Ernst Cassirer, The Individual and the Cosmos in Renaissance Philosophy: Chapter 3, "Freedom and Necessity in the Philosophy of the Renaissance"

Renaissance philosophers often present ideas through image and myth (Bruno in particular saw this as a requirement of human reason, but Valla and others also take this approach). Cassirer sees this literary form as a key to understanding the way Renaissance philosophy deals with the problem of necessity and free will. It does not offer any new solution or even new conceptual frame to the problem. It shows more interest in leaving the problem in tension than it does in a resolution. Cassirer's suggestion seems to be that the softening of the concepts and distinctions through literary form contributes to the ability to maintain the problem in tension.


There is also an insistence on addressing the problem without reliance on dogma, relying only on human reason. (I think the the modern philosophical tradition would find a tension between the reliance on reason and the use of myth.)

In Pompanazzi, at least, the precision of the Scholastic distinctions used to analyze freedom and necessity is maintained -- even enhanced by insisting on fidelity to original Aristotelean conceptions -- but there is no attempt to reconcile dogma with reason. Pompanazzi does follow Valla, however, in insisting that there is no conflict between foreknowledge of events and human freedom of action, since it is the events themselves which are determined and not their causes. Pompanazzi also resists drawing any ethical consequence from pre-knowledge; he severs metaphysics from ethics.

Pico della Mirandola's Oration on the Dignity of Man distinguishes man from every other being by his freedom to create his own nature through action. For everything else but man, being determines action: what a thing is, what it's place is in the order of things, determines what it does, how it acts. For man, on the other hand, his own free action determines what he is. Pico's theme -- that freedom defines man's nature -- is drawn from humanist thought, but he introduces a new element to that tradition by portraying man as a microcosm (a concept developed in the thought of Cusa and Ficino). Man, according to Pico, actually contains the possibilities of all other things in himself, and thus be can become like any of them.

In this, Pico distills the tension characteristic of Renaissance thought -- man must be open to the entire universe, to knowledge of all the world, but hold himself apart from it. The distinction made here between man and world, mind and nature, subject and object is not absolute, because the opposed pairs are also defined by the relationship between them. That relationship is found in acts of willing and knowing. (Cassirer sees this as following the true sense of Platonic philosophy -- both transcendence and participation).

Charles de Bouelles professes a division of the world into levels which illustrates the centrality of this theme -- the simultaneous distinction and involvement of subject and object -- in Renaissance thought. The highest level -- self-reflective knowledge -- also requires the most basic level -- simple being -- as the object of its knowing. (Cassirer sees an influence from Cusa's thinking on the trinity in this, where final unity depends on a process of development.) This metaphysics is also an ethics: man isn't simply given self-reflection, he rises to that level by virtue of his own effort and action.

Allegory of Adam as an expression of Renaissance thought: portrayal of primordial man that focuses on his freedom. Merging with Prometheus myth, focus on man's power to create. Boccaccio: Promethean creation as a second creation of man, which gives him not existence, but his specific character as a creator -- Renaissance philosophy moves away from this trope in increasing seeing man's creativity as a result of his own free action.

98: Cusa and Bruno. For Cusa, ideal of humanity is realized in Christ. For Bruno, ideal of humanity requires idea of autonomy, but this pulls it away from religion.

In the second section of this chapter, Cassirer examines the significance of Renaissance thought's struggle with astrology. Astrology was not vanquished by medieval thought, but it was tamed. Medieval medicine and natural science in particular were saturated with astrological thinking. But astrology was only permitted to be a secondary force, like demons or evil spirits, subordinate to God. Faith kept it in check in systems of medieval thought.

With the strengthening of a worldly outlook in the Renaissance, however, astrological thinking comes more to the foreground. Ficino holds that the stars can influence the bodies of men but not their minds, which I think Cassirer suggests was a respectably conventional view. But concern for the power of the stars remained foremost in his thinking anyway. His ethical work stresses directing ones life in accordance with the possibilities allowed by the constraints of that power. This amounts to a new challenge to human freedom that was characteristic of the trend of Renaissance thought. As the regnum gratiae (rule of grace) wanes, the regnum naturae (rule of nature), which makes its own claims on human freedom, waxes. Since astrology and magic were woven into the early Renaissance conception of natural science, and this fabric was only slowly unwoven and reassembled upon different principles, the struggle for asserting human freedom became for the Renaissance largely an intellectual struggle with astrology.

Pompanazzi grapples with the astrological view by trying to reshape it, to make it methodologically strict. So Pompanazzi accepts as given many reports of miraculous or apparently magical events. But he insists that they are not the result of any special personal or spiritual powers. Instead, they can all be systematically explained by the same forces which shape more ordinary events, and that these regular shaping forces are astrological. Even divine action only occurs through the mediation of the heavenly bodies. In fact, our knowledge of the divine through revelation is itself subject to astrological causality, because the intellectual realm is just as thoroughly within the bounds of systematic natural causes as the physical world.

104: "Here, a logic is operative seeking to deduce a priori the form of astrology as the only one adequate to our knowledge of nature. Astrological causality becomes, to use a modern phrase, the 'condition for the conceivability of nature'. For Pompanazzi, it does not signify a surrender to the world of miracles but actually the only salvation from that world, the only sure guarantee for the unconditional validity of the laws of nature. Though it may seem paradoxical at first glance, we are dealing with a thoroughly 'rational' astrology." (This brings to mind Veyne's study of 'rational' Greek mythology.)

Renaissance philosophy brings forth both a new conception of knowledge, in which everything can be explained in a unified way from natural causes, and a new sense of human freedom; but these conflict. Microcosm motif used as a way out, a way of balancing the demands of both. Ficino's takes up this motif to portray the world as organic, hierarchical, emanatistic. But emanationism and hierarchy are undermined by new cosmological thinking founded by Cusa, which denies that the cosmos is graduated or even centered. So the motif of microcosm is taken up as one of correspondence between man and heavens rather than dependence. So with Paracelsus we have an account of a harmonious correlation between man and the heavens, without either side being strictly superior or uniquely determinative. So there is room for ethics, since man's action has influence, too. This is actually taking up a theme of Ficino's astrology. Ficino held that the influence of the stars circumscribes the life possibilities of an individual, but it leaves choices of direction within the set of possibilities. Man can still choose the direction of his life -- whether he strives for the intelligible or the sensible.

Pico, on the other hand, attacks astrology directly (although is own thought is fairly saturated with magical and astrological thinking). While Neoplatonist-influenced medieval thought gave transcendence a spatial as well as spiritual dimension, and thus portrayed the world as having a hierarchical order, Pico recognized no spatial priority. The hierarchical systems lent themselves to acceptance of stellar influences though occult causation; Pico rejects causation that is not proximate and experienced, and thus demonstrable and verifiable.

