Socrates, Sworder & a Bad Omen

Roger Sworder 27th Dec. 1946 - 27th Oct. 2016

A BAD OMEN

Several days after the present writer returned from a year’s wandering around India, China and South-East Asia, and only a few weeks before Roger Sworder died, he walked around to Dr Sworder's house, two streets away. Dr Sworder came to the front door, but since it had been an unusually wet winter in southern Australia the wooden door had swollen with moisture and was jammed. The two men pushed and pulled but couldn’t open it. Finally, Sworder called out from inside, “You’ll have to go around the back!” So the visitor went around to the back door. When he walked in, Dr Sworder said to him, “That’s a very bad omen, my friend. We haven’t seen each other for a year and we couldn’t open the door.”

* * * 

In the Phaedo we see Socrates in jail awaiting his execution. His friends visit him and are confounded by his composure and his refusal to take any steps to escape. The immediate problem that the dialogue proposes is, ‘Why is Socrates not afraid to die?’ Fear of death is natural in human beings, surely, but Socrates again shows himself to be strange specimen. Not only is he not afraid to die, but he welcomes it. This is because, as he explains to his comrades, he has been preparing for death throughout his entire life, and he has been doing this by way of philosophy. Indeed, he says, philosophy is nothing else but a preparation for death, and the true philosopher spends his whole life in pursuit of death, seeking death, yearning for its consummation.

The interlocutors, Cebes and Simmias and the others, are taken aback by this, but Socrates insists it is so and much of the dialogue is concerned with presenting this doctrine: philosophy is a preparation for death. In philosophy, Socrates explains, we are concerned not with the ephemeral and accidental qualities of the physical realm and of things apprehended by the senses, but rather with the eternal and unchanging paradigms – Forms – upon which the world of becoming is modeled. The things of the physical realm serve to remind the philosopher of their eternal models and the whole of philosophy is the study of these models, first through their physical copies and thn in themselves. These models reside in the great darkness of eternity beyond the gates of death. Why then should someone who has spent their life contemplating the eternal Forms fear death? Instead, they should welcome it. This is how a philosopher ought to live their life. Contemplating the eternal forms, the Real, and, in this, pursuing death, release from the realm of change and flux.

At 62B, however, Socrates adds an important proviso. Although philosophy is the study of death and the philosopher seeks death with his whole being, he is forbidden from doing anything to directly hasten it. We are, says Socrates, like guards standing watch at our posts, and we have a binding duty to stand at our watch until we are relieved of that obligation. Taking our own lives is strictly forbidden. It is an allegory that the mystics tell us, Socrates says, that “we men are put in a sort of guard post from which one must not release oneself or run away”. It is, he says, “a high doctrine with difficult implications.”

This is the paradox that is at the heart of the Socratic life. On the one hand the philosopher must pursue death, love death, want nothing more than death – death, the realm of the timeless Forms; the telos of life lies beyond the horizon - and yet on the other hand he is forbidden from doing anything to bring it about. In this paradox lies the fullness of a life well lived, the philosophical life.

Roger Sworder spent his life teaching philosophy but also – more than any other man the present writer has ever met – practicing a life of philosophical contemplation. He was reclusive. Hhe dedicated his time to thinking the best thoughts about the best things. He pondered mathematics, music, astronomy and geometry. He trained himself in Pythagorean arithmetic until he had an uncanny ability to compute numbers mentally. He read and pondered the dialogues of Plato over and over. He immersed himself in the epics of Homer, memorizing them in the original Greek. He would spend weeks, months, tackling fundamental philosophical questions. The present author recalls the weeks, months, Dr Sworder spent sitting at his piano carefully constructing and studying and contemplating the musical proportions described in the early sections of Plato’s Timaeus. He wrote little but what he did write was deeply considered and concerned essential matters.

