Floating Utopias

Plato is widely regarded as the father of utopian schemes, but the reputation is undeserved. Any critical reading of the Republic reveals that Socrates' famous description of an ideal polity is not intended as a utopian programme and there is no expectation that such a state could or should ever be realised on earth. In fact, his purpose is to describe justice in the soul of man, and it is only by analogy that he gives an account of justice in a state. All the same, Plato remains the fountainhead of Western political imagination; no other philosopher offers as much to those who would dream of a better world. Not only has Socrates' tour de force in the Republic stimulated political thinkers throughout the ages, but so too have other Platonic dialogues, most notably the Critias, the work in which we find the celebrated description of the lost continent of Atlantis. The detailed description of the great maritime city of Atlantis is often touted as the well-springs of science fiction; the sustained imagination of a fictitious world. As well, it is often regarded as the first great adventure in civic design. Built according to a geometric schema in a series of concentric circles, the Atlantean city is the first and most extraordinary instance of an imagined polis in the Western tradition. 

It is without hesitation, therefore, that we can nominate Plato as the forebearer of recent schemes to construct designed city-states in pursuit of a better political future. The world today is sagging under the strain of broken institutions and it is abundantly clear that the current structures are incapable of offering new solutions. Specifically, a world of eleven billion or so human beings is being poorly served by some 150+ nation states mired in structures and patterns of governance largely created to address the impasse that followed in the aftermath of World War II. Such states are both unwilling and unable to forge new ways to address new realities. We are surely on the edge of a brave new world, but mid-XXth century solutions are hopelessly, even dangerously, inadequate for the task.  

In the face of this, certain people - not prepared to wait for calamities to overtake us - are looking to new models, and it is no accident that Plato's maritime utopia, Atlantis, underpins them. This is the strategy of the so-called 'seasteading' movement. Despairing at the ossified inadequacy of existing nation states, certain brave souls have looked seaward into the neutral waters of open oceans as a space in which to construct exemplars for the dawning era. The essential idea is to use modern engineering methods to build small city-states at sea, beyond the reach of existing national boundaries. There, in international space, free of stultifying regulations, paralysing tax regimes and overbearing governments, communities of innovators and entrepreneurs can experiment with bold solutions to contemporary and emerging problems. 

At the forefront of this movement is the Seasteading Institute. See their website here. Of recent times they have negotiated a deal with French Polynesia to construct the first 'seastead' in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. To that end, they have conducted an international contest for designs for the new city-state. The rationale for such a venture is both simple and old: it is a matter of demonstrable historical experience that city-states that extract themselves from corrupt and inefficient nations and stand alone are, by virtue of optimum size and flexibility, able to forge ahead and become remarkably prosperous. The outstanding example of it in modern times is Singapore. Once the Singaporeans removed themselves from the moribund inertia of Malaysia they didn't look back. Other cities could do the same except that the territorial jealousy of modern nations prevents it. The solution, then, is to step outside of the nation-state system and build cities beyond their territorial waters. Unburdened by inept governments, such free polities can become adventures in utopian living. 

The Republic of Rose Island - coat of arms.

The modern precursor to the current 'seasteading' movement was a short-lived experiment in Italy in the late 1960s. The engineer Giorgio Rosa fund the construction of a large platform in the Adriatic Sea outside of Italian national boundaries. He named it the Republic of Rose Island and declared esperanto as its national language. It was intended as a stand-alone micronation with restaurants, bars, a post office and accommodation with minimal government. The whole structure was in fact an adaptation of the same technology used to construct oil drilling platforms, and it looked like it. Thus:

The Italian government, however, viewed the entire venture as a tourist gimmick designed to avoid taxation. The republic had declared independence on 24 June 1968 but the Italian navy invaded on February 13 1969 and destroyed the facility outright. This brief and ill-fated episode in 'seasteading' is the subject of the film 'Island of the Rose: Freedom is Frightening', see here:

The new Seasteading Institute hopes for a happier outcome. It is sponsored by numerous wealthy individuals, such as Peter Thiel, and is supported by a growing community of highly educated people frustrated by the inability of existing governmental systems to deal effectively with mounting contemporary issues. The first principle of a seasteading city-state is minimalist government, but also - within that - a willingness to experiment with new systems and methods of government and organisation. 

All of this sounds very reminiscent of certain phases of Mencius Moldbug's musings on neoreaction. There was, at one point at least, his vision of a world of small Singaporeanesque city-states in open competition with one another, with citizens free to exit whenever they liked in their search for a commodious place to reside. Such city-states would be technological hubs run at a profit with appropriate corporate modes of governance. The seasteading movement is clearly a related phenomenon and as such provides an insight into the motivation behind much neoreaction, namely that NRx is instigated and populated by a high IQ and technologically savvy cohort who are at their wits end when confronted by the failure of existing governmental systems to embrace the possibilities available to us. NRx, that is, grows out of the yawning disparity between what might be done and what existing governments will permit. The neoreactionary, finally, says, "Damn it! We'd be better off under a benevolent dictator!" Similarly, the seasteader says, "Damn it! We'd be better off living on an oil platform in international waters!" 

