Mysteries of State in the Renaissance: Neoplatonism, Reformation and Political Cosmology

By Colm Gillis

Government decisions shape our lives, but how much do we know about the foundations of modern political thought? Theorists in the Renaissance constructed the ideological world we inhabit. They claimed to have mastered natural secrets whilst also promising perpetual, flawless, and scientifically demonstrable rule. Selective applications of artistic themes, religious symbols, imperialistic concepts and spells cast by intellectual magic, helped advance sovereign rule. By mid-17th century, these speculations were spinning an elaborate web of control. If we wish to understand myths of our current age, the intellectual mystique enshrouding origins of the modern State must first be revealed.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris UK
• Release date: Aug 28, 2014
• ISBN: 9781499088045

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Copyright © 2014 by Colm Gillis.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2014913317

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CONTENTS

Preface

Introduction

Chapter I

Chapter II

Chapter III

Chapter IV

Index

Bibliography

VISITOR: . . . what of the case when some one ruler acts neither according to laws nor according to customs, but pretends to act like the person with expert knowledge, saying that after all one must do what is contrary to what has been written down if it is best, and there is some desire or other combined with ignorance controlling this imitation? Surely in those circumstances we must call every such person a tyrant?

YOUNG SOCRATES: Of course.

Plato’s Statesman, 301c

PREFACE

This book is an investigation into socio-political theory and practice. While the work was inspired by the humiliating circumstances of Ireland’s public disgrace of recent years, an analysis of the financial crisis, whose ramifications will probably be felt long into the future, is not offered. Rather, the study probes historical circumstances that seeded the birth of modern states. Notwithstanding the indirect nature of its applicability to the current situation, such an analysis is crucial for an understanding of how states function in the present day and hence, it may be argued, assumes added relevance as a consequence.

So let me lay out some of my personal reasons for embarking on a research project somewhat outside my field. Before 2008, I had little interest in politics, was a passive spectator of the ambitious and furthermore was a believer in the fundamentals of progress, most famously encapsulated in Ireland’s case by the sobriquet of the ‘Celtic Tiger.’ Money papered over the cracks that opened as a result of the rapid liberalization of Ireland in the final quarter of the last century, with major social problems noticeably increasing during the Celtic Tiger years. Undoubtedly, many were aware of this, but as a nation we ignored it and traded security, not to mind dignity and culture, for luxury, an easy bargain to grab when a country is not in the throes of an existential crisis. Social problems are much the same now as they were before the crash and when the golden web was unspun the fragile structure was not so much revealed. Its shoddiness merely became more apparent.

Gallons of ink, or billions of electronic impulses, have been actuated since the crash. Ireland’s economic constraints, thanks in no small measure to a population who will ‘adjust’ either at home or away, haven’t bit as hard as they have in a country like Greece. It is recognized that the crisis was not the end of the world, although that is not to downgrade the immense personal toll exacted on many. Personally speaking, something galled more than the information jungle potted with ratings agencies, bondholders, default, growth projections, bond yields and zombie banks.

What primarily struck me was the fact that wealth which men and women had struggled for (or maybe had been fortuitous to receive) could be so easily commandeered in a lawful fashion. Adding insult to injury was the manner in which the European ‘project,’ a euphemism for a smoothly functioning partnership between big business, technocrats and career politicians, was strengthened. Finally, as of time of writing, the filleting of all social bonds in Ireland, which essentially translates into a military style operation against the protection enjoyed by the family in the 1937 Constitution, continues apace. A populace who feel demoralized, and unable to do much else except listen to the same liberal elite who ran their financial security into the dust, are unable to appreciate their own source of strength.

After several years of, what may be roughly termed, ‘soul-searching’, only one thing had become clear concerning the predicament. That was the nefarious influence of the banking industry, an entity which had broken through the moral chains by which it had previously been bound during the course of European history. It may seem like a trivial observation in light of events, but it has been put out there that certain banks lost the run of themselves and a structural solution is all that is required to fix the current crisis. On the contrary, banking is inherently flawed. Banks have a monopoly on the money supply and can subtly influence everyone’s behaviour , which is highly immoral and subversive. For some reason, I felt unable to make a profound contribution in this regard and knew little else outside of this. Such reflections did prompt an understanding, however, that issues in the modern world have to be delved into beyond a superficial level whose parameters of discussion are often fixed.

