Beyond the Text: The Intellectual Historian's Podcast
Welcome to Beyond the Text, a podcast series dedicated to delving into intellectual history with depth and context. In a world saturated with quick takes, Beyond the Text goes the extra mile. Paying homage to Skinner's insights on the importance of context, this podcast unveils overlooked aspects of historical and intellectual narratives.
Co-hosted by Samuel Woodall and Jack Thomson, Beyond the Text explores the profound impact of thought and ideas throughout human history—forces that have driven change, shaped societies, and sparked revolutions. Beyond the mere words on the page, this podcast unravels the layers surrounding pivotal concepts and moments. Each episode meticulously examines the connections, influences, and societal currents that contribute to their evolution.
Join us on this journey to grasp the true significance of intellectual history. Whether you're an enthusiast, a curious mind, or someone intrigued by the myriad forces shaping our world, Beyond the Text provides a space for nuanced exploration. Tune in and venture beyond the surface to understand the rich tapestry of our intellectual heritage.
Samuel Woodall is a PhD candidate in Intellectual History at the University of Buckingham. He previously earned an MLitt in Intellectual History from the University of St. Andrews and a BA (Hons) in History and Politics from the University of Exeter.
Jack Thomson holds an MA in Philosophy from the University of Buckingham and brings a philosophical lens to the exploration of ideas, ensuring each discussion is both rigorous and thought-provoking.
Beyond the Text: The Intellectual Historian's Podcast
History of Ideas Club: Joseph de Maistre
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Welcome to the third instalment of our Heritage Series, part of the History of Ideas Reading Club, hosted by Jack Thomson (MA Philosophy, University of Buckingham).
In this session, we turn to the fiercely counter-revolutionary thought of Joseph de Maistre (1753–1821) — one of the most provocative and eloquent defenders of authority, monarchy, and faith in the wake of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution.
Jack explores de Maistre’s Considerations on France and The St Petersburg Dialogues, unpacking his vision of providence, order, and political legitimacy in a post-revolutionary world. Through de Maistre, we trace the intellectual foundations of traditionalism and reaction — ideas that would deeply influence later conservative and Catholic political thought.
👉 Watch to learn:
- How de Maistre responded to the chaos of the Revolution
- Why he saw bloodshed as divine justice
- His influence on thinkers like Donoso Cortés, Bonald, and even modern conservatism
🗣️ This episode continues our journey through Heritage: from Plato and Augustine to the philosophical roots of Burkean conservatism, exploring how ideas of order, virtue, and tradition have shaped Western political thought.
📚 Hosted by the History of Ideas Reading Club (University of Buckingham)
🎙️ In association with Beyond the Text: The Intellectual Historian’s Podcast
#HistoryOfIdeas #HeritageSeries #JosephDeMaistre #PoliticalPhilosophy #Conservatism #IntellectualHistory #BeyondTheText #PhilosophyDiscussion
Figure itself out. Um, so yes. Welcome to the History of Ideas Reading Club with me, Sammy Woodall. Uh, we're used to doing that now, but Paul was usually when Jack was in Leiden and we were trying to do the podcast, which we also have that we we poorly advertise each section. We always forget, but we have Beyond the Text Podcast where you can find, which I think you may have said that you've listened to a little bit of. Um, but you can find recordings of the History of Ideas Club of often poor audio quality from the past, but it is getting better, I think. But also Jack and I spur discussions one-on-one about the topics that we cover in these sessions. So if you want to get some juicy hot takes from Jack and I on these topics, then you can uh listen to those to your heart's content. But today we're going to be looking at Montenegra and Demaistra. As Jack has already said, we're going to sort of push through Montagna relatively swiftly, and then I'll hand over to Jack to look at Demaistra. Um but yeah, I'm Sam, I'm doing PhD at the University of Buckingham looking at toleration in the English 18th century, so the 18th century and sort of precursory uh material, 17th, even 16th. Um is sort of my remote when it comes to looking at political thought. So I'll sort of give a little overview of Montaigne if there's any questions or anything you want to raise, otherwise we'll push swiftly on. Right, so Monteneo is the progenitor of the essay. The collection we have largely concerns traditional matters, which is why we fitted it into this series on heritage, such as fortune, prayer, custom, repentance, suffering, the purpose of philosophy, and truth, with some seeming trivial in comparison, such as his essays on cannibalism, sleep, drunkenness, and not to counterfeit being sick. Montena's aim in all of this is to better understand the human subject, which he said with his philosophy. Thus his reflections primarily concern human behaviour, trying to expose its often subtle complexity, be it through the lens of Montenegr's own experiences, his observations of others, or his reflections upon history, ancient and contemporary, about which he was well read by Herodotus, Thucydides, Plutarch, Tacitus, Cicero, and many more Greek and Latin authors that cited frequently throughout his canon. Due to the political turbulence of the Reformation Age, Montaigne was under constant scrutiny from church authorities, a fact to which he often alludes in his work. Though always apparently in sound conscience and good humour. His longest and most celebrated essay, The Apology for Raymond Saban, defends the Christian skepticism of his condemned friend. Here and throughout the essays, we see Montaigne's weariness of certainty in human and religious matters. This is perhaps best conveyed through his reflections on the uncertainty of human affairs and the need to learn how to die well. For Montenegra, this means overcoming the fear of death through wisdom and the practice of virtue. Virtue, he explains in his essay on the study of philosophy, leads to a contempt of death, because it leads to a basic detachment from all our aims, hopes, and achievements. These are certain aspects that those who have either come to Plato or Augustine sort of seen, and this is why we're sort of saying that Montaigne during this period is somewhat a relitigation of those ideas that we've already seen, obviously being rediscovered in the Reformation. Montaigne is also noted for his essay of the education of children, addressed to a friend of his who had asked him to advise how her infant son should be educated when the time came. He presents what might be described today as a Socratic or interrogative, question-led approach to education, encouraging teachers to refrain from lecturing at their students, and instead to allow them to explore their interests more freely. So if you so desire, please do whatever you want. And yeah, not entirely, but not entirely independently of the teacher's input. The teacher should guide the students' exploration of material by encouraging them to question its very foundations. Here, Montaigne also encourages teachers to caution their students against the vanity of excessive rhetoric or in knowledge. For this session, we have selected the essay of custom. Here, somewhat surprisingly, Montaigne decries what he refers to as the tyranny of custom, complaining that it is more often cited to justify vice and virtue than it is an expression of prejudice rather than love or cultural or piety. Montaigne also argues that what most people call conscience is not natural but rather a product of custom. However, he also concedes that it is often more dangerous to change a law received than to bear its indulgent. So, Jack, I don't know necessarily what do you want to do. So skip through, yeah, that's fine.
