Welcome back to the new thinkery. My name is David Barr. With me as always is my good friend Alex Brieu. How are you doing Alex?
Good to go with you. I'm doing well. Great. And I'm doing great.
And how are you doing Greg McRaeu? Man, I'm very happy tonight. I'm very happy. How about you guys?
All happy? I'm doing, yes. I'm exceedingly pleased. We have David Lowenthal recently turned 99.
99 years old. Yeah, which is excellent. 99 years young. I'm teetering 200.
Yeah. Teetering. And so let me give a brief bio. Dr.
Lowenthal is a retired professor of political philosophy, having taught for 34 years at Boston College, but also at Harvard, Wheaton and North Carolina State. After retirement, he briefly held the Dells on chair at Assumption College. He is the author of Slave State, rereading Orwell's 1984, which is what we're going to talk about tonight. Present dangers, Shakespeare's thought in the mind and art of Abraham Lincoln's philosopher statesman.
David, nice to have you. And I do want to note that your Shakespeare on the Good Life is one of our favorite books, three of us, especially your interpretation of Macbeth in that little character Satan, which we had all missed in earlier readings. Well, so you all teach literature as well, like Shakespeare? Right.
Yeah. For sure. Wonderful. Yeah.
Shakespeare and Dickens were Orwell's favorite authors. Is that right? Yeah. We did an episode on Dickens at Christmas time.
We did an episode on Christmas Carol. Oh, that's wonderful. So if it's okay with you, what we usually do with guests, we're sort of eminent like you is we would like for them to give us a little bit of an intellectual biography. And then maybe we will start talking about how your most recent book on 1984.
So can you tell us Professor Lawenthal? I mean, folks who are connected to book, philosophy and study, book, philosophy in America will know that you were a long serving professor of book, philosophy of Boston College. The first one really there and taught there for a long time and had a number of students who went on to become eminent in their own right. And so I guess all started at the beginning, how did you become interested in the study of book philosophy or these kinds of things?
Well, that's very interesting question. I went to book on college. Book and College was an excellent place. It had some refugee scholars from Germany, both named Rosenberg, author and Hans, and they were really marvelous.
Now it turns out that author was a communist. He was a German communist and he was a communist in the old school, a real believer in democracy. And Hans was not a political man at all. But I studied history with them and they wanted to go on to the Yale department and study more history.
And it turned out that I had a semester to wait. So I enrolled at the news school and news school was better known as the center of adult education. It was founded that way. But then a miracle worker named Alvin Johnson went to Europe, one of the most leading Nazis were coming in and recruited as many scholars as he could.
And they didn't know directly like Leo Sausi went to England first, but most of them came directly. And it was same from Italy and Germany particularly and also Russia. So the result was a very unusual faculty of scholars. They didn't know anyone in this country.
And they were terrific in every aspect, but they didn't have a department of history at the news school. The graduate school was rather recently founded. And so when I came across some people whose name just kind of asked around who were there. But there was no history department.
History was included in particular subjects like sociology or philosophy. And somebody said you got to take course by Leo Sausi. Well that did it. Because for the first time in my life, there was a teacher who thought, who thought, who analyzed a difficult orphan text with you and thought with it, opened up the possibilities.
I never had that before. And in a way I've never had a sense. He was a marvelous teacher. He both gave lectures and seminars and had them both.
I have to admit that I think in one of the seminars I think it's got to be plus. It was rather severe, greater. But that's how I got into political philosophy. Everything else seemed unimportant.
And I want to read as much political philosophy and as much philosophy. So when I read, let's say Descartes, I tried to read all the major writings of Descartes. And the same with Bacon, Aristotle. I tried to give myself a much better background of philosophy generally.
And well, it turned out to be there's a new world. I'm sure you had a similar experience. From that point on when I was I was going to be both of the columns, Straussians, and in some sense that's really true. I am a Straussian.
And of course, on a change of it, rather than it. Could you sense the school was already starting, even in those early years? The Whist school? Sort of a Straussian cohort.
Could you tell? No, no, no. No, at the beginning, it wasn't anything like that. There were just a few students, Jaffa and Gwapsey were among the first.
And of course, they retained a closer relation to Strauss because while he was speaking at the New School, he got an offer from Robert Maynard Hutchins, the president of the University of Chicago, to become a university professor. No, you know, by that time he had published some books in English, of course. And a university professor, professor was able to teach as much or as little as he wanted. I mean, it was really the perfect freedom for a professor and to Strauss retain that position all the way through until his retirement, which had never happened, but he went out to your place.
