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Thursday, October 24, 2024
Thursday, October 17, 2024
The Straussian Moment -essay by Peter Theil
After the 911 attack by Islamic Jihadists, who were all educated upper middle class and led by a multi-millionaire, the post war policies of sending wealth from the West to under-developed portions of the world to create more satisfied and happy people was proven false. The Straussian Moment is a famous essay that explores the fallacies of the Enlightenment and Liberalism.
The first 25% is intelligent enough, and would be "a good read". After enough preconditions are setup it becomes a grasp of our times like no other perspective I've encountered.
Strauss is less important than Peter Thiel and this essay. I believe Thiel uses the Strauss reference to give a key to unlock the deeper meaning of this essay. The "secret layer" in philosophy tracts goes back at least to Plato. One can think of Hebrew (scriptural) poetics in this way also. The general plain idea is to hide the instance of insight or truth telling to preserve the life of the writer.
This essay is unique in how it is the heaviest of lifting in the realm of political philosophy, and turns to Biblical ideas (apocalyptic) and they fit right in. Fit right in to the point that without the Biblical references the philosophical thoughts would be incomplete or less intelligent.
I have never encountered a critique of Hobbes so well crafted as this perspective. I have never encountered a critique of the underpinnings of modernity that gave me pause. Most of the critiques of modernity come from Marxists or hippies, and it's always a dumb ride. This critique is anything but a dumb ride.
Apocalyptic is a word movies and pop culture have made into an even dumber ride. This essay will make one actually worried. It is the real Apocalypse.
If you are cautious of the URL link, just Google research "The Straussian Moment Peter Theil" to do a deep dive.
https://gwern.net/doc/politics/2007-thiel.pdf
Quotes from The Straussian Moment
JOHN LOCKE: THE AMERICAN COMPROMISE
"The new science of economics and the practice of capitalism filled the vacuum created by the abandonment of the older tradition. That new science found its most important proponent in John Locke and its greatest practical success in the United States, a nation whose conception owed so much to Locke that one exaggerates only slightly to describe him as its definitive founder.
We must return to the eighteenth century to appreciate the tremendous change Locke wrought. Revolutionary America was haunted by the fear of religious war and the fanatical imposition of virtue on the entire state. The Declaration of Independence’s evocation of “the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” had a counterpoint in the older tradition, in which the first two had not existed and the pursuit of happiness would have seemed inferior to (and certainly much more subjective than) the virtuous life. When one fast-forwards to the America of the 1990s, the larger context of the Founding had been forgotten: America had proved so successful in shaping the modern world that most Americans could no longer recognize the originality and strangeness of its founding conception."
“If a part of the population declares that it no longer recognizes enemies, then, depending on the circumstance, it joins their side and aids them.” There is no safety in unilateral disarmament. - Carl Schmitt, German legal scholar.
The Hegelian Alexandre Kojéve believed that the "End of History" would be marked by the definitive abandonment of all the hard questions. Humanity itself would disappear, but there would no longer be any conflict:
If Man becomes an animal again, his acts, his loves, and his play must also become purely “natural” again. Hence it would have to be admitted that after the end of History, men would construct their edifices and works of art asbirds build their nests and spiders spin their webs. . . . “The definitive annihilation of Man properly so-called” also means the definitive disappearance of human Discourse (Logos) in the strict sense. Animals of the species Homo sapiens would react by conditioned reflexes to vocal signals or sign “language,” and thus their so-called “discourses” would be like what is supposed to be the “language” of bees. What would disappear, then, is not only Philosophy or the search for discursive Wisdom, but also that Wisdom itself.
Carl Schmitt echoes these sentiments, albeit with rather different conclusions. In such a unified world, “what remains is neither politics nor state, but culture,civilization, economics, morality, law, art, entertainment, etc.” The world of “entertainment” represents the culmination of the shift away from politics.
A representation of reality might appear to replace reality: instead of violent wars, there could be violent video games; instead of heroic feats, there could be thrilling amusement park rides; instead of serious thought, there could be “intrigues of all sorts,” as in a soap opera. It is a world where people spend their lives amusing themselves to death.
Schmitt does not reject the possibility of such a world out of hand, but believes that it will not happen in an entirely autochthonous manner:
"The acute question to pose is upon whom will fall the frightening power implied in a world-embracing economic and technical organization. This question can by no means be dismissed in the belief that everything would then function automatically, that things would administer themselves, and that a government by people over people would be superfluous because human beings would then be absolutely free. For what would they be free?
This can be answered by optimistic or pessimistic conjectures, all of which finally lead to an anthropological profession of faith." Such an artificial world requires a “religion of technicity” that has faith in the “unlimited power and dominion over nature . . . [and] in the unlimited potential for change and for happiness in the natural this-worldly existence of man.” For Schmitt the political theologian, this “Babylonian unity” represents a brief harmony that prefigures the final catastrophe of the Apocalypse.*’ Following the medieval tradition, Schmitt knows and fears that this artificial unity can be brought about only by the shadowy figure of the Antichrist. He will surreptitiously take over the entire world at the end of human history by seducing people with the promise of “peace and security”:
God created the world; the Antichrist counterfeits it... . The sinister magician recreates the world, changes the face of the earth, and subdues nature. Nature serves him; for what purpose is a matter of indifference—for any satisfaction of artificial needs, for ease and comfort. Men who allow themselves to be deceived by him see only the fabulous effect; nature seems to be overcome, the age of security dawns; everything has been taken care of, a clever foresight and planning replace Providence? The world where everything seems to administer itself is the world of science fiction, of Stephenson’s Snow Crash, or of The Matrix for those who choose not to take their red pills. But no representation of reality ever is the same as reality, and one must never lose sight of the larger framework within which the representation exists. The price of abandoning oneself to such an artificial representation is always too high, because the decisions that are avoided are always too important. By making people forget that they have souls, the Antichrist will succeed in swindling people out of them.
Repeat that:
By making people forget that they have souls, the Antichrist will succeed in swindling people out of them.
"A direct path forward is prevented by America’s constitutional machinery. By “setting ambition against ambition” with an elaborate system of checks and balances, it prevents any single ambitious person from reconstructing the old Republic. America’s founders enjoyed a freedom of action far surpassing that of America’s subsequent politicians. Eventually, ambitious people would come to learn that there is little one can do in politics and that all merely political careers end in failure. The intellectual paralysis of selfknowledge has its counterpoint in the political paralysis embedded in our open system of government."
There is no culture without a tomb and no tomb without a culture; in the end the tomb is the first and only cultural symbol. The above-ground tomb does not have to be invented. It is the pile of stones in which the victim of unanimous stoning is buried. It is the first pyramid.
Rene Girard’s antithesis of Hobbes/Rousseau peaceful Social Contract, the war of all against all culminates not in a social contract but in a war of all against one, as the same mimetic forces gradually drive the combatants to gang up on one particular person. The war continues to escalate and there is no rational stopping point, at least not until this person becomes the scapegoat whose death helps to unite the community and bring about a limited peace for the survivors.
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