“Wittgenstein’s Vienna” by Allan Janik and Stephen Toulmin

The central thesis of this book is that it is impossible to look at Ludwig Wittgenstein’s philosophy without considering the milieu in which the man was raised. By only considering his Cambridge days onward, after he had met Bertrand Russell, one is missing the uniquely Viennese aspects of his thought. As such, this book is as much a history of thought in fin de siecle Vienna as it is an encapsulation of Wittgenstein’s philosophy.

It was the beginning of the end for the Hapsburg Empire, where traditional culture and mores were transforming, yet Emperor Francis Joseph futilely sought to stem the tide of progress. “The values which this society cherished were reason, order and progress, perseverance, self-reliance, and disciplined conformity to the standards of good taste and action. The irrational, the passionate, and the chaotic were to be avoided at all costs.” Yet there was a burgeoning intelligentsia that was willing to go against the established grain. Karl Kraus in writing, Arnold Schoenberg in music, Adolf Loos in design, Gustav Klimt and Oskar Kokoschka in painting were all leaders of this rebelling artistic wave. This new literati were also polymaths who dipped their toes into adjacent fields, notably philosophy (on which every learned Viennese felt he was entitled to have an opinion). There were dozens of intellectual circles that met regularly to recite, debate, present, sing, drink, and gossip at the many cafes of Vienna. And there was one over-arching problem which kept cropping up, “the nature and limits of language, expression, and communication.”

Seen in this light the “Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus” might, at first glance, seem less original, but not so, as it fused together prevailing Viennese thoughts to come up with a logical answer to the “problem” of language. And the genius of Wittgenstein was not only what was in the “Tractatus,” but what he deliberately left out, the essence of life that for him was of most import, “that skeptical resignation, insight into the incompatibility of reality, is not merely another negation among others. It is our best knowledge.” Wittgenstein’s project was to map out the limits of reason in the tradition of Kant, Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, and Tolstoy. It was to build a wall between fact and value, to assert that the first might be public in a sense, while the other was intensely individual. His message was at the same time anti-metaphysical and anti-positivist. As Paul Engelmann insisted, “positivism holds—and this is its essence—that what we can speak about is all that matters in life. Whereas Wittgenstein passionately believes that all that really matters in human life is precisely what, in his view, we must be silent about.”

The “Tractatus” was so revolutionary because it got out of the way what could be justifiably said, what could be communicated adequately, so that one could instead focus on what was not spoken. Wittgenstein felt, “ethics is transcendental… How things are in the world is a matter of complete indifference for what is higher.” Again, “the fundamental point of this whole critique was to underline the ethical point that all questions about value lie outside the scope of such ordinary factual or descriptive language… [The] Tractatus becomes an expression of a certain type of language mysticism that assigns a central importance in human life to art, on the ground that art alone can express the meaning of life. Only art can express moral truth, and only the artist can teach the things that matter most in life… It did not, of course, claim that morality is contrary to reason; merely that its foundations lay elsewhere.”

Wittgenstein was not trying to solve the problem of language because to him it was not a problem, but an unsolvable riddle. As Wittgenstein professes in his penultimate aphorism, “my propositions serve as elucidations in the following way: anyone who understands me eventually recognizes them as nonsensical, when he has used them—as steps—to climb beyond them. (He must, so to speak, throw away the ladder after he has climbed up it.) He must transcend these propositions and then he will see the world aright.” This is philosophy not written in stone, but as plastic utensils. If it serves its purpose correctly, then it can be discarded. 

However, Wittgenstein feared he would be inevitably misunderstood. In fact, he admitted, after reading Russell’s preface to the first edition, that Russell had badly misunderstood the whole thing. Wittgenstein came to the view that the only man who would understand the “Tractatus” was he who “has himself already had the thoughts which are expressed in it.” Or as he would later write to Engelmann (in a slightly different context), “how could I expect you to understand me, when I barely understand myself!” 

Wittgenstein is clearly a tough nut to crack. I think it would be fair to say that he was an ethical individualist. He viewed values as something intrinsically personal and, therefore, incapable of being truly expressed through language. “Collective morality is an illusion. The only hope for the individual is to find, and save, his own soul; and even this he can do only by avoiding worldly attachments.” His philosophy was so revolutionary in its modesty. Although later in life he would come to amend some of his positions in the Tractatus, his general gist would remain, “to say nothing except what can be said… and then, whenever someone else wants to say something metaphysical, to demonstrate to him that he had failed to give a meaning to certain signs in his propositions.”

“The Radetzky March” by Joseph Roth (translated by Joachim Neugroschel)

This novel’s plot spans the lives of three generations of the Trotta family, from its ennobling rise to its tragic fall. The family’s destiny in many ways mimics the arc of the Hapsburg Empire in general. The book was written by Roth in Austria during the inter-war years, but the story’s plot ends just before the First World War concludes. Roth’s characters very much inhabit the multitude and expansive breath of the Empire. “The German Austrians were waltzers and boozy crooners, the Hungarians stank, the Czechs were born bootlickers, the Ruthenians were treacherous Russians in disguise, the Croats and Slovenes, whom he called Cravats and Slobbers, were brushmakers and chestnut roasters, and the Poles, of whom he himself was one after all, were skirt chasers, hairdressers and fashion photographers.” Roth’s story deals with big themes, including military honor, duty to country, family and friends, political conservatism, and the meaning of life, death, and posterity. Women are almost totally left out of the picture, aside from the occasional romantic dalliance.

