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March 25, 2004
In an interesting post called Literature's Gift, which is about finding the culture of the Times Literary Supplement arid and dry (I too am repelled by that literary culture), Lars makes a passing comment. He says " Perhaps I should admit that I am not up to writing on politics." In reading that sentence I thought it is very hard for philosophy to engage with the actuality of politics. Politics is so different to reason.
How so?
In his Recollections of a Bleeding of a HeartDon Watson captures a crucial aspect of politics that is often overlooked. Watson talks of politics in terms of animals capturing, killing and devouring another. The line between triumph and despair is narrow. What propels you one minute blows back in your face the next. It is a life of intense emotional ups and downs.
He then offers a description of Paul Keating, the former Australian PM. Keating, Watson says, was governed by an instinct or calculation that not all human action derives from, or responds to, reason. Watson says this means that:
"...there is an impulse to war and self-destruction, a need for faith in things that are not rational, and a tendency to chaos--perhaps because chaos has cleansing or redemptive qualities."
That is right. It is about the impulse to war and self-destruciton.
How can that be expressed in terms of philosophy? It is difficult. Another word that is often used is rat cunning of the politician as a street fighter. They have the smarts to make it up as they go along in a world of Heraclitean flux.
When you think about it Thomas Hobbes got it right. It's all about frightening people in need of security. Frightening them into accepting that protection from the fear (of terrorism) requires obedience.
When I taught Hobbes in an undergraduate course at university I tried to make sense of Hobbes in Marxist terms. Hobbe's insights I opined could be viewed as being a political philosophy based on free competion of the newly emerging capitalist market. That is one way to interpret his state of nature and his view of humanity.
My experience in working in the heart of the political machinery of federal parliament is that Hobbes expresses a fundamental presupposition of politics and politicla philosophy.
The state of nature is the expression of the unreason of politics. It is what is concealed by normal political realities. It is a world of evil (treachery and savagery), dynamic chaos and destruction.
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