In Search of the People (Part I)

We have previously discussed the role of Motte and Bailey tactics in leftist revolutionary thought. Words like critical thinking, education, racism, oppression, and genocide do not mean what most people think they mean. Specifically, they have nothing to do with physical violence, teaching people to read and think for themselves. Instead, these words are simply reduced to matters of whether you support the leftist revolutionary agenda. If you do not, then you are guilty of racism, oppression, and genocide. If you are a parent or teacher, you are guilty of failing to educate children and teach them critical thinking skills. Because of this, leftist revolutionaries are justified in using violence against you.

Here, I would like to turn to the word “people.” Within classical liberal thought, people are important in the sense that everyone should have equal rights and be equal before the law regardless of their birth or personal wealth. For leftist revolutionaries, while they pretend to support the masses, in actuality the People are those who support leftist revolutionaries as opposed to the vast majority of individuals who live in a country who are alienated from themselves and suffer from false consciousness. This has important implications for democracy. Democracy, for leftist revolutionaries, is about not elections and rule by the majority of voters. On the contrary, a country like North Korea is a true people’s democracy as Kim Jong Un represents the true consciousness of the People. This notion of the people goes back to Rousseau, who had even greater contempt for the masses than even Plato.   

Much of the story of leftist revolutionary movements can be seen as a search for the People. Leftist revolutionary intellectuals can never be more than a small percentage of any society. In order to seize power, they have needed to hold up some larger group and pretend to rule in their name. This has meant finding a group that not only is physically oppressed and demands reforms but is so alienated from the rest of society that their needs can only be satisfied through a complete revolution.

Consider the example of the French Revolution. The French political system in 1789 was in need of reform such as the elimination of feudal privileges and that the monarch should share power with a national assembly. These were things for which there was widespread support throughout French society. The problem for the French Revolution was what to do after the low-hanging fruit was dealt with in the summer of 1789. There was no national consensus for any truly revolutionary changes. As such, the radicals of the revolution ran into stiff opposition not just from aristocrats who fled abroad and supported foreign invasion to restore the ancient regime, but also from peasants. 

This challenge to the Revolution helped bring about the Reign of Terror. Robespierre was faced with the problem that for all his talk about the People, the majority of actual people in France were quite counter-revolutionary. As a Rousseauian, Robespierre’s solution was simply to define the People as those who supported the Jacobins, with himself then as the embodiment of the will of the People. He could then commit mass murder against Frenchmen in the name of the People and turn himself into a dictator. As the majority of Frenchmen lacked a revolutionary consciousness, they did not count as the People. As such, they needed to be reeducated or killed in order for the real people to come into themselves.

One of the main ways that the French Revolution influenced classical Marxism is that it taught Marxists to distinguish between peasants and urban workers and assume that only rural workers counted as the People. Peasants lacked a revolutionary consciousness. They still clung to Christian beliefs and the land that they worked on. Allow for some basic land reform to turn peasants into small landowners and peasants would turn into the staunchest defenders of the establishment. By contrast, Marxists assumed that urban workers could be turned into a properly revolutionary class. By moving to the city, workers could be assumed to have dropped their Christianity and their dreams of owning some land or a small business. Trapped under the heel of a capitalist boss, the worker would have no choice but to embrace a total revolution of society.

The main threat to urban workers developing a revolutionary consciousness was nationalism. Workers, having abandoned their precocial identity as living in a village or province, might, upon moving to large cities, choose to identify with the nation and believe that they could improve their lot by engaging in national politics instead of a global revolution. As such, nationalism needed to be denounced. Those who believed in their nation could not be the People. 

The classical Marxist opposition to the bourgeoise, religion, and nationalism helps explain the deeply seeded anti-Semitism within Marxism and the wider left. Historically, Jews have functioned as an economic class, a religion, and as an ethnicity. All three of these manifestations of Judaism were problematic from a Marxist perspective. Obviously, Marxists could not accept the role that Jews have historically played as merchants and moneylenders. Jews also needed to abandon their beliefs in being chosen by God. Finally, Jews could no longer think of themselves as a people but instead should assimilate into the wider human family. Take away Judaism as an economic class, a religion, and an ethnicity and there is nothing left. As such, for Marxists, Jews did not exist as a people and Judaism needed to disappear. Only by abandoning Jewish peoplehood could Judaism join the People. 

One of the ironies of Marxist anti-Semitism is that it was not lessened by the large numbers of Jewish Marxists. On the contrary, Jewish Marxists promoted anti-Semitism. To be accepted as a Marxist, a Jew needed to demonstrate that they rejected everything about Judaism. At most a non-particularist version of Judaism (Tikkun Olam) could be allowed to survive. Such a Judaism is not any kind of Judaism at all but it is useful for covering the fact that the goal is the elimination of Judaism. Following this logic, Jewish identity could be allowed as long as a Jew used their position as a Jew to denounce Judaism and argue that they were not being anti-Semitic in doing so on the grounds that they were Jewish and were fulfilling the true Jewish spirit of humanistic universalism.     

Oppression and Alienation: Understanding Palestinian Terrorism

This post owes a debt to Clarissa. I made the decision not to talk about Russia here for the purpose of space and lack of competency in the field but much of what I say here about Hamas and the logic of alienation being used to justify irrational cruelty as an end in of itself has been influenced by her discussions of Russia’s motivations for invading Ukraine and their sense of grievance against the West.

Classical liberalism is fundamentally concerned with physical oppression. The problem with the world is that there are people out there willing to burn people at the stake for believing the wrong things about the nature of the Eucharist or some other obscure metaphysical issue. If only people learned to interfere in other people's private lives a little less, the world would become significantly better, though still far from a perfect, place. This needs to be contrasted with the leftist revolutionary tradition stemming from Jacques Rousseau. Here, the central crime is alienation. To be clear, there is usually a connection between physical oppression and alienation. People who claim alienation will usually be able to claim some sort of historical persecution. This allows leftist revolutionaries to cloak themselves as struggling against some sort of oppression. The reality is that alienation is distinct from physical oppression. By blurring the distinction, leftist revolutionaries can claim that opposing them by definition makes you an oppressor and justifies their use of physical violence against you. This has important implications for understanding current events like the Israel-Hamas war and why people on the left are so willing to support Hamas even as it goes against every value the left pretends to support. 

With persecution, Zayid does a conscious malicious action to Umar, who is the passive victim. The logical implication of this is that Umar has the right to respond by doing bad things to Zayid to cause him to stop. With alienation by contrast, Umar is the victim of historical forces that Zayid might, in some sense benefit from, but are certainly not his creation. These forces render Umar passive and stop him from developing his authentic self as a member of a particular group. Furthermore, alienation might even cause Umar to develop a false consciousness where he becomes grateful to Zayid as his benefactor and comes to identify with Zayid's group. If Zayid were merely Umar's persecutor, he could do something about it; mainly, he could stop or at least lessen his persecutory actions. With alienation, there is nothing that Zayid can do. First, he is not the cause of Umar's alienation, just the practical manifestation of it. Second, any attempt, on Zayid's part, to help Umar will actually increase his alienation. With persecution, there can be more or less of it; with alienation, its mere existence is an ultimate evil. Despite the fact that Zayid is not responsible for Umar’s alienation, by equating alienation with physical oppression, Umar gains the moral right to harm Zayid even if Zayid is a good person who honestly wants to help Umar.

How does this thinking look when applied to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? Imagine a Palestinian living in Gaza before October 7. He is going to work in Israel and gets stopped at an Israeli checkpoint where a soldier beats him up. This would be physical oppression. In a classical liberal story, our Palestinian would get to work and his Israeli boss and co-workers would become aware of the injustices of Israeli rule over Palestinians. This they reject out of their liberal universalist humanism, which teaches that there is really no such thing as Israelis and Palestinians; rather, we are all united in a common humanity. As such, in addition, to getting the Palestinian to a hospital, the Israelis join with the Palestinian to protest against military abuse and work for a two-state solution or even a single secular liberal democracy for all. 

This story becomes quite different if we look at it from the perspective of alienation. Here, the primary crime of Israel is not any land they took from Palestinians or the occupation but the fact that they stand in the way of the development of a true Palestinian consciousness. From this perspective, the real threat is not the Israeli soldier. On the contrary, the soldier serves a valuable purpose. His persecution of Palestinians serves to awaken their consciousness as Palestinians, who as victims of Israel can claim moral superiority. By contrast, the liberal Israelis, through their universalist humanism, challenge the very notion of Palestinian identity. In fact, the more that they attempt to limit Israeli oppression the more they increase Palestinian alienation. It would not help if the liberal Israelis decided to leave their land and give it to the Palestinian. The Palestinian would still live under the hegemony of Western thought as he would be tempted to be grateful to the liberal Israelis and try to now be like them.  

To be clear, Palestinian alienation should be understood within the larger perspectives of Arab nationalism. Once upon a time, Arabs were a dominant power. Then came Imperialism, where Arabs came under European domination. More than just an injustice in the sense of persecution, it brought about alienation. Remember that, unlike the Mongols who destroyed Baghdad in 1258, the French and the British had a plausible argument that it was their right and moral duty to "civilize" Arabs. As such, Arabs lost their proper consciousness of being superior but also came to suspect that the West might really be better. To make matters worse, just at the moment that the British were finally leaving the Middle East, you had the establishment of the State of Israel and it turned out Arabs could not even defeat the Jews. This would imply that Arabs were really pathetic unless we assume that the Jews are the center of a vast conspiracy. The only way to escape this alienation is for Arabs to decisively demonstrate their superiority so that they no longer even have to compare themselves to the West. By destroying Israel and saving the world from the Jewish conspiracy, they would show that they had deserved to be on top as the movers of history all along. (To be clear, while being an Arab is not the same thing as being a Muslim, Islam can easily be substituted for the purpose of this narrative if that is what appeals to the particular individual.) 