The grandfather Trotta saved the Kaiser’s life at the Battle of Solferino, earning the family its title. “His unshakable simplicity viewed death in the field as a necessary consequence of warrior fame.” He was later to become disillusioned with the propaganda and lies of the military and so retired to country life on his family farm, with his pension and the beneficence of the Kaiser assured. “Though a man in the prime of his life, he appeared to be aging swiftly. He had been driven from the paradise of simple faith in Emperor and Virtue, Truth, and Justice, and, now fettered in silence and endurance, he may have realized that the stability of the world, the power of laws, and the glory of majesties were all based on deviousness.”

The eldest Trotta made sure that his only son served the Kaiser in a civilian capacity, never to join the ranks of the army. “Fate has turned our family of frontier peasants into an Austrian dynasty. That is what we shall remain.” The son was industrious and spartan- loyal to his work, his family, and the empire. “Herr von Trotta und Sipolje ate very swiftly, sometimes fiercely. He virtually destroyed one course after another with a noiseless, aristocratic, and rapid malice; he was wiping them out.” This younger Trotta lived at the empire’s peak and was proud of the Hapsburg’s success and his small part in making sure the empire ran smoothly as a district captain far from Vienna. “Herr von Trotta had always made a point of appearing richer than he was. He had the instincts of a true gentleman. And in those days (and perhaps our day too) no instincts were more expensive than those. People favored with such curses do not know how much they possess or how much they spend. They draw from an invisible source. They never keep accounts. They assume that their wealth cannot lag behind their generosity.”

This middle Trotta named his only son Carl Joseph and bred him to be the success in the army that his own father had forbade of him. “Other officers talked about their orderlies with meticulous expertise, the way they talked about girls, clothes, favorite dishes, and horses. But whenever conversation turned to servants, Carl Joseph thought about old Jacques at home—old Jacques, who had even served Carl Joseph’s grandfather. Aside from old Jacques, there was no other servant in the world!” But with each generation of the Trotta family there was a foreboding sense that life could not go on as it was, despite each generation’s wishes to keep time and the Empire standing still. “And the world was no longer the old world. It was about to end. And it was quite in order that an hour before its end the valleys should prove the mountains wrong, the young the old, the stupid the sensible…. The world worth living in was doomed. The world that would follow it deserved no decent inhabitants.”

With the family’s fortunes so went the Empire’s. “Vienna already stinks of the sweat of the Democrats; I can’t stand being on the Ringstrasse anymore. The workers wave red flags and don’t care to work. The mayor of Vienna is a pious janitor. The padres are already going with the people; their sermons are in Czech…. This era wants to create independent nation-states! People no longer believe in God. The new religion is nationalism. Nations no longer go to church. They go to national associations. Monarchy, our monarchy, is founded on piety, on the faith that God chose the Hapsburgs to rule over so and so many Christian nations. Our Kaiser is a secular brother of the Pope, he is His Imperial and Royal Apostolic Majesty…. The Emperor of Austria-Hungary must not be abandoned by God. But God has abandoned him!”

“The Betrothed (I Promessi Sposi)” by Alessandro Manzoni (translated by Bruce Penman)

This epic novel, set in seventeenth century Lombardy, has many twists, turns, and historic digressions. The main story revolves around a young peasant couple thwarted in marriage by an unscrupulous nobleman with his own eye on the girl. Capuchin friars, silk weavers, snooping inn keepers, Milanese bakers, timorous village priests, smuggling fishermen, country lawyers, unbefitting nuns, blackguard bravoes, and nosy noblewomen all make appearances. The saintly historic figure, Cardinal Federigo Borromeo, plays a pivotal role in the story. There is even a character, based on a real-life noble, named “the Unnamed,” who is so sinister that his identity has been concealed by Manzoni for posterity. The narrator of the tale purports to have discovered and translated the original Milanese manuscript by an anonymous author and is retelling the story, with his own additional comments, historical asides, and certain embellishments. In reality, Manzoni wrote the novel from scratch in his native Tuscan tongue, with a light sprinkling of Latin, in the early nineteenth century.

The novel telescopes in and out between the travails of a core group of characters with ties to the betrothed couple and the larger historical events engulfing northern Italy in the seventeenth century. The quasi-war for control of Milan, between Spanish and French interests, fueled by German mercenaries and the Venetian Republic’s meddling, sets the background. The countryside was full of “Spanish soldiers, who gave lessons in modest deportment to the girls and women of the area, and who tickled the backs of the odd husband or father with a stick from time to time. They also never failed, at the end of summer, to spread out across the vineyards and thin out the grapes, so as to lighten the labours of the peasants at harvest-time.” The Spanish nobility, ensconced in their fortress palaces around Milan, make themselves equally reviled by the peasants, behaving haughtily above the law. “‘Yes, sir, it was worthy of a gentleman,’ shouted the count, ‘and let me tell you so, because I ought to know what befits a gentleman and what doesn’t. If it had been a matter of fists, now that would be quite different; but a cudgel doesn’t dirty your hands. What I don’t understand is why a couple of weals on a ruffian’s back should upset you so much.’” In these seasons of poor harvests and famine, the Spanish governors in charge also made matters even worse by issuing price controls and flour rationing edicts, which enflamed the Milanese locals, leading to bread riots. “Ferrer saw, as anyone could see, that it is highly desirable that there should be a fair price for bread. He also thought — and this was where he went wrong — that an order from him could do the trick…. Ferrer was behaving like a lady of a certain age, who thinks she can regain her youth by altering the date on her birth certificate.” Furthermore, as the novel culminates, black plague spreads from village to village and into the gates of Milan, to devastating effect. Faith and trust in God, as well as the honor of the clergy and the humbleness of the peasants are all recurring themes. “Troubles very often come because we have asked for them; but that the most prudent and innocent of conduct is not necessarily enough to keep them away; also that when they come, through our fault or otherwise, trust in God goes far to take away their sting, and makes them a useful preparation for a better life.”

