With all the chaos of screaming heads running frantically along the political aisles of capitols, universities, main streets, and neighborhoods, there’s confusion as to why, exactly, we are screaming and running. Our modern American society has acclimated itself to finger-pointing, as if that action has ever produced clarity.
Many problems are at the root of this chaotic discourse, and Glenn Ellmers, the Salvatori research fellow on the American Founding at the Claremont Institute, appears to have pinpointed one of the primary sources: our political philosophy (or lack thereof).
The Polar Opposites
Ellmers dives into this Western issue in his new work, “The Narrow Passage: Plato, Foucault, and the Possibility of Political Philosophy.” The two names in the title are indicative of not just the book but the current philosophies held in the West and America primarily. Plato and Michel Foucault are not only separated by millennia, but their philosophical differences are on equally opposite ends of the philosophical spectrum.
As time has progressed into the modern era, America has also produced a citizenry of polar opposites in political philosophy (among many other social categories). Ellmers discusses that we not only struggle with the polarity of our political philosophies, but that we are also in danger of losing a political philosophy or having one hardly worth possessing.
The author highlights an interesting perspective that many do not consider. What is philosophy, and what is its place in society? “Socrates’s fellow Athenians simply assumed philosophy was bad,” he writes. “It is just as lazy and superficial, however, for us moderns to assume that philosophy is good.”
The statement should force individuals to pause in their march to whatever philosophical drum they’re listening to. The question should arise: Where is this philosophy leading me? Where is it leading my neighbors, city, state, and nation?Where Does It Lead?
Ellmers derives his considerations from the varied thoughts and statements of philosophers both ancient and modern (hence the title). Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Machiavelli, Hagel, Nietzsche, Strauss, and Foucault. The range is wide, and the names are readily identifiable and respectable.
Regardless, this doesn’t mean that their influences have been positive or negative. The issue at hand seems to be that we are gravitating toward philosophies, perhaps only due to their name and popularity, without considering Ellmers’s powerful statement of whether they are good or bad—without considering where this or that particular political philosophy leads.
We are living in an age of ideological promotions. Unfortunately, a number of these ideologies promote destruction, such as the idea of “permanent revolution,” where, as Ellmers references the ongoing New Left’s Maoist version of Marxism, the struggle becomes “an end in itself.”
Today, they are called woke ideologies. But on the opposite end are the “anti-liberal elements of the Right,” who have retreated from politics with the idea that “nothing can be done” (that is, political fatalism).
‘The Narrow Passage’
The Left and Right have marched so far from each other that they have now become entrenched, and all that remains is to fire politically charged bombs at the other’s position.
Those long marches and entrenchments left a power vacuum that had to be filled by an alternative. This alternative is a correlation of Machiavellianism and Nietzscheism where “bureaucracy” meets “will to power” culminating in what has become the Administrative State. This Hobbesian (a philosopher also referenced in the book) result stems from our elimination to reason civilly among ourselves, an act that is the very basis of political and social flourishing, if not mere survival.
“‘The nature of authority changes in response to an absence of reason,’“ Ellmers writes, quoting professor Arthur Sementelli. ”And thus it becomes ‘increasingly difficult to separate ideology from policy.’ Modern trends in bureaucratic government reveal ‘how authority can become unhinged from reason and rationality, enabling spaces for domination.’”
Ellmers is trying to alert us to the fact that this politically philosophical struggle is not just a battle of ideas, but a war of survival. The war is not one of attrition, as it will have an end. Our concern should be: Where will it end?
The author, from the introduction to the conclusion, weaves in the ideas of religion, morality, virtue, and, for America, the Constitution. History proves what is needed in order to thrive as a society. Part of that is the implementation and adherence to a proper and true political philosophy, a philosophy the Founding Fathers worked diligently to create.
History, specifically recent history, has shown how new ideas under the guise of groundbreaking and liberating political philosophies can destroy a society. We are indeed on the cusp of destroying our own.
Ellmers believes we are destroying our society because we have destroyed ourselves individually by diminishing or eliminating our capacity for “reason and rationality.” This has been done by regurgitating false philosophies.
This American destruction is relatively recent, as made clear in his quote of Leo Strauss: “Until a few generations ago, it was generally taken for granted that man can know what is right and wrong, what is the just or the good or the best order of society—in a word that political philosophy is possible and necessary. In our time this faith has lost its power.”
The Ongoing Battle
Indeed, that power has been lost. Certainly, the Founders’ virtuous political philosophy is held by many within the United States, but there is the necessity of power behind it. That power must be transmitted to the marketplace of ideas, not merely because it is constructive, but because it is true.
This is not a Foucault version of truth by power, but rather the reverse: power by truth. Foucault’s cynical view of truth indeed contaminated that ideal for moderns, suggesting that a truth was not true by virtue of its own existence but rather by the political power behind the idea. This consideration has been a source behind the removal of reason and rationale in our ongoing political and social debates. Two sides are battling it out over an idea that one side believes doesn’t even exist.
But that battle goes on. Indeed, it must go on because the alternative is frightening.
“Much depends upon whether the American people have become so dependent on the administrative state that the overthrow of the established order is not merely difficult, but undesirable,” Ellmer writes of the battle, quoting political scientist John Marini. “In that case, political self-government, and individual freedom, will cease to be important elements of the American regime.”
Ellmers’s work, however, is not built on fear but on thoughtful consideration of countless political and philosophical angles. In fact, his work is rather hopeful, as it places the responsibility on us for moving the country, and the West generally, toward that proper and true political philosophy that all nations have required for sustainability and success. It is the philosophy that abides more with Plato than Foucault, and specifically with those who established us: our Founders.
“[Political philosophy] is above all the work of citizens, of morally serious men and women, dedicated to recovering ‘our ancient faith,’” he writes. “What can each of us do as individuals, as members of communities and congregations, and as citizens? Virtue, unlike ‘social intelligence,’ can only be cultivated one soul at a time. If historical determinism is false, it means that virtue and chance will always play a part in shaping our destinies, and that the choices we make in exercising our moral freedom can be decisive, even in ways we may not expect.”
‘The Narrow Passage: Plato, Foucault, and the Possibility of Political Philosophy’ by Glenn Ellmers Encounter Books, July 11, 2023 Hardcover: 120 pages
