188. TMM - The City of God, cont. - The Agent of Terror

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The Magic Mountain 

The City of God and Evil Deliverance - cont.

P473 “I protest... your insinuation that the modern state dooms the individual to the hell of slavery. And I protest yet a third time, against the harrowing alternative you have presented us: Prussianism or Gothic reaction. The sole purpose of democracy is to provide an individualistic corrective to the absolutism of the state. Truth and justice are the crown jewels of individual morality; and should a conflict arise with the interests of the state, they may very well appear to be hostile to it, but in fact are directed toward the state’s higher... transcendent -- good. The Renaissance as the origin of the deification of the state? What sham logic! The achievements that the Renaissance and the Enlightenment wrested from the past... were individual human personality, human rights, and human freedom.” 

Pirenne makes a point of these “rights” being for the educated aristocracy, and so not “human” rights exactly. That idea came much later. Erasmus never addressed the “common man” and even Luther came to see those men as a threat to peace and security. Lutheranism, like Anglicanism, was a decision made by princes for their subject. Those subjects had no say in the matter. Calvin, saw things differently. 

Pirenne on the Renaissance and Reformation HERE; Renaissance Italy HERE; Erasmus and North of the Alps HERE; and Aristocratic quality of liberalism HERE.
...

“...I was attempting to introduce logic into our conversation... and you have replied with high-mindedness. I am more or less aware that the Renaissance gave birth to what is known as liberalism, individualism, humanistic citizenship, and all that... the heroic age that ‘wrested’ your ideals came to an end long ago -- those ideals are dead, or at best lie twitching in their death throes, and those whom they had hoped to finish off have got their foot in the door again. You call yourself... a revolutionary. But you are badly mistaken if you think that future revolutions will end in freedom. After five hundred years, the principle of freedom has outlived its usefulness. A pedagogic method that regards itself as a daughter of the Enlightenment and employs educational methods based on criticism, on the liberation and nursing of the ego, on the breaking down of ordained living patterns -- such a pedagogy may still achieve moments of rhetorical success, but for those who know and understand, it is, beyond all doubt, sublimely backward. All institutions dedicated to genuine education have always known that there can be only one central truth in any pedagogy, and that is absolute authority and an ironclad bond -- discipline and sacrifice, renunciation of the ego and coercion of the personality. It is ultimately a cruel misunderstanding of youth to believe it will find its heart’s desire in freedom. Its deepest desire is to obey.”

P474 Joachim sat up straight. Hans Castorp blushed. Herr Settembrini twirled his handsome moustache excitedly.

“No!” Naphta continued. “The mystery and precept of our age in not liberation and development of the ego. What our age needs, what it demands, what it will create for itself, is -- terror.”
...

“And might one inquire... who or what... will be the agent of this... this terror?”

“...I am at your service, I don’t believe I am mistaken in assuming we are agreed in our presupposition of an ideal primal condition of man, a stateless condition that knew no compulsion, where the relationship to God was direct and childlike, where there was neither sovereignty nor service, no law, no punishment, no injustice, no union of the flesh, no class differences, no labor, no property, but only fraternity, and moral perfection.”

P475 “Very good. I agree... I agree except for the point about union of the flesh, which obviously must always have been the case, since man is a highly developed vertebrate, no different from other animals.” 

I wouldn’t have agreed to nearly as much. 


“As you wish, I am merely establishing fundamental agreement as to man’s original, paradisal conditions, without law and with a direct childlike relationship to God, all of which was lost in the Fall. I believe we can walk side by side a little farther down this path by tracing the state to a social contract, which takes sin into account and protects against injustice and which we both therefore regard as the origin of sovereign authority.” 

It’s important to jump in right at the beginning of an argument like this. I don’t buy any of it, but Mann is laying out the popular streams of European thought which were all built on the foundation of Christianity. I reject the “paradisal.” I think there was always punishment in the highly constrained world of a very local social group. That said, the development of sovereign authority in Europe following the Dark Ages was based on the establishment of order. This authority originally lay with the local prince and only later shifted to the kings as their power expanded. Except in Germany where this didn’t happen until the 19th century. 


