This is Kant writing ‘Concerning an event of our time which demonstrates the moral tendency of the human race’ (i.e. the revolution)
“There ‘must be some experience in the human race which, as an event, points to the disposition and capacity of the human race to be the cause of its advance towards the better….and towards the human race as being the author of this advance”
and:
’such an event would have to be considered not itself as the cause of history, but only as an intimation, an historical sign (signum rememorativum, demonstrativum, prognostikon)…..’
This last formula recalls explicitly Thomistic formulations of the sacraments and more particularly of the Eucharist. …… which suggests the sage of Konigsberg might, perhaps have been an enthusiast of the blood sacrifice? and how would RDE take the notion of the paradigmatic philosopher of the enlightenment being such a fan of ‘this game of great revolutions’ accompanied as it is by ‘momentous crimes’?
Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive but to be young was very heaven.
Though no doubt we’ll have the argument that they should have agitated for a working group on Bastille conditions and enlisted the ancien regime in a social partnership arrangement.
The reason Louis is smiling is that he can see Napoleon limbering up in the background.
I think there were very few prisoners there, one being Irish. It was symbolic.
On a footnote on violence, the repression in Wexford cost far more lives than the entire French Revolution. But to our reformists and conservatives only rrevolution is violent not repression.
I think productive labour would be better than the Guillotine here.
What about cleaning the public toilets for Ahern and say Sean Fitzpatrick.
On a footnote on violence, the repression in Wexford cost far more lives than the entire French Revolution.
I assume that you’re referring to ‘98? Let’s also not forget the terror visited on the Ulster Protestant United Irishmen as well (followed by a policy of enlisting Dissenters as full partners, which eventually led among other things to the encouragement of the Orange Order).
The reason Louis is smiling is that he can see Napoleon limbering up in the background.
That would be Emperor Napoleon to you, pleb (And I was interested to see the many Irish names among the Marshalls of France on the Arc de Triomphe, some years ago).
Probably by not understanding what he was on about.
Sorry…the comment at the top was a bit obscure; I was in the middle of writing about K. and the revolution when your post reminded me what day it was and off I went…….
I wasn’t suggesting that you were obscure SoS, nor even Kant. Just that I doubt that many of those who accept RDE’s analysis would be able to grasp the subtleties of Kant’s thought.
The repression here in the 1790s (and for that matter in Poland) at the hands of reaction claimed more victims than what is generally considered as the “reign of terror” ie guillotines and what not in Paris – what is usually blathered on about by conservative commentators as is noted above, but if you include the civil war in the Vendee – which is usually left to one side in the popularly promoted image of repression in the French Revolution (most of the victims there being of low status) – then the death toll inflicted by the French Republic in repression would I think exceed that of the British or Russian states during the same period. But I agree with the general point made above – the bloody repression elsewhere in the same decade makes nonsense of all the crap about the French Revolution being driven off course by Utopian ideology into hence inevitable repression thereby laying the course for the Gulag, concentration camps etc… etc.. etc…
Thanks Garibaldy:
incidentally Kant also expressed his enthusiastic support for the United Irishmen in 1798 in a letter that i now can’t find the reference for…actually, it is interesting (at least to me) how often authors of the German aufklarung use Ireland as a stick to beat British pretensions to democracy or civilisation with: Hegel, for example, in his essay on the English reform acts, laid great emphasis on the shame and injustice of the conditions prevailing here. I, for one, grew up thinking we were England’s dirty little secret and that most people on this the continent were oblivious: this appears to have been far from the case.
I, for one, grew up thinking we were England’s dirty little secret and that most people on this the continent were oblivious: this appears to have been far from the case.
It certainly is, given how many people of various European nationalities I’ve personally encountered over the past decade and more who brought up this subject of their own accord. I think that we are becoming accomplices with the British press and educational system in suppressing the topic here in this country, though (I wrote in another set of comments here that the southern liberal unionist set may have lost the war of independence, but that they may win the peace).
The aforementioned suppression may have had a lot to do with the fact of the war in the North, whereby it was easy to imply that anyone decrying British oppression in the past was expressing delight at the latest car bomb. It was a crude mode of argument but it seemed to work wonders at the time. Similarly the implication that anyone concerned about the fact that the guards were dropping IRSP members down the stairs of various nicks was a closet terrorist also silenced debate.
The extent to which the British public remains ignorant of the country’s behaviour can, I think, be seen in the way in which the presence of British soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan is portrayed over there. Even liberal commentators seem to make a complacent assumption that, in comparison to the brutal and ignorant Yanks, the British soldier is a model of behaviour and decorum, much loved by the locals. It was intriguing to see the debate on Newsnight the other evening where it was more or less generally accepted that the British had a duty to keep the warring natives apart and impose peace on their behalf, which is the old line we used to hear about the North. There’s a whole, “let’s back our troops,” thing going on there at the moment which feeds into this idea of the British Army as a basically benign and neutral force.