Solving Palestinian alienation would require that Palestinians not only physically defeat Israel but do so in a way that gave them the moral high ground as the superior culture. This simultaneously means that Israelis must acknowledge that the Palestinians were right all along but that all the real work was done by Palestinians. Following the logic of Robin DiAngelo, Israelis would have to work to dismantle not only the State of Israel but also even the liberal Jewish identity that made it possible while acknowledging that, due to the enormous crime of Zionism, there is nothing that Israelis can ever do to atone for the unearned privilege of being Israeli. Even for Israelis to take credit for dismantling Israel would be an act of oppression as that would imply that Palestinians are not fully capable on their own and need the help of Israeli "white saviors." All credit must go to the Palestinians who not only defeated Israel all on their own but were magnanimous enough to allow Israelis the illusion of helping out of a desire to help even such loathsome beings as Israelis. In truth, Being an Israeli so twists a person's thinking that even their attempts to atone are secretly still attempts to exert power and therefore oppression. As such, there really is no way for Israelis to help Palestinians solve the problem of alienation. The closest that an Israeli can come is to acknowledge that there is nothing that they can do to atone for the crime of being Israeli but they can only strive to learn to better humiliate themselves. 

Clearly, Palestinian alienation cannot be solved and that is actually the point. As long as Palestinians never overcome their alienation, they can never be held responsible for any of their actions. Furthermore, they have a blank check to commit any atrocity. All of this becomes justified as part of the struggle against oppression. This is a highly attractive offer, one that few people have the mental health to resist.       

Once one recognizes this distinction between physical oppression and alienation, so much of what might confuse regular Westerners about the Israel-Hamas war begins to make sense. Why did Hamas seize power in Gaza after Israel left in 2005 and turn it into a terror base, building tunnels instead of trying to improve the economy? What sort of advocate for Palestine could have thought that attacking Israel on October 7th was a good idea knowing that it would lead to the current devastation of Gaza we are now seeing? Living in peace with Israel once Gaza could develop as its own state might have improved the lives of ordinary Palestinians but it would have still left them in Israel’s shadow, both economically and morally. To overcome their alienation, Hamas needs to defeat Israel militarily while claiming the moral high ground in the eyes of the world.

Most of the towns that were hardest hit were populated by Israelis on the left. These were people who worked hard to improve relations with Palestinians and provide employment for them. This kindness was repaid by Palestinian workers providing intelligence for Hamas on the layout and security procedures of these towns. The largest number of Israeli civilian casualties came from the Nova Music Festival, which presumably had a similar ratio of conservatives to liberals as you would find at Burning Man. This has helped unite Israel. Unlike attacks on settlements, which allow Israeli leftists to argue that it is only the "mean oppressive right-wingers" that stand in the way of peace, the attacks of October 7 have made it abundantly clear that Hamas wants to murder all Israelis, regardless of where they stand on the political spectrum. It is liberal Israelis who truly threaten Palestinian identity. As long as the world thinks that there is a version of Zionism that is ok, they will not allow for the full river to the sea liberation of Palestine. Just as there can be no such thing as a liberal Nazi, there can be no such thing as a liberal Zionist. To demonstrate this point, it is precisely the liberal Zionists who must be murdered.

At first glance, it might seem absurd to accuse Israel of genocide. Where are the Israeli gas chambers and crematoria or their equivalent infrastructure-intensive machinery to indicate a top-down conspiracy to wipe out as many Palestinians as possible? Does anyone believe that even right-wing Israeli officials care so much about killing Palestinians for its own sake that they would sabotage the Israeli war effort to cause Israel to fall under foreign occupation just to kill a few more Palestinians? Here, genocide must be understood in the sense of alienation as opposed to physical oppression. Genocide in the sense of alienation does not require anyone to be murdered. You are guilty of genocide if you do anything to interfere with the development of a group’s identity. From the perspective of alienation, the Israelis living near Gaza and minding their own business, even if they were little kids, were the moral equivalents of Nazi concentration camp guards so it was right to kill them. 

From a leftist revolutionary point of view, such actions were not genocide. The Palestinian people rising up against their oppressors as part of the recovery of their national identity can never be guilty of genocide. Furthermore, Israelis, since they are oppressors, have no true identity to be wiped out. On the contrary, as we know from Freire, attacking an oppressor is not really violence but a redemptive act of love.

In a perverse sense, Hamas has been successful. The October 7^th attack surprised Israel. It required years of sophisticated planning and logistics. Now, no one can think of Hamas as incompetent at least militarily. An even more important victory for Hamas is that they have demonstrated that they can kill Israelis in all sorts of horrific ways without losing popular support on the Arab street or even on Western college campuses. The fact that Western leftists have been forced to go against their stated values such as protecting rape victims demonstrates the moral power of Hamas. They are so powerful that they do not have to conform themselves to Western values. On the contrary, it is the Westerners who wish to confirm to Hamas’ values.         

Shelby Steele argues that much of the radicalism of the 1960s was made possible because the mainstream white establishment had lost its moral authority due to being implicated in the crime of enabling segregation. As such, white elites now needed blacks to return to them the moral authority they previously possessed. This meant surrendering in the face of the demands of student radicals regardless of whether these demands had any connection to improving the lives of blacks living in poverty. 

A similar dynamic may be playing itself out between the Western left and Hamas. The Western left has a hypocrisy problem. For all of its rhetoric of overthrowing Capitalism, it has been too easily seduced by its comforts. Campus radicals are not about to give up their iPhones let alone the opportunity to work for Apple. This has given rise to a corporate pretend radicalism without any substance that actually strengthens big business.

Much as the Civil Rights movement revealed the hypocrisy of 1950s white liberals by showing what an actual liberal movement could be, Hamas has shown what it means to truly be a revolutionary decolonization movement. Hamas does not allow concerns about codes of conduct or even the day-to-day welfare of the residents of Gaza to stand in the way of their struggle against Zionism. The Western left knows that to restore their credibility as a revolutionary movement they need to embrace Hamas as the true embodiment of everything the left hopes to be. By supporting Hamas from thousands of miles away, leftists can maintain their moral authority as revolutionary opponents of Capitalism while still being able to live lives of Capitalist comfort at home.

One thing that I would hope readers take away from my discussion of alienation is that it is fundamentally a mind virus. Alienation cannot offer solutions to real-world problems. It is precisely the attempt to do so that worsens the problem. Thinking of oneself as suffering from alienation cannot even solve the personal psychological problem of alienation. On the contrary, feeling alienated is an addictive drug that feels good in the short run precisely because it presents the perfect excuse for not taking responsibility and attempting concrete actions to improve your life. All of this is quite intentional. The purpose of left-wing revolutionary ideologies is to have a revolution that places leftists in power. This requires a class of individuals who are psychologically broken to such an extent that they cannot function in society and therefore can be pushed into supporting a never-ending revolution in the hope that they can somehow be healed.

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Genocide, Ecocide, and, Christopher Columbus

  

I was recently helping a student with an assignment on putting Christopher Columbus on trial. The student struck me as reasonably intelligent and without any strong political axes to grind. My basic pitch to them was that there are good arguments to make against Columbus but he was not a simple cartoon villain. I asked them if they had ever heard of Howard Zinn, the primary influence for this particular assignment. They had not. This is in keeping with my general experience with students. They do not know who Zinn was even when copies of his People’s History of the United States are on their classroom bookshelves and posters with his quotes are on the walls. As counter-intuitive as this may sound, I do not take this as good news. These students are so thoroughly in Zinn classrooms that they are unable to imagine an alternative. Zinn as the author of a book can be countered by simply pointing out that there are other perspectives. Admittedly, this is assuming that the individual has not turned Zinn into scripture. Part of what makes Zinn so dangerous is that he presents himself as offering Gnostic knowledge as to the “true” nature of the United States. This means that, if you disagree with Zinn, you are by definition, one of the “unenlightened” or even the “Satanic” so your arguments can be dismissed out of hand.

What struck me as particularly interesting was that the text framed the charges explicitly in terms of modern concepts like genocide and ecocide as opposed to charges that would have meant something to someone in the sixteenth century like the violation of Natural Law and just war theory. Genocide and ecocide are such new concepts that we are still in the process of establishing what they even are. To be clear, this does not mean that these concepts are illegitimate. On the contrary, much hinges on our ability to incorporate them into a meaningful legal framework. This takes time and careful thought as opposed to throwing these terms around to make yourself sound sophisticated and socially conscious. 

No one has made any serious attempt to prosecute someone for ecocide so we really have no idea what such a charge would look like if brought to a court of law in the twenty-first century let alone to accuse someone in the sixteenth century, before anyone even thought in terms of humans being able to harm something as abstract as the environment. Even in the case of genocide, we are still in the beginning stages of establishing precedents to make it a meaningful crime. Contrast this with an established crime like first-degree murder, where all parties basically agree with the meaning of the charge, leaving the only question as to what the facts are. No defendant is going to get away with claiming that murder is legal.

Making sure that even the defendant recognizes that what they are accused of is actually a crime is important in order to establish a mens rea, a guilty mind. To get a conviction, the defendant needed to have known that what they were doing was illegal in some sense. For example, an essential part of the Nuremberg Trial was that the Nazi defendants knew that what they were doing was in violation of standards and norms of conduct and would invite retribution from the international community if they were caught. Otherwise, they would not have covered up their atrocities during the war and then denied any knowledge of them happening afterward. Without this, prosecutors could not have gotten around the fact that the entire trial was in violation of the principle of ex post facto as the defendants had not violated any clearly defined statutes.   

The recent ICJ charges against Israel are a good example of the problems facing anyone trying to make genocide a meaningful crime. Putting aside what one thinks about Israel’s actions in Gaza, does anyone honestly believe that this trial is really about the war with Hamas as opposed to the question of Israel’s right to exist? Until you can distinguish the two, no genocide trial is going to carry legitimacy.

Murder is a meaningful concept because it is an objective claim that can be disconnected from what anyone thinks of the rightfulness of the perpetrator’s action. For example, I may believe that it is moral to shoot an actual white supremacist like Richard Spencer and not simply punch him. That being said, such an action would be murder, however noble the cause. As such, as a juror, I would be obligated to vote guilty even though I would find myself agreeing with the defendant.

