Summer 2024: What I Have Been Reading
Conservatism, Eternal Peace, and American Novels.
In July and August, I read and thought about the history and theory of Conservatism, how some thinkers tried to justify and conceptualize eternal peace and one-world unity, and what makes a good American novel.
Non-Fiction
Yoram Hazony: Conservatism: A Rediscovery. It’s relatively unsurprising that Peter Thiel’s review on the back of the book states that “the more intellectually forceful challenge to libertarianism comes not from progressives but from conservatives.” Many books written to criticize modernity, or usually a small aspect of modernity, think of Christopher Lasch, make correct observations, but fall short in attempting to provide solutions because they are way too narrow. Hazony offers a good introductory read for how different groups of conservatives think about the crisis of modernity and how they think about solutions, though I suspect that reading Burke would be a better foundation for the more intellectually-curious readers.
Yoram Hazony: The Virtue of Nationalism. Same author and similar arguments as above. This book precedes Conservatism, and makes an interesting argument for why we are not thinking about nationalism properly. Again, I think it is a good introductory read, but I would like to ask a lot of follow-up questions, pushback on some arguments, and stress others more strongly.
Roger Scruton: How To Be A Conservative. Similar class of book as the above two, though slightly more British.
Herbert Marcuse: One-Dimensional Man. Frankfurt School professor Herbert Marcuse explains his thesis that the modern, advanced society subordinates everything human to economic growth and exploitation, including human reason, leading to a totalitarian system with rights, like free speech, never used by choice of its members. Reading Marcuse is always a little bit painful, yet the thinking that Marcuse shares has been undeniably influential to the formation of the New Left. Many of his observations point towards deeper truths about human nature and the modern condition. Yet, I wish they were more substantiated and grounded in political philosophy and that the prescriptions would be deviating more from Marx and were more considerate across the board. The following passage shall be sufficient to demonstrate the spirit of his arguments: “The distinguishing feature of advanced industrial society is its effective suffocation of those needs which demand liberation—liberation also from that which is tolerable and rewarding and comfortable—while it sustains and absolves the destructive power and repressive function of the affluent society. Here, the social controls exact the overwhelming need for the production and consumption of waste; the need for stupefying work where it is no longer a real necessity; the need for modes of relaxation which soothe and prolong this stupefaction; the need for maintaining such deceptive liberties as free competition at administered prices, a free press which censors itself, free choice between brands and gadgets.”
Edmund Burke: Reflections on The French Revolution, Part I. It is not unreasonable to say that Edmund Burke is the founder of Conservatism, as we understand it today. Obvious recommendation.
William F. Buckley, Jr.: God and Man at Yale. This classic work, published in 1951, significantly influenced modern conservatism. A young Buckley critiques Yale University for what he perceives as its abandonment of religious and traditional values, arguing that the university has become secular and hostile to Christianity. He claims that while American society was historically rooted in Christian principles, Yale's faculty have shifted toward secularism and collectivism, often undermining these values. Buckley controversially asserts that universities have a responsibility to their alumni, who he argues are generally more religious and conservative, and should therefore refrain from teaching doctrines like socialism, which he believes have been discredited. He also expresses concern that conservative and religious viewpoints are increasingly marginalized in academic discourse, leaving little room for debate or the inclusion of traditional perspectives.
Michael Gibson: Paper Belt On Fire. The book contains several good and timeless anecdotes about the Thiel Fellowship.
Philip Zelikow: The Road Less Traveled. Fascinating history book about the forgotten opportunity to call a conference for peace during the Winter of 1916/17 to end WWI. It teaches the attentive reader about the war aims of the British and there are several questions On War that I started looking into after reading the book.
Christopher Hitchens: Letters to a Young Contrarian. Massively overrated.
Vladimir Sergeyevich Solovyov: War, Progress, and the End of History. Recommended by Peter Thiel; I found it highly insightful. Solovyov is one of the Great Russian philosophers and Christian thinkers of the late 19th century that has been almost forgotten. I might read about it another time, but go read it in the meantime.
Tony Reinke: God, Technology, and The Christian Life.
Wendell Willkie: One World. Another recommendation by Peter Thiel; I enjoyed reading it. Former Republican presidential candidate Willkie worked with FDR. He traveled around the world and wrote about his observations of other countries and outlined his vision of a one-world government that seems quite dystopian to me.
