The Life of the Mind
by
by
Mary McCarthy (Editor)
A Really Unexpected Revelation
Hannah Arendt, most famous for her contention concerning the banality of evil in her writing about the trial of Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem, died in 1975. Remarkably, however, she provides an explanation in her Life of the Mind for the social as well as political situation in which we find ourselves in 2018.
Like many I am bewildered how a man like Trump - mendacious, corrupt, vulgar, misogynistic, and incompetent - can insinuate himself into a political system, like that in the United States, which is explicitly designed to avoid such an outcome. Arendt supplies some answers I find compelling; and in a strange way, comforting because they suggest that while the world is very strange indeed, it is not entirely without order.
Arendt’s fundamental distinction is that between truth and meaning. “Reason,” She says, contradicting an unstated axiom of both liberalism and science, “is not inspired by the quest for truth but by the quest for meaning. And truth and meaning are not the same thing.”The tendency of liberal thought is to “interpret meaning on the model of truth.” And then to evaluate the world, especially other people, in terms of their expression of truth. This she says is a fallacy, and I see her point.
Arendt takes Immanuel Kant seriously when she says, “No eliminating of errors or dispelling of illusions can arrive at a region beyond appearance.” At best, as the Pragmatist philosophers have demonstrated, we are engaged in an endless search for the truth about the world. What we have in the bag as it were is appearances. We are effectively stuck with things are they want to be seen. “The expressiveness of appearances expresses nothing but itself,” she says rather elliptically. Appearance is the surface that we skate on in daily life.
“Error is the price we pay for truth; and semblance is the price we pay for the wonders of appearance.” And most of us deal with the problem of semblance in a very routine way that doesn’t seem to attract the degree of interest that error does by social scientists or political commentators. “The reality of what we perceive,” Arendt says, quite accurately as well as succinctly, “is guaranteed by its worldly context, including others who perceive as I do.”
Thomas Aquinas called this in the 13th century the sensus communis, the feeling of a group, and used it as the ultimate mark of correct religious doctrine. So the idea has a long philosophical pedigree. In fact the biblical concept of the Logos, the Word, as it is used particularly in the Gospel of John and in prior Jewish philosophy, is one of coherent speech. It refers not to truth or falsehood but to meaning, the import of truth and falsehood. The real political phenomenon of significance is not Trump but the self-discovery, with the help of modern technology, of a group within which there is such shared meaning.
Meaning occurs not in the details but in an apprehension of a whole, a coherence which often can’t be arrived at through rational much less scientific methods. Once arrived at, meaning can be impervious to the truth or falsity of the elements through which it had been achieved. Such resistance to factual argument may appear as obdurate stupidity, emotional awkwardness, or lack of serious engagement. But it probably isn’t any of these things.
Trump has provided meaning for millions of Americans, many of who claim they do not care about the truth of his character or abilities. Such an attitude is incomprehensible to the liberal mind. But this is because we go on ad nauseam about the costs of error in trusting and electing a man like Trump. What we should be discussing is not the error of Trump but the semblance of Trump, what meaning he provides (not necessarily the meaning he wants to supply).
This meaning is likely to be peripheral to the political issues of immigration, elitism, race and religion. None of these individual issues really seem to matter that much to his supporters once he entered office. They know something that those who think about liberal truth don’t know; perhaps even something larger that the focus on error misses. The decision about what is worthwhile knowing is not one that liberal thought has paid much attention to. Perhaps it is this that is the core of the current ‘interruption’ in the American political system: making decisions about what’s really important is more important than being right about how the world works.
Appendix: The Aesthetic of the Idiot Savant
Since I posted the review above, I have received several messages saying essentially: OK so what is the aesthetic of Trump? These provoke me to, like Steve Brody, take a chance. I emphasize that the Trumpian aesthetic is not what he sells but the semblance that his supporters buy. My assessment of what they’re buying is in no way analytical since I don’t know many of them. But from the ones I see and hear on the news and tv commentaries I can make at least a guess.
