As I read the Fukuyama excerpt you included, I was reminded, hazily, of a Chomsky interview in which he said something to the effect of, "All anyone really wants is to know that they can meaningfully affect their little corner of the world." Maybe he is describing a sort of recognition: I set out to do something, I did it, and others can now see that I have done said thing, which allows them to hail me as the doer of that thing and thus the kind of person who could be such a distinguished doer.
Of late, though, I've had the sense that there is a certain, insidious strain of post-postmodern ressentiment and anomie conveyed in the resignation, "it is what it is." Perhaps that sense of powerlessness is, at root, a response to a sort of "unseenness," but I wonder whether something more material and volitional is also at stake. It's not just about being seen, or hailed, per se, but also "being able to do," to have the agency and self-determination to engender what we imagine and thereby to be recognized.
I'm just an interloper, so if this is all off-base, do correct me. My entree to such things--and Strauss--comes mostly from Matt Sitman and Sam Adler Bell's "Know Your Enemy" and the wonderful writers (I am also midway through the Ganz book) in that orbit.
I think there’s something to that! You shouldn’t be too idealist or too materialist I think. You could do a lot worse than KYE as an introduction to the “intellectual bestiary” of the right, especially in the midcentury. Thanks for the comment!
Didn't mean to delete. A bestiary, yes! I did a bit more reading about Fukuyama's various iterations of thymos and Nietzsche's notion of recognition. Would you say that recognition, or its absence, is tied to "ressentiment?" Pankaj Mishra's "Age of Anger" traces the development of a sort of globe-spanning grievance culture through eruptions of ressentiment (he draws from both Nietzsche's and Scheler's formulations). I found it very persuasive and elegantly argued.
When you write about the cultural middle being wiped away, what do you mean?
I think the response to the absence of recognition I was thinking of and ressentiment are closely related but not quite the same thing. What I mean about wiped away I suppose is the death of the 20th century version of the middlebrow, which whatever its many defects still sometimes pointed upward in an aspirational way to a "higher" version of culture/life etc.
BTW, I love KYE and find the episodes are a very fun complement to reading the thinkers Sitman and Adler-Bell talking about. They are actually the original reason I started on this little philosophical odyssey that has taken me to Strauss, Bloom, Jaffa, etc.
Thank you for the suggestion, Sam. It's a great essay. I had forgotten what a compelling, felicitous writer Churchill was. And in his reflections, we glimpse a so-called Great Man reflecting on the vagaries of Great Man-ness.
I'm still a KYE devotee--the ultimate discursive gateway drug!
I think it's an interesting function of Moore's occultism that leads him to create characters like Gull and Rorschach. It's like once he creates the character who is the expression of pure Will in the Crowleyian sense he admires them too much to fully condemn them.
Have you read Saul Bellow's Ravelstein? I just finished it but I don't know much about Allan Bloom beyond that book. You'd probably get more out of the Straussian in-jokes and be better at matching the pseudonym to the midcentury intellectual than i was.
Yes, I agree, I also think both Rorschach and Gull in particular tap into a basically romantic reactionary aspect of his sensibility that is otherwise (not entirely convincingly imo) camouflaged with anarchism. One get the sense that he probably does share some of the bleak vision of modernity you get through their eyes in Watchmen and From Hell, if not necessarily the actual politics per se. I have a copy of Ravelstein sitting on my desk right now, but I have yet to start it, I think I'm waiting to be finished with some other Bellow.. How did you like it?
It didn't blow my mind but I liked it as a tribute to a friend and as a portrait of older male friendship and a reflection on aging and dying, neither of which I find myself reading about very often. It's funny too. I definitely want to read the major novels now.
I am not committed enough to be a Fukuyama stan, but I read his Political Order books many years ago—the first when I was 18 and the second when I was 22—and I feel fairly comfortable with promoting both of them. What makes Fukuyama distinctive, as far as I can tell, is his capacity for tremendous social scientific synthesis of a large body of materials—evolutionary biology, history, economics, anthropology, sociology, etc.—while still remaining philosophically sophisticated and astute. It's a hard think to pull off, something that comes becomes if you ever read, say, Jared Diamond's books.
Is the cave beneath the cave idea Strauss'? I've only come across it in Closing of the American Mind. I always thought it was provocative, though every time I've tried to deploy this idea in conversation with others, I tend to meet skeptical raised eyebrows.
Thanks! As far as I know the cave beneath the cave idea comes originally from Strauss, it’s in the final section of Persecution and the Art of Writing if I’m remembering correctly.
From Hell poses an intriguing challenge to Fukuyama since Moore implies that history secretly ended in the 1890s, not the 1990s, thus Gull's horror at the "last man" his labors have brought about. I look forward to your longer thoughts on the subject!