So yeah, that's pretty much how I got started as a thing. Do you remember what the first thing you read with Strauss was in the first lecture is the first class? Well, he used to give me an electrical, water-political philosophy. And after the first thing I read, of that I'm really not sure.
National, right in history, National was the big blockbuster. That was the big thing. But no, I guess I don't remember the first thing I did read. But, you know, everyone, now he attracted large audiences at New York School.
And New School has a rather spectacular institution, whereby I think it was once a month, they invited somebody to give an elective and some members of the faculty and outsiders as well. And the whole city was invited to come. And I remember one of those I attended that Strauss gave, but there were many others as well. So it was very short.
The news was very intellectually vibrant place. It was in a way a center for this kind of thing in Manhattan. So it really performed a very valuable function. But in the early days, Strauss had huge large lectures, large numbers.
His seminars were always well attended. I should tell you a secret. I was a favorite of Strauss. He called everybody Mr.
So-and-so, Mr. Quopsy, Mr. Jeff. He called me David.
I thought I know I was the only one. He called my first name. And of course it was America. We got to know this Strauss was a little bit.
Harvey Mansfield and I was traveled out to the Cape. Strauss with vacationing, I think it was in Chatham. And Harvey and I went out to see him. We met Mr.
Strauss. The relationship between Strauss and Mrs. Strauss was really something somebody got to find out about. It was so lovely.
And so gentle. And she treated him in the same way. So that, just hearing a few words from her, you can see she's sort of a kind woman that she was. But so I got to know this Strauss was pretty well.
When he left news film, I was designated by my class to give him a gift. And I went, well, what, here we go. And I came across five beautiful volumes of Jane Austen in Old Magnificent Leather. And that was the class gift.
I gave it to him. He was deeply, you know, he loved Jane Austen. He also loved us. But he thought Jane Austen was closer to the truth of things.
So, you know, I got to know Strauss particularly well. Compared to our vet girl, I didn't live there. I lived at home. And I wasn't hanging around in the news for a long time.
But still, it was a cherished memory. When he went to the station to go to the university, I was the caretaker of his dog, Shwotch. When you talk about Shwotch, there's a lot of talk about him. You want to know about this?
Anything you know about the dog? Well, I don't know anything about Shwotch, but it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, David, when you take care of him. So I took care of him as, you know, in the station. And he loved dogs.
And I tell you something about Strauss, which is really unusual. You know, a lot of us are pretty good in theory. And nobody better than Shwotch. But his practical judgment was very good.
And he followed everything. He read the strategies of World War II. He recommended one or two to me. But his practical judgment and his toughness.
Oh, we, we, we wouldn't be in a position as we are now, if anyone like Strauss were among the leadership because, and then he was also when he had to be very direct, you know, very direct. So that the shots had certain other capacities, including the capacity for political leadership that will never really displayed, you know, in his life. It was mainly in his judgment, then he's talking about things. So, you know, you know, many people like that, even in his sanctuary, so that he combined all the gifts of memory, analysis, just, she a perception, she a perception.
And he said, you have to look at the surface of things. How true that is. So that it was a genius in so many ways. That would be the kind of general point.
And some were, you know, I can't really picture Strauss as being out on the hustings. It was not that kind of thing about his capacity for statesmanship. I thought was really, I was always impressed. The book recommended my reading.
I remember was by my name, Wilmot, it had to do with World War II. And he had studied that carefully. But Strauss was when he went to the city, she learned something from it. One time genius.
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You get your ancient language on and now back to the show. So today we're talking to Troskin. We're talking about Orwell and a rereading. You write of Orwell's 84.
Did he ever talk to you about Orwell? Not at all. Okay. Not at all.
So we just wanted to ask, how did you come to start thinking about Orwell again? Well, that's a very good question. A rereading of 1984. And he's an interesting thinker because the left and the right at various times, all trying to claim 1984 is their book.
So what started you on this reappraisal? Well, I was first of all, I received the approximate review during the war. And that's why I first learned about him. Because he wrote a regular letter from London.
And it was always very instructive. And so having done that, I wasn't a steady Orwell reader. But I did get a job teaching at Harvard. And a thing back of it, three outsides.
The dean at the time told all the departments that they'd have to hire as personnel and faculty, somebody from the outside. They're very ingrown. So he hired three people all at once, one of which Richard Cox remained a good friend, remember the great book on Locke. And the other Henry Karrill, who afterwards went out to the University of Hawaii.
Well, you see, they hired us for three years, and they fired us all immediately. So nobody had a chance to get tenure there. My mentor in the, they call it government club, was Sam Beer, a wonderful, wonderful man. And Sam kind of, I was an instructor in SOC side too, social science too.