“Didn’t Oscar Wilde say something about the tragedy of the poor
Vendee peasant fighting “for the hideous cause of feudalism”?”
Worse than Kronstad, I think.
I am told that there is still a folk memory of the repression. Mishandled by Paris and manipulated by the British and Royalists. In Nicaragua a similar mistake with the Miskitos opened the way for Imperialism.
History does have lessons.
Speaking of pro-war propaganda aimed at the British public (which was really only developed and perfected in dealing with public disaffection after the Great War, bringing us the ghastly Poppies among other stunts), remember William Orpen’s experience:
After the outbreak of the First World war, Orpen, like John Lavery, was appointed an official war painter and given the rank of Major. During his stay on the Western Front, he completed numerous drawings and paintings of private soldiers as well as official portraits of generals and politicians. Other notable paintings included Dead Germans in a Trench, Members of the Allied Press Corps, and Ready to Start. Most of these paintings now hang in the collection of the Imperial War Museum in London. Following the armistice Orpen was made official portrait artist to the Versailles Peace Conference, where he completed several works including for The Signing of the Peace.
Orpen was deeply affected by the suffering he witnessed in the war. His feelings and misgivings about the treatment of common soldiers was evidenced by his painting To the Unknown British Soldier Killed in France, first exhibited in 1923. This picture portrayed a flag-draped coffin flanked by a pair of ghostly and wretched soldiers clothed only in tattered blankets, set against the opulent backdrop of the Paris Peace Conference. Although the work was widely admired by the general public, it was attacked by the authorities and Orpen was forced to paint out the soldiers before the picture was accepted by the Imperial War Museum.
From memory some of the grievance of the ‘anti-revolution’ peasantry in the Vendee wasn’t that different from the ‘pro-revolution’ peasantry elsewhere – in that urban wealthy were buying up land and imposing more strict exploitation, in the Vendee these elements were pro-Republic hence the commonality of rural folk were anti-Republic…..with the proviso this is from memory. Apparently there is a correlation to this day with the strength of the counter-revolution in a particular area in the 1790s and the right wing vote today.
This is Kant writing ‘Concerning an event of our time which demonstrates the moral tendency of the human race’ (i.e. the revolution)
“There ‘must be some experience in the human race which, as an event, points to the disposition and capacity of the human race to be the cause of its advance towards the better….and towards the human race as being the author of this advance”
and:
’such an event would have to be considered not itself as the cause of history, but only as an intimation, an historical sign (signum rememorativum, demonstrativum, prognostikon)…..’
This last formula recalls explicitly Thomistic formulations of the sacraments and more particularly of the Eucharist. …… which suggests the sage of Konigsberg might, perhaps have been an enthusiast of the blood sacrifice? and how would RDE take the notion of the paradigmatic philosopher of the enlightenment being such a fan of ‘this game of great revolutions’ accompanied as it is by ‘momentous crimes’?
Probably by not understanding what he was on about.
Why on earth does Louis look like he’s smiling gently in that picture?
Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive but to be young was very heaven.
Though no doubt we’ll have the argument that they should have agitated for a working group on Bastille conditions and enlisted the ancien regime in a social partnership arrangement.
The reason Louis is smiling is that he can see Napoleon limbering up in the background.
they should have agitated for a working group on Bastille conditions and enlisted the ancien regime in a social partnership arrangement
Bing! Straight into the quotes file with that.
I think there were very few prisoners there, one being Irish. It was symbolic.
On a footnote on violence, the repression in Wexford cost far more lives than the entire French Revolution. But to our reformists and conservatives only rrevolution is violent not repression.
I think productive labour would be better than the Guillotine here.
What about cleaning the public toilets for Ahern and say Sean Fitzpatrick.
On a footnote on violence, the repression in Wexford cost far more lives than the entire French Revolution.
I assume that you’re referring to ‘98? Let’s also not forget the terror visited on the Ulster Protestant United Irishmen as well (followed by a policy of enlisting Dissenters as full partners, which eventually led among other things to the encouragement of the Orange Order).
The reason Louis is smiling is that he can see Napoleon limbering up in the background.
That would be Emperor Napoleon to you, pleb (And I was interested to see the many Irish names among the Marshalls of France on the Arc de Triomphe, some years ago).
Probably by not understanding what he was on about.
Sorry…the comment at the top was a bit obscure; I was in the middle of writing about K. and the revolution when your post reminded me what day it was and off I went…….
I wasn’t suggesting that you were obscure SoS, nor even Kant. Just that I doubt that many of those who accept RDE’s analysis would be able to grasp the subtleties of Kant’s thought.
