Redstate

By Paul J Cella Posted in Archived | political philosophy — Comments (0) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

My colleague over at What’s Wrong with the World, Maximos, an old friend of Redstate to boot, is capable of some remarkable passage of philosophical synthesis. No doubt his prose style makes demands of the reader that bloggers are not accustomed to. Nevertheless, I know of few writers who can so ably render the dilemmas and disasters of modernity in politics. Herewith a sample, with some annotation by me:

In this, contemporary conservatives, right-liberals[*] almost to a man, disclose their philosophy as a mere modulation of the dominant political frameworks of modernity; we are creatures of affects and drives, desires, forces of attraction and repulsion, and political society is a contractual artifact engineered to facilitate, for the individual, the maximal potential satisfaction of appetites compatible with the MPSoA of all other individuals in the simulacrum of society[**]. The specific good of the political is the facilitation, and protection, of a regime of preference-satisfaction; the political is instrumental towards the acquisition of the objects of desire, and towards their security from the vicissitudes of history, the malice of our fellows, and, increasingly, the judgments rendered, from within the older teleological traditions[***], against the essentially disordered foundations of the age. In this respect, both left and right are modulations of a common theme, the left valorizing progressive lifestyle experimentation on the basis of sentimental identitarianism ("I have experienced repeated, persistent feelings of attraction to members of the same sex, and therefore, I am gay."), the right analogously valorizing a consumerist acquisitiveness ("I wish to enjoy all of the trappings of material abundance, as I define them, and no impediment should be placed across my path, no ethical crosswind should divert my trajectory."); both essentially want what they want when, how, and in the quantities they want it [****], and it is not the underlying disposition that distinguishes them, but only their objects, and the political doctrines expressive of the respective desire-object pairings.

______________________

* The term “right-liberal” originates with another WWwtW colleague, the mysterious ZippyCatholic. It refers, generally, to neoconservatives, mainstream conservatives and Republicans. Its purpose is not derogatory but rather explanatory: the idea is to capture with a useful label that vast swath of normal, sane, thoughtful men and women whose political position amounts to an embrace of the fundamental premises of Liberalism while critiquing (often very effectively) its excesses. In a Hegelian sense, they operate as the right wing of Liberalism, checking intemperance in pursuit of that system, but consolidating its general hold over the modern mind: the synthesis of the thesis of Liberalism in confrontation with its antithesis.

** See Locke, John and Hobbes, Thomas; also Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. There is a strong consensus, in political philosophy, that, whatever one thinks of it, the quintessential innovation of modernity in politics (i.e., Liberalism) is the posited materialism which sets forth man as a unitary creature, impelled to action primarily, or even exclusively by his material desires or passions. The urge to possess, to rule, to acquire power, the libido dominandi, is understood to be the primary engine of human politics. And “political society is a contractual artifact engineered to facilitate” this urge.

*** That is, the traditions overthrown by the modern revolution in politics — traditions which presented man as an inherently dualistic creature, in the world but not of it, materialistic and spiritual, affected by passions and desires but also drawn inevitably away from those toward an end (telos) that is outside the material world.

**** To the extent that Conservatism is a true alternative to Liberalism, and not merely a consolidator of it, it must set against acquisitiveness, passion and desire limitation, prudence, and higher purpose.