predecessors, and the like, sometimes quite
> clever and often difficult to master. But none of that surface argumentation
> is very important, and it never matters if there are contradictions in it.
>
> My job as commentator is twofold - first, to find that core problem and
> central thesis, and second, to discover an argument that can sustain the
> thesis, even if the author never actually succeeds in articulating it in the
> text. In effect, what I try to do is to make the great philosopher more
> perfect, more successful, than he actually was, by reconstructing, and if
> necessary even inventing, the argument as he should have stated it. Most
> great philosophers, I believe, have brilliant intuitions that they are only
> partially successful in bringing to the level of explicit expression. They
> see more than they can say. If my commentary is successful, it will say
> clearly what they have had the genius to see, and I will then be able to
> hold this idea up to readers and show it to them in all of its conceptual
> beauty...''
>
> http://robertpaulwolff.blogspot.com/2010/04/memoir-fifth-installment.html
>
> Why do I find this important and interesting? Because Wolff represents the
> polar opposite of Strauss and makes a near perfect foil. They are
> essentially motivated to write on a theory of state, which in the background
> draws upon their personal concept of a theory of human nature.
>
> They both wrote during a crisis of a national state. Wolff did so during the
> 1960s. Strauss did so beginning in Weimar, and then repeated also during
> 1960s.
>
> The central idea for Strauss is not the reconstruction of classical
> political philosophy as he imagines it should be. His central or core
> concept is this theory of state. If you go back and read Strauss's work on
> Zionism and his critque of Spinoza you will be able to see this theory in
> the making. This is the intellectual connection between the practical
> politics of the neoconservatives and the Israel righwing. It's not that they
> are Straussians. Many have probably never heard of him. The underlying
> connection is a Whiteman Identity struggling with its profound insecurity in
> worlds with peoples who are not like them, and in fact probably dislike
> them.
>
> This sounds like I am over privilaging psychology, but both the US necons
> and the Israeli Right act like a group mind that has somehow become or is
> based on a collective identity. So that's the identity, pretending it is a
> person, that I am dealing with when I study Strauss. Wolff in many ways
> represents his own era of the 1960s very well---I think of him as an
> individual, but who also represents the period and the political battles,
> another group mind-identity---the very one that circumscribes its
> antagonist, the righwing reaction.
>
> Meditate on it another way. Consider that Strauss more or less reproduced an
> authoritarian Roman republic complete with its military mind set.
>
> There is an interesting geneology to this concept of state, because it is
> essentially reproduced in the Old Testment in the first five books. I forget
> where, Deuteronomy(?) the tribal elders are assigned their appointed duties.
> The only one I remember is Levy, keeper of the laws(?). Spinoza re-extracts
> this mode of government out the OT and makes his concept of a republic with
> some changes (I forget what)---because it was the last name of my climbing
> partner for twenty years.
>
> It takes awhile to realize that the OT is a political text, complete with a
> theory of state, with a constitution, national colors, the correct wood for
> the beams, the layout for the main meeting rooms. They even give the proper
> dimensions (what the hell is cubit?).
>
> We are an authoritarian Roman republic cum empire complete with its military
> mind set. That is essentially what both the US and I assume Israel has
> become. Now the counterforce, following Wolff, we arrive at his concept of
> anarchical state, a state I presume I would enjoy living in, since I visted
> such thing once.
>
> Why is it so necessary to stick to this roman republican-imperial ideal?
> Because it preserves the identity and privilages of our ruling elite. Ian
> was dead on when he noted Wolff's In Defense of Anarchy. What a nice flash
> that was.
>
> What do they fear? The cultural threat of the Other, which is precisely what
> an anarchical state provides. But cultural threat is far too loose a term,
> because it is an entire constellation of imminant social-psychological
> values that run entirely counter to the those of the ruling elite. Now the
> economists will argue what does that have to do the actual or concrete
> system of wealth and class were the `real' war is waged?
>
> Here's a sloppy answer. The dominance of neoliberal ideology as the proper
> superstructure for the US, depends on us masses believing in it as an ideal.
> We the masses must believe this doctrine, in order to follow its disciplines
> of work and merit. Yet what the current depression displays in broad ugly
> terms is the architectural collapse of this ideal. It doesn't work in
> practice, it doesn't work as theory, or as ideal. Work hard, die poor.
> Master the great canons, make yourself as smart as you want, spend decades
> trying to understand your world, in other words follow the merit system, and
> you still end up last, unless you become a brillant proponent of this stupid
> ideology, or you started out with enough money to last a lifetime.
>
> It is quite remarkable to me, that my economic progress over the last
> forty-seven years amounts to a simple fact. I can barely survive, without a
> roomate. Now there is a life achievement worth noting. That's pretty much
> were I started
> as a twenty year old kid and needed roomates.
>
> Anyway, there are just great things to find in Wolff's memoirs.
> Unfortunately the organization of his web pages is confusing in the
> extreme---but they are well worth sorting out.
>
> CG
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