This is a compelling defense of politics as participation in a common world, and the movement from Arendt and Voegelin to Coke is especially effective. My reservation is that mediation can preserve inherited blindness as readily as wisdom. Still, the central claim holds: immediate justice easily becomes cruelty, while a public must be patiently made through conversation. - Thanks, Bryce.
Thank you, William! Your point about mediation and inherited blindness has particular application to Coke, I think. Pocock found Coke's claim to common law's immemorial provenance not only inaccurate (common law stemmed mostly from William the Conqueror's imported feudal law) but tending to inhibit "self-conscious political change," as James R. Stoner puts it. As far as mediation more generally, I think I was too blithe in my treatment of it here. I hope to write about its role in Charles Peirce's thought as applied by Josiah Royce in his notion of communities of interpretation.
Still, here I refer to mediators as those identified by Coke (the common lawyer) and Voegelin (spoudaios, the "mature man"). These figures don't equate to Plato's philosopher-king as Arendt reads Plato--as a reaction against the polis. But how does the "mature" person function in a republican polity or even in local assemblies practicing forms of direct democracy? I guess I hear the book of James, for starters: "Which of you is wise or learned? Let him give practical proof of it by his right conduct, with the modesty that comes of wisdom" (REB).
Bryce, another insightful and well researched essay. You make a nuanced argument for public engagement and dialogue, and for mediation as a way to get us there. To your discussion of Arendt on common sense I might insert a bit of Gramsci on hegemony, and on definitions of ideology, insert a bit of Althusser on ideological state apparatuses.
Cort, thanks! I knew nothing of Gramsci or Althusser, but they would provide good antitheses toward a better syntheses if I ever got my head around their thought. As I understand Gramsci, hegemony hides itself in common sense--in the cruddy form of fragmented, past ideologies--the very thing Arendt enlists common sense to fight. And Althusser seems to broaden Appleby, Voegelin, and Arendt on ideology beyond the individual's relation to some imagined community: "Ideology represents the imaginary relationship of individuals to their real conditions of existence." But I haven't yet so much as read a full essay by either thinker.
Both writers would have reservations similar to William's in his comment: "mediation can preserve inherited blindness."
This is a compelling defense of politics as participation in a common world, and the movement from Arendt and Voegelin to Coke is especially effective. My reservation is that mediation can preserve inherited blindness as readily as wisdom. Still, the central claim holds: immediate justice easily becomes cruelty, while a public must be patiently made through conversation. - Thanks, Bryce.
Thank you, William! Your point about mediation and inherited blindness has particular application to Coke, I think. Pocock found Coke's claim to common law's immemorial provenance not only inaccurate (common law stemmed mostly from William the Conqueror's imported feudal law) but tending to inhibit "self-conscious political change," as James R. Stoner puts it. As far as mediation more generally, I think I was too blithe in my treatment of it here. I hope to write about its role in Charles Peirce's thought as applied by Josiah Royce in his notion of communities of interpretation.
Still, here I refer to mediators as those identified by Coke (the common lawyer) and Voegelin (spoudaios, the "mature man"). These figures don't equate to Plato's philosopher-king as Arendt reads Plato--as a reaction against the polis. But how does the "mature" person function in a republican polity or even in local assemblies practicing forms of direct democracy? I guess I hear the book of James, for starters: "Which of you is wise or learned? Let him give practical proof of it by his right conduct, with the modesty that comes of wisdom" (REB).
Bryce, another insightful and well researched essay. You make a nuanced argument for public engagement and dialogue, and for mediation as a way to get us there. To your discussion of Arendt on common sense I might insert a bit of Gramsci on hegemony, and on definitions of ideology, insert a bit of Althusser on ideological state apparatuses.
Cort, thanks! I knew nothing of Gramsci or Althusser, but they would provide good antitheses toward a better syntheses if I ever got my head around their thought. As I understand Gramsci, hegemony hides itself in common sense--in the cruddy form of fragmented, past ideologies--the very thing Arendt enlists common sense to fight. And Althusser seems to broaden Appleby, Voegelin, and Arendt on ideology beyond the individual's relation to some imagined community: "Ideology represents the imaginary relationship of individuals to their real conditions of existence." But I haven't yet so much as read a full essay by either thinker.
Both writers would have reservations similar to William's in his comment: "mediation can preserve inherited blindness."
As I said, very fine piece. And you know me, Billy Bragg is also worth listen. Released under Thatcher.
https://youtu.be/b0pJCHahL0c?is=z00VOrJ-GkkRPqrO
That’s it! “Above the sound of ideologies clashing” Thanks.