“Benissimo!... Social contract -- that’s the Enlightenment, that’s Rousseau. I would never have thought --”

“Beg your pardon, but we now come to a parting of the ways. Given the fact that all sovereignty and authority were originally vested in the people, who then transferred all legislative and other powers to their prince, your school of thought deduces, first and foremost, the people’s right to revolt against the crown. Whereas we --” 

This may have been the case with the Germanic tribes but even that didn’t last long after they crossed into the Roman Empire. Here's some more Pirenne: Church and State in a depopulated world without commerce HERE; The classic medieval, domainal economy, 5th to 9th centuries HERE; Nobility and princes in Feudal Europe HERE;


“...we, for our part... are perhaps no less revolutionary than you, but we have always deduced, first and foremost, the supremacy of the Church over the secular state. For even if the state’s ungodliness were not branded on its brow, one need only note a simple historical fact -- that its origins can be traced to the will of the people and not, like those of the Church, to divine decree -- and thereby prove that the state is, if not exactly a manifestation of evil, then at least a manifestation of dire necessity and sinful shortcomings.” 

The origin of the secular state in Europe can rarely, if ever, be traced to the will of the people. From the Carolingian period the kings were agents of the Church and crowned by the Church. I think Pirenne may cover some of this HERE.
...

“I know what you think of the nation-state. ‘Above all else, love of the fatherland and a boundless hunger for glory.’ That is Virgil. [Again I would remind the reader that this was written in the mid 1920s when Fascism was in power in Italy and National Socialism was on the rise in Germany.] You amend him with a little individualism, and call it democracy; but your fundamental relationship to the state remains completely untouched. You are apparently not disturbed by the fact that money is its soul. Or would you contest that? Antiquity was capitalist because it idolized the state. The Christian Middle Ages clearly saw that the secular state was inherently capitalist. ‘Money will become our emperor’ -- that is a prophecy from the eleventh century. Do you deny that it has literally come true, making life itself a veritable hell?”
... [Settembrini still wants to know the agent of terror.]

“Brash curiosity for a spokesman of a social class that is itself the agent of the freedom that has ruined the world... I am quite familiar with the political ideology of the bourgeoisie. Your goal is a democratic empire, the world-state, the apotheois of the principle of the nation-state on a universal plane. And the emperor of your empire? We know him. Yours is a gruesome utopia, and yet -- on this very point we find ourselves more or less in agreement. For there is something transcendent about your capitalist world republic -- indeed the world republic is the transcendent secular state, and we are one in our faith that on some distant horizon a final perfect condition awaits mankind what will correspond to his original perfect condition. Since the days of Gregory the Great, the founder of the City of God on earth, the Church has seen it as her task to bring mankind back under divine rule. [Now we are to the subject Ivan Karamazov brings up in TBK] His papal claim to temporal authority was not made for its own sake, proxy dictatorship was, rather, a means, a path to a redemptive goal, a transitional phase from the heathen state to the kingdom of heaven. You have spoken to our pupils here about the Church’s bloody deeds and her chastening impatience -- but that was very foolish of you, for the zeal of the godly cannot, by definition, be pacifistic. And Gregory himself said. ‘Cursed be the man who holds back the sword from shedding blood.” We know power is evil. But if the kingdom is to come, the dualism between good and evil, between this world and the next, between power and the Spirit, must be temporarily abrogated and transformed in a principle that unites asceticism and domination. That is what I call the necessity of terror.”

“But its agent! Its agent!”

P477 “You even ask? Can it be your Manchester eyes have failed to notice the existence of a social theory that promises the victory of man over economics, a social theory whose principles and goals coincide exactly with those of the Christian City of God? The Church fathers called ‘mine’ and ‘yours’ pernicious words, described private property as usurpation and thievery. They repudiated private ownership, since, according to the divine law of nature, the earth is the common property of all mankind and therefore its fruits are likewise intended for the common use of all. They taught that only greed, itself a consequence of the Fall, defends the rights of property, since it also invented exclusive ownership... They hated money and finance and called capitalist wealth fuel for the fires of hell. With all their hearts they despise the economic principle that declares price is the result of the workings of supply and demand, and they damned those who lived by the fluctuations of the market as exploiters of their neighbors. Even more blasphemous in their eyes was another form of exploitation, that of time -- the monstrosity of receiving a bonus, that is, interest paid on money, from the simple passage of time and thereby perverting a universal divine institution, time itself, to one’s own advantage and the detriment of others.” 

Oh, the irony. In the end, the only lasting result of the Crusades, started by Pope Urban II in 1096, was the rise of commerce and the return of currency to Europe and the resulting creation of the bourgeoisie. And then the Papacy itself became most adept at taking advantage of the Italian banking system to finance itself and its works in Europe. 


P477 “Benissimo!” Hans Castorp cried... “Time . . . as a universal divine institution -- now that is extremely important!”