And they had offered me a job because I had had a Ford faculty fellowship. At the time I was teaching down North Carolina State. And I got this fellowship when I was taught how to study the history of science. That's very, very useful.
Essentially, it's an extension of philosophy. So I was reading all the way up to Einstein. I read the Wikipedia, I really acquainted myself with a top scientist. But so being at Harvard and being in my third year, and knowing that I had to do something, but because the means of expanding the faculty were now, you had to replace somebody, or be extraordinary.
So Sam said, well, you have to write a book. And I said, you really mean I have to write a book. And then it won't even look at you if you don't write a book. So I remember it on my own well.
And I decided I'm going to read it all over a well and write something and I did. So the work that you see published now, at the beginning, right back there, I think, something like 1955, 56 or 77, something like that. And so I completed a manuscript. And I gave it on Sam.
And Sam said, what are you giving me? I said, this is a complete manuscript. He said, no, you need a book, a real book. And because it wasn't a book, I did W.C.
Tanya and these are the other two guys. And we all found a place somewhere else. And I thought I managed to find a job at Wheaton College and the Warren's College and then Sebastian College. So but that's how the thing got going.
And for all this time, I hadn't really looked at it. I had read more, but I hadn't really looked at what I had written. And then I looked at it as more extensive manuscript, of course. And I thought, I wonder if people would be interested.
Now, this was just a few years ago. And I thought, well, I'll go through it and see if I can still think it's good. Well, I did think it went pretty good. And kind of sloughed to a part that I didn't think would be popular at that time or needed.
And so, I put together a little book that you see in front of you. And I was in order to prepare for seeing you fellas. I must say, I haven't remembered all of my old, well, all these years. But nevertheless, I read as much as the book I wrote as I could.
I still liked it. I was appalled by the situation in which we found ourselves, just as he was. And the gloomy feeling coming out of that book was very severe because he thought that the situation that roughly he described would I say roughly I'll come back to that. Something like it was inevitable.
And there were sections of my book quoting him that seemed to have written yesterday for our country. The loss of independent thought, the centralization, the sort of sense that everything has to be done by the government and COVID, of course, had contributed to that. But so I thought, my god, oh, well, what's really a profound man? He did more to understand our situation.
And to him, the big question was, how could this dream of socialism, of improvement, of progress? And one thing actually said, I don't believe in progress. But how could this dream of progress be turned into something so opposite to it? After all, and then the image of the combination of the intellectual was also a tyrant and torturous.
He got from the Soviet Union. But in many ways, the picture that he paints is a lot worse than even the Soviet Union. But inspired by him, he tried to sort of see further into it, watch the logic of the thing, even beyond Stalin and all of this. You start your book with, you actually don't get to 1984 until part two, you start a considerable amount of time going through how Orwell responded to other people writing in this sort of style.
Yes. Yeah. Well, as some of his earlier works, but I just had a question and it never occurred to me. But you show him writing about Wells and Burnham and who's the other, Cussler and Zem Yotten, out of Mount of Fear.
But it sounds like there was like a flurry of dystopian writing in the week of World War II or around then. I was wondering if he was on the genre and how Orwell stands out against the others? Well, I have to tell you, fellow, something I'm not a great scholar of other people's writings. And I'm not, for example, Orwell.
I've read a couple of books about Orwell his whole life. But I wanted to think for myself and that was really very important to me. So I was not really trying to be on my own. And I read a couple of things that he's read, of course, Brave New World.
Brave New World is the picture of the future with the opposite kind of conclusion to it. Oh, I thought, usually, a Soviet Union is an example that things are not going to be pleasant in any way. Everything is going to be compelled. And I thought, particularly, I guess we should around us today, I thought his name is coming up all the time, but thought is going to be compelled.
And so my conclusion was that Orwell thought very deeply, how can you go from all these wonderful thoughts about human equality, human the end of poverty, and all the things that were promised by progress? How can that become this awful thing, which through atomic wars, he thought, would actually dominate the whole globe in three different forms? So how could that happen? And to us, that really is a problem.
How can enlightened age, an age loaded with advanced technology, changing, improving every day? How can this end in this way? I mean, this is really worthy of very deep thought. And so I think Orwell is underestimated as a thinker, because he didn't put all of his thoughts together.
He let them show in different essays and books, and it's hard to piece them together. And that was my idea to try to go through it and look at it as a philosopher would, and see its merits and its defects. I think I laid a little low on some of the defects, but nevertheless, to actually see it. And I thought, oh, well, it's really a wonderful guide to kind of opening up what essentially is pessimism about majority as deep pessimism about majority.
