Modern European Intellectual History

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Modern EuropeanIntellectual History

• Lecture 2
• The Enemy
• The Bourgeoisie
• January 28, 2008

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outline

• intro did the bourgeoisie exist?
• the emergence of the bourgeoisie
• bourgeois culture
• bourgeois philosophy
• traditions of dissent
• conclusion

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the era of the bourgeoisie

• often known as the Victorian age
• Lytton Strachey, Eminent Victorians (1918) The
  history of the Victorian age will never be
  written we know too much about it.

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Flauberts axiom

• Hatred of the bourgeoisie is the beginning of
  all virtue.

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the discreet charm of the bourgeoisie (Luis
Buñuel)
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bourgeoisie myth or reality?

• key alternative to keep in mind throughout
• is the bourgeoisie largely a myth created by its
  opponents?
• or, did something pretty much like the
  bourgeoisie created the civilization that the
  modernists opposed (and which with some minor
  amendments still exists today)?

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from economics to politics

• old story the class emerges in the slow rise of
  the cities over the country, then triumphs in
  politics
• the idea of a persistence of the old regime
  (Arno Mayer) in the 19th century
• but the bourgeois was always the man of the future

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drowning out the past

• Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist
  Manifesto (1848) The bourgeoisie, historically,
  has played a most revolutionary part. The
  bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand,
  has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal,
  idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder
  the motley feudal ties that bound man to his
  natural superiors, and has left no other nexus
  between people than naked self-interest, than
  callous cash payment. It has drowned out the most
  heavenly ecstacies of religious fervor, of
  chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine
  sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical
  calculation.

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accomplishing wonders

• It has been the first to show what man's activity
  can bring about. It has accomplished wonders far
  surpassing Egyptian pyramids, Roman aqueducts,
  and Gothic cathedrals it has conducted
  expeditions that put in the shade all former
  exoduses of nations and crusades. Constant
  revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted
  disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting
  uncertainty and agitation distinguish the
  bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed,
  fast frozen relations, with their train of
  ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions,
  are swept away, all new-formed ones become
  antiquated before they can ossify. All that is
  solid melts into air, all that is holy is
  profaned, and man is at last compelled to face
  with sober senses his real condition of life and
  his relations with his kind. In one word, it
  creates a world after its own image.
• Marshall Berman, All That Is Solid Melts into Air

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the two-front war of the bourgeoisie

• threat of aristocratic reversion
• meritocratic/rationalistic elitism
• François Guizot Enrichissez-vous! (Get rich)
• bourgeois liberalism v. mass democracy
• the threat of the workers and the specter of
  revolution

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bourgeois civilization

• if the bourgeoisie exercised hegemony anywhere,
  it was in the sphere of culture, manners and
  norms--everyday life
• Walter Benjamin, Paris, capital of the
  nineteenth century
• From community (Gemeinschaft) to society
  (Gesellschaft) (Ferdinand Tönnies)
• freedom and order

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the gospel of work

• Thomas Carlyle
• Guizot par le travail et lépargne.
• Samuel Smiles, Self Help (1859)
• survival of the market fit
• supplemented by charitable humanitarianism
• sabbathless pursuit of wealth

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sexual repression (?)

• the most infamous stereotype about bourgeois
  manners
• the Other Victorians (Steven Marcus)
• the repressive hypothesis (Michel Foucault)

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ouch
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the religion of science

• two different developments
• quantum leaps in the sciences (including new
  sciences)
• the rise of natural science as a prestigious
  model for all endeavor
• reductive materialism
• Auguste Comte (1798-1857)

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Comtes positivism

• Course in Positive Philosophy (1830s-50s)
• freedom v. determinism
• the three ages
• the warfare of science with religion (Thedore
  Draper Andrew Dickson White)
• sociocracy and sociolatry

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the church of humanity
3, rue Payenne
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the positivist calendar

• link
• today Sunday, Moses 28 (Mohammad), 218
• honoring past traditions that add up to us
• Dec. 31 Festival of All the Dead

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scientizing social life

• Social Darwinism
• Cesare Lombroso
• Hyppolite Taine
• race, moment, milieu
• vice and virtue are products like vitriol and
  sugar

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aesthetic dissent

• Romanticism
• Bohemianism
• Friedrich Nietzsche