Re: LS Confronting power

From: David L Thomas (dlt44@ipa.net)
Date: Mon Apr 12 1999 - 18:05:13 BST


Carmen, Diana, LS power players,

I asked
> If this is true and war destroys this stuckness would not one, under MoQ, have to view
>it as ultimately moral and good?

[Carmen answers]
>never

[from Groliers on war]
"In most modern societies the resort to war usually occurs only when other
methods of resolving differences have been exhausted. [They're STUCK] The
generally preferred means of resolving differences among modern nations is
through discussion, negotiation, and compromise--the tools of diplomacy. When
diplomacy cannot resolve issues vital to the fundamental interests of the
involved parties, war--the ultimate tool of diplomacy--may result. War, as
described by the 19th-century military writer Carl von Clausewitz, is the
continuation of policy by other means--that is, by forceful, violent means."

[Dave]
While I agree with you're sentiment [no war, ever] I don't believe that MoQ
excludes it just expands the "means of resolving differences" by helping to
understand that a delicate balance between static and dynamic must be
maintained.

[Diana]
> If would have been nice to see the context of the quote, because at first
> sight it seems wrong.

[Dave]
The quote is from a book by Cornel West in the section discussing Lionel
Trilling. It is credited to Trilling's first book (Matthew Arnold 1939).

West's setup to the quote was:

Trilling's major criticism of Arnold is precisely what one might expect of a
young Marxist influenced critic of American pragmatism: the relative neglect
of political and economic power when considering the impact of critical
intelligence in society.

[Full Quote from Trilling's Matthew Arnold]

"The everlasting question of philosophical politics is how to place power and
reason in the same agent, of how to make power reasonable, or how to endow
reason with power. Clearly a state-which implies power- is required because
some classes or individuals refuse to conform to reason and must be coerced
for the good of the rest...
  Arnold's theory of state does not hold up as a logical structure, nor does it
hold up as a practical structure. Its failure is the typical liberal failure,
for it evades- it was intended to evade- the problems of what H.N. Brailford
calls " the crude issue of power..always the last of the realities that
sensitive and reasonable men can bring themselves to face."

Since Brailford's quote is three times removed from the author it would take
some searching to find the original context. Some insight into the context
might be forthcoming from looking at it from the historic perspective.
Pragmatism and Marxism were the first contemporary philosophies to talk
substantively about the issues of power. This was primarily made necessary as
a result of the changes manifested by the Industrial Revolution; the fruits
and spoils of which were peaking during the Victorian Era (1838-1901) when
Emerson (Essays, 1st Series 1841, 2nd Series, 1844 etc.) and Marx (Economic
and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, Communist Manefesto-1848, etc) were
developing their philosophies. As you can see in the list below a majority of
pramatists, prior to Trilling, were born in this era.

THE PRAGMATISTS- R.W.Emerson
(1803-82)Peirce(1838-1914)James(1842-1910)Dewey(1859-1952)Hook(1902-89)C.Wright
Mills(1916-62) W.E.B.DuBois(1868-1963) Reinhold Niebuhr(1892-1962) Trilling(1905-75)

American Pragmatism came of age during the life of John Dewey (1859-1952). The
following is a list of wars (most certainly not complete) that occurred during
his life span.

2nd Opium War, China vs Britain (1856-60)
US Indian Wars (1850-1890)
US Civil War (1861-1865)
War of the Triple Alliance Paraguay vs. Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay. (1865-70)
Franco-Prussian War (1870-71)
War of the Pacific-Bolivia vs Chile (1879-84),
First Sino-Japanese War (1894-95)
Spanish-American War (1898)
Russo-Japanese War (1904-05)
Russian Revolutions(1905-1923)
Italo-Turkish War (1911-12)
Balkan Wars (1912-13)
World War I(1914-18)
Chinese Civil War (1916-1928)
Chaco War,Bolivia and Paraguay (1932-35)
Spanish Civil War (1936-39)
World War II (1939-45)
Chinese Communist Revolution(1936-1949)
The 1st Palestine War (1947-49)
India,Pakistan War (1947-48)
The Korean War (1950-53)

So it must have become self evident by 1939, at the start of the Second World
War after "The War to End all Wars", that men, and more particularly
philosophers, would have to bring themselves to face and develop strategies to
deal with "the crude issue of power"

We see now the results of Marx's philosophy in dealing with the issues of
power, maybe MoQ as a continuation of Pragmatism will have better results.

Dave

MOQ Online - http://www.moq.org



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