Thanksgiving, 2010

Last year in celebration of Thanksgiving I indulged in compiling list. I say indulged because I included no explanation or explication, unlike in my Mozart Counterpoint series which began at least as a sort of list. As such, I'll again leave you to determine the virtues of these works and the commonalities and differences amongst them. Last year's theme was simply art and Mr. Northcutt joined me in compiling a list of ten works. His 2009 List. My 2009 List.

I thought I'd make a tradition of it and compile a new list this year with a new theme. This Thanksgiving the topic is Sacred Music. This list is 15 items instead of 10 and this time is in a sort of order: consider the listing to be in three tiers and consider the order within those tiers to be a little loose (except for the #1 spot.) I tried to avoid listing different settings of the same text and to avoid listing many works by the same composer. I also confined myself to settings of Latin texts only. Also and obviously, the list could be much longer.

–

15) Laudate pueri Dominum, 'Psalm 112,' RV.600 - Laudate, pueri, Dominum; laudate nomen Domini (Antonio Vivaldi) [YouTube]

14) Dixit Dominus - Dixit Dominus Domino meo (G.F. Handel) [YouTube] [Text]

13) Te Deum (Anton Bruckner) [YouTube] [Text]

12) Spem in alium (Thomas Tallis) [YouTube]

11) Ave Maria (Josquin des Prez) [YouTube]


10) Mass for Four Voices - Agnus Dei (William Byrd) [YouTube]

9) Vespro Della Beata Vergine - Ave Maris Stella (Claudio Monteverdi) [YouTube] [Text]

8) Mass in C minor, KV.427 - Kyrie (W. A. Mozart) [YouTube]

7) Mass in B minor - Credo - Et resurrexit (J. S. Bach) [YouTube]

6) Ave verum corpus, KV.618 - (W. A. Mozart) [YouTube]


5) Missa Papae Marcelli - Gloria (Giovanni Palestrina) [YouTube]

4) Officum defunctorum - Kyrie (Tomás Luis de Victoria) [YouTube]

3) Mass in B minor - Gloria - Cum sancto spiritu (J. S. Bach) [YouTube]

2) Mass in C minor, KV.427 - Sanctus (W. A. Mozart) [YouTube]

1.

Missa Solemnis in D, op.123 (Ludwig van Beethoven)

 Credo - Et incarnatus est  (see 3:40)

Tom Crawford on Beethoven's 9th

In a wonderful pre-concert lecture Thomas Crawford, Music Director and Founder of the American Classical Orchestra discusses the music and history of Beethoven's 9th Symphony. Crawford discusses the scholarship of examining the Beethoven manuscripts, instrumentation and period-instruments, the grand structure, the many little moments, and the philosophical dimensions of Beethoven's final symphony.

The Orchestra celebrated its 25th Anniversary Concert this year.
Visit them at http://www.americanclassicalorchestra.org/

Part I | II | III | IV | V | VI | VII

Music and Community

One of the most common criticisms of the left by the right is that the left is collectivist whereas the right is individualist. One of the most common criticisms of the right by the left is that the right is religious whereas the left is secular.  The left thinks the right wants to mix church and state and the right thinks the left wants to use the government to create the communal bonds it doesn't have. Responses by both ardent people of faith and secularists seem to range from casual distaste to wanting to stamp out the opposition. (Though I recall musicologist Michael Steinberg in the preface to his book Choral Masterworks: A Listener's Guide describing himself as a "religion-loving atheist.") These are of course broad sentiments of general observations, but there is probably some truth in them.

Earlier today we were discussing Aristotle, the present day philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre  politics, morality, the idea of "community as man's end." We noted that while it is not necessarily the end of man's existence, it surely is an important aspect. Everyone seems to have some longing for community, though there is considerable debate as to what that community should be. Filmmaker Ingmar Bergman often put man's longing for community beautifully but sharply:

Does God exist? Or doesn't God exist? Can we, by an attitude of faith, attain to a sense of community and a better world? Or, if God doesn't exist, what do we do then?

Regardless of whether I believe or not, whether I am a Christian or not, I would play my part in the collective building of the cathedral.

Well, we're grasping for two things at once. Partly for communion with others — that's the deepest instinct in us. And partly, we're seeking security. By constant communion with others we hope we shall be able to accept the horrible fact of our total solitude.

Unmotivated cruelty is something which never ceases to fascinate me; and I'd very much like to know the reason for it. [http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ingmar_Bergman]

Now we also spoke not long ago about music and how with the obvious exception of solo pieces, it is often both communal and individualistic. Everyone brings his unique skills, history, and practice to his instrument but all harmonizes into a whole. We recall Aristotle's statement of members of a community living not in unison but in harmony, a sentiment now rather cliché. We recall also Emerson's statement that “friends do not live in harmony merely, as some say, but in melody.” Now I am not saying if we all made music together we would achieve world peace. Yet the experience of making music together (particularly certain music) and even "only" experiencing music together can give such a sense of shared. . . something, and that something should certainly make one more aware of our shared human situation.