“Theaetetus” by Plato (translated by M.J. Levett & Myles Burnyeat)

This is another dialogue on the nature of epistemology. It does not end with a satisfactory definition of knowledge. Or, at least, a neat and tidy one. Socrates lays out the purpose, speaking to Theaetetus early on. “You were not asked to say what one may have knowledge of, or how many branches of knowledge there are. It was not with any idea of counting these up that the question was asked; we wanted to know what knowledge itself is.” From there Socrates, Theaetetus, and Theodorus try to work out a satisfactory theory of knowledge.

Theaetetus begins by agreeing with Protagoras, who tried to equate knowledge with perception. Socrates summarizes the tenets of Protagoras’ pupils. They “maintain (a) that all things are in motion and (b) that for each person and each city, things are what they seem to them to be. And upon this basis you will inquire whether knowledge and perception are the same thing or different things.” Socrates responds with his own thoughts, “my perception is true for me—because it is always a perception of that being which is peculiarly mine; and I am judge, as Protagoras said, of things that are, that they are, for me; and of things that are not, that they are not…. If whatever the individual judges by means of perception is true for him; if no man can assess another’s experience better than he, or can claim authority to examine another man’s judgment and see if it be right or wrong; if, as we repeatedly said, only the individual himself can judge of his own world, and what he judges is always true and correct: how could it ever be, my friend, that Protagoras was a wise man, so wise as to think himself fit to be the teacher of other men.” Socrates is saying that if all men’s perceptions were equally judged as correct knowledge, then there would be no need for wise teachers to school ignorant pupils on the truth. Instead, everyone’s perceptions would be equally true. Socrates continues, “if all things are in motion, every answer, on whatever subject, is equally correct, both ‘it is thus’ and ‘it is not thus’—or if you like ‘becomes’, as we don’t want to use any expressions which will bring our friends to a standstill…. One must not even use the word ‘thus’; for this ‘thus’ would no longer be in motion; nor yet ‘not thus’ for here again there is no motion. The exponents of this theory need to establish some other language; as it is, they have no words that are consistent with their hypothesis—unless it would perhaps suit them best to use ‘not at all thus’ in a quite indefinite sense…. We do not yet concede to [Protagoras] that every man is the measure of all things, if he be not a man of understanding. And we are not going to grant that knowledge is perception, not at any rate on the line of inquiry which supposes that all things are in motion.”

Socrates and Theaetetus continue trying to hammer out a definition of knowledge, but it is elusive. Whenever they get close, a refutation is found and the answer escapes them. Socrates states, “we have determined that to ‘possess’ knowledge is one thing and to ‘have’ it is another; accordingly we maintain that it is impossible for anyone not to possess that which he has possession of, and thus, it never happens that he does not know something he knows. But he may yet make a false judgment about it. This is because it is possible for him to ‘have’, not the knowledge of this thing, but another piece of knowledge instead. When he is hunting for one piece of knowledge, it may happen, as they fly about, that he makes a mistake and gets hold of one instead of another…. It follows that a man who has knowledge of something is ignorant of this very thing not through want of knowledge but actually in virtue of his knowledge.” Socrates goes on to state the difference between judgement and knowledge. “Now when a man gets a true judgment about something without an account, his soul is in a state of truth as regards that thing, but he does not know it; for someone who cannot give and take an account of a thing is ignorant about it. But when he has also got an account of it, he is capable of all this and is made perfect in knowledge.” Having built up this definition of knowledge, Socrates, himself, appears intent on once again knocking it down. He states, “We said that the man who defines knowledge as correct judgment together with an account would choose one of three meanings for ‘account’.” Theaetetus responds, “The first was, a kind of vocal image of thought; the one we have just discussed was the way to the whole through the elements” which have both been discredited. Socrates reveals the third and final meaning, “What the majority of people would say—namely, being able to tell some mark by which the object you are asked about differs from all other things.” Socrates addresses this final meaning of ‘account’, “if ‘adding an account’ means that we are required to get to know the differentness, not merely judge it, this most splendid of our accounts of knowledge turns out to be a very amusing affair. For getting to know of course is acquiring knowledge, isn’t it?… So, it seems, the answer to the question ‘What is knowledge?’ will be ‘Correct judgment accompanied by knowledge of the differentness’—for this is what we are asked to understand by the ‘addition of an account.’… And it is surely just silly to tell us, when we are trying to discover what knowledge is, that it is correct judgment accompanied by knowledge, whether of differentness or of anything else? And so, Theaetetus, knowledge is neither perception nor true judgment, nor an account added to true judgment.” It seems that defining knowledge properly has all of us going around in circles. But the journey itself has, perhaps, been worth the effort.

“Helgoland: Making Sense of the Quantum Revolution” by Carlo Rovelli

Rovelli is a quantum physicist, who specializes in quantum gravity. On the side, he writes pop-science books. This one is in his wheelhouse. His preferred quantum model is not the Copenhagen Interpretation favored by Bohr and Heisenberg, though they were on the right track focussing on measurement. Bohr wrote, “Whereas in classical physics the interaction between an object and the measuring apparatus can be overlooked—or if necessary can be taken into account and compensated for—in quantum physics this interaction is an inseparable part of the phenomenon.” Rovelli’s model is not Everett’s Many-Worlds or David Bohm’s Pilot Waves, though he helpfully explains and extracts from both, as well. Rovelli’s conception is strange, beautiful, and mystical, while being, obviously, still grounded in hard science. “The keystone of the ideas in this book, is the simple observation that scientists, and their measuring instruments as well, are all part of nature. What quantum theory describes, then, is the way in which one part of nature manifests itself to any other single part of nature…. To understand nature, we must focus on these interactions rather than on isolated objects.” Rovelli is blunt about how his conception of quantum physics necessarily modifies his view of reality, “The discovery of quantum theory, I believe, is the discovery that the properties of any entity are nothing other than the way in which that entity influences others. It exists only through its interactions.”

