Category Archives: New Leviathan

NL XXXV: What Civilization Means Specifically

September 17, 2018 – 6:51 am

Index to this series

Civilization is a process, from barbarity towards the ideal of civility (35. 1). The ideal itself, and any particular stage along the way, are also called civilization (35. 11). This is our understanding from the previous chapter.

Civilization happens to a community. Any member can refer to the community in the first person plural: it is a “we” (35. 24). There is the corresponding possibility of a “not-we” (35. 25), in the sense discussed in Chapter VIII, “Hunger and Love” (8. 16). The “not-we” can be relative (35. 28) or absolute (35. 27), according as, to its own members, it is a “we” or not. To us, a relative “not-we” can be a “you” (35. 28). I shall suggest that the “not-we” is always at least a “they,” although Collingwood uses this only for the relative “not-we” (35. 28).

Continue reading →

By David Pierce | Also posted in Collingwood, dialectic, Philosophy | Tagged , , , | Comments (6)

NL XXXIV: What Civilization Means Generically

September 14, 2018 – 6:56 pm

Index to this series

Turning now to Part III of Collingwood’s New Leviathan (1942), we take up civilization, a topic of utmost importance, featuring as it does, for example, in the controversial hypothesis of the “Clash of Civilizations,” and generally being something that reactionaries say they want to defend.

Civilization is something that happens to a community (34. 4). We studied communities as such in Part II, and their members individually in Part I.

Civilization is a “process of approximation to an ideal state” (34. 5). That is the gist of Chapter XXXIV, “What ‘Civilization’ Means: Generically.” There will be a lot to spell out.


We have returned to Istanbul. Below are
sunset photos from our last night on the Aegean coast

Continue reading →

By David Pierce | Also posted in Collingwood, dialectic, Language, Philosophy, Principles of Art | Tagged , , , , | Comments (5)

NL XXXIII: Decline of the Classical Politics

September 10, 2018 – 8:16 am

Index to this series

Lacking the experience of social and political life mentioned at the end of the previous chapter, Germans could not understand the classical politics. German communities were non-social (33. 32). What experience those communities did have of freedom was despised (33. 5). When Marx converted Hegel’s dialectical idealism into the equally nonsensical dialectical materialism (33. 91), he sought only to teach what materialism entailed: that there was no such thing as freedom of will (33. 97).

Continue reading →

By David Pierce | Also posted in dialectic | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments (4)

NL XXXII: Society and Nature in the Classical Politics

September 9, 2018 – 7:54 am

Index to this series

In the last chapter, we described classical politics by analogy with classical physics. Now we turn entirely to politics. The nature of “Society and Nature in the Classical Politics,” Chapter XXXII of the New Leviathan, is not the nature studied by physics; it is the nature of the “state of nature” (32. 32), which is our theoretical political origin.

The “problem of the classical politics” (32. 1) is “to give an account of the social element” of political life (32. 19). The non-social element of political life is nature (32. 19).

Continue reading →

By David Pierce | Also posted in Criteriological Science, dialectic | Tagged | Comments (3)

NL XXXI: Classical Physics and Classical Politics

September 8, 2018 – 10:52 am

Index to this series

As my beach holiday winds down, so perhaps does the current spate of blog posts. Here is one more. Setting aside Homer, I continue immediately with Collingwood, in part because, in the 2000 paperback impression of the 1992 Revised Edition of the New Leviathan that I take to the shore, I have now also read the Editor’s Introduction by David Boucher. (Back at the cottage, I have to type out the quotes from this that I make below; for quotes of Collingwood himself, I cut and paste from a scan of the 1947 corrected reprint of the 1942 First Edition.)

As I could infer from my pencil-marks, I had read Boucher’s introduction some time before; but I could remember little of it. I think it is aimed at professional philosophers, rather than at anybody who would admire Collingwood for saying, as he does in An Autobiography (page 6), when he describes getting prepared to go to Rugby School,

The ghost of a silly seventeenth-century squabble still haunts our classrooms, infecting teachers and pupils with the lunatic idea that studies must be either ‘classical’ or ‘modern’. I was equally well fitted to specialize in Greek and Latin, or in modern history and languages (I spoke and read French and German almost as easily as English), or in the natural sciences; and nothing would have afforded my mind its proper nourishment except to study equally all three.

Continue reading →

By David Pierce | Also posted in absolute presuppositions, Criteriological Science, dialectic, Galileo, Pacifism, Principles of Art | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments (13)

NL XXX: War As the Breakdown of Policy

September 6, 2018 – 6:05 pm

Index to this series

By the account of Chapter XXX, called “War as the Breakdown of Policy,” of Collingwood’s New Leviathan (1942), humans have not always made war (30. 1). Why then do we make it now? People say war is a continuation of policy (30. 14); but as Collingwood cleverly points out (30. 15), the original saying, which is due to Clausewitz (30. 69), is ambiguous: a continuation could be an extension or a breakdown (30. 16–17).


Photos taken September 6, 2018
around our cottage
and of the wood that I cut there
in Profesörler Sitesi
Altınova, Balıkesir, Türkiye

Continue reading →

By David Pierce | Also posted in dialectic, Pacifism, Principles of Art | Tagged , , , , , | Comments (13)

NL XXIX: External Politics

September 4, 2018 – 9:36 am

Index to this series

Executive summary (added September 13, 2018, edited July 19, 2019): Dealing with other bodies politic is the third stage of political life, after societies’

  • formation (as if by marriage),

  • dominion over non-social communities (as if by having children).