Yeah, man, ask the questions that you mentioned, you mentioned this in passing. I was wondering if you could elaborate or you asked the question, which I think is an excellent question to question that Orwell himself points us to, you know, what, how is it that we started from these lofty goals and a chemical quality and ended up someplace bad? And you mentioned passing technology. I mean, it seems to me on reading Orwell and then also on reading your book that I mean, I'm not saying it's the whole answer, but at least part of the answer seems to be bound up with this question of technology, some degree.
Well, he was really very sour on industrialization. You see, he was caught in the vine. He saw the defects of eternity, but didn't want to give it up. And he would occasionally mention the pre industrial age, a simpler age, pre-technological age.
But he couldn't permit himself to get rid of the very modern views that modern socialism definitely had to use originally a Marxist. So these things involved. So that was a limitation. And that's why the ancients played on ours, though, are really so useful.
So because they offer some alternatives. But in his mind, you either have the social paradise or as actually happened, you go downhill. And all the courses for that include things like enlightenment. You know, the what we think of as in line, or let's start with a philosopher.
You know, very few philosophers have done as much evil as Marx, can we get in with it? Amen. Nature, a tumor much lesser extent, because it was much more grounded figure. But particularly Marx, you could still see it today, as a kind of recruidescence of Marxism.
But the role of philosophy of enlightenment is something which people have made hopes for, the age of reason, it's the age where people are missing a religion, religion, which is important to all of them. But where these things are going to be out of the picture, and we're going to live as rational beings. And that hope, if you look around, you see what do people think? What do they read?
Where do they get their ideas from? For example, all the diagnoses of our situation today often omit a simple thing, which you you fell so perfectly aware of. And that is relativism. Relativism came out of philosophy.
I remember very well, originally from sociology, and it kind of came into the bloodstream. There's nothing worse for a regime based on natural rights that man, God-given rights, then that kind of relativism. And it starts to sink in, you know, longer believe in natural rights. Yeah, most of our country probably have doubts about it.
But why? Well, there are other countries and who showed, you know, who can prove it in so many objections. But the main point is it's a cheap sense of the intellectual bloodstream of the country, and we can say, so you resolve to be a certain kind of person, is weakened by the notion that there are all these other people at other times and all the rest. In short, we know too much.
We know too much. It's very hard to have a healthy society that is always thinking about not only its past, but its present and other societies and what they like, and it becomes a cosmopolitan thing. And it loses its perspective as a unit, as a unit, fairing, hazard will in human life. Things get watered down and even believes they're watered down.
And that's why fanaticism can come up. And it has recently, I mean, because all the insistence on the jab and mass, particularly, these are part of a kind of fanaticism. It's a replacement for religion, where people hold on to a belief, fanatically. You see somebody in the street who was laying a mask, say, get that mask on.
I'll report you. What is this? So, what they say, recrew lessons of religiosity of a fanatical kind. Yeah, if I can jump in here, you had a really interesting passage when you were discussing 1984, specifically O'Brien and his motives.
Because O'Brien, right for those who don't know, has a kind of duality, right? He's on the one hand, he seems to be this rebel, but it turns out by the end that he's actually working on the poem. And one of the, I think the difficulties is, he seems so obviously superior. And yet, he's so outright cruel, right?
Not just that he's irreverent or something like that. He's really just quite terribly cool. And you talk about how he's forced in a way, because he's an atheist, and because they've given up on old Christian values to pursue a new immortality, right? Immortality.
Immortality, because God is dead, and there's no sort of it. During the highest being, the most enduring being is the state, and specifically the totalitarian state that has everything in its power. So by incorporating himself within that, he attains a kind of immortality. I thought you do a good job of showing how absent a kind of more sensible outlet for your religious sentiments, they get inclined to radical products.
What you say to totalitarianism, I think it works for communism as well. This idea that you're part of this historical trajectory culminating in this bliss. It's a very attractive prospect, if you have no religion, it offers you a new eschatology. Right?
Or Brian is a really fascinating character, because I would like, he's a perfect gentleman. I mean, now a perfect gentleman, he's wise. And that's why Winston Smith admires him, because he seems to be the embodiment of an excellent human being. Now, we don't know of any actual political leaders, including communist, or exactly like that.
But we do know of a lot of people who we call kind of intellectuals, who share some of those characteristics, but not exactly like that. So what Orwell has done is to extend or kind of perfect the inner self of a certain kind. So we want to be gentlemen or we act as gentlemen, we're intellectual, we're very thoughtful. See, that's the outside.