Rovelli begins, “Quantum theory predicts granularity, quantum leaps, photons and all the rest, on the basis of adding a single equation of eight characters to classical physics. An equation which says that to multiply position by speed is different from multiplying speed by position. The opaqueness is complete.” Rovelli’s world is one that is fundamentally based on interaction and subjectivity. Quantum mechanics “describes the elementary and universal grammar of physical reality underlying not just laboratory observations but every type and instance of interaction…. Any interaction between two physical objects can be seen as an observation.” This requires a new way of conceptualizing reality. “The properties of an object are the way in which it acts upon other objects; reality is this web of interactions. Instead of seeing the physical world as a collection of objects with definite properties, quantum theory invites us to see the physical world as a net of relations. Objects are its nodes…. There are no properties outside of interactions…. If the electron is not interacting, there are no properties. This is a radical leap. It is equivalent to saying that everything consists solely of the way in which it affects something else. When the electron does not interact with anything, it has no physical properties. It has no position; it has no velocity.”

The relational nature of reality has consequences. Objectivity is dispensed with. Everything is subjective. “No universal set of facts exist…. Facts relative to one observer are not facts relative to another. It is a shining example of the relativity of reality…. The joint properties of two objects exist only in relation to a third. To say that two objects are correlated means to articulate something with regard to a third object: the correlation manifests itself when the two correlated objects both interact with this third object…. The existence of a third object that interacts with both the systems is necessary to give reality to the correlations. Everything that manifests itself does so in relation to something…. Entanglement is not a dance for two partners, it is a dance for three…. Entanglement is therefore far from being a rare phenomenon that occurs only in particular situations: it is what happens, generically, in an interaction when this interaction is considered in relation to a system external to it.”

The inescapability of the subjectivity of nature is hard to fully wrap one’s head around. “If the world consists of relations, then no description is from outside it. The descriptions of the world are, in the ultimate analysis, all from inside. They are all in the first person…. If we imagine the totality of things, we are imagining being outside the universe, looking at it from out there. But there is no “outside” to the totality of things. The external point of view is a point of view that does not exist…. The world is this reciprocal reflection of perspectives…. The relational perspective shows that physics is always a first-person description of reality, from one perspective.”

In conclusion, Rovelli dips his head into dualism and consciousness, considering mind and matter. For Rovelli, everything is relative. “If we think in terms of processes, events, in terms of relative properties, of a world of relations, the hiatus between physical phenomena and mental phenomena is much less dramatic. It becomes possible to see both as natural phenomena generated by complex structures of interactions…. At the physical level, the world can be seen as a web of reciprocal information.” The subjective nature of reality is, once again, fundamental. “The best description of reality that we have found is in terms of events that weave a web of interactions. “Entities” are nothing other than ephemeral nodes in this web. Their properties are not determined until the moment of these interactions; they exist only in relation to something else…. Every vision is partial. There is no way of seeing reality that is not dependent on perspective—no point of view that is absolute and universal.”

“Anarchy’s Brief Summer- The Life and Death of Buenaventura Durruti: A Novel” by Hans Magnus Enzensberger (translated by Mike Mitchell)

First published in German in 1972, Enzensberger’s Anarchy’s Brief Summer is a self-described “novel” about the life of the Spanish anarchist, Buenaventura Durruti. However, the bulk of the book is actually excerpted historical documents and recollections by Durruti’s associates, arranged by Enzensberger chronologically. He intersperses his own comments infrequently, in brief chapters of editorial glosses, otherwise allowing Durruti’s contemporaries to speak for themselves.

Despite the collaged perspectives, the book manages to read like an unbroken narrative. The names attached to the quotes hardly matter—the words of the famous, such as Simone Weil, blend seamlessly with those by hardened anarchists in the trenches, repentant Catholic priests, and skeptical Bolshevik advisors. The slight discrepancies of the witnesses add to the mythic quality of Durruti’s life, by building nuance and texture.

It is in Enzensberger’s choosing and arranging of this commentary that he creates his own story. It veers towards the hagiographic, as Durruti comes to symbolize the ideals of the entire anarchist movement, especially in his shrouded death. However, the mundane details of how Durruti conducted himself and related to others allow for all his faults and sincere humanism to show through. As Enzensberger, himself, was kicked out of the Hitler Youth in his native Germany for not “being a good comrade,” an anti-hierarchical utopian movement might hold personal appeal.

Syndicalist-anarchism, like all nineteenth century utopian philosophies, attracted ardent followers who tried to will their ideas into existence. Unlike the communists, the Spanish anarchists lionized Bakunin, not Marx. They did not believe in a vanguard of the proletariat. “Durruti always insisted that the revolution should not end up with the dictatorship of one party, that the new society should be built from the bottom up, not decreed from above. That was the reason why the anarchists could never accept the result of the Russian revolution.” In the case of the anarchists, neither Spanish history nor the apparatus of the State made that easy. “The main weapons of the CNT [the anarchist federation of trade unions, the Confederacion Nacional del Trabajo], both in the country and in the towns, were strikes and guerrilla warfare… Their methods were revolutionary, going from self-defence to sabotage and from expropriation to armed revolt.”

