The Intellectual Foundations of Anti-Fascist Resistance

The history of the 1930s and 1940s tells of the networks of individuals and small groups inside Germany which worked to effectively undermine, hamper, and hinder the Nazi war effort and Nazi systematic destruction of human life. This resistance movement had measurable effects: thousands of Jewish lives were saved as Jews were hidden or smuggled out of the Nazi-controlled territory; Germans deliberately produced munitions to substandard specifications, disrupted railways, and cut telegraph and telephone lines, all to make the military less successful.

What motivated these Germans? Some answers to that question are obvious: they desired to free Germany from Nazi oppression and end the war that was taking German lives; they had the rather obvious moral intuition that murdering millions of people — not only Jews, but Russians, Poles, religious groups like the Jehovah’s Witnesses, communists, libertarians, etc. — was wrong and should be stopped.

The official name for Naziism is ‘National Socialism’ and opposing it was risky. Many members of the resistance died for their beliefs. Given the risk involved, those who opposed National Socialism spent time and energy exploring and articulating their motives. One example is the writings of the White Rose group at the University of Munich.

The leaflets produced and distributed by the White Rose are written in a reflective and educated tone. They include references to Chinese philosophers, Greek and Roman thinkers like Aristotle and Cicero, the Old Testament, classic German poets like Goethe and Novalis, and most most frequently, allusions to the New Testament and to Jesus. The members of the anti-fascist resistance had a carefully reasoned and documented worldview which caused them to take an uncompromising stance against Adolf Hitler and his National Socialism.

Other members of the resistance also wrote about their motivations. Perhaps most famously, Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote extensively during the prewar and wartime years.

Examining the statements of those who took steps against the Nazis, both similarities and differences appear. Bonhoeffer was a Lutheran theologian; Claus von Stauffenberg was devout Roman Catholic; still other resistance members were Calvinist, Protestant, or Evangelical. The members of the White Rose group included all the above and followers of eastern Orthodoxy.

As journalist Uwe Siemon-Netto writes

It was by and large a movement of Christians, Protestant as well as Roman Catholic.

He gives details:

As far back as 1933 some 6,000 pastors, one-third of Germany’s entire Protestant clergy, had joined the anti-Nazi Pfarrernotbund (Pastors Emergency League). Interestingly, this number corresponds roughly to the proportion of ministers actively opposed to the totalitarian authorities in East Germany after the war, according to Harald Krille, editor-in-chief of Glaube und Heimat, a weekly Protestant newspaper for central Germany.

It was in 1933 that Hitler seized power, so Siemon-Netto’s data shows that the resistance began immediately. The members of what would become the resistance had been watching and analyzing carefully. They didn’t wait to see what would happen, or give National Socialism a chance to prove itself. They knew and understood the actions that Hitler would take. They were ahead of the curve in perceiving and responding to evil on a large scale.

“Thousands of clergymen critical of Hitler,” Siemon-Netto continues, “were jailed, forbidden to preach, or drafted and often sent to the Russian front, from whence most did not return.”

Yet these are the easy and obvious examples: theologians and clergy. The biggest part of the resistance was composed of people who didn’t get a paycheck from a church, and didn’t officially represent organized religion.

Claus von Stauffenberg was one of many officers who were part of resistance: they were a large part of organizing assassination attempts on Hitler, and sabotaging the war effort. Military officers saw Hitler as carelessly wasting the lives of young German soldiers. Claus von Stauffenberg played a central role in a plot to assassinate Hitler, and was executed when the plot failed. Claus von Stauffenberg understood the risk he was taking, and considered it worthwhile. There were at least 42 attempts to assassinate Hitler from 1932 to 1944, indicating the level of energy in the resistance movement.

Carl Friedrich Goerdeler studied economics at the University of Tübingen. His career included a role as a bureaucrat in the city government of Solingen, the mayor of Königsberg, and the mayor of Leipzig. When Hitler seized power in 1933, Goerdeler first attempted to influence Hitler; he wrote him memoranda on various policy topics, hoping to change Hitler’s plans. Goerdeler resisted pressure to join the Nazi Party, and by 1936 took an openly hostile view of Hitler and the National Socialist government. Starting in 1938, Goerdeler was involved in a series of plots to overthrow the National Socialist government and assassinate Hitler. Like Claus von Stauffenberg, Goerdeler paid with his life.

Both Goerdeler and von Stauffenberg represent a large segment of the resistance, perhaps the majority: They hadn’t studied theology at the university, weren’t employed by a church, didn’t represent a church, and didn’t receive a paycheck from a church. They came from ordinary, worldly, walks of life.

Yet both of them were motivated by deeply spiritual conceptions of life. Goerdeler was a Lutheran and von Stauffenberg was a Roman Catholic. Both had absorbed the faiths of their families in childhood, and both of them retained this faith as adults. These two men probably could not have expressed their faiths in the precise academic language of professors, but they had absorbed and internalized their faiths to the point at which they instinctively recognized evil when they saw it, and to the point at which they knew that they were morally obliged to take action against such evil, even if it would cost them their lives.

About Goerdeler’s conceptual framework, Uwe Siemon-Netto writes:

His sense of order made him an early opponent of National Socialism. In very Lutheran terms, Goerdeler called the anti-Semitic outrages of the Hitler regime an “unbearable offense to civilization and a manifestation of mob rule.” Driven by his own motto, omnia restaurare in Christo, Goerdeler strove to topple Hitler.

