tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7154359965221795553.post5300966080456355846..comments2024-03-01T14:27:35.794-08:00Comments on Albion Awakening: PatriotismBruce Charltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09615189090601688535noreply@blogger.comBlogger9125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7154359965221795553.post-56459538906628015792016-10-16T02:08:58.416-07:002016-10-16T02:08:58.416-07:00So for intellectuals of the left the real is dismi...So for intellectuals of the left the real is dismissed for the ideological and truth replaced by theory. That makes sense. William Wildbloodhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13231219533755925897noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7154359965221795553.post-76840746518548646482016-10-15T17:47:01.591-07:002016-10-15T17:47:01.591-07:00I just ran into something interesting in the late ...I just ran into something interesting in the late Leonidas Donskis's recent essay (now online), "Forms of Hatred":<br /><br />"A passionate collision took place between Orwell and the Left in Great Britain over nationality, a supposedly bourgeois and reactionary concept. The Left always favored deracination as a sign of personal liberty and dignity, yet Orwell tried to reconcile natural patriotic feelings with other modern sensibilities, first and foremost with individual freedom, dignity, equality, and fellowship. He believed that our existential need for roots and a home, if neglected or, worse, despised, may make an awkward comeback in the form of symbolic compensation, such as a fierce attachment to the doctrine or ideology that becomes our symbolic home. As Karl Marx would have put it, a genuine proletarian does not have a home, for his home is socialism."<br /><br />He goes on to recommend Orwell's essay, "Notes on Nationalism".<br /><br />(My first impression is that his analysis of forms of hatred is not convincing, but I have not tried to think about it carefully (yet).)<br /><br />David Llewellyn DoddsAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7154359965221795553.post-69679762373835727062016-10-12T19:15:05.112-07:002016-10-12T19:15:05.112-07:00A passage caught my eye in Huizinga's Burgundi...A passage caught my eye in Huizinga's Burgundian paper: of the historians at the Court, he says (my translation), "The dependence on the House occupies for them the place of a general patriotism. Now, such a conception of dynastic loyalty is eminently suited to make the transition to a sense of a national state, to be filled with a new, higher content." This does not seem condescending, it seems to combine historical analysis - that Burgundy did not go beyond using 'patria' in the plural, even in the thought on its observant, engaged contemporary historians - with the conclusion that to proceed to a 'general patriotism' would be something not only new but 'higher', but that this was not some sort of eventual progressive inevitability - nor was its not happening something grossly 'primitive'. He sees continuity and change - rather as Eric Voegelin uses the imagery of compactness and differentiation while he stresses there can also be regression (which can present itself as 'progress'). <br /><br />As to 'nation states', to combine Huizinga and Geyl, here, they seem to see multiple modernities - one 'modern' tendency was to absolutistic centralized states, another was actually 'more mediaeval' in holding on to diverse existing laws and rights and privileges, yet in fact both better and more novel in combining this in a developing consciousness of general patriotism which was opposed to that centralizing, uniformitarian absolute striving of others. <br /><br />David Llewellyn Dodds Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7154359965221795553.post-89487985524975253952016-10-10T22:16:26.643-07:002016-10-10T22:16:26.643-07:00@David - This feeling is based on The Waning... wh...@David - This feeling is based on The Waning... which was an important book for me as a youth. Re-reading it now, ir seems like a secular liberal dismantling of the essence of the middle ages - an attack on what was best about it; implicitly cntrasted with a supposed progression in the early modern/ Renaissance era. <br /><br />But in most ways the truth seems to be the opposite - the raw cruelty of the Tudor period, its greed, its superstition and fascination with magic, and the emerging attitude of exploitation seems far more evident later than earlier; yet these are supposedly medieval. I suppose I got this from later, pro-medieval writers like Chesterton and Lewis - but the facts seem to back them. <br /><br />In sum, there is a quality of the smug modern 'humanist' condescendingly looking-down on the middle ages. Bruce Charltonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09615189090601688535noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7154359965221795553.post-67233788665108052972016-10-10T20:23:15.208-07:002016-10-10T20:23:15.208-07:00Hmm... This is my eighth book of his (if memory se...Hmm... This is my eighth book of his (if memory serves me correctly) - with the Waning (read in Dutch) the finest so far - I have not got to Homo Ludens or In de schaduwen van morgen (1935: translated by his son Jacob Herman Huizinga as In the Shadow of Tomorrow), of both of which I've heard very good things - but I haven't got any clear sense "he is 'on the wrong side'", yet (though I'm not sure what his 'limitations' may be, either).<br /><br />David Llewellyn Dodds Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7154359965221795553.post-88430612415263850092016-10-10T02:02:05.484-07:002016-10-10T02:02:05.484-07:00@David - I would regard Huizinga as a brilliant wr...@David - I would regard Huizinga as a brilliant writer (even in translation - ie the English Waning of the Middle Ages which is first rate prose) - but he is 'on the wrong side' - which is a problem!Bruce Charltonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09615189090601688535noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7154359965221795553.post-26004215254018754472016-10-09T17:48:29.036-07:002016-10-09T17:48:29.036-07:00Something I'd like to reread on this, is Johan...Something I'd like to reread on this, is Johan Huizinga's “Patriotism and Nationalism in European History” (of which I've read the Dutch original). While not getting around to rereading it yet, I have read something that seems to complement it in some ways, Pieter Geyl's The Revolt of the Netherlands, 1555–1609 (1932). And now I've had the good hap to get another complementary work by Huizinga, a long paper from 1911 the title of which might be translated as 'From the Prehistory of Our National Consciousness' and which is about Burgundian history (I don't know if this has ever been translated into English, though there appears to have been a 1930 adaption of it by him in French). I've just reached a fascinating section about 'a sense of solidarity, which could yet not be called a national consciousness' related to heraldry and mottos!<br /><br />Your saying "Patriotism means no more and no less than love of one's country. This includes its landscape" made me think of David Jones's volume of poetry, The Sleeping Lord and Other Fragments (1974).<br /><br />David Llewellyn Dodds<br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7154359965221795553.post-58690347650613309282016-10-06T01:59:06.998-07:002016-10-06T01:59:06.998-07:00Very interesting link, Bruce. Thanks for pointing ...Very interesting link, Bruce. Thanks for pointing it out.<br /><br /> By the way, someone has suggested to me that in the more enlightened person love of country is superseded by love of humanity but I don’t go along with this at all. Of course, love of humanity is something anyone acknowledging the reality of God and the teachings of Jesus should regard as essential but what does it really mean? I would say if you don’t love the particular how can you love the general? I think love of humanity is often used as an excuse specifically to reject love of the particular and hence any kind of real love at all.William Wildbloodhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13231219533755925897noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7154359965221795553.post-42054666123785810642016-10-05T14:52:54.253-07:002016-10-05T14:52:54.253-07:00@William. I feel the same way about this matter. O...@William. I feel the same way about this matter. Orwell was writing about this antipatriotic aspect of the Left back in the 1930s (the essay Inside the Whale, I think). And Solzhenitsyn wrote memorably about the roots of the Left as follows: <br /><br />http://www.roca.org/OA/36/36h.htm<br /><br />Bruce Charltonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09615189090601688535noreply@blogger.com