One example of such music the sacred mood of Mozart's Die Zauberflöte but probably the best is Beethoven's 9th symphony. Merely listening to the piece in the concert hall in it's hour-long glory is a shared experience. It is a journey from the harsh opening through turns ethereal, shocking, dazzling, rich with pathos, and celebratory to. . . to what? The simplest of Beethoven's themes, something anyone can enjoy, appreciate, and somehow take part in because everyone is supposed to.

Now I have heard secularists balk about Bach's religiosity, but I have never heard one complain about the line, "Do you feel the presence of the Creator?" in this symphony. Maybe they are overwhelmed by the "awe, mystery, and infinity" (in Tovey's words) the composer has evoked. We see in the finale the composer use counterpoint as a tool of synthesis and with a great double fugue Beethoven combines the two main themes. This synthesis of joy and brotherhood completes the journey from the peregrinate opening and draws all together and as we saw with Mozart's final symphony, creates a most profound sense of unity. In this symphony we feel the sacred as potently as in the "Et incarnatus est" of the Missa Solemnis but with an explosive exuberance, the "consummation of joy in Gloria Dei Patris" as Tovey put it. We have in the 9th Symphony something most extraordinary from Beethoven. It is not a cheap suggestion to "come together" "put aside our differences." It is an invitation to transcend them for a while and share in an experience which will hover over the rest of your life.  In this symphony we have not just a great work of art, but a priceless gift.

On MacIntyre on Capitalism

This essay is a sort of sibling to my previous one, Caution: Intellectual's At Work.

Philosophy in Plato's Apology certainly seems to be very political and indeed it is. There are ideas behind all actions and Socrates' teaching certainly had broad effects. (To make an enormous understatement.) Thus how we act and interact part of political philosophy.  Yet where is the line between political and personal? At what point does someone trying to live a good life become a busybody trying to reorient other people?

I was pondering those questions, and others, after I read this essay on Alasdair MacIntyre in Prospect. It was a curious read for me because I in many was have an Aristotelian outlook on life. So MacIntyre seems to also, and yet we were not as nearly in accord as I would have expected. Let me share some of my concerns.

"MacIntyre yearns for a single, shared view of the good life as opposed to modern pluralism’s assumption that there can be many competing views of how to live well." Is that not a little. . . unnerving to hear? In the other of this pair of essays I mentioned that the intellectual ought to be humbled by the philosophical endeavor and a little reluctant to start reordering society.The administration of justice, to Aristotle, was the principal order of society, not a consensus on how one ought to live.

Such is a problem with intellectuals, that they are so intelligent they don't see the bounds of what they can and ought to do. Likewise, they seek perfectly logical systems of belief, at the expense of whether something is likely to work and often in contrast to observation. Hence the extraordinarily immoderate ideas of many highly intelligent people. Such would not be so problematic if they did not lend their stamp of authority on highly dangerous figures and movements. Such is not to say consistency is not laudable, but that it may have a price. The author reports one of MacIntyre's ideas in a very Aristotelian phrase, "The telos for human beings is to generate a communal life with others." Of course living with others is natural, but it is too easy to misread this phrase as, "because one lives (and must live) with others that one lives only to live with others" which is rather off base. (This may be an awkward paraphrasing of MacIntyre, I suspect.)

Too, today the word modernity is invoked as a buzzword to summon up images of industrialization, pop music, and kids who don't read listening to iPods.  This sort of association is not unlike the association between the word "factory" and images of sooty stone buildings with Mr. Moneybags taking advantage of child labor. (Modern medicine, modern online libraries, and the like don't get much praise.) This cliché is wearing tenuously thin. If one has a particular idea to critique, do so.

Wearing thin with me also is the tendency of people to use the word capitalism without defining it. The word is usually used to mean something tantamount to "something bad involving money." It is used nine times in this essay and we have no remote, let alone satisfactory, definition of it. 

The economics he describes, or at least how it is presented, is also particularly confused.

Take the following example:

For workers are also consumers and capitalism requires consumers with the purchasing power to buy its products. So there is tension between the need to keep wages low and the need to keep consumption high. Capitalism has solved this dilemma, MacIntyre says, by bringing future consumption into the present by dramatic extensions of credit.

Not quite and not having defined capitalism, understanding this paragraph is problematic. How does capitalism require anything? You don't have to buy anything. If there is demand for something, someone might create the product to meet the demand. If not, the productive capacity will go to produce something else. I suppose in theory if you couldn't produce anything that anyone wanted, you could just support yourself farming. What MacIntyre is in fact against is mainstream Keynesian economics. This economics, now offered up as our saving grace by certain economic big wigs, relies on buying for the sake of buying just to get demand up. (An absurd notion since people don't buy just anything, they don't by globs of GDP by products they need.) The asset bubbles created by the government were created, in part, under the assumption that you could continuously engineer growth and have an everlasting rise in values. The government, not only "people behaving badly," created the easy credit which made taking risks (which at any other time would have been regulated and rendered impossible by a market) possible.