In this framework, resistance was not optional; it was a duty to defy the National Socialist government:

A Lutheran ethos motivated men like Goerdeler. Goerdeler’s internalized Lutheranism told him that Germans must rid themselves of this evil.

He didn’t write or talk about spirituality; he lived it:

Goerdeler, who knew nothing of Luther’s theology of the cross, lived a theology of the cross.

From these examples, it is clear that those who resisted the Nazis weren’t reacting out of simple emotion. They were drawing from a deep well of intellectual resources. They received the support they needed to take the ultimate risks and endure the ultimate sacrifices.

Competing Liberalisms: From Locke to Mill and Beyond

The word ‘liberalism’ and the history of liberalism are complicated and surprising. Historians are careful to distinguish among the different definitions of ‘liberalism’ for this reason. A political thinker who was a liberal in the 17th century is different from one in the 18th century, who in turn is different from one in the 19th century. It will be important to sort and chart these distinct meanings of the word.

John Locke was a liberal; Hillary Clinton was a liberal. But the two are different and distinct from each other.

Although historians can identify isolated strands of liberal thought in previous centuries, and even millennia ago, modern political liberalism emerged in the late 1600s. This era includes the Glorious Revolution and most of John Locke’s political writings.

The initial version of liberalism, shaped by Locke and others, emphasized the task of government being to protect every citizen’s life, liberty, and property. The etymology of ‘liberalism’ and ‘liberty’ make clear the goals and values of liberalism. In one famous passage, Locke writes that “no one can be put out of” an initial free state of nature “and subjected to the political power of another, without his own consent.”

Along with the idea that a government derives its legitimacy from the consent of the governed, other key ideas in this original Classical Liberalism included an emphasis on keeping government in check so that it did not encroach on the rights of the individual, and the articulation of such rights as freedom of speech, freedom of association, freedom of religion, and free markets. A laissez-faire economic approach was understood as protecting the individual’s right to do as she or he pleases with her or his property.

Note that Locke posits that humans have, or had, an initial “state of nature,” which he hypothesizes to be a state of liberty. Other political philosophers, including some who disagree sharply with Locke, agree on this point, that there is or was a “state of nature” which is prior to a social contract and the institution of government. The “state of nature” might be logically prior or temporally prior to the formation of a governed state.

For example, Thomas Hobbes developed a concept of the “state of nature” which was sinister and violent, while Locke’s state of nature was a bit more cheerful.

This initial version of modern political liberalism — note that the late 1600s are reckoned as ‘modern’ — arose and developed in the British Isles, and is often called ‘Classical Liberalism’ as Maurice Cranston writes:

Traditional English liberalism has rested on a fairly simple concept of liberty — namely, that of freedom from the constraints of the state. In Hobbes’s memorable phrase, “The liberties of subjects depend on the silence of the law.” In general, however, English liberals have always been careful not to press this notion to anarchist extremes. They have regarded the state as a necessary institution, ensuring law and order at home, defense against foreign powers, and security of possessions — the three principles Locke summarized as “life, liberty and property.”

Buried in Locke’s view of the world is an Enlightenment concept of human beings as rational, knowing, deliberative agents. Locke, like nearly every other political philosopher, had a notion of human nature, and his conception of society and government arose from his idea of human nature.

The concept of a human being as a deliberate, rational, knowing agent is foundational for free market economics.

Central to this original version of Classical Liberalism is a sharp distinction between society and government. In chapter 19 of Locke’s Second Treatise (1689), which runs from paragraph 211 to paragraph 243, the word ‘government’ occurs approximately 48 times, the word ‘society’ approximately 43 times, and the words ‘free, freedom, liberty’ approximately 29 times. In the chapter, Locke makes a detailed effort to distinguish between society and government.

Following Locke, Thomas Paine emphasizes this distinction and scolds the writers who fail to note it. In 1776 he explained:

Some writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins. Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness; the former promotes our happiness positively by uniting our affections, the latter negatively by restraining our vices.

Paine continues, writing that society “encourages” communication or dealings between individuals or groups, while government “creates distinctions.” Society “is a patron,” but government is “a punisher.”

Classical Liberalism proposes that the task of political philosophy is to develop structures which will confine government to its proper province and prevent it from encroaching up society’s realm, as Maurice Cranston notes:

English liberals have also maintained that the law can be used to extend the liberties of subjects insofar as the law is made to curb and limit the activities of the executive government. Thus, for example, the English laws of habeas corpus, of bail, and of police entry and arrest all constrain or restrain the executive and, in so doing, increase the freedom of the people. Some instruments of constitutional law have a similar effect.

The Classical Liberalism of John Locke had a profound influence on the founding of the United States, leading to the abolition of slavery and the universal suffrage for all citizens, including women and formerly enslaved people.

Eventually, a competing form of liberalism arose to contend with the original form of Classical Liberalism. A central author in this new movement was J.S. Mill. In 1859, advocated a schema which inverted the logic of Classical Liberalism. Instead of limiting and curbing government power so that both the individual and the society would be free to flourish, J.S. Mill wanted to empower government to restrain society. Mill reasoned that society, with its unregulated markets and its political principle of majority rule, was the true danger to the freedom of the individual.

