Berlin on Rousseau: The Philosopher of the Lower-Middle Class

Isaiah Berlin has probably one of the best readings of Rousseau (as in most philosophically exciting AND most in line with the authentic spirit of that lunatic great). From "The Idea of Freedom," included in his Political Ideas in the Romantic Age (emphasis mine):

This outlook and these opinions in their abraded, inflamed and morbid condition took the form - as so often both before and after him - of a violent, piously philistine attack on all that is refined, distinguished and unique in society, against that which could be considered in some sense withdrawn, esoteric, the product of exceptional elaboration or unique endowments, not immediately intelligible to the casual observer. Rousseau's furious onslaughts upon the aristocracy, upon refinement in the arts or in life, upon disinterested scientific enquiry, upon the lives and characters of all but the most immediate purveyors of objects useful to the average man - all this is not so much the cry for justice or understanding on the part of the representative of the insulted and injured helots, as something far more familiar and less respectworthy: the perennial distrust of moral or intellectual independence and freedom on the port of those spurious representatives of the middle class who found their voice in Rousseau, and who became progressively more influential in the nineteenth century - the believers in a solid, somewhat narrow, morally respectable, semi-egalitarian, privilege-hating, individualistic ideal, with its respect for work, success and the domestic virtues, its sentimental materialism and intolerance of differences - in short the great middle class of the nineteenth century, which becomes the enemy and the butt of all the révolté writers of that period, and which has survived so much more powerfully in America than in Europe today. Rousseau, so far from being the protagonist of the artist or the sans-culotte or the preacher of moral freedom, turns out to be an early and indeed premature champion of the lower middle class - the common man of our century - against not merely the aristocracy or the masses, but the uppers sections of the middle class, with its artistic and intellectual aims and demands and ideals, which prosperous peasants and industrious artisans - the 'common' men - obscurely feel to be a menace to their own more conventional, more deeply traditional, more rigidly set moral and intellectual values and decencies, with their solid protective crust of prejudice, superstition and faith in the sound, the kindly and the commonplace, concealing beneath a solid surface an elaborate network of social sensibilities and snobberies, passionately clung to, and a jealous consciousness of precise status and position in a profoundly hierarchical society. Rousseau is a poor, or rather deliberately self-blinded, sociologist, who threw dust in the eyes of many generations by representing as a rustic idyll or Spartan simplicity - the immemorial wisdom of the land - what is, in fact, an expression of that small-town bourgeois and class-conscious outlook, admittedly in an abnormal and diseased condition, which made him peculiarly aware of the vices and errors of the last days of a collapsing feudal order, and peculiarly blind to the deficiencies of that social outlook and those ideas which his own fiery genius did so much to enthrone in their place. In short, he was a militant lowbrow and the patron saint of the enemies of intellectuals, long-haired professors, avant-garde writers and the intelligentsia - the advanced thinkers - everywhere.

Of course this is all said with an Oxford sneer. But nevertheless, I think Berlin has captured much of the spirit of Rousseau. He's a great critic of luxuriating intellectual elites and a ruthless defender of entrenched popular prejudice. Does this make him a champion of the lumpenproletariat? Of the Trump voter? 

James Kent on Alexander Hamilton

Some interesting remarks from James Kent's "Memories of Alexander Hamilton."

What first struck Kent was Hamilton's "masterly" efforts "to reanimate the powers of the Confederation, and to infuse life, vigor, and credit into that languishing system" (283). This is all clear from Hamilton's early efforts beginning in 1782 to centralize the fiscal state of the nascent Confederation and to raise revenue for the national government. Hamilton was just 25 years old at the time:

it will abundantly appear, in the subsequent history of his life, that his zeal for the establishment of a national government, competent to preserve us from insult abroad and dissensions at home, and equally well fitted to uphold credit, to preserve liberty, and to cherish our resources, kept increasing; and that his views grew more and more enlarged and comprehensive as we approached the crisis of our destiny ... he did more with his pen and tongue than any other man, not only in reference to the origin and adoption of the Federal Constitution, but also to create and establish public credit, and defend the government and its measures, under the wise and eventful administration of Washington" (288).

Kent is effusive on Hamilton's talent as a lawyer (though he notes the competence of American lawyers at that time was nothing inspirational). When he was arguing before the Supreme Court of NY, Hamilton was just 27.

On Hamilton's role in the constitutional convention, Kent writes that Hamilton's "avowed object was to make the experiment of a great federative republic, moving in the largest sphere and resting entirely on a possible basis, as complete, satisfactory, and decisive as possible" (299). It is clear that in Kent's judgment, Hamilton was the indispensable figure in the crafting and ratification of the constitution. Particularly notable, I think, is the praise of Hamilton's oratorical skill in dominating the ratifying debates in New York state.

I think the most interesting discussion is of Hamilton's role as Treasury Secretary.