National authorities are very likely, as we saw in the case of the Republic of the Rose, to view these ventures as exercises in tax evasion. And so they might be. But what, it might be asked, is wrong with that? If a city-state can prosper and advance with minimalist government and low taxation, why not avoid bloated high taxing bureaucratic red-tape hell-holes? The strategy of heading out to sea to avoid government regulation is well established. There are cases in the ancient world, all the way through to L. Ron Hubbard's Sea.org. But as the case of Mr Hubbard should remind us, this raises other issues, for it is not only incentive-destroying taxation and unwarranted and overbearing regulation that such people seek to avoid. The name 'seasteading' is adapted from the American term 'homesteading' and evokes a nostalgia for the wild west, but in that it also evokes the most American of delusions, the confusion between freedom and lawlessness. The 'wild west' was beyond the frontier, and, by definition, beyond the reach of the law. It is a persistent American myth - alive and well among so-called 'libertarians' - that this equates to freedom (which in turn equates to the highest human good.) No doubt there is a certain amount of such libertarian delusion driving 'seasteaders' and among them are those who seek 'free spaces' in order to indulge in dubious, if not criminal, violations. Among the high IQ and technologically savvy, for instance, you will find people looking for places outside of civilised scrutiny so they can indulge their dreams of transhuman monstrosities.

More promising, though, the 'seastead' offers the hope of a revival of the polis, the city-state, as the natural and most appropriate unit of human civilisation. Neoreaction's admiration for the city-state (Singapore, Hong Kong, and so on) is not unfounded. Leaving aside the recent resurgence of state-based nationalism, which might be applauded for other reasons (anti-globalism), the finer particularism of the city-state offers far greater scope for human diversity and protection from the evils of one-world universalism. The seasteaders are not mistaken about this. The creation of a myriad seabound city-states, each with different modes of government, different purposes for different peoples, unburdened by the primitive, restrictive concerns of existing nations, can only be deemed a positive step into the future. 

* * * 

For all of that, the present author remains especially underwhelmed by the entries to the Seastead Institute's architectural contest (see examples above and below). The concept of the utopia-at-sea New Atlantis is fine in itself, but the designs are unexciting. In most cases, what we have is Lego Land on water. There is rather too much Buckminster Fuller in these designs. Futuristic pretensions. Modular dreariness. An unrelenting artificiality that, in practice, makes people unhappy. Let us note that much of the success of city-states like Singapore and Hong Kong  comes not just from the small scale of the enterprise and the openess of governments to creative and productive citizens but also to the deep traditional rootedness of the Chinese. Their success lies precisely in their ability to combine modernity with tradition. It is not an easy formula to reproduce. With few exceptions, attempts by the Arabs to create viable modern city-states in the Persian Gulf and elsewhere have been far less succesful (as anyone who has ever spent longer than a weekend in Doha will tell you) and their architect-designed cities-on-water are, in the main, stagnant and horrid.

Why the future needs to look like a cross between a P & O Liner and an oil rig is a mystery. There was certainly nothing rosy about Giorgio Rosa's Republic of the Rose. Roses may have adorned the micronation's coat of arms, and the above-referenced documentary may wax about freedom and liberty, but the structure itself was pure ugliness. Who would want to live on that? Who would even want to avoid tax on that? There is no avoiding it: ugly buildings make ugly people. An artificial Lego Land in French Polynesia or anywhere else soon encounters very real complications of human reality. It is a pity that the guidelines for architectural designs for the Seastead Institute's contest do not make any concessions for the human need for beauty; the proposed floating cities are entirely concerned with utilitarian requirements (and getting their snout in the climate-change trough) which, no matter how clever in themselves, reveal an impoverished and shallow estimation of the human being. Plato, the distant father of these seabound utopias, made no such underestimation. 

Yours,

Harper

Holes in Oblivion: Sex and the Sacred in Eric Gill

"Man is composed of matter and spirit, both real and both good."

There is enough distance now from the watershed year of 1989 to revisit the life and work of the great English engraver and master craftsman Eric Gill. Up until that year Mr Gill had been a favourite of many, including the Traditionalists with whom the present author was at that time associated. Gill was touted as an outstanding modern representative of the traditional arts and crafts and no less an authority than A. K. Coomaraswamy wrote in his favour with great enthusiasm. But then a tell-all biography that drew upon his previously unreleased diaries was published and the rather deviant sexual life of the artist became public knowledge. It was revealed that throughout much of his adult life he had been happy to frolic not only with his wife and innumerable lovers but with his sister, his daughters and his dog as well! He recorded these exploits in detail in his journals and appears to have had no qualms or conscience about them at all. His reputation suffered.

He is, for this reason, a strange case. His extraordinary sexual life was in glaring contrast to his devout Catholicism and his undoubtedly sincere spiritual demeanour. Indeed, he seems to have been perfectly able to combine his erotic experimentalism with an otherwise monkish life and a deep dedication to the traditional arts. Those that knew him praised him as "the married monk." He founded the Guild of St Joseph and St Dominic, a guild for Catholic craftsmen informed by a Dominican monastic spirituality (see below). He was dedicated to a revival of Catholic aesthetics and to pioneering a new spirit of Christian art against the ugliness of modern mechanisation. 

At the same time, though, as one of his daughters would later relate, he had an endless fascination for the erotic and in no way felt this to be at odds with his spiritual vocation. He is thus an enigmatic figure, or seems so to us, being a peculiar meeting of convention and deviance, high purpose and errant appetites. It is unfortunate, because he is far more interesting than the salacious sex life that has overshadowed him: he is an artist of great importance and entirely deserved the reputation he enjoyed prior to the 1989 revelations. He single-handedly led a revival of a traditional artistic sensibility and style appropriate to the modern era and the modern predicament. There are few things as decadent as sculpture in the modern era: Eric Gill led a one-man restoration of the art. Beyond question, he is one of the most significant religious artists of the modern era.

Yet we dwell now upon his erotic misdeeds and find him either fascinating or villainous, or both, and cannot refrain from viewing his work through a far more erotic focus than before. It rarely occurs to us in this that, whatever the facts about Mr Gill's private life, we of the XXIth century, though we bask in our own estimations of the degree to which we are "liberated" from the strictures of the past, are extraordinarily prudish and will send public figures to purgatory for the slightest sexual indiscretion. Gill was guilty of more than indiscretions, but we need to ask whether we are really in a position to fully understand such an artist. Our own erotic culture is, in fact, both narrow and shallow. In particular, popular morality has no accommodation for collaborations of sex and the sacred, whereas traditional cultures invariably do. 

For Gill, in himself and also in his work, as we see it now, was absorbed by two things, sex and the sacred, and in his own mind he sought to reconcile them and, moreover, he did this through Catholicism. This is reported by those who knew him well. They relate that his conversion to Catholicism was in order to reconcile the sexual and the spiritual dimensions of his life. True, this does not seem to have included observing Catholic moral codes, but all the same Eric Gill found a unified vision of the erotic and the sacred in the Catholic faith. How? Are we really in a position to understand it? We live in times when feminist critics just yell "Rapist!" when Mr Gill's name is mentioned. They want him stricken from history. We live in times of on-going moral outrage. In politically intense times such as these we are not in much mood to try to understand the contradictions of Mr Gill's inner quest for meaning. 

The kiss of Judas

Catholicism, all the same, is - when compared with Protestant forms of Christianity - a sensual, physical and visceral spiritual temperament. Protestantism is, by nature, much more cerebral and abstracted. It is a faith of ideas. Catholicism is a faith of physical encounter. And this is what Mr Gill wanted. He needed a spirituality that was deeply physical, even sensual. Protestants rarely appreciate this about Catholicism: that it offers a deeply sensual spiritual encounter. There is the deep sensuality of the Eucharist, the visceral literalism of the Real Presence. There is the deep empathy for the suffering on the Cross, for the wounds of Christ, the passion of Christ. There is the cult of relics - bones and other remnants pillaged from the corpse of saints. Works are physical acts. Devotion takes a physical form. This was entirely in accord with Gill's character. He was a sculptor by trade and temperament. He was a man of touch. Tangibility was a spiritual fact for him. He worshipped with his hands. He adopted the motto: "Man is composed of matter and spirit, both real and both good.” He found this doctrine realised in his Catholicism. 

Madonna and Child with Angel

Much of the time in Catholicism, though, this sensuality manifests in forms that are sadomasochistic rather than in forms of erotic celebration. There is no gainsaying this fact. Catholic eroticism, where it enters Catholic piety and zeal, tends to the sadomasochistic. Nothing is as tangible as pain. Other converts to Catholicism have turned to the hair shirt, flagellation and extreme penances; for Gill - against all the moral teachings of the Church, it is true - it was a case of giving himself to unrestricted sexual curiosity. 

A cynical view would be that this was entirely opportunistic, and convenient, the ruse of a lech, the narcissistic self-excusing rationale of a deviant sex criminal. But we have Mr Gill's art as a counter argument to this. There is nothing sordid or gratuitous in his work. Instead, it is - as we see very well now - a lifelong dialogue between the erotic and the sacred, congruent with and testifying to the sincerity of his life. His was a sincere attempt to live according to the motto: "Man is composed of matter and spirit, both real and both good" and his art, as much as his diaries, is a record of this motto realised. 

His autobiography,(see here), begins with a chapter entitled 'Holes in Oblivion', being scattered recollections from his childhood. This is the oblivion, we might say, into which his reputation was cast after his sexual misdeeds were made public. He went from being a widely celebrated and saintly artist to suddenly being reviled and having his works removed from galleries and public places all across England. The Traditionalists with whom the present author was associated suddenly dropped him as their model of the modern spiritual craftsman. All the same, his work still speaks for itself - through holes in oblivion, as it were - and is a beautiful, if now problematic, record of Mr Gill's spiritual quest. This writer, at least, is still prepared to hold his work in high esteem and to try - putting aside all moral squeamishness - to understand it as a deep and sincere encounter of sex and the sacred such as has rarely occured in Catholic piety. 

*

*  *

*  *  *

This is one of the most explicit images whereby Mr Gill brings together his two obsessions, the sexual and the sacred. Called 'The Nuptials of God' it depicts Christ having sex on the cross. This is a defining image - the quintessential Eric Gill. 

The harem. Much of Mr Gill's erotica is orientalist, depicting Near Eastern or Asian women.

* * * 

Entitled 'God Sending'. Phallic creativity continues the work of God the Father. 

Mr Gill's sexuality was inseparable, it seems, from his artistic identity. Much is explained by his theory of art. He held the view - and regarded it as traditional and therefore historically normal - that the artist co-operates with (participates with) God in His creation. Creating is a divine act. The artist is a creator by extension from the Creator Himself. Mr Gill, that is, worshipped a deity in its demiurgic aspect which, in the Christian account, is God the Father. The feminists are right about him. His religion is essentially patriarchal. It celebrates the creative male god. This is to say, it is essentially phallic. His position is exemplified by a drawing labelled 'God Sending' (see above) which shows God send (acting through) a young ithyphallic male: the phallic male as an agent of God, the phallus as the divine instrument of creation, erotic energy as the divine creative impulse in the universe and in man. That is central to the entire theological outlook of Eric Gill. 

* * * 

GILLS SANS

Mr Gill was intent on renovating the entire landscape of modern industrial life. One of his greatest creations was the font type now known as Gill Sans. It is arguably his most enduring legacy. It has been one of the most popular and widely used fonts of the modern era. Shortly after its creation it was taken up by British Railways for their signs and publications, and somewhat later it was adopted as a standard font by Penguin Books. 