This new form of liberalism, promoted by Mill and others, rested on a subtly but importantly different understanding of freedom.

A “liberalism” that once argued for economic freedom, and for the government to refrain from controlling society, now argued for the exact opposite. Maurice Cranston explains:

The traditional form of English political liberalism naturally went hand in hand with the classical economic doctrine of laissez-faire.

“Toward the end of the nineteenth century, however, certain radical movements and certain English liberal theorists,” continues Maurice Cranston, propounded “a different — as they claimed, broader — concept of freedom, which was, to a large extent, to prove more popular in the twentieth century than traditional English liberalism with its economic gospel of laissez-faire.”

The split between Classical Liberalism and J.S. Mill’s liberalism each birthed a handful of political and economic movements which would struggle with each other through most of the twentieth century.

The newer form of liberalism was less about protecting freedom and more about providing comfort. Indeed, it was willing to sacrifice freedom.

One of Mill’s famous sayings seems to support liberty:

the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others.

The slippery slope in Mill’s argumentation is hiding behind the word ‘harm’ in this well-known quotation. ‘Harm’ had long been understood as compromising or undermining the protection of an individual’s life, liberty, and property. But now Mill would interpret ‘harm’ in a broader way. ‘Harm’ would be the failure to intervene into the life of the individual, or into the life of society. Such intervention was, according to Mill, morally obligatory, in order to improve the life of the individual.

Liberalism had gone from protecting the life of the individual to improving the life of the individual. While an improved life might seem like a good thing, troubling questions soon appeared: Who decided what was truly an improvement? Who decided which improvements were necessary? How would this improvement violate the rights of the individual, if she or he didn’t want a particular improvement? And who would pay for the improvements?

Maurice Cranston describes the tensions between the two groups of liberals:

The central aim of this new school was utilitarian — namely, freeing men from misery and ignorance. Its exponents believed that the state must be the instrument by which this end was to be achieved. Hence, English liberal opinion entered the twentieth century in a highly paradoxical condition, urging, on the one hand, a freedom which was understood as freedom from the constraints of the state and, on the other, an enlargement of the state’s power and control in order to liberate the poor from the oppressive burdens of poverty.

Liberalism had split into two movements. The two contradicted each other. A single liberal movement soon became a practical impossibility, and eventually, there were more than two versions of liberal movements, both in England and around the world. A significant number of these movements did not use the word ‘liberal’ but rather wore labels like communist, socialist, progressive, etc.

Before the rise of J.S. Mill’s new version of liberalism, the original Classical Liberalism had a good career, especially in the United States, but also in various nation-states around the world, as Patrick Deneen writes:

A political philosophy conceived some 500 years ago, and put into effect at the birth of the United States nearly 250 years later, was a wager that political society could be grounded on a different footing. It conceived humans as rights-bearing individuals who could fashion and pursue for themselves their own version of the good life. Opportunities for liberty were best afforded by a limited government devoted to “securing rights,” along with a free-market economic system that gave space for individual initiative and ambition. Political legitimacy was grounded on a shared belief in an originating “social contract” to which even newcomers could subscribe, ratified continuously by free and fair elections of responsive representatives. Limited but effective government, rule of law, an independent judiciary, responsive public officials, and free and fair elections were some of the hallmarks of this ascendant order and, by all evidence, wildly successful wager.

The success of Classical Liberalism for a century or two in various locations around the globe is due to its core drive for freedom and liberty. Practical steps toward a “weak” or “limited” government made such freedom and liberty possible.

The vision of freedom was nearly universally appealing, allowing Classical Liberalism to appear in nations of various cultures, various religions, and various languages: a global phenomenon. Patrick Deneen expounds on the attractiveness of the doctrine:

The deepest commitment of liberalism is expressed by the name itself: liberty. Liberalism has proven both attractive and resilient because of this core commitment to the longing for human freedom so deeply embedded in the human soul. Liberalism’s historical rise and global attraction are hardly accidental; it has appealed especially to people subject to arbitrary rule, unjust inequality, and pervasive poverty. No other political philosophy had proven in practice that it could fuel prosperity, provide relative political stability, and foster individual liberty with such regularity and predictability.

As effective as Classical Liberalism had been in the process of moving the world into modernity, it yet had within itself the seeds of its own downfall. The liberty of each individual to propound her or his own worldview included the worldviews which undermine a stable society. Those worldviews were translated into action. As society was sabotaged, civic chaos began; the response to the turmoil was increased governmental powers to manage the social instability.

Classical Liberalism, which began by restraining government power to protect individual liberty, had given birth to a movement which necessitated increased government intervention into the life of the private citizen.

Instead of society working to limit government’s ability to shackle the individual, the new order included increasing the government’s power to shackle the salutary ability of society to shape a communal life conducive to individual development.

Patrick Deneen narrates how liberalism destroyed both itself and society:

Liberalism’s founders tended to take for granted the persistence of social norms, even as they sought to liberate individuals from the constitutive associations and education in self-limitation that sustained these norms. In its earliest moments, the health and continuity of families, schools, and communities were assumed, while their foundations were being philosophically undermined. This undermining led, in turn, to these goods being undermined in reality, as the norm-shaping power of authoritative institutions grew tenuous with liberalism’s advance. In its advanced stage, passive depletion has become active destruction: remnants of associations historically charged with the cultivation of norms are increasingly seen as obstacles to autonomous liberty, and the apparatus of the state is directed toward the task of liberating individuals from such bonds.