When the present author last saw him Dr Sworder proposed that they write a book together with the working title: Plato & the Philosophy of Ecstasy. In the Phaedo, where Socrates is confronting death, we are given a strongly dualistic rendering of the Theory of Forms. The Forms are eternal, unchanging, singular: the particulars of the created world, on the other hand, are ephemeral, ever-shifting, composite, and so on. There is the eternal soul on the one hand and the temporary housing of the body on the other. Sworder's interpretation of Plato went beyond this. He would point out that students typically read the Phaedo first among Plato's works, and come to the Parmenides - Plato's most difficult work - last. And yet chronologically this is topsy-turvy. In the Phaedo Socrates is at the end of his life. In the Parmenides he is a very young man. Plato has constructed his dialogues to be like this. As we read them we journey back through time, and philosophically we travel from the dualism of the Phaedo backwards to the ontological unity announced in the Parmenides. This is a consequence of the paradox described above. 

Plato, Sworder believed, is the philosopher of the ecstatic. The culmination of Platonic philosophy is an ecstatic vision of an optimum world. Sworderean Platonism is not world-hating. The created realm is, as the Timaeus puts it, the best of possible worlds, and to fully realise this - to appreciate just how best this best is - is an ecstatic experience. He felt that Nietzche was almost exactly wrong about Plato in this respect. Nietzche casts Plato as the dour and joyless Apollonian, but is not Socrates a pre-eminently Dionysean figure?, Sworder asked. “Socrates drives people mad!” he said. He wanted them to write a book on the theme of divine madness in Plato. He and the present author sat and catalogued many of the passages they might discuss in such a work. One of them is the death scene in the Phaedo where Socrates drinks the hemlock like it is a draught of honey. 

* * * 

When Roger Sworder was in a critical condition in hospital the doctors brought him out of his coma and asked him how he wanted them to proceed. He asked to be let go. He knew that his time had come. His watch had ended and his obligation done. A greater compulsion had intervened. As Socrates puts it to his comrades in the Phaedo, a man must stand at his post "until the gods send some necessity upon him..." Roger Sworder recognized that such a necessity had come to him. He might have opted for futile surgery, chemotherapy, a few more years subsisting on machines, clinging to life as if death is a mournful oblivion. Instead, he didn’t flinch. Whenever he talked about death he would tell people, "I can't wait!" In others this sort of talk is just bravado and jest. In a philosopher it is a studied attitude. Accordingly, the moment he had the chance he was gone. This was only proper for a man who had spent his life practicing the philosophy of Plato, and his fearless leap into the darkness of eternity is his ultimate lesson for all who studied under him.

Plato tells us that a soul is free of rebirth and achieves liberation if it lives three lives in a row as a philosopher. We might doubt that this was Roger Sworder's third and final incarnation devoted to philosophy, but all who knew him would agree that it was surely not his first. 

Yours,

Harper McAlpine Black 

Funeral Notice

Mencius Moldbug & NRx - Geeks for Monarchy

It should hardly come as a surprise to readers of this journal, nostalgic as it is, and replete with neocolonialist and anti-modernist sympathies, that the author is an avid reader of that brave breed of contemporary political thinkers who are gathered under the label Neoreactionary, or NRx for short. Chief among them is the character known, pseudanonymously, as Mencius Moldbug, who is perhaps - and it is no exaggeration - the only truly original political thinker of our times. It was the author's privilege to present a talk on the aforesaid thinkers, and Mr. Molbug in particular, at the Bendigo City Public Library as part of their Philosophy in the Library series, on the cold, rainswept evening of October 3rd last. This posting relives the presentation made that evening by way of the slideshow to which the author, as presenter, spoke. The talk, due to last an hour and intended to be introductory and accessible to the general public, went briefly as follows:

1. The presenter explained that he had had chosen to introduce an element of contemporary political philosophy to the series since political philosophy tends to be under-represented. Everyone bangs on about something called "ethics" in philosophy these days. Boring. There is, in fact, a whole 'Dark Enlightenment' of new poltical thought waiting to be discovered. 

2. A slide to sooth those made restless by a political topic. Ancient Alexandria and the great lighthouse, an emblem of Neoreaction. This too a means of taking the presentation back to ancient times...

3. The presenter declared his personal affinities and interests. He is, above all, a Platonist and is reading the NRx through the lens of Platonic political thought. Specifically, Plato (especially the Republic) gives a comprehensive critique of democracy, but where in contemporary thought can one find any serious engagement with that critique? The presenter has found kindred spirits in this regard among the Neoreactionaries. But, he wonders, are they just rehashing the arguments of Thrasymachus and co.? Do they go beyond the assertion that 'might makes right'? The presenter supposes that this is the central problem in Western political philosophy. Where do the NRx stand? 

