The Remedies and Nostrums of Conservatism: A Misopogon Part II

This is part two in a two-part series.

 

Homo Bulla and The Philosophies of Magic

 

Sit tibi terra levis – May the ground be light on you

“Man is a bubble (Homo Bulla), they say;” writes Varro, the greatest scholar of ancient Rome, in his book on ‘On farming’, “in which case the proverb must be truer for an old man. And I am in my eightieth year, which warns me to pack up my baggage in readiness to journey out of this world.” (Varro, 1912, p. B) From this point on, the philosophies and the thinking I will write about find their best epitaph in these words of Varro.

In other words, “conservatism” now stands apart. [1]. Edmund Burke’s legacy, it seems, single-handedly, with thinkers such as Scruton and Oakeshott, is carried onwards by remaining worthy of the artistic appeal and a feeling necessarily connected with life, i.e., to make a home our dwelling place – enchantment. [2]. The conservatism that is more capable, and which we encounter more in our politics now, of what Nietzsche calls the “corruption of the text”, which in the absence of any deeper thought, appeals to ideas such as ‘the family’, ‘nation’, ‘my kind of people and religion’ and similar things. And, [3]. the conservatism with which I will deal now, the so-called “revolutionary conservatism“, (a denotation which finds its source in the book, and initially the doctoral thesis of the Swiss philosopher, unrepentant fascist and secretary of Ernst Jünger himself, Armin Mohler, “Die Konservative Revolution in Deutschland 1918-1932“). While Burke’s conservatism and the latter are similar in at least one way, I will not deal with conservatism caught up in certain ideas because its multiplicity makes it indefinable to deal with it in any meaningful way.

So where is the difference or the sameness between Edmund Burke’s conservatism and the revolutionary conservatism that Mohler testifies to?

I think that the division that Mohler saw between revolutionary conservatives (among whom he counts over 40 well-known thinkers such as Martin Heidegger, Ernst Jünger, Thomas Mann, Carl Schmitt, Ludwig Klages and others), and nationalism-socialism has little or no legitimacy. However, what can be said, and it is not difficult to conclude, is that revolutionary conservatism arose largely as a reaction to the ideas that liberal philosophies pushed forward, as did Burke’s conservatism. But the way how Burke talks to us about the preservation of heritage is different from the defense of the particular tradition of the revolutionary conservatives. To pay heed to Burke’s remedy with the feeling of enchantment as different from the nostrum of the conservative revolutionaries’ defense, this divide seems to be the case on a miniature scale, even in Albanian literature. For instance, Lukë Bogdani and Gjergj Fishta are the preserves par excellence of that which was and still is (especially the Fairy (Zana), the enchantment of which was preserved so without hostility that it has even entered the Albanian translation of the Bible, [Ezekiel, 3:15]), and definitely, Burke would have agreed when they show honor to life regardless of whose life it is by recognizing and honoring other heritages as well. (It is perhaps to show our love, or the lack thereof, of being a Burkean of conservation that we still call Naim Frashërin, a poet intoxicated by the philosophies of Rousseau and Voltaire, as our national poet. Compared to the sublime mysterium tremendum et fascinans verse of Fishta, Naimi sounds like someone who just recently started to write and read.) But when we talk, for example, about the works of Mid’hat Frashëri or even those of Ernest Koliqi (in whom the Fairy (Zana) is now not something to be preserved, but a means to mark the Albanian blood and race, which must be protected according to a certain tradition, always clean of unwanted features), then we are talking about a revolutionary conservatism and thus, a ‘little’ more than a dangerous conservatism. But why?