The ultimate roots of Pico's objection to astrology are not metaphysical, however, but ethical. The claims of astrology would limit man's scope for self-determination, which Pico insists on in face of all else. He attributes great and even seemingly unfathomable human achievements to human genius rather than external astrological influences. Thus, the Renaissance achievement in breaking the power of astrology (and Pico influences Kepler in particular on this path) was the result of the assertion of human freedom in Renaissance thought.

Albert O. Hirschman, Exit, Voice, and Loyalty: Chapter 2, Exit

How does exit lead firms to repair lapses in quality? When customers leave, the firm loses revenue. If this loss is large enough, the firm will try to correct the failure. If the loss is too large, however, it will be unable to act. So for exit to work optimally there must, paradoxically, be some inert customers -- ones who will not respond quickly to a deterioration in quality.

In a situation where all producers in an industry produce flawed goods, exit may actually create an equilibrium in which firms do not lose money from lapses in quality. Customers are effectively exchanged between the competing firms as they leave one and buy from another. Exit wastes effort (looking for competing goods) that would be directed more usefully through voice if there were no competition. Effectively conceals the systemic failure in quality.

This assessment (collusive competition obscures poor quality and frustrates improvement in conditions) can be applied to non-economic institutions. Examples: multiparty democracies, competing trade unions.

Albert O. Hirschman, Exit, Voice, and Loyalty: Chapter 1, Introduction and Doctrinal Background

Fundamental question: how do organizations recover from lapses in efficiency? Options for clients of lapsed organizations roughly break down into exit (withdraw from interaction) and voice (remain but apply pressure).


Key premise: perfect competition is a poor model for organizational behavior, because slack is pervasive in organizations, including businesses. Slack tends to increase entropically until corrected.


Exit: economics. Voice: politics.

Ernst Cassirer, The Individual and the Cosmos in Renaissance Philosophy: Chapter 2, "Cusanus and Italy"

Cusa's influence on Italian philosophy must be looked for not in academic philosophy, but in the thought of key practical men and artists, particularly Leonardo and Alberti. His key influence was not in doctrines but in goals and methods. Cusa propels a tendency in Renaissance thought which insists on giving priority to knowledge based on experience. Cusa creates the methodological basis for this direction in thought by portraying measurement as the foundation of knowledge.


With his mystical embrace of nature, St. Francis led the way to a revaluation of the sensible world. The key image which comes out of the resulting mystical tradition is that of the world as a book written by God. Campanella and other natural philosophers looked at this as a matter of sympathetic reaction to nature, so that things in the world are capable of being understood as signs of God as a result of an immediate feeling. Cusa and the scientific thinkers after him looked for truth in mathematically expressed systematic relationships in nature. The success of this scientific development depended on two innovations. First was the use of the vernacular as a means of expression (is this plausible? Descartes, Leibniz, and Newton wrote in Latin.) The second was the emphasis on technical applicability.

The Platonic philosophy of the Florentine academy represents something of a retrogression from Cusa. Cusa sought to reconcile philosophical and religious thought in a single system with neither having superiority. Florentine Platonists -- Ficino and Pico --gradually retreated to restoring primacy of theological interest. However, it still represented a continuation of the theme of the problem of knowledge that had been opened by Cusa.

Beauty central link between God, man, and world for Florentine Platonists. God created world with harmony and order. The mind of man is constituted to judge and know beauty.

Common ground with Cusa’s idea of man as a microcosm of the world. The soul, because it is able to know beauty in all of nature, is an intermediary element between god and the world for Ficino. And this is a dynamic intermediation for Ficino as much as Cusa. For both, man becomes an intermediary by acts of knowing. For Ficino, these acts have the specific character of giving form to nature and acting to improve upon the given form. (This notion was well suited to adoption by the artists of the Renaissance.)

Man is representative of all nature for Cusa, so his redemption implies the world’s redemption. Incarnation for Ficino redeems nature as well as men because it guarantees through man’s redemption that man always has the ability to give nature form.

For both Cusa and Ficino, work of the mind has no end. This infinite seeking for more perfect knowledge is not a defect, but what relates man's efforts to God.

For both Cusa and Ficino, Christ has a similar position -- as humanity in general (Cusa) or the idea of humanity (Ficino). Similar philosophy of history in relation to Christianity -- not seeing a sharp polarity between Christian truth and preceding error, but seeing all religions as having a share of legitimacy in that in some sense they worship God.

Ernst Cassirer, The Individual and the Cosmos in Renaissance Philosophy, Introduction and Chapter 1, "Nicholas Cusanus"

Introduction: Received view is that the philosophy of the the Renaissance did not share in the main intellectual current of the era, which emphasized the individual and distinctive. Rather, its main concerns were inherited theological ones. The burden of this work is to show that there is a unity of direction in Renaissance philosophy, and that this unity is in fact a "Hegelian focus" of the Renaissance as a whole.

Key doctrine of Neo-Platonic mysticism, which is absorbed into Scholasticism: graduated cosmos from the finite (the world of man) to the infinite (God). Cassirer claims that Cusanus does not deviate from this (which seems like a stronger claim than might be justified). His difference is in focusing on our ability to know God. He finds that the condition for knowledge as it was then conceived -- comparison or measurement -- does not exist for man with respect to God. He sees logic as based on concepts of comparison, which can only tell us about the finite. But there is not a finite series of steps to the absolute.

Feeling is not enough either. God must be known to be loved. So then, a new kind of knowing is required: visio intellectualis. A single act. Hold contrary ideas together. Takes mathematics as its launching point. (It's a bit hard to make anything of this from Cassirer's sketch.)

To understand Cusa, he must be seen as a key figure in the reception of Plato, or rather the recovery of the original doctrine of Plato: a sharp distinction between the sensible and the intelligible, with knowledge of this opposition being the key to all philosophy, all thought.

The medieval Scholastic tradition inherited by Cusa, on the other hand, drew mainly from Aristotle and Neo-Platonism. Aristotle rejected Platonic dualism -- his fundamental idea is that processes of development unify the sensible and the ideal. Neo-Platonism tried to bridge the difference between Plato and Aristotle; it reasserted transcendence, but then retracted it with its key concept of emanation (which is adapted from development) -- that the absolute overflows and thus provides form to matter.

Cusa returns to the fundamental Platonic concepts of separation and participation. On the one had, no series of steps based on what is empirically given can lead us to what he calls the Maximum (This truth constitutes knowing ignorance). In fact, the process of reasoning through comparison can never reach any finality. Nevertheless, this process participates in the ideal in that it seeks determinateness, which is the characteristic of what is ideal. So man can at least legitimately aim to make empirical knowledge ever more precise (This is ignorant knowing).


Aristotelean-Scholastic cosmology: a graded order of four changeable earthly elements and an immutable substance of the stars (whose only change is perfect movement). Cusa rejects any ordering of elements because he does not accept that anything in the world can be closer to the ideal than anything else; instead, all bodies are composed of mixtures of elements. Nor does Cusa accept the possibility of perfect movement for anything in creation, which is always marked by imprecision. This leads Cusa to his central cosmological views -- the earth is in motion, and there is no central unmoving point in the universe (there can only be a metaphysical center -- God -- not a physical one).


Each thing in the universe has its own infinitely complex motion centered on itself. Souls have an analogous individuality. This infinite and irreducible individuality is in both cases the mark of the universal. Individuality is not a limitation; it has positive value. Universal order consists in this infinite variety; so existence participates in the ideal through having infinite individuality. From this, Cusa assigns a positive value even to the diversity of religious rites.


Image of picture that seems to look at observers in every direction -- symbol of god's relationship to individuality. Illustrates visio intellectualis -- intellectual vision -- comprised of unified totality of individual relationships to God.

Incarnation seen not as a temporal event, but as something always happening in very soul -- view adopted from German mysticism, devotio moderna.

Sources of Cusa's thought: devotio moderna, Nominalism (via moderna) and Italian Renaissance's recovery of antiquity. Cusa incorporates these into a realization of the individualism characteristic of the age within religion and philosophy. God can only be grasped through the limitation to an individual view; the truth about God is the totality of views, empirical multiplicity.

Cusa's thought develops from emphasis on Platonic concept of chorismos to that of methexis.

37: Cassirer attributes common cosmological views to Cusa and Bruno. In this point in particular it is clear how much Blumenberg's concluding chapters of The Legitimacy of the Modern Age respond to Cassirer. Blumenberg seems to tend to take for granted Cusa's endorsement of multiplicity upon which Cassirer lavishes attention -- his focus is to distinguish the function of this in Cusa and Bruno -- this is the point of taking such care as well to argue that Bruno was not persecuted for these same doctrines, but for the rejection of the Incarnation which was the systematic corollary of infinite multiplicity for Bruno.

For Cusa, the Incarnation is a systematic requirement. Even to understand that we cannot know God implies a relation that must be mediated by something. This something is Christ, as the general self, the universal content, of humanity.

Cusa sees man as a microcosm of nature -- in this sense, man includes all of nature in himself. Necessitates a break from the medieval notion of redemption as liberation from nature. Instead, all of nature is redeemed with and through man.

Knowledge for Cusa is not a reproduction of ideas, but a creative act of an individual mind, an unfolding, a movement along a chain of ideas.Space and time -- or at least the ability to measure and understand them -- are produced by the mind. Positive evaluation of man's embedding in time, his historical nature. Man realizes his particular nature within time, and in so doing reflects God's nature.

Human beings particular creative function is to give, create, attribute value to things. It is only through judgment of a human intellect that anything has value. Positive function of sensible world -- instigator and material of creative human intellectual activity.

Hans Blumenberg, The Legitimacy of the Modern Age: Part IV, Chapter 3, "The Nolan: The World as God's Self-Exhaustion"

Bruno's fundamental point of conflict with the church: the Incarnation. To be an adequate expression of God, the world must be infinite. There can be nothing held back that could be added later to fulfill or redeem the world. Moreover, the infinite world has no privileged center which could be the scene for such a redemption. Nor can there be a privileged time at which such a singular event can break in.

However, Bruno doesn't have the uniformly infinite conception of time that he has of space. He sees time, or at least the realization of reason in time, as cyclical. This falls short of making a place for his own liberatory pretensions, much less of providing for modernity's self-understanding of the epochal transition at its birth.

Bruno is not consistent in this view of reason in history, however. He's sees the ability to even arrive at some astronomical knowledge, for instance, as dependent on long durations of observation -- of time in which a tradition of observation is carried out, and so reveals otherwise hidden astral motion. This approaches modern conception of a collective subject in scientific inquiry. Bruno associates this cumulative aspect of inquiry with the metaphor of the ages of man -- our era is already an old one because it draws on all that has come before.

Bruno's reception of Cusa -- behind borrowed forms and means of expression, there is a different systematic logic. Cusa is asserting plurality against a levelled-off Aristotelian tradition -- recovering voices like Epicurus and Protagoras and even admitting the perspectives of other religions. Bruno puts forth criticism of both ancient and Christian religion using the criterion of morality.

(Isn't this picture of shared content but different systematic logic the opposite of Blumenberg's general thesis about the epochal transition -- that there was a shared structure of questions for which a different content of answers was provided?)

Cusa is preoccupied with the threat of theological voluntarism and absolutism to the assurance of stability in the world. Bruno resolves this by taking the world as the exhaustion of God's possibilities.

561: "The problem with which the Cusan had struggled and with which every attempt to come to terms with the late medieval crisis had to deal -- stabilizing the world in the face of its being put into question by theological absolutism -- now is no longer dealt with by means of a relation of image to original, but rather by means of a congruence between divinity and worldliness."


Bruno directly contradicts the view of creation developed and refined in medieval thought -- that creation is God's restriction to a single possibility. This finds a way out of the late-medieval crisis of theological voluntarism and the arbitrariness of creation.

Creation for Bruno is boundless, and contains an infinite number of worlds; all possibilities are realized in it. There is not room in this infinite creation for a supplement in the form of the Incarnation, as there was in Nicholas of Cusa's world whose potential had not yet been fully realized (although this aspect of not being fully realized is only apparent, because time, which provides the gap between creation and completion is an artifact of the human spirit).

(In the course of this comparison (565) Blumenberg recognizes that in this case the epochal transition is revealed in a common set of assertions for which different systematic sets of questions are provided.)

Bruno's rejection of the idea of divine 'personhood' is related to the infinity of the world as well. Nicholas retains divine personhood, but must also retain a finite world as the locus which the (singular) begotten second person completes. For Bruno, nothing that contradicts simplicity is divine. So the medieval attribution of personality to God -- originating in Augustine -- cannot stand. There is no divine self-consciousness, no will. This means God does not will creation and choose what to create; rather, creation is a manifestation of God's nature with nothing hidden or held back. So everything possible must exist, which means the world is infinite and uncentered.

For Bruno, these qualities or the world apply not just to space but also to time. It is a real infinite dimension in which change is always occurring, and thus in which infinite possibilities can come to exist. The reality of time makes it possible for the world to be the infinite correlate -- the immanence -- of the divinity.

The reality of time anchors the fundamental motion of everything in the world, in which only the whole is at rest. This vision of an infinite world with everything in motion within it coordinates Parmenides and a radicalized Copernicanism. There is ultimate uniformity of the world; everything is in motion and changing without any privileged center of that movement.

Nicholas - lack of proportion between creation and divine nature requires the Incarnation to bridge the gap for human salvation. Bruno - lack of proportion between human and divine nature precludes the Incarnation, but God can be immanent in nature because it is infinite, and hence in proportion to Him.

Bruno's Copernicanism challenges an essential metaphysical premise of the medieval scholastic system -- that movement is transmitted from the outer heavens to bodies on the motionless earth. Instead, the earth is already in motion, and the apparent motion of the heavens is really a result of the earth's own motion. So there is no place for astral determination of earthly action.