SPEAKER_03That's a good summary of my own.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, all Montaigne. And yeah, we had also looked at potentially doing Montesquieu, but these might be things that we come back to at a later session. Um but some questions to think of before we dive into De Maestra is what Montenegro opens up is questioning what kind of custom aid to do. Now, as we've sort of just mentioned, he looks at it in a relatively critical uh vein. Um can we think of any positive reasons why some of the customs Monteneo points to have originated and taken hold? Uh, what might be the limitations of these? What should we make of Montenegra's celebration of the utility and justice of the Christian religion? Again, something important when we come to Demaistra. Um yeah, and Maistra will take interest in the custom of prayer, paraphrasing him, why have nations always prayed? For Demaistra, the answer has to do with searching for the purpose in suffering, i.e., sanctifying it. Allowing ourselves to be instructed by it in the virtues of humility, patience, and gratitude. Does this introduce a dimension to custom which Montaigne has neglected? Now this is something we can explore moving forward. We're not going to be at that, are we? Unless you want to, Jack. This was when we attempted to run the session the last time.
SPEAKER_03I couldn't be here the last time, so I recorded an introduction, um, which we don't make them actually here in person.
SPEAKER_00But that's a nice little ancient world into early modern, so we will now get into the 18th century. Yeah. Oh, okay.
SPEAKER_03This is the uh the computer dialogue, um that will be double. Um, I'll tell you a little bit about um the major life. Um very what I would say very much counterpoint to Montanium, principally because he has the he's able to reflect on the fruits of the Reformation, the Reformation, the uh the Renaissance and the early Enlightenment, and sort of consider whether the the skepticism and then also the rationalism of um people like Montaigne, which Sand alluded to, where does that leave us um with some of the deepest questions? Um it was mentioned in that introduction that Montaigne um made the human subject his philosophy, and one of the one of the roots for that is the question of um what do we do about death? What do we do about um death in light of of conscience and so forth? And you see, Montaigne deals with these questions on the one hand by saying that conscience is something what we would say today socially constructed. Um so he he's wary of what he inherits on that question, but then on the other hand, he he he he still believes death is something that can be reasoned about, and even that sort of going forward to death is something to be practiced in a philosophical way. Um these are questions I think Demestra opened up anew. Is conscience really something that we construct? Is death something rational? Um is our history rational in this in the way that Montaigne might like to suggest? Um so Demestra, he is born in 1753. Um I don't have a biography on here, so I'll I'll just talk a bit about it. Um he died in 1821, so he lived all the way through the French Reformation. Um French Revolution, sorry. Um which is like an anti-Reformation maybe. Um as um you mentioned he was born in uh Chamber um in Savoy, which is I think it at the time it was French territory, I think. Um it's sort of now modern day northern Italy, I think.
SPEAKER_07No, somebody's now France.
SPEAKER_03Oh, it's still it's still France, okay.
SPEAKER_07I've just been there a few weeks ago. So it's only about not quite two hours from Geneva.
SPEAKER_03I see, okay, yeah. So it's still within France. Um he's born into a Catholic family. Um, his father has been a um lifelong um servant to the Piedmontes monarchy, which is um the Kingdom of Sardinia, which includes Turin, um I think uh the island of Sardinia also. Um the um uh de Maitre was going to spend a lot of his life in these parts, uh, first studying law following in his father's footsteps, um, much later as the ambassador to the court of Alexander II in Russia on behalf of uh the island of Sardinia. Um very successful in the Senate and he was appointed, uh just um he was very successful in his legal career, so much that he was appointed to the Senate, but only months before the revolution actually broke out. Um and being sort of a member of the aristocracy, that was quite dangerous for him. Um now he he wrote a lot during this period um to try and uh uh create dissent against the people who were bringing the revolution about. So he writes um uh Considérations Sidra France, um a bit of a long essay um exploring the um the political and theological arguments against uh the revolution, and in that publication launches his intellectual career really at a Catholic apologist, which is what he'd known for in his later works, especially the St. Petersburg dialogues, where he says he's trying to very much like St. Augustine justify the ways of God to man. Now, Maestra is a curious figure because he actually, as was unfortunately customary of the time, spent a lot of time in the Masonic lodges um studying Illuminism, which is not to be confused with the Illuminati, um, and and it's not that element of the Masonic um history, it's rather just the interest in the doctrines and philosophies of Gnosticism, Neoplatonism, and the Eastern religions and trying to somehow bring them all together is basically a reaction against Enlightenment rationalism. Um you're going to see Mesha basically playing with some of those scenes in a revised way, um after he begins to sort of take the Catholicism a bit more seriously intellectually. Um so he's always dancing a little bit with that, but um I think that begins to change uh post-revolution. Um okay. Um the St. Petersburg dialogues is a collection of 11 uh fictitious dialogues he writes in the in the very classic literary style, where rather than writing a like a clear argument, you're you you have these characters who are talking back and forth. Um, the three characters, the Senate, and so the senator, the count, and the uh cavali uh cavalier? Uh cavalier. Chevalier, chevalier. Um they discuss themes ranging from uh justice, virtue, vice, um providence, um the various philosophical doctrines like the state of nature, um and they try to to combat a lot of the culture of the time in these dialogues, and it some speculations in these texts are quite um esoteric. Um, for example, the the symbolic role of the executioner with the topic becomes quite fascinating early on versus much later dealing with the subject of war. Um, and that's the essay I want to focus on in particular um today, because if we're going to explore providence in the early modern to late modern period, the the a lot of the principal objections to this concept that emerge and which Maestra spends a lot of time defending is the is how Providence sits with the moral sense. Is providence something that is just? Um is it the case that the the good and the bad sort of seem to suffer equally, and if so, what does that imply for providence? Um and then when you encounter a phenomenon such as war, what you might like to do is assimilate that into the into the into your understanding of providence. Is it something that is a function of divine providence or is it something that you can't square with it? And so this is what he tries to do in the seventh dialogue. Um now um let me begin. Okay, so introductions um aside, what we'll try to do for the rest of the session is have more of a conversation about these scenes. Um I have quotations that we can read together to focus the discussion. Um I I think I want to begin by opening a discussion with the question: what do we understand by providence and what is its relation to virtue?
SPEAKER_02I think it has to do with with God at first.
