notes

dont take my statements too seriously. My notes are written with the intention of critically returning to them later. the only reason these notes are public is because i want criticism, and i want to meet people attracted to the same curiosities i am. so criticism is welcome

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Isn't it wild that if you fuck around enough you can just turn an argument into the opposite? Like if you don't give a shit you can argue that Hobbes believed in the sociability of humans-- sure, skepticism can lead to Augustinian dogmatism-- sure, Hayek is a marxist-- stoics, epicureans, all the same to me---

i feel like that fucker who said that snow was black. this is actually pretty fun,

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Hence our law grants the appearance of liberty, preserves the influence of the aristocracy, and removes the cause of the dispute between the classes.

Let me put this fascinating quote in its fascinating context.

Cicero (106-43 B.C), egotistical dipshit, practitioner of a particularly annoying Lord-Henry variant of skepticism and popularizer of an unbearably saccharine form of stoicism, a Montaigne without the modesty or charm, a Demosthenes without the clarity, and overall a man I hate that I've read, is helpful in only two respects; first, through parroting the words of his betters, he has preserved much from antiquity; and second, through his straightforward, vain nature, is able to present a fascinating picture of the political machinery of his day without much varnish.

Here is a remarkable passage from De Legibus, a sequel to his companion book, De Res Publica, which- despite its influence from the 13th century onward, is really nothing more than a shoddy and almost childish philosophical veneer over crude apologetics for the roman republic.

'The tribunes of the plebs have too much power, they say.' Who can deny it? But the power of the people themselves is much more cruel, much more violent; and yet this power is sometimes milder in practice because there is a leader to control it then if there were none. For a leader is conscious that he is acting at his own risk, whereas the impulse of the people has no consciousness of any risk to itself. 'But', you object, 'the tribunes sometimes excite the people.' Yes, and they often calm them too. For what college of tribunes could be of so desperate a character that not a single one of the ten retained his sanity?...But consider the wisdom of our ancestors in this matter. When the Senate had gained this power to the plebians, conflict ceased, rebellion was at an end, and a measure of compromise was discovered which made the more humble believe that they were accorded equality with the nobility; and such a compromise was the only salvation of the State... in the meantime the senatorial order is not subject to envy, and the common people make no desperate struggle for their rights. Thus it is clear that either the monarchy ought never to have been abolished, or else that real liberty, not a pretense to it, had to be given to the common people; but this liberty has been granted in such a manner that the people were induced by many excellent provisions to yield to the authority of the nobles...

And, most interestingly, he justifies his recommended law which makes votes open to high ranking nobles, but otherwise secret.

I am granting this freedom to the people in a way as to ensure that the aristocracy shall have great influence and the opportunity to use it... [the recommended law:] they [the votes] shall not be concealed from citizens of high rank, and shall be free to the people]... let the people have their ballots as a safeguard of their liberty, but with the provision that these ballots are to be shown and voluntarily exhibited to any of our best and most eminent citizens, so that the people may enjoy liberty also in this very privilege of honorably winning the favour of the aristocracy... the people are satisfied with possessing the power; let them but keep that, and in everything else they are governed by influence and favour. And so, to leave out of account the corrupting effect of general donations upon the peoples votes, do you not see that if bribery can ever be got rid of, the people, before they vote, will ask the opinion of the aristocracy? Hence our law grants the appearance of liberty, preserves the influence of the aristocracy, and removes the cause of the dispute between the classes.

-III.x-xvii.22-39.

There's a lot that can be drilled out of this passage, but I don't want to write too much. Just keep in mind that while it has some surprising resemblance to the modern day, this is not a one-to-one correspondence with how contemporary electoral politics runs. Not even close. But it's interesting!

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note on music.

I wish I could really appreciate musical commentary- or, even better, to be able to at least approximate the depth of listening that some are able to maintain almost unconsciously. When I read a good critic, I feel as though their commentary has somehow burrowed into the music itself, and reshaped it for me. I feel as though my listening has improved. But perhaps I am deluding myself?