But inside is a desperation, a desperation because of the lapsing of Christianity, and it's a stress on the fate of the individual in the afterlife. So I think Orwell wanted to show this unusual combination of, because the heart of O'Brien is intellectuality, very intelligent. So it's very unusual combination of somebody who is thoughtful in some ways, who seems to be, and somebody who is very stingful power. Now, I think he understood the communist leaders as that kind.
Of course, he wouldn't say, Leonard was a perfect gentleman, or even Trotsky. But nevertheless, the type of the combination of a kind of civilized person who also inwardly feels that it's not enough, it's not enough as Aristotle and Plato thought, being a good gentleman or being a gentleman is a wonderful thing. Well, no, it's not enough. We need something deeper and something more solid.
And that literally comes from this feeling of power. Now, I think there's a considerable truth in that. I think a lot of these people really believe what they said. At least for a while, I think communism, for those who haven't, and the experience of it is really, and suddenly I was in the Marxist, well, I'll tell you about that.
But no, it's essentially dead, but still the deep strivings inside of it. I mean, you can see it in Hitler, of course, you can see it must lead. But you see it even more in communist Russia, because it claims to be the embodiment of the enlightenment of equality of freedom. And that's why Russia is more of a model for all than other totalitarian countries.
So I think, as it just as a general point, Orwell has put his finger on things, unfortunately, that are hard to reverse. You know, people who think of doing something to ourselves, technology, every time something comes out, the whole country wasn't delight. Technology has its own kind of, I once remember a remark of Strauss, I mean, he's the only one who remembers it. But he said you cannot leave technology without moral control.
In other words, if you let it run free, that's why you get. And of course, he saw another one. I mean, only apart from the atom bomb, there are also effects of that technological society among others, it's superficiality. So the by bringing up this issue, Orwell, I think, stands pretty much alone.
And that's why he's so worried that talking to and he's so human, you know, he's, he doesn't claim to be a philosopher, because he never studied philosophy. I mean, it's a big lack with him. But literature is one thing, philosophy and other. And he never talked to philosophy.
That's why I never like to use theoretical terms. Even when he talks about human virtues, he won't try to kind of give them any kind of a kind of philosophical bent. It's always you have to see it directly, you know, that kind of thing. So, one thing you, I think that comes across in your book is you don't try to make Orwell more philosophic than he is.
And so you get a very human side really get a sense of him sort of working through the possibilities, trying to figure it out, being honest about his commitments, what he really thinks. And maybe not questioning those enough, that would be, though you do wonder if he had, it's not more about the history of philosophy, what he would have been capable of this came about. You're doing it. You're doing it right.
So one thing you mentioned that I thought was, I think it would be really valuable for our listeners was you talk about how in big brother, I'm sorry, in 1984, he gives you a kind of simple language to refer to things. I think you call it parlor rumors or something like that. Yeah, they've now come into the vernacular, like big brother and double thing. Maybe you can talk a little about that because he avoids jargon, but for that very reason, I think his effect is more powerful, wouldn't you say?
Well, he does avoid jargon. He speaks very directly. And again, he can be mistaken as being a kind of slapdash thinker because he didn't put it all together. But it does all hang together.
And that's why I take up the different kind of elements at first that he has to think about perfectionism, by which he, in a way rejects both the classical and the Christian demands on people. You have to be your natural self, your full self. You have to be willing to shoulder all the burdens. He wasn't a very great optimist about life.
Life is tough. So that I think all well did as much as he could with trying to put things together. And above all, he thought the intellectuals were losing their moral compass that the human heritage was a great danger of faltering and collapsing from them. And so when you ask yourself, well, who is he buying the book for?
Well, it had to be a certain level of intellectual because he did think that a political writer could have an effect, even though he has some very pessimistic things to say about that. But he did his best. But I think we want to Alex that, oh, well, went as far as you can as a modern man on other subject. And plumbing the depth of our difficulties.
And he doesn't go quite as far as he might have because it would have been a little bit too shocking for him. But he still believed in enlightenment. You know, he kept trying to keep the ideals of the opportunity. He cherished them and particularly getting a bit of poverty and scarcity.
But you can see that you can't have the one without the other. So here we are in the world where we could with technology, you know, we can feed ourselves and do all the rest of comfort. Now, it's in his view, it wasn't going to happen. And but you see, to go further in our thinking about the problems, we come up with some shocking difficulties.
You know, what I mentioned, philosophers who've had a bad effect marks Nietzsche, you notice I've omitted John Locke, what John Locke has not saying. I would say that more harm has been done to the world by John Locke than by any other philosopher apart from people like Bacon, but in his forward thinking. And the reason is this, that the whole idea of natural rights, which in a way has its own resounding feeling in us. But the idea that every human being has natural rights is explosive.