Helmuth Plessner: Die Verspätete Nation (engl. The Belated Nation). Alex Karp analyzed parts of this book in his doctoral dissertation “Aggression in der Lebenswelt” (an English translation can be found here). The book paints a devastating picture on how Germany's intellectual, cultural, and historical background led to the ideology of the Third Reich. Personally, I think Germany was a belated nation because it was still a monarchy in 1900 and never became a proper nation state before the wars.
Carl Schmitt: Gespräche über die Macht und den Zugang zum Machthaber (engl. Conversations about power and access to those in power).
Carl Schmitt: Die Tyrannei der Werte (engl. The Tyranny of Values). Written in 1960, this book offers a rarely heard but overly legalistic critique of the modern German constitution, arguing for a neutral legal order that – at least pretends – to tolerate diverging viewpoints instead of imposing “values” on its citizens. I’d caution against trusting Schmitt’s judgment in this specific work blindly, given his history of misjudgments, partially by being too legalistic, combined with the fact that Schmitt’s more famous writings criticized similar “neutral fictions” of the Weimarer Republik. The format of these short reviews is insufficient to trace the development of his political thought and speculate on the reasons for why he makes this turnaround in his stated thought, but such an inquiry seems beneficial.
Immanuel Kant: Zum Ewigen Frieden (engl. Perpetual Peace). I have studied Immanuel Kant reasonably deeply around six years ago; what is always most striking about reading Kant is how much trust he places in human reasoning and how his Copernian turn places free and sovereign individuals at the center of inquiry, trying to break away from imposing too many arbitrary restrictions from nature on them. This specific brief treatise must be understood in that light; he outlines how perpetual peace between sovereign individuals could be achieved and outlines what an international order and an enlightened international law needs to look like. It is fascinating how powerful this brief treatise has been; maybe one could even say that Kant was the intellectual founder of the UN. As mentioned previously, I am skeptical that a Kantian world order is achievable, as long as we don’t discover ways to alter human nature substantially, and as long as that is the case, there is quite a lot of danger in trying to implement it. And even if we could alter human nature, I am unsure whether that would be desirable, if the end goal is Kant’s vision of Perpetual Peace.
Ernst Jünger: Der Waldgang (engl. The Forest Passage). Jünger wrestles with the question of human nature in extreme situations, such as emergencies and catastrophes. As a conservative who opposed the Weimarer Republik but never joined the NSDAP, one can read the book as Jünger moving away from the political, narrowly understood, and as a part of his post-war reflection on individual resistance and inner emigration. Content aside, the prose is quite beautiful and can be considered a revival of forest mysticism in the mid-20th century.
Byung-Chul Han: Vom Verschwinden der Rituale (engl. The Disappearance of Rituals). Han is one of the more thought-provoking contemporary German philosophers, though I shall say that the bar for being thought-provoking in Germany is fairly low. His core argument – as I understand it – that rituals are a crucial aspect of the human experience and that a breakdown of rituals in modernity is causing human suffering and disorientation at large scale – seems certainly not too far-fetched to at least take seriously.
Byung-Chul Han: Psychopolitik (engl. Psychopolitics).
Fiction
Richard Brautigan: In Watermelon Sugar. Maybe a little too post-modern and surreal for my taste.
John Williams. Stoner. I enjoyed this re-issued novel that is rightly considered to be one of the great American novels. It follows the quiet life of William Stoner, an English professor in Missouri, and does a great job of capturing the essence of an ordinary life. A good reminder that academic life is way too fierce, given the stakes involved, and how petty rivalries form.
Amin Maalouf: Samarkand. Great novel, especially if you haven’t thought about the Arab world in the early second millennium BC much.
Michel Houellebecq: Submission. I have had this controversial novel on my reading list for quite a while. I don’t think the narrative is fully descriptive or coherent, but I think it outlines what a potential muslim future for Europe could look like.
Kazuo Ishiguro: A Pale View of Hills.
Dan Brown: Origin. That one is quite cliche, but this is one of my favorite Dan Brown novels that I re-read recently.
I also re-read this speech that Tony Blair gave on globalization in 2005. Some of the essays I have been reading can be found on my bookshelf.
I'm interested in your thoughts on #14. Does the fact that unlike the other items, you don't provide any commentary for it reflect that it was unremarkable / not worthy of a read?