Thread by @yungneocon

It’s interesting how an entire camp of philosophers always split people between those who think they’re elitist & reactionary. And those that think they’re radical, going all the way back to Plato & Aristotle.

Included in this list (i include some nonphilosophers for a reason) are Plato, Aristotle, Thucydides, Herodotus, Lucretius, Augustine, Maimonides, al Farabi, Ibn Sina, Ibn Rushd, Ibn Khaldun, Hobbes, Machiavelli, Spinoza, Nietzsche, Mendelssohn, Hegel, Burke, Arendt, Foucault etc

The reason this bifurcation emerges is that they often define themselves or implicitly position themselves in distinction with *both* the state/king, *and* the masses.

A common idea in the history of political philosophy is that wisdom & philosophy are inherently in tension with power, but also that wisdom makes people cynical and unwilling to obey the social contract because they know it’s bull shit

The kings then view it as a threat to their power, and average people to their Habitus, and social organism. If everyone pursued the truth the argument goes society couldn’t function.

But society is a necessary precondition for the creation of philosophy etc *in the first place* (there needs to be literacy, surplus, organization, specialization, order), and most argue that some kind of authority are needed as precondition for society’s order.

And so the dilemma arises that this becomes a kind of self defeating endeavor . From this idea, some derive elitist ideas (Burke,), others utopian (Plato), others reactionary (le Maistre), others aristocratic (Aristotle).

On the other hand, some go the other direction, like Nietzsche, Spinoza, al Farabi, Weber, Foucault, Mendelssohn, Hobbes, Kant, Hegel—some in a quietist direction that emphasizes self cultivation & virtue (stoics & epicureans, religious secularists (lol))

Others take this is an anti intellectual direction (Sorel, Proudhon, Austrian Econ). Some take it in a liberal direction (Locke), republican (Rousseau), or a synthesis (Kant, Hegel, Hobbes)

Many of these thinkers, Aristotle, Many of the Roman & Greek philosophers, the Muslim philosophers, Maimonides, Machiavelli, Nietzsche, Hobbes, and others also have another agenda—tempering the rule of power by tricking it into doing so

The idea here was to either accept that political leaders will definitively be oppressive but trying to temper that (Aristotle & Machiavelli) with marginal improvements, to more radical attempts to encourage self dissolution (Nietzsche).

Hobbes, Spinoza, Burke, Kant, and Hegel perform an interesting maneuver, whereby, under the pretense of leaning everything exactly as it is, they undertake to ruthlessly critique its foundations.

This is the inverse of those who try to justify née radicalism with older traditions (see people who like Thomas Jefferson lol), or those who on the premise of critique are actually endorsing everything as it is (Locke, Heidegger).

I want to point out that the idea that truth or wisdom tends inexorably toward pluralism, critiques of power, social conflict etc is also found throughout not just Western/Euro Phil & Abrahamic religions but throughout much of Asia as well.

Its found in Confucianism, and it aims to resolve it through strict outward rules, but flexible social allocation & assignation. Whereas Taoism takes the converse view either a quietist withdrawal or an active violence toward society.

Buddhism & Hinduism have equivalents too. Indeed I’d hazard that this idea is found in basically any settled state societies with literate reflective traditions & not just among self serving philosophers but among those in power & among rabble rousers too

What are called tyrants or demagogues or populist leaders or sectarians or schismatics etc are found throughout history, that rail against both the current order but also its critics.

That’s because said figures often gain popularity by mass appeal to a *return* to a more noble in corrupted order, in which case clearly state power isn’t bad, just the current rulers, but the critics & buzzkills are.

Additionally, those in a position to be intellectuals or scholars or writers or whatever, are often from liminal classes—neither peasant nor aristocrat or minor nobility or rising free peasant or professional etc

The key point being they have the material resources, however little, and the background & time to do this, they sit across different social positions & so can observe them, but aren’t true elites or their converse.

These are people who, to simplify, if we imagine economic, political, social, & cultural ‘capital’ as distinct, it is those who have some of one but not the other. Economically well off but politically marginal or in danger.

Or, neither economically ir politically powerful, but high in cultural & social status. Or economically poor but pulling some weight politically & socially.

Said groups of liminal elites are perfect targets for would be rulers because they have are elites who can be targeted without changing anything at all or angering the powers that be.