As well as Gill Sans, Mr Gill crafted numerous other fonts especially for the purposes of religious works. His typesetting and illustrations for Bibles are rightly famous:

*

*  *

*  *  *

The Guild of St Joseph and St Dominic 1920-1989

THE CONSTITUTION OF THE GUILD

The Guild is a society of Catholic craftsmen who wish to make the Catholic Faith the rule, not only of their life but of their workmanship and to that end to live and work in association in order that mutual aid may strengthen individual effort.
Supporting themselves and their families by the practice of a craft, the members choose St. Joseph as their patron. Further, having found the Dominican Order their most explicit teachers, they also place the Guild under the patronage of St. Dominic.

The Guild holds;

That all work is ordained to God and should be Divine worship.
As human life is ordained to God so must human work be. We cannot serve God and Mammon but we can love God and our neighbour. The love of God means that work must be done according to an absolute standard of reasonableness; the love of our neighbour means that work must be done according to an absolute standard of serviceableness. Good quality is therefore twofold, work must be good in itself and good for use. (From ‘Actus Sequitur Esse’, The Game, Sept.,1921).


That the principle of individual human responsibility being a fundamental of Catholic doctrine and this principle involving the principle of ownership, workmen should own their own tools, their workshops and the product of their work.


The Guild therefore aims at:



Making the goodness of the thing to be made the immediate concern in work.


Undertaking and imposing only such work as involves responsibility for the thing to be made.

Making the good of the work and the freedom of the workman the test of its workshop methods, tools and appliances.

THE RULES.

Members shall be

Practising Catholics

Earning their living by creative manual work

Owners of their tools and of their work.

Admission to the Guild shall be by the unanimous consent of the members.

Applicants for membership who fulfil all conditions for admission shall be postulants for at least one year and shall be known as Qualified Postulants.

Applicants, such as apprentices, may be admitted to membership who do not yet fulfil the third condition for admission, but shall remain postulants until such time as they are able to fulfil it and shall be known as Unqualified Postulants.

The approval of the Guild must be obtained for the entrance of any apprentice or employee to a member's workshop and such apprentices or employees must be Catholics.

A Guildsman may not enter into workshop partnership with a non Guildsman.

The members shall elect annually a Prior who shall represent the Guild in all its affairs and superintend the work of such other officers as may be appointed. He shall generally take care that the Constitution be observed.

There shall be a meeting of the members at least once a month to decide whatever may be required. Postulants shall attend the Guild meetings but without a vote.

It shall be the Guild's duty to encourage understanding and practice of its principles among its members by arranging occasions for their discussion and exposition.

Guildsmen shall meet in the Chapel for prayer in common on such regular occasions as may be arranged.

There shall be a regular Guild subscription for the upkeep of the Chapel and other expenses.

The Guild owns its land and buildings under the name of the Spoil Bank Association Limited.

The property is intended for occupation by Guild members and for use for Guild purposes only.

The Guild shall administer its property through its officers and at its meetings, but the property accounts shall go through the books of the Spoil Bank Association only.

Membership of the Guild shall include membership of the Spoil Bank Association Limited.

Yours,

Harper

Menexenus - Socrates Dancing Naked

There are few readers of Plato who take much delight in the strange little work entitled Menexenus. Among the works attributed to Plato it stands out as especially enigmatic and unusual. Rather than a dialogue, it is a long recitation by Socrates, uninterrupted, of a patriotic Periclean funeral oration. Its purpose and its place in Plato's writings is disputed on every point. Except as an extant example of the genre of Athenian funeral orations, it is largely uninteresting with no obvious philosophical merit.  The present writer, however, regards it as a delight and has a particular attachment to it. This follows from his doctoral work on Plato's Timaeus. He found that the Athenian patriotic mythology that underpins the cosmology presented in Timaeus is presented clearly and directly in the Menexenus and there are important themes common to the two works. He is inclined, therefore, to think that there is a deeper purpose to the Menexenus than at first appears. Although, having said that, he is fully aware of the great difficulties that the work presents. In this sense it is delightful just as a conundrum. If it is not profound, it is certainly intriguing. We might think of it as one of Plato's puzzles. 

Some of the difficulties concerning the Menexenus, with other notes, are presented below:

*

*  *

*  *  *

Firstly, its authenticity should be regarded as doubtful. In large measure it depends upon notices in Aristotle. The present author has a policy of not reading Plato through Aristotle and rejecting claims where only Aristotle makes them. Without corroboration from other sources, we are right to doubt that Plato was the author of this work. XIXth century scholars regularly questioned its authenticity, but not so scholars of the XXth century. The difference is explained by a shift in perceived connections between Plato and Aristotle. On the whole, the present author is with the XIXth century scholars on this and resists Aristotelean readings of Plato. 

There are, all the same, no counter traditions indicating another provenance have come down to us, and we must admit that the wider Platonic tradition has always regarded the work as by Plato himself. The fact that it is a strange work that seems entirely at odds with the rest of the Platonic corpus must count in favour of its authenticity: the tradition is unlikely to have adopted such a strange work unless it was strongly attested. 

Secondly, it commits blatant anachronisms of a glaring kind. How is this to be explained? Socrates, in the funeral oration he recites - which he says was taught to him by Aspasia, the famed mistress of Pericles - refers to events that happened some thirteen years after his death and after the death of Aspasia much longer. Plato is otherwise careful never to cross temporal verisimilitude: in the Menexenus it is shameless. There seems to be deliberate and systematic distortion of historical chronology. What is to be made of this? There is no chance it has been done in error - a slip of the stylus. So it must be by design. But what design? (Some have gone so far as to suggest that the Socrates we meet here is, in fact, a ghost.) 