For example, the conductor two days ago mentioned his appreciation for Fauré's orchestration. And as the orchestra began the suite, I heard it! But it would be disingenuous to call this perceptiveness my own- I would have been unable to pinpoint exactly what I loved so much about Fauré without that forward notice.

And how about when I attempt to make my own judgements? How poor are they? Here's an example. I think Ravel shares a lot of Fauré's orchestral merits. That's a very uneducated statement, though; they sound similar to me, but what do I know about orchestration? Am I a composer? Am I a scholar of the period? Hell, could I tell you where exactly either one studied?- I'm aware Ravel studied under Fauré, but someone who just read a Wikipedia article could surpass my knowledge in four minutes. Perhaps, between one and the other, there's a world of difference, and my prior statement belays my absolute crudeness! Or perhaps the similarity is exceptionally obvious, and it wasn't even worth mentioning:

Hence he dared say he had observed that Brahms’ First Piano Sonata was very similar to Beethoven’s Hammerklavier Sonata. No wonder that Brahms, in his straightforward manner, spoke out: “Das bemerkt ja schon jeder Esel.” (“Every jackass notices that!”) (Style and Idea, Ch 4.)

My profound lack of nuance extends to other fields as well- my theoretical merits above all, of course. A little comment by Gramsci, referencing 16th century thinker Bruno, puts it well:

It is a matter of common observation among all scholars, from personal experience, that any new theory studied with "heroic fury" (that is, studied not out of mere external curiosity but for reasons of deep interest) for a certain period, especially if one is young, attracts the student of its own accord and takes possession of his whole personality, only to be limited by the study of the next theory, until such a time as a critical equilibrium is created and one learns to study deeply but without succumbing to the fascination of the system and the author under study. (I. Publishers, p383)

My mind is so easily swayed, that even a few pages into a book I find myself to be a new person.

Would I have any appreciation for Brancusi without Loy's poem? No! I would have looked at his sculptures and seen some scraps.

...As if / some patient peasant God / had rubbed and rubbed / the Alpha and Omega / of Form / into a lump of metal

A naked orientation / unwinged unplumed / the ultimate rhythm / has lopped the extremities / of crest and claw / from / the nucleus of flight... (Mina Loy, Brancusi’s Golden Bird)

But now, a few verses later, his sculpture transforms into something beautiful- it soars into the sky! But I'm no wiser between then and now. I've just cribbed someone else's eyes.

And this entire note- isn't it really just an inferior mimicry of Montaigne's essay (nominally) on Sebonde, which I recently read, with his grand skepticism and Augustinian religious flair replaced with my shallow, subjective worries? I've even copied his self-effacing comments- the only difference is that whereas he's being modest, I am being perfectly sincere. I am genuinely not worth much as it stands.

Well, I guess I'll have to be content to appreciate Schoenburg as an author, rather than as a composer. I'll have to be satisfied with stumbling over well trodden paths. And I'll do so while listening to Fauré's suites!

You should listen to them too! This one's more famous, but I prefer the Dolly suite. But as we have established, I'm no judge.

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Original Accumulation and Charity

Chuang was right to say that original accumulation wasn't just a historical relic, but a constantly lurking presupposition haunting the reproduction process, no matter how advanced bourgeois society becomes.

Original accumulation- which shattered the iron rice bowl, sold off californians on the front step of the mission and the gaol like day-by-day slaves to the rancheros and press ganged workers onto ships and railyards from Shanghai to San Fransisco- still exists. It exists latently in the police, the prison, the military, the fink halls old and modern, in the 'back to work order' and the Agropass that throws the farmworker back into the flames. It still lurks, and reveals itself whenever the music stops. And it's at the moments when capitalism struggles to reproduce itself that these horrors become transparent- transparent, because the brutality of forced labour and dispossession is in direct contradiction with those same ideals that capitalism boasts on its better days. The scaffold clashes with the drywall that conceals it.

But for liberals, whose ideology is a beatified form of bourgeois society taken one-sidedly, original accumulation is merely the exception to their inviolable rules.