I will use the phrase Idiot Savant to characterize the general Trump aesthetic. Both words can be interpreted negatively or positively depending on one’s political proclivities. ‘Idiot’ for example refers in the original Greek to a political loner, and since the 19th century to mental defectives. Savant, similarly, can denote both a learned person as well as an autistically challenged individual. I hope therefore that I have avoided bias in either direction.
The components of the Idiot Savant aesthetic are probably as numerous as Trump’s individual supporters. But I think there are some generally important memes that provide a common meaning. Here are some of the most striking:
- Intelligence is not a pre-requisite for success.
- We are all flawed; the only essential virtue is self-confidence.
- Celebrity is the real mark of integrity.
- Religion consists of conditional fealty to one’s tribe.
- The condition of fealty is that the tribe maintains its faithfulness through mutual encouragement and control among themselves.
- Disfavour shown towards individual members of the tribe is a sign of corrective regard and does not imply permanent exclusion.
- The only real evil in the world exists outside the tribe.
- Politics is a business that is inherently corrupt and diminishes the value of life the more it is engaged in.
Obviously there are any number of other elements that are consistent with these but I think they capture the totality of the Idiot Savant. The ‘precepts’ are both materialistic and spiritual. They evoke historical references to the astronaut, the cowboy, the Washingtonian revolutionary, even back to Paul of Tarsus and his single-minded, single-handed creation of a new religion. The allusions to the Old Testament divinity are not incidental.
Naturally the Idiot Savant has a target enemy aesthetic. For many the simple rejection of this target provides all the meaning necessary for the adoption of the Idiot Savant. I will characterize this enemy aesthetic as that of Liberal Meritocracy, which rejects semblance itself as an acceptable category. Liberal Meritocracy holds that there are valid socially derived standards of behaviour and advancement which are the same for everyone. The adherents of Liberal Meritocracy are professionals of most kinds, city-dwellers, and successful members of minority groups. These happen incidentally to include large numbers of Jews, Blacks, Mexicans, and immigrants, many of whom are Muslim.
I welcome all correction or extension of the aesthetic.
Hannah Arendt, most famous for her contention concerning the banality of evil in her writing about the trial of Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem, died in 1975. Remarkably, however, she provides an explanation in her Life of the Mind for the social as well as political situation in which we find ourselves in 2018.
Like many I am bewildered how a man like Trump - mendacious, corrupt, vulgar, misogynistic, and incompetent - can insinuate himself into a political system, like that in the United States, which is explicitly designed to avoid such an outcome. Arendt supplies some answers I find compelling; and in a strange way, comforting because they suggest that while the world is very strange indeed, it is not entirely without order.
Arendt’s fundamental distinction is that between truth and meaning. “Reason,” She says, contradicting an unstated axiom of both liberalism and science, “is not inspired by the quest for truth but by the quest for meaning. And truth and meaning are not the same thing.”The tendency of liberal thought is to “interpret meaning on the model of truth.” And then to evaluate the world, especially other people, in terms of their expression of truth. This she says is a fallacy, and I see her point.
Arendt takes Immanuel Kant seriously when she says, “No eliminating of errors or dispelling of illusions can arrive at a region beyond appearance.” At best, as the Pragmatist philosophers have demonstrated, we are engaged in an endless search for the truth about the world. What we have in the bag as it were is appearances. We are effectively stuck with things are they want to be seen. “The expressiveness of appearances expresses nothing but itself,” she says rather elliptically. Appearance is the surface that we skate on in daily life.
“Error is the price we pay for truth; and semblance is the price we pay for the wonders of appearance.” And most of us deal with the problem of semblance in a very routine way that doesn’t seem to attract the degree of interest that error does by social scientists or political commentators. “The reality of what we perceive,” Arendt says, quite accurately as well as succinctly, “is guaranteed by its worldly context, including others who perceive as I do.”
