Nostalgia, Memory and Decline at the Dawn of Modern Political Thought A Dissertation Submitted ...

260 Pages·2008·0.91 MB·English

by  Brian Smith

Nostalgia, Memory and Decline at the Dawn of Modern Political Thought

A Dissertation
Submitted to the Faculty of the
Graduate School of Arts and Sciences
of Georgetown University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the
degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
in Government

By

Brian Andrew Smith, M.A.

Washington, D.C.
July 18, 2008
Copyright 2008 by Brian A. Smith
All Rights Reserved

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Nostalgia, Memory, and Decline at the Dawn of Modern Political Thought

Brian Andrew Smith, M.A.

Thesis Advisor: Patrick J. Deneen, Ph.D.

Abstract

This dissertation examines the relationship between our understanding of the past
and the idea of decline in modern political thought. I contend that the manner in which
we recall our history frames our horizon of political possibilities. Biblical and pagan
thought present two different but overlapping interpretations of the cosmos and time. In
their original form, each provides its adherents with definite limits to human existence
and erects boundaries to our ability to alter the foundations of political and social life. In
modernity each of these undergoes a profound transformation that alters man’s
perceptions of life and its meaning. Specifically, they foster two distinct but overlapping
modes of interpretation in memory and nostalgia. Using the writings of Rousseau, Burke,
Tocqueville, and Nietzsche, I seek to defend the importance of historical memory
because of the way it fosters political constraint—particularly amidst political and social
decline. Understanding the possibilities and dangers implicit within these ideas, we may
better realize the potential for maintaining free societies.
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Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the foundations and organizations that supported my studies
over the last five years. In addition to Georgetown University, these include the
Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, the Earhart Foundation, the Institute
for Humane Studies, the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, the Acton Institute, and most
recently, the Tocqueville Forum on the Roots of American Democracy.
In addition to my committee, Michael Brown, Michael Intriligator, Andrew
Murphy, Robert Purdy, Stephanie Purdy, Joe Reisert, and David Williams all provided
valuable comments at different stages of the process. As flawed as this work is, without
their suggestions and assistance, it would be far worse. My students over the last two
years and the members of the Tocqueville Forum reading group also helped me
enormously by serving as sounding boards for various interpretations, particularly of
Tocqueville and Nietzsche. Here I would like to especially thank Jeff Bolling, Randy
Drew, and Kyle Davis.
My friends – particularly Furman Daniel, Jackie Kerr, and Beth Mercurio –
constantly reminded me why I went to Georgetown in the first place.
Finally, I would not have made it through graduate school without the support of
my family.
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Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Decline and the Modes of Historical Thought in Modernity …………………………… 1

Chapter 2

Reclaiming Nature’s Voice: Rousseau’s Nostalgic Politics and the Idea of Decline …… 41

Chapter 3

Breaking Truth and Nature: Burke on Memory and Decline in Revolutionary Times ….. 86

Chapter 4

Recognizing Providence: Tocqueville on Equality, Memory, and Decline ……………… 135

Chapter 5

Estranged from the Present: Nietzsche and the Dream of Reenchantment ………………. 185

Conclusion: The Politics of Memory, Nostalgia, and Decline …………………………… 233

Bibliography …………………………………………………………………………….. 245

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Chapter 1
Decline and the Modes of Historical Thought in Modernity
We are, all, prophets about the past.
—John Lukacs1
Everyone needs his memories. They keep the wolf of insignificance from the door.
—Saul Bellow2
I. Introduction
This dissertation examines the relationship between our understanding of the past
and the idea of decline in the formation of modern political thought.3 Throughout the
work, I contend that the manner in which we recall or efface our history frames our
horizon of political possibilities. Biblical and pagan thought present two very different
interpretations of the cosmos and time. In their original forms, each mode of thinking
about time provides its adherents with a series of definite limits to human existence and
erects boundaries around man’s ability to alter the foundations of his political and social
life. In modernity each of these undergoes a profound transformation. This change often
leads people to either rely upon their historical memory to guide politics, or leads them
into remake their social life in light of their nostalgic longings.
While it would be too simple to starkly oppose either historical memory and
nostalgia, or the linear time of biblical teaching against the cyclical consciousness of the

1 John Lukacs, Historical Consciousness or the Remembered Past (New York: Harper and Row, 1968), p.
263
2 Saul Bellow, Mr. Sammler’s Planet (New York: Viking, 1970), p. 190
3 By decline, I simply mean the idea and perception that the vital core of society faces the danger of
destruction. Of course, many of the authors I cite over the course of this work understand their society’s
most important elements differently, and I note this in regards to each thinker.
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pagan world, I argue that because of biblical teaching’s emphasis on the importance of
linear time and restraining sense of historical memory, its inheritors can produce a more
limited sense of man’s natural capabilities. On the other hand, because the pagan vision
interprets the cosmos nostalgically, it opens the possibility of horrific abuses in pursuit of
an image of unrealizable perfection in politics. This image of past perfection leads
nostalgic men to think nothing in principle constrains us from radically altering the nature
of their communities.
In this work, I seek to defend the importance of a constrained sense of both
history and anthropology for maintaining a free political order, particularly amidst the
backdrop of political and social decline.4 I accomplish this by examining the lingering
echoes of ancient biblical and pagan time consciousness in the responses of Rousseau,
Burke, Tocqueville, and Nietzsche to the moral and political crises they perceived in their
societies. In their political teachings, each of these thinkers draws on concepts of
nostalgia or historical memory. I argue that we can only fully understand their political
philosophies in light of their particular visions of historical anthropology. In doing this, I
hope to clarify our understanding of the relationship between history, memory and
politics, particularly in moments of civilizational crisis. These relationships form the
grounding conditions that determine options a society might find possible, or even
thinkable at any given time.5