Burke’s conservatism and revolutionary conservatism agree that they are, ultimately, artistic projects: they use art in a particular way, one hiding itself behind it and the other pushing it forward. But while Burke finds it necessary to speak of a “moral imagination,” just as Oakeshott and Scruton speak of “morality,” they are concerned first and foremost with life – their art, it serves or should serve life. Enchantment is the becoming of the one who is alive. Although revolutionary conservatism started as an artistic project, in political action, it leaves art aside and to use the verses of the poet, whom Mohler considers a revolutionary conservative, and from whom Nazi Germany took concepts such as “the Reich of a thousand years”, “fire and blood” and “Nordic superman”, Stefan George –

“The walls are tapestried with velvet bloom

“– A fashion grown from some ancestral mood (stimmung) –

“Your arm in mine we come into the room

“And tell each other death is good.” (George, 1974, p. 149)

This conservatism is related to the concern, or the request that we lack this concern, about death. They seemed to be heading at the point where, when they talk about the death of the soul and only the body remaining (Klages), about the death upon which new things will flourish (George), being-towards-death (Heidegger) or even with the revival of völkisch movements and the denial of the Christian religion (for the Burkean kind, this religion has been durable and remained and we should be more careful when denying it), they are not afraid of death – but it is precisely this lack of fear in the face of death which, when the political action cleans away their artistic project, they are not afraid to bring it, blessed with Wagner’s music, in Auschwitz and Treblinka.

on-compos mentis – Of unsound mind

I think the conservative mind, the revolutionary mind to defend, and Burke’s mind to preserve are mad (marrëzi). But not in the sense that Mill called the conservative party (“the stupid party“), but in the sense that they are taken (driven mad: të marrë) by a feeling that one can hardly elaborate and that one can hardly live forever without feeling it. Where Burke or Scruton see enchantment in all that is, revolutionary conservatives take only a certain interpretation how things should be and make that the tradition that enchants them. Unlike Mohler and like-minded thinkers, I think that the holocaust is not just an act pushed forward as a result of the violence of Enlightenment ideas on the “soul of the people“. As I have argued, if Burke’s and Scruton’s concern is with the enchantment of the home: something has gone wrong when this home seeks to become the home of the world, for which neither Burke nor Scruton would have agreed; and what’s more, they themselves would say that this “universal [racial or similar of the revolutionaries’ defense] enchantment“, the revolutionary conservatives do not experience somewhere, but rationally create it themselves to respond to a certain tradition they want to protect, a tradition which makes them more similar than more distant to Nazi Germany. It is for this reason that I refuse to call conservatives revolutionaries as such, as Armin Mohler does, and I am of the thought that their designation should be the Philosophies of Magic, while their projects to be called Traditionalism. For if it is to be said, that if these traditionalist magical philosophies had an internal logic and consistency, then this consistency and this logic depends on their conviction that what was had to be affirmed, but only on one condition – if we believe their magic wand that they do not do everything according to the image of a tradition that they themselves created and push forward.

It is true that the liberal philosophies, with their definitions and with their deep traces in almost every constitution of present Europe, perhaps have to admit the hypocrisy and sometimes the same criticisms that they have made for their opponents (the hypothesis of the “natural state” is the groundbreaking hypothesis, that has thrown into the deeps of oblivion the lives of Europe’s best kings and revolutionaries): but in this essay I have not seen it fit to expand on this – because conservatism, although a reaction-to-the-Enlightenment, still calls forth a human feeling which is not a reaction against anyone or anything, except that it is there and we all experience it in the circumstances in which we are wired to encounter it. I think there is still room for this feeling in politics, and the nearer we are to Burke, the nearer we are to being worthy of knowing what we are preserving. But the closer we are to everything else, at least in conservatism, ideas against women, homosexuality or other houses (inhabited by people who also share their own enchantment) or if we accept the ideas from the philosophies of magic with their tradition ready to serve us – I think it is more than dangerous for these ideas to participate in our political and policy-making world. And I think their best place is in art, without the political action. Because in art, what happened to Stefan George is bound to happen now too; to Stefan George, who as the most famous poet and one of the most influential people in Europe of his time, leaves when the Nazis take power – refusing to be part of them. It is not that “revolutionary conservatism” separates itself from art; art separates itself from revolutionary conservatism. And it is this separation of art that leads us to the conclusion that it was the members of Stefan George’s circle who conspired the attempt to assassinate Hitler (Claus von Stauffenberg).