SPEAKER_05I think that's something we can posit, uh something out more control as humans. Um sort of happens to us, um and sort of going against this is sort of already something which feels um yeah irrational, yeah. That's a way of life. Um it's sort of the question like how does providence unravel through time? Is it only because of God, or do we have like an do we participate in it in a way? Um that's a question I have a lot with uh with Providence. Um one of them is of course we are doing everything, uh but in how far do we have the free will ourselves, or are we um sort of more like stimulated by something either natural or divine um or ingrained by society? Um so there's a lot of these questions already around the topic. Um yeah, that's that's my first thoughts.
SPEAKER_06So I don't really know what the word means to you. I mean, I feel it is something like fate. And then you ask you ask the question, is it ordained? Or and is it something I can know? Or do I just discover it along the way? Um, if I send discovering along the way, am I really discovering anything? Am I just you know calling you know the things that chance upon me my fate? Um so but I I I'm not a Christian, so I don't have a strong sense of providence and what it means.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Yeah. It's the early debates were were much more about this this sort of this metaphysical question of the relationship between providence and freedom. And we saw the very briefly, we didn't have a chance to go fully into the argument that Augustine presents, but this is the way Augustine approaches this um this problem. He he's more interested in whether the free will of God and man are compatible hypothetically. Um and Augustine tries to distinguish blind fate from the personal providence of God, and this is the how the Christian try to articulate the difference. Um it's quite a curious um factor of Maestra's writing that he is not at all interested in this argument. He's much more interested in the moral reality of providence and the moral arguments in favour of providence. He sees this as going much deeper than the the than the than the than the metaphysical question. So in other words, he thinks that the the the moral approach to this question um sort of almost incorporates the assumption that that the the free the freedoms are compatible. So to put it another way, um how do we make sense of the fact that we have a moral sense? That would be the the approach to this question, to try and derive problems from the fact of the moral sense. What would make the moral sense cohere with reality and with our ex with our broader experience?
SPEAKER_06Um is that is this a move towards an a more empirical understanding? So metaphysical providence Augustine feels always felt it was metaphysical, yes, and it was of its time in a sense. It wasn't that it was uh uh knowledge passed down from God from the Bible.
SPEAKER_05It was that I wouldn't even say it's only metaphysical, like theological, like it works in reformation, yeah, but not in the which is uh indeed, indeed. Which is a yeah, a very significant step from metaphysics in a way.
SPEAKER_03Yes, so exactly. So for that reason, I think Matri is doing something a bit more radical, and we'll see if he's successful. Um let's begin. Um never lose sight of this general truth, that a general law, if it is not unjust for all, cannot be so for the individual. Do not have a particular illness, but you could have it. You have it, but you could have been exempt. One who perished in a battle could have escaped. The one who escaped could have perished. All are not dead but all went there to die. So no more injustice. The just law is not that which affects everyone, but that which is made for everyone. They really do not know what they are saying when they complain that vice is happy and virtue unhappy in this world. If the good man does not suffer because he is good, and if the wicked man does not prosper because he is wicked, the objection disappears.
SPEAKER_05I don't get that last sentence.
SPEAKER_03They really do not know what they are saying when they complain that vice is happy and virtue unhappy in this world. So vice is happy means vice goes rewarded.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_03Virtue unhappy means virtue goes unrewarded.
SPEAKER_05When you do vice, you rob and you gain.
SPEAKER_03And being virtuous is like sort of suffering in a way. Yeah. And he said if the good man does not suffer because he is good, and if the wicked man does not suffer because he is wicked, the objection disappears. So what is this objection? That makes the references. What are we trying to show us in this passage?
SPEAKER_05I think he's just giving his like opinion that he thinks that suffering is inherently um belongs to the good man and he does good. Um, so he says like if that doesn't happen, the objection disappears. But I don't see what he means with sort of the objection.
SPEAKER_06Is it saying if a good man suffers but if a good man's a good man may suffer but not because he is good? The suffering and the good are separate.
SPEAKER_03Yes. Exactly, exactly.
SPEAKER_06And bad man.
SPEAKER_05Um this goes into like the Roman thing that they thought sort of were actions and or something that should tie together, right?
SPEAKER_03Can you tell it a bit more?
SPEAKER_05Well you um you mentioned this thing about the the Romans sort of having this idea of that um that your material um way of behaving your actions that they and then also the sort of rewards you have in life things you experience or um get done to you that they say something sort of parallel to your sort of supernatural state of how do gods look at you um which is more sort of one-on-one than maybe uh Christianity would say uh because we can see in in Christianity that sort of you suffer because well Christ suffered but he was fully good so it wasn't sort of yeah yes um any bounty any benefits of like well resurrection from the dead which is quite a bounty but yeah but why why does it um to get this issue quite clear why does it um why does it appear problematic that the that the good suffer and or that the evil go unpunished how does this potentially undermine providence well it's it kind of says that that if providence is one-on-one with the world and God really is God really behind providence then he would never let a good man suffer because God is sort of right yes yes he would never let another good man suffer the self-centered television one adds well to get well without is that a quote no no no no no but uh no I was just gonna say but the then the existential critique then you were saying what is providence it's arbitrariness we said you know we don't know it brings us to the question like is death somewhat in God like does God want some things that have to do with death and I think suffering always has to do with um sort of death or evil in a way because so if you look at Augustin's example I think he was saying you know you may suffer in this life you will you will I guess you will yeah yeah don't fight it yeah um but you your reward or your uh your place in heaven will come in the next life so there's actually there's there's a lot of balance sheet going on here so is the balance sheet solely within this life yeah or is part of it in the in the um you know in heaven in the in um follow following death and if so how do you you know to what extent do you feel it is just that you shouldn't be a good person but suffer in this life beginning reward in the next life yeah you know eventually or not so we actually we have part part of the problem is we we just don't know what we should count towards a just life.
SPEAKER_00And I was saying to you Jake just then semantically providence is something shunned by say the 1940s existentialists because it's you know intertwined with arbitrariness it's intertwined with this kind of idea that you know decisions are made that semantically yes providence can be this kind of divine intervention but on the flip side it's also you know oh uh that was providential you know sort of like it it becomes that kind of as you're saying sort of fate or kind of yeah um which obviously recording what you want and you know every answer is true.
SPEAKER_06But it was lucky it was providence uh you know my genius so you take a pick.
SPEAKER_00But I think what's interesting about arbitrariness is that arbitrariness is coming into exactly what um uh DeMoistra is trying to put across here and then coming out of just seeming arbitrary and I think maybe I don't know Jack if that kind of leads you in the direction of uh where we're going but sort of when you're raised with arbitrariness and why are certain things going a certain way for the good or for the vice-filled individual.
SPEAKER_05What I think is also good with really master is that we need to really like go into his mind and he's a Catholic so we need to have like certain articles of faith pretty well um explain on which he builds for his case of Providence because you just told you as the children were not a Christian for example and so that sort of can understand really what providence is from the Christian perspective.