Even Aristotle's conception of weight, which is supposed to show the affinity of bodies for rest in their proper place, is relativized to a plurality of worlds and turned to the purpose of serving a theory of the internal motion of those worlds.

Bruno breaks from Aristotle's teleological conception of motion -- movement from potential to reality -- to embrace a cyclical view -- potential to real and back to potential to free up space for other actualizations. Motion is fundamentally circular or cyclical, but not perfectly so, since it is infinitely elaborated and complex. But here he transforms Cusa's doctrine of imprecision -- in the absence of unfulfilled teleology, infinite elaboration is no longer a mark of the unbridgeable difference between the actual and transcendent, but rather of the realization of God in the world.

In contrast with Plato and Aristotle, where movement is measured against an absolute and finitely periodic time defined by diurnal motion, time is infinite and formless and movement is seen as the necessary condition for the measurement of (relative) time.

Bruno is akin to Leibniz in seeing worldly bodies having the origin of their motion within themselves, and seeing apparent causal relations as mere synchronicity of independent motion. But Leibniz rejects the reality of infinite space and time and the principle of indifference implicit

in it to preserve the idea of a purposed creation and a personal relation to God -- in this sense he marks a regression from Bruno.

Form for Bruno not external to matter, but produced from it. But matter never has a final form, a destiny; ceaselessly throwing off forms and taking new ones. Man has no special nature, but simply an intensified ability to go beyond nature, to create new forms. This limitless ability to create anew through work -- which is an infinite process not completed in any individual -- makes man like God. Contrast to Cusa, for whom being like God is a definite ideal which is ever more closely approached -- here the infinite process itself of taking man away from animal nature is what makes man like God.

593: "The great symmetry of man becoming God and God becoming man, which the Cusan had set up against the conflict that was breaking out between the medieval consciousness of God and the new consciousness of self, had been destroyed by the third element of the system, the no longer limited world, which Nicholas himself had introduced, with caution, to balance the transcendent infinity."

Blumenberg concludes with an analysis of the conflicting models of pagan metamorphosis and Christian Incarnation. Stories of metamorphosis were prolific, the transition from God to worldly was portrayed as easy and common, but this was also received by the philosophical critique of myth as evidence of deceit, of the immorality of the Gods. Incarnation was exceptional, singular, and it was above all important to remove suspicion of being simply another myth, to guarantee its reality. This guarantee provided a privileged status for man as the motive of the Incarnation. But nominalism removed this privilege by dissolving any claim of human entitlement to the Incarnation, making it a pure act of grace. In this context, Bruno's reassertion of the model of metamorphosis provided a new guarantee, but only of the world, not of man's privileged place in it.

Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson, Off Center: "Conclusion: Meeting the Challenge"

Steps for restoring a balance of political power

1) rebuild the breadth of labor unions -- but this will have to be done largely after balance is achieved rather than as a prerequisite. It is impossible to pass the new laws and issue the regulations needed for a labor revival while Republican extremists are in control.
2) Use the internet to organize opposition. Fundraising, e-mail lists, blogs. Powerful and flexible tool for coordination.

Republican corruption and overreach have created an opening for restoration of political balance.
Proposals
1) Remove barriers to increased voter turnout.
a) Reform voter registration: implement same-day registration; get rid of requirement to re-register after moving; restore voting rights for ex-felons
b) Make election day a national holiday

2) Increase the proportion of competitive elections
a) Put redistricting in the hands of non-partisan panels
b) Split state electoral votes by district as well as state (neither this or the preceding should be done only in Democratic states, however -- that would be "unilateral disarmament")
c) Create pure open primaries with top two vote-getters advancing to general election
d) Require free TV and radio airtime for federal candidates
e) Take constituent service out of the hands of Congressmen and have it performed by non-partisan ombudsmen (strongly disagree with this: the vested interest of politicians in reelection gives them a stronger incentive to perform constituent service well, and the incumbency advantage this provides is bearable).

3) Increase transparency and accountability
a) Restore the Fairness Doctrine
b) Start an American tradition of Question Time for the President before Congress
c) Provide a simple yearly prospectus of government spending every year (perhaps with tax returns)
d) Restrict use of closed rules in the House and make sure that existing rules for conference committees can only be waived with a two-thirds vote.

Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson, Off Center: Chapter 6, "The Center Does Not Hold"

Political scientists and pundits generally expect centrists to hold sway. This has not happened because the institutional moderating forces have not been as effective as expected.

1) voters -- not only are voters poorly informed, but this ignorance is not random. Republicans strive to make sure voter ignorance is tilted in their favor, which has diluted the effectiveness of voters without strong ideological affiliations as a moderating influence.

2) opposition -- the Democrats are simply not as unified and organized as the Republicans. Senior committee members more autonomous. Campaign funding often depends on special interests with an agenda that cuts against liberal policy. Moderates vulnerable to Republican framing. Lack of institutional control means there is little ability to reward loyalists, while Republicans can reward those who stray. Disproportionate significance of Republican-leaning small states in Senate apportionment creates a large segment of vulnerable Democratic Senators who are especially hard to keep in line.

3) media -- decreasingly effective in exposing the actual effects of Republican policies because of a) focus on entertainment over substance, b) "he-said she-said" model of objectivity, and c) herd mentality in deciding what issues are worth covering. The parallel right-wing media universe also plays an important part in distorting coverage.

4) Republican moderates -- intimidated and bought off.

Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson, Off Center: Chapter 5, "The Republican Machine"

New Republican power brokers (Norquist, DeLay, Rove) are a key to the direction of American politics.Two key facts: (1) their politics is extreme; (2) their power is not necessarily a function of official positions.

The new power brokers have created the high degree of centralization and coordination in conservative politics. From their role as middlemen between activists, politicians, and lobbyists,they impose discipline on all of them to foster a unified (and extreme) agenda. They control the access of interest groups and lobbyists to politicans and legislation, and they also control the access of politicians to campaign money and leadership posts. They determine how much apparent independence supposedly moderate Republicans can show in order to strengthen their electoral prospects.

The coordination makes possible several kinds of "backlash insurance" to protect vulnerable incumbents from the consequences of supporting an unpopular far-right policies.
1) Agenda control - control what comes up for debate in Congress, keep popular and more centrist or liberal issues from getting a hearing, use unified public relations campaign to frame how the issues are presented in the media.
2) procedural manipulation - protect Republicans from unpopular votes on bills by using legislative rules. In the House, Republicans use a closed debate rule to quash moderate of liberal amendments to bills. This can't be done in the Senate,but conference committees are abused in a way that makes the original Senate bill irrelevant, so that Senators can safely vote for popular amendments that will be stricken from the final law.
3) Policy distortion - design legislation so that relatively trivial but popular aspects are most evident (e.g., front-loading middle-class tax cuts) while more significant and very unpopular right-wing measures are obscured (e.g., phase-ins and sunsets for tax cuts that mostly affect the very rich to hide their true extent).
4) Throw lots of money behind incumbents who are still at risk despite other measures.

