rational control, leo strauss, manliness, etc.

Conservatives want to conserve the modern liberal political experiment. Seeing what good it has done (and understanding that it would take a physical and intellectual revolution to rapidly change regimes), conservatives want to be a friend of liberalism. And a good friend will praise what you have done that is good and help you to see and remedy your failures.

Liberalism, like everything human, is imperfect. While there is much good to be celebrated in liberalism, there is also much with which to be concerned. One danger and temptation liberals face might be called the desire for rational control. Modern politics, beginning with Machiavelli, is the attempt to explain and construct society in such a way that will prevent chaos and minimize suffering. Leo Strauss explains Machiavelli’s reasoning thusly,

[that] there is something fundamentally wrong with an approach to politics which culminates in a utopia, in the description of a best regime whose actualization is highly improbable. Let us then cease to take our bearings by virtue, the highest objective which a society might choose; let us begin to take our bearings by the objectives which are actually pursued by all societies. Machiavelli consciously lowers the standards of social action. His lowering of the standards is meant to lead to a higher probability of the actualization of that scheme which is constructed in accordance with the lowered standards. Thus, the dependence on chance is reduced: chance will be conquered.

What is Political Philosophy?,pp. 41

The Machiavellian character of our political life has also been reinforced by the determinism of modern natural science. The idea is that, if only the right system is established, or the right government and people put into place, than we will have true and final justice. Rational control is a decent enough idea, and has been weakened by the philosophers that followed Machiavelli; but taken to the extreme it is Utopian and can be dangerous, as the 20th century has shown. We must recognize there are limits to both our reason and our action. Some things we will not be able to prevent; some things we will not be able to fix.

The influence of the idea of applying rational control or social planning on our societies also affects the way we understand each other. In order to be controlled, human beings have to be commodified. In this process we lose our individuality and our personality. This commodification is something that is normally linked to capitalism, to the free market economy, but I think the actual source of this problem is even deeper. Harvey Mansfield of Harvard traces it down nicely in his recent book Manliness:

“Rational control tries to free itself from an individual self, which it sees as arbitrary, distracting, entangling, and irrational. So it works to diminish the importance of the individual. Professionalism makes one individual replaceable by another, for example, one doctor by another; technology makes available machines that work for anyone who submits to the requirements of their use; democracy gives authority to the multitude, it used to be said, or majority as we say – a certain number of undefined individuals. Individuals such as these are exchangeable for one another as they have no individuality. Lacking individuality is the way rational control likes us to be, that we can be governed without regard to our foibles and without encountering foolish excuses for resistance. Rational control believes in individualism rather than individuality, an individualism of individuals effectively alike, as in Hobbes’s state of nature. Nowadays it often speaks the language of diversity, but it believes in egalitarian justice that leaves manliness, the cause of diversity, unemployed.”

Manliness, pp. 234-235

A good way of understanding the significance of an idea is by contrast. The ancient understanding of politics was spiritual, moral, and teleological. Politics was about the good life and the good society. Peter Maurin, a modern but anti-modern thinker famously said, “a good society is one that makes it easy for you to be good.” The Ancients would nod their heads in agreement and the moderns would mostly disagree. (thanks Peter Kreeft) For modern political theorists, politics is not about the good life but about the functional, safe and stable society.

The Ancients and Moderns ought to be put into conversation. There is much to be learned from the dialogue. Contrary to perhaps the popular opinion, the American Founding is not totally detached from Ancient wisdom. In fact, a good case can be made that American political institutions incorporate a great synthesis of Ancient and Modern political thought; I hope to explore this idea some other time. It suffices for now to reference the quotation that is currently being used as a subtitle for this blog, as it is an excellent summary of what a wise Ancient thinker would say to the modern liberal democrat: “A free society cannot survive if we are so free that nothing is expected of us.”