Durruti was a man of action, not a philosopher. His particular strength was in propaganda of the deed. “Durruti went in, pistol in hand, and demanded the money, there was a shoot-out, the union got its money, the school could start, that’s all… Durruti took the money with one hand and gave it away with the other, for prisoners’ families and for the struggle.” Durruti was personally implicated in the assassinations of Prime Minister Dato and Cardinal Soldevila, the attempted assassination of King Alfonso XIII, as well as countless bank robberies and munitions thefts throughout Spain and as far afield as France, Cuba, and Argentina. The anarchists were cavalier about death—both their own, and, particularly, for enemies of the revolution. “Every day a worker died, the following day a bourgeois or a policeman.”

During the Spanish Civil War, there was another civil war within that civil war. Amongst the anti-fascists, there was a Republican wing that combined the moderate Social Democrats, ousted from power in Franco’s coup, with more ardent communists, supported by the Bolsheviks in the Soviet Union. The Syndicalist-Anarchist wing viewed these men as almost as evil as Franco’s fascists and, certainly, anti-revolutionary in nature. The anarchists could not forget that, when in control of Spain’s government, these same Republican officials had imprisoned, tortured, and executed their comrades. Now it was the anarchists who had the muscle in the streets, if not most of the weapons and money. “The wearers of proud uniforms, the gentlemen with their officers’ drawl, their medal ribbons and epaulettes, the men with swords at their side and black Homburg hats are finished, they have been defeated. The ones who have shown their power here and won the game are those who previously had no say at all, who were persecuted and imprisoned and had to crawl away to hide in any hole they could find… The politicians were afraid of fascism but they were even more afraid of the people in arms.” The feeling of animosity was reciprocated. “We went to the meetings as typical middle-class intellectuals in ties and jackets, armed with fountain pens—and suddenly found ourselves confronted with a cohort of anarchists coming in through the door: unshaven, in battle dress, armed with hand grenades, revolvers and tommy guns.” Political maneuverings, clashes over military discipline, and the withholding of artillery and ammunition for anarchist positions at the front hampered the anti-fascist cause as much as Franco’s tactics.

What becomes vivid in Enzensberger’s collection of personal testimonies is that Durruti was a revolutionary, who asked much from his comrades, but practiced what he preached. “Durruti was no parlour anarchist. He was a worker, spent his days at the workbench. Four countries had condemned him to death.” It was this sincerity that endeared him to the masses. “Durruti kept telling the workers that the republicans and the socialists had betrayed the revolution… He told the miners that bourgeois democracy was bankrupt and the time was ripe for revolution. The bourgeoisie had to be expropriated, the state abolished.” Unlike most anarchists, who were politically radical, but domestically conservative, Durruti practiced equality within his home. “When my wife goes out to work, I clean the house, make the beds, cook the meals. Moreover I give my little girl a bath and dress her. If you think a real anarchist should sit around in a bar or a cafe, then you still haven’t understood anything.”

However, in the Spanish war, impeccable personal character was no match for the systemic incentives that rewarded shrewdness and conniving stratagems. The anarchists had to fight a rearguard battle with the communists, while also bearing the brunt of the burden on the frontlines. “While we on the militias committee were of the opinion that our most popular and capable comrades ought to go to the front in order to command companies, battalions and columns there, they took the opposite view: they wanted to keep the best leaders for the time after the war… They were all waiting to divide up the spoils before we’d even got them.” The forces of integrity failed to carry the day. “The communists had gained an immense amount of influence through the Soviet Union’s arms deliveries. We were constantly afraid that the Spanish anarchists would suffer the same fate as the anarchists had in Russia.”

Anarchist foot soldiers excelled in the street battles of Barcelona. But as the fighting dragged on and turned into conventional warfare with frontlines and set-piece maneuvering, the anarchists struggled to adapt. It is hard to fight a war with no officers, no hierarchy, and no discipline. “(There being no place for officers in a column inspired by Organized Indiscipline.)” When anarchist ethics conflicted with day to day practicalities the anarchists had trouble squaring the two. The result was an idealism divorced from reality. Confusion and death reigned. “They solve local problems by means of the following three questions: ‘Where is the district court? Where is the land registry with the register? Where is the prison? Then they burn the court files and the land registers and release the prisoners.” A Russian observer commented, “Although they castigated dogmatism, they were dyed-in-the-wool dogmatists themselves. They tried to force life to conform to their theories… Now, impromptu in the hail of bombs and bullets, they had to modify what only yesterday had been inviolable truth.” Durruti was the first anarchist commander to see this tension and try to adapt. “The indiscipline at the front and the bourgeoisification at home will lead to the victory of the fascists if we don’t do something immediately… War’s a bastard. It doesn’t destroy just houses but also the highest principles… My whole life long I’ve been an anarchist, should I now start wielding a cudgel to impose discipline on my men? I will not do that. I know that discipline is necessary in war, but it has to be an inner discipline that derives from the goal we are fighting for… On no account will we deny our principles, nor will we bring disgrace on the tools of our work, the hammer and the sickle.”

Imagining that politically naive and philosophically idealistic anarchists could navigate their way into the halls of power seems fanciful in retrospect. What these men had in character and honor were their deficits in the nuanced gamesmanship that they were confronted with behind the lines. They were out-maneuvered at every turn by the communists, the republican generals, and the professional politicians. “True, there are people who mock us and call us political failures; there are even some who call themselves anarchists who say that. In reality, the undertaking was nothing more than a defeat. We have suffered many defeats. That is no reason to sully the memory of the fallen.”