Hans Blumenberg, The Legitimacy of the Modern Age: Part 4, Chapter 2, "The Cusan: The World as God's Self-Restriction"

Blumenberg's interpretive approach to Cusa: his work can only be understood as an attempt to save the (intellectual order of the) Middle Ages. He must be seen as having grasped the instability of the medieval unity of God, man, and world. The unprecedented systematic unity of his thought must be seen as an attempt to conserve that unity.

The systematic tension in medieval theology: the world has an order and rationality which is guaranteed by God; but God's unfathomability to rational inquiry becomes an ever more central theme.

Cusa's thought intensifies the tendency towards divine transcendence while also creating a path for man and the world to be seen as moving towards transcendence. He rejects, as does Nominalism, the Aristotelean binding of concept to originating object, seeing concepts as having an independent existence, but in addition he sees the human agent as having a creative role in shaping the order of concepts to understand reality. He rejects Aristotelean distinctions between orders of objects with different degrees of intelligibility.

Cusa's quest to save the Middle Ages fails, and must fail -- this necessity is the key point to be explicated.

Background to Cusa's thought: close relation of emphasis on divine transcendence and skepticism about all knowledge.

Medieval concept of transcendence: Neoplatonic and biblical. Neoplatonic transcendence is at least figuratively spatial, as something not part of a finite cosmos; biblical transcendence is temporal, related to a process which will come to an end.

Cusa's 'method' of docta ignorantia [learned ignorance] acknowledges that man does not have transcendent knowledge, but aims to understand the nature of this ignorance. Turns attention to man's process of pursuing knowledge. Construction of limit concepts for knowledge.

Idea of man being made in the image of God is the key that binds Cusa's theology and anthropology. Notions of complicatio and explicatio [folding together and unfolding] perform a similar function in binding his cosmology and theology.

Definition of God as the Not-Other (rather than the absolutely Other) provides a guarantee of stability for the world. Not-otherness as the metaphysical linchpin. (All beings are defined by God to be not other than what they are, and they also follow the divine principle by begetting only what is similar to them.)

Device of coincidentia oppositorum [coincidence of opposites]: use of logical antitheses to find a limit-point where language must be suspended on the path to transcendence -- but this is not just a resignation, but a procedure of testing different constructions tending toward transcendence (like the mathematical model of the circle whose radius is perpetually doubled). The specifically mathematical illustrations are called symbolic investigations (symbolice investigare) by Cusa. These constructions can also be reversed, providing a path from transcendence to immanence.

Function of language as pointing a path to transcendence rather than designating an object.

Knowledge of ignorance as a positive understanding of a predicament rather than mere resignation; not just recognizing that knowledge is incomplete and imprecise at any point, but taking stock of what is unknown as a preliminary step to pursuing further knowledge. Scholasticism (motivated by the eschatological reservation, God's withholding of himself, which required a limit) viewed knowledge as already completed; Cusa's method is a challenge to this static conception. Cusa's opponent Wenck saw the Cusan depiction of the pursuit of knowledge as futile because it had no definite end.

Contrasting deployment of medieval metaphor of the trace or vestige. For Wenck, this is akin to an image; it's relationship is one of analogy to the truth; there is a static proportionality between the trace and the truth (or God). For Cusa, the trace is a signal of the path to be pursued in seeking knowledge.

Cusa rejects medieval distinction of knowledge by concept and knowledge by image, of literal and figurative expression. For him both image and concept are provisional means to orient and direct thought toward a knowledge which is never fully realized.

Scholastic system relied on double-truth -- reason about what could be known with certainty and faith about what was theologically reserved -- and dogmatically asserted their agreement. Cusa fills in the space between these with the notion of conjecture.

501: "Here it turns out that faith and conjecture, fides and coniectura, are functionally equivalent; they provide reason with the presuppositions that it lacks,proceeding from which it can arrive at items of knowledge within the total system. The Cusan saw that the threat to the scholastic architecture posed by the cynicism of the 'double-truth' theory could not be removed from the world by obstinately repeating the apodictic assertion of the necessary agreement between reason and revelation but more likely by making visible a continuum of shadings, applications, projections."

Faith is like conjecture for Cusa in that it is assumed hypothetically in order to be proven by experience.

Function of faith as offering opportunity for reason to establish truth should be seen as a response to the crisis of certainty of the late Middle Ages.

Contrary to some interpretations, Cusa was not an astronomical reformer. His interest in the difficulties of contemporary astronomy was in the service of his principle of imprecision. (Though the necessity of confronting the fact of existing imprecision was a spur to later astronomical reform.) Similarly, Cusa insisted on the rotation of the earth not as a response to any astronomical problem but to vindicate his cosmology, which denied any fundamental difference between the earth and heavenly bodies.

Cusa rejects both the finite world of the Aristotelean-medieval tradition and the arbitrary world of nominalism. The world is a creation adequate to the Creator; it unfolds the original unity in indefinite time and space -- unfolding (explicatio), and hence movement, is essential to the world.

Cusa displaces the earth from the cosmological center to create space for God as the metaphysical center from which everything else emanates. Furthermore, God's relation to the earth is not mediated through other levels of creation as in the Aristotelean-medieval tradition -- for there are no levels of creation for Cusa, God's relation to all of creation is immediate.

For Cusa, man lacks the ability to grasp the entire order of the world directly (in a subject-object relationship), but, because of the imaginative powers he possesses as one made in the image of God, he is able to conceptually reproduce the path of creation.

Cusan notion of transcendence -- not just external, not just seeing the world, from the point of view of the infinite, as vanishing into a single point, but also internal, seeing everything as capable of indefinitely greater proximity, of being indefinitely better understood.

518: "But what happened to man while the cosmos grew into the infinite with its Author? The step in metaphysical speculation by which finitude was suspended had as its consequence not only that from then on the world was, as it were, 'on the point of' itself becoming divine, but also that it became -- instead of a realm of experience capable of completion and thought to have been largely completed -- a field of data that are in principle always surpassable, an inexhaustible store of objects of knowledge."

Cusa's theology has God creating the world without reservation -- i.e., having no special place and provision for man. Man's dignity comes not from his central location in the world, or of it having a teleology directed at him, but in his capacity to create the world again in thought.

Tension in medieval thought between uniqueness of the individual and creation as expression of finite set of forms -- brought into the open if not resolved by Cusa.

Cusa fails to resolve medieval tension between (Scholastic) rationalism and (Nominalist) voluntarism. Early Cusa of Docta ignorantia saw God creating a world that was as great as possible. Later Cusa retreats to voluntarism -- what is created is no better than any other possibility. Cusa still tries to resolve the tension in De possest by arguing that possibility is much part of the original creation as actuality -- but this doesn't reduce the apparent arbitrariness of actuality for man.