He continues,

This expansion of credit, he goes on, has been accompanied by a distribution of risk that exposed to ruin millions of people who were unaware of their exposure. So when capitalism once again overextended itself, massive credit was transformed into even more massive debt. . .

What imperative exactly is he implying here? First, that you have a responsibility to disclose something of the risk to the borrower. This sounds very nice, but how do you actually ensure someone understands something? They sign the paperwork, they nod. You could explain it perfectly clearly and still not be sure they knew what they were getting into. Second, he is implying that the borrower does not have the responsibility to figure this out for himself.

Moving on,

Not only does capitalism impose the costs of growth or lack of it on those least able to bear them, but much of that debt is unjust. And the “engineers of this debt,” who had already benefited disproportionately, “have been allowed to exempt themselves from the consequences of their delinquent actions.”

Indeed, but that only happens if you force people to pay back the debt of others. If the only people affected are the lender and the borrower, no one else is implicated. This is an issue of the "debt engineers" having corrupted the members of the government, i.e. the people with the monopoly on the law, and "persuaded" them to force citizens to pay back the debt.

Oddly, he proposes regulation but according to this article does not consider his proposals "regulation." Yet when he writes that, "since regulations merely 'have as their aim the prevention of further large-scale crises' he is in a sense correct because the regulations, like his own non-regulation regulations, seek to put managing the economy in to the hands of elites instead of allowing individuals to manage their own affairs and assess risk for themselves.

The question again, as we have discussed before, is where does discipline and order come from? MacIntyre properly faults the "capitalism" of the government-run sort, but would replace it with his non-regulation regulations. The distributist model discussed in the article is likewise statist by nature.  

Overall, the economic thinking in this essay is lamentably muddled. (As presented, the association between "money-trading" (another vague term) and inequality is so thin I can't even critique it.) In a way this is unsurprising, since as Jesus Huerta de Soto demonstrated in his essay, "Economic Thought in Ancient Greece" [1] philosophers seem unable or unwilling to consider economics as a separate discipline. They're also, though often admittedly, not concerned with liberty. What is not admitted is that in a free economy, one not managed by the government, you wouldn't have to fear the debasement of your money and you wouldn't have to engage in any kid of activity you don't want to.

Virtue in Aristotle is in fact a most complicated notion and discussing it also requires familiarity with his logical books. Discussing the political aspects requires familiarity with nearly of Aristotle. In Aristotle virtue is a complex of innate desire and conscious action, inducement and freedom, nature and cultivation. It is impossible to speak about it glibly and do it any justice.

Perhaps MacIntyre does not provide a legitimate critique of capitalism, but rather of capitalism as most people think of it, i.e. as an economy managed by the government. If so, his criticism may be well-placed.  It is laudable that MacIntyre attempts to acknowledge both the good and bad of, say, globalization, but I think his thinking would benefit from some more precise definitions. Of course it is possible MacIntyre is badly represented in this article, a potentiality I duly acknowledge. As presented in this article though, his cases are rather muddled.

–

[1] http://mises.org/daily/4707 and my response: http://apologiaproliterativita.blogspot.com/2010/09/response-to-economic-thought-in-ancient.html

See also:

• Common Objections to Capitalism [video lecture] by Art Carden
• Cooperation: How a Free Market Benefits Everyone by Jeffrey Tucker 
• Economics As Science: A Catholic Defense of the Free Market by Thomas E. Woods Jr.
• No, the Free Market Did Not Cause the Financial Crisis by Thomas E. Woods, Jr.
• Bring Back the Guild System? by Thomas E. Woods, Jr.
• The Empirical Case against Government Stimulus by Robert P. Murphy
• The History of Capitalism (excerpt) by Ludwig von Mises
• Why the Meltdown Should Have Surprised No One [video lecture] by Peter Schiff
• How A Marxist Sees the Crisis (a short observation) by Jeffrey Tucker
• The Meaning of Competition by Daniel Krawisz

Caution: Intellectuals at Work

I haven't read Thomas Sowell's Intellectuals and Society[1] but ever so often I read something and share more in his skepticism of intellectuals: skepticism of what they do and what they want others to do. It sounds like such a nice word. It comes from the Latin intellegere, meaning "to understand" and it conveys a sort of lofty attention to reason, a philosophical detachment from emotions. The World English Dictionary lists it as, "delight in mental activity" which sounds so very cerebral, like you're some genius ecstatic by the quantity and profundity of your thinking. Now in all of this praise for oneself and one's endeavor is liable to make one quite haughty about both. "I'm a smart person, I've set my great brain on this matter, I've solved it, and people ought to listen. I'm an intellectual!"