“Indeed it is... These humane minds were disgusted by the idea of wealth increasing automatically and placed all speculation and transactions involving interest under the rubric of usury, making every rich man either a thief or the heir of a thief. They went even further. Like Thomas Aquinas, they regarded trade in general -- the basic commercial act of buying and selling for a profit without having altered or improved the product -- as a despicable occupation. They were not inclined to assign high value to labor in and of itself, because it is an ethical, not a religious act, performed in the service of life, not of God. And since labor was concerned exclusively with life and its maintenance, they demanded that both personal profit and public esteem be measured by the productive effort involved. They considered the peasant and the craftsman honorable people, but not so the merchant or the industrialist. [This is a bit problematic as there were no “industrialists” until somewhat later. Also this distinction between “craftsman” and “merchant” seems easier than it really was. Pirenne writes "democracies of privileged petits bourgeois were characterized by egoism and protectionism" when describing the exploitative domination of city markets by the guilds under the ancien regime. See HERE page 382-388] They wanted goods to be produced on the basis of need and loathed the idea of mass production. [This was the view of the guilds as well. Capitalist production that competed on price was a late development that took place outside the guild dominated cities and under the protection of Kings who were dependent on the funds they could raise from these “new men”] Well, then -- after having been buried for centuries, all these economic principles and standards have been resurrected in the modern movement of communism. The correspondence is perfect, down to the meaning of international labor’s claim of dominion over international marketeering and speculation. In the modern confrontation with bourgeois-capitalist rot, the world’s proletariat embodies the humanity and criteria of the City of God. The point of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the political-economic demand for salvation in our time, is not dominion for its own sake and for all eternity, but only a temporary abrogation of the polarities of mind and Spirit under the sign of the cross. It is a way of overcoming the world by ruling the world, a transition; its point is transcendence, the kingdom itself. The proletariat has taken up Gregory the Great’s task, his godly zeal burns within it, and its hands can no more refrain from shedding blood than could his. Its work is terror, that the world may be saved and the ultimate goal of redemption be achieved: the children of God living in a world without classes or laws.”
...

P478 [Settembrini responds,] “...You attempted a while ago to help us understand a Christian individualism founded in the dualism between God and the world, and tried to prove its preeminence over all politically determined morality. A few minutes later you are advocating a socialism that ends in dictatorship and terror. How do you reconcile the two?”

P479 “Opposites... may very well be reconciled. But what is mediocre and makeshift will never be. Your individualism, as I made bold to remark before, is a makeshift thing, a series of concessions. It corrects your heathen state morality with a little Christianity, a little ‘individual rights,’ a little so-called freedom, that is all. Whereas an individualism that proceeds from the cosmic, astrological importance of the individual soul, an individualism that is not social, but religious, that experiences its humanity not as a contradiction between self and society, but between self and God, between flesh and Spirit -- such a genuine individualism can be reconciled very nicely with a community rich in ties of commitment and obligation.”

“So it’s both anonymous and communal,” Hans Castorp said.

“...That is one possible answer, but only one. It comforts me a little. But let us confront it in all its consequences. Along with industry, your Christian communism rejects technology, the machine, progress itself. In denying what you call marketeering, the world of money and finance, which antiquity valued much more than farming and handicrafts, it also denies freedom. For it is as clear as clear can be that, just as in the Middle Ages, all private and public relationships will be bound to the soil, even -- and I do not find it easy to say this -- even the individual personality. If only the soil can provide a living, then it alone can provide freedom. Craftsmen and peasants, no matter in what honor they may be held, own no land, they are vassals. Here and there in the course of our discussions, you have made mention of human dignity. But now you are advocating an economic system whose morality deprives the individual of freedom and dignity.”

“There is much that we might say about dignity or the lack thereof... For now, I would be most gratified if in this context you might find reason to see freedom less as a lovely gesture and more as a problem. You maintain that the morality of Christian economics, with all its beauty and humanity, creates men who are not free. I, on the other hand, declare that the issue of freedom -- or, to put it more concretely, the issue of cities -- as highly moral as issue as it may be, is historically associated with a most inhuman degeneration of economic morality, with the many horrors of modern marketeering and speculation, with the satanic rule of money, with commerce.”

P480 “I must insist that you not hide behind reservations and paradoxes, that you confess clearly and unambiguously that you are the blackest reactionary.”

“The first step toward true freedom and humanity would be to cast off your quaking fears of the term ‘reactionary.’ “
...

[The cousins are invited up to see Settembrini’s apartment,] ...The garret... had two small rooms that were both occupied by the republican capitalist -- one serving as bedroom, the other as the study of the literary contributor to the Sociology of Suffering. He cheerfully showed his lodging to his young friends, calling them private and cozy, thereby supplying them with the right words by which they could then praise his quarters -- which they did in unison. They both found it quite charming -- private and cozy...