Providence seen as God's unfolding (explicatio) of all possibilities, bringing unrealized possibilities into equal status with realized ones, doesn't confer on the world greater reliability or intelligibility (as providence had originally been intended to do). Humanity as the unfolding of infinite different possibilities for man does not confer on any individual the dignity of having been necessary.

Individuality is secured for Cusa (and similarly for Pico della Mirandola) by man's freedom, specifically his freedom to orient and shape himself.

Knowing as projective rather than receptive. Knowing is not reflecting each object in the world into its appropriate concept. As God's creation of the world is a systematic unfolding of possibilities, knowing is constructing a system of conjectures that in effect recreates the world in thought. It is man's ability to construct a potentially limitless system of thought parallel to the world system that makes him possess the character of being in the image of God.

528: "The isolation of man's quasi-divinity was a detachment of the self-comparison to God from its foundation in the relation of image to original, a reverse translation from the quality of a distinct substance into marks of accomplishment. The adoption of ancient formulas could not be the motive operating in this process because divinity for the ancient world meant primarily not at all omnipotence and omniscience but rather immortality and self-sufficiency, in other words, a syndrome of characteristics that does not manifest itself in actions."

Medieval thought is faced with a burden of contingency in understanding why any particular object in the world should exist. For Cusa, the system of thought that man creates still needs to reflect the system that God created and not any other system, so this really doesn't overcome the burden of contingency, but transfers it to the original ground from which the system is unfolded.

Man as creator -- defining feature. Man's creativity has its highest and characteristic form when the creation is an invention of man's mind rather than the imitation of a model -- language, syllogism, invention of games, geometry (although Cusa sometimes sees this as a lesser, imitative, form of creation).

Man's autonomy -- metaphor of a picture that looks at each of its observers individually -- corresponds to model of world with no center, no privileged location -- Cusa launches from this metaphor into a vision of relationship between God and man -- that God liberates man to follow his own path. Contrast with both Nominalism, which saw man as having no freedom to secure salvation, and the Stoicizing withdrawal from question of salvation and assertion of autonomous control of nature. Attempt to give autonomy a theonomic origin.

Cusa's Christology makes the Incarnation a necessary consequence of the Creation -- creation cannot reach its maximum perfection without the realization of the maximum perfection of human nature -- and this is possible only through God's self-restriction in the Incarnation of Christ.

Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson, Off Center: Chapter 4, "The Race to the Base"

Three sources of radicalization in the Congressional Republican caucus: replacement of Southern Democrats, replacement of Republicans by more conservative Republicans, tendency for Republican members of Congress to grow more conservative the longer they are in office.


Party leaders have actively sought to promote policies that satisfy the conservative base, and they have organized the led and relied on the base to weed out or bring into line Republican politicians who are too moderate.


Increasing political influence of the wealthy. Turnout becoming more heavily tilted to the most well off. Money is becoming a much more important factor in political races as campaigns become more expensive, and this, of course, is an even bigger boost to the influence of the wealthy. Trade unions and civic groups once provided an organizational counterweight for the less well-off, but they have largely decayed.

Congressional and Senatorial seats have increasingly become safe for one party or the other -- most often, Republicans. Some of this is due to historical trends in party affiliation (like the movement of the South to Republicans). But on the district level, a great deal of it is the result of partisan redistricting. This means that Republican incumbents generally have more to fear from primary challenges than general elections opponents.

Activist groups representing base constituencies within the GOP coalition increasingly drive turnout. They also are playing a larger role in recruiting and vetting candidates.

Political parties are actually becoming a more important factor in candidate success, largely because they have become a centralized source of money. Money from Republican Party leaders' PACs are an especially important factor in driving primary and general election success of right-wing candidates.

Hans Blumenberg, The Legitimacy of the Modern Age: Part 4, Chapter 1, "The Epochs of the Concept of an Epoch"

We begin with an inquiry into the change in the use of the term "epoch" in Goethe's lifetime -- a change from signifying an event to signifying a period of time. This philological exercise leads into something like a dialectic of historical reason. Periodization has important functions in historical thinking. It captures real differences in historical context and thus inoculates against anachronisms that would issue from the neglect of these qualitative differences. It also responds to a need to see history as something responsive to individual intervention. But historical research dissolves any particular boundary chosen to differentiate epochs. It finds continuities or precedents for any any epochal event or figure.

Thus it is with the epochal transition from the middle ages to the modern ages. Historicism blurred the transition and pushed it back in time with ever accumulating discoveries of new debts and antecedents.

Restatement of Blumenberg's conception of epochal transition as a reoccupation of positions, riffing from Kant's first analogy of experience. Changes of epoch are only possible to experience or understand at all because something -- namely, a frame of systematic requirements -- stays in place across the divide.

466: "Here we are not dealing with the classical constants of philosophical anthropology, still less with the 'eternal truths' of metaphysics. The term 'substance' was to be avoided in this context because every type of historical substantialism such as is involved in, for instance, the theorem of secularization -- relates, precisely, to the contents, which are shown in the process of 'reoccupation' to be incapable of this very permanence. It is enough that the reference frame conditions have greater inertia for consciousness than do the contents associated with them, that is, that the questions are relatively constant in comparison to the answers."

466-467: "During the phases in which the function of this frame of reference is latent -- in the periods, that is, that we assign to the epochs as their 'classic' formations -- we must expect, above all, gains by extension and losses by shrinkage; in the new reorganization, certain questions are no longer posed, and the answers that were once provided for them have the appearance of pure dogma, of fanciful redundancy."

The epochal transition from middle ages to modernity didn't occur at a single point in time, but there was a threshold which can be discerned by examining two figures on opposite sides of it: Nicholas of Cusa and Giordano Bruno.

470: "[Nicholas of Cusa and Bruno] can only be brought into confrontation to the extent that they allow us to recognize the congruent position frames for their reality, to the extent that they pose homologous questions to which their answers, in spite of their mutual opposition, still relate. Only this differential analysis makes visible what it is that separates the positions on either side of the epochal threshold; it discloses what must have happened in order to force their incompatibility."

The self-understanding of the modern age as a new foundation created by an act of will creates a demand for a single event or figure which marks the transition from the middle ages. But this cannot be provided, because they were intermeshed; they, so to speak, cohabited for some time.

In any case, the effort to find a point that represents a sharp break between a fully rational present age and a not fully rational predecessor creates a tension in present's self-conception: in making reason contingent, it brings into question whether modernity, too, might be found wanting in rationality. (This seems like an issue to me whether or not the break is sharp.) There is reassurance, however, in that modern epochal system is more resilient than its medieval predecessor. The strength of the medieval system was that it did not rely on confirmation from the life-world. But this in its turn increased the pressure on its internal coherence. The strength of the modern system is its unceasing drive for confirmation from the life-world, and the flexibility which result form this orientation. The corresponding weakness is the lack of clarity in what the totality of the system amounts to, and the uncertainty about whether it was susceptible to alteration by deliberate action.

