Hello folks, before we get down to all the wisdom that you usually expect from the new thinkery, I'll just say there's a good chance if you're listening to this podcast that you like Leo Strauss. Guess what, folks, if you want to learn from real bonafide, Straussian, Weismann, they're coming down from their mountain and convening in Austin, Texas and January. Is that right Greg? Oh yeah.
Let me name these Zarathustras that will be there. We got Mark Blitz of Claremont McKenna College, Chris Lynch, Missouri State University, Chris Renee Donne, also of Claremont McKenna College. Ron, Dernaydon, go on be there. Yeah, Dernaydon.
And Lauren, Lauren, Rottener. Oh, Rottener of the Battle Snake. And last but not least, former guest of the show, Devin Stauffer of the University of Texas at Austin. And what they're basically going to do is they're going to discuss what is political philosophy, the essay, but then also the various chapters of natural right and history.
And you're going to get a real lesson. In addition, there will be certain lunchtime lecturers of which one is the handsome and old Gregory McRayer and the less handsome, but not as old. Alex, for you, yours truly. Greg, we're going to be there too.
We're going to be there. Oh, that's nice. If you want to meet two thirds of the new thinkery, I mean David will probably not be there. But I hope so.
I hope so. We'll try to get it. I'll see those are the new thinkery. Apply to this.
Now Greg, where is it? And what are the eligibility requirements? Tell the folks that don't. Well, yeah, anybody who's interested in Leo Strauss should apply unless you're old.
If you're between the ages of 21 and 35, come on down. They're currently, they're really especially interested in recent undergraduates currently enrolled undergraduates, juniors and also currently enrolled graduate students. If you're studying for your master's or doctorate, you should definitely apply. It'll be in Austin, Texas, January 2nd through the 7th, 2024.
That's this coming January. Should be nice weather. Maybe someplace cold one. Get down to Texas.
There's a rolling admissions for this with a final deadline of November the 12th. There are links. We can point this out. It's going to be pinned to our Twitter page here in just a moment.
Yeah, so apply as soon as possible. So that means, right? Don't wait. If you put TNT in the box right now, you're going to extra 30% off.
That's not true. I don't know what that means. But it doesn't cost anything, right? Right, right, right.
It's free. Yeah, you'll get $300 travel stipend to help to free the cost of travels, right? And there's no tuition and accommodations will be provided if you live outside of Austin, Texas. Also meals.
Whoa, it's quite the bargain. It is. All that wisdom for negative $300. They're going to pay me.
They're going to throw my, at least try that mitigate the cost of my flights. Go to our Twitter account at the new thingery and we have a pinned tweet at the top. It's got links, everything you need there. And guess what?
Share that tweet, retweet it and enjoy the coming wisdom. Welcome back to the new thingery. My name is David Barr and with me is always my good friend. It's pretty.
How are you? I'm feeling good. I'm in for a hot app. I'm looking forward to talk about some ideologies and care.
But let's before we get to that, let's introduce our ideological terrorist himself. Hi guys. Hey, are you now terrorists? So that's the word you'd use Alex because I always knew Greg as a patriot.
Not an honest picture. He was one of those guys that would wear a nice served hat at the local chilies. Right. Right.
For free beers and I found it disgusting. Do you have any opinions on that? Dean Ian, younger man, our guests today. How are you?
Good. How are you? Thanks for having me back. Yeah.
I tell you guys, I don't know if I told you this during that when I was in college, I, my day was in the Air Force and so I was pretty broken college. And so I used some of his old duffel bags just for carrying my clothes to college because you know, I didn't have, I didn't have a problem. You're probably well made to, right? Oh my God.
They're still, they still held up there. Fantastic. And I was in the elevator and somebody was like, Oh man, welcome back. I was like, Oh thanks.
You know, and that didn't dawn on me until after I got like, Oh, he thought like welcome back from like, I've been deployed and I was like, just can't. I was like, Oh man. So I really did have my example of stolen valor there David that you always accused me of. I'm joking.
Of course. I thought when you said Greg was a patriot, you meant like a patriot in the way of proud boys a patriot. I'm proud. You're proud.
And I'm a more man than a boy, but I'm not a girl. So yeah, probably anyway. So our guests tonight is a second time on the show. The first time is actually just with paying Alex without a commission.
Were you a dog or being born? I forget what it was. I think that was it. So it was a for your dollars birth.
It was a show with Greg. It was a wonderful episode. It was just a great book in there. And he's a one man story of you know, kind of how the great books help save him during various low points of his life.
And anyway, Damien is a close friend of ours. He's a jujitsu master, which is really all I want to talk about. But he knows Hannah rent better than most are rent scholars. In fact, corresponds with a rent scholars.
You've been studying. Tell us a little bit. So we're reading an essay by a rent before you introduce the essay, Damien. How did you get interested in the rent?
I mean, it's more than just the passing fad for you. You read her every single day. Yeah. So I had not read much of her, I know, for a prior to.