It's explosive. It explodes all the old regimes. All the regimes that aren't founded on natural rights. And so you see I'm struggling even today, trying to combine natural rights with their old beliefs.
And but and then putting the individual on his own, the notion that by nature, we are individuals, individuals who have to defend our own lives, our own liberty, and our own pursuit of happiness. That notion immediately separates people from each other. We are not born as individual, born as part of a social unit, at least the family. So that by wrenching, wrenching us out of that, and putting us on our own, you can understand half the old psychological, those of our country, I just do that, people being placed on their own, people being lonely.
Now this is the very source of those who at some point are going to succumb to totalitarianism, because it focuses everything. It gives you a meaning, part of a big thing. So it's a great danger. But nevertheless, putting us on our own is, I mean, you know, I'm a great believer.
I'm a big conservative just you up. I'm a big believer in individual liberty. But nevertheless, putting us on our own, by wrenching us out of the family and out of the social setting and making out the very foundation of your political views, I don't believe, especially I don't believe it's true. And secondly, I believe it's very bad in its ultimate effects.
It has some glorious things like our country, like the countries that truly have become liberal. I mean, it's so wonderful to be brought up in this kind of thing. But nevertheless, the psychological effects, I think, are not good. And you know, like to recognize that you don't talk about it.
It's one of those hidden criticisms that in a way may not be helpful to make it this time. But still, if I had to say, speak as a political philosopher, I would say that the effort to correct the whole globe, I talk about human rights everywhere, the same, cannot end up well. And if you say, well, what's your turn? The alternative, which I would want to take seriously, is to have occasional glimpses in societies of happiness, of doing well, of even freedom.
Not every society can have it, but some can. And you don't want to put those societies into a kind of mold, which is going to be just like ours. That's why I try to replay our democracy elsewhere is a very questionable thing. But that is the only alternative.
In other words, if I were playing or Aristotle, and I looked at the scene, and I said, well, are you willing to give up all these Martin hopes? Think of it. Francis Bacon, Bacon for all those every basic invention you could think of right now. And to hold out this prospect, what a wonderful thing, including weapons, incidentally, but not atomic weapons.
But you have this prospect, what a wonderful thing. And they caught the nhat and graphs it. And then it's fresh and it's accompanied by enlightenment. You have to get rid of the whole religion which constrains you.
And so the general idea, I think, player now, I would say, you're expecting too much of human life. And you can't find a universal solution to man's problem. Just to go back here, Professor Longbott, that's really helpful. And a persistent theme that you've circled back to a few times here seems to be that one of Orwell's limitations is that he's remained a modern to the end.
And it seems like you consistently advocated the idea that a larger perspective that would go back to play when Aristotle would help us to understand these things. And I think that's right. I think that's a really good bow on our conversation of 1984. If it's okay with you, we often have guests on and ask them a series of silly questions just so that our listeners can get to know who you are.
So we'll ask some questions we call this lightning round. And you can answer them or you can pass if you don't want to answer or whatever you like. So I'll just throw the first one out and then we'll see how it goes. All right, who's here's an on start with a softball?
Who's your favorite philosopher? Not Locke, that's what you would say Aristotle. Aristotle, very good. And not Marx.
Can you briefly describe how you used to be a Marxist? Yes. This was in the last days of being a Boston, Brooklyn college, went into the army, but I was already a Marxist because we were in the depression. The depression was a terrible thing.
Because we had low billions out of work. And the least poor people would actually go out publicly to suit stations where they hold out a ball and be given suit. Monvolously, they always dressed up to the occasion. One sign of our deterioration is that our dress would become so informal.
But this was very, very remarkable. So the depression was terrible and it kept lasting. And then Marx comes along and offers his ready solution. He analyzes capitalism and tries to tell you how to get rid of this.
He always calls for violent revolution. Oh, perhaps for one exception, but almost every time it was a violent because the capitalists weren't going to let go of their property. So that is the background of my going into Marxism. But during the war, I met and suddenly being in the US Army was I was in the Air Force.
The Army Air Force? I was in the Air Force. This was in the 44-45. I flew in B-29s from Tinnian.
And we weren't bombers, but I flew 13 missions, which were mainly to observe the weather because as a radar operator, which I was, I could see the cloud formations. And the bomber command had to arrange their bombing in accordance with where the clouds were to affect the most damage and get it and take the least damage. So this is really quite important. So for the 13 of those and from Tinnian, we went as far as South Korea.
So it's pretty long trip. You'll be on a plane for 24 hours. And so when I was in the Army, I met all these different people and a wonderful experience. I had one anti-Semitic experience that happened at, we used to train at NYU.