This last point reflects, perhaps, the view of al-Farabi, the Mahometan Platonist, who, in his scheme, imagines that Plato wrote the Menexenus last of all at the end of his life. Its theme is death - it is a funeral oration. It is therefore the ultimate dialogue. Perhaps it reflects Plato coming demise in old age, and perhaps the Socrates of the dialogue is speaking from the dead. Or perhaps Socrates here - more than anywhere else - represents Plato himself. It is intriguing that al-Farabi places the Menexenus last among Plato's works. Its chronological position in the dialogues is widely disputed. For al-Farabi it was Plato's last word. This affords it an unusual prominence. The usual tendency is to bury it among the "middle dialogues" so-called where it will be least conspicuous and hopefully not cause too much trouble. 

Regarding the content itself, the question immediately arises: to what extent is it parody? There is no agreement about how to read the work. Some regard it as parodic while others regard it as serious. Some - it is a view with which the present writer is in sympathy - suppose it is both. 

This problem is compounded because there is no clear purpose to attributing the oration to Aspasia, and then the problems concerning the identity and character of Aspasia are themselves doubly confounding. Socrates says that he had Aspasia as a teacher. What are we to make of this report? Aspasia is an enigma. On the strength of this report she is, like Diotima, depicted as a wise philosopher-ess, a female patron of Athen's seers. (See the picture at the head of this page.) More commonly, though, she is presented as a prostitute, emblematic of sensuality, and in a famous incident Socrates is said to have dragged Alcibiades from her embrace back to the life of philosophy, the 'House of Aspasia' being synonymous with a den of sensuality, as shown below:

Most every reader concedes that there is irony in Socrates' words. "Here is a speech I learned from Aspasia..." But at whose expense? What is the point of the irony? The conventions of Platonic irony very often promote disagreement among his readers. No instance of it is more widely disputed than this. There is irony, certainly, when Socrates proclaims that Aspasia taught him formal rhetoric, but no one can agree on the shape and object of the irony. This means that there are numerous entirely divergent ways to read the text. 

Who cannot detect irony in Socrates' speech at the outset of the dialogue?


O Menexenus! Death in battle is certainly in many respects a noble thing. The dead man gets a fine and costly funeral, although he may have been poor, and an elaborate speech is made over him by a wise man who has long ago prepared what he has to say, although he who is praised may not have been good for much. 

The speakers praise him for what he has done and for what he has not done - that is the beauty of them - and they steal away our souls with their embellished words; in every conceivable form they praise the city; and they praise those who died in war, and all our ancestors who went before us; and they praise ourselves also who are still alive, until I feel quite elevated by their laudations, and I stand listening to their words, Menexenus, and become enchanted by them, and all in a moment I imagine myself to have become a greater and nobler and finer man than I was before...

And if, as often happens, there are any foreigners who accompany me to the speech, I become suddenly conscious of having a sort of triumph over them, and they seem to experience a corresponding feeling of admiration at me, and at the greatness of the city, which appears to them, when they are under the influence of the speaker, more wonderful than ever. This consciousness of dignity lasts me more than three days, and not until the fourth or fifth day do I come to my senses and know where I am; in the meantime I have been living in the Islands of the Blest.

* * * 

As well as this, being patriotic in nature, the funeral oration has political implications, and so the work is important in determining Plato's political views and ideals. Parody and irony may change the political implications of the work quite dramatically. Is it a lampooning of the pretentious over-blown jingoism typical of Athenian political oration? Is it designed to expose the hypocrisy of the Athenian political class and especially the democracy that executed Socrates and scorned philosophy? Is it a critique of the use of historical appeal in Athenian political speeches? Is it a satire of political rhetoric in general? 

These are all possibilities. But it is also possible that the core of the work is of serious intent. On a simple reading it is patriotic in tone and adds weight to the view that Plato was, in all essential respects, a loyal and patriotic Athenian, an Athenian aristocrat himself, and the work is serious on that level rather than anti-Athenian in any sense.

As for the oration, whose speech is it really? Plato gives it to Socrates who in turn attributes it to Aspasia, whereas in tone and content it would not seem likely to belong to either of them. Very likely it was a separate composition and Plato has worked it into a framework featuring Socrates and then the distancing to Aspasia. The work bears comparison to Pericle's extant Funeral Oration found in Thucidydes History of the Peloponnesian War.

Yet, as we see in the passage quoted above, Socrates charges that such orations bewitch the hearer into a state of revery (semnos) - "living in the Islands of the Blest" - drunk on words. Is the Menexenus intended as a type of counter-charm, an inoculation, against the potency of political oration? 

* * * 

These difficulties would seem to be intractable. Even the most basic questions about the work are hotly contested. We can despair at this, or rejoice. It seems that it is only through the agency of a global view, which is to say in the context of Plato as a whole, that one can settle upon any particular reading of the Menexenus. Everything depends upon how one sees Plato in general. For the present author, though, this is a measure of the work's genius and is among the internal points of evidence that must count for its authenticity. In its own way it is a masterpiece. Who but Plato could compose such a perfectly obscure enigma? 

Even so, and in the face of such conundrums, this reader maintains that every work of Plato has a key. He draws attention to the following exchange at the beginning of the dialogue:

MENEXENUS: Then why will you not rehearse what she said?

SOCRATES: Because I am afraid that my mistress may be angry with me if I publish her speech.

MENEXENUS: Nay, Socrates, let us have the speech, whether Aspasia's or any one else's, no matter. I hope that you will oblige me.

SOCRATES: But I am afraid that you will laugh at me if I continue the games of youth in old age.

MENEXENUS: Far otherwise, Socrates; let us by all means have the speech.