So I retired from the Navy in 2017 and went to Columbia University in New York and I started in January of 2018 and study of American studies. And the head of the center for American studies at the time was Casey Blake, who was a brilliant man and became my advisor. And basically what that degree was at the time was founded in kind of US intellectual history. So through those, through certain courses that I took, I ended up reading quite a bit of her.
I read her, I think, in four different classes. One, kind of political science, just in her kind of republicanism or the idea of republicanism. She's in a very similar kind of to fill in that way. So she's included in that.
And then what actually happened was I read the seminar, this great teacher loop made it. It was called how democratic is the US something like that. And what he would do is he would pair like a current text and very current, like one that had just come out with kind of a classical text and played over a subtle and one of the things he printed out was some sheets of from a Rensselman Revolution. So it's a current out and then X out the parts that he didn't want us, we wouldn't have to read, just like an international history.
I ended up doing these. So I was so interested in what I was reading that I read, I read those X out passages and then I went and bought the book and read the book. And then was then started reading Origins of the Totalitarianism, which this essay became the final chapter of. I'll talk about that a little bit later.
And then just started, I don't know why I think it's always an interesting question is how certain thinkers or writers, how we get drawn to certain people. It's like an interesting thing for everybody, how anybody looks. And I read Strauss prior to this and I was kind of ignorant to, or naive to whatever tensions. So I read Strauss and Bloom kind of deep into the kind of first wave and he was conservative thought, public interest and all that stuff.
And I saw kind of a lot of similarities and in a rant as far as her, the weariness of his and what she was able to talk about as a ideology and how important that idea was to that generation that had experienced these kind of horrors of World War II and having to come in terms of it. So I read this, I read all of her major texts and then I started working on all of the collections of essays that she had read anything. I can read in English that had been translated in English, I don't read them. And so I read all the collections of essays, all of her major work, quite a few secondary texts which there are some very different just yeah and that's kind of how it was.
Yeah I think she's, it's useful at any time to kind of read her from whatever side of the political spectrum. I think she ought to pull you to the middle, I think, whatever side you're on. And I think that that gets lost these days quite, it seems like at least if I were that she's pulled to one side. Yeah, so that's something I think early on I think this is only anybody that reads these kind of thinkers are, is that you really have to read them yourself because often I think the critics or the interpretation of them, it might not be what you get from it when you actually read it yourself.
Jamie, you already touched on this a little bit and I apologize for backtracking and a lot of our audience probably knows who Hannah Arendt is was, but can you just briefly mention when she was writing where she's from, what she's doing, what's her project, any other kind of thing you think so much I know what and heard of her. Yeah, so she was born in 1906, she's a German born, she's born in Germany. She died in New York in December of 1975. She moved to the United States in 1941, but was left escaped moved to France in 1933.
Briefly was interned in a camp and then escaped moved here to New York and sort of became part of the New York public and electrical scene. Rope for boys and review, Rope for different, kind of fell out with them a little bit, eologically, and then Rope for other publications. She taught at multiple different universities, University of Chicago, she talks verbally for years, taught at Princeton, I believe she was the first woman to be given like a full professorship at Princeton. So I just thought Chicago, at the committee of social thought, ended up at the New School of Social Research in New York and died in December 1975 when she was working on their last major work was The Life of the Mind and famously the last page, the beginning of a third volume of that judging the beginning of that was in a typewriter and she'd been cheap.
So I never finished that, but the published book is the first two volumes, thinking and willing to believe. She wrote a dissertation, I was actually moving, I think when she was three to coming to work, which I believe was her son, and I think she said that she, she always thought the political theory is not a philosopher later on and it's famous there in the year 1963 and I'm sorry reading comment, I believe it 14 and a very influential thinker in her ideas. Yeah, and then wrote Origins of the Telliliaries and was her first major work, which is published in 1951, and then I guess her other major works, the next major, one of the major kinds of philosophical works is the Human Conditions, never next to major work. And then also wrote one of the books, and as she was writing this, she, after this was a platform given in Guggenheim, a grant to write a book called Totalitarian Elements and Marxism and never finished the book, but Marx became this kind of constant interlocutor, but an important, trying to turn, I think, with what she saw in Marxism, kind of bridges the work, I believe, from Origins of the Telliliaries to the next major work.
And she works on, she discusses in Marx and those kinds of ideas quite a bit in the book, but she has notes and letters that are, a lot of them, right? And then we have some of Nietzsche's stuff, where he has plans for unpublished works, I think, right, Alex? You have to correct me, Eric, right? Did a rent anywhere project future projects?