If legal professionals are still working out the details as to what counts as genocide and to distinguish it from what they personally think of the defendant, how are high school students supposed to do any better? One suspects, that part of the point of this exercise is to ingrain into students the anti-law belief that being guilty of a crime is all a matter of whether you like someone and agree with their morality. This is the natural way for humans to think. Unless it is actively educated out of people, we are left with not a legal system but a collection of warring tribes pursuing vendettas against each other. 

This use of contemporary terms to denounce Columbus is all the more frustrating because, if you want to teach students about Spanish atrocities in the New World in a meaningful way, there is no need to bring in concepts that we, let alone sixteenth-century Spaniards, do not yet understand. Instead, we can bring in concepts such as Natural Law and just war theory, which were widely understood at the time.

Sixteenth-century Europeans did not simply believe that they were superior to everyone else and could do with them as they pleased. Medieval Natural Law Theory, which Christians developed out of the Greco-Roman philosophical tradition, took as its starting point that ethics, while of divine origin, was something distinct from Christianity. As such, non-Christians had rights even to the point that non-Christians could be legitimate rulers with the ability to demand the obedience of Christians. For example, Jesus implied that one should pay taxes to the Romans. While medieval Natural Law assumed hierarchy with a king at the top and everyone else their subjects, the king had obligations to his subjects. As for foreigners, the king could not simply wage war, even against non-Christians, without a legitimate cause and once he conquered a land, the people, once they submitted themselves, became his subjects whose rights must be protected.

This is a useful lens to understand Spanish activity because it quickly became clear that the actions of many Spaniards in the New World violated Natural Law and many Europeans were horrified by what they heard. This included Ferdinand and Isabella, who saw Native Americans as their subjects whom they were obligated to protect both physically and spiritually. Far be it for me to want to defend Ferdinand and Isabella who were morally responsible for the deaths of thousands of Jews during their expulsion from Spain in 1492. That being said, it is difficult to hold them responsible for what happened to Native Americans.

Introducing students to Natural Law and just war theory would have the advantage of helping them get into the heads of early modern Europeans so we could have a meaningful conversation as to what it meant to move from a medieval framework to the Enlightenment without falling into the Whiggish trap of assuming that this meant going from religious fanaticism to becoming a rational tolerant individual. 

Imagine that you are an educated European hearing about Native Americans for the first time. You might ask if they have governments, property, and marriage, which would establish them as “civilized” even if they are not Christians and greatly limit the right of Europeans to colonize their lands. For example, the Japanese, whom Europeans are soon going to encounter for the first time, are, even if they are not Christians, obviously civilized and, unlike Muslims, have no history of making war against Christians. As such, beyond sending missionaries and merchants, Europeans need to leave Japan to the Japanese.

Even if Native Americans are not civilized and cannot claim ownership over their land this does not mean that they are subhuman and can be abused at will. On the contrary, it is clear that they deserve protection and Europeans should help them become civilized. It would be difficult to teach them about Christianity unless they have already embraced the framework of European civilization and understand Natural Law, without which Christian doctrines like Original Sin make no sense.

It quickly becomes clear that not all Native Americans are the same. Some are warlike and brutal, a threat to Europeans and natives alike. The obvious solution is to fight the “bad” natives and protect the “good” ones. Unfortunately, it also becomes clear that many of the Spaniards who have come to the New World are nothing better than thieves and murderers. (The fact that people in the sixteenth century violated the moral code as they understood it on a regular basis should be no more surprising than seeing people today violate the moral code as we understand it.) Acknowledging the existence of  “bad” Spaniards means that it is hard to tell the difference between the “good” natives who are merely fighting to protect themselves and the “bad” natives motivated by greed and a desire to kill. How about we send godly friers to help form native communities? The good intentions of these friars can be seen from the fact that they are risking their lives to come to America and preach the gospel to the natives without any hope of material gain. The friers will control the soldiers by reminding them of their Christian duty. The friendly natives should want to join of their own free will to learn European ways and become Christians. Those who do not want to join can assumed to be hostile.

All of this sounds reasonable until you realize that the biggest threat to Native Americans was never European guns and steel but the germs Europeans unknowingly carried. An important lesson that I want my students to take away is that millions of Native Americans died despite European good intentions. My students may mean well and their ideas might still end up killing millions for reasons that are beyond their comprehension.    

Contrary to popular myth, pre-modern Europeans did not believe that they were superior to other people. They knew better. It was the Enlightenment that pretended to have discovered the fact that China was an advanced civilization that had developed useful insights regarding ethics. This was somehow supposed to refute Christianity even though Christians had never denied this fact. One could not have been a scholastic who admired Greco-Roman thought without being aware of this. On the contrary, Natural Law is premised on the assumption that one can develop an advanced society with an ethical system without Christianity. It was because our ancient Greco-Roman pagans were basically decent people that they recognized that they fell short of the ethical principles that they knew were true. This led many of them to become Christians in the first place as they felt they needed atonement. It should be noted that Protestants are going to turn against this Natural Law tradition precisely because it so readily conceded that humans could be good, at least a little bit, without believing in Jesus. In this, Protestants ended up accidentally bringing about the Enlightenment.

The only advantage that pre-modern Europeans believed they had was Christianity, which allowed them to go to heaven. They knew that they were not more advanced than other people. It was only once we get to the eighteenth century that Europeans have a decisive edge over everyone else. It is only at this point that Europeans could even begin to ask the question of why they had this advantage and conclude that it actually had something to do with them being somehow superior. It should be noted that for Adam Smith the European advantage was solely due to social and legal systems and not any innate European abilities.

If you were a Native American running into a European who was in the process of dropping the medieval Natural Law model in favor of the Enlightenment, there might be certain advantages but also risks. Our Enlightened European may be in the process of developing a notion of human rights that is unconnected to being part of a political system. Under the influence of Rousseau, our European might look to you as a model of innate human goodness untainted by civilization or Christianity. On the flip side though, unmooring our European from Natural Law and its emphasis on personal relationships is going to limit their sense of obligation to those they have power over. If Native Americans are suffering it must be because they are "unenlightened savages," something that Europeans bear no responsibility for. Prioritizing natives as economic assets or, worse, bodies occupying useful land over souls in need of salvation is going to limit any incentive to treat Native Americans with decency. Most importantly, the Enlightenment had not yet solved the epidemiological problem that turned first contacts into death traps for Native Americans.   

 

Are You an Augustinian or a Rousseauian? Why the Origins of Evil Is Important for Conservatives and Liberals

At the heart of the debate between conservatives and liberals is the question of evil. Both conservatives and liberals may look around and recognize that much of the world is not as it ideally should be but they will disagree as to why this is the case. For a conservative, the source of evil lies in human beings themselves. The liberal will see the source of evil within society. 

The conservative view can best be seen in the thought of Augustine of Hippo, who saw even infants as sinners ruled by self-love. This flaw only becomes even more manifest in older children when they come to suspect that they are not what they should be but, rather than improve themselves, they come to actively hate the good. For example, the child hates learning Greek in school, which requires effort and discipline. His teachers are not content to leave him in his comforting idleness but desire the child's good. Therefore, the child hates them along with anyone else who might attempt to direct him onto a good path. Seeking refuge from the good with its demands, the child eventually comes to actively embrace evil. For example, stealing pears and throwing them away because he knows it is wrong. 

Self-love is so dangerous because it never goes away even when a person honestly tries to be better. The adult who decides to finally focus on his studies and earn a degree will find himself pursuing even greater depravities like becoming an honored teacher of philosophy. With his mastery of being able to talk about ethics, he will finally become truly impervious to anyone questioning his complete lack of virtue. 

In the world of Augustinian psychology, there are essentially two kinds of people, the tragically flawed and the satanically evil. There are the people who try to do what they intellectually know is the right thing even though, in the long run, they are doomed to fail. The other kind of person clings to their claim of righteousness by pretending that their self-love is actually a virtue. Such people are satanic in the sense that they do evil not out of some venial weakness of character but because they actually believe that evil is the true good. 

The solution for the conservative, even if it is a highly imperfect one, is to keep the individual, with his self-love, in check through social organizations. This includes the brute force of the law but more importantly the family and organized religion, which inculcate a person with a moral code and a conscience. This makes it possible for a person to not constantly pursue their self-love even when no one is around and there is no fear of punishment.

This notion of self-love as an inescapable fact of human psychology can also be seen in thinkers like Bernard Mandeville and Adam Smith. There is the hope that, under the right system, self-love can be harnessed for the public benefit. That being said, the starting assumption is that there is no way to remove self-love and create truly selfless people. Even the man who sacrifices his finger to save China will never escape the fact that losing that one finger will cause him greater suffering than the deaths of millions of strangers. 

If Augustine was the paradigmatic conservative, Rousseau can be seen as the paradigmatic liberal. Rousseau rejected Original Sin. People are born fundamentally good because nature is inherently good. It is society that corrupts them. People left to their own devices would be noble savages without a thought of preferring themselves to others. It was only with the invention of private property that people learned to be greedy. Education made people arrogant by causing them to assume that the greater their book learning, the wiser they were when, in truth, greater book learning simply meant less connection to the truths of nature.    

This question about the origin of evil becomes important when we consider the prospect revolution as a solution to the problem of evil. If you are an Augustinian, you are likely to recognize that human beings, with their self-love, will eventually corrupt any set of institutions they are allowed to control. As such, rather than reign in self-love, the institution will come to serve that self-love. Therefore, from time to time certain reforms must be made in order to allow those institutions to resume their job of keeping human self-love in check. What you are not going to consider is tearing institutions down in the hope that better ones will grow in their place. It would be the height of madness to assume that the same people who lack virtue even when they are kept in check will suddenly conquer their self-love once there is nothing left to stop them.  

This is the critical context for understanding Edmund Burke. It may be one thing for British colonists in America to rebel against the Crown in the name of traditional English liberties with the local colony governments remaining largely the same. This is not the same thing as the French deciding to tear down centuries of monarchial tradition because of something some of them read in Rousseau. 

The Rousseauians, like Maxmillian Robespierre, who carried out the French Revolution and eventually the Reign of Terror did not ask themselves who will guard against the revolutionaries. On the contrary, the revolutionary, by the mere fact of being a revolutionary, was assumed to be free from the taint of social corruption. If you believe that society corrupts then struggling against society should protect a person from corruption and make them virtuous. Hence, Robespierre thought of himself as incorruptible. 