Having been used in the first two stages, dialectic can be used in the third. Being the eristic of external politics, war has no psychological cause. War is a state of mind, which does not think non-agreement can become agreement. Pacifism has this state of mind.

External politics are international relations. These represent the third of the “stages” in political life (29. 1), which we enumerate:

  1. The joining of wills into a society, which rules itself (29. 11).

  2. Such a society’s ruling over a non-social community in a body politic (29. 12).

  3. Dealing with other bodies politic (29. 13).

Continue reading →

By David Pierce | Also posted in Collingwood, dialectic, Pacifism, Philosophy, Plato, Psychology | Tagged , , , , | Comments (12)

NL XXVIII: The Forms of Political Action

September 2, 2018 – 8:53 am

Index to this series

Executive summary (added September 12, 2018), To condemn political discussion is to wish for tyranny: this continues a thought from the previous chapter. The ruling class need not share their deliberations with the ruled class, but it is better if they do. As our understanding of the reason for an action evolves—at first the action is merely useful, but later it conforms to a rule—, so ruling, originally by decree, has evolved to include legislation. However, to be enforced, law does not require a formal structure; international law is an example. The best reason for an action is duty. Though the German Treitschke says our highest duty is to the state, he gives the state no duty, and so his politics are entirely utilitarian.

In Plato’s Republic, Socrates seeks understanding of the just human being through examination of the just state. In Collingwood’s New Leviathan, the order is reversed. What we first considered in somebody, we now look at in the “body politic.”

Narthex of the former Taksiyarhis Church (now museum), Ayvalık, Balıkesir, Turkey, August 30, 2018

Continue reading →
By David Pierce | Also posted in Collingwood, Homer, Philosophy, Plato | Tagged , , | Comments (5)

NL XXVII: Force in Politics

September 1, 2018 – 7:09 am

Index to this series

Executive summary (added September 12, 2018): When persons cannot rule themselves, they are ruled by force, as a duty, by other persons, for the benefit and pleasure of all. Force includes fraud and deceit; but their use must be limited, if those persons who are being ruled by force now will one day join the ruling class themselves. If a liberal and a conservative party take up respectively the ideals of democracy and aristocracy discussed in the last chapter, the parties must understand that each needs the other, in order to engage in the dialectic that aims for the best society. If somebody thinks the two parties waste energy, either in pretending to be in opposition to one another, or in actually being opposed, then that person is effectively wishing for tyranny.

In my last post on the New Leviathan (which was my first for this year), I said Collingwood would discuss the British parliament in Chapter XXVII. That chapter is now my subject.

The ruling class must incorporate new members from time to time, whether anybody thinks about it or not (27. 75). Anybody who does think about it may take up one of two goals (27. 77).

27. 79. To hasten the percolation of liberty throughout every part of the body politic was the avowed aim of the Liberal party; to retard it was the avowed aim of the Conservative party.

27. 8. The relation between them was consciously dialectical. They were not fundamentally in disagreement. Both held it as an axiom that the process of percolation must go on. Both held that given certain circumstances, which might very well change from time to time, there was an optimum rate for it, discoverable within a reasonable margin of error by experiment.

Continue reading →

By David Pierce | Also posted in Collingwood, dialectic, History, Hitchens, Philosophy, Philosophy of History | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments (10)

NL XXVI: Democracy and Aristocracy

August 29, 2018 – 8:02 pm

Index to this series

Executive summary (added September 12, 2018, edited January 26, 2019).

  1. Aristocracy and democracy are abstractions (§§26. 1[0]–28). Inseparable from one another, they are properly understood as correlative rules for the ruling class:

    1. Don’t let in anybody who is unqualified.
    2. Don’t keep out anybody who is.

  2. By what Collingwood will call, in Chapter XXXI of the New Leviathan, the Principle of the Limited Objective, (which was recognized by the Early Church Fathers,) the ruling class should be prepared to solve, not every problem (as Plato wanted), but those problems that are expected to come up (§§26. 3[0]–34).

  3. The democratic and aristocratic principles have been at work throughout the history of Europe: in Greece, in Rome, under the feudalism of the Middle Ages. The French Revolution was not only democratic, but also aristocratic, for aiming to give power to the bourgeoisie, not the entire population (§§26. 4[0]–66).

  4. Adapted from the literary concept of peripety, the concept of revolution actually has no place in history, where there are no heroes or villains, just human beings, partly good and partly bad (§§26. 7[0]–82).

  5. The concept of a revolution in history is even dangerous, if it leads you to think a political problem can have been solved once for all (§§26. 9[0]–96).

There can be no pure democracy, not for a length of time, not if we understand a democracy to be a society whose ruling class is the whole of it. Even the most extreme democrat of ancient Greece never contemplated citizenship for women, slaves, or resident foreigners. We may be more liberal today, at least regarding women and slavery. Still we do not open the ruling class to foreigners, such as myself where I am; nor do we open it to children. We could do so, in the sense of extending the franchise to all human residents. Both possibilities were discussed favorably in the early 1990s in The Nation, as I recall, in one case by a legal minor. However, perhaps most children could not be given such adminstrative duties as used to be assigned by lot to Athenian citizens. Even if they could, what of the animals that live among us—shall they be citizens?


Edward Hicks (American, 1780-1849),
The Cornell Farm, 1848, oil on canvas,
Gift of Edgar William and Bernice Chrysler Garbisch,
National Gallery of Art Continue reading →

By David Pierce | Also posted in Aristotle, Leo Strauss, Plato | Tagged , , , | Comments (14)