SOCRATES: Truly I have such a disposition to oblige you, that if you bid me dance naked I should not like to refuse, since we are alone. Listen then: If I remember rightly, she began as follows, with the mention of the dead:

Two motifs appear in this exchange that are significant for understanding the oration that follows. Nothing - let us insist - is accidental in Plato. Every detail is important. It is often the seemingly odd and insignificant details, easily overlooked, that offer the keys that will open up the secrets of a Platonic dialogue.  In this case, we have, firstly, the "games of youth in old age" motif, and secondly, the "dancing naked" motif. Both, no doubt, are playful, but it is the play in Plato that often reveals most. 

Regarding the youth/age motif, it appears here but also it other crucial points in Platonic dialogues and everywhere it serves to introduce a certain body of material that includes, for example, the myth in the Politicus which is introduced by the device: "Listen, then, to a tale which a child would love to hear; and you are not too old for childish amusement..." Thus the oration in the Menexenus is placed in this category of material. It will be found that this material is on common themes and among them is the doctrine of autochthony, a central theme in the oration. The heart of the oration, which is really quite beautiful, is the following:

And first as to their birth. Their ancestors were not strangers, nor are these their descendants sojourners only, whose fathers have come from another country; but they are the children of the soil, dwelling and living in their own land. And the country which brought them up is not like other countries, a stepmother to her children, but their own true mother; she bore them and nourished them and received them, and in her bosom they now repose. It is meet and right, therefore, that we should begin by praising the land which is their mother, and that will be a way of praising their noble birth.

The country is worthy to be praised, not only by us, but by all mankind; first, and above all, as being dear to the Gods. This is proved by the strife and contention of the Gods respecting her. And ought not the country which the Gods praise to be praised by all mankind? The second praise which may be fairly claimed by her, is that at the time when the whole earth was sending forth and creating diverse animals, tame and wild, she our mother was free and pure from savage monsters, and out of all animals selected and brought forth man, who is superior to the rest in understanding, and alone has justice and religion.

And a great proof that she brought forth the common ancestors of us and of the departed, is that she provided the means of support for her offspring. For as a woman proves her motherhood by giving milk to her young ones (and she who has no fountain of milk is not a mother), so did this our land prove that she was the mother of men, for in those days she alone and first of all brought forth wheat and barley for human food, which is the best and noblest sustenance for man, whom she regarded as her true offspring. And these are truer proofs of motherhood in a country than in a woman, for the woman in her conception and generation is but the imitation of the earth, and not the earth of the woman. And of the fruit of the earth she gave a plenteous supply, not only to her own, but to others also; and afterwards she made the olive to spring up to be a boon to her children, and to help them in their toils. And when she had herself nursed them and brought them up to manhood, she gave them Gods to be their rulers and teachers, whose names are well known, and need not now be repeated. They are the Gods who first ordered our lives, and instructed us in the arts for the supply of our daily needs, and taught us the acquisition and use of arms for the defence of the country.

Thus born into the world and thus educated, the ancestors of the departed lived and made themselves a government...

This reader detects no direct satire in this account but rather a formula to which Plato returns in many forms. Compare the Politicus myth (which cosmologizes the Athenian autochthons) and the prologue to the Timaeus/Critias ensemble and its apparent connections with the Republic. In these structures - which extend across dialogues - first citizens are created and born (from the earth), then educated, then create government. All of this is under the auspices of Athena, goddess of wisdom and patroness of philosophy. Plato is a patriotic Athenian, but his patriotism is, as it were, esoteric. This is the main point that the present writer wants to bring to the study of Plato. Throughout his works he reveals certain "secret" aspects of the Athenian cultus. The Menexenus is among these works, although its first purpose is to provide a measure of common (exoteric) patriotism. 

As for the motif of Socrates "dancing naked", it should be understood in this "esoteric" sense and should be counted as a significant signal rather than merely a passing comment in jest. In the Aspasian oration we have Socrates "dancing naked". We meet Socrates in many moods and many modes in the dialogues of Plato: here he dances naked for us. Whatever this metaphor might mean, it signals that the Menexenus is, in fact, a very important and revealing work, a dance of words but one in which the real nature of the Platonic Socrates is revealed unclothed. 

Yours,

Harper McAlpine Black

The Authentic Reactionary - Nicolás Gómez Dávila

"The reactionary escapes the slavery of history because he pursues in the human wilderness the trace of divine footsteps."

- Don Colacho

Nicolás Gómez Dávila, better known as 'Don Colacho', is a hero of reactionary political thought but little known beyond those circles. He stands as an exemplar in a number of respects. Firstly, he was a private scholar who, being financially independent, devoted himself to compiling a library of great works and then to being absorbed in its books. He never so much as set foot in a university. He is a model of the independent scholar, uncontaminated by the toxins of official thought. He sets an example to be followed. If you are young and intelligent but find universities thoroughly diseased with Marxist pseudo learning, the alternative is to become successful in business (a career path that requires acumen rather than empty academic certification), attain financial independence early in life, then build a library of great works and allow it to be your teacher. That is what books are for; in an age in which the teaching profession is corrupt, books must be our teachers. 

But secondly, since he owned and immersed himself in a vast number of books Don Colacho understood very well that the last thing the world needs now is more books; what it needs are more and better readers. Accordingly, he was disinclined to write very much. Largely, he wrote aphorisms, and he collected and published them in book form only reluctantly. The most important of such collections is 'Scholia To An Implicit Text' which is listed as 'Out of Phase' reading on this present site, here. 