Discusses the 'seriousness that is always new' as a marker of epochal thresholds (mythical to classical, classical to medieval, and medieval to modern). This brings us to Nicholas of Cusa, whose thought is marked by a free and easy play with the medieval system, although also a concern for its decline. (I think Blumenberg is suggesting that this really marks Nicholas as a pre-epochal figure). This in turn leads into consideration of the significance of the interest in Nicholas as a candidate for the epochal figure of modernity. Blumenberg attributes this interest to a concern for the perceived destructive consequences of modernity, and the sense that this destructiveness issues from an illegitimately radical break with what came before it. The consequent desire to retrieve the legitimacy of the modern age by finding a liminal figure who does not share the radical consciousness of the traditional epochal figures finds a congenial candidate in Nicholas.

Blumenberg rejects the idea of there being an epochal figure or event at all.

477: "It is true that we must proceed from the assumption that man makes history -- who else should make it for him? -- but what we can discover in history is not identical with what has been 'made' to occur at any given time. For in relation to actions that could have 'made history' -- whether of the discredited 'great men' or, more recently, of the masses that are defined by their economic conditions -- the element of interference always supervenes. In the realm of ideas, this has brought historians to the resigned confirmation of the 'misunderstandings' that dominate histories of the reception of ideas and that can occasionally be described as 'fruitful.' The principle that man makes history certainly does not mean that was is made depends solely on the intentions and the percepts as a result of which and according to which it was produced."

(Isn't Marx more succinct? "Men make history, but they do not make it just as they please.")

478: "Man does indeed make history, but he does not make epochs. This is a deduction not from the admirable principle that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, but more nearly from the reverse, that it is less than them; that is to say, it is not the equivalent of action. Action takes place within the horizon of the historically possible, but its effect is not the arbitrarily, accidentally, 'totally other,' either. The effect also occurs in a context of the reciprocal interaction of synchronicity and nonsynchronicity, of integrative and destructive interdependence. An epoch is the sum total of all the interferences between actions and what they 'make.'"

Epochal threshold discerned by 'interpolating' between Nicholas of Cusa and Giordano Bruno.

Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson, Off Center: Chapter 3, "New Rules for Radicals"

Six rules that explain how Republicans make major changes in public policy with very small majorities despite widepsread public opposition.

1. Control the agenda.
Control of both houses of Congress means being able to decide which measures are even considered. This can mean either pushing legislation which doesn't have broad public backing at all (Social Security privatization) or preventing more popular alternatives or amendments from being considered (censure vs. impeachment for Clinton, many amendments to the bankruptcy bill, conservation vs. energy company subsidies).

2. Control the content of legislation.
The example used is Medicare Plan B (prescription drug coverage), in which a more popular Senate plan was frozen out of a final vote by stacking the reconciliation committee. It's debatable how different this is from the first rule.

3. Make changes surreptitiously.
Many goals can be achieved either in legislation that draws little attention or by even less conspicuous executive orders. Examples: workplace safety deregulation (executive action and little noticed Congressional action), removing overtime pay protections (executive action with Congressional response squelched by agenda control), and environmental deregulation (executive action).

4. Stall needed changes or reauthorizations.
Preventing renewal of assault weapons ban. Stonewalling an update of the minimum wage. Stifling expansion of public health care initiatives.

5. "Starve the beast:" tax cuts now to force spending cuts later

6. Tilt the playing field -- change the rules of political competition to favor Republicans.
Mid-term redistricting. Threats to nullify Senate filibuster by parliamentary procedure.

These methods don't necessarily work with issues that are highly publicized or when opposition is well-organized.

Barack Obama, Dreams from My Father

The book is framed as a search for authenticity and a sense of belonging. Perhaps surprisingly, the intellectual aspect of this gets little attention. I have no real sense of what he studied, or what he took from that. His search is in large part a coming to terms with what it means to be black in America. But it is foremost seeking an understanding of what his family, and particularly his father and his father's side of the family, mean for him.

Obama's brothers and sisters

from his mother and her Indonesian second husband Lolo: Maya

from his father and his Kenyan first wife Kezia: Roy (Abongo), Auma, Abo, Bernard

from his father and his American third wife Ruth: Mark, David (who died in motorcycle accident)

from his father and a girlfriend: George


Auma - key link to Obama's family in Kenya and a remarkable story of achievement in her own right, excelling enough as a student in Kenya to go on to study lingiuistics in Germany


Lolo Soetero - tragic figure, a man whose idealism is squeezed out of him by the post-Suharto crackdown on intellectuals trained abroad


Ruth - the one unsympathetic figure from the family

Barack Obama, Dreams from My Father

433: "I asked her why she shought black Americans were prone to disappointment when they visited Africa. She shook her head and smiled. 'Because they come here looking for the authentic,' she said. 'That is bound to disappoint a person. Look at this meal we are eating. Many people will tell you that the Luo are a fish-eating people. But that was not true for all Luo. Only those who lived by the lake. And even for those Luo, it was not always true. Before they settled around the lake, they were pastoralists, like the Masai. Now, if you and your sister behave yourself and eat a proper share of this food, I will offer you tea. Kenyans are very boastful about the quality of their tea, you notice. But of course we got this habit from the English. Our ancestors did not drink such a thing. Then there's the spices we used to cook this fish. They originally came from India, or Indonesia. So even in this simple mealyou will find it very difficult to be authentic -- although the meal is certainly African.'

Rukia rolled a ball of ugali in her hand and dipped it into her stew. 'You can hardly blame black Americans, of course, for wanting an unblemished past. After the cruelties they've suffered -- still suffer, from what I read in the newspapers. They're not unique in this desire. The European wants the same thing. The Germans, The English ... they all claim Athens and Rome as their own, when, in fact, their ancestors helped destroy classical culture. But that happened so long ago, so their task is easier."

Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson, Off Center: Chapter 2, "Partying with the 'People's Money'"

The American public did not favor the Bush tax cuts over increased social spending or even deficit reduction. Nor did Americans favor the skewed distribution of those tax cuts over more egalitarian alternatives. The Republicans were aware that they were pursuing a policy without public support. So they disguised the size of the cuts with phase-ins (especially at the top end) and sunsets. They also left the alternative minimum tax in place to give them more apparent room for cuts: they realized that its increasing bite on the middle class would compel a fix, but by that time the cuts would already be in place. The sunsets were also designed to create an artificial crisis of sudden, apparent tax increases several years later; the idea is that this will create pressure to make the cuts permanent at that time.

They also stretched legislative norms to maneuver the cuts through Congress. They used their control of the agenda in the House to evade consideration of budgetary alternatives and consequences. And they passed the cuts through the budget reconciliation process to circumvent a Senate filibuster.

