Thiel's Error
Time! Time…there is no time to do this post right, but go read Thiel’s hugely important piece in Policy Review and thank PEG, who tipped me off. Thiel’s piece is not only crucial reading but it’s very good, except for a certain interpretation of the history of political thought that leads him unnaturally into the arms of all-or-nothing eschatology. The idea of globalization, he claims,
is not new. It is coeval with the modern West. Starting in the seventeenth century, the dawn of the modern era, the global state or market has become the sine qua non for this-worldly peace and security.
This already is implicit in the writings of Thomas Hobbes, the definitive political philosopher of modernity. For Hobbes, the natural state must be replaced by an artificial or virtual world over which humans have full mastery and control. The telos is replaced by the fear of the end, or the fear of death. And so the classical virtues, such as courage, magnanimity, or wisdom, give way to peaceableness as the greatest good. In the state of nature, the war of all against all prevails; but under the artificial human world of the social contract, humans will become citizens by giving a monopoly on violence to the figure of Leviathan, a powerful monster that lives at sea. To make explicit what is implicit, Leviathan cannot be merely the master of a given nation or kingdom, since then the state of nature would still prevail amongst nations and kingdoms. For Hobbes ’ City of Man to be built, Leviathan must rule all nations and kingdoms and truly be the prince of this world. He is the “mortal god” created by the mind of man.
I can only focus on the essential error here, which is that Hobbes’ theory of order is (or, on another telling that might also be at work here, should and must be) scalable: once the problem of natural disorder is ‘solved’ at the level of the state, the leap of contractual faith ushering in the first, tribal Leviathan must be replicated, cascading upward, until it is consummated at the higher level of all humanity. This imputes categories of thought and motives derivative from those categories at once far too purely scientific and far too purely Christian for Hobbes. Reread that phrase of Thiel’s — “to make explicit what is implicit” is to read into Hobbes what, unless you are coming at him from a perspective, inherited but in turn unmoored from Christianity, that holds the flesh cannot comprehend the spirit, is not there. Even if Hegel, as Strauss alleges, did appear to consummate Hobbes, that consummation only appears to exist from within a scientized Christian view: the flesh of Hobbes is overcome by the spirit of Hegel.
What I mean is that the Hobbesian Leviathan, though patently a Christian state, is not a New Testament construction but a most forceful attempt to reassert the validity of Old Testament wisdom against the transgressive and chaotic potentialities of post-Lutheran Christianity – in which Christ, no matter what he said, really did come to put the old covenant in the dustbin of history. Hobbes wants to insist that the Mosaic experience is foundational, of a piece with human nature. To stray into the primacy of possibility unleashed by a political theology in which the flesh of the old law is to be entirely replaced by the explosive interpretive anarchy of the spirit of the new law is to fall once again into the murderous superstition of the Jews at the foot of the golden calf. Leviathan is a tribal survival mechanism that hedges conservatively in two directions: first, against the narrowing, incestuous, fragmenting destruction of irrational pagan power worship, and, second, against the expanding, contagious, universalizing mania of apocalyptic eschatology that emerges when the spirit is unmoored from the flesh.
To come down into practical particulars, the bottom line is that Hobbes is actually a profoundly anti-globalization theorist; to put it provocatively, the state of Israel is more Hobbesian in its order than the international scientific community. Because Thiel does not recognize this, he does not recognize the way in which a more or less catastrophic end to the current globalization boom might not result either in one big anarchy or many small tyrannies. His claim that no one can win the next world war is provocative but without justification. I would bet on whichever powerful participants are most Hobbesian in the respect I present here. And that still speaks pretty well of America.
So your saying that Hobbs Leviathan is (in historical order) an old testament type god, or a human enforcement of an old testement type god’s wishes, or some kind of state-wide internalization of an old testment type gods moral and practical instruction.
And you think that countries that have this type of strong theocratic underpinnings like Israel or the US, will win the next world war becasue this type of underpinning provides…. discipline? Self Confidence? Cleanliness?
— cw · Mar 3, 03:28 PM · #
To stray into the primacy of possibility unleashed by a political theology in which the flesh of the old law is to be entirely replaced by the explosive interpretive anarchy of the spirit of the new law is to fall once again into the murderous superstition of the Jews at the foot of the golden calf.
James, the sharpest and wittiest commentary on this way of thinking I’ve ever seen comes in Auden’s long poem For the Time Being, in the section called “The Slaughter of the Innocents,” in which Herod defends his decision to order the deaths of the Israelite infants. I can’t resist quoting a part of it:
“Today, apparently, judging by the trio who came to see me this morning with an ecstatic grin on their scholarly faces, the job has been done. ‘God has been born,’ they cried, ‘we have seen him ourselves. The World is saved. Nothing else matters.’
“One needn’t be much of a psychologist to realize that if this rumour is not stamped out now, in a few years it is capable of diseasing the whole Empire, and one doesn’t have to be a prophet to predict the consequences if it should.
“Instead of Rational Law, objective truths perceptible to any who will undergo the necessary intellectual discipline, and the same for all, Knowledge will degenerate into a riot of subjective visions…. Justice will be replaced by Pity as the cardinal human virtue, and all fear of retribution will vanish….
“Naturally this cannot be allowed to happen. Civilization must be saved even if this means sending for the military, as I suppose it does. How dreary… O dear, Why couldn’t this wretched infant be born somewhere else? Why can’t people be sensible? I don’t want to be horrid. I’ve tried to be good. I brush my teeth every night. I haven’t had sex for a month. I object. I’m a liberal. I want everybody to be happy. I wish I had never been born.”