Such admirable restraint in a modern scholar is exceedingly rare. Rather, we live in an age in which scholars and boffins are interminably verbose; every scholar on the planet will shake your hand and begin a conversation with the phrase "Have you read my book?" There have been few men more bookish than Don Colacho, but he found the rush to publish unseemly. There are quite enough books in the world and generally speaking all the essential ones have been written. He almost counts as a modern intellectual saint just on this score: he has the uncommon good grace not to burden his readers with wordiness. Through aphorisms he expounded a philosophy of profound paleoconservative reaction: he proclaimed himself to be a Reactionary and wore the label with pride. His aphorisms constitute a treasury of reactionary thought: essentialized thoughts unlittered by verbiage or clap-trap.

He did, however, write some short essays, and among them one of the most essential is that entitled 'The Authentic Reactionary'. Here Don Colacho proposes that liberalism and conservatism are partial visions, and that the reactionary takes account of a fuller notion of reality. Both the liberal and the conservative, he says, labour under mistaken estimations of history. The reactionary, he says, stands in a proper relation to history, avoiding both miscalculations. This is a theme in the aphorisms too. In the tripartite schema he constructs, Don Calacho sees the reactionary as occupying a radical centre between two dire miscalculations. "History is neither necessity nor freedom," he writes, " but rather their flexible integration." He charts political philosophies against a spectrum extending from fate to free will. This essay is one of the great charters of reactionary ideas. It deserves to be more widely acknowledged. The full essay is presented below:

*

*  *

*  *  *

THE AUTHENTIC REACTIONARY

Nicolás Gómez Dávila

The existence of the authentic reactionary is usually a scandal to the progressive. His presence causes a vague discomfort. In the face of the reactionary attitude the progressive experiences a slight scorn, accompanied by surprise and restlessness. In order to soothe his apprehensions, the progressive is in the habit of interpreting this unseasonable and shocking attitude as a guise for self-interest or as a symptom of stupidity; but only the journalist, the politician, and the fool are not secretly flustered before the tenacity with which the loftiest intelligences of the West, for the past one hundred fifty years, amass objections against the modern world. Complacent disdain does not, in fact, seem an adequate rejoinder to an attitude where a Goethe and a Dostoevsky can unite in brotherhood.

But if all the conclusions of the reactionary surprise the progressive, the reactionary stance is by itself disconcerting. That the reactionary protests against progressive society, judges it, and condemns it, and yet is resigned to its current monopoly of history, seems an eccentric position. The radical progressive, on the one hand, does not comprehend how the reactionary condemns an action that he acknowledges, and the liberal progressive, on the other, does not understand how he acknowledges an action that he condemns. The first demands that he relinquish his condemnation if he recognizes the action’s necessity, and the second that he not confine himself to abstention from an action that he admits is reprehensible. The former warns him to surrender, the latter to take action. Both censure his passive loyalty in defeat.

The radical progressive and the liberal progressive, in fact, reprove the reactionary in different ways because the one maintains that necessity is reason, while the other affirms that reason is liberty. A different vision of history conditions their critiques. For the radical progressive, necessity and reason are synonyms: reason is the substance of necessity, and necessity the process in which reason is realized. Together they are a single stream of the standing-reserve of existence.

History for the radical progressive is not merely the sum of what has occurred, but rather an epiphany of reason. Even when reason indicates that conflict is the directional mechanism of history, every triumph results from a necessary act, and the discontinuous series of acts is the path traced by the steps of irresistible reason in advancing over vanquished flesh. The radical progressive adheres to the idea that his- tory admonishes, only because the contour of necessity reveals the features of emergent reason. The course of history itself brings forth the ideal norm that haloes it.

Convinced of the rationality of history, the radical progressive assigns himself the duty of collaborating in its success. The root of ethical obligation lies, for him, in the possibility of our propelling history toward its proper ends. The radical progressive is inclined toward the impending event in order to favour its arrival, because in taking action according to the direction of history individual reason coincides with the reason of the world. For the radical progressive, then, to condemn history is not just a vain undertaking, but also a foolish undertaking. A vain undertaking because history is necessity; a foolish undertaking because history is reason.

The liberal progressive, on the other hand, settles down in pure contingency. Liberty, for him, is the substance of reason, and history is the process in which man realizes his liberty. History for the liberal progressive is not a necessary process, but rather the ascent of human liberty toward full possession of itself. Man forges his own history, imposing on nature the errors of his free will. If hatred and greed drag man down among bloody mazes, the struggle is joined between perverted freedoms and just freedoms. Necessity is merely the dead weight of our own inertia, and the liberal progressive reckons that good intentions can redeem man, at any moment, from the servitude that oppresses him.

The liberal progressive insists that history conduct itself in a manner compatible with what reason demands, since liberty creates history; and as his liberty also engenders the causes that he champions, no fact is able to take precedence over the right that liberty establishes. Revolutionary action epitomizes the ethical obligation of the liberal progressive, because to break down what impedes it is the essential act of liberty as it is realized. History is an inert material that a sovereign will fashions. For the liberal progressive, then, to resign oneself to history is an immoral and foolish attitude. Foolish because history is freedom; immoral because liberty is our essence.

The reactionary is, nevertheless, the fool who takes up the vanity of condemning history and the immorality of resigning himself to it. Radical progressivism and liberal progressivism elaborate partial visions. History is neither necessity nor freedom, but rather their flexible integration. History is not, in fact, a divine monstrosity. The human cloud of dust does not seem to arise as if beneath the breath of a sacred beast; the epochs do not seem to be ordered as stages in the embryogenesis of a metaphysical animal; facts are not imbricated one upon another as scales on a heavenly fish. But if history is not an abstract system that germinates beneath implacable laws, neither is it the docile fodder of human madness. The whimsical and arbitrary will of man is not its supreme ruler. Facts are not shaped, like sticky, pliable paste, between industrious fingers.