From the conservative perspective, the problem with any revolutionary movement comes out of this confidence that self-love can be circumvented. We are self-loving beings who seek to pretend, especially to ourselves, that we are not in order that we should be able to pursue our self-love without being held in check by society or even our own conscience. This renders revolutionaries morally perverse. You are going to take people who are already predisposed to self-love and being deceitful about it. You are then going to allow them to overthrow the very system that keeps their self-love in check, all while telling these revolutionaries that they are above self-love. Is it any wonder that the end results are monsters, who commit mass murder? 

To be clear, Augustinian politics is no guard against corruption. This should come as no surprise as people remain tainted by self-love no matter if they become kings or even popes. On the contrary, the loftier the position the more likely they are to be seduced by their self-love, believing that their self-love is somehow really the selfless caring for humanity. That being said, Augustinian politics, because it does not believe in the perfectibility of human beings, is protected from sinking into the totalitarianism that is the logical endpoint of Rousseauian politics. 

To bring this around to our modern political discourse, if you are an Augustinian, you may honestly believe that racism, as a type of tribalism that ultimately comes from self-love, is an evil that needs to be fought. One might even support laws banning discrimination. What you are not going to do is make any pretense that racism can be eradicated. You are certainly not going to engage in anything so reckless as tearing down social systems in a bid to eliminate "structural racism." You cannot change the reality that people have their thumbs on the moral scales in favor of people they perceive as being more like them. What you can do is to strengthen those social systems that will speak to people's sense of decency and keep self-love in check. 

The Secret of Ankh-Morpork: A Tale of British Liberalism

In the Constitution of Liberty (I:4), F. A. Hayek distinguishes between what may be called the British evolutionary empiricist and French rationalist schools of liberty. The French tradition, as exemplified by thinkers like Jean Jacques Rousseau (yes, he was born in Geneva), sees liberty in terms of specific policies and political structures that can be known through reason. Its primary goal is the creation of a utopian ideal government with the right laws and the right people in charge. The British tradition, as exemplified by Adam Smith and Edmund Burke, sees liberty as emerging out of systems of human interaction that transcend the design of any particular person. These can be seen in economic markets and traditional social orders. As with biological evolution, these systems are rational in the sense that they follow clear rules and are not random even as they have no rational designer. The goal of such liberty is not any utopian ideal but to limit physical coercion in people's lives.

It strikes me that one of the finest modern examples of this British approach to liberty can be found in Terry Pratchett's comic fantasy series Discworld. In particular, I would like to focus on his use of the city of Ankh-Morpork, which relies less on any of its visible institutions than on a certain subconscious sensibility embedded within its citizens. On the surface, one would be hard-pressed to think of Ankh-Morpork as any kind of Utopia. The city is filthy, crime-ridden, corrupt and under the boot of the tyrannical Patrician Lord Vetinari. And yet there is something about the city that allows it to, if not necessarily function well, at least avoid collapsing on a day to day basis. Furthermore, there is something about Ankh-Morpork that draws people from all over Discworld, whether barbarian raiders, tourists or immigrants. As paradoxical as it might sound, if you find yourself alienated by the place you grew up in, Ankh-Morpork is precisely the place that you can count on to feel at home.

What is Ankh-Morpork's secret of success? It is not the place has some particularly brilliant form of government. There is not much of a government doing anything and the little government that there is seems totally outmatched by the challenges it faces. Is there something special about Ankh-Morporkians themselves? There is no race of Ankh-Morporkians. On the contrary, Ankh-Morpork is a collection of every race and species on Discworld. Furthermore, the people themselves are not particularly wise nor virtuous. What makes Ankh-Morpork special is something about the deep-seated institutions of the city itself that transcend its politics and its racial makeup. One might even think of it as magic, something that is not too far fetched considering how the wizards of Ankh-Morpork's Unseen University mess with the fabric of reality.

In this sense, Ankh-Morpork is the perfect British classical liberal counter-Utopia. The place is far from perfect but is still a place that real people might want to live in. This only makes sense in a world that rejects Utopias. In fact, constantly hanging over Ankh-Morpork is the prospect of a path to Utopia that is never taken in the form of the messianic Captain Carrot Ironfoundersson. He is the true heir to the throne of Ankh-Morpork (the last king having been killed off centuries ago). He even has a sword and a birthmark to prove it. It has been foretold that he will bring truth and justice to Ankh-Morpork. (See Guards, Guards.) One of the running jokes of the series is that despite all the people who know of Carrot's heritage, there is no grand push to make him king because no one actually wants truth and justice. It is not that anyone actually likes Lord Vetinari, but his style of management, corruption and all, suits people just fine.  

Carrot does well as an honest watchman and as a human raised by dwarfs and whose love interest, Angua, is a werewolf, he is well positioned to negotiate between different races. That being said, it is obvious that Carrot would be a dreadful ruler if he ever got around to fulfilling his destiny. He has principles that he will not compromise on, while politics is the art of compromise. It is unfortunate that Pratchett never got around to completing Carrot's story arc. I imagine something along the lines of Vetinari being killed off, chaos threatens the city, and the people are demanding that Carrot agree to become their king. Carrot should then give some version of Life of Brian's "you can all think for yourselves" speech before riding off into the sunset. The city falls into chaos and it is exactly the kind of chaos that afflicted Ankh-Morpork every day under Vetinari. Perhaps Nobby Nobbs becomes patrician; regardless, it does not matter who officially rules as it is the city itself that actually is in charge.

Part of Discworld's use of an emerging order is its lack of clear ideological heroes. For example, Vetinari is not any kind of liberal. He is a dictator, who clearly does not believe in civil liberties. That being said, what great evil does Vetinari actually do? He seems to sit in his office, call people in and suggest that certain courses of action might be good for their continued health. For all that it is taken as a given that Vetinari is ruthless enough to have people tortured to death on a whim, he does not seem to do much of that. This does not mean that Vetinari is a good guy; his love of power precludes that. Nevertheless, there is something about the culture of Ankh-Morpork that resists blatant authoritarian force. Vetinari is smart enough to understand that the best way to hold on to power in Ankh-Morpork is to avoid directly giving orders. Instead, everything, including theft and murder, is legalized though regulated by guilds. These institutions gain their authority through the perpetual motion of tradition that transcends any attempt by individuals to control them. In essence, Vetinari allows the city to run itself while he devotes himself to politics, staying in power by positioning himself as the known quantity that people can live with.  

We see a similar thing with Sam Vimes, the head of the city watch. While Vimes is certainly more likable than Vetinari, his values are quite conservative. Unlike his ancestor who killed the last king of Ankh-Morpork, Vimes is not a revolutionary. What Vimes believes in is the law. It is not that Vimes believes that the law is perfect. On the contrary, he is quite aware of its limitations. That being said, it is precisely because Vimes sees how little good the law can do in the face of real problems in the world that he believes that the law, for whatever it is worth, should apply to everyone, rich and poor, humans and every other race. (See Night Watch and Snuff.) Vimes is the kind of common man just doing his job around whom heroic things seem to happen.

This sensibility seeps down into the rest of Ankh-Morpork. It is a cosmopolitan place in which even dwarfs and trolls learn to if not exactly tolerate each other than at least to not murder each other too often. (See Thud.) Ankh-Morpork has legal prostitution in the form of the Seamstress' Guild. It even allows for explorations of gender identity in the case of Cherry Littlebottom, who comes out as a female dwarf. For all of this tolerance, it is not as if there are many actual liberals in the city crusading for people's rights. (There are zombie activists promoting the rights of the undead.) Most of the residents are highly parochial, interested in their mothers or some other hobby. But it is precisely such narrow mindedness that makes Ankh-Morpork's type of tolerance possible. The residents are too focused on their own private business to mind anyone else's. When the occasional mob does form, they are usually dispersed not by appeals to any noble ideals but by reminding the mob that there are more important things in their lives that they should care about.  

In Discworld, the arc of history does bend toward justice. A running theme through the series is the expansion of personhood to include an ever wider circle of beings such as golems or goblins, who were previously seen as either lacking feelings or so depraved as to be outside of personhood. (See Feet of Clay and Snuff.) What makes this possible is not that particular individuals become "woke" to oppression. Rather, it is that the underlying social system evolves as to include new groups. Once that happens, no conscious tolerance is needed. You can hate the group, but even the very fact that you hate them serves to embed them within the fabric of society, making their elimination inconceivable. (This is an important theme in understanding anti-Semitism. Jews were never in danger from people who believed that Jews killed their Lord as long as Jews were considered part of the existing order of society. Mass violence against Jews only became possible when Jews came to be thought of as something other.) 

On the other side of this coin, minority groups themselves, such as the dwarfs, change as they move to Ankh-Morpork. They might not intend to assimilate and might not realize what is happening until they are raising the next generation but by then it is too late. It is the power of Ankh-Morpork that it is able to assimilate outsiders and turn them into Ankh-Morporkians who embody Ankh-Morpork values even as such people claim to hate Ankh-Morpork and desire to return to the "old country."

Much as Ankh-Morpork attracts outsiders, the city finds itself host to a wide variety of religions. Most Ankh-Morporkians seem indifferent to religion in their personal lives even as religious institutions seem to thrive. There is even a Temple of Small Gods devoted to cast off religions that services people who might not be particularly religious but who like religion as a general idea. The only people who seem interested in forcing their beliefs on others are the Omnians. Even they find themselves caught in the web of Ankh-Morpork sensibilities and are reduced to "aggressively" handing out pamphlets to unbelievers.  

This brings us to the question of markets. As Ankh-Morpork is not a Utopia, it should come as no surprise that Ankh-Morpork is not a free-market Utopia along the lines of Galt's Gulch populated by libertarian ideologues prepared to explain the evils of government planning. That being said, what is interesting about Ankh-Morpork is that it is precisely the kind of place in which innovation either happens or which innovators quickly make their way to in order to market their ideas. It is not that Vetinari loves innovation. On the contrary, he understands more than most people how innovations can make tidal waves in society and he knows that the entire basis of his power lies in his ability to offer people more of the same. It is not that Ankh-Morporkians themselves love innovation either, at least as a principle. That being said, Ankh-Morporkians can be seduced by the magic of a new invention. This allows for innovations to make a rapid jump from a prototype that someone is fooling around with to a part of the social fabric, moving through the stage of dangerous innovation too fast for an effective opposition to build up and stop it. 