As I read the Fukuyama excerpt you included, I was reminded, hazily, of a Chomsky interview in which he said something to the effect of, "All anyone really wants is to know that they can meaningfully affect their little corner of the world." Maybe he is describing a sort of recognition: I set out to do something, I did it, and others can now see that I have done said thing, which allows them to hail me as the doer of that thing and thus the kind of person who could be such a distinguished doer.
Of late, though, I've had the sense that there is a certain, insidious strain of post-postmodern ressentiment and anomie conveyed in the resignation, "it is what it is." Perhaps that sense of powerlessness is, at root, a response to a sort of "unseenness," but I wonder whether something more material and volitional is also at stake. It's not just about being seen, or hailed, per se, but also "being able to do," to have the agency and self-determination to engender what we imagine and thereby to be recognized.
I'm just an interloper, so if this is all off-base, do correct me. My entree to such things--and Strauss--comes mostly from Matt Sitman and Sam Adler Bell's "Know Your Enemy" and the wonderful writers (I am also midway through the Ganz book) in that orbit.
I think there’s something to that! You shouldn’t be too idealist or too materialist I think. You could do a lot worse than KYE as an introduction to the “intellectual bestiary” of the right, especially in the midcentury. Thanks for the comment!
Didn't mean to delete. A bestiary, yes! I did a bit more reading about Fukuyama's various iterations of thymos and Nietzsche's notion of recognition. Would you say that recognition, or its absence, is tied to "ressentiment?" Pankaj Mishra's "Age of Anger" traces the development of a sort of globe-spanning grievance culture through eruptions of ressentiment (he draws from both Nietzsche's and Scheler's formulations). I found it very persuasive and elegantly argued.
When you write about the cultural middle being wiped away, what do you mean?
I think the response to the absence of recognition I was thinking of and ressentiment are closely related but not quite the same thing. What I mean about wiped away I suppose is the death of the 20th century version of the middlebrow, which whatever its many defects still sometimes pointed upward in an aspirational way to a "higher" version of culture/life etc.
Thanks for your reply and thoughts. I really like what you're doing here. Looking forward to reading more of your essays!
Quite a bit of what you've perceptively written about here is covered in a great little review essay by Cyril Hedoin (who's always a good read) here on Substack: https://open.substack.com/pub/cyrilhedoin/p/mass-effects-and-the-disenchantment?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=1fn2p
BTW, I love KYE and find the episodes are a very fun complement to reading the thinkers Sitman and Adler-Bell talking about. They are actually the original reason I started on this little philosophical odyssey that has taken me to Strauss, Bloom, Jaffa, etc.
Thank you for the suggestion, Sam. It's a great essay. I had forgotten what a compelling, felicitous writer Churchill was. And in his reflections, we glimpse a so-called Great Man reflecting on the vagaries of Great Man-ness.
I'm still a KYE devotee--the ultimate discursive gateway drug!
I think it's an interesting function of Moore's occultism that leads him to create characters like Gull and Rorschach. It's like once he creates the character who is the expression of pure Will in the Crowleyian sense he admires them too much to fully condemn them.
Have you read Saul Bellow's Ravelstein? I just finished it but I don't know much about Allan Bloom beyond that book. You'd probably get more out of the Straussian in-jokes and be better at matching the pseudonym to the midcentury intellectual than i was.
Yes, I agree, I also think both Rorschach and Gull in particular tap into a basically romantic reactionary aspect of his sensibility that is otherwise (not entirely convincingly imo) camouflaged with anarchism. One get the sense that he probably does share some of the bleak vision of modernity you get through their eyes in Watchmen and From Hell, if not necessarily the actual politics per se. I have a copy of Ravelstein sitting on my desk right now, but I have yet to start it, I think I'm waiting to be finished with some other Bellow.. How did you like it?
It didn't blow my mind but I liked it as a tribute to a friend and as a portrait of older male friendship and a reflection on aging and dying, neither of which I find myself reading about very often. It's funny too. I definitely want to read the major novels now.
I am not committed enough to be a Fukuyama stan, but I read his Political Order books many years ago—the first when I was 18 and the second when I was 22—and I feel fairly comfortable with promoting both of them. What makes Fukuyama distinctive, as far as I can tell, is his capacity for tremendous social scientific synthesis of a large body of materials—evolutionary biology, history, economics, anthropology, sociology, etc.—while still remaining philosophically sophisticated and astute. It's a hard think to pull off, something that comes becomes if you ever read, say, Jared Diamond's books.
Is the cave beneath the cave idea Strauss'? I've only come across it in Closing of the American Mind. I always thought it was provocative, though every time I've tried to deploy this idea in conversation with others, I tend to meet skeptical raised eyebrows.
Thanks! As far as I know the cave beneath the cave idea comes originally from Strauss, it’s in the final section of Persecution and the Art of Writing if I’m remembering correctly.
From Hell poses an intriguing challenge to Fukuyama since Moore implies that history secretly ended in the 1890s, not the 1990s, thus Gull's horror at the "last man" his labors have brought about. I look forward to your longer thoughts on the subject!