Hans Blumenberg, The Legitimacy of the Modern Age: Part III, Chapter 11, "The Integration into Anthropology: Feuerbach and Freud"

With the triumph of theoretical curiosity, Blumenberg sees its field of objects expanding from nature to other realms.

The rise of a species of popular curiosity is introduced through anecdotes of the tribulations of Alexander von Humboldt.

Feuerbach -- fundamental conception is "knowledge drive" -- temporal rather than spatial conception of the unknown which man's curiosity seeks to uncover -- anticipation. Hyperbolic and exaggerated formulations serve the function of making knowledge possible. Theology as a hyperbolic anthropology. Immortality as displacement of the gaining of knowledge within history to a quasi-spatial state of perfection in which no further knowledge remains to be achieved.

Immortality as conceived of by the Enlightenment and German Classicism seeks to bridge the gap between what will be known by mankind and what can be known by an individual man. Feuerbach insists on retaining consciousness of the gap. For Feuerbach, individuals are only agents in the progress of knowledge, not the loci of its completion. Individuals sense the gap between what they know and what can be known and feel a drive to close it, even though this cannot be completely achieved.

For Feuerbach, man's knowledge drive is not concerned with things beyond human comprehension, it is concerned with what man can know but doesn't yet know.

Feuerbach uses story of Copernicus' desire to actually see Mercury to illustrate function of reason and knowledge as an anticipation of feeling and sense rather than as a completion of them.

Need as correlate of action and fulfillment for Feuerbach. Knowledge drive seeks to possess its object, at least imaginatively -- this is a specific form of the happiness drive, which seeks power and ownership. Happiness drive as the "drive of drives."

Freud - curiosity as redirection of fundamental libidinal impulse -- in example of Leonardo, both a sublimation and an obsessive regression from primary sublimation (of libido into artistic creation).

Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson, Off Center: Chapter 1, "Off Center"

There is greater political polarization almost entirely because the Republican Party has become more extreme at all levels: the base of party activists, the rank and file congressional membership, the presidency, and the top political bosses and consultants. There has not been a corresponding trend among Democratic Party activists and members of Congress. Democratic activists have not become particularly more liberal, and Democratic members of Congress only slightly so.

Nor is there a corresponding trend among the public at large. Polling shows that the public has grown neither more polarized nor more conservative. Furthermore, the polling data probably understates the gap between the increasingly radical Republican party and the electorate. This is because of the somewhat narrow range of issues polled and because of the ability of focused Republican political campaigns to shape opinion on a few issues.

Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson, Off Center: Introduction

Republicans have won recent elections by very narrow margins. Public opinion is evenly divided. Nevertheless, Republicans have succeeded in enacting an ideologically extreme agenda.

Traditional view is that the large proportion of politically moderate voters would weed out political extremists. But Republicans no longer fear the median voter, because voters are increasingly in the dark about the content of policies. Media coverage focuses on personalities, and the Republican Party controls the legislative agenda and designs its policies with the objective of concealing their real effect on the public. The policies are also designed to shape and restrict future policy choices by stealth. (The authors call these twin innovations "backlash insurance.") The winnowing of political hopefuls is increasingly in the hands of a small minority of rich contributors and highly organized ideological groups. Along with the rise of safe seats, this makes intraparty competition the main concern of many Republicans, thus driving them to more extremist politics. The Republican Party leadership has also successfully centralized authority within the party.

Hans Blumenberg, The Legitimacy of the Modern Age, Part III, Chapter 10, "Curiosity and the Claim to Happiness:Voltaire to Kant"

Descartes' objectivization of theoretical curiosity, turning it into an impersonal process, severs the link between the quest for knowledge and individual happiness. The search for knowledge takes on, for the individual (as Nietzsche was later to insist), the character of renunciation. Descartes still saw the process of inquiry itself as discovering the conditions for human happiness in the near future, since he envisioned the totality of knowledge as finite. But the relation becomes more problematic when, as in Voltaire, possible knowledge is taken to be unlimited: then knowledge can be seen as never providing a complete material basis for happiness, which in any case is primarily a matter of correct behavior rather than total knowledge.

Maupertuis was the exponent of an organized and aggressive curiosity. He conceived and organized research projects of vast scope. He envisioned curiosity driving not just the collecting and recording of unusual things and events, but also the creation of them. He also proselytized against limits to investigations, even urging experiments on human beings.

Maupertuis' cosmology, like Leibniz's, views the world as a continuum of beings. But for Maupertuis this order has been destroyed by losses and extinctions. Maupertuis theory of curiosity follows from this. If the continuum of beings still existed and was accessible, then knowledge of the nature of reality would be immediate and observational. Man's insatiable curiosity is the consequence of this lack of immediate accessibility of the order of beings (and also of the inaccessibility of all things in time because of man's finite existence).

For Rousseau, the conflict that Voltaire sees between man's happiness and his unlimited pretensions to knowledge simply does not exist in man's original state. He depicts a natural condition that is not afflicted by curiosity, where consciousness is so immediate that the level of knowledge required for curiosity does not exist. There is a mystery here about what could disturb this equilibrium and begin the spiral of curiosity and knowledge. In any case, it is a picture that lacks critical force because Rousseau acknowledges that the process of curiosity, once set in motion, is irreversible.

Rousseau's pragmatic view of truth -- taking off from Democritus' image of truth having taken up hiding in a well -- there are many paths to error, so the pursuit of truth is more likely to fail than succeed, and it is likely that the truth would not be well used in any case.


Hermann Reimarius gives positive value to truth's lack of perspicuousness. He holds that this encourages effort and work to make discovery, which is better for man's character. Similar s Hume, who sees the exertion involved in the pursuit of truth as productive of pleasure in its own right, more than any result from the pursuit.


Lessing, following this path, holds out ceaseless striving for truth rather than contemplation as the ideal of human fulfillment. Curiosity (along with ambition) is the stimulus for this striving, and thus premature revelation of truth to others, which stunts their curiosity, is an actual hindrance to fulfillment.

Lichtenberg sees man as adapted to asking and pursuing causal knowledge of nature, but unable to grasp ultimate nature either of the external world or himself. The value of the pursuit of knowledge lies in the discovery of this boundary and the use of this discovery to orient understanding to the things over which man can actually have power.

Kant takes the boundary or limit of reason as itself the pre-eminent object of reason. The appetite of reason takes it beyond the limit of what it is capable of knowing (this is 'passive,' which is to say uncritical, reason). Enlightenment consists in the self-imposition on reason of limits to its aspirations, to exclude objects that are outside its grasp. At the onset of his critical phase, Kant is optimistic about a fairly rapid triumph of public enlightenment. He comes to see this expectation as premature, and increasingly accommodates himself to a public regulation of reason.

Kant demolishes the Augustinean dichotomy between self-knowledge and theoretical curiosity. He sets the understanding of the bounds and conditions of human knowledge itself as the object of theoretical curiosity.