What will the twenty-first century bring for liberalism? Will the struggle between Classical Liberalism and J.S. Mill’s liberalism continue? Will one or the other of those two dominate? Will the tension continue to be framed as one between individual liberty and governmental interventionism? Which political leaders, and which policies, correspond to Classical Liberalism? Which correspond to J.S. Mill?

In any event, the only way to understand the political dynamics of today and tomorrow is to study the past.

A New Empire Takes Form: The End of the HRE and the Beginning of the Austrian Empire

The Holy Roman Empire (HRE) is a difficult thing to explain. Its beginning does not have a precise date, as it gradually emerged from the remnants of the Carolingian and Ottonian Empires. As the old joke frames it, it was not Holy because it was primarily a secular organization decorated by a superficial relationship to Christian spirituality; it was not Roman, because it was a Central European alliance which only for a few brief years included Rome within its territorial boundaries; it was not an empire, because although its emperors bore that title, they did not have the absolute dictatorial power of emperors in ancient times, but rather were elected to their office and could act only after cobbling together a consensus from those who had elected them.

One clear fact about the HRE is its ending. A series of diplomatic and military maneuverings terminated it in 1806.

If the nature and structure of the HRE are murky and ambiguous, the system and organization of what followed it is even less clear — and what followed it was the Austrian Empire.

The Holy Roman Emperor Franz II declared the Austrian Empire into being in 1804, as a response to Napoleon having declared himself to be the Emperor of the French Empire. Franz II declared that the throne of the Austrian Empire would be hereditary, in contrast to the HRE’s elected emperorship.

The Austrian Empire didn’t come into full effect until Franz II dissolved the HRE in 1806. Napoleon had demanded that Franz II abdicate. Franz II issued a document, the wording of which seemed to dissolve the empire. Rather than abdicate, Franz II may have hoped to thwart any ambitions which Napoleon may have had to be the Holy Roman Emperor. Perhaps Franz II figured that dissolving the empire was the only way to prevent Napoleon from becoming the next Holy Roman Emperor. Historians continue to investigate the exact intentions of both Franz II and Napoleon.

In any case, the HRE came to an end, and Franz was now the Emperor of Austria. He is therefore known both as Franz II of the HRE and as Franz I of the Austrian Empire. Such is the numbering system of hereditary monarchies.

Like the HRE before it, the Austrian Empire had a misleading name. It was not only Austrian, but contained a number of nations: Hungary, Slovakia, and Bohemia; parts of Italy, Poland, Romania, Yugoslavia, and Germany. It was a multi-ethnic, multi-lingual, and multi-national empire.

The diversity within the Austrian Empire was both a strength and a weakness. It fueled intellectual creativity and accessed a large range of landscapes and their natural resources. But, again like the HRE, the emperor was obliged to balance the competing interests of the competing nations within his empire, and in the course of these negotiations sometimes was sometimes obliged to compromise his own interests as well.

Perhaps it was inevitable that the Austrian Empire would be characterized by constant change and negotiation, because the creation of the empire was itself an act of compromise, as historian Benjamin Curtis writes:

Several events then provoked the final, flailing expiration of the Holy Roman Empire. In 1804 Napoleon was declared emperor of France, which was a terrible affront to Franz, who could not abide that this Corsican upstart would place himself on a level equal to the prestige of the Habsburgs. Franz was also justifiably worried that Napoleon would either take the German imperial title or dissolve the German empire, which would then leave the Habsburgs actually inferior in rank. Thus in August 1804 Franz proclaimed an Austrian Empire, giving himself an ambitious new title without changing much else about his realms. In fact, in his proclamation, Franz explicitly recognized that he ruled over several states, and promised that he would not change any of their constitutions. The legality of this unilateral proclamation was questionable, but it received solid support from the aristocracy and the rest of his subjects, even in Hungary. Franz’s assumption of a new imperial title was a naked play for dynastic honor, to ensure that he would remain an emperor regardless of what Bonaparte called himself.

The Austrian Empire cannot be separated from the Habsburg dynasty. To study one is to study the other. The Habsburg family created the Austrian Empire, and sat on the throne for its entire existence. The Habsburg dynasty had dominated the HRE prior to the advent of the Austrian Empire, and the Habsburgs would dominate the form of state which finally replaced the Austrian Empire.

From 1273 until the HRE ended in 1806, there were only a few brief periods during which the Habsburgs did not occupy the throne of the HRE. Other dynasties had ruled the HRE prior to 1273.

As Holy Roman Emperors, the Habsburgs ruled a large and changing collection of kingdoms, duchies, principalities, and semi-independent city-states. The last category were called “free imperial cities” and were self-governing, not subject to any local prince or king, but rather representing themselves directly to the Holy Roman Emperor. These cities were successful examples of democracy.

Of all territories collected together into the HRE, the home territory of the Habsburgs had a special status, different and apart from other parts of the HRE, like Tirol, Hungary, Slovenia, Slovakia, etc.