Now, when the more than danger of these nostrums in politics when they cause art to separate itself from them and the concern with death is elaborated, and then when Burke’s meaning stands embodied with life through enchantment, along with the conservatism caught up in ideas that has no idea what it is doing most of the time. I also need to mention that, to return to the beginning, Plato and Heraclitus again speak of a logos; a different logos, but still for a logos. It is Heraclitus, likewise, who speaks against Homer, which does not seem to be acknowledged anywhere by Plato when he mentions them together, but in whichever way the matter may be, in conservatism, Hyponoia does not call a ban on thought. We must also think beyond Burke (he himself would have preferred this rather than his thoughts to turn into a metaphysics of preservation), and we must certainly think beyond what the philosophies of magic try to do with their tradition. And if at all we still find ourselves at the crossroads of giving ourselves consolations for the feeling, or lack of it, of enchantment, I am of the opinion that perhaps we should listen more to Homer than to anyone else—

“παῦροι γάρ τοι παῖδες ὁμοῖοι πατρὶ πέλονται,

“οἱ πλέονες κακίους, παῦροι δέ τε πατρὸς ἀρείους.

“ἀλλ᾽ ἐπεὶ οὐδ᾽ ὄπιθεν κακὸς ἔσσεαι οὐδ᾽ ἀνοήμων,

“οὐδέ σε πάγχυ γε μῆτις Ὀδυσσῆος προλέλοιπεν,

“ἐλπωρή τοι ἔπειτα τελευτῆσαι τάδε ἔργα.”

(“Few indeed are the children like their father: / Most are worse, but few are better than their fathers / But since you will not be worthless or foolish, / Nor is the wisdom of Odysseus that has forsaken you altogether / (This is why you should have) hope that you will succeed in these things.”, Odyssey, Book II, verse 276-280.)

If there was at least one thought that would unite the preservers of the home from Homer, Heraclitus, Emperor Julian, Christianity (the latter one), to Burke and beyond, it is this – when we lose home, the journey to it – is ours and only ours alone. Anyone who starts talking to “us” to comfort us they are showing you a home that isn’t yours. Conservatism, in essence, is an alone and lonely journey. Conservatism is a misopogon (μισοπώγων, misopogon: beard-hater), like that of Emperor Julian to laugh at his own philosopher’s beard while showing others what they are forgetting. If a conservative can’t laugh at the lack of one’s own articulation – then that conservative is not enchanted. But just like in the political world, so in the art world, if one hasn’t translated or preserved the sense of enchantment so that others can at least understand it – one has failed. For by failing to reveal to the other the enchantment you experience, you have thus failed to feel your own enchantment yourself – to feel your own life yourself.

Conclusion

 

What is conservatism? My intention in this essay was to show not only that this wonder does not send us to a mere compendium or gathering of different views but that it sends us to a common human feeling. The feeling in which our belongings and our dwellings’ places take on a life of their own and become our homes is what Scruton rightly calls enchantment. The reasons why we have different histories about what it means to be conservative are to be found here (Scruton sees English Common Law as the embodied enchantment for the English). I have argued, then, that this feeling is central to understanding Burke and his legacy (which is furthered, single-handedly, by Scruton and Oakeshott) – and that these thinkers relate to each other because their thought is stranded on aesthetics first and foremost.

I have elaborated that we can find the antagonism towards this feeling even in the first drama of rationality and heritage, which Burke’s heirs have not considered enough, with Plato (Socrates) and Heraclitus and Homer. Where on the one side with Socrates, we have unchangeability, the good, the dianoia and the sacred or inner voice spirit (daimon), to achieve happiness, while on the other side with Heraclitus and Homer, we have what is and the deities as in becoming or changing, the hypotonia, the human daimon and the difficulty that in a world of perpetuity flux to have the hopes of embodying a paradise on earth – a paradise defined by those who cannot bestow another paradise except what they know as their own paradise (the regimes of the last century).