SPEAKER_04So it will be important to to see sort of for example why he because he's gonna say like God does not have any evil in him and sort of another thing is that we fell of course the original sin which sort of brings into it the the need for justice and the in case of sort of suffering because we sinned therefore we suffer in a way one thing that comes to mind is if you look at it from a general perspective it's hard to see generally how there can be meaning suffering or how providences at work but if I look at it just for me in my life I can see I suffer I can see the fruit of that I can see that's hopefully helping my spiritual life I have a conviction that's you know the the actually the rewards are here and now in terms of maybe not physically but in terms of uh some sense of peace but then I can't say how someone else is going to benefit from suffering but they can discover that for themselves my hope is but it feels to me like it also is is unpacking um traditional Christianity because once you you're no longer saying you know you know Catholic Church the Bible here is the answer you're saying well have a think about it and even if you're still a Christian then mind people like me but even if you're still a Christian your Christianity is no longer the same once you start to question and try to interpret what providence is it's not a good thing.
SPEAKER_05It's something we we really struggle with in theology to work out what providence really means um especially the question of evil I think we only take the articles on saves and try to reason with them it's uh that's in this question as well I hope we'll get onto some of those scenes a bit later.
SPEAKER_03Let us read on um suppose each moral action were paid so to speak by some temporal advantage the act having nothing more of the supernatural would no longer merit a recompense of this kind. Suppose on the other hand that in virtue of some divine law the thief's hand should fall off the moment he committed the theft people would refrain from septor they refrain from putting their hand under the butchered cleaver.
SPEAKER_04The moral order would disappear entirely therefore to reconcile this order with the Lords of justice it is necessary that virtue be recompensed and vice punished even in this world but not always not immediately it is necessary that the incomparably greater portion of temporal happiness be attributed to virtue and a proportional amount of unhappiness be to vice but that the individual never be sure of anything imagine the other hypothesis it will lead you directly to the destruction of the moral order or to the creation of another world what um what has maintained added here is this to do with freedom so in order to do something that has merit I need to be free to do something that's evil otherwise there'd be no merit either if there's such a huge reward in my virtue that it was just it's just sort of too easy to do or if my hand would drop off if I was going to do something bad.
SPEAKER_00Could I limit my freedom I don't know um I mean you've got to remember the backdrop of this which is a a it's it's when when is this penned?
SPEAKER_03Sorry the the year I didn't tell you actually forgive me um I didn't tell you when it was penned um and that's partly because I don't have it on there. However if I quickly um inspect uh 1821 it was published but that means it would publish posthumously because it's an understanding so it was basically writing it sort of from um 1803 to 1817 that's because that's when he was um posted in St.
SPEAKER_00Petersburg sorry but no I mean this is in the vein of a massive counter-Enlightenment movement that specifically opposes um what they refer to as the mechanization of enlightenment you know the mechanism of the scientific element but also the scientific into the political so you've got someone like Bentham who's actually been brought across from England to address the French convention and I mean this to me particularly what you were just referencing in terms of you know how how should we do justice? Should we cut off the hand of a thief for a crime that's committed with the hand, this sort of thing it's very much kind of it really feels like it's countering the culmination of Enlightenment political philosophy in something like the utilitarian movement which would be exactly that sort of you know end of a utilitarian line of thought at this time which would be well if they do X then we respond with X and this is how we create a fairer equal sort of moral sort of um system within these kind of emerging whether it be republics in France or you know and Benfram's addressing yeah addressing the French convention at the sort of I think end of the 18th century I can't remember when but he's invited to present and I mean this is exactly the kind of thing that De Maestra would be looking at and thinking this is the wrong direction for for French society to be moving in the mechanism of enlightenment the kind of you know everyone's a part of it and will find a way to kind of equal out like a piece of a machine you know you do this wrong well this happens to you and then you do this right well you get this you know sort of what we would now see as kind of maybe socialist or Soviet communist kind of ideas of kind of like reward and punishment yeah no no I know yeah yeah and I'm using that flippantly but yeah but sort of moving in that direction but I don't want to be an acronistic and read it back but that would be the critique sort of like yeah thinking of like Aristotle practical reasoning virtue yeah all wrapped up in a very elegant sentence actually when you think about it with utilitarianism I find somewhere happy as opposed to um yeah then you're kind of there um so would you call this the kind of romantic response? I'd certainly say so it it's in the vein the vein of well Russo is a difficult character but he obviously is it's put into the into the counter enlightenment um canon.
SPEAKER_04Yeah and in which case like any reaction do they end up going too far and falling into a a similar trap in that if they if it if that approach leads to licentiousness or that sort of spontaneity at all costs then you end up actually depriving yourself of freedom in a different way because it leads to addiction or it leads to a society where the strongest can dominate because there's no yeah structure.
SPEAKER_00Certainly yeah but I I think um I think Jack will be best placed to kind of uh respond respond to that kind of in terms of in terms of sort of in the case of Demaistre but I mean what we also have to remember is um in a romantic vein I would completely agree yes and that is what the counter enlightenment leads to through people like Goethe, Sturm and Drang much sort of in this period late 18th century kind of turning into that very much kind of yeah romanticized view of spontaneity individualism and on that side but we've got to remember that these terms are horrible hyphenated anachronistically written terms that we're putting on these thinkers I mean Rousseau is as much an enlightenment figure as he is a counterenlightment figure. Goethe could be romantic he could be part of the enlightenment he's using the same tools ideas but just going to a different end but Jack in terms of the substance you might want to respond.
SPEAKER_03Yeah um I'd like to um correct um your initial interpretation Joe it's not so much freedom that's a question here but intention okay um suppose each moral action were paid by some temporal advantage the act having nothing more of the supernatural will no longer merit any recompense why do we act virtuously this is the question that's being raised is providence is providence just to be understood as reward or is it something else? This is what the second paragraph seems to me to to to to bring into question so in this sense it it's not fortune providence isn't fortune um in a in a calculated sense or it's not utilitarian it is a relevant connection I now understand um it's is it fate there's it's not it it it's not possible to conclude necessarily from this paragraph because we're still dealing with where do actions lead potentially in their longevity so if I if I do steal maybe my hand doesn't fall off immediately maybe I do feel good but in the end some kind of justice on average does accrue to thieves because of the the the constitution of societies perhaps but also because of the constitution of our conscience we think we get away with things in the moment but then we are tormented and this is one way I think and really a little bit beyond what this text says here but one way that I think that um we can now move from the first to the second paragraph saying first of all that suffering isn't obviously connected to um whether you're virtuous or viceful it isn't connected in a one on one a one way but it's not completely disinterested either it's not arbitrary which would the which was what the first paragraph begins to suggest. It's neither it's not and maybe that maybe that is the sense in which it's maybe not fate. I don't know if you think that's sufficient.