In fact, history results neither from impersonal necessity nor from human caprice, but rather from a dialectic of the will where free choice unfolds into necessary consequences. History does not develop as a unique and autonomous dialectic, which extends in vital dialectic the dialectic of inanimate nature, but rather as a pluralism of dialectical processes, numerous as free acts and tied to the diversity of their fleshly grounds.

If liberty is the creative act of history, if each free act produces a new history, the free creative act is cast upon the world in an irrevocable process. Liberty secretes history as a metaphysical spider secretes the geometry of its web. Liberty is, in fact, alienated from itself in the same gesture in which it is assumed, because free action possesses a coherent structure, an internal organization, a regular proliferation of sequelae. The act unfolds, opens up, and expands into necessary consequences, in a manner compatible with its intimate character and with its intelligible nature. Every act submits a piece of the world to a specific configuration. 

History, therefore, is an assemblage of freedoms hardened in dialectical processes. The deeper the layer whence free action gushes forth, the more varied are the zones of activity that the process determines, and the greater its duration. The superficial, peripheral act is expended in biographical episodes, while the central, profound act can create an epoch for an entire society. History is articulated, thus, in instants and epochs: in free acts and in dialectical processes. Instants are its fleeting soul, epochs its tangible body. Epochs stretch out like distances between two instants: its seminal instant, and the instant when the inchoate act of a new life brings it to a close. Upon hinges of freedom swing gates of bronze. Epochs do not have an irrevocable duration: the encounter with processes looming up from a greater depth can interrupt them; inertia of the will can prolong them. Conversion is possible, passivity ordinary. History is a necessity that freedom produces and chance destroys.

Collective epochs are the result of an active complicity in an identical decision, or of the passive contamination of inert wills; but while the dialectical process in which freedoms have been poured out lasts, the freedom of the nonconformist is twisted into an ineffectual rebellion. Social freedom is not a permanent option, but rather an unforeseen auspiciousness in the conjunction of affairs. The exercise of freedom supposes an intelligence responsive to history because confronting an entire society alienated from liberty, man can only lie in wait for the noisy crackup of necessity. Every intention is thwarted if it is not introduced into the principal fis- sures of a life.

In the face of history ethical obligation to take action only arises when the conscience consents to a purpose that momentarily prevails, or when circumstances culminate in a conjunction propitious to our freedom. The man whom destiny positions in an epoch without a foreseeable end, the character of which wounds the deepest fibers of his being, cannot heedlessly sacrifice his repugnance to his boldness, nor his intelligence to his vanity. The spectacular, empty gesture earns public applause, but the disdain of those governed by reflection. In the shadowlands of history, man ought to resign himself to patiently undermining human presumption. Man is able, thus, to condemn necessity without contradicting himself, although he is unable to take action except when necessity collapses. 

If the reactionary concedes the fruitlessness of his principles and the uselessness of his censures, it is not because the spectacle of human confusion suffices for him. The reactionary does not refrain from taking action because the risk frightens him, but rather because he judges that the forces of society are at the moment rushing headlong toward a goal that he disdains. Within the current process social forces have carved their channel in bedrock, and nothing will turn their course so long as they have not emptied into the expanse of an unknown plain. The gesticulation of castaways only makes their bodies float along the further bank. But if the reactionary is powerless in our time, his condition obliges him to bear witness to his revulsion. Freedom, for the reactionary, is submission to a mandate. 

In fact, even though it be neither necessity nor caprice, history, for the reactionary, is not, for all that, an interior dialectic of the immanent will, but rather a temporal adventure between man and that which transcends him. His labours are traces, on the disturbed sand, of the body of a man and the body of an angel. History for the reactionary is a tatter, torn from man’s freedom, fluttering in the breath of des- tiny. The reactionary cannot be silent because his liberty is not merely a sanctuary where man escapes from deadening routine and takes refuge in order to be his own master. In the free act the reactionary does not just take possession of his essence. Liberty is not an abstract possibility of choosing among known goods, but rather the concrete condition in which we are granted the possession of new goods. Freedom is not a momentary judgment between conflicting instincts, but rather the summit from which man contemplates the ascent of new stars among the luminous dust of the starry sky. Liberty places man among prohibitions that are not physical and imperatives that are not vital. The free moment dispels the unreal brightness of the day, in order that the motionless universe that slides its fleeting lights over the shuddering of our flesh, might rise up on the horizon of the soul. 

If the progressive casts himself into the future, and the conservative into the past, the reactionary does not measure his anxieties with the history of yesterday or with the history of tomorrow. The reactionary does not extol what the next dawn must bring, nor is he terrified by the last shadows of the night. His dwelling rises up in that luminous space where the essential accosts him with its immortal presence. The reactionary escapes the slavery of history because he pursues in the human wilderness the trace of divine footsteps. Man and his deeds are, for the reactionary, a servile and mortal flesh that breathes gusts from beyond the mountains. To be reactionary is to champion causes that do not turn up on the notice board of history, causes where losing does not mat- ter. To be reactionary is to know that we only discover what we think we invent; it is to admit that our imagination does not create, but only lays bares smooth bodies. To be reactionary is not to espouse settled cases, nor to plead for determined conclusions, but rather to submit our will to the necessity that does not constrain, to surrender our freedom to the exigency that does not compel; it is to find sleeping certainties that guide us to the edge of ancient pools. The reactionary is not a nostalgic dreamer of a cancelled past, but rather a hunter of sacred shades upon the eternal hills.

Trans. RVY

Yours,

Harper McAlpine Black