Spain in the summer of 1936 turned out to be the high-water mark of international anarcho-syndicalism. It was the closest any anarchist movement would reach to controlling the levers of a European government. A Social Democrat politician quipped as he saw Durruti’s column marching off to the Aragon front, “There was almost something hippie-like about them, but they were hippies with hand grenades and MGs [machine guns] and they were determined to fight to the death.” Even when faced with political reality and the temptations of power, the anarchists remained true to their own ideals to the bitter end.

“Aphorisms” by Franz Kafka (translated by Willa Muir, Edwin Muir, and Michael Hofmann)

In this collection of aphorisms, Kafka sets down some riddles to live by. Or, at least, to try to wrap your mind around. How many are worth a ponder? “A cage went in search of a bird.” What does that even mean? When a metaphor is so obscure does it have any worth? Or is it not obscure at all for those capable of an esoteric reading? “Leopards break into the temple and drink all the sacrificial vessels dry; it keeps happening; in the end, it can be calculated in advance and is incorporated into the ritual.” Is this a comment on organized religion? Or on the origins of religion? Sometimes his comments can strike the reader as a truism. “Grasp the good fortune that the ground on which you stand cannot be any bigger than the two feet planted on it.” Or a humorous jab at the commonality of man. “It is inconceivable that Alexander the Great—for all the military successes of his youth, for all the excellence of the army he trained, for all the desire he felt in himself to change the world—might have stopped at the Hellespont, and never crossed it, and not out of fear, not out of indecisiveness, not out of weakness of will, but from heavy legs.” Sometimes Kafka just gives helpful guidance. “Dealings with people bring about self-scrutiny.” He ends with this friendly advice, “It isn’t necessary that you leave home. Sit at your desk and listen. Don’t even listen, just wait. Don’t wait, be still and alone. The whole world will offer itself to you to be unmasked, it can do no other, it will writhe before you in ecstasy.”

“The Sound of the One Hand: 281 Zen Koans with Answers” (edited and translated by Yoel Hoffmann)

When first published in 1916 this book caused quite a stir in Japan for “giving away” the answers to Zen koans. The first koan is a classic, “The Koan on the Sound of the One Hand: In clapping both hands a sound is heard; what is the sound of the one hand? ANSWER: The pupil faces his master, takes a correct posture, and without a word, thrusts one hand forward.” Most of the koans develop in riddle-like form. “MASTER: A man walks straight. How will you walk straight through the forty-nine curves of the narrow mountain road? ANSWER: Twisting and turning, the pupil winds about the room as if walking a narrow mountain road.” Some of the koans are quite coarse. “MASTER: Why do birds shit on Buddha’s head? ANSWER: “What the hell! Some damned bird shit on my head!” Saying this, the pupil makes the pretense of shaking it off his head.” The pupil often even seems to disrespect the master’s questions. “MASTER: It is said that big waters and small waters all return to the eastern sea. The waters of the Sumida River—where will they flow back to? ANSWER: The pupil opens the front of his kimono and pretends to urinate.” Many of the koans teach proper time and place. “MASTER: How can you enter the realm of Buddha without leaving the realm of the devils? ANSWER: When in the living quarters, I converse with the guests. When retuning to the meditation hall, I sit in meditation.” Many of the koans require some back and forth, “Before and After: A monk asked Master Chimon, “What is the lotus flower before it appears above water?” Chimon said, “It is a lotus flower.” The monk said, “What is it after it has appeared above water?” Chimon said, “It is a lotus leaf.” MASTER: “Before it appears above water”—in place of Chimon, on your own, answer the question. ANSWER: “An earthernware mortar.” MASTER: “After it has appeared above water”—what of it? ANSWER: “A rice cake.”” Few among the koans actually deal with the Buddha and enlightenment explicitly. “Buddha’s Master: Master Hoen said, “Even Buddha and Miroku [a legendary bodhisattva] are his slaves. Tell me who he is.” ANSWER: The pupil enumerates such names as “Gonbe, Hachibe, Ohichi, Osan” [common Japanese names of men and women].”

“The New Science of Politics” by Eric Voegelin

Voegelin’s short book is a collection of his six Wallgreen lectures, which attempted to describe what has gone wrong with the political sciences since modernity. He blames the positivist, scientistic, and gnostic turns which reached their apex after the Enlightenment. First, Voegelin decries those who tried to take value judgments out of the field of political science. Nothing was more destructive than “the attempt at making political science (and the social sciences in general) “objective” through a methodologically rigorous exclusion of all “value judgments.”” Voegelin notes that this is a modern phenomena. “The terms “value-judgment” and “value-free” science were not part of the philosophical vocabulary before the second half of the nineteenth century…. This situation was created through the positivistic conceit that only propositions concerning facts of the phenomenal world were “objective,” while judgements concerning the right order of soul and society were “subjective.” Only propositions of the first type could be considered “scientific,” while propositions of the second type expressed personal preferences and decisions…. Only when ontology as a science was lost, and when consequently ethics and politics could no longer be understood as sciences of the order in which human nature reaches its maximal actualization, was it possible for this realm of knowledge to become suspect as a field of subjective, uncritical opinion.” With this modern trend, Voegelin contrasts the study of politics which came to its pinnacle during the classical Greek period. “The validity of the standards developed by Plato and Aristotle depends on the conception of a man who can be the measure of society because God is the measure of his soul…. The Platonic-Aristotelean elaboration of the new truth marked the end of a long history.”

Voegelin blames the Gnostic heresy for the deviation of the study of politics from its solid classical roots. But first he reaches back further. “The clash between various types of truth in the Roman Empire ended with the victory of Christianity. The fateful result of this victory was the de-divinization of the temporal sphere of power…. By de-divinization shall be meant the historical process in which the culture of polytheism died from experiential atrophy, and human existence in society became reordered through the experience of man’s destination, by the grace of the world-transcendent God, toward eternal life in beatific vision. By re-divinization, however, shall not be meant a revival of polytheistic culture in the Greco-Roman sense…. Modern re-divinization has its origins rather in Christianity itself, deriving from components that were suppressed as heretical by the universal church.”

