Politics without Vision: Thinking without a Banister in the Twentieth Century

423 Pages·2012·2.52 MB·English

by  Tracy B. Strong

POLITICS WITHOUT VISION

POLITICS
W I T H O U T
VISION
T H I N K I N G
W I T H O U T
A
B A N I S T E R
I N T H E
T W E N T I E T H
C E N T U R Y
TRACY B. STRONG
the university of chicago press
chicago and london
Tracy B. Strong is Distinguished Professor in the Department of Political Science
at the University of California, San Diego. He is a former editor of Political Th eory and
the author or editor of many books, including Friedrich Nietzsche and the Politics of Transfi guration,
Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the Politics of the Ordinary, and Th e Many and the One:
Religious and Secular Perspectives on Ethical Pluralism in the Modern World.
Th e University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637
Th e University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London
© 2012 by Th e University of Chicago
All rights reserved. Published 2012.
Printed in the United States of America
21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 1 2 3 4 5
isbn- 13: 978-0-226-77746-7 (cloth)
isbn-1 0: 0-226-77746-4 (cloth)
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Strong, Tracy B.
Politics without vision : thinking without a banister in the twentieth century / Tracy B. Strong.
pages ; cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn-13: 978-0-226-77746-7 (cloth : alkaline paper)
isbn-10: 0-226-77746-4 (cloth : alkaline paper) 1. Political science—Western countries—
History—20th century. 2. Political science—Western countries—Philosophy. I. Title.
ja83.s765 2012
320.01—dc23
2011043370
o Th is paper meets the requirements of ANSI/N ISO Z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper).
For Babett e—she made it bett er
Th e poem of the mind in the act of fi nding
What will suffi ce. It has not always had
To fi nd: the scene was set; it repeated what
Was in the script.
Th en the theatre was changed
To something else. Its past was a souvenir.
It has to be living, to learn the speech of the place.
It has to face the men of the time and to meet
Th e women of the time. It has to think about war
And it has to fi nd what will suffi ce. It has
To construct a new stage.
—Wallace Stevens, Of Modern Poetry
I want to learn more and more to see the necessary in things as beautiful.
—Nietzsche, Th e Gay Science
C O N T E N T S
PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ix
NOTE ON SOURCES AND ABBREVIATIONS
xv
INTRODUCTION
Th e World as We Find It
1
ONE
Kant and the Death of God
16
TWO
Nietzsche: Th e Tragic Ethos and the Spirit of Music
57
THREE
Max Weber, Magic, and the Politics of Social Scientifi c Objectivity
91
INTERLUDE
“What Have We to Do with Morals?” Nietzsche and Weber on the Politics of Morality
137
FOUR
Sigmund Freud and the Heroism of Knowledge
146
FIVE
Lenin and the Calling of the Party
184
SIX
Carl Schmitt and the Exceptional Sovereign
218
SEVEN
Martin Heidegger and the Space of the Political
263
EIGHT
Without a Banister: Hannah Arendt and Roads Not Taken
325
CONCLUSION
Th e World as It Finds Us
370
INDEX
397
P R E FAC E A N D AC K N O W L E D G M E N T S
When one teaches the history of Western political thought, in general, for the
period that goes from, say, Th ucydides to Marx, perhaps even Nietzsche, one
knows what to teach and roughly in what sequence. It is the “canon,” and, if
the criteria for membership are not defi nitive, at least they are defi nite. When
one att empts, however, to teach the political theory of the past century, nei-
ther the choice of authors nor their sequence is obvious. Th e diffi culty lies
in the fact that it is not clear what story one is to tell about the twentieth
century. (Th ere are several stories about the previous period[s]—I suppose
there could be others, but there are stories that exist to be told in bett er and
poorer manners.) Th ere is as yet no story—there is as yet no mythos—for
the twentieth century.
Th is is not for lack of trying. Francis Fukuyama’s 1996 Th e End of History
and the Last Man with its vision of a world in which the clash of ideologies
was coming to an end in the favor of liberal democracy proved short- lived.
Samuel Huntington’s 1996 Th e Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of the
World Order foresaw the locus of war to be between diff erent cultures with
war as inevitable. In apparent response, Amartya Sen argued in Identity and
Violence: Th e Illusion of a Destiny (2006) that such clashes were the conse-
quences of a lack of pluralism in one’s identity. Th is list can be extended al-
most indefi nitely. Yet, one must ask, what are the important qualities of the
past century? Th is question underlies all att empts such as those above. I
have chosen in this book to write about what I think most important for our
times in the century just past. While I discuss this at some greater length in
the introduction, it is worth noting here that the justifi cation of my choices
and my focus relies to a great extent on my understanding of which events
were central to the twentieth century (and still are in our new century). If
you do not see those events as central, this book will pass you by. I will not
discuss these events at great length—reference to them will (have to) suf-
fi ce—but they are so prominent that they are easily ignored. To be blunt: