[lit-ideas] Re: Thought in the European Core
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 6 Oct 2011 08:39:27 -0400 (EDT)
Comment on Helm's comment
In a message dated 10/5/2011 10:31:45 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx writes:
Re Hughes Consciousness and Society, The Reorientation of European Social
Thought, 1890-1930, copyrighted in 1958.
On page 12 Hughes writes, “it is now time to speak of . . . the ‘unit of
historical study’—to use “Toynbee’s phrase [which] is neither world-wide
nor national. Nor is it that undefined entity, whose boundaries are never
clear but in whose spiritual reality most of us believe, which we call
Western civilization. Nor, finally, is it simply Europe. The geographical
area of study is Europe in the narrower sense – the original ‘heartland’ of
Western society: France, Germany (including Austria), and Italy.
“Why precisely this area? Initially it may be argued that from the Empire
of Charlemagne to the present six-nation community of ‘Little Europe,’ an
area approximating the one with which I am dealing has had a more intense
European consciousness, a more identifiable sense of common culture and
common interests, than characterized the countries on the Western European
periphery, Scandinavia, the Iberian Peninsula, the British isles – these have
always seemed less self-consciously European than the states of the
Continental Core.”
“In the course of the study I hope to establish that it was Germans and
Austrians and French and Italian – rather than Englishmen or Americans or
Russians – who in general provided the fund of ideas that has come to seem
most characteristic of our own time. . . .”
Helm comments:
"I want to draw a distinction between the Intellectuals of Britain and
America and those of the nation’s Hughes has taken up. Several hypotheses
occurred to me, but I managed to poke holes in all of them. What comes most
forcefully to mind is that Pacifism was a potent force in Britain and
Isolationism in the U.S."
Ritchie should be able to historicise how potent pacifism was -- pax
britannica? Cfr. the portrayal of conscientious objectors in the novels of
Virginia Woolf, say.
"Both were negative forces detracting from our Anglo-American ability to
counter the more forceful thoughts arising from France, Germany, Austria and
Italy. We Anglo-Americans were an intellectual emptiness which Hughes’
Europe plunged two World Wars into.
Are we doing any better today, or does Europe still do our thinking for
us? Someone might object that Anglo-American thought is the most potent
force in the world today, but not in the Hughes sense. We tend not to take
France seriously and have in effect taken serious weapons away from Germany,
Austria and Italy and that has been our substitute for thought. Meanwhile,
Germany and France are still busily thinking, although who is doing the
more serious thinking is in doubt. I read an interesting discussion which in
effected argued that France’s greatest modern thinkers derived their
thoughts from German predecessors (French Philosophy of the Sixties by Luc
Ferry
and Alain Renaut)."
Again, it may do to distinguish between 'philosopher' and 'thinker'. But
then, one reads Diog. Laertius:
"Epicurus thought that..."
Did Epicurus preach? I bet he did. There is this 'pragmatic' side to
Hellenistic philosophy, most argue.
But what Epicurus actually did was to _say_. To say things (legomena). So,
it's speech that counts as action for the philosopher.
--- also to consider: the thought of Churchill, the thought of Hitler. In
what various ways is thought presupposed in action; how can we deal with
'thought' _in abstracto_, and so on.
I agree with Ferry and Renaut that most French thought is German. Come to
think of it, the French, ultimately -- "Franks" -- are LOWER Franconians,
i.e. Germans -- at 'core'.
Unlike the Italians, which are REALLY *Graeco-Roman*.
Cheers,
Speranza
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