I don't know, I haven't been through all of the papers in Library of Congress, though they're available, I haven't put them into that stuff very much, but some of it's in non-secondary texts or excerpts of some things like that, and in some of the introductions, the other collections of essays, Jerome Cohn writes brilliant introductions, he's the editor of all those texts on essays and he writes a very good introduction to all of those, and I guess he saw it there, but I couldn't answer that, if you would. Okay, why'd you let us, I mean, I thought this, as it was great, it sounds to me from your description, as though this is maybe a more, it's the word fundamental or total account of her understanding of totalitarianism, and it's both racial and, like you could say, Marxist forms, right? Correct me if I'm wrong, but it struck me as a really powerful essay with a number of really useful ideas or formulations of some of the distinctive features of totalitarian governments, which she distinguishes right from ancient, it's in the first section, she starts there, so, you know, maybe it tells you what you think the significance of this essay is in particular, maybe it gives us, this probably was hand in hand with that question, so maybe a kind of overview of what she's talking about here. Yeah, I think what's important here is it's kind of, I think to look at it, forget who said this, but one scholar said that, first of all, it wasn't the, I think she wanted to call it a little bit of a elements of totalitarianism, I think that would work better, as English, though it was called something different before, it was even publishing this, but I think it's really to look at it as a phenomenological sort of method of trying to come to terms with this, you know, it's like when you think of the term essay as an attempt at something, I think Cohen writes this about her, she's really kind of an essayist, and I think it's really just a way of her working through this idea of totalitarianism that she says, that she is very, it's very idiosyncratic in that way, what you just mentioned is that it's not, that doesn't fit into what we know from this kind of cyclical decay of political regimes that we studied, anything we read in, you know, say, or the early Greeks, which she's very faithful to even kind of, she's very adoring about its famous kind of her, her, her, um, adulation kind of happens, and sometimes I think idiosyncratic ideas like this can be tricky, but I think she says that it's such a horrible thing that could only happen within modernity that makes it so kind of powerful and pressing and still useful to kind of look at as that it is so idiosyncratic in her way that it's not tyranny, it's not dictatorship, it's not authoritarianism, it's not any of those ideas that we're used to, which one of the reasons I was drawn to it is because there's this kind of thing that happens that sales in this book skyrocketed after Donald Trump was elected in 2016, it's kind of from here, but it's not, you know, I wonder how many of those people really read the book and what they really thought it, you know, because it's not right, because it's not those things, it's not anything, she's, it's very specific, so there's only two totalitarian movements ever in history, according to her, and that's not the other one, right?
Yeah, I mean, to return to the point you make about how this could only arise in modernity, and I wonder, because on the one hand she wants to take an only rise in modernity, and I think there's a few reasons, right? She describes totalitarianism as invoking history, right, or nature, but nature understood as a movement, and so it's almost as history itself as a kind of historical process, so and there it seems tied above all to Darwinism, right, seems to be this, and so there's this attempt to explain sort of a destiny or a historical trajectory or a movement in terms of the particular circumstances that guided it originally, and so there's this denial of the universal, which then means that at the same time, and this is what I think makes totalitarianism sort of distinctifertarian as well as it has to become ideological, right, so that the ideas are understood and she makes them really nice things about this, ideas are understood not as something to be contemplated and the openness of philosophical inquiry's laws, but they're utilized as premises, in which like the whole system of logical effects are deduced, which always involve eliminating, right, eliminating either classes of people or eliminating races of people, and so now there's that issue, and then she says this regime also explodes, I think she used that word, sort of the ancient regime, cycles or regimes sort of structure, yeah, typology, right, so I think when you look at it like that, you're kind of a pains to wonder, well, is this system a kind of, if it's just a creature of modernity, does it really explode this typology, would it have to be superior in some sense, or wouldn't it be a kind of decayed version of what happens, totalitarianism would be what happens necessarily when you make philosophy political in its ambitions, right, just to quote Marx, right, philosophers of the trade out just to the world, now we're going to try to change it, right, that suggests a completely, like you could say the ancient is looked at as a decayed form of philosophy, they might even be hesitant to go on philosophy, but I just want to remark that because it's struck me as an important, I don't want to call it contradiction, but a question that I have, you know, about what she's saying, I don't have your thoughts on that, but that was the reaction I had. No, that's interesting, yeah, I don't. And there's lots of things that I think, and I rent their slippery, they're very tricky, you know, it's very hard to, I mean, where I spent quite a lot, you know, she has this line, it's just this movement of from the classes into masses, I always thought that was a nice, that's tough, what do you mean by that, you know, it's, it's really kind of, you know, it's, I almost thought about that as like, is that just kind of a product of the mind that it was, that's what we're doing, because what she defines it as is kind of like, there's no more, you're born into a position, there's no more of that.
Okay, well, that's, there's a lot to that, you know, there's going to be a lot of those things, and I think she goes into kind of, I think, explain it, but yeah, it's, it's, it's complicated, it was very complicated, but I think she's pretty clear, I think, in at least totalitarianism, to do some gratitude, that the pre-Semitism is for world domination, but it can't exist without that idea or that end state, which I think is one of the main, very important principles that separates it from her definition, and obviously, you know, it's specific to what she thinks is, she often, you know, many people written, I think, I'm going to use these terms, they're, you know, interchangeably. I mean, it reminds me a little bit of what Herodotus says about ancient Persians, I was trying to think of like an ancient choralea, but he says, the Persians think that, you know, right, and they still think this to this day, I've pushed him over this, but I think that the next, people next to them are next lowest, and if you go further, they're even lowest, and basically, like, there's this concentric circles of ever worse human beings that really get away from, which is interestingly enough, a kind of justification of imperialism. This is obviously imperial, and at least the Persians seem like a nice quasi-corollary of maybe Nazism in that way, that seems racial or nationalistic, let's just say. But also, there's this interesting element that Herodotus relates about the Persian gods being the sun and the moon, so they're not confined to the particular bounds of the city, but they're kind of cosmic.