A major turning point was in 2012 when I attended a lecture on the French Revolution. Avoiding the typical hero-worship of the revolutionaries, this lecture opened up a vista of questions about the socio-political realm. It also prompted a realization about history in general. Zhou Enlai, a Premier of the Chinese People’s Republic, was either referring to 1968 or 1789 when he said that the significance of one or other of the French Revolutions had yet to be felt. If it was the latter (which would make the quote memorable), then this study shows such a throwaway remark to be all too true. Banking played no small part in the French Revolution, it should be noted as an aside. Since 2008, another major episode has unfolded alongside the financial crisis, namely the sets of carefully engineered ‘popular’ protests which have enveloped mostly Arab nations and other countries like Ukraine and Thailand. Europe is now in a position to observe - from news reports detailing vicious partisanship with the resulting deaths, displacements and depravities - its own history post 1789. Increasingly, I wanted to understand 1789 and the modern world from a more fundamental perspective and so looked as far back into history, as was reasonable, to detect the course of modern currents.

Both the French Revolution and its aftermath, i.e. our age, can be appreciated to a surprisingly profound degree if we concentrate on the growth of political theory from the late Middle Ages to the Renaissance. This period must be analyzed if we aim to grasp the logic behind 2008 and the notion that the State (a convention) can never fail, even if everyone else does. There is no targeting of the whodunit villains from the last few years and decades, but rather a more comprehensive understanding of the theoretical foundations, and political metaphysics, of states as they relate to the lives of individuals. Importantly, it should be noted that this is not intended to be an anti-state work calling for disorder and cynicism.

Before going back in time, there are five main points I wish to make in respect of contemporary doctrine. Firstly, there is the cultural Keynesian which supplements the eponymously titled economic movement, although the latter’s appeal has been (possibly) in terminal decline. Maynard Keynes told people to live for the now as we will all be dead someday. As a result, political, economic and social habits have been ingrained, with such tendencies heaping misery onto future generations. By this I primarily refer to both the debt mountain and erosion of community values. Maybe we, or our children, will be the ones to bear the brunt of inter-generational recklessness. Even if we avoid being flattened by a monumental collapse, we will still reap some of the fruits of the present harvest before the irresponsibility of this position is finally found out.

Another disturbing reality, related to this, is vacuous populism. Aside from its thoughtless nature, populism targets laws which in turn are built on moral speculations that sink deep roots into civilization. To advocate morality is unpopular. It is unpopular, when there are murmurings of a perfect state being reached, and to say that there has to be limits or that there has to be a certain way of doing things is virtually treasonous. A moralist can always be accused of hypocrisy, since humans are weak. Yet without morals there can be no civilization or alternatively there will be a civilization under constant siege. Offered as an alternative to considered deliberation, bounded by ethics and law, is the market model of politics where decisions with long-term consequences are treated no different than an impulse to buy a vacuum cleaner or some other commodity.

Third, there is the fact that instruments of power, which can do ‘good,’ can just as easily be switched to do the opposite. Technology is value-neutral. A state power with the ability to perform charitable works on a vast scale can just as easily use the same capability for less noble purposes. In Ireland’s case, the expansion of social welfare was reconfigured to bring about an expansion in corporate welfare, for instance. Our much trumpeted progress has to bear this reality in mind.

Fourth, it has to be accepted that modernity is inherently atheistic. Erecting a governmental superstructure that will plan, direct, co-ordinate and execute a general will is atheistic primarily because of its ontology of human nature. Humans are modelled as mere passive receptors whose needs and desires can be conveniently categorized and analysed statistically. Mankind’s existence is reduced to a bag of sinewed nerves and psychological pressures. It is both structurally atheistic and atheistic at a more fundamental level. Rule by middle class professionals accentuates the atheism of modernity because this class is most likely to portray themselves as capable of predicting and commanding natural and social phenomena.

Finally, and most importantly, there is the inherent lie of perfect self-sufficiency that was understood by the ancients like Plato and Aristotle. The anatomy of this understanding is detailed in Chapter 3. No matter how much progress, modernity, bells and whistles, etc… is achieved, the quest for perfect materialism can never quench the belief in a perfectly fair and just world. That perfect world can never exist on earth. Political rule involves having values, by implication excluding some other values, to maintain a necessary ethic. As Robespierre demonstrated, the most humane and compassionate, wanting ultimate political involvement, often make the worst of tyrants. What I would contend is that the dialectic between progress and backwardness, i.e. the bread and butter of organisations like the EU, is a false one. It would be more useful to concentrate on a discussion that has in mind the delusion of humans to convince themselves that they can know.

I would like to thank Gordon Warren for suggesting improvements to the manuscript, ‘Abdulhaqq Bewley for steering me in the right direction, ‘Abdassamad Clarke for valuable conversation, ‘Uthman Morrison for the seminal lecture and my family for being supportive and patient.