Summarizing the report on manufactures:

He contended that the encouragement of manufactures tended to create a more extensive, certain, and permanent home market for the surplus produce of land, and that it was necessary, in self-defense, to meet and counteract the restrictive system of the commercial nations of Europe. IT was admitted, however, that if the liberal system of Adam Smith had been generally adopted, it would have carried forward nations, with accelerated motion, in the career of prosperity and greatness. The English critics spoke at the time of his report as a strong and able plea on the side of manufactures, and said that the subjects of trade, finance, and internal policy were not often discussed with so much precision of thought and perspicuity of language (314-5).

Kent also brings to my attention Hamilton's pseudonymous pamphlets in favor of neutrality written under the names "No Jacobin" and "Pacificus." Kent thinks especially highly of Hamilton's "Camillus" pamphlets defending the Jay treaty. Kent predicts these will be long read, but I'd never heard of them.

By 1798, Hamilton's stance of neutrality had turned somewhat more bellicose, as he demanded a far firmer military response to potential French aggression.

Kent also quotes Washington's praise of Hamilton, which I hadn't seen before:

He declared Hamilton to be his 'principal and most confidential aid; that his acknowledged abilities and integrity had placed him on high ground and made him a conspicuous character in the United States and even in Europe; that he had the laudable ambition which prompts a man to excel in whatever he takes in hand; that he was enterprising, quick in his perceptions, and that his judgment was intuitively great.' (320)

After his tenure in government, Hamilton returned to the law, where many of his most important cases dealt with libel and defamation:

While he regarded the liberty of the press as essential to the preservation of free government, he considered that a press wholly unchecked, with a right to publish anything at pleasure, regardless of truth or decency, would be, in the hands of unprincipled men, a terrible engine of mischief, and would be liable to be diverted to the most seditious and wicked purposes, and for the gratification of private malice or revenge. Such a free press would destroy public and private confidence, and would overawe and corrupt the impartial administration of justice. (325) 

Kent also recounts a dinner he had with Hamilton in April, 1804, where Hamilton expressed disappointment that he had not fully developed a systematic account of jurisprudence built "upon the principles of Lord Bacon's inductive philosophy. His object was to see what safe and salutary conclusions might be drawn from an historical examination of the effects of the various institutions heretofore existing" (328).

And here's quite a remark! "I have very little doubt that if General Hamilton had lived twenty years longer, he would have rivalled Socrates, or Bacon, or any other of the sages of ancient or modern times" (328).

Orwell on the National Anthem

George Orwell's complex if deep sense of nationalism is well known. (Even if his distinction between patriotism and nationalism is less than convincing).

Here are the final paragraphs of "My Country Right or Left." Perhaps of some relevance in understanding the boiled rabbits of our day: 

If I had to defend my reasons for supporting the war, I believe I could do so. There is no real alternative between resisting Hitler and surrendering to him, and from a Socialist point of view I should say that it is better to resist; in any case I can see no argument for surrender that does not make nonsense of the Republican resistance in Spain, the Chinese resistance to Japan, etc. etc. But I don’t pretend that that is the emotional basis of my actions. What I knew in my dream that night was that the long drilling in patriotism which the middle classes go through had done its work, and that once England was in a serious jam it would be impossible for me to sabotage. But let no one mistake the meaning of this. Patriotism has nothing to do with conservatism. It is devotion to something that is changing but is felt to be mystically the same, like the devotion of the ex-White Bolshevik to Russia. To be loyal both to Chamberlain’s England and to the England of tomorrow might seem an impossibility, if one did not know it to be an everyday phenomenon. Only revolution can save England, that has been obvious for years, but now the revolution has started, and it may proceed quite quickly if only we can keep Hitler out. Within two years, maybe a year, if only we can hang on, we shall see changes that will surprise the idiots who have no foresight. I dare say the London gutters will have to run with blood. All right, let them, if it is necessary. But when the red militias are billeted in the Ritz I shall still feel that the England I was taught to love so long ago for such different reasons is somehow persisting. 

I grew up in an atmosphere tinged with militarism, and afterwards I spent five boring years within the sound of bugles. To this day it gives me a faint feeling of sacrilege not to stand to attention during ‘God save the King’. That is childish, of course, but I would sooner have had that kind of upbringing than be like the left-wing intellectuals who are so ‘enlightened’ that they cannot understand the most ordinary emotions. It is exactly the people whose hearts have never leapt at the sight of a Union Jack who will flinch from revolution when the moment comes. Let anyone compare the poem John Cornford wrote not long before he was killed (‘Before the Storming of Huesca’) with Sir Henry Newbolt’s ‘There’s a breathless hush in the Close tonight’. Put aside the technical differences, which are merely a matter of period, and it will be seen that the emotional content of the two poems is almost exactly the same. The young Communist who died heroically in the International Brigade was public school to the core. He had changed his allegiance but not his emotions. What does that prove? Merely the possibility of building a Socialist on the bones of a Blimp, the power of one kind of loyalty to transmute itself into another, the spiritual need for patriotism and the military virtues, for which, however little the boiled rabbits of the Left may like them, no substitute has yet been found.