— Alan Jacobs · Mar 3, 03:43 PM · #
“Instead of Rational Law, objective truths perceptible to any who will undergo the necessary intellectual discipline, and the same for all, Knowledge will degenerate into a riot of subjective visions….”
That is exactly what JPis complaining about when he references Lutherism. As I read him, James is Herod here. IS that what you are saying. This is like a frickin game of charades. Why can’t you guys just clearly say what you mean?
— cw · Mar 3, 03:52 PM · #
Well, James may indeed be Herod, for all I know, but what I take him to be doing in this particular post is describing the Hobbesian view, not endorsing it. (Describing it in order to show how Thiel gets it wrong.)
— Alan Jacobs · Mar 3, 03:56 PM · #
It’s hard to tell with JP, but I think he is more old testement than new.
I also think that Auden is misreading his bible in order take a cheap poke at liberals: “I’m a liberal. I want everybody to be happy. I wish I had never been born.”
Liberalism is founded in the anarchic, hierarchy destroying, chaos bringing, message of jesus: that god loves us all equally. Science confirms this message: we are all decended from the same monkey momma.
So I’m dissapointed with Auden.
PS. After I read your comment the second time I understood what you were saying. JP is harder, but I have vowed to jsut accept his writing as it comes and not complain about how sometimes its like trying to read the entrails of a sacraficial chicken, so I take everything I said about charades back.
— cw · Mar 3, 04:27 PM · #
Of course I don’t really know if liberalism is founded in Jesus’s message of equality, but it sure seems like it ought to be.
— cw · Mar 3, 04:43 PM · #
cw, Auden isn’t criticizing liberals, he’s criticizing Herod: the point isn’t that Herod is a liberal — he’s a murderous tyrant — but that he thinks he is, because he “wants everyone to be happy.” But of course he is retaining the authority to determine what makes people happy and to enforce those conditions, at gunpoint if necessary.
I think I’m going to coin a new phrase and call this liberal fascism. (Kidding, kidding.)
— Alan Jacobs · Mar 3, 04:53 PM · #
Needs more Marx. Way more.
— Freddie · Mar 3, 05:02 PM · #
OK, now I get it. This is just like when I was back in college.
Good joke about the Liberal Fascisim.
— cw · Mar 3, 05:34 PM · #
Can we just say that Hobbes’ third party with rights but no duties leads to totalitarianism?
— mike farmer · Mar 3, 06:37 PM · #
Thiel’s error is similar to one made by many opponents of internationalism: they often fail to see how fundamental and permanent the nation-state is taken to be by a system of international justice. It’s the United… Nations. Are there any serious rivals to nationalism on the world stage today? We are all Hobbesians now, in this narrow sense.
— matt · Mar 3, 07:36 PM · #
Self-selection into virtual networks does not the end of culture make. Seems more likely to multiply and harden differences in private virtue. Calibrated pinpoint communication to the already inclined, etc etc, leads to finer, more accessible, more numerous and more discriminate systems of exclusion.
Public culture blands into gray multicultural goo to accommodate our distracted, neo-eccentric lives of the mind. While underneath, undeterrable pockets of chaos seek vengeance, revolution, and authorship. The initial balance between surveillance and privacy will decide much of our fate, methinks.
This Leviathan talk is too airy to be meaningful, btw. “Old Testament order versus New Testament chaos” has no need of proper nouns. Transgressive and chaotic potentialities of post-Lutheran Christianity versus the accidental wisdom of “there is no why” Mosaic commands? The “primacy of possibility” of bottom-up self-discovery versus the clarity of already given and engraved, “trust me” monologic interpretation? Why bother with such a complicated frame when a simpler, more concise restatement will do?
I’m all for “undercurrents of perpetual allusion.” But when discussing living systems, emergence, logical depth and self-organized criticality, it’s exactly the wrong method. Or is your goal provocation rather than description, art rather than science?
— John Aristides · Mar 3, 07:48 PM · #
James: Thanks for this post. I ardently wish that we have more posts from you (and Reihan! And Alan!) on Thiel, whom I keep regarding as one of the most important thinkers alive, though I’ve disagreed with him here and elsewhere.
Alan: Great passage. Fantastic spin on The Grand Inquisitor, no?
All: Thiel is glib about the nation state, which I think is wrong (but fear may be right), but in another talk, he said something to the effect: “The 21st century will be the end of the nation state, for better or for worse.” Unlike other internationalists, he is not utopian, so that makes his insights more valuable.
— PEG · Mar 3, 07:50 PM · #
James rightly points out the error of presuming scalability. Explaining why this is an error, he writes:
The real explanation for the error is functional. Different levels of organization obey different laws. A molecule emerges from a system of atoms, and a replicator emerges from a system of molecules, but each does so for drastically different reasons. Differences also exist within levels of organization. Constituent characteristics and environmental forces determine the superorganism. Look, e.g., at siphonophorae versus the bee hive versus the lion pride. Are the constituents presocial, subsocial, semisocial, parasocial, quasisocial or eusocial? What are the internal and external forces? What are the frequencies and patterns of interactions?
— John Aristides · Mar 3, 08:20 PM · #
Under what circumstances will Leviathan emerge? Under what circumstances might it be chosen?
The former probably needs a cataclysm. The latter is unlikely. Nobody is going to submit to a new, remote, and compulsory tax regime without an equally compelling cause. Ditto to a supervening, all-encompassing Weberian police power. And without compulsory taxes and force monopoly, there is no Leviathan.
To get to Leviathan, we’re going to have to be hit by a really frickin’ big stick. Linear evolution and drift just ain’t gonna do it.
— John Aristides · Mar 3, 08:48 PM · #
Shit, man. You could quote Josh Mitchell at least once.
— Matt s. · Mar 7, 02:03 AM · #
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