The repression here in the 1790s (and for that matter in Poland) at the hands of reaction claimed more victims than what is generally considered as the “reign of terror” ie guillotines and what not in Paris – what is usually blathered on about by conservative commentators as is noted above, but if you include the civil war in the Vendee – which is usually left to one side in the popularly promoted image of repression in the French Revolution (most of the victims there being of low status) – then the death toll inflicted by the French Republic in repression would I think exceed that of the British or Russian states during the same period. But I agree with the general point made above – the bloody repression elsewhere in the same decade makes nonsense of all the crap about the French Revolution being driven off course by Utopian ideology into hence inevitable repression thereby laying the course for the Gulag, concentration camps etc… etc.. etc…
Didn’t Oscar Wilde say something about the tragedy of the poor
Vendee peasant fighting “for the hideous cause of feudalism”?
Thanks Garibaldy:
incidentally Kant also expressed his enthusiastic support for the United Irishmen in 1798 in a letter that i now can’t find the reference for…actually, it is interesting (at least to me) how often authors of the German aufklarung use Ireland as a stick to beat British pretensions to democracy or civilisation with: Hegel, for example, in his essay on the English reform acts, laid great emphasis on the shame and injustice of the conditions prevailing here. I, for one, grew up thinking we were England’s dirty little secret and that most people on this the continent were oblivious: this appears to have been far from the case.
In the first ‘Wilt’ book, Tom Sharpe has his eponymous hero quote Metternich as saying that ‘Ireland is England’s Poland’.
I, for one, grew up thinking we were England’s dirty little secret and that most people on this the continent were oblivious: this appears to have been far from the case.
It certainly is, given how many people of various European nationalities I’ve personally encountered over the past decade and more who brought up this subject of their own accord. I think that we are becoming accomplices with the British press and educational system in suppressing the topic here in this country, though (I wrote in another set of comments here that the southern liberal unionist set may have lost the war of independence, but that they may win the peace).
The aforementioned suppression may have had a lot to do with the fact of the war in the North, whereby it was easy to imply that anyone decrying British oppression in the past was expressing delight at the latest car bomb. It was a crude mode of argument but it seemed to work wonders at the time. Similarly the implication that anyone concerned about the fact that the guards were dropping IRSP members down the stairs of various nicks was a closet terrorist also silenced debate.
The extent to which the British public remains ignorant of the country’s behaviour can, I think, be seen in the way in which the presence of British soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan is portrayed over there. Even liberal commentators seem to make a complacent assumption that, in comparison to the brutal and ignorant Yanks, the British soldier is a model of behaviour and decorum, much loved by the locals. It was intriguing to see the debate on Newsnight the other evening where it was more or less generally accepted that the British had a duty to keep the warring natives apart and impose peace on their behalf, which is the old line we used to hear about the North. There’s a whole, “let’s back our troops,” thing going on there at the moment which feeds into this idea of the British Army as a basically benign and neutral force.
“Didn’t Oscar Wilde say something about the tragedy of the poor
Vendee peasant fighting “for the hideous cause of feudalism”?”
Worse than Kronstad, I think.
I am told that there is still a folk memory of the repression. Mishandled by Paris and manipulated by the British and Royalists. In Nicaragua a similar mistake with the Miskitos opened the way for Imperialism.
History does have lessons.
Speaking of pro-war propaganda aimed at the British public (which was really only developed and perfected in dealing with public disaffection after the Great War, bringing us the ghastly Poppies among other stunts), remember William Orpen’s experience:
After the outbreak of the First World war, Orpen, like John Lavery, was appointed an official war painter and given the rank of Major. During his stay on the Western Front, he completed numerous drawings and paintings of private soldiers as well as official portraits of generals and politicians. Other notable paintings included Dead Germans in a Trench, Members of the Allied Press Corps, and Ready to Start. Most of these paintings now hang in the collection of the Imperial War Museum in London. Following the armistice Orpen was made official portrait artist to the Versailles Peace Conference, where he completed several works including for The Signing of the Peace.
Orpen was deeply affected by the suffering he witnessed in the war. His feelings and misgivings about the treatment of common soldiers was evidenced by his painting To the Unknown British Soldier Killed in France, first exhibited in 1923. This picture portrayed a flag-draped coffin flanked by a pair of ghostly and wretched soldiers clothed only in tattered blankets, set against the opulent backdrop of the Paris Peace Conference. Although the work was widely admired by the general public, it was attacked by the authorities and Orpen was forced to paint out the soldiers before the picture was accepted by the Imperial War Museum.
http://www.visual-arts-cork.com/irish-artists/william-orpen.htm
From memory some of the grievance of the ‘anti-revolution’ peasantry in the Vendee wasn’t that different from the ‘pro-revolution’ peasantry elsewhere – in that urban wealthy were buying up land and imposing more strict exploitation, in the Vendee these elements were pro-Republic hence the commonality of rural folk were anti-Republic…..with the proviso this is from memory. Apparently there is a correlation to this day with the strength of the counter-revolution in a particular area in the 1790s and the right wing vote today.