Voegelin suggests that a prime error of modernists is thinking that history has some predetermined destination and purpose. Modern man could cut out the transcendent and solely focus on the immanent world. “The problem of an eidos in history, hence, arises only when Christian transcendental fulfillment becomes immanentized. Such an immanentist hypostasis of the eschaton, however, is a theoretical fallacy. Things are not things, nor do they have essences, by arbitrary declaration. The course of history as a whole is no object of experience; history has no eidos, because the course of history extends into the unknown future.” The Gnostics attempted to restore the certainty that Christian de-divinization had removed from the world. “What specific uncertainty was so disturbing that it had to be overcome by the dubious means of fallacious immanentization?… Uncertainty is the very essence of Christianity. The feeling of security in a “world full of gods” is lost with the gods themselves; when the world is dedivinized, communication with the world-transcendent God is reduced to the tenuous bond of faith…. Ontologically, the substance of things hoped for is nowhere to be found but in faith itself; and epistemologically, there is no proof for things unseen but again this very faith.”

Gnosticism is a mistaken attempt to reach for that which is fundamentally uncertain. “The attempt at immanentizing the meaning of existence is fundamentally an attempt at bringing our knowledge of transcendence into a firmer grip than the cognito fidei, the cognition of faith, will afford; and Gnostic experiences offer this firmer grip in so far as they are an expansion of the soul to the point where God is drawn into the existence of man.” From Hegel and Comte to Marx and Hitler, man surpassed his knowledge and reached into the realm of God. “Gnostic experiences, in the amplitude of their variety, are the core of the redivinization of society, for the men who fall into these experiences divinize themselves by substituting more massive modes of participation in divinity for faith in the Christian sense.” Man was now responsible for his own final purpose. “Gnostic speculation overcame the uncertainty of faith by receding from transcendence and endowing man and his intra-mundane range of action with the meaning of eschatological fulfillment. In the measure in which this immanentization progressed experientially, civilizational activity became a mystical work of self-salvation…. The death of the spirit is the price of progress…. This Gnostic murder is constantly committed by the men who sacrifice God to civilization…. Gnostic thinkers, leaders, and their followers interpret a concrete society and its order as an eschaton; and, in so far as they apply their fallacious construction to concrete social problems, they misrepresent the structure of immanent reality.”

When Gnostic movements successfully takeover the machine of modern politics, the results shall be disastrous. “Victorious Gnostics can neither transfigure the nature of man nor establish a terrestrial paradise; what they actually do establish is an omnipotent state which ruthlessly eliminates all sources of resistance…. The party line may change, but the change of interpretation is determined by the government. Intellectuals who still insist on having opinions of their own concerning the meaning of the koranic writings are purged. The Gnostic truth that was produced freely by the original Gnostic thinkers is now channeled into the truth of public order in immanent existence.”

“From Hegel to Nietzsche: The Revolution in Nineteenth-Century Thought” by Karl Lowith (translated by David E. Green)

Lowith’s book recapitulates nineteenth-century German philosophy using Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel as the intellectual jumping-off point. In fact, Lowith stresses that all continental philosophy after Hegel is best seen through his thought—either in agreeing with him or pushing against him, but always in conversation with Hegel. Lowith first introduces Hegel in comparison with his slightly older contemporary, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, perhaps the only German of the early nineteenth century who could be considered his intellectual superior. Lowith compares the similarities between Hegel and Goethe, two men who respected and were in correspondence with each other, while each recognizing their own superiority in their respected fields of talent. “Both attempted the “adventure of reason” by placing themselves—disregarding discursive understanding—in the middle between personal existence and the existence of the world. The difference between their ways of mediation resides in the fact that Goethe sees the unity from the point of view of nature as it is perceived, but Hegel from the point of view of the historical spirit…. In each case, it lies in the fact that the affairs of men are subordinated to the service as a whole…. When Goethe speaks of nature, trusting that it also speaks through him, he means the reason behind everything that lives, just as the primary phenomena are themselves a kind of reason, more or less permeating all created things. When Hegel speaks of spirit, confident that it also speaks through him, he understands thereby nature as otherness of the idea, while the spirit is a “second nature.””

Hegel saw philosophy as progressing through time.  He wrote, “As concerns the individual, each is a son of his time; and philosophy is their time comprehended in thought. It is just as foolish to imagine that some philosophy transcends its present world as to imagine that an individual can transcend his time.” Lowith expounds, “The absoluteness of his system would then consist in an absolute relativism, because Hegel—in contrast to Kant—represents the absolute as an ever-present spirit, immanent in reality…. A basic evaluation of Hegel’s meaning for the present has to proceed from the fact that he was the first to make philosophy aware of itself as the thought of time…. By viewing the past as having an effect on the future, philosophy becomes the consciousness of the age, and continuity becomes the principle of the historical process.”

Lowith later relates Hegel’s philosophy of history, “Hegel delivered his lecture on the philosophy of history in the years 1822-23 and 1830-31. The introduction explains the principle of his study: the unfolding of the spirit, and also of freedom, in stages. The spirit, which, as world spirit dominates history, is negative vis-a-vis nature; that is, progress in the unfolding of the spirit towards freedom is progress in liberation from subjection to nature. In Hegel’s philosophy, therefore, nature as such has no independent positive significance…. Furthermore, the everyday life of mankind is without substantial significance for Hegel’s idea of world history…. World history moves upon a higher plane than that of everyday life, whose ethical criteria do not obtain for political events…. Within the movement which involves the “world as a whole,” individuals are only means to the end of this whole.”