4. A key slide that announces many themes. The quotable Mr. Nicholas Land points out that the evils of democracy were thoroughly understood in European classical antiquity and yet today it amounts to an unquestioned religious dogma. How did we get to this impasse? The presenter admits that he is especially interested in the notion that democracy is now a religious creed since religions - including secular ones - are among his areas of concern, both professionally and privately. Where philosophy veers off into religion is exactly his territory. 

5. Introducing the Neoreactionaries. They, like the present author, are bloggers. 

6. The main blog in question is - or was, since it is no longer a going concern - Mr. Molbug's 'Unqualified Reservations'. Recommended browsing. 

7. It all began with an unassuming blog post in 2007. Moldbug was fooling around in his garage one day and decided to invent a new political philosophy... 

8. The title 'Formalism' then required a little explanation. Mr. Moldbug took it from legal philosophy where the Formalists are mortal enemies of the Realists. The Realists (judicial activists) have been running amock in the US legal system since at least the 1960s. 

9. Moldbug has a keen interest in law and legal philosophy. (The point was made here that Plato encountered similar legal decay in Athens which, like the USA, became notoriously litigious.) 

10. A Molbugean principle. Limiting government is an invitation to an unlimited judiciary. Power, by its nature, is absolute. If you limit it in one area, another area will fill the void. 

11. So who is this character? No, Mencius Moldbug is not, in fact, his real name. Like many bloggers - including the present one - he writes under a playful pseudonymn. Real name: Curtis Yarvin. Computer geek. (Helpful voices in the audience pointed out here that once upon a time computer geeks were hairy leftists in sneakers. Moldbug is that new generation of anarcho-capitalist geeks firmly on the Right of the political spectrum. The social capital in Silicon Valley has moved.) 

12. Some intellectual biography. Moldbug began reading Ludwig von Mises, guru of the libertarian Austrian school of economics. But he ended up reading...

13. Thomas Caryle. This caused the presenter to digress with a brief life of Carlyle since these days virtually no one reads Carlyle or has even heard of him. Carlyle Revisited. The story was told of Mr. Carlyle's famous history of that great watershed the French Revolution... 

14. And how John Stuart Mill's housemaid burned the only copy in a famous mishap. 

15. So famous, in fact, that here the incident is shown in a contemporary Japanese illustration. Stoic and Scottish, though, Carlyle sat down and wrote it again. 

16. This deserved a few juicy quotes from the Scottish sage, such as this one. The Carlylean prose style in action. 

17. And this one.

* * * 

18. Cut to Edmund Burke who also gave us an account of the French Revolution. The point here was that Moldbug and the Neoreactionaries are not Burkeans. In fact, they're not a lot of things. Let us list a few...

19. They are not Neocons. That's for sure. 

20. And nor are they Cuckservatives - those miserable political cuckolds of the contemporary Right who are happy to have Whigs screw their wives and daughters and take whatever they want as long as they - the Cucks - can have the money. The bogus Right. 

21. And they are not patriots either. There is a big assortment of odd characters on the political Right. In Leftist fantasies they are all the same (because Leftists are all the same, since Leftism by definition is collectivist.) The Right is characterised by great diversity. 

22. There are the libertarians. Moldbug started out as a libertarian but, as we will see, grew out of it. 

23. There are also the so-called 'National Conservatives' of various sorts. Big in Japan. Big in most places, in fact. But NRx is not that either. 

24. And they are not neo-Nazis, no matter what their critics might say. From the NRx viewpoint Nazism was, well, National Socialism, and in that a socialism like any other. 

25. At this point the presenter considered it wise to remind the audience of Godwin's Law. Whigs live in strange little bubbles. If they ever encounter an idea from outside that bubble their first instinct is to cry, "Nazi!" and to consider the argument done. But no, NRx is not Nazism either and has little or nothing in common with Nazism. 

26. Is it, then, Traditionalism? That, the presenter explained, is perhaps nearer the mark, although not quite. Some NRxers like reading Julius Evolva, it is true. Yet the NRx are against "universalism" - something to which many 'Traditionalists' are prone. 