Thomas Aquinas called this in the 13th century the sensus communis, the feeling of a group, and used it as the ultimate mark of correct religious doctrine. So the idea has a long philosophical pedigree. In fact the biblical concept of the Logos, the Word, as it is used particularly in the Gospel of John and in prior Jewish philosophy, is one of coherent speech. It refers not to truth or falsehood but to meaning, the import of truth and falsehood. The real political phenomenon of significance is not Trump but the self-discovery, with the help of modern technology, of a group within which there is such shared meaning.
Meaning occurs not in the details but in an apprehension of a whole, a coherence which often can’t be arrived at through rational much less scientific methods. Once arrived at, meaning can be impervious to the truth or falsity of the elements through which it had been achieved. Such resistance to factual argument may appear as obdurate stupidity, emotional awkwardness, or lack of serious engagement. But it probably isn’t any of these things.
Trump has provided meaning for millions of Americans, many of who claim they do not care about the truth of his character or abilities. Such an attitude is incomprehensible to the liberal mind. But this is because we go on ad nauseam about the costs of error in trusting and electing a man like Trump. What we should be discussing is not the error of Trump but the semblance of Trump, what meaning he provides (not necessarily the meaning he wants to supply).
This meaning is likely to be peripheral to the political issues of immigration, elitism, race and religion. None of these individual issues really seem to matter that much to his supporters once he entered office. They know something that those who think about liberal truth don’t know; perhaps even something larger that the focus on error misses. The decision about what is worthwhile knowing is not one that liberal thought has paid much attention to. Perhaps it is this that is the core of the current ‘interruption’ in the American political system: making decisions about what’s really important is more important than being right about how the world works.
Appendix: The Aesthetic of the Idiot Savant
Since I posted the review above, I have received several messages saying essentially: OK so what is the aesthetic of Trump? These provoke me to, like Steve Brody, take a chance. I emphasize that the Trumpian aesthetic is not what he sells but the semblance that his supporters buy. My assessment of what they’re buying is in no way analytical since I don’t know many of them. But from the ones I see and hear on the news and tv commentaries I can make at least a guess.
I will use the phrase Idiot Savant to characterize the general Trump aesthetic. Both words can be interpreted negatively or positively depending on one’s political proclivities. ‘Idiot’ for example refers in the original Greek to a political loner, and since the 19th century to mental defectives. Savant, similarly, can denote both a learned person as well as an autistically challenged individual. I hope therefore that I have avoided bias in either direction.
The components of the Idiot Savant aesthetic are probably as numerous as Trump’s individual supporters. But I think there are some generally important memes that provide a common meaning. Here are some of the most striking:
- Intelligence is not a pre-requisite for success.
- We are all flawed; the only essential virtue is self-confidence.
- Celebrity is the real mark of integrity.
- Religion consists of conditional fealty to one’s tribe.
- The condition of fealty is that the tribe maintains its faithfulness through mutual encouragement and control among themselves.
- Disfavour shown towards individual members of the tribe is a sign of corrective regard and does not imply permanent exclusion.
- The only real evil in the world exists outside the tribe.
- Politics is a business that is inherently corrupt and diminishes the value of life the more it is engaged in.
Obviously there are any number of other elements that are consistent with these but I think they capture the totality of the Idiot Savant. The ‘precepts’ are both materialistic and spiritual. They evoke historical references to the astronaut, the cowboy, the Washingtonian revolutionary, even back to Paul of Tarsus and his single-minded, single-handed creation of a new religion. The allusions to the Old Testament divinity are not incidental.
Naturally the Idiot Savant has a target enemy aesthetic. For many the simple rejection of this target provides all the meaning necessary for the adoption of the Idiot Savant. I will characterize this enemy aesthetic as that of Liberal Meritocracy, which rejects semblance itself as an acceptable category. Liberal Meritocracy holds that there are valid socially derived standards of behaviour and advancement which are the same for everyone. The adherents of Liberal Meritocracy are professionals of most kinds, city-dwellers, and successful members of minority groups. These happen incidentally to include large numbers of Jews, Blacks, Mexicans, and immigrants, many of whom are Muslim.
I welcome all correction or extension of the aesthetic.
posted by The Mind of BlackOxford @ January 09, 2018
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