And one of our own corps is Aviation Group, Aviation Cadet Group. There was one guy who liked to when we were kind of crouching between exercises out on the field. He come and pull people over from the back. And we noticed that they were all Jewish, Jewish cadets.
They were all Jewish. And he tried it on one little guy. I think his name was Leibovitz. And this is what happened.
The little guy gets up. The guy who pulled them over was at least ahead. And then much stuttered. And there's a little guy did.
He grabs the other guy by closer neck and says, if you do that once more to one of us, I'm going to kick this shit out of you. It was very effective because you can see this little guy knew how to handle himself. And but apart from that, I spoke to people from every state, Mississippi, every state. No, not a bit of prejudice.
They all know how to do it. And so it was a very good experience. But as the war went on, and then Soviet Russia was always acting very peculiarly. And I said to me, what am I doing?
I can't believe that. Of course, I condemn the war itself, war went to. So I said, you know, as if we had implemented it, so I said, what am I doing? I can't keep doing this.
When I went to the news school, essentially, I had lost my marks as a bunch. I didn't have anything else. And that's why the news school was really kind of, you know, kind of almost a pathway to heaven, because it did allow for that. But but Marc, we must not underestimate for the young marks and with all of us, chemists and fake the fields of violence and all the rest of it.
And it's all slogans and death to the boys was he and it makes you sound heroic. You know, if you do these things, so it's kind of coming back. It's like a serpent, you can't completely kill it. But that's my history with Marcia.
I was probably a monster maybe a year and a half or two, but now more. I just want to say thanks for your service in World War II. My grandfather was a ball turret gunner in B-24s and flu missions over German. Oh, that was really dangerous.
We were so high, above 30,000 feet that they needed their plane or their ACK, you know, and they couldn't reach us. So we used to look down below and see these bombs exploding underneath our plane. So it wasn't the dangerous mission itself. My grandfather was actually shot down on his 23rd or 24th mission and was a POW for your half.
So I have to tell you that those people who went to a really hot fire, you know, the Americans very much nothing. You can't imagine all these people from the series of bombs. The willingness to do what Everett took was simply amazing. And you wonder, you hope that's coming to that spirit.
I'm sure some of it is. It doesn't hit the newspaper headlines. But that spirit is what kind of brought us through. They really wouldn't know for the word defeat.
Meanwhile, after World War II and starting with Vietnam, defeat seems to us a good thing. You know, in general, you don't get into wars. If you lose them, you get into wars, you gotta win them. So that's the background of Marxism.
Fair enough. That's actually, I got a good follow up lightning round question. Sort of related. Who is the best politician in your lifetime?
The best politician. It doesn't have to be American, but could be. Oh, God, Churchill would know it. No question.
Okay. All right. Oh, Churchill. Okay.
All right. All right. We're not American. I would say in my own lifetime Reagan.
Wow. That's really something. Yeah, I would. I, you know, I was a hawk for a while.
I mean, for a long while. I favor the George Bush every day. And still think that there was reason to do what he did in Iraq. But I would have waited a bit longer.
But everybody thought that's what I'm saying, that weapons are mass instructed. Everyone, all the Western countries intelligence, yes, he has them. He has them. And in hands with America, of course, they're very dangerous.
But once you start a foreign war, it's really kind of amazing that Americans can keep doing it. But it's very difficult. And of course, we started to lose support inside of us. And not always for good reason, but still, and had a collapse.
And so I think George Herbert Walker was pulled off the only victory that we've had. But I don't like to see how country do something and fail at it. Me. Let me switch gears and ask you have a favorite work of literature.
Oh, that's really a tough one. I think my favorite author is Jane Austen, because she's so troubled. And I think it was a bit more difficult. That's okay.
Jane Austen's an excellent answer. I'm reading Man's Field Park right now myself. So you are. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Have you ever had any nicknames?
Do you get the name? Do you get the name of the family price? Have I had a nickname? Yeah.
Have you read a nickname, dude? I had a grandma who called me Doublea. Doublea? Doublea?
Doublea? Doublea? Doublea? Yeah.
But my, that was her favorite name for me. Apart from that, I've never had a nickname stick to me. I've never, I remember ever copying Colum. I'm sorry.
It's a terrible laugh in my biography. I know. Bear it. No.
All right. What was your first car? That I do remember was a Chevrolet, a little Chevrolet C-Dan. I won't even try to think of the price of the thing at that time.
But a little Chevrolet C-Dan. How old were you when you got your first car? Do you remember that? Like a teenager or in your 20s?