4 Here, I borrow the terminology of “constrained” and “unconstrained,” and change it somewhat from
Thomas Sowell, A Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggles (New York: Basic Books,
2007). Where Sowell simply refers to how notions of human nature affects politics, I expand this meaning
to include how we understand our broadest sense of historical possibility.
5 Here, I foreshadow Tocqueville’s sociology of knowledge. For him, social conditions dictate the ideas
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This chapter proceeds in five main parts. In the first, I briefly discuss my reasons
for studying decline and how this theme affects political thought and practice.
Specifically, I point to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as the critical period to
consider when reflecting upon the nature of modern thought about decline, and outline
my reasons for choosing the four thinkers who drive this dissertation. Next, I sketch the
two major but overlapping modes of time consciousness in biblical and pagan thought
and elaborate upon the link each bears to memory and nostalgia. In the fourth and fifth
sections, I turn to the psychological and social functions nostalgia and memory tend to
serve. There I begin to develop my argument that the constraint offered by historical
memory provides a better anthropological grounding for political life than that which
modern nostalgia presupposes. However, for now I turn to a simple question: why study
ideas of decline at all?
II. Responding to Decline
I would begin by observing that contemporary political theorists often obsess over
notions of progress or utopia and seldom discuss their counterparts in decline, nostalgia,
and cultural pessimism. I find this strange in light of the fact alongside their positive
teachings, many of the canonical thinkers in the history of political philosophy tell the
reader a story about their societies’ actual or impending failure. These visions of failure
frequently serve as a crucial backdrop to their conceptions of how we should understand

any society will easily accept. For one example, see Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, ed. J.P.
Mayer, trans. George Lawrence (New York: Harper, 1963), pp. 15-16. On the implications of this
sociology of knowledge, see Joshua Mitchell, The Fragility of Freedom (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1995), pp. 11-18.
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political life.6 More importantly, I would also note that when societies marshal their
intellectual resources to face profound crisis, they indicate far more clearly than they
would in moments of apparent repose those things which they truly value.
I do not wish to weigh in on whether or not our society currently faces the specter
of decline. If anything, this enquiry may show the ways in which every polity’s choices
determine on a daily basis whether it embraces or staves off political and social ruin.
Instead, I hope to shed light on some of our society’s reasons for thinking about the
subject in the ways it does. While perhaps all peoples live with confusion about their
current course, I would argue that our civilization seems particularly afflicted with self-
contradiction and doubt about its present course. Where intellectuals regularly bemoan
the failings of one aspect or another of our society and despite the failure of utopian
thought, America’s popular language remains that of progress, optimism, and quite often
a more permanent sort of hope.7 However, beneath the assumption of progress and
despite the optimistic tenor of most public speech, wide swaths of our popular media
exhibit a marked gloominess about the present moment. A cynic might claim they speak
this way merely because bad news sells, but this explanation seems rather simple.8
While some intellectuals seem to question whether or not our society really even
deserves saving, most of our prophets of dire economic crisis or the effects of

6 Indeed, one might add that many of the major thinkers of the 20th century attempted to tell a grand story
about the calamites that befell the world and provide a genealogy of their origin. At a minimum, think here
of Strauss, Arendt, Oakeshott, and Voegelin, among others.
7 Joshua Dienstag, Pessimism: Philosophy, Ethic, Spirit (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press,
2006), pp. ix-x
8 For an interesting recent analysis of many such media, see Eduardo Velasquez, A Consumer's Guide to
the Apocalypse: Why There is No Cultural War in America and Why We Will Perish Nonetheless
(Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2007).
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environmental degradation usually presuppose not the inevitability of decline, but rather
the hope we might arrest it. Other still betray a secret longing for a kind of cathartic ruin
that might portend social renewal.9 In later chapters, I will show the sense in which both
Rousseau and Nietzsche prove themselves exponents of such thoughts. For now, I merely
wish to identify that in recent years, many intellectuals seem to do their best to assert our
impending downfall and constantly deride the popular optimism of American culture.10
Within contemporary trends in the history of political thought, I would argue that
the idea of decline suffers from a relative neglect because many of the major grand
narratives in modern political theory fail to robustly engage the dilemmas within the
philosophy of history which decline suggests. Most political philosophy in the liberal or
progressive tradition actively eschews the very idea of unavoidable social decline and
decadence. The future-orientation of these theories rules out the possibility of irreversible
decline. While more classically liberal thinkers posit a fundamentally restrained vision of
nature and historical possibility, philosophies of open-ended progress actively aim at
unmooring humanity from most or all of its constraints – think here of the contrasts
between the ideals advanced by Adam Smith and John Stuart Mill, and the difference

9 Dienstag, Pessimism, p. x; Arthur Herman, The Idea of Decline in Western History (New York and
London: The Free Press, 1997), pp. 7-9
In the meantime, nearly all declinists live day to day as David Hume did: as if the very opposite of what
they argue holds true. Sane existence never meshes well with perpetual crisis.
10 Here, just to cite a handful of examples of what I mean in the last decade alone, see the following:
Samuel Huntington, Who Are We?: The Challenges to America's National Identity (New York: Simon and
Schuster, 2004); Niall Ferguson, The War of the World: Twentieth-Century Conflict and the Descent of the
West (New York: Penguin Press, 2006); Jared Diamond, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or
Succeed (New York: Penguin Press, 2005); Robert Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of
American Community (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2001); and Kenneth S. Deffeyes, Hubbert’s Peak:
The Impending World Oil Shortage (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001). On broader trends of
recent apocalyptic thinking, see also Paul Corcoran, Awaiting Apocalypse (New York: St. Martin’s Press,
2000).
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