Now I'm not going to start bashing reason and thinking, but I would like to raise a few questions about the intellectual project. Well, one at any rate: what is it? Namely, 1) does it attempt to understand by welcoming criticism, reflection, change, variation, modulation, interpretation, and perhaps synthesis with other ideas? 2) Does it imply that it itself is the truth and ought to be followed. Or 3) does it simply present itself and not impose any further? Perhaps #1 and #2 are silly questions: surely a thinker on the one hand hopes his ideas are true but on the other would welcome correction or incorporation into the truth. Now is position #3 possible? Can you actually write, think, or do something and not hope it to be emulated somehow?

I've pondered that question a lot when thinking about the possible effects of my own writing. It seems that all writing sort of exhorts the reader to do something. In fact could one say all thinking is to some end? So it's a sort of gamble, thinking. You could easily go very wrong. It's a sort of odd problem isn't it? How is it possible to think something which is impossible? Where did that thought come from? Why should we be able to imagine something which is not? I think that's what intrigued some philosophers when considering artists: how did they come up with that? From whence did that art come? Hence Nietzsche's fascination with the creative power of the artist and Plato's explanation for how a random person like Tynnichus came up with something like his famous paeon ode (he was inspired by the Muses.)[2] One might be tempted to say: yes you created something new but the potential was there. The words, notes, colors, et cetera already existed. (This argument, similar to Aristotle's explanation of change via the concept of the potential) has much merit. But what about an idea? Again on the one hand you might say that reality somehow prompted you to think that idea. Indeed, perhaps. Yet if it is wrong. . . then it's only an idea. For example, I can interpolate two ideas which are impossible in reality: the plane Jupiter with human feet. So this mis-perception has sort of produced something and thus it's really quite striking you could come up with something, however you do it, completely at odds with reality.

So that's a very long-winded way of saying it is possible to be wrong. Indeed. I apologize for the discursion. Yet truth is a fickle thing. For example, consider Shakespeare's Hamlet. It didn't happen, maybe it couldn't have, maybe nothing like it ever will. Yet there is something truthful about what happens in it. Likewise science seems only to offer provisional truths, each being superseded by a model more consistent with observed phenomena. Yet there is something truthful even in the primitive explanation.

Now I'm not advancing ditching reason, but I think an awareness of these epistemological issues should give an intellectual a little modesty. Such an awareness should make it a little harder to say, "Hey do x, y, and z" especially when they haven't been tried before. Or especially when they have been tried and have failed. You would think this kind of awareness would be present in intellectuals, if indeed they are intellectuals. Now we all have ideas about which we are fairly certain, very certain, not so certain, and so forth. Now aside from any particular moral reasons, you would think this uncertainty would affect what you exhorted others to do, let alone what you deign to force others to do. That's why, from this principle of philosophical uncertainty alone, I think federalism and republicanism are laudable practices. The ideas everyone believes in go at the top. Everyone follows those rules but there are very few of them. Some ideas apply only at the state level; there are more of them but not too many. And so forth down until you reach your personal values which are your own personal idiom.

Thus the intellectual might offer a caveat: "Here is what I am thinking, what I believe, or how far I've come in considering this problem." Perhaps we might add, "I hope it helps" or "Do good with it." Yet I keep wanting to add more caveats. You don't want to be responsible for leading someone to anything bad, but once you get someone thinking that's certainly a possibility. Of course it's not really your fault, per se, but how would you like to have been responsible for getting some dictator "thinking"? Now this problem is of course not new and has plagued philosophy from its birth. Socrates was of course tried for corrupting the youth. Surely if anyone could have vindicated philosophy Socrates could have.

Well, in his own defense he says that he didn't take any money for what he did. He also said that since bad people harm others, why would he corrupt anyone, who would come back and harm him? Thus he must have corrupted them unintentionally. In the Crito he notes that even if he is not guilty, he has been found guilty and must follow the laws. How could he disgrace the laws of the city that raised him? How could he accept exile and lose the rights of a citizen and live in other disorderly cities? Would not disobeying the law corrupt the youth, and then prove the judges right?–Is this is really a defense of philosophy?

In his apology he goes on to link philosophy to, "wisdom and truth and the greatest improvement of the soul." Now that is a more specific claim, but it lacks the how. How does philosophy bring those things about? Why? Does it always? Can it lead you astray? In discussing teaching Plato's Apology of Socrates, Allan Bloom said:

How would you understand the effect Socrates had on Alcibiades? Alcibiades was an ambitious, young, political man. What did Socrates teach him? Isn't it possible that if you take an ambitious young political man and you give him gifts of philosophic criticism you can turn him into a very dangerous man?