And it struck me that perhaps that's one way to think of this notion of totalitarianism as a movement or a motion. It's inherently, in so far as it's based on the idea as premise, as, you know, forcing through the cold logic, you know, what you have to do, and that this is part of a historical motion, it seems to be something close to like, esitology or something like that, right? Like, there's like a sort of almost revelational component to it, but initiated through logic or philosophy into this weird rationalism. I'm not even fixing all those pieces, but it's just struck me that Herodotus was a helpful lens for thinking about how the ancients might respond to this apparent claim that this explodes their political thought or something.
Yeah, I have that, I have that esitological, I've written in my margin a few different times in this essay, but you know that this is linear, but it's not circular, it's not cyclical, it's a linear, this idea of she reiterates this numerous times about movement. It's a politics of movement backed up by this fictitious ideology, ideology, totalitarianism, the muse of the ideology, which is another thing that she says separates it from this idea of tyranny. Not that totalitarianism doesn't include elements of tyranny, she writes about this. Like when it begins, it will kind of mirror it will utilize aspects of tyranny and dictatorship to get it started, but then tyranny is not totalitarianism, but totalitarianism includes elements of tyranny.
And she goes into this right with the Nazism is nature and then Bolsheism is history. And these dialectical movements that they have, they're both kind of in a way, I suppose, dialectical and that they're linear, that there's an end state, but I, I mean, one of the interesting parts about this too is her idea of positive law, lawfulness and lawlessness. That's what I was about, actually. Yeah.
So it's not just a linear sort of part that separates it from ancient tyranny, it's this, Alex and I were talking before we jumped on, but the first part seems to really track this idea that modern totalitarianism somehow tries to transcend a sort of legal, illegal distinction, legality, illegality, something like that. I'm not actually sure I quite followed it. So maybe you can help explain it for me. That's part one of the section of it again today that I think it's so difficult again.
I think it's hard to understand. I think so too. Yeah. Yeah.
That in the end was loneliness and salty. No, that I got loneliness, I mean, just resonates very deeply in my soul. So that was crystal clear. I use that.
She says when she says, you never feel near that when you're with other other people or something like that. Yeah. Jesus. Yeah, it's good to be sorry.
No, I use this essay. I had this essay in a reading group because I thought, it's kind of like an interesting introduction to her. I think we, and then as we were reading it, they were like, this is really hard. Yeah.
It's a lot of, it's very dense. There's a lot to kind of dig through. But I thought one of the, you know, again, it's hard to because, you know, when I rent users terms like common sense, I think, okay, she's talking about common sense, which is not as simple as what we think of like, oh, it's a common sense. It is, but it isn't.
It's more so that's tough. But I think when she talks about positive law and the ideology, it almost seemed to me, it was that natural law is universal. So that's based on universals. But with ideology behind these kind of fictions is that it was almost like the, these totalitarian elements or movements, utilized kind of date, inverted it to where they made a positive, they made their own universal and then derived everything kind of from this fiction, this kind of universal of history with capital H or, you know, nature, the capital then.
And then they just kind of threw terror right through what she talks about as terror feeds into that as its own ends. And that anything justifies that. It's, which is another part, I think, you know, this idea from topic, history, every human being at the end of themselves, it's definitely the opposite of that, that that doesn't justify the means in any capacity and that are the only role for anyone in these totalitarian movements is to accelerate what's seen as or what's believed as this in their fiction as the desired end. I guess this is getting ahead to part three, but the logicality, I think, is the word she uses a lot and, you know, just piggybacking on what you just said, the way in which we're talking about communism and we're talking about fascism or Bolsheism and fascism.
As I'm reading and I'm thinking of like, darkness at noon in 1984 and all these things. And I was what I found really persuasive was this. And I can't quite sure if I can connect this to part one on legality, but like, there's this notion of what that end state looks like, or what, what the goal is. And then everything gets interpreted in light of it.
And so it's sort of, it has an amazing capacity to explain everything, these ideologies. And you can see this. I mean, she talked about racism, for example, and if you, if she was obviously talking about fascism and national socialism, like if you believe in racism, then you can explain everything in light of this, right? Well, of course, this is what we have to do in this, any other.
And if the goal is extermination, if these people have to be exterminated, then we will exterminate because it's a sort of weird self-affilling prophecy. But I was also just thinking about like what I found most chilling in her account of this. And again, this is probably what made me think of darkness at noon and others was the way in which it sort of compels the levers to completely abandon themselves to the cause, right? So like you have these weird examples of folks confessing to crimes they know they didn't commit into totalitarian regimes.