SPEAKER_06The idea that you accrue you accrue something.
SPEAKER_03Indeed indeed one way or the other yes but it's not um not immediate and it's because the the intention has to be pure providence is about the cultivation of intention is that a fair interpretation any objection the best sentence Providence it seems to me like the Maitre is suggesting here that providence has a lot more to do with the formation of intention yeah the formation or the exercise or the exercise that's a good question.
SPEAKER_06What would I what I perhaps both perhaps both but I think that's reciprocal one can be you can be self-aware and form intents with the the in intent the further intent of becoming virtuous does that work that's a good question.
SPEAKER_03And if it results in you becoming virtuous is that a bad method is you're breaking the method there I I think the I think he said suppose each moral action were paid by a temporal advantage now the question is do we value what we do in in the context of what we understand as virtue because of what it gives us or do we value virtue in itself? So I think what you're describing there Bruce is would be something like valuing virtue in itself which is a good thing to value. I do want to be virtuous I do want to be virtuous but you'll get there by any means or um well if you really want to be virtuous then you then that means to get there by to the best of your ability by virtuous means.
SPEAKER_00But in the Enlightenment it doesn't necessarily mean so because you've also got that wave of the kind of Bernard Mandevilles of private vice, public good the kind of uh again this is obviously the context within which this is being written but the idea that actually a public virtue might be something that you can work towards by facilitating your own interests lining your own pocket or um you know so this again is something that's happening with the mechanisation of Europe industrially politically the idea that economies can start to function in a much more intricate way where private individuals might be able to do something which you know lines their own pockets or is in their own interest but actually might create something potentially you know much bigger than would have been created if you'd given all your money to the state or to the church or to um if you do it for your own interest.
SPEAKER_06So you can ask yourself is ambition a virtue and if your answer is no then it's an un a non-virtuous means of achievement if your answer is yes then you're being virtuous by cogniting an office in which you'll then you know exercise other virtues.
SPEAKER_00I didn't I didn't perceive the objection that you raised that there would be an aim of virtue. Yes an aim of doing something good or perhaps even a kind of counterweight to your vice you know going further back to the Medici's putting up statues as a response to their as a response to their vice.
SPEAKER_03But you already understand what they're doing there.
SPEAKER_00True you've already answered the question I think but the T loss is still virtue the aim is still virtue.
SPEAKER_03No it's not it's not I think someone like Mandeville would argue that it is I think Mandeville's wrong I don't know who he is let me explain why it seems to me that Medici already has decided in his heart and he's made it very admitted I um I want to compensate for my vice. We don't love virtue we want to compensate for advice that's different.
SPEAKER_06Yeah yeah and I think this is and again you mentioned sort of I think and now I understand this distinction you mean public virtue private private private vice right exactly this is the same this is this is not the love of virtue because it's not sincere it it turns what's understood as virtue into a means to satisfy your guilt in your own terms um and it that means it amounts to pride yeah or at the very least the the covering over of shame that needs to be felt for sort of repentance and growth yeah but but your your love of virtue leading to action those actions must must be channeled through specific virtues you can't yes you can't pursue virtue in the abstract in in in in you have to perceive charity or or whichever and then comes to the question of which which um acquaint what which virtues are virtues in this but uh which then leads on to the question of where where do you where does the authority class point come from that's a very good question.
SPEAKER_03I proceed now to the subject of war um because that is an interminable question beyond the scope of this time but very happy to discuss um afterwards I also mentioned because we are coming up against A Club but we started a bit late if people are willing we can keep going for as long as people are willing but if some if any of you have to go that that's perfectly fine. So the the Gold quotation came from the very first dialogue where Maestra settles very quickly some some common objections to providence what has it what relation has it to virtue and vice? Why did that the the good seem to suffer and the then the evil people seem to get away with everything and he tries to dispel some of these these common objections but now a much bigger task opens up for him if we if we follow him so far. What about something like war? What is the relationship between war and providence? Is war something that's somehow understood to have its good in a more philosophical or theological sense in that it had a it had a a function in this world so it's not something irrational but it's something that can be made sense of and is it something first of all that can be made sense of in human terms or is it something that requires that the language of theology to understand this is the the question he sets for himself. He begins um explain why the most honorable thing in the world According to the judgment of all humanity, without exception, has always been the right to shed innocent blood innocently. If you look at the matter closely, you will see that there is something mysterious and inexplicable in the extraordinary value that men have always attached to military glory, the more so in that if we took it into account only Syrian human reasoning, we will be led to directly opposite ideas. So it's not a question of explaining the possibility of war by the glory that surrounds it, but of explaining this glory itself, which is not easy. If I could supplement this paragraph with a comment he makes um uh at this point, but which I haven't put on there, maybe to bring this this question into the concrete. He asked us to consider the difference between the soldier and the executioner. He said, Imagine someone with no knowledge of human customs comes up to you. We today we would say, imagine an alien comes to us. Imagine an alien comes to us and he asked to he asked about soldiers and he asked about executioners, and you tell him, Oh, well, a soldier goes to war and he kills people, um in w in the context of war. The executioner kills people who have done uh who have committed crimes in the in the in you know they they've stolen or whatever. And the alien might say, Oh, so it seems to me that the executioner is a very noble figure, and that the soldier is some somebody a bit more barbarous. But Mainstrip says, at least in the context of his day, the politics of this question have shifted dramatically, it must be said, so let us discount that that problem. In the 19th century, people basically felt that executioners were very much taboo, but soldiers were very noble figures, as long as they were acting according to the conventions of military etiquette, which there was a fairly well-formulated military etiquette, which makes me go on to describe in a later paragraph, which I will show. What did they that lead to that instinct? Why do we differentiate the soldier and the executioner morally?
SPEAKER_04I was wondering this in terms of it being in the moment of fair fight or not. So, yes, someone might be a criminal, they committed a crime month ago, they're being executed here and now. But in here and now they're tied up. The executioner's got an axle at birth, he's a big strong man, he's just killing them. Whereas, at least in soldiers, generally speaking, you've got one army versus another, they're shooting each other, they're all sort of equal perhaps equally armed, and it's a fair fight.
SPEAKER_05So, in the moment, it it seems far more noble than just this seemingly poor, innocent criminal. Especially when you take it take it in relation to the whole society, sort of build upon uh Christian values as well. Yeah, right, it would be pretty pretty much looked down upon if you just kill such a man who seems helpless.