Another of Hegel’s primary goals was to preserve Christian religion within the framework of the primacy of the bourgeois State. “Thus [Hegel] sees Jesus as a “man who sought to restore man in his totality” by combining within himself, the God-man, both human and the divine…. The outcome of this absorption of religion into philosophy is Hegel’s philosophy of religion.” Hegel explains, “If there is to be no knowledge of God, the only realm which remains to interest the spirit is the realm of the ungodly, the limited, the finite. Of course man must be content with the finite; but it is an even higher necessity that he have a Sabbath in his life, in which he may transcend his workaday affairs, in which he may devote himself to what is truly genuine and come into awareness of it…. The object of religion, as of philosophy, is the eternal truth of its own objectivity.” Lowith concludes with Hegel’s attempted reconciliation between Athens and Jerusalem, “Hegel still belongs to the “Old Testament” of philosophy, for his philosophy is still based on the standpoint of theology. His philosophy of religion is the last great attempt ever made to “resolve” (ambiguously) the conflict between Christianity and paganism, between Christian theology and Greek philosophy. Hegel is the culmination of the ambiguity of the modern age, which equates the negation of Christianity with Christianity.”

Lowith explains how Hegel’s followers, on both the German left and right, tried to espouse his logic, even while vehemently disagreeing with their master. “It is the task of the progressive spirit of the age to free Hegel’s philosophy from itself by means of the dialectic method. According to Hegel’s statement that “the present is uppermost,” it is the absolute right of the age which superseded him to defend his system critically against himself, in order to accomplish the principle of unfolding and freedom.” The neo-Hegelian Johann Scholz posited, “Prior to Hegel, no great thinker dared so courageously to put philosophy into the stream of life. They all stood on the bank, thinking it their job to build a bridge across it, for eternity.”

Perhaps the philosopher who took Hegel’s philosophical system most-beyond what was originally intended was Karl Marx. “Marx’s criticism of the existing order is not motivated by mere “desire for change.” It has its roots in a Promethean rebellion against the Christian order of creation. Only the atheism of man with faith in himself must also see to the creation of the world…. For [Marx], Epicurus is the greatest representative of the Greek enlightenment. He was the first among mortal men to dare to defy the gods of heaven…. The destruction of the Christian religion is the prerequisite for the construction of a world in which man is his own master.” Marx claimed, “It is therefore the duty of history, the beyond of truth having vanished, to establish the truth of this world. Philosophy is in the service of history.” Lowith explains, “Criticism of heaven is transformed thereby into criticism of earth, criticism of religion into criticism of right, criticism of theology into criticism of politics.” The political sphere has replaced the religious as the space in which man interacts with his fellows in Marx’s system. Politics has been elevated to the supra-position in society. However, Marx’s communism is placed squarely within the structures of Hegel’s system. Communism “is intended as the realization of the dialectical unity between independent action and depersonalization which is the outcome of Hegel’s history of philosophy. It is the practical way in which man, living in society, keeps the entire objective world in subjection, as self-generated, and also remains himself in his otherness. Thus according to Marx’s idea, it is not only the expropriation of private property, but also the “vindication of real human life as man’s property,” a total return to himself of man who has become a stranger to himself within the objective world which he has generated…. True communism… as Marx, the Hegelian, conceives it, is a reappropriation of human nature at the stage of development which civilization has attained in capitalism. Within this context, it is the “genuine resolution of the conflict between… existence and essence, between depersonalization and independent activity, between freedom and necessity, between individual and species. It is the riddle of history solved.”” Lowith concludes by describing the new Marxian man, “The man who lives in a communistic society does not possess objective reality in the form of ownership common to private capital, but rather through the fact that all objects are for him a positive, depersonalized objectification of himself. He is the man to whom the world indeed belongs, because its manner of production does not alienate him, but establishes him.”

Another later philosopher who interacted with Hegel was the Dane, Soren Kierkegaard, who looked inward towards the individual man, instead of out to the society of men. Kierkegaard complains, “Spoiled by continuous converse with the historical, man seeks solely that which is significant, man concerns himself solely for what is accidental, the historical issue, rather than what is essential, what is innermost, freedom, morality.” Lowith contrasts, “The Hegelian refuses to be content with the subjectivity of existing.” For Kierkegaard, everything rests upon the individual at base. “What is an individual existing man? Yes, our age knows only too well how little he is; but this is the peculiar immortality of the age…. Without ethical or religious enthusiasm, a man must despair upon finding himself an individual man—but not otherwise.”

For Lowith, this epoch of German philosophy, in which every new thought was in response to Hegel, ends with Friedrich Nietzsche. “Nietzsche’s actual thought is a thought system, at the beginning of which stands the death of God, in its midst the ensuing nihilism, and at its end the self-surmounting of nihilism in eternal recurrence…. The problem of eternity, how it comes to mean eternal recurrence, is found in the way by which Nietzsche surmounted “time” with “man.” It is a way of escape from the history of Christianity.” Nietzsche did not place much faith in bourgeois society, “The center of gravity of necessity belongs among the mediocre: mediocrity, as the surety and vehicle of the future, consolidates its position against the rule of the mob and the eccentrics (both usually in league). This produces a new opponent for the exceptional man, or a new temptation.” Nietzsche concludes with his own prophetic warning, “Who still desires to rule? Who to obey? Both are too burdensome. One herd, without a shepherd! Everyone wants the same thing, everyone is equal: if anyone feels differently, he goes of his own accord to the madhouse.”