On Edmund Burke, I have dwelt more to show his difference with the liberal philosophies of the time, i.e., his thoughts on the social contract and what – here is also to be found why Burke’s legacy is that of enchantment – the nature of man is (art). Starting from his uses of the word art and elaborating on his views, I have succeeded in showing that the “cherishing” of “prejudices” is not wickedness as it is now often understood, but that it is the condition of the enchanted man, who opposes even the king, his kingdom, and the thought of the time – to show and appeal to the feeling of what his home is. The ban on slavery, the opposition to the abuses of the kingdom, the non-taxation of the American colonies, the state not interfering in its citizens’ lives, the non-divine law, and many other things are to be found here. Burke does not talk about power and defending the “status quo”; Burke preserves the enchantment and, thus, the feelings of one’s own home.

My argument why Burke’s philosophy is not an ideology but rather a method of policy-making is to be found in my distinction between heritage and tradition; that gives us two bodies of how they present themselves, that of preservation and defense. Heritage is only those things that remain, which we preserve even and primarily unconsciously, because we are enchanted by them, this is why Burke says that change is possible: given that human nature is art, everything is changeable, as long as we don’t have the confusion that arises when changing things brings old difficulties. Conservation has no enemies: conservation is simply an extension of the feeling of enchantment of things we experience as they are. Tradition is something else, tradition is a certain interpretation of the world, engraved and consciously defended. Tradition must have enemies because otherwise, it cannot exist. Burke speaks of heritage: the so-called “revolutionary conservatives” speak of the tradition.

I have distinguished three types of conservatism: [1]. that of Burke, [2]. that which is more similar to what Nietzsche calls “the corruption of the text”, the conservatism of the ideas of ‘family‘, ‘nation‘, ‘my kind of people and religion‘ and similar things, which refuses to explore its enchantment, [3]. and the revolutionary conservatism. I was not concerned with that conservatism, which refuses to examine itself, and I was more concerned with the distinction between Burke’s conservatism and the conservatism of the revolutionaries. Concluding that conservatism, whatever it may be, is an artistic project and relates more to our (if we are to talk about things through an outdated model) “irrational” than “rational” part. I have gone so far as to call all conservatives taken (driven mad, të marrë). The difference between Burke’s conservatism and revolutionary conservatism is to be found in the way they manifest themselves in policy-making. Burke’s conservatism and the revolutionary one are both artistic projects, but where Burke’s artistic project (with “moral imagination” and similar stable points) serves and is such because it should serve life, the project of revolutionary conservatism is concerned or seeks the mood to lack the concern, about death. I have argued that Auschwitz and Treblinka are not only reactions to the violence of Enlightenment ideas but that they are also artistic projects where art has been detached from them, and they have ended only with their only concern – death. Which they are not afraid to bring or experience.

I refuse to call conservatives revolutionaries as such, and I have labeled their thinking as the philosophies of magic and the compendium of their views as traditionalism, for they seek, by a magic wand, to conceal that they are interpreting what is in the way they think what is should be, and they are defending the tradition just, rationally, created (given what I have just said, one might reconsider putting Heidegger here: all the while, one has to recognize that his political actions, make his thinking more alike than dissipating before this tradition.) I have concluded the whole essay by saying that there is still a place in politics for Burke’s artistic project of life (naming his attitude a remedy), but not the conservatism of revolution or traditionalism with their artistic, nostrum-ridden projects of death. The latter have their place only in art (because art can domesticate them), and to them, as much as I have made a misopogon with Burke’s philosophy towards them, I have also shown them what they are forgetting. – The conclusion of their art (with Stefan George) and the verses of Homer.

 

References