You must in your own experience have had students who sometimes turned sour. And who used what you taught them. . . [3]

Bloom didn't finish that line with any specific action, but we might infer "something bad." We also might use, "not toward the ends of wisdom and truth and the greatest improvement of the soul." Indeed it is not difficult to think of philosophers and specific works which were interpreted in such was as to bring about great ill. Yet perhaps more interestingly, Bloom then flips the problem: "What about a man who came along and caused pious men to suspend their faith until they had answers to certain philosophical questions?" We now have the problem of both dangerous truths and dangerous untruths, and beliefs which may be either (or both in admixture.)

Yet might also ask, "Is it moral not to question?" While reason and philosophy don't guarantee truth or goodness, you are at least aiming at both. If you are not questioning how things work, what your place is, what you ought to do, then how do you hope to do good?

To question or not to question? And if to question, how? And once you have your answer, how certain are you of it? And even if you are quite certain, what are the implications of that truth? Does it give you responsibility, authority?

In his apology Socrates tells the story of how he goes out seeking to disprove the oracle and find someone wiser than himself. He looks among those reputed to be wise, among politicians, among poets, and among the artisans. Those reputed to be wise had no sense of what they didn't know, the artisans thought because they knew one thing that they could speak of all things, and the poets could not even explain their own poetry. Socrates did not find any of these men wiser than himself because they had no hint of their own ignorance.

It seems that this underlying requirement of philosophy, and admission of ignorance, is in some tension with a desire to do good and improve one's soul, which are positive acts. The admission, though, ought not diminish one's zeal but rather temper his conceit.

–

[1] http://www.amazon.com/Intellectuals-Society-Thomas-Sowell/dp/046501948X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1290179591&sr=8-1
[2] Ion, 533-534; See also Apology
[3] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRnzrDpGN5A

Gardiner on Beethoven's Fifth

Sir John Eliot Gardiner thinks there is something French about Beethoven's 5th Symphony. Did Beethoven use French tunes written during the Revolution to incorporate ideas of rebellion and liberty into his symphony?

Part I | II | III | IV | V | VI | VII | VIII | IX

Around the Web

For Saturday, September 25 through Friday, November 12.

1) T. S. Eliot and the Demise of Literary Culture

2) Where Time and the Timeless Intersect: T. S. Eliot's Four Quartets

3) Time, Tense, and Physics

4) Bass-Baritone Bryn Terfel on singing Scarpia and Wotan

5) Interview: Soprano Anna Netrebko

6) Musical Language and the Minor Third

7) Mahler at 150

8) Preparing for Mozart, the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra Fashions Itself After Its New Conductor, William Christie

9) Roger Scruton on the Postmodern Ear

10) Burnt Out? Try Improvisation

11) The Persistent Paradox of Human Uniqueness
 
12) Flouting, (Not Flaunting) the Rules of English

13) Nick Cohen on England, Class, and the new drama, Downton Abbey

14) Economics in One Lesson: The Video Series

15) Is Economics a Science?

16) Does a Shipwreck mark the site of a Punic War battle?

17) The New World of Shaming

18) Before Television, Paper Theater in the Home

19) The Science of Self-Help

20-23) On Mario Vargas Llosa, Nobel Laureate:

• Interview with Emily Parker of the WSJ
• Thoughts from his son, Alvaro Vargas Llosa
• Thoughts from the New Criterion
• and thanks, from Ian Vasquez of the Cato Institute

24-36)

Book Reviews

• American Colossus: The Triumph of Capitalism 1865-1900, by H. W. Brands
• Beetle: The Life of General Walter Bedell Smith, by D.K.R. Crosswell
• Bourbon for Breakfast, by Jeffrey Tucker
• Canti of Giacomo Leopardi, translated by Jonathan Galassi
• The Hemlock Cup: Socrates, Athens and the Search for the Good Life, by Bettany Hughes
• How an Economy Grows and Why It Crashes, by Peter D. Schiff with Andrew J. Schiff
• How Intelligence Happens, by John Duncan
• Lion of Liberty: Patrick Henry and the Call to A New Nation, by Harlow Giles Unger
• Manthropology, by Peter McAllister & Is There Anything Good About Men? by Roy F. Baumeister
• The Music Instinct, by Philip Ball
• Washington, A Life, by Ron Chernow
• What Ever Happened to Modernism?, by Gabriel Josipovici

Hayek on Conservatism and Liberalism

In his 1960 book The Constitution of Liberty Friedrich Hayek wrote a short essay titled Why I Am Not a Conservative[1] in which he differentiated among modern liberalism, Classical Liberalism, American conservatism, continental conservatism, and socialism. It seemed to Hayek as it did to Mencken, that American liberalism had become decidedly illiberal and that while the conservative was now allied with the defender of liberty against socialism, they were far from one and the same. Minimally, Hayek was correct to distinguish among these movements.