When COVID rode in, original accumulation marched behind it. I remember when they conscripted UK soldiers to drive trucks on english roads- in China, they're locking workers in their factories in an effort to reconcile the production of capital with epidemic containment. In the US, some in the government seem to be threatening to keep rail workers on the tracks, by force of law and batons if necessary. Remember when sailors were trapped on their ships for over a year, at the height of quarantine? In a time of crisis, the capitalist system spontaneously becomes a crimp and a slaver, without a week's notice.

Ah, but that was in unusual times! Surely, normalcy will return, soon.

Fuck off.

A digression- De Soto said that private property was necessary to preserve Christian charity. For how can we give alms to the poor if there are neither alms to give nor poor to take them? I couldn't agree more.

So damn them! Damn those Mack-the-knife humanitarians whose gloves are always clean and pockets always full! Damn the philanthropists of the world, those handwringers and academics and samaritans of the world who haven't seen either end of a picket line or a gun, who bemoan slavery abroad and celebrate civilization at home. Damn those who condemn the flicker, and consecrate the flame!

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why do so many liberal historians always start strong, only to get more diffuse and moderate as they get closer and closer to the modern day??? I swear to god sometimes I read these books and I wish i could get the author of chapter 32 to have a long hard talk with the far more radical author of chapter 3

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review of Nussbaum's Concise History of the Law of Nations

The title is misleading. Written immediately after World War 2, Nussbaum's primary concern is not to accurately reflect a theoretical or material history of "the law of nations". The book is a disjoint combination held together by two loose principles: an untempered hatred of a large but rarely explicitly named coterie of historians attempting to trace the United Nations back to this or that historical character, and a vague image of legal positivism circa 1947 against which every belle the historical revisionists have dared to assign the title "founder of international law" is squared up against.

Nussbaum's great merit is his ability to read. He gives due attention to every thinker that enters his dungeon. Unfortunately our author's vision is terribly farsighted. Looking out from the vantage point of the 40's, his discernment is occasionally impressive concerning antiquity, medieval, and even early modern thinkers. But as his object of inquiry scoots closer and closer, pleasant theoretical dissection blurs into a dreary recitation of historical events.

At some point 3/4ths of the way through, Nussbaum somewhat goes a bit insane. After drudging through the most insipid german legal scholarship he can find he forgets his book is supposed to be "concise" and spends 30 valuable pages on exceptionally dreary shit. He read through 12 volumes of Christian Wolff and he wants you to share in his misery.

Probably the most fun elements of the book stem from his very 19th century tendency to constantly associate theory with "national types"., especially qua religion. For example, I learned that Pashukanis is a neo-byzantine theorist

dont read it

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Goddamnit why is everyone in the enlightenment such a nerd... "epicurian" this, "stoic" that, I swear to god I just wanna learn about the theoretical milieu of early bourgeois society if you want me to read fucking cicero you'll have to drag me kicking and screaming

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Vitoria, Hobbes, Democracy

Read a book of excerpts concerning Francisco de Vitoria (1500's) trying to argue he's a proponent of "Catholic democracy"...

Putting aside the fact that Vitoria was an unabashed supporter of Charles V and that the revisionist book itself was published in Franco's Spain, it's an interesting (at least thought provoking) argument! It baldly reveals the silent presupposition in most democratic theories that everyone's aspirations can be amalgamated into some single polity. It's silly, but framing as "democratic" Vitoria's argument that a monarch was given their power by the people (commonwealth), but that the commonwealth must give up their power and cannot rescind their mandatory choice makes the often silent tension between us as a rich many and "the people" as an alien abstraction (in this case embodied by our friend Carlos) really obvious!

public power is of God... just and legitimate... [and] cannot be abolished even by the consensus of men. If a man cannot give up his right and ability of self-defence and of using his own body for his own convenience because this power belongs to him by natural and divine law, by the same toke. the commonwealth also cannot by any means be deprived of its right and power to guard and administer its affairs against violent attack from its enemies, either from within or from without. - Political Writings of Vitoria, Cambridge, On Civil Power, p19

Isn't that such a fascinating quote?!