All the other nations in the HRE had their own monarchs, or freely-elected governments in the case of the imperial cities, but the home territory of Habsburgs was ruled directly by the dynasty. That territory was Austria. So it was reasonable that, when it was necessary to match Napoleon’s bravado, and when it two years later seemed that the HRE was at an end, Austria would form the basis for a new Habsburg empire.

Napoleon’s military aggression shaped European geopolitics from 1800 to 1815, as the French Revolution had shaped them from 1789 to 1799. During those 25 years, when the nations of Europe could agree on little else, they agreed to cooperate in their opposition to Napoleon. Seven coalition wars were fought, the first two defending against the French Revolution, and the next five against Napoleon. In the midst of these wars, the Austrian Empire was born and tested.

Describing early years of the Austrian Empire, historian A.J.P. Taylor refers to Franz by the anglicized form of his name:

In 1804 the lands of the House of Habsburg at last acquired a name: they became the “Austrian Empire.” This threatened to be a death-bed baptism. In 1805 the Habsburg dream of universal monarchy gave a last murmur, and Francis aspired to defend old Europe against Napoleon. Austerlitz shattered the dream, destroyed the relics of the Holy Roman Empire, and left Francis as, at best, a second-class Emperor. Austria emerged at any rate as an independent country and strove for an independent policy. The result was the war of 1809, the attempt to discover a new mainspring of action in leading the liberation of Germany. This war almost destroyed the Austrian Empire. Napoleon appealed for a Hungarian revolt and even sketched plans for a separate Kingdom of Bohemia. What saved Austria was not the strength of her armies nor the loyalty of her peoples, but the jealousy of her Imperial neighbors: Alexander of Russia and Napoleon could not agree on terms of partition and were content with frontier gains — Alexander carried off eastern Galicia, and Napoleon turned the South Slav lands into the French province of Illyria. The events of 1809 set the pattern of Austrian policy for forty years, or even for the century of the Empire’s existence. Austria had become a European necessity. In harsher terms, the Great Powers were agreed that the fragments surviving from the Habsburg bid for universal monarchy were more harmless in Habsburg hands than in those of some new aspirant to world empire. The nature of the Austrian Empire was clearly shown in the contrast between Austria and Prussia. Both were restored to the ranks of the Great Powers on the defeat of Napoleon; but Prussia carried herself there by harsh reforms, Austria by pliant diplomacy and ingenious treaties.

Founded in 1804, entering into full effectiveness in 1806, the Austrian Empire faced its first big test in The War of the Fifth Coalition. The coalition attempted to defend itself against Napoleon’s attacks, but for the most part unsuccessfully. The decisive battle was at Austerlitz. Austerlitz is located near the point at which the borders of the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Austria meet. (Austerlitz is also called Slavkov u Brna; the Czech Republic is roughly the same territory as Bohemia.)

The coalition loss at Austerlitz led to a treaty signed in Pressburg. (Pressburg is also known as Bratislava.) This treaty represented a loss and humiliation for the Austrian Empire. The nineteenth century can be viewed as the long tragic decline of the Austrian Empire, which lost several territories in the Treaty of Pressburg.

When did the Austrian Empire end? Some historians suggest that it ended in 1867, with the Austro-Hungarian Compromise. After that year, Hungary was seen as its own independent nation-state, while the remainder of the territories of the Austrian Empire continued under the same name. In an arrangement known as a ‘personal union,’ the same monarch ruled both.

Other historians argue that the Compromise of 1867 did not end the Austrian Empire, but rather merely redesigned it. After this year, Austria-Hungary had the same territory, the same monarch, and many of the same governmental agencies as it did before that year. The Hungarian desire for independence drove the compromise and was partially satisfied by it, but the Habsburgs continued as before to rule a collection of diverse nations, ethnicities, cultures, and languages.

At the latest, then, the Austrian Empire ended on November 11, 1918, when the last Austrian Emperor, Karl, abdicated.

Varieties of Shame, Varieties of Guilt, and Why They Matter

Psychologists, counselors, and other mental health professionals recognize the significance of shame and guilt. These are powerful and sometimes destructive. But not all guilt is the same; not all shame is the same. Distinguishing between different types of guilt and different types of shame allows the reader to more accurately analyze in any particular concrete situation.

One type of shame is perception — real or imagined — that the people in one’s environment are aware of one’s flaws or sins. A man is ashamed if others learn that he stole money from an orphanage, or embezzled from his employer, or has a secret addiction. Such shame is often occasioned by the sudden revelation of one’s secrets. This type of shame can be called ‘outer-directed.’

A different version of shame is “inner-directed.” This is a self-valuation based upon one’s flaws or sins. One might review one’s actions, and label one’s self as worthless or evil. Such an internalized shame might arise when the distinction between one’s actions and one’s self is not made clear. Although one might have committed horrible crimes, it is those crimes which are evil, not one’s self. Ultimately, actions, not people, are judged to be good or evil.

There are perhaps other varieties of shame, in addition to these two.

Likewise, there are different sorts of guilt.

One kind of guilt is the reality of an individual’s having committed a sin or crime. This is a physical objective truth. A man either did, or did not, rob a bank. It is not a matter of “feeling” that the man is guilty. It is a verifiable fact. This can be called ‘ontological guilt.’