27. Then is it, someone asked, Alt Right? Well, yes, more or less. Alt Right being a broad designation for a wide range of ideas on the political Right that are NOT Burkean, Neocon, Cuckservative or any of the others. The Alt Right is otherwise known as the Real Right - as opposed to the compliant gutless mainstream New World Order Right that has been a total disaster in conservative politics over the last two generations or so. It is not inaccurate to characterise the Neoreactionaries as Alt Right, of a sort. 

28. By now, after twenty-seven slides, the audience was visibly restless. What exactly is a Neoreactionary anyway? they wwere eager to know. 

29. The presenter showed them the lighthouse at Alexandria again. 

30. And then a map of the so-called 'Dark Enlightenment'. This confused everyone but it did at least get across the idea that Neoreaction is diverse. (Hot topics such as Human Biological Diversity were avoided during this exposition.)

31. So, a quote from Mencius again. What does he want? Government that is (a) extremely small, (b) extremely efficient and (c) extremely strong. As distinct from what libertarians typically want.  Remember - he started life as a libertarian but turned into a Neoreactionary when he grew up and read Carlyle.

32. A further account of what Neoreactionaries want. A future among the stars. 

33. Some examples. The XVIIIth C. tradition of enlightened absolutism of Frederick the Great and such XXth C. examples as Singapore, Hong Kong, Dubai. The return of the City State. 

34. Supplemented by a nice quote from Nick Land. 

35. And then the presenter drew attention to the last part of the Nick Land quotation. What is Neoreaction? What do they propose? What sort of world do they envisage? Mr. Land spells it out here.

* * *  

36. The presenter then provided a quick display of cat memes to underline key NRx themes. Every Philosophy in the Library lecture, he believes, requires a cat meme interlude. (For some in the audience, this was the highlight of the whole evening.)  

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41. For more information, the presenter directed attendees to the Hestia Society, NRx front group. (There was some discussion of the motto 'The only morality is civilization'. Hobbsean, what?) 

* * * 

42. Turning now to a few salient NRx themes. First, Moldbug's notion of the 'Cathedral' = The Whig Establishment. 

43. A quote from Land to further the point.

44. And - to the delight of some in the audience, and the shock of others - a few slides illustrating Mencius Moldbug's deep hostility to universities and academics. (It became clear that this is a matter near to the presenter's heart. Moldbug, in his opinion - having spent a quarter of a century in academia - is on the money here.)

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51. By now the lecture is obviously running over time, so it is necessary to truncate the final section. The presenter offered several key themes of classical Moldbuggery. The first, and least contentious perhaps, is that social and political decay has been masked by technological change. NRx is a geek philosophy by geeks for geeks, and geeks should know. As the social fabric frays around us we stare at our iPhones and give it no regard. Waves of technological advancement mask political decline. This must be even more obvious in hi-tech Europe. 

52. Secondly, a key theme in Moldbug is the Puritan genealogy of Leftism. The presenter observed here - by the way - that is very different to the old Right where it was the Jews who were the bad guys. There is no anti-semitism in Moldbug - indeed, he's Jewish! On his reading of history (very astute and intelligent) the Whigs go back to Calvin. The presenter is enthused by this idea and again thinks that Moldbug is on the money. Leftists are Puritans. Leftism is a puritan religious cult. 

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59. And finally, a point of political philosophy certainly worth discussing. What is worse, weak or strong government? We remember that Plato's guardians are given absolute power. But doesn't absolute power corrupt absolutely? A potent theme in Moldbugean thought is that, on the contrary, it is weak governments that commit heinous acts. When a government feels threatened they round up their enemies and put them in concentration camps. Or they fail to act when action is needed, such as weak democratic governments that lack the fortitude to address debt. Plato was right about this too. Democracy floats in a sea of debt because no one will vote for necessary austerities. It thus becomes a orelude for tyranny. Better to have strong government that can act when action is warranted. This, again, is where NRx parts company with libertarians. 

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* * * 

The presenter went a full twenty minutes over time and hardly scratched the surface. There was, however, some lively discussion afterwards and the next day in another venue. 

Yours,

Harper McAlpine Black