Colm Gillis, Norwich, 27/07/14

INTRODUCTION

The start is something other than the beginning. . . . A start is the onset of something; a beginning is that from which something arises or springs forth. The world war began centuries ago in the political and spiritual history of the Western world. The world war started with battles in the outposts. The start is immediately left behind, it vanishes as an event proceeds. The beginning, the origin, by contrast, first appears and comes to the fore in the course of an event and is fully there only at its end.

Martin Heidegger¹

Ideologies of the contemporary age are products of momentous changes that occurred in Europe from the Renaissance period onwards. Change implies a state that is new and arrived at in place of another state, an older mode of being which, at the time it held sway, seemed as inalterable as that which succeeded it. In the Renaissance natural law, custom and royal prestige, were gradually displaced by concepts such as progress, modernization and popular rule. Applied ubiquitously in global discourse nowadays, the very semantics of the new language indicate that change is no longer an aspect of human existence but inherent. Furthermore, the dialogue of dynamism provides a foil to the ordered view of the cosmos that defined the theocentric age of Medievalism.

Yet as seemingly unstoppable as the progressive juggernaut appears, it’s fair to say that modernity suffered a de-legitimization in the course of the 20th century. Nonetheless, popular sovereignty has endured and its actualization rarely leaves an ever-present handmaiden of material advancement. Populism is a seemingly natural foundation for legitimate rule but even this apparently basic right suffered growing pains before being widely accepted, a point not lost on Macpherson (1911-1987), who observed in 1965 that

[d]emocracy used to be a bad word. Everybody who was anybody knew that democracy in its original sense of rule by the people or government in accordance with the wishes of the bulk of the people, would be a bad thing—fatal to individual freedom and all the graces of civilised living. That was the position taken by all men of intelligence down to about a hundred years ago. Then within fifty years, democracy became a good thing.²

When the heels of democracy gained traction, other worlds, inimical to the era of monarchies, were left in the dust. As personifications of the defunct order, candidates are not in short supply, but no personage emerges as more archaic a figure, with regard to the evolution of political thought, than the 17th century Divine Right theorist Robert Filmer (1588-1653). Despite being allied to a discredited movement, this contemporary of Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) synthesized ideological strands of naturalism, Roman law and anti-clericalism, weaving them together in a unique pattern, the tapestry of ‘Filmerism’. Sir Robert posited sovereign rule as a gift inherited from Adam. At the coping stone of the dynastic house, conferences of family patriarchs voted for a supreme father. Subsequently, these participants in the assembly would settle under a paternal and monarchical shade. Power was then absolute and Biblical references helped to buttress a Bodinian-like imperialism, with kings acquiring dominion and arbitrary power over property, life and even the cherished English custom law. Such were the parameters of Filmerism.

Openly patriarchal in his outlook, Filmer’s theories are regularly derided. His fame rests to a large degree on his writings being held up as a straw man to be battered down by the intellect of John Locke (1632-1704), an unsportsmanlike re-evaluation of his theories which occurred long after Filmer had passed away. An examination of the climate of his time goes some way to excusing Filmer, with the monarch clothed in excessive robes of power amidst the din and clamour of political disputes enveloping England in the second quarter of the 17th century.

Historians have been kinder to those such as Hobbes, despite structural similarities existing between Hobbism and Filmerism. Yet, while he undoubtedly broke with ideals of sovereignty, as they were understood in the Middle Ages, Filmer wasn’t out of step with the philosophical climate of his time. Filmerism justified authority on a clear, principled premise, the absolutist in strange harmony with an age where the tempo was directed by those such as Descartes (1596-1650) and Galileo (1564-1642), an era in which the one, gilded idea could explain everything. Furthermore, despite the posthumous ridicule, an impression lingers that Filmer possessed unique insight into the foundations and legitimacy of political governance. From the 17th century onwards, authority was increasingly portrayed as rooted in, and a product of, human rationality. In the latter stage of the English Reformation, obligations to a sovereign followed a rationally formulated contract in the minds of many Royalists and Parliamentarians. Filmer diverged and his ideas were intuitive and perhaps too close to the bone. While he took issue with Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) on a range of points, he agreed that mankind was possessed of an elemental sociability. This reality, rather than that of individual prudence, informed the premise of authority. In his greatest work Patriarcha, Filmer launched a scathing attack on those who claim that

mankind is naturally endowed and born with freedom from all subjection, and at liberty to choose what form of government it please, and that the power which any one man hath over others was at first by human right bestowed according to the discretion of the multitude.³

In opposition to many of his contemporaries, Filmer poured scorn on the prudence and foresight of the multitude as grounds for political rule. His stark contrast between absolute monarchy and anarchy may have been overcooked, but the identification of human obedience as being one based on patriarchy is not an extreme concept. As Daly points out,⁴ the most powerful nation on Earth in the modern era comprises variegated hues of political opinion. Yet, on a regular basis, each distinct colouring pays homage to the founding fathers. In addition, many nations in the contemporary world give virtual, or even, sacred status to a dominant father figure.