Like Charles Dickens, Pratchett's depiction of businessmen was a mixed bag. I do love Harry King whose fortune literally is founded on human excrement. (See Raising Steam.) For a city in which so much is privatized, it is a mystery as to why Ankh-Morpork would need a government-run post-office or mint. (See Going Postal and Making Money.) Even in those cases, Vetinari takes a very hands-off approach and simply lets the conman Moist von Lipwig take charge. In both cases, it is the Ankh-Morpork spirit and not government planning that quickly takes over and cause these institutions to serve purposes beyond anyone's design. 

Ultimately, Pratchett also possessed Dickens' appreciation for the common unheroic virtues. People might be cowards and hypocrites (otherwise known as being self-interested), but they are redeemed by their petty loves and kindnesses. As with Dickens, this goes a long way to redeeming Pratchett. He is a defender of the common man with his bourgeois dreams of doing even the most humble job well and getting ahead as opposed to waging revolution. This is in contrast to the Marxist pretend support for the working class; no one despises the common man like a Marxist. 

The truth about Ankh-Morpork is that it is actually very well run; it is just that it is not being run by any person, not even Lord Vetinari. Ankh-Morpork is a liberal and even revolutionary city that is completely lacking in liberal revolutionaries. It is the deep-seated embed institutions of the city itself that transcend any politician, system of government or particular race that guard the city's liberty and allow it to thrive.  

History 111: Candide and the Innate Goodness of Man (Part II)

(Part I)

If medieval and early modern Christianity had a pessimistic view of human nature in which man is innately sinful and can only be kept in check by Church and State, we moderns tend to have a rather optimistic view of human nature that stresses man's innate natural goodness. This too has consequences for both theology and politics. If man is good then it stands to reason that he can achieve salvation through his own means without the aid of the Church. Now it becomes possible to talk about human reason as the bar against which to judge all things. Only someone confident in the intrinsic goodness of human beings could allow them to judge the world around them and do it based on what is innate to them. As for politics, a belief in human goodness allows for human beings to craft their own laws. We can even begin to talk about government as a contract between equals instead of the dictates of a patriarch to his children, leading to liberal democracy.

The legacy of this notion of human goodness still presents itself in our debates over crime and punishment and foreign policy. Why do people commit crimes? A conservative would say it is because they are "bad" people, motivated by greed and malice. In order to protect itself, society must remove this person from its midsts, either through prison or even the death penalty. Punishment is something that the person deserves as his just deserts. In the liberal model crime results from either mental illness, being raised in a problematic society or simply bad education. One way or another it is not the person's fault and the purpose of any "punishment" is not to penalize the person, but "rehabilitate" them. (See "C. S. Lewis on the Implications of the Nazi Holocaust.") Why are there terrorists? The conservative will tell you that it is because they are "evil" and hate "freedom." Naturally, such people can only be stopped by invading other countries and killing those people who deserve it. The liberal will tell that terrorists are the products of economic inequality, the legacy of colonialism and a fundamentalist education that preaches hate. Agree to peace talks, address the massive economic inequalities across the globe and provide a proper education for all and terrorism will disappear.

Now even the liberal acknowledges that there is much that is wrong with the world. Rather then lay the blame on people, the blame is placed on society. It is society that creates inequalities and teaches prejudice. People, left to their own devices, would naturally wish to live in harmony with others, recognizing the common humanity of all, and would not be bothered by the existence of other races and creeds. People have to be taught to hate others because of the color of their skin and the deity they pray to. The good news is that people can be saved from their own prejudices. With a properly funded welfare program, civil rights legislation and tolerant education, the natural human goodness in people will reassert itself and stand against all the ills created by society in the first place.

This brings us to Candide, a novel that represents this Enlightenment shift in how one views humanity. Candide is naturally good. Contrary to a simplistic view of the character, Candide is not stupid (a mistake made by the modern day adaptation, Forrest Gump). Candide is simply naive due to the fact that he is raised with no experience with the world. This is crucial to the character because it is precisely this lack of worldliness that allows for Candide's goodness. Candide does not suffer from greed, does not hate anyone and only wishes to live in brotherhood with all. Candide is not even capable of understanding the possibility that other people are not like this. The reason for this is that Candide exists completely uncorrupted by society. (This idea would be taken even further by Rousseau.)

It is for this reason that Voltaire subverts the garden of Eden story. Instead of Adam and Eve committing Original Sin, willfully disobeying the divine commandment to not eat from the tree of knowledge, and being rightfully thrown out of paradise, Candide has no notion of sin. He only wishes to experiment with the laws of "cause and effect." The fact that he kisses Cunegonde is interpreted as sin by a corrupt society, leading to him being wrongfully exiled from his beloved home in Westphalia. Instead of degenerate humans needing to be saved by righteous laws, Candide is the pure one, it is the outside system that is degenerate.


       

Avatar is Not Liberal Propaganda (It is Something Far More Pernicious)

I went to see James Cameron's new science-fiction extravaganza, Avatar, last night. Let me say, right from the beginning, that I loved the movie. In terms of story, acting to say nothing of the special effects this movie must be judged as a full success. Particular mention should be made of the climatic air battle between the human invaders and the native Na'vi of the moon Pandora. It also should be said that not since Emperor Palpatine's finest Imperial Stormtroopers were routed by the koala bears of Endor in Return of the Jedi has modern armor and lazar guns proven to be so ineffective against Stone Age technology. Liberals correctly criticized the Bush administration for their failure to provide armored vehicles to protect our soldiers against road side ambushes in Iraq. What are citizens of Cameron's future universe to think of their soldiers going into battle in vehicles whose windshields are not even arrow proof? Perhaps in the deleted scenes on the DVD we will find out that Cheney and Rumsfeld were transported to the future to lose this war for the humans. This brings me to the main point of what I wish to discuss here, the movie's politics. Conservatives have been up in arms in attacking this movie, accusing it of being liberal propaganda. There are good reasons for this. This is a movie made for over two-hundred million dollars about an evil imperial corporation (somehow this is not a contradiction) out to destroy a pristine native culture in the service of their greed for unobtainum (yes it sounds as corny as it looks). I believe this is a mistake, one that hides the true dark side of the film's message. When Cameron and other members of the Hollywood left attack free enterprise corporations and venerate hunter-gatherer cultures, they are not being liberal. On the contrary, they set the stage for the destruction of liberalism, for fascism.

For all of their moral flaws, corporations are built around individual freedom. People, of their own free will, choose to work for these corporations and people freely choose to purchase the goods and services provided by them. No physical coercion is used. (Corporations wielding heavy armaments designed for use in offensive warfare are no longer private businesses, but governments. So, when properly understood, Avatar is a story about big government oppression, despite the corporate label.) In stark contrast to this is the hunter-gatherer society, living close to a state of nature. Life in all observed hunter-gatherer societies here on earth is proverbially "nasty, brutish, and short." Considering the Skull Island quality of the natural life on Pandora, life would be nastier, more brutish, and shorter. A society living under such conditions would need to devote itself nonstop to providing food and fending off enemies, creating a militarized leadership. Everyone must carry out their assigned tasks and live their lives according to the decisions made by the leadership. All forms of deviance are, by definition, acts of treason and punishable by death. In other words, this is the conservative society par excellence and one that is inimical to liberty. One might even be tempted to call it primitive Fascism. This is not as absurd as it sounds when you consider that, in the Western tradition, it was the same Rousseau, who idealized man in a state of nature and also venerated the Spartan model of society. In the end, Rousseau even denied the notion of personal freedom, choosing to define freedom in terms of subservience to a people. Ironically enough, while the non-evil human protagonists are capable of making individual choices and turn against the evil militarized corporation, the Na'vi are defined by their lack of significant individual choices. (Yes, the Na'vi girl makes out with the main character.) We are told that these aliens have no interest in human goods, medicine, or technology (though they do speak English at a level far outstripping many Hispanic immigrants and Haredim). We are to believe that not a single member of the Na'vi species, not even their teenagers, can be tempted by fast food, antibiotics, or even a ride on a starship, the things that could make liberty meaningful, to vote for selling out on their pantheist religion and their mother trees. Abstract moral choices are only possible in minds educated at above subsidence levels. Only a mind raised on the luxuries of eating every day and effective medicine that will allow it to live to die of old age can worry about things like rights for a less fortunate group or protecting the environment; all these being necessary tools for a Na'vi resistance in the first place. Of course, none of the Na'vi are attracted to human ways, desire to live past thirty and travel to the stars, just as all Palestinians only desire to shed their blood in their nationalist cause of war with Israel, without any coercion or brainwashing.

If I were telling the story of Avatar I would make the corporate hatchet man, Parker Selfridge (played by the talented, but underused Giovanni Ribisi) the hero of the story instead of a villain. He is a young man of enterprise, who, despite growing up in difficult circumstances, has become so rich that he can fund interstellar mining expeditions. His personal background has given him an appreciation for the abilities of other less fortunate people. Because of this, he is willing to make a woman his lead scientist, hire minorities and even a crippled ex-marine. Selfridge comes to Pandora without the backing of the military industrial complex government back on earth and their protection, confident that he can peacefully make a deal with the Na'vi. Instead of guns, he turns to new forms of science that allow him to send his loyal employees to the Na'vi in Na'vi bodies. Many of the Na'vi are eager to trade with Selfridge, allowing him to mine their land, and join him in created an economic paradise for all. The conservative Na'vi leadership, though, concerned about their hold on power, refuse to negotiate and attempt to drive the humans away by brute force. War seems inevitable, as Selfridge finds himself tempted to hire mercenaries and meet force with force, until the crippled ex-marine, Jake Sully, having fallen in love with Pandora's environment and a Na'vi girl manages to find a way that the precious unobtainum could be mined without causing too much permanent damage to the trees. Selfridge is initially skeptical about Sully's tree-hugging liberalism but agrees to go along even though it means making less money than he had initially hoped. Selfridge's employees defeat the conservative Na'vi leadership by demonstrating that they actually have a greater interest in protecting the environment than even the so-called earth lovers. Meanwhile, back on Earth, word has spread to the government, about Selfridge's success and they demand that Selfridge pay special taxes and that the Na'vi submit to Earth as a colony. The Na'vi refuse and Selfridge and his employees find themselves agreeing to put their lives on the line to fight for what they have created. Selfridge calls in some favors with some smuggler contacts of his and manages to arm the Na'vi with at least some modern weapons. There is a climactic battle in the air over Pandora as the Na'vi heroically fight off the Earth armada, with Selfridge and his employees manning the front lines. In the end, the Earth military is defeated. Selfridge and his employees permanently join the Na'vi by taking on Na'vi bodies and help negotiate a trade deal with Earth, giving all Na'vians a life of luxury and freedom unimagined by their ancestors.