And for me and for so many of us, it's so difficult to comprehend what someone would confess to it. You can sort of explain it simply, right? Well, it's fear, the torture they wanted to end is setting together. But the way that it sort of gets internalized due to the logic, how, like, well, if the party says this, and I believe the party is right, I must be guilty.
And if I, even if I'm not guilty, like the cause is so important that I have to confess, so it's not getting the way of the party. And even worse than that, if you plead your innocence and you're undermining the task, therefore you're actually are a criminal. Yeah, yeah. Unless you think, if you don't, if you fake a criminal, then you're a patriot, but you're serving, I mean, it's just, it's crazy.
And in keeping with this, I thought a really interesting point she made is that it's really trying to accelerate the historical or natural rights. That's it. And therefore it ends up undoing it because it's inherently self-destructive, right? It's forcing the issue and leading to the categorization of people and just expending energy until you whittle things away.
And you can see this with the Nazis, especially during World War II, just opening up a second front and just expending people to their fighting with children and then just consumed and done. Manpower is gone. I mean, it's compelling as an articulation of the phenomenon. Yeah, in the beginning of section two, I kind of just read a couple of them.
Yeah, please. Okay. So section two, so it's page three ten on our handout. I forget what.
So for anybody, like you can download this for free online. You just search for the all gene terror and there's a PDF. So this is page three ten of this one. In section two, it says terror becomes total when it becomes independent of all opposition.
And then the next paragraph opens with terror is the realization of this law of movement. It's chief aim is to make it possible for the force of nature to race freely through mankind and hinder by any spontaneous human action. And that's a very important idea. To a run thinking this idea of spontaneous human action and you'll hear these terms of Natality with her often plurality and action.
These are three terms here a lot. So Natality is this idea that we're all born into the world with this capacity for spontaneous action. Right. For something new to begin something to begin new to begin new.
And that's really that's the hindrance to all of this. Is this idea something new? And I always remember, you guys have ever seen the movie children and men? Like a movie, it's all movie, but basically it's like this dystopian film.
It doesn't like that. I just come to an album. So this dystopian film, five ones in it, it's very, I believe it. There's been a kind of 18 years of infertility of human beings.
And there's one woman who's pregnant, one child woman who looks pregnant. And it's just an interesting idea like that. So in that film, that's the only hope for human beings is it's kind of one kind of new person being born. And that's really kind of all you would need really, you know, a rinse, how I might say such a thing, but it reminded me that that's really all you.
You can't entirely stand about the situation. Yeah. And like you just, it's an I was like in the most fundamental way. But if totalitarianism was ever realized, then it never was, right?
Because there was never real domination. So there was never real real actual realization. It would just kind of necessarily destroy itself. And I haven't seen this, but really quick.
So I was always, whenever I read about terror and I said, I always kind of was like, well, what, you remind me of the French Revolution, quite a bit French terror and should go to the map more than the book on revolution. Just a couple of points. What is it? I mean, right above where you quoted, she says, terror is the essence of totalitarian domination.
And I fix it on that as I was reading it. And I thought a different movie of lives of others in the way that if you haven't seen that, folks at home, I encourage you to sometimes it's on Netflix. And just this way that these regimes did seem to rely upon terrorizing their citizens or subjects, I suppose. But you're your comment about this notion that children and men that one pregnant person can undo this entire regime.
I'm sort of, I mean, this is a slightly different thing, but I find a slavery kind of the same thing. I read Frederick Douglass's narrative for a council. Like there are these enormous apparatuses that require terror and force to try and stamp out what's fundamentally human. And ultimately, because we are human, they cannot be successful.
There will be someone born who's going to want to learn to read. There will be someone born who is it, right? And I mean, you know, Alice was talking about Herodotus as the kind of diversions. As I was reading this, I kept thinking about Zenefin's fictional count of the versions in the Syrpidea because Zenefin there presents Cyrus.
And for me, that's the closest case of an ancient example of trying to do it. Cyrus is aiming for world domination precisely and he uses terror and force to do it. He wants to completely sort of stand about in the opposition. And he infantilizes them.
He one of the things that she does really well, which I think is true in the lives of others. She talks about how it's trying to explode the private, turn families against each other, turn friends against each other. And Zenefin talks about this right now. So he talks about a secret police.
He talks about the ways that this would undermine the family and undermine friendship. And you know, I grew up in West Berlin. And so that's probably one of the reasons I really liked the lives of others. But you know, when they released all this information after the fall of the early wall, you saw just how many people were snitching on their husbands, their wives, their kids, their grandkids, their neighbors, their bosses.
And you just realized like you can't thank God it was only in one particular geographic location because man, it really was total. And it really did try to insinuate itself into every single aspect of life, which is why it's a tell-through and such a great term to me. Because it's like ancient tyranny aimed at tyrannize over others, but did it really try to have total control and sort of, I don't know, monopoly of terror over every aspect of your life? I don't think so.
Yeah, I think that's what she says too. I'm sorry. Yeah, yeah. Since we're all bringing up movies, I'll just bring up my favorite movie, Poor Little White Boy.