By contrast, another type of guilt is an emotion: this can be called ‘phenomenological guilt.’ One perceives one’s self to be guilty. This perception can be accurate, or it can be false.

Shame and guilt are painful. Externalized shame is the experience of being publicly humiliated. Inner-directed shame is the experience of self-loathing. Ontological guilt is the fact that one has done evil. Phenomenological guilt is to feel — accurately or mistakenly — that one has done evil.

These concepts are seen in specific situations: in Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, the main character, Raskolnikov, repeatedly tries to persuade himself that he’s done nothing wrong, and therefore need not feel guilt. Yet a phenomenological guilt keeps reappearing in his mind, and as his attempts to repress it become more frantic, the sublimated guilt is the hidden cause of his bizarre thoughts, words, and deeds. Finally, persuaded by his friend Sofya, he confesses the crime which he has committed. One interpretation of Dostoevsky’s plot is this: to get rid of the phenomenological guilt — i.e., to get rid of the feelings of guilt — one must get rid of the actual guilt — i.e., one must get rid of the ontological guilt. Confession is the first step in a process which will eventually eliminate the ontological guilt. After his confession, Raskolnikov embraces the sentence given to him. Finally, throughout Lent, he wrestles mentally with accepting the facts that he committed the crime and is justly imprisoned. At Easter Time, he and Sofya communicate their love for each other, and he experiences a sense of renewal. Later, he meditates on New Testament texts; Sofya had given him a Bible. He experiences an internal resurrection and regeneration.

Raskolnikov first had to recognize that his phenomenological guilt was indeed accurate. Then he confessed his crime and accepted his sentence; this was not a simple act, but required a great deal of internal wrestling. Finally, he had to receive forgiveness and acceptance, both from human beings, and from God. His ontological guilt thus removed, his phenomenological guilt also disappeared.

A different example shows how shame is calculated into people’s decisions and actions.

In the works of Homer and especially of Virgil, characters commit acts which strike the reader as amoral and as fueled alternatingly by rage or by fear. Individuals like Aeneas seem almost sociopathic or psychopathic. These characters are acting in ways calculated either to avoid or to eliminate a sense of outer-directed shame. They have a hierarchy of values in which avoiding outer-directed shame is at or near the top.

These Virgilian characters are seeking honor, which is an inverse of shame. An outer-directed sense of honor is to be praised by one’s fellows. Entire cultures are sometimes labeled as ‘honor-shame’ cultures, because this polarity drives their ethical thinking as well as their personal ambitions.

Correspondingly, an inner-directed sense of honor would be a healthy form of self-regard, and the antidote of an inner-directed sense of shame. To acknowledge the reality of one’s misdeeds, to acknowledge the evil of those deeds, to accept the consequences for those deeds, and yet not loath one’s self, is a salutary inner-directed sense of honor.

To complete the symmetry, the opposite of guilt is innocence: the two types of guilt, ontological and phenomenological, would be balanced by the same two types of innocence. To be ontologically innocent would be to have in fact not committed the sin or sins in question. To be phenomenologically innocent would be to believe or to feel that one is innocent, quite apart from the actual fact of one’s guilt or innocence.

Perhaps a final concept can be added to the two types of guilt and the two types of innocence. All four of these are in some way in need of, and are relieved by, forgiveness.

Forgiveness from a human being, or a group of them, eliminates outer-directed shame. Forgiveness toward one’s self eliminates the inner-directed shame. Forgiveness from God eliminates ontological guilt, and embracing that forgiveness eliminates phenomenological guilt.

It is a lack of forgiveness which leaves the stories of Homer and Virgil with unsatisfying endings.

Dostoevsky’s plot comes to a happier conclusion. Raskolnikov must endure agonizing spiritual torment for several hundred pages before finally receiving forgiveness in the last two or three pages of Crime and Punishment.

Shame, guilt, and forgiveness form a powerful interpretive structure which can be applied to events real or fictitious.

Reconstructing the Architecture of an Arabian Cathedral

Sometime around the year 567, an architectural exemplar was constructed in the region now known as Yemen, at the southwestern end of the Arabian peninsula. The governor Abraha caused it to be built. He claimed that “neither Arabians nor Persians have built anything equal to it.”

Abraha’s boast might have some merit: he’d corresponded with Emperor Justinain about the construction of this cathedral, and Justinian had contributed materials and skilled craftsmen to the project. Justinian wouldn’t have allowed himself to be associated with any building project that wasn’t spectacular.

This cathedral no longer exists, but historians Barbara Finster and Jürgen Schmidt have created a painstaking reconstruction of the church. Along with Justinian’s donation,

Daneben verwandte Abraha einheimisches Material, gurub-Steine für die Sockelzone, Steine vom Berg Nuqum, verschiedenfarbigen Marmor und vergoldete Ornamentfliese aus dem »Palast der Bilqis« in Marib.

Another historian, Werner Daum, estimates a slightly earlier date for the construction of the church, around AD 540. In any case, the cathedral lasted only until the mid 700s, when it was destroyed by invading Islamic armies. According to Daum, documents indicate that the church was still standing in 750/751, but was gone by 753/754, and so the demolition of the church is dated to around 752.