Besides for the sake of satisfying my desire to quibble over definitions, it seems prudent today to revisit this work and see how Hayek's distinctions stand. My hope is not to establish a perfect set of definitions but rather to point out interesting coincidences, contrasts, changes, and arguments. Perhaps we may shed a little light on matters which seem rarely considered without much bias and histrionics. Of course we will be general here because the definitions are general, the movements they describe having been diverse and having changed over time. Also I myself don't like to be pigeon-holed into broad categories and I'm sure you don't either. Nonetheless movements do have broad traits and similarities, so let us look at them and raise a few interesting questions.

I've chosen to examine a few quotations from this insightful essay and discuss each in turn.

1)

It is that by its very nature it cannot offer an alternative to the direction in which we are moving. It may succeed by its resistance to current tendencies in slowing down undesirable developments, but, since it does not indicate another direction, it cannot prevent their continuance.

This seems to me to be an excellent point slightly misstated (though Hayek goes on to make it later in one way or another.) It is certainly true that conservatism, qua disposition, has no finite ideology. Yet in practice it is not nothing. No one who identifies as conservative would say he he is not in favor of something, i.e., something has to be conserved. Such usually is either the status quo or something more distant in the past. It does then seem to offer a direction, just not a degree. The conservative disposition, then, has the potential for regression. For example, in attempting to conserve some idea one continually regresses backward in the hope of finding some pure form of the idea or some idealized implementation of it which one hopes to conserve. As progressivism has no delimiting factor to prevent its lurch forward, conservatism has none preventing its lurch backwards. Now reasoning backward and forward is good for discovering the ideological roots and logical ends of one's beliefs but it can carry one far afield and away from his own political tradition.

Such brings us to the crux of Hayek's point above: once something exists at some point it can be called conservative. Thus today calling yourself a conservative says very little as you could essentially want to conserve anything and hence there is merit to complain about conservatives who are pro Social Security but against universal health care, who are in favor of this government institution but not that one. This is quite dangerous for any movement, since without a definite ideology it becomes, well, indefinite, and eventually infinite in scope.

2)

The conservative feels safe and content only if he is assured that some higher wisdom watches and supervises change, only if he knows that some authority is charged with keeping the change "orderly."

This seems more true of a particular personality than any ideology. In fact it seems rather reasonable and may be phrased quite simply: "where is the good going to come from?" If you know what the good is why don't you try and bring it about? The difference again is temporal: the conservative wishes to conserve the good which already exists at the expense of attaining the good which does not, and the reverse for the progressive. The liberal position, however and as Hayek rightly says, is not the median between these positions. Existing institutions and future systems of organization are evaluated by how they advance or preserve something specific: liberty.

3-4)

This fear of trusting uncontrolled social forces is closely related to two other characteristics of conservatism: its fondness for authority and its lack of understanding of economic forces.

Again these characteristics seem largely applicable to both the left and right. Since no one has made a case for mob rule, let us move the discussion to that of democracy. Now of democracy we may say there are two aspects, that of individual sovereignty and that of "rule by the people." The second characteristic is most often interpreted to mean, essentially, majoritarianism. Now the right seems fairly consistent in its anti-democratic, aristocratic, sometimes even monarchist sentiments. It favors bringing about the good through existing institutions. The left, however, often promotes democracy and populism. The will of the people, the current generation of people, is seen to take precedent over existing rules and legislation and thus the popularity of the notion of a "living constitution." In contrast the conservative sees abiding by inherited rules as necessary for the preservation of existing good. Interestingly, though, while the left (ostensibly) procures its will from the people, it manages oligarchy anyhow in the form of statism and bureaucracy. Again it is only the liberal who trusts that free men each managing their own interests can realize them.

The similarities persist regarding lack of economic understanding. While we are not in a position here to categorize economic theories as leftist or rightist and then attempt to validate them, I would draw the one point that both are authoritarian. For example, both socialist models and rightist models like distributism require some body to decide how much of something you can own.

5)

In the last resort, the conservative position rests on the belief that in any society there are recognizably superior persons whose inherited standards and values and position ought to be protected and who should have a greater influence on public affairs than others. The liberal, of course, does not deny that there are some superior people - he is not an egalitarian - bet he denies that anyone has authority to decide who these superior people are. While the conservative inclines to defend a particular established hierarchy and wishes authority to protect the status of those whom he values, the liberal feels that no respect for established values can justify the resort to privilege or monopoly or any other coercive power of the state in order to shelter such people against the forces of economic change. Though he is fully aware of the important role that cultural and intellectual elites have played in the evolution of civilization, he also believes that these elites have to prove themselves by their capacity to maintain their position under the same rules that apply to all others.