No, no, no, no, no. This is my second marriage. And I, how old was I? It was not early.
I married when I was a young. So my first marriage, I was, let's say, I can't believe it. 21. How about that?
Yeah. I married the girl next door, which is always convenient. It is. Yeah.
I'm not going to have to walk her far. What's your favorite place you've ever visited, Professor Lowenthal? In the far and over domestic? Sure.
For an order domestic. Favorite place is a little strong, because I haven't been at some of these other places. I was very like San Francisco very much. And but I love Brooklyn, New York.
I just loved it. There was nothing it had. If you needed something, go down to Manhattan. We were strangers to Burridge, you know, Five-O.
The Bronx, filled with tharners. Yeah, in our view. Staten Island, go back to the one out there. Whoever thought of them.
Who cares? Queens. You can bail it. Yeah.
So the whole focus was Brooklyn, Manhattan. Queens, even Queens would be a kind of adventure. Were you a, were you a, I'm sorry, were you a Dodger fan? I wasn't really a fan.
Okay. My favorite spot was Touch Football, so I used to like to play it. So I was ahead of the atmosphere. We had a few burly guys on that.
So we challenged the regular football team to touch tackle. I must say, we did pretty well, but still I played, actually played football. But in my later years, tennis, tennis, I followed tennis, I loved tennis. And that's why for my favorite sport, I never became a fan in the success.
And I shouldn't pretend to it. Fair enough. What, Alex? Where did you live in Brooklyn?
I lived in Bensonhurst. Okay. And Bensonhurst, I know, you know anything about it? I lived in Brooklyn before.
Yeah, because it's on New York Bay, one part of it. And I loved it. It was really, you see, life was a difficult. We didn't have any supermarkets.
Every little locality had its own set of stores. So they had a drug store, they had a grocery store. They had a deli quite often. And so each locality had that.
And you got to know people. You, it was such a different system. I must say, I love going into super market, but fundamentally, I don't like super market. I like the old system where people were specialists that go straight.
Yeah. That's right. I just have one last question. We're a little over time.
But I think if folks at home might really like to hear about maybe one or two of your favorite memories from teaching. And teaching? Yeah. Favorite student or class you taught or particular memorable event?
Yeah. Well, I hesitate to speak of particular students. But let me think. Well, this was an interesting one.
I think it was a 1960, teaching out at Berkeley at the university as a felon for my friend, Dick Cox. And I remember a student at one point referring to the Marines as being stupid. And I think my, maybe my loftiest moment wasn't in political philosophy, but wasn't telling the student how much he owed to the Marines. And so to kind of make sure that all my students understood that I wasn't going to favor the intellectuals over the common people.
I'm a great admirer. Just like, oh, well, I really admire the common people. People slug it out, reliable, patriotic, and religious. And if we have any hope from those immigrants who have been illegally let out, it's from some virtues that they themselves have to begin with, including family and religion.
So, and so, no, I was really very happy in Brooklyn. I have no complaints whatsoever. I kind of look back on those days, which will kind of, well, for whatever problems came up, especially they were settled. Settled.
So that, um, several in a sense that you know all the alternatives. But today, things are being done, which are beyond my belief. I guess cannot believe that people are doing things that they do today. I mean, our own administrations, our own intellectuals, their demands for closing down on disfusion abuse, the whole atmosphere is seven.
At the news school, particularly who say anything. No, in my book, present dangers. I speak of liberty as being by necessity. If you want to keep it, ask me moderate.
You cannot go to extremes. And with the help of the Supreme Court, unfortunately, we have gone to extremes under the war in court, particularly gone to extremes and allowed all kinds of things that any healthy society, including our own founders, would have suppressed or would never allowed can allow revolutionary groups, for example. It makes utterly no sense for a country to have with its business. And a lot of organizations that want to destroy it.
No, that's simply insane. The treatment of obscene literature. I mean, we become one of the filthy stations in history. And it's just awful.
A certain sobriety is necessary to a republic. It's part of republic in virtue. You can't get rid of it. You need it.
And so I think by opening the doors too wide. That's why the title of the presentation, everything was no liberty for license. And that is the general kind of picture of the other thing. So I'm afraid I won't ramble on.
Our listeners are a lot of David. Thank you so much. Thank you. This is a good note to end on Professor Lowenthal.
Thank you so much for joining us. One last question. Do you have anything on deck for the next publication? Because I originally studied Montesquieu.
When I was a Rob, I must agree. It was on Montesquieu. And we all used your translation in our classes. Oh, yes.
Of course. Everybody does. Oh, yeah. Well, Harry Jeff said that the introduction to my translation was one of the besties ever read.