Filmer attacked any form of government other than monarchy, even denying their existence. His specifically anti-egalitarian credentials turned on an erudite inversion of democratic principles - namely, the injustice of future generations contracted to obey by virtue of decisions made by their forebears. Arguments relating to the role of women, servants, (in the pre-universal suffrage era), and more cogently, that of children, somewhat hoisted egalitarians on their own petard, as there were people in society, both by necessity and practicality, who could not wield any power. Once the tables were turned, the upshot was an acquisition of total hegemony by the regent. Custom and tradition could be overridden, once more giving Filmerism a modern gloss as a political philosophy in tune with the strictures of positive law. What ran through the analysis of Filmer was a placing of society as central to the locus of political coordinates and a further acknowledgement that power was the source of obligation, as opposed to that of rationality. It was a top-down theory when describing the genesis of the socio-political realm, but a bottom-up theory when understanding the operation and evolution of polities. He found an unlikely ally in David Hume (1711-1776) who later said that

[a]lmost all the governments which exist at present, or of which there remains any record in story, have been founded originally, either on usurpation or conquest, or both, without any pretence of a fair consent or voluntary subjection of the people.⁵

Hume argued that subjects were generally either subjected by force or their leader gained power via a marital tie. Even the anatomy of the so-called democratic mandate was laid bare;

But where no force interposes, and election takes place; what is this election so highly vaunted? It is either the combination of a few great men, who decide for the whole, and will allow of no opposition; or it is the fury of a multitude, that follow a seditious ringleader, who is not known, perhaps, to a dozen among, them, and who owes his advancement merely to his own impudence, or to the momentary caprice of his fellows.⁶

Donnoso Cortés (1809-1853), the Spanish political philosopher and diplomat, retraced the Filmerite path in the 19th century. Cortés was ultramontane and reactionary, horrified at the budding ideological movements embedding themselves across Europe. With particular venom, he abased Liberalism. For Cortés, Liberalism was a confused mess of barely articulated demands and programs that sought effective power while refusing to supply the necessary authority. Liberals were dismissed as a class mired in endless and fruitless discussion. It was this characteristic of the bourgeoisie, stressed Cortés, most deserving of contempt. From experience, he could perceive that governing is, by definition, action-centred. Liberals committed a fatal error in seeking to politicize everything, including metaphysics, with the aim of transforming every divergence of opinion into a political debate. The whole idea of trawling the public arena and then synthesizing the various groups into a general body aligning itself perfectly with self-endorsed representatives of the people was, for Cortés, a mirage. Significantly, like Filmer, he placed the family, whose sacred status was already yielding to the rationalist onslaught, at the centre of his social vision;

Donnoso Cortés always had in mind the final consequences of the dissolutions of the family resting on the authority of the father, because he saw that the moral vanished with the theological, the political idea with the moral, and all moral and political decisions are thus paralyzed in a paradisiacal worldliness of immediate natural life and unproblematic concreteness.⁷

There were those cut from a different cloth to Filmer and Cortés, but who were yet cognizant of the rationalist tide and its false promises. At times contemptuous, at times tender, at times humane, at other times rapaciously cruel, Nietzsche (1844-1900) somewhat synoptically attempted a comprehensive evaluation of the errors of Western civilization. Merciless to any belief or ideology promoting an ‘external’ form of transcendence, he castigated Christianity and Judaism. In addition to their erroneous positions on metaphysics, their crime had been that of glorifying the weak and hence polluting the blood of the noble and strong with that of the servile and meek. Nietzsche attempted a most despicable role reversal, seeking to make heretofore virtuous acts into vices and hence justifying his own emotive brand of aggressive sensuousness. Those religiously inclined were not only a retarding force. They were, as Nietzsche saw it, no different from the modernist movements he despised. While he applied insight when identifying fatal flaws that dogged contemporary paradigms, Nietzsche fell into the positivist trap of failing to discern, through empiricism and observation, crucial differences between objects he investigated. Nonetheless, if we ignore his clear errors, his classification of modernity as being at its core nihilistic was perceptive. In The Gay Science, it was not declared that God’s existence was in doubt. Rather, it was emphasized that the systemization of theology, a new trend, laid bare the atheism at the heart of the contemporary movements. Ideologies were self-righteous and unreflective, as regards their own assumptions, Nietzsche claimed. Furthermore, these ideologies were essentially dishonest and pulled the wool over people’s eyes, pretending their threadbare theories were unquestionable truths. He understood with clear certainty that the theocentric belief and morality, which had previously given order and meaning to society, could never be replaced by the designs of the systems-men and rationalists. Aside from being a moral vacuum, the new world was dangerous, repressive and unmerciful. The madman who was cherished as a sign of God during the Medieval period was now a defective human. These new religions were heartless, but still doctrinal in nature. In the Will to Power, an all too accurate portrait of the coming deluge was elucidated, a chaos which was a function of the collapse in morality and contemplativeness;