Now that would be a liberal story and I do not think it would take a Robert A. Heinlein or Ayn Rand to appreciate the dramatic possibilities of it.

History 112: Candide and Kant (Q&A)

1. During his lifetime how did the public react to the works of Voltaire? Was he praised or like many others was it not until many years later, possibly after his death was his works recognized for what it was?
2. Did Voltaire get in any trouble with the Church for this work? It seems to have some negativity toward religion?


Voltaire is another good example of what I have said previously: you can get away with being heterodox as long as you know how to play your politics. Voltaire flipped back and forth from being successful and unsuccessful in this political game throughout his life. At various times he was imprisoned and exiled and at other times he wined and dined with kings and nobles. This is the contradiction of Voltaire; he made a name for himself as this anti establishment figure and he cashed in on this notoriety to become an international celebrity. (This is not that different from artists who denounce big corporations and then attend events sponsored by big corporations.) Candide itself was a major bestseller in its day. Unfortunately for Voltaire he did not reap the financial awards as there was not much in the way of effective copyright laws in the eighteenth century. Before the nineteenth century almost no one was able to make a living from being a writer.


3. Do you know, or have any guesses, as to which STD Pangloss is talking about in this section?

"O my dear Candide, you must remember Pacquette, that pretty wench, who waited on our noble Baroness; in her arms I tasted the pleasures of Paradise, which produced these Hell torments with which you see me devoured. She was infected with an ailment, and perhaps has since died of it; she received this present of a learned Franciscan, who derived it from the fountainhead; he was indebted for it to an old countess, who had it of a captain of horse, who had it of a marchioness, who had it of a page, the page had it of a Jesuit, who, during his novitiate, had it in a direct line from one of the fellow adventurers of Christopher Columbus; for my part I shall give it to nobody, I am a dying man."

Dr. Pangloss has syphilis, a “popular” disease during the eighteenth century. Voltaire goes with the popular assumption, still being debated to this day, that syphilis came from the New World. Notice the clergymen involved in this "genealogy" of transmission. You have a Franciscan giving it to Pacquette. (One assumes while doing other things besides for confession.) And you also have a pedophile Jesuit. Voltaire sticks all sorts of subversive material most of it between the lines to avoid censors.

4. Kant praises Frederick II for the tolerance within his country. Was he Kant's patron, or was Kant giving him acknowledgment and using the state as an example simply because it was a good example at the time?

One assumes that Kant had Frederick II of Prussia in mind when he talked about the tolerant ruler. I do not think that Kant was directly funded by Frederick II, but Kant was a professor at the University of Konigsberg, so he was not in a position to mouth off against the government. Voltaire actually was personally very close to Frederick II.

5. In Kant's essay when he is discussing how the restrictive phrase "Do not argue" always comes up in the context of everyday relations with others, he says, "Only one ruler in the World says, "Argue as much as you want and about what you want, but obey!" Who is the ruler he is referring to?

I assume that he is referring to “Reason.” Reason is the authority against which everything must be judged. We have been discussing the move away from traditional authority based on ancient books and religious leaders. This essay by Kant is one of the classic statements of this transition.

6. Ok, maybe I'm not understanding the reading correctly. But does Kant believe that there should be no government because government obstructs/discourages our ability to think and reason? And that Enlightenment can only happen when people go against their government (aka "emergence from his self-impost immaturity")?

As we have already seen, particularly with Rousseau, the Enlightenment search for liberty has an ironic tendency to turn into apologies for authoritarian forms of government. If you read carefully Kant is mainly interested in religious freedom, political freedom seems to fall by the wayside. This is particularly important within the context of Frederick II, who was very tolerant in terms of religion but maintained a highly authoritarian regime in all other regards. As one Enlightenment philosopher commented: your Berlin freedom consists of saying any nonsense about religion. Let someone stand on the streets and talk about liberty and you will see that you live in the most oppressed land in Europe.
Kant’s emphasis on Duty is also going to have repercussions in terms of individual freedom as nineteenth and twentieth century German history will show.

7. Has enlightenment, as Kant describes it, ever been achieved? He warns that it is a slow process, because if it happens too quickly, the masses will cling to a new set of prejudices and never work past their "immaturity." I cannot think of a time when there was not some sort of great unthinking mass, as Kant call's the general public, clinging to some sort of prejudices or popular ideology. What are your thoughts?

As Kant states: "Do we presently live in an enlightened age?" the answer is, "No, but we do live in an age of enlightenment." I do not think that any era could ever live up to Kant’s standards. Being an enlightened individual, committed to challenging authority and finding things out for oneself is difficult; the alternative is just so tempting. This is one of the first things that one has to realize when trying to follow this path. If you think that it is some slogan you can choose to adopt you are probably not one of the enlightened. Enlightenment is something that only a few people in any generation could ever hope to achieve.

History 112: Enlightenment I (Q&A)

1. In the Davies text they spoke of Rousseau as a man that overcame a lot and as a man that was a forward thinker about equality and rights. In the excerpt online about his views on women, he sounded like a pompous jerk [for arguing that women needed to be kept in their place]. I was just curious if his views on women were acceptable back then? Was his views typical of the general public, and what about other forward thinkers, did they also agree with his view on women?
2. What were the common folk's opinion on how women should be treated? Also what was the Church's take on this? Were women of "wit" or "letters" looked down upon, as Rousseau thought they should be?
Rousseau was hardly alone in his sentiments even among Enlightenment figures. Not only did they have, by our standards, fairly negative views on women, their advocacy of freedom and reason was built around the premise that women needed to be kept in their place outside of the public sphere. (This is not all that different from Thomas Jefferson saying that “all men are created equal” and still being a slave owner.) This is not a matter of hypocrisy; they meant something very different from what we mean when we talk about freedom and liberty.
I assigned this particular sample of Rousseau’s writing precisely because it is something so offensive to the modern ear. This piece stands in stark contrast to Voltaire’s “Plea for Tolerance” which sounds very modern. Of course as we shall soon see Voltaire is also not a modern. One has to ask was Rousseau really so forward thinking and is it really meaningful to talk about people being forward thinking. You say that Rousseau sounds like a “pompous jerk.” As a product of modern liberalism, I would agree with you. People not trained in the historical method will read Rousseau and pat themselves on the back and think about how “tolerant” and “forward thinking” they are. We, as practitioners of the historical method, on the other hand see this as an opportunity to turn the question on ourselves. Why is it so obvious to us that Rousseau was a pompous jerk; might there be something that we are missing?
The Catholic Church traditionally has a rather funny relationship with women. On the one hand the Church venerates the Virgin Mary along with a slew of female saints. There is, as we have discussed, a long tradition of Catholic female visionaries such as St. Teresa de Avila. This veneration of women, though, has very little to do with real every day women and in fact may have been detrimental to women. If the Virgin Mary is the model of womanhood against which all women are judged, what woman can every hope to come out ahead.

3. Rousseau and Wollstonecraft provide starkly contrasting views on women and their role in society. How did the role of women differ between different social classes in the late 18th century Europe? If a woman wanted to become educated during this time period, what options did she have for doing so?
As we have seen previously “oppressive” societies are not such much oppressive as there being a system that one can play if one keeps from offending the wrong people. (For example Galileo was able to be a heliocentrist up until the moment he made fun of Pope Urban VIII.) If you are an upper class woman, while you would not have direct access to a university education, you would still be capable of getting an education, likely through private tutors and books, and even take an informal part in the public sphere. (In fact much of the Enlightenment takes place in salons hosted by upper class women.)
This was not an option for lower class women. That being said, lower class men also did not have these options either. In a sense lower class women were “freer” since there less restrictions upon them in terms of them being women.



4. How would Rousseau have responded to Mary Wollstonecraft's idea that it is better for everyone when a woman is self-sufficient?
As with most polemical debates, Rousseau and Wollstonecraft are talking past each other. For Rousseau the primary issue is not individual liberty. On the contrary the pursuit of individual liberty is a trap that leads to irrationality and tyranny. One has to submit oneself to the “General Will” and pursue the rule of reason by promoting the welfare of society. Wollstonecraft, like most people in the liberal tradition, thinks in terms of individual liberty.

5. Davies says, "Rousseau and Voltaire were as different as chalk and cheese", but from what I gathered from the reading, they seem quite similar. Rousseau believed that "since the evils of the world are overwhelming, all one can do is to put one's own affairs into order," meaning that you should practice self interest. Voltaire believed that all men should be free, no matter their station. So, in essence, Voltaire wanted common men to practice self-interest through government and Rousseau appealing to the "enlightened elite" encouraged self-interest. In essence, they have the same belief but are applying them to different socio-economic groups...Is this right, or am I missing something?

Rousseau and Voltaire had very different understandings as to the nature of progress and the nature of society. Rousseau believed that the advent of civilization, with the rise of private property, had corrupted human nature. He is the exact opposite of Thomas Hobbes; while Hobbes’ man in a state of nature is a bloodthirsty barbarian, Rousseau’s natural man is completely peaceful and lives at one with nature. Rousseau is critical of the very mechanisms of progress so beloved by the Enlightenment, reason, culture and the state. From Voltaire’s perspective Rousseau was as much an enemy of the Enlightenment as the Catholic Church.