During the roughly 200 years that the church stood, it was a marvel, as Finster and Schmidt write:

Die Bekrönung der Außenwand erfolgte durch eine ebenfalls vorkragende Attikazone, aus vier (jeweils?) zwei Ellen hoch Zierbändern aus buntem, polierten Stein.

Finster and Schmidt refer to the fact that the joist ends overhung as did the meader at the top of the structure, an engineering feat.

The church built by Abraha in the city of San‘a’ was not only an architectural wonder, but also a reminder of a time when the Arabian peninsula was inhabited by a large number of Christians, who lived peacefully with anamists, Jews, and Zoroastrians. The landscape of Arabia was home to churches, cathedrals, and seminaries.

Starting in the mid 600s, Muslim armies conquered the peninsula, destroying the worship and educational places of the native populations. Numerous brilliant architectural examples were lost in this mass demolition.

Because of the linguistic ambiguities in transliteration, Abraha is also cited as Abreha, Abrahah, or Abrahah al-Ashram. San‘a’ is the city in which this edifice was located, a city also spelled Sanaa, San’a, or Sana.

The One That Started It All: Shevoroshkin and Nostratics

Can the family tree of the world’s languages be traced back to a single ancestor? It’s no surprise that Dutch, Danish, and German are part of a single language group and share a common ancestor language. Romanian, Portuguese, and French descend from Latin. This understanding of language genealogy is common.

The work of historical linguistics over the last several centuries has yielded several detailed family trees, each of which shows the relationships between some of the world’s currently-existing languages. Dutch, Danish, and German arise from one earlier language, and together with Norwegian, Flemish, Icelandic, and others, form a sibling group: the parent language which gave birth to all of them no longer exists, but can be reconstructed.

The patterns found in the contemporary languages give clues about the structures of the parent language. Working backward, linguists can discover the features of the now-extinct parent. In the case of German, Swedish, Dutch, etc., the original source language is called “Germanic” (not German!) or sometimes “proto-Germanic.”

Likewise, a proto-Italic language gave birth to Latin; Latin in turn produced Spanish, Italian, etc. A proto-Slavic language yielded Polish, Russian, Czech, Slovak, etc.

Moving a generation further into the past, linguists then sought a common ancestor for the Germanic, Slavic, and Italic families. Those three — together with a few others, like Celtic, Hellenic, and Indo-Iranian — are all the progeny of an original “Indo-European” language. This language would have been spoken up to around 2500 B.C., and perhaps even written, although no written evidence has been discovered.

As research moves back generation by generation, the postulation of these various ancestor languages is based on ever more indirect evidence. It is tenuous to reconstruct a language for which no written traces exist, and which has not been spoken or used for centuries or even millennia. Data is derived from the common features of the existing daughter languages.

It is even more shaky to reconstruct a mother language when the evidence is a collection of hypothetical languages which are themselves reconstructions.

The move from examining the vocabulary and grammar of Gothic and Old Icelandic to reconstructing a proto-Germanic language is at least justified by concrete examples from the daughter languages. But the move to reconstruct Proto-Indo-European is even more fragile, because the daughter languages themselves are hypothetical reconstructions.

Yet linguists have done precisely this.

So there is now a detailed account of the proto-Indo-European language, its daughter languages, granddaughter languages, and great-granddaughter languages. As the name ‘Indo-European’ suggests, the family includes many of the languages which are now spoken in a broad area from India to Europe. Sanskrit and English turn out to be cousins.

This same multi-generational family tree structure has been documented for other language groups — an Afro-Asiatic group, a Dravidian group, a Kartvelian group, and others. Eventually, any existing language is seen as part of a larger linguistic family.

The final step — a speculative and controversial step — is to show all these groups, in their earliest phases, as siblings, and to posit a single language as the ancestor of all known human speech. The ultimate source is called ‘proto-World’ or ‘proto-Human’ or ‘proto-Sapiens’ and corresponds to an intuitive understanding of human language. It is conjectured to have been common during the Paleolithic era.

The ‘proto-World’ hypothesis engenders both love and hate among linguists — those who do research in historical linguistics are also called ‘philologists’ — because it has only the most uncertain indirect evidence, and yet also seems to be probably correct. The response of many linguists is that it is likely to be true and likely never to be proven.

One step in the process of developing the proto-World hypothesis was the discovery — or invention, depending on how you view it — of the Nostratic language group. This super-family of languages includes the Indo-European group, as well as the Uralic and Altaic groups, and potentially other groups. The Nostratic macrofamily does not, however, include all languages. It is an intermediate stage of development between proto-World and Indo-European.

Among linguists, there are two extreme views: on the one hand, a confident assertion that proto-World and Nostratic had a concrete existence, were part of a clearly definable family tree of languages, and are properly the object of rigorous academic study and attempted reconstruction; on the other hand, a rejection of proto-World and Nostratic as purely speculative and conjectural, lacking any observable evidence, and not properly the object of academic investigation.

Given those two extreme positions, fiery and entertaining debate is guaranteed. There are, of course, many moderate scholars who see proto-World and Nostratic as reasonable hypotheses, but as lacking enough detailed evidence to fuel rigorous reconstruction.