But that's a side. I was actually going to say that's cool. Bar, bar stepped away so he can't make his political story. Yeah, I think there's a, I think there's a, I think there's quite a deep point about this birth thing because it wants to turn everybody into the sort of atomic isolated individual.
And that's impossible with birth because pregnant women are both one and two people at the same time, right? And so there's, oh, there's this. And I think it goes even cutscene a deeper, which is that in laying claim to being the fulfillment of the motion of nature or history and therefore deserving of total control and total terror, the greatest reputation of that is the objection of the young, right? That they don't agree, right?
Because they are the manifestation of the natural historical motion. And they can stand against it, right? And they are unpredictable and they are sort of spontaneous in that sense. And the spontaneity ends up, it ends up showing that nature and history have other intentions, but it also ends up showing the limitedness of the sort of, the sort of theoretical approach of ideology, which is again, to take this premise and to do everything from it to all exclusion.
So you could say there's even a connection therefore between the spontaneity of a child, right? Who has, you know, who has their own development and objectives. There's a relationship between that and you could say something like philosophical objection, right? That there's this counter movement coming in.
I don't know if she intended that, but it strikes me as a really, because she ends on this note, she brings up a few times, but she ends with this really remarkable point where she says, there remains also the truth that every end in history necessarily contains a new beginning. This beginning is the premise, the only message which the end can ever produce. Beginning before it becomes a historical event is the supreme capacity of man a little further. The beginning, this beginning is guaranteed by each new birth.
It is indeed every man. I thought that was such an interesting connection between individual and birth. And I think she's on this and I don't know if she articulates it elsewhere or more. I don't know if you have any connections.
Yeah, I mean, that's definitely central to, so she will move into this more in later text. There's also kind of incomplete essay in one of her own totalitarianism and the question is called essays and understanding. There's two books from 1930, essays from 1934 and there's an essay on the totalitarianism in there as well. But she'll, you know, he owns a lot harder than human condition, believe I think so.
And but it's central to this is that, I mean, it's a pretty short essay, right? It was a 20, 20, 20, something to take this one. Yeah, not very long. Not very long.
And there's so much in it and she does repeat these ideas, this kind of idea over and over about spontaneous human action, you know, it's kind of sad to the only savagest of tell things. I don't want to take this too far field, but just as a quick digression. Like this was published in the review of politics. I enjoyed it and I just thought to myself how few journals would publish something like this in 2023, like a probing political theoretical investigation of the phenomenon with almost no secondary literature.
I mean, she's dropping names Plato Kant, like you mentioned, I take a pretty clear illusion, the Heidegger Runfrio six, which I'd be happy to hear your thoughts on, because clearly there's some influence there. But just sort of serious probing inquiry that I mean, like an ordinary citizen could read and understand something about politics from. What a novel idea. I was ranting about this to myself in my car, not a single footnote.
You know, in this paper, I will argue I'm very grateful to. Like, I mean, it's just none of the formalities. She doesn't even say what she's doing in the section. She just assumes an intelligent reader can figure out the elements and just not a word.
It doesn't feel like it's wasting words at all. It's not scholarly. And I don't mean that as an insult. I mean, that is praise, actually.
It's like, hey, here's a thoughtful reading on actual current politics that will help us understand things. So I think, man, we should be more than that. Yeah. I mean, I think that's the reason I, you know, that passage that I actually read at the very end of the essay, the very end of the book.
So it's really actually the end of the book. I'm a adult. It's one of those passages, you know, it's like she will, and there's much better ones in that, but in her essays, I don't know how many times I've been reading an essay by her hands and sort of tossed the book, you know, it's a theory of saying, you know, but then there'll be florishes of beautiful passages, like really beautifully written language. And you'll like this, right?
But then on revolution, she has a whole section, I'm really bad. Oh, is that right? About you, about tired. No.
Yeah. My favorite, that's my favorite quote, my favorite story. Anyway, so, you know, when she was teaching at Berkeley for the year, you guys know, Eric Hoffer and her became good friends. And who's Eric Hoffer?
Eric Hoffer was a self-educing wrote this thing, this bestseller called True Believer, basically not take off things. And he was called, he's basically the long-term enthalos, but he was this union worker, supposedly self-educated, lived in San Francisco. And I think I was the Howard Sedab, the state of her book. And so he read a biography of a movie institute, I think, has all books, but some of her biography.
And he would just go to the library and live in this apartment. And he ended up teaching at Berkeley after the book. I think after the book, the image he had no degree. But her husband was also the second husband, was also kind of self-educated, and was a professor at Bard College and developed a great, kind of almost liberal arts program there.
And they're both very, very, very large college. They're heads and they're thinking they didn't know that. But yeah, so she wrote back, she in the letter, it was a great book of correspondence between she and Carly Asper's, who she wrote her dissertation under, which is totally cogent, which I thought was very interesting, cogent, also, which was there as well under Asper's book. But she wrote back that it's that I think something like I'll approach it is that Hopper is the best that America has offered.