SPEAKER_06But the the criminal is that murdered 20 people painfully, tortuously, and uh everyone would agree he deserved it, and there could have been 10 soldiers against one soldier. So there may be a preconception as to the scenario and the balance, but there wouldn't be an absolute um yeah, truth about it.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. I'm just pacifists in general.
SPEAKER_06So I think I think both of these are uh the protection of society as the the in-group, you know, either protecting from the out-group or protecting from the um portrayal of somebody within that group. So I feel I feel there's a common moral base there. Um and the differences are almost social. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00There's also a question of value judgment of systems at this time as well, I guess, in the sense that when one condemns, and and this is something debated in France at the time, in terms of when one sorry um when one condemns one to death in one's own state, you are essentially admitting that your state has failed that citoyen, or the you know, uh in its time. If you're fighting against another state, you're fighting against a value system you're fighting against, you know, a whole set of beliefs that perhaps you as an enlightenment figure believe are wrong. Um, you know, they've attacked you. Or they've attacked you and and are threatening yours. I mean, it's funny you mentioned aliens, Jack, because Voltaire actually does mention the idea of how would we deal with not only countries afar, but say there were other cultures on other planets. You know, he actually does mention this, and most people like to kind of skip over it because they're like the the philosophy here is probably complicated enough on Earth's terra firma, let alone venturing into other ones. But yeah, how do you start to come up against other value systems, other yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_04So, like I said, I've got an absolute answer to it, it always depends on the context, especially if once you've got a criminal tied up, you can incarcerate them, for example. It is options, whereas if if an army is literally invading your country, you've got to attack them to defend themselves. But then if you're attacking, if you're obeying their country, then it's people didn't fight for their own country.
SPEAKER_07This was fought for the French. Yeah, the English fought. Yeah, ones on that side, ones on this side.
SPEAKER_06Also, war comes from a breakdown of you know war by other means, politics and leaders. And you could say it's unjust that you know the soldiers kill the soldiers, what they should all do is kill the leaders.
unknownAnd then elect new leaders and get them to focus. Yeah, if you get better leaders, you just make peace. Right. Yeah. I quite like this idea. Why are we why are we letting all soldiers sort of fight?
SPEAKER_05Yeah, put the leaders in the ring, and we will figure it out as sort of the actual people.
SPEAKER_04The soldiers enjoy it. I mean, if they're obviously if they've been forcefully conscripted, that's one thing if if they volunteer because they want to risk death for whatever reason. And they yeah, and they feel courageous. Yeah, uh, is that yeah.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, or you have the old English till Beowulf, and he just goes and slays dragons.
SPEAKER_07Doesn't it also have to do with the the executioner really being shunned in the Middle Ages?
SPEAKER_05And um that probably comes from the idea um that execution is revenge, and as Christians we're meant to forgive, and not there's this there's this tense between sort of Christian and secular because it's also what happens in sort of the Old Testament in the New Testament. Yeah, the Old Testament is eye for an eye, but Christ sort of fulfills the law of the Old Testament, and so we are born anew and we are not pertaining to the law anymore, but we are now under the law of mercy. Um we don't belong to this earth basically anymore, um, in a way that we don't yeah, we don't pursue the justice of the law in a way, we we forgive.
SPEAKER_04Um that that's how I interpret it. And then that sort of comes into tension when you're running a society and having to protect people, and if there's people being violent against the vulnerable, how do you protect them?
SPEAKER_05Well, it's Christ who gave sort of an example of lowering himself to a servant to be basically defenseless, but he's also a king. So if we become kings and we try to imitate Christ, we we we throw away our engines and we can become a servant.
SPEAKER_04Okay, well, to another country as well, to ourselves, of course. But it's more that if someone was attacking my you know children or something, yeah. How do I defend them? So I can be meek and I can you know be the servant and so on, you know, that's what I'm calling. But how do I defend someone else on the or without using force against the aggressor?
SPEAKER_05I guess it's a big question. I think Christ at the same time. Christ shows that love is sort of the biggest strength in the world as sort of um humanized in the Holy Spirit, exactly, which acts solely through love and can sort of defeat evil, um for example of the apostles afterwards, but in practice, yeah, your children die, and you a good man.
SPEAKER_06Is it is it loving to protect my children against someone who's charging out?
SPEAKER_05That's that's really one of the biggest objections, sort of, of this sort of pacifist Christian sense of really like pouring yourself out just in servitude to to your neighbor, whoever this neighbour is, right?
SPEAKER_04Or is that the way as a neighbor? Is that a way of serving as a Christian would be to attack the the axe murderer who's threatening my children? That would be the most loving thing to do in that instance. Not that I'm gonna just generally be bloodthirsty, it's I think it's possible to be Christian and also someone who defends the vulnerable.
unknownWell, yeah, this is the question, right?
SPEAKER_05Because it's it's in a way sort of sort of doing doing the judgment again and um uh and the return of it. Are you killed, so I killed back?
SPEAKER_04Not necessarily, but if it's in the moment, if it's simultaneous with the aggressor attacking the vulnerable, I defended.
unknownWhat if there is a holy spiritual?
SPEAKER_04Well, of course, you would hope in any given moment there's a way of resolving something without killing him. So there might be a way of preventing him through, you know, but without but then once someone's committed an evil action, if I then go a few days later and just go and kill him, I think that's very different in the moment using proportionate force to defend the child.
SPEAKER_05And also, like God is omnipotent, right? Almighty. And we are all like children of God, but he doesn't save us like every second, right, from from evil. Right, yeah, yeah. Um and he sends his own son to be basically tortured while he's fully without sin, which uh other people aren't even.
SPEAKER_06Uh but if he doesn't save us, are you saying that we can then save ourselves? Actually, your case of children is a great example. So if you want to protect your children and you choose to kill them, and God is not going to, you know, you're not expecting God to make a difference at this point in any providential. He might do in extraordinary circumstances, but you can't assume you will. But but that's you can't assume you will. So you exercise your individual practical reasoning. Exactly. That's what you're doing. If you want to go against doctrine, uh and you you take action now, that could be in the moment, and you could say, Well, I think it was instinct I reacted to what I didn't read reason about it. Yeah, but it could be a week later when you say, Well, actually, I've fended him off this time, but next time I won't be lucky, so if I don't do something about a time up, a better time up and uh or stab him in the back, or whatever it's gonna be. You're gonna fend one stuff. Uh uh, is one of those morally right and the other morally wrong? I'm not sure then.