One linguist in the Nostratic camp is Vitaly Shevoroshkin; author Robert Wright gives a glimpse of Shevoroshkin’s work:

The assertion that proto-Nostratic actually existed, though sufficient to inflame a number of American linguists, is innocuous compared with the second part of Shevoroshkin’s world view: the Nostratic phylum is itself historically related to the handful of other great language families Shevoroshkin sees in the world, which means that all of them are descended from a common tongue. This language — called, variously, proto-Human, proto-World, and the Mother Tongue — would have been spoken 50,000, 100,000, maybe even 150,000 years ago, probably in Africa, and then diffused across the globe. And here’s the kicker, the thing that gives Shevoroshkin a rock-solid basis for his bunker mentality: he believes not only that proto-World’s past existence is apparent but that proto-World itself is apparent, its primordial elements distinctly visible in modern languages, as refracted through eons of linguistic evolution. He says we can now begin reconstructing proto-World, the basic vocabulary from which all the world’s known languages have sprung.

While detailed descriptions of how, e.g., Old High German emerged from proto-Germanic have been thoroughly explored, and accounts of them ossified in a couple centuries’ worth of academic work, the details of Nostratic and proto-World are murky and research is ongoing. This will provide employment and heated debate among scholars for another century or two.

Picking up the Pieces: What Can Be Learned from the French Revolution

Prior to 1789, the world had certainly seen its share of brutal and excessively bloody wars, in which many people had died. But the French Revolution was something different: it wasn’t a war; it was the mass execution of unarmed and defenseless civilians.

The French Revolution was also a tragedy. It began promising freedom of speech and ended by murdering people who had simply dared to express an opinion. It began promising freedom of religion and ended by killing priests and brutally enforcing atheism upon the populace.

What went wrong?

The revolutionaries correctly identified a political problem — the absolutist Bourbon dynasty — but they incorrectly sought to fix that problem by changing, not the government, but rather the society.

One fixes governmental problems by changing the government. One fixes societal problems by changing society. The French Revolution attempted to fix governmental problems by changing society, and so was doomed to failure.

Having toppled the monarchy, the revolutionaries discovered that they had no thought-out plan to replace it. What followed was a series of ad hoc governments, hastily structured, quickly manifesting their weaknesses, and as hastily replaced by other equally impromptu governments.

The ideology of the revolution — ideologies lack nuance and complexity — tended toward an absolutism of thought and often of action. The demand for absolute freedom led predictably to chaos. The chaos led predictably to a demand for order, which led to tyranny. The absolute nature of the revolutionary ideology — critics of the French Revolution called it “metaphysical” — also led to oversimplification. Blanket edicts replaced subtle legislation.

A century earlier, John Locke had already pointed to the distinction between government and society. A decade earlier, Thomas Paine had pointed to the same distinction with fresh wording for a new circumstance. To its own detriment, the French Revolution failed to heed this insight.

While both society and legislation can be frustratingly complex, the Byzantine intricacies of governments and cultures are the way they are for a reason. Patient examination will reveal wisdom in the labyrinthine structures. Both natural structures — oysters or stalactites — and human structures — great architecture — require time to be built, and in this time, acquire a multitude of details and variations.

Impatient revolutionaries wish to sweep aside the complexities at once, and introduce an absolute simplicity. Impracticality is the least of the vices of such thinking: it soon turns deadly.

The Jacobins were an influential faction among the revolutionaries in France. The Benthamites in Britain were followers of Jeremy Bentham, originally gathered around his system of philosophical utilitarian ethics, but then broadening those principles and hoping to apply them to society and government. Both groups, while differing from each other, made the same mistakes.

Edmond Burke made insightful critiques of the French Revolution as it unfolded and even predicted its various developments before they happened. Writing about Burke, historian Russell Kirk explains:

Society is immeasurably more than a political device. Knowing this, Burke endeavored to convince his generation of the immense complexity of existence, the “mysterious incorporation of the human race.” If society is treated as a simple contraption to be managed on mathematical lines — the Jacobins and the Benthamites and most other radicals so regarded it — then man will be degraded into something much less than a partner in the immortal contract which unites the dead, the living, and those yet unborn, the bond between God and man. Order in this world is contingent upon order above.

Burke saw that humans have three great relationships: to those who lived before them, to their contemporaries, and to those who will live after them. Any thoughts about the differences between government and society must account for all three.

The revolutionaries in France fell to one side or the other: either a legalism which found endless rules for people to obey, or an anarchistic nihilistic absence of any guidance.

The antidote offered by Burke was a morality which was not one of endless legislation, but which offered rather ethical guidance, as Russell Kirk reports:

There exists no simple set of formulas by which all the ills to which the flesh is heir may be swept away. Yet there do exist general principles of morals and of politics to which thinking men may turn.

The prudent thinker, Kirk writes, “is concerned with a number of” the same “primary questions” as the French Revolutionaries were, “and with a vaster array of prudential questions, to which the answers must vary with the circumstances and the time.” Contrary to the romanticized image of revolutionaries, the leaders in France from 1789 to 1799 were remarkably doctrinaire and rigid, unwilling or unable to allow for variances in legislation or morality, seeking simplistic universal rules to be applied mechanically to all people at all times in all places.

A century later, Burke’s thought would be echoed by Jacob Burckhardt, who referred to a class of thinkers, including those of the French Revolution, as the “terrible simplifiers.” Rather than having an ideology, Burke’s mission was to show that ideologies are doomed to fail, and in the process of their failure, bring misery.