This kind of self, what you can do as just kind of a person who can read, these kind of thinkers and develop these kinds of ideas. But I think she's kind of writing, she wrote these books, weren't what totalitarianism was written for a general development. It wasn't. A lot of her books, a lot of her stuff wasn't written for kind of what we would call academia, or if you're reading papers.
And I think that if we're kind of getting them where reading this is, and I believe this strongly about her that anyone can kind of pick up, I mean, it's, she's not easy to read at all. But it doesn't name drop like Foucouta's or something like your particular lesson. Yeah, I think anyone can kind of pick this up and read it. And you're going to be able to kind of understand, like, Alice, we were talking about these ideas of loneliness and my guys' position, and she kind of closes this essay with as far as elements of totalitarianism.
But I think, especially, I think, kind of, I returned to this and COVID. That's funny because I was actually about to ask like, okay, totalitarianism, 1983, Bolstianism, fascism. Why shouldn't anybody care in 2023? Haven't we learned that totalitarianism is a bad thing?
And is there anything for us to learn from her in 2023 that's not just historical curiosity? Yeah, well, she says, unfortunately, she writes about this. She says, unfortunately, I probably won't end after these regimes over. She says this after Stalin was the aftergater died and I was still on diet.
Still not over. It still, it will germinate. And that's tricky though. That's kind of one of those things because it also said, there's a limit to what you can learn from this brief.
Well, it's not prophetic because that's where she says in these ideologies, right? Because that ideologies are a fiction about that they tell you the past, present, and the future. And so that's something I think to be wary of is this kind of, this idea of even being precious. I think it's tough to come to terms with her, but I think it is instructive in ways to just be wary of these elements that she does discuss.
I don't know if that's the way we came. I remember something. Oh, it's interesting. Kind of isolation.
Yeah. I was actually thinking that all this research now that's shown how lonely people are isolated, COVID not COVID. And I just thought to myself, okay, if she's right that this is a symptom or a feature of totalitarianism, does this mean that we moved in that direction? Because I mean, everything you see says this is the case about us.
Yeah, social media technology. You guys, I think that you guys just, I think did the episode on Hijer's essay. Yeah, question of technology, which I think the essay, the title is much more simple than that. It's very obviously.
I think the only thing to buy to yours is actually more probably approachable is kind of what is called thinking this lecture, she has on what was happening, which I ranked actually was instrumental in getting translated. But yeah, I think it's hard. It's something I'm careful of. It's not being like, yeah, that's today, you know, it's tough because she is saying that it is idiosyncratic.
So without authoritarianism, authoritarianism isn't totalitarianism. Even Marxism was not totalitarianism. It was Bolsheism, she specifically saying that it's the interpretation of the interpretation of the utilization of those ideas that led to totalitarianism, not Marx itself. Yeah, but I do think it's helpful to kind of re-heard.
In whatever way, it's kind of, I don't want to say it helps kind of work my way through these kind of things that I'm not on on on you see in today's society, especially in social media and technology. But it does kind of help I can go to have some understanding. Yeah, I feel as though I haven't read her in some time. And I feel as though I appreciate her more after having read Strassby, that she is more on the ground.
And I don't think she has as good a grip of the problems that she's dancing around as Josto's. But to her credit and maybe to Strassby's credit, she is more, she's more attentive to some of the issues of the ground. No, that's a little unfair to Strassby, because we'd like the introduction of the city of Man, and he's obviously very sharply attuned in writing about his thoughts on it. But still, there's something helpful about her working through these issues.
I don't want to move us to close, but I thought maybe a good, I don't know if you guys want to jump in with anything else, but that may be a good question to ask us if I'm curious about this myself. What do you recommend people read after this? Oh, yeah, great. So on the one hand, go read the questions of the totalitarianism, on the other hand, there's all this bullshitism stuff.
I think it's quite interesting, but you suggested earlier, she's criticized for that not being as present in the origin. So we'll be good at picking up on some of the themes of her critique of ideology as she written other things on ideology as she written other things. Yeah, no, no, I think so I'm not a huge fan of this book, and all volumes, I think the first two, it's very hard to find a cohesion kind of the three volumes. I think they're published separately, they're three volumes.
So and Margaret Canavan, so her text on the rent are great, but she's great. She's a very deep book on populism and the idea of the people as well. But I think the books of her essays, I think between past and future, I think she's really kind of an essayist and I believe Jerry Cone even said that she would kind of get bored with the book, the major works, and kind of wrap them up with Elle. So I'd say the essay, I think on revolution, I think for political theory, this and on revolution work well together, especially the talk of the totalitarianism volume, but the on revolution is kind of her strongest political, in her republicanism.
And you'll see kind of a lot of tilt-wheel match, she kind of compares the French Revolution in New York and people, who are being too positive about American. That's just kind of what it is. It's not a force. Yeah, I'd say, I'd say, you know, take a look at her essays, and I also say like this is something I wrote down.