6. How did the Classical Republic form of government not rise in the Renaissance if the Renaissance was a rediscovery of these texts? Were there advocates for this? Why did they not succeed or why weren't there any defenders for Republics?
The Renaissance has Republican governments such as Florence and Venice. And republican governments continued to exist in the eighteenth century in places like the Dutch Republic and the city states of Switzerland. The accepted consensus at the time was that republican governments worked well for small states, but that for larger states one needed a strong central power such as a Monarchy. This assumption has its roots in Aristotle who argued that democracy only works well when you only have a few thousand active participants. The success of the “American experiment” is important precisely because it showed that a republican government could work on a massive scale. This is the underlying theme of Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America. Tocqueville was a French aristocrat who toured American during the early nineteenth century and commented on American life.

7. I did some more research on the Second Treatise and understood that it was best known for popularizing the right of revolution. Some sources also say that the Treatise influenced Thomas Jefferson's "Declaration of Independence". Do you think John Locke would be happy to see his work, his thoughts influenced another document that eventually used against his own country?
8. Reading the Locke text, it reminds me very strongly of the Declaration of Independence, especially in the first few lines and in the method for denying the rights of a king over men as being a good form of government. Being written nearly a hundred years earlier I certainly see it as possible that this document was in mind when the Declaration was written, do we have any evidence as to whether this is the case or no?

The line “life, liberty and property” end up in the Declaration of Independence as “life, liberty ad the pursuit of happiness.” The Constitution puts the word “property” back in. John Locke died decades before the American Revolution. He actually took an active interest in the American colonies and even helped write the constitution for the Carolinas. I must confess that I myself find the use of Locke by the Declaration of Independence to be remarkably unconvincing. (Read past the opening passage of the text and judge for yourself) I doubt if Locke would have found it convincing. This may sound very unpatriotic, but if I had been alive during the Revolution I would have been a Tory, like a third of Americans back then, and would have supported the British. I am a big Anglophile and I consider it rather unfortunate that we separated from England.


9. Norman Davies mentions briefly that "Differences between Western and Eastern Europe were growing" but did not go into details. Can you discuss more about these differences in class?

Davies is actually a specialist in Eastern European history, particularly Poland. So while most textbooks ignore Eastern Europe, he actively tries to incorporate it. Hopefully from reading Davies you will get a picture of Poland that moves beyond the Pollack jokes that we have all grown up with. Over the course of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries England, France and Prussia (which will eventually come to form Germany) are going to industrialize in ways that other countries such as Spain, the Italian states and Russia do not. As such England, France and Prussia are going to take this tremendous leap forward at the expense of other European countries and eventually much of the world. Why this happens is an open question that I hope to discuss in future lectures.

Syllabus for History 112 Spring 2009

This coming quarter I am going to be doing History 112 again, though this time I am going to be teaching as an SSL. This will be completely my class with a curriculum completely under my discretion. Here is my proposed syllabus. I decided to go with Norman Davies' Europe: a History as my textbook though I have included two chapters from Jacques Barzun's From Dawn to Decadence. I would like to thank Dr. Breyfogle for allowing me to plagiarize off of his syllabus. This is still something I am tinkering around with. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Ohio State has a system known as Carmen where teachers can photocopy material and place it online where students in the class can read it. This is a great way to get around copyright issues. The university also puts out a publication known as Exploring the European Past (ETEP). It has various modules, collections of primary and secondary source materials on specific topics. Teachers can select modules of interest, which will then be collected into customized booklets for the class. ETEP is expensive, I admit, but it is a great way to introduce students to source material and the scholarly process.


History 112
European History:
The Sixteenth Century to the Present

Spring 2009

Lectures: MW 5:30 – 7:18 Mendenhall Laboratory (ML) 0191


SSL: Benzion N. Chinn
Office hours: M 3-5, and by appointment
Office: 009 Dulles Hall. Phone: 240 994 184
E-mail: chinn.26@osu.edu
Blog: www.izgad.blogspot.com



General Information

Welcome to the wonderful world of Modern European history!

In this course, we will study fundamental events and processes in European politics, war, economics, intellectual thought, culture, and society from the sixteenth century to the present. We will attempt to explain the origins of the contemporary world; the rise of modern secularism in its various manifestations and the rise of the modern liberal state. As we shall see there is more to this story than man all of a sudden becoming rational. We will strive to understand how Europeans lived and gave meaning to their lives in the “early modern” and “modern” eras.

The course is both topically and chronologically organized and emphasizes the common characteristics of European civilization as a whole rather than specific national histories. It traces threads of continuity while also examining the vast changes experienced by European society in these 400 years. In a course that spans several centuries and covers a large geographical area, the majority of peoples and events cannot be studied in detail. We will focus on particular cases that illustrate important patterns of change and conflict that have shaped the European world as we know it now. Hopefully this course will serve as a gateway for further explorations.

Throughout the course, students will learn skills that will be necessary for them both as history students and in most of life’s endeavors: critical and analytical thinking, writing, reading, listening, note taking, working in groups, and public speaking.



Objectives/Learning Outcomes

By completing the requirements for this Historical survey, students will:

1. Acquire a perspective on history and an understanding of the factors that shape human activity. This knowledge will furnish students insights into the origins and nature of contemporary issues and a foundation for future comparative understanding of civilizations.
2. Develop critical thinking through the study of diverse interpretations of historical events.
3. Apply critical thinking through historical analysis of primary and secondary sources.
4. Develop communications skills in exams, papers, discussions.
5. Develop an understanding of the patterns of European history, and how they inform present-day European society, politics, and relations with the rest of the world.


Important Information

Students are very welcome to come and talk with me about any aspect of the course and the wonders of history. My office hours and location are listed above. I can also be reached by e-mail (chinn.26@osu.edu).

In accordance with departmental policy, all students must be officially enrolled in the course by the end of the second full week of the quarter. No requests to add the course will be approved by the department chair after that time. Enrolling officially and on time is solely the responsibility of each student.

Disability Services: Students with disabilities that have been certified by the Office for Disability Services will be appropriately accommodated, and should inform the instructor as soon as possible of their needs. The Office for Disability Services is located in 150 Pomerene Hall, 1760 Neil Ave; Tel: 292-3307, TDD 292-0901; http://www.ods.ohio-state.edu/.

This is a GEC course. This course fulfills the second half of the GEC Category 5. Arts and Humanities A. Historical Survey. It also fulfills the GEC category “International issues western (non-United States) course.”

Attendance
I am not grading for attendance. My philosophy is that the real work of this class goes on outside of my classroom. My lectures serve to help you understand the material you are reading and to equip you with the tools to get the most out of what you read. In theory one should be able to simply do the readings, not come to class, do all the assignments (one would have to come to class for the in class assignments) and do fine. Of course any student who could do that would have no need for my class to begin with. While one does not have to come to class one still has to participate. All students most e-mail me at least one question or serious comment about the reading by noon on class days. I use these questions as the basis for the class. My lectures are, in essence, my response to your questions.

Readings

All books have been put on two-hour reserve at Sullivant library.

All books are available for purchase at SBX and other area bookstores
**[Be sure to bring a copy of the readings to each discussion section as you will refer to the readings regularly during discussion]**
Required Books:
Norman Davies – Europe: a History
Deborah Lipstadt – History on Trial
ETEP Reader (Make sure to get the one assigned to this specific class. It will have my name on it.)

Grades will be computed on the following standard scale:

A: 92.6% and above B+: 87.6% to 89.5% C+: 77.6% to 79.5% D+: 67.6% to 69.5%
A-: 89.6% to 92.5% B: 82.6% to 87.5% C: 72.6% to 77.5% D: 62% to 67.5%
B-: 79.6% to 82.5% C-: 69.6% to 72.5% E: below 62%


Two special comments:
1) Since the University does not record D- grades, a student earning a course average below 62 will receive an E in this course.
2) In order to pass the course, you must pass the Final Exam with at least a 62.

Breakdown of Assignments
Class Participation – 15%
Maps and Quizzes – 15%
Paper #1 - 20%
Paper #2 - 20%
Final – 30%

Map Assignments and Quizzes

The “quizzes” component of your discussion section grade (15% of your total grade) includes two map exercises (one take-home and one in-class) and three in-class quizzes.

· Quizzes: Each quiz will comprise 3-4 short questions based on the materials in the reading assignments and lectures.
Map assignments:
Map assignment #1: European towns and physical geography (take home)
Map assignment #2: Contemporary Europe, political (in-class).
On take-home map assignment, students will be able to use published atlases (the best option) and/or good web maps (I recommend maps from National Geographic, the CIA, and the UN).
In-class map assignment (#2): Students will be required to know the locations of the countries of Europe today. In class, they will be given a map of today’s Europe with the borders marked and asked to fill in the names of the countries from a list provided. (usually approximately 30 countries)
Grading Your Exams and Papers:
I furnish below brief descriptions of how you will earn your essay grades:
· "C” essays will include: an introductory paragraph that contains your thesis; a body of several paragraphs in which you offer evidence from the readings, lectures, and discussions to support your thesis; and a conclusion that reiterates your basic argument. That being said this paper will have serious methodological problems.
· "B” essays will include: all of the above requirements for a “C” essay. It will demonstrate basic competence and understanding of the required assignment.
· "A” essays will include: all of the above requirements for a “B” essay plus more data and some indication of independent or extended thought. To get an “A” you are going to have to impress me by doing something that exceeds my expectations of 112 students.
· As for “D” and “E” essays: usually, these essays do not include a viable thesis and/or they do not include very much information from the course.


Late Paper Assignments and Make-Up Exams

Students must take the final exam at the scheduled times. Students will be allowed to take a make-up exam only for urgent reasons, such as medical or legal emergency. In such instances, students should, if possible, contact the instructor at least one day in advance. The student will be expected to present written proof of the emergency, such as an official statement from the University Medical Center. Without a valid excuse, students may be permitted (at the discretion of the instructor) to take a make-up exam. However, their grade will be reduced by a full letter (e.g., an A will be dropped to a B) for each week that passes after the scheduled exam time.
Extensions for the paper are granted at the discretion of the instructor to those students presenting valid and verifiable excuses (again you will be expected to provide written documentation). Students who are unable to fulfill assignments as scheduled for family, religious, or medical reasons must contact the instructor before the due date of the assignment. Papers that are received late without just cause or without a previously approved excuse will be graded down by a full letter per day late.