What I relate is the history of the next two centuries. I describe what is coming, what can no longer come differently: the advent of nihilism… This future speaks even now in a hundred signs… For some time now, our whole European culture has been moving as toward a catastrophe, with a tortured tension that is growing from decade to decade: restlessly, violently, headlong like a river that wants to reach the end, that no longer reflects, that is afraid to reflect.⁸

Nietzsche’s most dire predictions were enacted. A polarising and embroiling of much of the world in a torrent of vague populism was, in hindsight, hardly surprising. Following Nietzsche’s death, the cult of the strong man was embossed on the collective consciousness. There were sociological factors contributing to this hero-worship. Many had begun to feel a sense of alienation. Industrialization had led to massive upheavals, although admittedly a gradual raising of living standards. Impersonal bureaucracy began to be felt more and that of monarchy and aristocracy less, with Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881) epitomizing both a sense of dehumanization and a yearning for a super figure during the Industrial Revolution. Group identity, overwhelming and exaggerated, served as a counter tendency. Nationalism, initially an inertial force, had, by the end of the 19th century, been given a pseudo-scientific lease of life by social Darwinism. Utilizing techniques of ideology, Nationalism provided a home for those who despised the sophistry of Liberal thought. The sheer power of Nationalism was seen in times of war, when its slogans were undoubtedly the most potent and even those like Marx (1818-1883) and Kropotkin (1842-1921) could be swept up in its slipstream. What Nationalism highlighted was that, contrary to perceived wisdom, man was not wholly rational, but needed transcendence. Identifying with blood, soil, his fathers, and his neighbours, Nationalists felt stirrings of something ethereal and were spurred into action. Filmer had clearly understood this.

While figures in the U.K. such as Houston Stewart Chamberlain (1855-1927) and Lord Redesdale (1837-1916), or movements in France spearheaded by Boulanger (1837-1891) or Charles Maurras (1868-1952), advanced the new tribalism, it was Italy who emerged as the crucible of extreme Nationalism. Vitally important to Fascism was the research of Vilfredo Pareto (1848-1923), a positivist who released his most acclaimed work, translated into English as Mind and Society, in 1923. Pareto was a radical sceptic who did not refute religious belief, but considered it to be merely a possibility. As such, he not only denied natural law, but also social contractarianism, as well as universal standards of reason and justice, considering them less relevant than testable and measurable observables. In his degradation of Humanitarianism, Socialism and democracy, his positivist conceit held that most humans were weak, unable to govern themselves and in need of the enlightenment of the few to save them from prejudice and superstition. Science could then serve as the civic education.

Italian Hegelianism served as a counterpart to Italian elitism. Hegel (1770-1831) had said that the State was a manifestation of God on earth and this authoritarianism was combined with a nationalistic fervour to revive Italy. One of these Hegelians, Giovanni Gentile (1875-1944), exerted considerable influence on Mussolini and served in his government. Gentile was one of those who rejected both scientism and positivism, proudly classing his own beliefs as anti-intellectual. Gentile made the State human, or perhaps inhumane. The State had to have a personality, consciousness, and this, of necessity, required complete absorption of everyone’s faculties to realize a collective greatness. Any submergence of the life of individuals into that of the State was held to be beneficial. Liberty was correlated with the use of force by the State. State violence was associated with Divine law and order. Therefore religion, family and individuality no longer had inherent meaning. Corporate life could exist, but as subordinate to the interests of the State. Other figures like Guiseppe Prezzolini (1882-1982) and Benedetto Croce (1866-1952) offered imperialistic visions of Italian greatness and made might right and justice equivalent to success. Georges Sorel (1847-1922), a Syndicalist, who had a romantic view of the class struggle and revolutionary violence, also figured large in the Fascist pantheon.

Nazism was a different movement from Fascism, despite the interchangeable nature of the terms in modern