Hayek puts this particular point well although he does not here call the "proving of themselves" what it is: a marketplace. The broader question here is the same as above: how does the good come about in a society? The conservative or traditionalist view is that it comes from institutions designed to bring about the good. Yet there is no institution which functions well apart from the quality of those running it and just as a good institution can fall under the stewardship of lesser men so can a poor one succeed under great ones. What then, is the benefit of giving an institution a monopoly on particular cause? On this point too the conservative finds common ground with the socialist, this time in terms of his fear of what an unruly marketplace will produce. A marketplace will, of course, produce whatever people want (within physical possibility.) Some fear what "the many" will bring about and thus see a need to "guide" what is brought about.

6)

Connected with the conservative distrust of the new and the strange is its hostility to internationalism and its proneness to a strident nationalism.

This point I am not particularly persuaded by. In America measures of both the left and the right, though small, are prone to both nationalism and its opposite, what British philosopher Roger Scruton has called oikophobia. [2] In the 20th century nationalism was often coupled with both leftist and rightist regimes. Logically, though, it would seem that nationalism is conservative by nature since it seeks some connection to the past, presumably to a past perceived as laudable, but this is at least in part a coincidence. Such is because one need not love what one's country was to be nationalistic, but only what it is. Indeed revolutions often have a nationalist element. One could of course found a country ex nihilo and it be quite nationalistic. Yet the overwhelming tendency to draw connections to the past, even when tenuous or outright wrong, is quite revealing about human nature. Nearly everyone pays homage and lip service to America's Founding Fathers. There are very progressive people whose favorite president is Thomas Jefferson and very conservative people whose favorite president is Theodore Roosevelt. Many a man feels his ideas to be consistent with the founding principles of America in one form or another.

7) When it comes to discussing war it seems nearly impossible for men to speak honestly. Specifically, I mean that when people speak about war in particular they seek to categorize ideas in dishonest ways, making all ideologies other than their own to be the inherently immoral or belligerent party and their own to be the besieged, inherently peaceful one. Everyone considers his ideology inherently pacifistic, except for under circumstances x, y, and z while opposing ideologies are inherently belligerent. (Here Hayek sees the socialists and conservatives again in concert, this time favoring imperialism.) It seems to me that this dissonance is the result of a tension few people want to admit, resulting from the fact that every movement seeks to grow and hopes to achieve dominance. Even if you admit the benefits of plurality and variety, what party has ever come to power, decided to advance its goals in moderation and given its opponents say in the process? (Though most of the time parties have to cooperate with others somehow because their power is balanced.)

Still no one likes being forced to do anything so most people at some level realize force is not desirable. The question is, then, when is force acceptable? Hayek essentially outlines the liberal position:

. . .to the liberal neither moral nor religious ideals are proper objects of coercion, while both conservatives and socialists recognize no such limits. I sometimes feel that the most  conspicuous attribute of liberalism that distinguishes it as much from conservatism as from socialism is the view that moral beliefs concerning matters of conduct which do not directly interfere with the protected sphere of other persons do not justify coercion.

Thus for the liberal there is a bit of a problem, that even if you believe that something is good for all man's liberal nature prevents the use of force. At best you can attempt to persuade him to do the good. Liberalism implies that even if you believe something is morally wrong, the use of force is still worse barring certain grave instances.

8) Clearly the most notable feature of Hayek's framework and discussion is his association of reason with Liberalism:

There is one respect, however, in which there is justification for saying that the liberal occupies a position midway between the socialist and the conservative: he is as far from the crude rationalism of the socialist, who wants to reconstruct all social institutions according to a pattern prescribed by his individual reason, as from the mysticism to which the conservative so frequently has to resort. What I have described as the liberal position shares with conservatism a distrust of reason to the extent that the liberal is very much aware that we do not know all the answers and that he is not sure that the answers he has are certainly the rights ones or even that we can find all the answers. He also does not disdain to seek assistance from whatever non-rational institutions or habits have proved their worth. The liberal differs from the conservative in his willingness to face this ignorance and to admit how little we know, without claiming the authority of supernatural forces of knowledge where his reason fails him. It has to be admitted that in some respects the liberal is fundamentally a skeptic .

The Liberal bests both the progressive and the conservative because he has a finite idea he wishes to preserve and extend. He therefore does not see change as inherently good or bad, but as a potential for improvement. He doesn't see institutions as inherently corrupt or sustaining and he doesn't see methodology as inherently truth-finding simply because it is new or old.

(Regarding conservatism and the use of reason, Hayek may be right but I think it would be better to be more specific: it would be unreasonable not to seek new methods in order to figure out some unknown, and it is conservative not to seek them for fear of making something else worse, but such a circumstance could come to pass without claiming "the authority of supernatural forces," which seems an extraneous addition to the argument.)