Plus philosophers are very annoying & self important—a fact which no doubt plays a role in the frequency of this idea. Namely the people that do writing & reflecting of course are gonna say that’s the most important thing.

And since that’s from who we receive ideas, there’s a strong selection bias. But the fact that this idea is also found among elites and among counter elites speaks to at least some autonomous reality beyond eggheaded self importance

For example, since we receive our ideas about history etc from media, academics, journalists, students. Professors, teachers & cultural workers, the dominant account tends to emphasize their role in social change.

Nowhere is this more apparent than the history of the anti apartheid struggle. The student, academic & cultural movement did quite literally nothing to end apartheid yet since those people tell the story, that’s the narrative we hear.

It’s also convenient for those in power so that people don’t undertake to make real change. Same is true for much of civil rights movement/pacifism, for anti Vietnam war accounts, and many other areas.

Notice this is the exact inverse of the scapegoat phenomena—in one area it is convenient to target thinkers & intellectuals because it allows you to look like you’re targeting elites without changing anything at all.

Here we have the other half, which is that agency is ascribed to these sectors of society, precisely because it seems plausible, it carries their imprimatur but it guarantees people learn the wrong lessons.

So is there truth to the idea then? In my opinion it’s biggest flaw is that it imagines knowledge & politics as discrete spheres when it reality the social processes of politics are epistemic & the social processes of epistemology are political

This idea is embryonic within the tradition itself in the recognition that social order enables the critique & disintegration of that social order, but my point is stronger—i don’t just mean condition of possibility, I mean homologous & intertwined processes

Yet, at the same time, there are far too many examples of the knowledge or ideology or socio epistemic processes of a system of power producing elements in tension with it, and accompanying radical breaks & splits in it for it to be accidental.

This is why neither Marx nor Foucault saw these activities as useless, nor did they see the political or material basis & dependence of intellectual thought as implying change or critique is impossible.

It is perfectly possible for intellectual and ideological work done in service to and for the elites to help them reproduce and or justify and or enact their system, ending up pointing to the exact opposite.

This is why, for example, anthropology’s excessive tradition of self critique is a little cringe (it vastly over estimates it’s own importance while at the same time throwing out the actual ways it can be useful!).

Anthropology indisputably emerged as a tool of state, social control, etc in the empire & colonial system. And yet it was also a place where very strong early critiques of these emerged in ways legible to the dominant order.

And this is why, today, two of the ideological state apparatuses most historically tied to colonial subjugation—anthropology & the Church—are today some of the biggest supporters & sponsors of, for example, decolonization or indigenous political movements.

Also, I want to note as a side point, Marx’s quote that “Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it.” Doesn’t mean that these need to be done by the *same* people

As in, he isn’t saying all philosophers should take up guns, he’s saying that those who take up guns should find what’s useful in philosophy.

Marx was largely skeptical of philosophers being able to take up said action. He thought the intellectual revolutionary addicts like Bakunin were laughable. And he spent the second half of his life in a library.

He also argued, however, that ‘science’ (by which he broadly meant all critical inquiry, scholarship, technology, philosophy, intellectual work, cultural forces of critique, etc) could link up w/ stateless societies to produce a synthesis that could bypass social stages entirely

One of them provides the technologies, the means, the the legible discourses, & the necessary self critiques, while the other provided the given concrete social relationships & practices.

This is not identical to but is consistent with Maos observation about students & peasants, intellectuals & lumpen.

(And, for the record, such a unity has been central to anarchism since the beginning—not to all anarchists obviously, Proudhon & Bakunin were romantic phillietines—but Marx ironically at the end of his life converged to ideas he had once dismissed.)

One last point, among the original group, altho they defined themselves in contrast to both king & serf, nobility & the masses, they do so in entirely different ways.

At the end of the day, the point of everything *are* the masses and peoples flourishing. The tension with the king emerges because they are something to which they are fundamentally opposed but which will suffer their indignities for the sake of social peace.

Whereas, conversely, with regard to the masses, the philosopher while in tension with them, these thinkers argue, it is at their sufferance (or indeed suffrance, lol) that the philosopher obtains their writ of contemplation in the first place.

Whatever we make of this world view then, let’s not be simplistic—even among many of its most elitist forms in the last instance it’s ultimate dedication is to the non elite (this obviously isn’t true of all of these thinkers but many of the best ones).