SPEAKER_05Okay, so you could also say, like if you're in that moment sort of act like that, and then a week later you think about it and you're like, oh, but actually, I was in a state of despair. I was in a state broken from God. I had fear in myself that actually Christ freed us from the fear of death, freed us from um from seeing, yeah, um, from this fear and to have um trust in the Holy Spirit. And then you can repent, for example, but still you did it. But in this repentance, you're still safe in a way.
SPEAKER_06Are you saying it's okay if he takes that action? Are you saying in that fear in that moment? Are you saying it's okay if he takes that action?
SPEAKER_05No, so I would say it's it's not okay in itself, sort of if you're under the law of Christ, but you just mentioned if you just from practical reason um reasoning, when someone attacks you, you sort of start defending because you don't believe, for example, you cannot assume that God is going to help you in this way. But I think when you're once you're in the law of God, because Christ showed us that He is real, He revealed Himself and gave us His Holy Spirit and showed us that He actually does intervene. And I think once you have sort of that sort of switch, that you're sort of under a different under a different new covenant instead of the old testament covenant.
SPEAKER_04In extraordinary circumstances, God performs miracles, but but day to day, God allows us to use our our reason and our you know, he gives us that dignity of exercising our freedom. So the normal way of things, he doesn't just intervene everything because he even allows an evil person freedom, the freedom to attack the child. Um he doesn't just intervene every time. You see that people are dying all over the world, uh, Christians are being killed, you know, in various countries are being attacked.
SPEAKER_05We also need to acknowledge that already in 400, when um Christianity became um the religion of the Roman Empire, yeah, we sort of we said it is just the wage war, so we already sort of um went away from sort of this purity of the faith. So if that goes such a long way and the whole generation's build upon it, yeah, of course, it's not God intervening because we don't believe in anymore.
SPEAKER_04Well, I believe, and many children children around the world have a strong Christian faith, and they're still being killed because God does allow evil people the freedom to do things that's why we need, I suppose, you know, ways of defending ourselves.
SPEAKER_00But there's also a state of nature will make people have that as well, right?
SPEAKER_04Of course, eventually it's important for them to go to heaven and participate in the eternal life, resurrection of the ultimate hope. But this is a total world as well, before we get to heaven.
SPEAKER_05What if you defend your children and these and these children sort of grow up with your sort of mindset of always defending yourself?
SPEAKER_00But this is the thing, this is value judgments, and there's a state of nature of value judgments, which I think is what DeMeistre is pointing towards and where perhaps a virtuous cause arises. Jack, I don't know if you want to give us some revelation, maybe some divine providence intervening in this debate to be able to reveal to us the truth before we look towards the next text in our canon.
SPEAKER_03I I don't want to end just yet. Um if people are happy to stay, if people are happy to stay, very smoothly, so I don't want to end just there. I can end you. Um yeah. Um I would like to slowly, not not not in numbers, but slowly just walk through the the rest of Maistra's argument, because this is obviously a point of contention. Um and and one I that becomes increasingly apparent as we follow his argument. Is Maistra's uh analysis and application of Providence to the subject of war fully Catholic? This is a question, doctrinal question. It's a very open question.
SPEAKER_01Yes.
SPEAKER_03What is what is I think relevant for the discussion for now is that in terms of just war theory, he's entirely he's entirely in his time. And and um uh so that so uh and this is what you present, Matthew, I think it's a very very modern perspective. I don't mean to say invalid. I I I Matthew and I have been having a conversation about this, and I and I'm um I'm very I find aspects of it very persuasive, but I also shared um Joe's objections, and we were going on about this. Um now um what is a couple of things came to mind sort of from a bit earlier on in the discussion. Um the soldier, we would go back a bit. The soldier was um war as such was a was a consequence of failed states you mentioned, Bruce. Um and then there's this question of um of how that manifests itself ethically, which we began to explore in particulars. Um Maestra raises this question as a sort of an extension of the original question. So we began by asking, and we haven't, I don't think any of us particularly understand how Demaistra thinks of this, how it is glory is attributed to the soldier, because we it we seem to be saying that the soldier is is is someone employed in very broken circumstances. So we haven't really gotten to understand why Maestra and many people elevate that position.
SPEAKER_05He doesn't always know the pony. Like really not why it's an opponent. He doesn't always know it, yeah.
SPEAKER_07No, smart people are really know the history of of their country in the sort of isn't a lot of this value whether killing flawers or or bad, um just convention. And then what is the difference between customs and convention? Can you tell me uh elaborate a bit more well we uh I was trying to get to the point of those the the essays on customs. Oh right, right, okay, yes. Um and I mean so much of the values we put on things most people don't actually think about when it's just convention. The last two or three decades, I think particularly bad where value judgments were just conventions.
SPEAKER_03Okay, okay.
SPEAKER_06Yep, I think I think I think if you say if you say convention movies for custom, I think I think it is custom. Today's conventional difference between convention and custom. I think convention is what we have today, and custom is the history of the kin to today.
SPEAKER_05Well, if you if you look at just law nowadays, England, for example, works on customary law, right? Or not just precedent on customary law, yeah, but some some sort of uh more overly sort of rely on uh statutory law. Yeah, so the statutes go back many ideas as well. Well England like has a much more um a richer history with with customary law on top of yeah, there are things these discussions within laws like what stuff aren't basically written down, yeah, in that sense. Okay, because the constitution by correlation, yeah, that's what he means.
SPEAKER_06And the glory of war is perhaps that kind of thing where because how I see it is actually there was a point in time, maybe a thousand years ago, when actually the the normal states were um yeah, we were sort of so on, the normal state was a state of war. Even when there were city-states in Greece, they were often there would be in a in a uh in tension where quite possibly they would have to go to war. So it seemed that actually glorifying war was a way of preparing people to actually preparing people to death, yeah, yeah, and those those behaviors, those those customs have continued up to today, but these circumstances haven't necessarily continued.
SPEAKER_05With evolution, we basically eat each other up to progress as a whole, right? And so maybe sort of society's ingrained sort of took over this this um this dialectical approach. Yeah, so they sort of prepare each other to die such that the strongest sort of society go on, which is something I don't agree with. That uh it's a good thing. But it's not the strongest the providential ones. I feel like I feel as if I feel like a secular um way of approaching like like there is sort of if you believe in God, right? There is already the perfect thing, so we don't have to evolve anymore because God can give it to us only if we swing to Okay.
SPEAKER_03Um I lost the shred of the argument. I'm sorry, that's my fault. Um I would like to Joey, you're going to um for sure. Okay. Um I will there's a lot more to get through. A few tenths. We will go through it. A few tenths we will go through it. You will be hearing from it.
unknownUm yeah.
