July 31, 2007
In his Enlightenment and Terror ----The Thomas More Lecture, Amsterdam, 2004--John Gray links enlightenment and terror with the belief in progress. He says that:
The belief that the accelerating advance of knowledge produces a better world is a myth. Now I am far from thinking that humankind can do without myths, and the myth of progress may once have been useful. It may be that some of the genuine advances of recent times—such as the prohibition of torture--could not have been achieved without it. Yet the myth of progress has long since become harmful. It suggests that by remoulding human beings the evils of human life can be eliminated—an idea that is one of the main sources of terror in the late modern world.
The Jacobins believed through the use of terror they could reshape human nature on a more virtuous model. Lenin followed them in this belief and used terror on a much larger scale. At the same time he gave state terror a theoretical foundation. Communism was not just an ethical ideal. It was the only possible result of a scientific understanding of history. In using terror Lenin believed he was advancing the progressive forces of history.
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This is a rather overwhelming bit of reading --intimidating in its scope. And it contains a passionate and welcome condemnation of the revolutionary agenda of the American neocons.
However, I'm so habituated to think of philosophies as the product of social relations, rather than the other way around, that I lose interest after a point.
Which really came first -- Strauss's interest in Plato and Machiavelli, or his lived, physical aversion to democracy and desire to tutor a ruling elite? And what presented the neocons the opportunity for their right-wing revolutionary experiment but the 100 year history of the American empire?
Who can even say for sure if the neocon "philosophers" believed what they said, or simply found these ideas useful propaganda?