Monday 29 June 2009

Costly Tastes

“Formerly I went frequently to Paris: I saw often many of those who were called ‘the philosophers’. It was particularly at Madame Geoffrin’s, Baron d’Holbaek’s, and d’Alembert’s, where they principally assembled. It was there that they silently planned the destruction of religion, of the clergy, the nobility, and the government. From the year 1766, I said to the Bishops who were connected with them, ‘They detest you’; to the great noblemen who protected them, ‘They cannot bear the splendour of your rank, which dazzles them’; to the Farmers-General who upheld them, ‘They envy your riches’. These continued, however, to admire, to flatter, and to support them.”

Louis Dutens, “Two Letters from Voltaire, Relative to Myself”, Dutensiana; Intended as a Sequel to the Memoirs of a Traveller, Now in Retirement, vol.V (London: R. Phillips and Dulau & Co., 1806), pp.93-4.

11 comments:

Recusant said...

Some things never change and the desire to butter up to your enthusiastic executioner seems to be one of them.

Deogolwulf said...

Precisely my thoughts when I read it.

James Higham said...

This is the whole dynamic which ensures the continuation of Them - the desire to frotteurize on the very thing which will destroy you.

Deogolwulf said...

Who is Them?

David Duff said...

It is both peculiar and unsettling that by and large one relies on the probability that, whilst people may often be confused by extraneous matters, they retain a very keen regard for their own self-interest. I have clung to this for 70 years, Deogolwulf, and it is unkind of you and Voltaire to disappoint me. What else can I rely on in this shaky world?

As I write, I am suddenly reminded of the German aristocracy in the 1930s who thought they could control Hitler. So maybe all is not lost. Perhaps this suicidal stupidity is confined to the upper classes, the result, perhaps, of generations of in-breeding.

Oh, goody, I feel better already!

Deogolwulf said...

Mr Duff,

I believe that these people did have a keen regard for their own interests, yet we may surmise all manner of failings, motives and passions which would thwart a clear view of them: blindness, short-sightedness, frivolity, rivalry, arrogance, power-worship, idolatry, faddishness, pretentiousness, moral grandstanding, self-absorption, and so on. Above all, however, we may perceive something deeply pathetic and cowardly in them, as Recusant suggests.

Through corruption, decadence, moral and rational subversion, a keen regard for one’s own interests does not necessarily mean that one will act towards one’s own well-being. One may be led to act against it. A power which aims to work against the interests of some people, for instance, and aims to get them to work in its interests, may be sufficient, if those people be corrupt, to persuade, befuddle, or “morally” badger them into believing that their interests are the same as its, and thus, it can get them to work against their own natural interests and even towards their own destruction, if that be expedient. Our modern governments provide master-classes in the illustration of this manipulation; but then our governments have quite a pedigree: they are partly the offspring of those blighters in the Parisian salons. And our societies are very decadent indeed. Perfect fodder, one might say.

Concerning the matter of rivalry, we may note that some of the underground subversive literature of the eighteenth century was encouraged or produced by members of the aristocracy in order to undermine one another. In pettiness and short-sightedness, they helped to spread the very slanders and unpleasant truths which would undermine the authority of their own class. This short-sightedness occurs again and again in history. Just think of the Germans in 1917 transporting Lenin to Russia in a sealed train, like a bacillus, as Churchill put it. Truly a wonder-weapon, and the Germans and the rest of us are still living with the ravages of the disease.

(By the way, it was not Voltaire whom I was quoting, but Dutens. The title “Two Letters from Voltaire, Relative to Myself” is apt to mislead; it is one of many passages in Dutens's book, in this case dealing with Voltaire, and presenting two of his letters. In Dutens's rightful opinion, Voltaire was one of the blighters.)

xlbrl said...

Frotteurize? Must I spend more than $30 on a dictionary, or is this "brown-nose" in American? Stockholm-syndome of personal body parts?

Great stuff, D-Wulf. How do you find these things?

Deogolwulf said...

"How do you find these things?"

In this case, by looking for something else.

xlbrl said...

I see. Hayek claims that finding not what we were looking for is how we found civilization, and insisting in finding what we are looking for is the process that takes us back. Very civilized of you. Hope you don't find what you are looking for.

Deogolwulf said...

Thanks! And you.

Christopher said...

To write of "one’s own interests" and one's own class is to point out an interesting irony; a fascinating effect of human nature. But it may well misses the point that I believe the author was trying to make with his very specific parallelism.

Perhaps: the Bishops detested themselves; the nobles felt their rank a fraud; the merchants their riches unearned. Thus admiration, flattery and redirection of monies to the 'philosophers' would be a sort of justice, a sort of honor, a sort of balancing of the books.