SPEAKER_03And don't won't let me go when I'm very happy to to continue the discussion with either here or we maybe migrate to either a pub nearby or the National Liberal Club. Um depending on preference, but I will just quickly take the opportunity to summarize the rest of the argument. Um just for people's interest. Demetra believes that in my interpretation that war is suprational. So it's not irrational. Its rationality, its intelligibility extends beyond human concepts and human logic. More precisely, it's very it's actually very Catholic logic it's the logic of sort of sacramental sacrifice that the sort of in the context of original sin the um and in the spirit of searching for opportunity in all of the brokenness and suffering in this world with war is the highest expression of a more general law of uh of destruction and violence through which things are sanctified this is Maistra's interpretation of war this is how he brings it under providence there was this really good sentence of him saying we are just as a whole on the altar yes burning as a sacrifice yes to be purified. This is it this is this is Maistra's understanding um to get there he tells us a little bit about some of the the the the be careful how I say the the the goods in the philosophical sense of war um this paragraph is quite interesting um um basically to summarize to paraphrase it um war tended to have an etiquette in that time things are a bit different now there's still the Geneva Convention but obviously there are politics and there are things like this and there are abuses of of the Geneva Convention all of this we understand this and probably also back then but an amusing line they all knew to stop war at at Easter and at Christmas right and and and and also many had many advance you see many advances in medicine and many applications of medicine in these times and many saints in in the Catholic tradition risen in this time and in response to the war. So it's sort of these like completely practical ways in which you see virtues emerging from the catastrophe the political catastrophe the moral catastrophe speaking um also the moral formation of the soldier is something Major points to but the paradox is how you have the moral formation of the soldier than the discipline and then the bloodlust which develops and this is why he leans more into this this cycle of violence which is sanctified. And then he has this um this it this remarkable literary passage which is very worth reading if you have not uh war is therefore divine in itself since it's a law of the world war is divine for its consequences of a supernatural nature who could dealt the great privileges to be found in death in battle who could believe that the victims of this dreadful sentence have shed their blood in vain was divine in the mysterious glory that surrounds it in the no less inexplicable attraction that draws us to it divine in the protection granted to its great leaders blah blah blah is divine its results it is this sort of drumbeat of this phrase it's it's it's compositionally a masterful chapter regardless of how we what we whether we agree with him that the the translator says Maestra is not someone to be taken seriously.
SPEAKER_00Which falls in line with Plato as well this is really kind of an irony with heritage rhetoric which is that they often criticize the use of rhetoric and then we'll go for it.
SPEAKER_03But but but we must not but we must not lose sight of the of the observations that are still striking there's something about war that resists rational comprehension. It's true what Maestra said the leaders are inexplicably on the whole saved from the catastrophe of war. They outlive the war what constitutes a victory in war is entirely inexplicable or constitutes a trajectory of the war is something you can't plan. People the history of war become very familiar with only the anomalies I set out to do this and it completely circumvented by the most remarkable circumstances. When is the war won? You can't answer that because the numbers are always different you you have these instances of the minorities overcoming the majority you point to factors but it's a great mystery and what Matra concludes is that what loses the war is fear and the antidote to that is prayer and thanksgiving and it's why they prayed the Te Deum in European culture throughout and the sort of to instill fear in the enemy and for them to give thanks. And what I just want to mention about this chapter if you haven't read it fully is it presents a great mystery on the literary front because it's this dialogue about war and then halfway through he starts talking about David in the Psalms and the and the thing I've been wrestling with and trying to understand what on earth is the connection. But it it it's so it's so subtle and then it ends with this meditation on searching out the mysteries of providence in the night and it's it's it's very it's all very beautiful. It's all very beautifully written and I think it touches on some critical mysteries of human experience and politics and it challenges the idea that war is senseless because it's terrible it's not senseless and it challenges the idea that it it tries to assimilate it not into something that's human approaching it and he leaves the mystery open it's a remarkable chapter the call to faith the call to faith it is a call to face it precisely is yes and an executioner would not such a calling that that's a great question. Thank you so much thank you for coming to me um it was also a call against waging war one's own population which is what we saw at the end of I think a slide or two ago which was the idea that um the dreary scenes of this end staging plague now what we see with the French Revolution is a plague of conflict waged against the citizens of a country not by an enemy force but by one's own government uh something which Maestra was acutely aware there are other thinkers Jack who are acutely aware you're so good at this who are acute clothing then our next seminar in two weeks' time is uh Edmund Burke Reflections on the revolution in France and we decided because we did a bit of Burke in the last series I just selected some excerpts and we decided it would be really interesting to read him alongside romantic poetry from Wordworth and Byron um to see I mean not we're not I don't I don't actually know I haven't done the scholarship whether Burke and um sorry whether uh wordworth and Byron read Burke but it's not the point the point is the culture the and the the milieu the intellectual milieu the the response to revolution and the response to rationalism in both these sink at the end cyclone of intellectual thought that was Edmund ripping its way through England at the time. But Edmund Burke is also in my opinion a cyclone of thought yeah and so the question is what is you know I want to I wanna investigate with you all what is the connection between Burke and romanticism and the poetry and I think it'll be a pleasant a pleasant evening and less um intellectually dense as this one which would be it's a lot of very difficult and controversial terrain but just as engaging a surprising choice. Yes I I would this I I really recommend it. It's so stimulating this book the St. Petersburg Dialogues it it's it's one of the greatest books I've ever read and I'm not someone who agrees with Mahe on everything I think his Catholicism needs some adaption of Catholicism needs tweaking personally. However it's it's in the script of what the translator says don't take it too seriously and you come away with I should have mentioned he's one of the most learned men of his period his like his graph of different languages is immense his his reading of the classics and the contemporary literature is is among the he's one of the most well read people of his time I have a quotation from one of his contemporaries somewhere here um one witness describes him in St. Petersburg as without contradiction the most outstanding personage of the time and place in which we lived abandoning himself to the limpid course of eloquence laughing wholeheartedly arguing with grace animating and governing the conversation it's he's a real character and it really comes through in this book and it's got such a breadth of subject matter including very seminal critiques of the state of nature of um of for instance that even just something as simple as the our general sense that language emerged from primitive societies and makes the case that it actually is a degenerative thing it's like so many things like wow like breadths of subject matter and sort it's it's it's very stimulating and I think it's it's a underrepresented book in the canon and we were we were both enlightened to it with a cultural friend of ours who may be listening in Canada and it's like Derek might be and I'm sure Derek would like to be joining us at the National Liberal Club.
SPEAKER_00Yes which is where we will proceed um potentially unless we've got uh we will imbibe and further the knowledge thank you to everyone online and we will see you in two weeks' time thank you very much indeed wonderful very good very good
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