I was reading Simone Bea, a similar time, her essays on oppression and liberty, it's a collection of essays, oppression and liberty, and it's her. I remember I was also friends with Raymond and her own, that's how she got to go to her lectures, I believe. She was friends with animals, she was in France. And so, I was always friendly, she was very, she was very admiring of Kim, and there was a book on her, and Kim was very interesting.
So, his book, the rebel, I think it's essays on the Anne Reville and on revolution are often read together. I would actually say that if you're going to read this, I think it's very fun. It was really fun to read Simone Bea's essays, and they kind of inform each other and kind of fill in, I think, gaps that both of them have. I thought that was a kind of fun exercise.
The last time I read, the totalitarianism, the third one, the last one I read it with, the essays, but I think I'm on revolution is a good place to start, but if you're going to go chronologically, it's hard not to start with. But, alternatively, you're going to have to, you did actually, you're going to have to go back and read it. And human condition is just kind of... That's what I read in grad school.
Yeah, I can't say I read it a hard time, but I read it a few times, it's very tough. I think it's a very tough. No, I agree with that. Right.
It's a tough book too. But, as far as I actually think reading Strauss and her together are very good. I think it's very interesting. I agree, Alex, that he's more maybe readable for I think I have to write in his very tough book.
Again, it's one of those books too. I remember reading out for I told David this and realized that all my notes had been wrong. Like, all my marginalia was bad, and I had to go buy a new book. It was the first book I had to buy a brand new copy, because I was a man.
I was terrible. I was writing pencil, Damien. David Barr has come back right at the end as we're wrapping things up. He's finally here.
But just in time, look, this wasn't the deepest I've ever entered. It was a good introduction. We didn't get as deep in a rant the same art, Heidegger. But I think he got deep enough to 50-something minutes with her is good.
Yeah. I don't know. Any closing remarks, final thoughts? It was a pleasure to have Damien on again.
I sort of enjoy his probing ways. It's good to see you again. Yeah, you guys, Tim, thanks a lot for having me. I think it's...
Of course. We've been wanting to do a rent for a while. We talked about it actually. I think when we wrapped up last time.
Yeah. I mean, Samantha Rose Hill's book, new book, she's done. She's an incredible thing. Oh, yeah.
I got one final thing. You mentioned actually passing the beginning about secondary literature. So can you give folks at home top two or three scholars that you'd recommend to me to be a parent? George could test.
George had the band. Yeah. His book on her is great. And again, and Margaret Canabans, both of her.
So great about them. They're very critical for us. They're not just kind of adoring book. Samantha Rose Hill's book is very popular.
It's called The Intardis series of Pretty Political Lives. She's brilliant on her mansion. Follow her on Twitter for stuff. She's incredible.
Knowledge about her. Yeah. I think Margaret Canabans books are my favorite on her mansion. It's one reinterpretation of the shorter one of the political thought of her.
And then the other one is reinterpretation of her political thought. You can find those. They're very good. Very clear.
And she also does a whole section on a natural ideology and terror of Canada, but also just totalitarian elements and Marxism. That whole part of kind of a rinse thinking that's an influential in these kinds of ideas. I'm for sure. Well, besides around, what do you read right now to keep your mind occupied?
Anything good? I just I've been reading a ton on populism. Okay. Really, really long.
What's the most the best thing you read on populism for the folks at home? Look for something to read. Michael Lind. Michael Lind wrote a very good book on populism.
That's not that my pillow guy. Is it Michael Lind? No, no, I think it's his name. Michael Lind.
Yeah, you wrote a recent article in Compact Man. I'll check it out. And then I was back in Tokyo too, where you can tell me. Of course.
But Tokyo is like one of those things like, it's so easy because you're like, hang on, that's right. That's right. That's right. That's right.
There's no throwing the I never wanted to throw a total across the room. You know, I have. I mean, you talk about the totalitarianism. It's like, I mean, it almost like he thinks that we're the most totalitarian regime, right?
I can think of no less philosophical people in Americans. Right? Like a big heart. Right?
Yeah. Right. Right. I agree with national self-loathing.
So I like, I'm not going to murder that group. Yeah. Just, you know, eight-hour thing. No, I'm actually trying to read actually more fiction.
I actually had not been reading much political philosophy at all until you guys were you. I miss me. I've been reading Jim Harrison a lot of Jim Harrison poems. I started Conrad's Nostromo.
I think part of it takes place in that country like Paraguay, which means that things will go down hill quickly. So you're reading spoke about narcissists. I know. What are you guys reading?
What are you guys working on? Oh, Alex, yeah. I haven't been reading anything. I've been watching ancient aliens ever since they discovered that alien in Mexico.
The ancient alien in Mexico. They found an actual ancient alien. Did you see that? Yeah.
I also think it's funny to do it on care that there was like UFO testimony. Yeah. I can't believe it. People don't care about that.
No one cares. Damien has been a pleasure talking with you. I was glad you came back on the show. I always enjoy reading Hannah Rents a while since I have.
But when you're still on else again someday. So thank you guys so much for having me. It's a lot of fun. Folks at home, don't forget to like, rate, subscribe, send pics.
Thank you very much. We'll see you next week on The New Thinkery.