The pressures of other course work, employment, and extra-curricular activities do not constitute valid excuses for late assignments. Note due dates on the syllabus and plan ahead. If the instructor is not available to approve excuses, leave a message on his/her e-mail or office voice mail (failing that, you may leave a message for the instructor on his e-mail or voice mail). There is no provision in this course for additional papers for extra credit or to substitute for requirements.


Submission of Assignments
All assignments are mandatory. If you do not submit one assignment, your final grade will be reduced by one full letter grade in addition to giving you zero for that assignment. If you do not submit two or more assignments, you will automatically fail the course.


Grade Reconsideration
A student who wishes reconsideration of his/her grade on an examination or paper should resubmit the assignment in its entirety to the instructor. The exam/paper should be accompanied by a written exposition explaining why the grade is not an accurate appraisal of the work. Appeals must be initiated within ten days after the paper/exams were returned to the class. In reviewing a paper or exam on appeal, the instructor reserves the right to raise, confirm, or lower the grade.


Plagiarism, Cheating, and Academic Misconduct
Plagiarism, cheating, or other academic misconduct will not be tolerated and will be reported to the Committee on Academic Misconduct. It is the responsibility of the Committee on Academic Misconduct to investigate or establish procedures for the investigation of all reported cases of student academic misconduct. Faculty Rules (3335-5-487) require that instructors report all instances of academic misconduct to the committee. Be forewarned that I will pursue cases of academic misconduct to the appropriate University committee. For additional information, see the Code of Student Conduct at http://studentaffairs.osu.edu/resource_csc.asp .
Plagiarism is theft. Please read the attached definition of plagiarism (Appendix B from University Survey: A Guidebook and Readings for New Students), see the websites: http://cstw.osu.edu/ and http://cstw.osu.edu/writing_center/handouts/index.htm. If you do not understand what plagiarism entails as it is described in this excerpt from the student handbook and/or websites, you should see the instructor before beginning any of these assignments.

Paper Assignments:
Over the course of this quarter you will be assigned two papers to write. While you have to do both of these assignments, you can choose the order that you do them in.

Paper Assignment #1: You will write a 3-5 page paper reviewing a work of historical fiction (either from the list below or approved by the teacher). In particular you will analyze the work in question from a historical perspective. How does the author view the period being dealt with? How accurate is the book; what sort of liberties does the author take?
Paper Assignment #2: You will write a 3-5 page paper reviewing a scholarly work of non-fiction (either from the list below or approved by the teacher). What argument does the author make about his subject matter? Is the author’s argument convincing? How does the work contribute to our understanding of the period?
Both of these assignment will require that you formulate a thesis and that you devote body of your essay to defending that thesis.

Works of Historical Fiction
Libba Bray: A Great and Terrible Beauty (Victorianism, Women)
Tracy Chevalier: Girl with a Pearl Earring (Early Modern Society, Women)
Bernard Cornwell: Richard Sharpe series (Napoleonic Wars)
Charles Dickens: Tale of Two Cities (French Revolution)
Umberto Eco: Eternal Flame of Queen Loana (Fascism, Historical Method)
Emile Guillaumin: The Life of a Simple Man (Nineteenth century French peasantry)
Thomas Keneally: Schindler’s List (Holocaust)
Katharine Mcmahon: The Alchemist’s Daughter (Scientific Revolution, Early Enlightenment, Women)
James A. Michener: The Drifters (Cultural Revolution)
Patrick O’Brian: Aubrey/Maturin series (Napoleonic Wars)
Erich Maria Remarque: All Quite on the Western Front (World War I)
Conrad Richter - The Light in the Forest (Enlightenment, Rousseau)
Baroness Emma Orczy: The Scarlet Pimpernel (French Revolution)
Arturo Perez-Reverte: Captain Alatriste series (Early Seventeenth Century Spain)
Elizabeth Peters: Amelia Peabody series (Victorianism, Egypt, Women)
Alexander Solzhenitsyn: August 1914 (World War I)
Art Spiegelman: Maus (Holocaust)
For more suggestions see http://www.historicalnovels.info/index.html

Non-Fiction:
Gene Brucker - Giovanni and Lusanna: Love and Marriage in Renaissance Florence (Renaissance, Women)
B.S Capp - The Fifth Monarchy Men: A Study of Seventeenth-century English Millenarianism (English Civil War, Apocalypticism)
Elisheva Carlebach - Divided Souls (Jews, Early Modern Identity)
Natalie Zemon Davis - The Return of Martin Guerre (Women, Early Modern Society)
Elizabeth Eisenstein - The Printing Revolution in Modern Europe (Renaissance, Scientific Revolution)
Leon Festinger - When Prophecy Fails (Apocalypticism)
Jeffery Friedman - The Poisoned Chalice (Enlightenment)
Christine Garwood - Flat Earth: The History of an Infamous Idea (Victorianism)
Carlo Ginzburg - The Cheese and the Worm (Early Modern Society)
Night Battles (Witch Trials, Early Modern Society)
Ecstasies (Witch Witch Trials)
Matt Goldish - Sabbatean Prophets (Jews, Early Modern Society)
Christopher Hill - Antichrist in Seventeenth-Century England (Apocalypticism, English Civil War)
Susannah Heschel - The Aryan Jesus: Christian Theologians and the Bible in Nazi Germany (Nazism)
Richard Kagan - Lucrecia’s Dreams (Inquisition, Women)
Thomas Laqueur - Making Sex
Solitary Sex[1]
Phyllis Mack - Visionary Women: Ecstatic Prophecy in Seventeenth-Century England (Women, English Civil War)
Richard Popkin - Messianic Revolution: Radical Religious Politics to the End of the Second Millennium (Apocalypticism)
Dava Sobel - Galileo’s Daughter (Scientific Revolution)
Pieter Spierenburg - The Spectacle of Suffering: Executions and the Evolution of Repression: From a Preindustrial Metropolis to the European Experience (Early Modern Society)
Barbara Tuchman - Guns of August (World War I)
D. P. Walker - The Decline of Hell: Seventeenth-Century Discussions of Eternal Torment (Early Modern Religion)
Frances Yates - Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition (Renaissance, Scientific Revolution)
Perez Zagorin - How the Idea of Religious Toleration Came to the West (Wars of Religion)

Movies: At several points during the quarter I will be showing films related to the material. While I think these films are useful and will be worth your while to watch, I am not about to invest an entire class period in showing them. I will though introduce the film and start it during the last half hour of class. Students are free to stay and watch or leave at their leisure. I have penciled in two tentative films, but I am open to alternatives.
Class Schedule and Assignments

1. March 30. Introduction: The Historical Method
Highly recommended: Herbert Butterfield – The Whig Interpretation of History

2. April 1. Renaissance and Reformation
Davies 469-507.
Luther’s 95 Theses (http://www.iclnet.org/pub/resources/text/wittenberg/luther/web/ninetyfive.html)
Papal Condemnation of Luther (http://www.papalencyclicals.net/Leo10/l10exdom.htm)

3. April 6. Religion Wars and European Society
Davies 526-39, 563-69.
Carmen: Magdalena and Balthasar, Edmund Williamson
Move: The Return of Martin Guerre

4. April 8. Scientific Revolution
Carmen: Barzun - “the Invisible College”
Video – Galileo’s “Dialogue” (http://library.ohio-state.edu/record=b5743543~S3)[2]
Quiz #1

5. April 13. Rise of Absolutism
Davies 615-28.
Carmen: Barzun – “The Monarch’s Revolution”
James I, Charles I, Thomas Hobbes, Louis XIV

6. April 15. The English Civil War and the Glorious Revolution (Passover No Class. You are still responsible for your reading and for the material I post.)
Davies pg. 545-53, 628-38.
ETEP – The English Revolution
Carmen: John Locke (From the Second Treatise on Government)

7. April 20. Enlightenment I
Davies 577-614.
Carmen: John Locke (Justification for the Glorious Revolution), Voltaire, Rousseau, Wollstonecraft.
Map # 1 Due

8. April 22. Enlightenment II
Candide(http://www.literature.org/authors/voltaire/candide/index.html),
Kant – “What is Enlightenment?” (http://www.english.upenn.edu/~mgamer/Etexts/kant.html)
Quiz #2

9. April 27. French Revolution I
Davies 675-757

10. April 29. French Revolution II
Carmen: French Revolution
ETEP – The Napoleonic Empire in Europe: Liberation or Exploitation?

11. May 4. Industrial Revolution
Carmen: Industrial Revolution I & II.
Paper #1 Due

12. May 6. Marxism
Davies pg. 835-41.
Communist Manifesto (http://www.anu.edu.au/polsci/marx/classics/manifesto.html)

13. May 11. Imperialism and the European City
Davies pg. 848-54.
Carmen: Orwell, Belgian Congo, Vienna and Paris I & II

14. May 13. World War I and its Aftermath.
Davies 875-96, 901-38.
Carmen: Palmer, Kern

15. May 18. The Russian Revolution and Stalinism
Davies pg. 959-65.
Reading: ETEP – The Russian Revolution
Carmen: Behind the Urals

16. May 20. Nazi Germany
Davies pg. 965-98.
Quiz #3

17. May 25. Memorial Day. (No Class)

18. May 27. World War II
Davies pg. 998-1055.
Movie: Downfall

19. June 1. Cold War
Davies pg. 1058-1136.
Map Assignment #2 (In Class)

20. June 3. Cultural Revolutions
Reading: ETEP – The End of Consensus: The Student Revolts of the 1960s.
In class presentations on European countries.

21. Conclusion
Lipstadt - History on Trial
Paper #2 Due

22. June 8. Final Exam

[1] For those who might be put off (or attracted) by Laqueur’s racy titles, these are serious works of scholarship dealing with changes in notions of sexuality during pre modern times. Once you get past the book title one is going hard pressed to find much to titillate or take offense at. One way or another I do strongly recommend them.
[2] This documentary is part of your reading assignment. You are to have watched it before coming to class.