A few notes.

First, notice the resemblance to Hobbes. This might seem odd considering the fact that the theoretical framework underneath Vitoria's theory is extremely Thomist, and often relies on the distinction of power (potestas) and authority (autoritas) that Hobbes so hated. But I think there's a decent argument to be made that the argument of both Vitoria and Hobbes sketch out different sides of a very similar picture.

Vitoria's Catholic divinity emphasizes harmony, in the tradition of Thomism etc etc. Hobbes, on the other hand, emphasizes the conflict between the individual and the united polity; the latter is explicitly antithetical to the former. But this difference of emphasis is only because Vitoria places natural law as a physical other, something divine and literally outside, whereas Hobbes puts that same law within individuals, in the form of a self contradictory impulse for both immediate self interest and mediated order. Hobbes' state of nature, in his own theory, is a self-obliterating step, that necessarily results in the exact same orderly system as Vitoria, except without any of that spooky metaphysical talk Hobbes hated. On the other hand, the iron fist that Vitoria conceals so nicely in the glove of late Medieval Christian doctrine unveils itself whenever he speaks of those "seditious fellows" who "have denied that kingly power or any kind of rule by a single person comes from God, affirming that all sovereign, generals, and princes are tyrants and robbers of human liberty" (p 13), and especially heretics.

I'm not the first one to notice this. Cumberland, a fascinating contemporary of Hobbes, made a very similar argument.

Second, about Vitoria. He exists at a point in which the modern nation state was just beginning to emerge. While it may have existed in England by 1520, Spain was still an amalgamation of cities, currencies, flags and banners with a flemish dude stuck on top and a colonial project uncomfortably tacked to the side. (Marx's intro to his articles on the Spanish Civil War is a surprisingly good summary). Vitoria was himself a part of the tail end of the scholastic tradition, and saw himself reconciling doctrine that was increasingly inadequate to the world around him. He tried to explain colonialism with roman terms, and Portuguese slavery, a new novel horror, as a new instantiation of an ancient practice. Commercial expansion was framed by reinterpreting roman private law to be universal, and so on.

It's with Vitoria that we find one of the first (seemingly accidental!) descriptions of jus gentium as a law shared among nations, rather than a law shared among all people; he misquotes Gaius, substituting "among all men" (inter omnes homines) with "among all nations" (inter omnes gentes). But this division is only made clear with Suárez. (See Nussbaum's concise history, p63)

Finally, a tentative conclusion. It seems to me that if we reduce our definition of democracy to "majority vote" or whatever we've lost the drift of how the concept historically existed and what social configurations make it theoretically viable as such. We've concealed the more important issue- that such a legislative process, if it predominates, necessarily requires a particular relationship between the individual and the polity- a relationship in which the "democratic will" is certainly not the same as the will of the people as a rich multiplicity. The original material- the hopes and passions and ideals of the many- has to be mutilated in the democratic machine.

This mutilation isn't just mere compromise, either- even if (as a stupid hypothetical) only one person voted (the robinsonade of the democratic process), or more realistically a single individual had some kind of commanding position over the state, their personal social existence would not be the same as the political character mask that actually rules. No matter how benevolent or kind Charles V could have been, as a ruler those human intentions would be only a mediating factor at best.

So what's the alternative? How can harmonious social life not result in some kind of suffocating necessity, alleviated only by a Stoic acceptance or bourgeois indifference? How can people be taken as people? How can the dream of democracy overcome its actuality?

i dunno

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"The extreme vagueness, the venerability, and the assumed sanctity of [Greek + Roman] natural law made the notion in later times a kind of magic hat from which learned dialecticians were able to pull astounding and indeed most valuable surprises. One of them was international law."

-A Concise History of the Law of Nations, Nussbaum, p22

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It's amazing how completely modern academic distinctions can divvy up thinkers that predate those neat divisions. Few books on Grotius mention his exhaustive theological work. And it was probably important to him dont ya think?

i mean i wouldn't smuggle myself in a chest of books for a hobby