Hayek's lesson here, though, seems to be that progressivism and conservatism are dispositions more than ideologies. As ideologies they are diverse to the point of being infinite and thus indistinct. Still, though, he seems to find good in both, describing conservatism as "probably necessary" and praising progressivism for its optimism about the future. Regardless of labels a fairly common view of  the problem goes something like this: there is good existing which ought to be conserved and bad existing which one would hope to root out, and good to be gained which we would hope to get, and potential bad we hope to avoid. Now how do we balance all of that to maximize the good? Thus in one respect an ideology is part definition of the good and part means of achieving it and in this respect conservatism/progressivism are only part of half of the equation.

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[1] http://www.fahayek.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=46
[2] http://www.civitas.org.uk/pdf/cs49-8.pdf

Mini-Review: Note by Note

Note by Note: The Making of Steinway L1037. 
Directed by Ben Niles. 2007.

While professional pianists may sit down at a modern concert grand piano and dominate the instrument, or get to know it, I think most of us approach the massive structure with some degree of reverence. The big shiny thing, usually the largest and often the only instrument at a concert, at least commands a lot of attention. It has quite the history too, from primitive designs in the middle ages, through the refinements of the Cristofori, the variations of the Viennese and English actions, and its ascendancy to dominance in the 19th century. Today it's hard to imagine a piano concert without a shiny grand, and arguably the biggest name in grand pianos is Steinway & Sons.

In part, then, this 80 minute documentary feels a tad like a commercial for Steinway. We don't get a look at other manufacturing techniques and no other brands are mentioned except to mention that Steinway is the only company which still does so much work by hand. Still, the tour of their facility in Queens, NYC makes quite an impression. What comes off most from this documentary is the tremendous degree of specialization needed to produce such a massive and intricate instrument. Indeed until recently pianos were likely the most complicated devices most people came into contact with and as such the tour of picking out the wood, the case's shaping, the painstaking fitting of the soundboard, the laying and stretching of the strings, the many phases of tuning (degrees of pre-tuning aka "chipping," rough-tuning, and fine-tuning) and the finishing is quite revealing.

Still, though, considering the tremendous energy and variety of specialization needed to bring you a pencil,[1] the process of bringing you a piano must be considerably more than depicted and I would have liked to see more of it. I'd have liked to see more about the shaping, weighting, and balancing of the keys, the construction of the hammer action, and the treatment of the wood. As wonderful as it is to see the shiny new Steinway arrive at a family's home and to see their son start to play for his parents and grandparents, I couldn't help feel we had skipped a beat somewhere.

Nonetheless Steinway is rightly proud that so much of their process is done by hand, from shaving off infinitesimal layers of wood for a perfect fit to the subtlest adjustments of pitch. Parts of this process, some of the craftsman say, you really cannot explain. There is no precise measurement for how much to cut or stretch or shave. There is some, considerable perhaps, intuition involved. Those variables, the variable of the different experiences the many craftsman bring to how they work, and the variety of material makes each piano a little different. They all have their own personality. Some fight back a little and some are easy going. Some have a massive sound, others more subdued. More interesting indeed is this point, but still too belabored. It seems this aspect was mentioned by everyone in the film and by the time pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard finds a suitable one in the great cellar of Steinway and Sons on 57th St. we've had the drift for a while.

Pierre-Laurent Aimard made the best point about the instruments the Steinway method produces, which is that it would be a tremendous bore and a great loss if every piano were identical. The variety produces not only the opportunity to find an instrument especially well-suited to a particular piece, but to find one which brings something totally unexpected to a performance. Harry Connick Jr. commented on this apparent capriciousness inherent in musical and piano performance: unlike in other mediums, what you create at the piano disappears when you are done. Each performance is a new experience, with differences in both the performer and the instrument.

Too, then, each performance contains the work of the many craftsmen who built that instrument, and they are rightfully proud of their work. They're quite a diverse lot, but they all looked middle-aged and older. I saw a couple of younger fellows here and there in the background, but I certainly hope there are more waiting in the wings, studying under the master craftsmen. Someone in the film mentioned how sad it would be if one day people wondered how Steinway made such instruments. Indeed, and let it not be necessary to have to rediscover it. Making this instruments is certainly demanding physically, but the  concentration needed to maintain such attention to detail, and the persistent risk of ruining someone else's hard work (at great expense too), seems to me quite enough to keep you on your toes. More importantly, though, if so much is indeed intuitive in this process it is even more important that they pass on their knowledge to successors.

Note by Note is an affectionate little documentary, and you come away with a great appreciation for the company which has remained in this business for over 150 years and succeeds by making a unique product, and the many craftsmen who put painstaking work (and their own personality) into each instrument. All of that work and variety in each instrument, from each performer, and each composer, added to the differences of each listener, make ever concert a unique experience. We ought never take one for granted.

Trailer

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[1] http://blog.mises.org/images/pencil1.png

Allan Bloom on Aristotle's Ethics

On teaching Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics.

Part I | Part II | Part III | Part IV | Part V