P482 [Settembrini walks with them back to the sanatorium and warns them against Naphta,] “...It is at the very least my duty to point out to you as young people certain intellectual risks you run in associating with that man and to beg you, moreover, to keep your relations with him within certain prudent limits. His form is logic, but his nature is confusion.” 

I love that line. 


“...Herr Naphta is a man of intellect -- and that is rare. He is loquacious by nature -- and so am I. Let those who would judge me do so -- I took advantage of the opportunity to cross intellectual swords with an opponent who is, after all, my equal. There is no one else, far and wide. In brief, it is true that I visit him, that he visits me, that we take our strolls together. We argue almost every day, to the point of drawing blood. And I must admit the very contrariness of his thoughts, their antipathy ot my own, add a special allure to our meetings. I need the friction. [Has it occurred to me before that this is the truly passionate romance of the book? This sounds like the intellectual equivalent of the plot of Swept Away once they are stranded on the island] Opinions cannot live unless they have the chance to do battle -- and I am firm in mine. But could you claim the same for yourselves... You enter the fray unarmed against such intellectual chicanery. If exposed to the influences of this half-fanatic, half-malicious humbug, both your mind and souls are in danger.” 

Interesting that he adds "souls" to this warning. 


P483 [Hans,]”...But you must explain one thing for me... 
...

“Well, he said a great many things about money, the soul of the state, as he put it, and spoke out against property, because it’s thievery, and against capitalist wealth in general, which he said, I believe, was fuel for the fires of hell... and sang the praises of the medieval injunction against interest. And yet, he himself -- excuse me, but he himself must be . . . It really is quite a surprise to enter that room -- all that silk.”

P484 “Ah, yes... that sort of taste is very characteristic.”
...

“Herr Naphta,” Settembrini replied, is no more a capitalist than I.”

“...I am waiting for the ‘but’ in your response, Herr Settembrini.”

“Well, those people never let any of their own starve.”

“Who are ‘those people’?”

“The fathers.”

“Fathers? Fathers?”

“I am speaking, my good engineer, of the Jesuits.”
...

“No, I never -- but, then, who would ever have thought it? So that’s why you called him padre?”

“That was just a little exaggerated courtesy... Herr Naphta is not a priest. His illness is to blame for his not having gone further by now. But he did complete his novitiate and take his first vows. Illness forced him to break off his theological studies... [Just as with the cousins, Settembrini gives them a status they haven’t yet achieved in the world. There is more here about his past and his teaching in the area.] But he is a member of the Society, and even if the ties were looser, he still would lack for nothing. I told you that he is a poor man, by which I mean one without possessions. Regulations, of course. But the Society has unlimited wealth at its disposal and takes care of its own, as you saw.”
...

P485 [Why does he live in such poor quarters?] Settembrini shrugged. “He must have his reasons... Perhaps it’s a matter of tact, or taste. I assume it eases his anti-capitalist conscience to dwell in a poor man’s quarters, and that he compensates for it by the style in which he lives. Discretion probably plays a role as well. It’s best not to flaunt the fact that the Devil is paying all your bills. You put on a nice unpretentious facade, and then behind it indulge your priestly penchant for silk.”

[Hans,] “...What I am saying is... is he a proper Jesuit?... He said things -- you know the things I mean -- about modern communism and the godly zeal of the proletariat that cannot refrain from shedding blood. In short, things I won’t amplify on -- but your grandfather with his citizen’s pike was a perfect little lamb in comparison, if you’ll pardon the expression. How does that work? Do his superiors agree with him? Does that square with Roman doctrine, for which the Society weaves its web of intrigue all around the world -- or so I’m told? Isn’t it... heretical, unorthodox, incorrect?...

P486 “... It’s very simple. Herr Naphta is first of all a Jesuit, a good and proper Jesuit. But second, he is a man of intellect -- otherwise I would not seek out his company -- and as such he is always looking for new combinations, adaptations, connections, modern permutations. You saw that even I was surprised by his theories. He had never revealed so much of himself to me...”

[Hans,] “...But why didn’t he become a  padre? He’s surely old enough.”

“I told you, it was his illness that temporarily prevented it.” [Just like with the cousins, again.]

“Fine, but don’t you think that if he’s a Jesuit first and a man of intellect, with permutations, second -- that the second part has something to do with his illness?”

“What are you trying to say?”

“No, wait, Herr Settembrini, all I mean is that he has a moist spot, and that prevents him from becoming a priest. But his permutations would probably have prevented it as well, and to that extent his permutations and his moist spot go together... In his own way he’s one of life’s problem children, too, a handsome Jesuit with a little moist spot.”

Beware of Hans when he starts speaking French. 
...

“...Arm your hearts and minds with mistrust, never let your critical resistance down. I will characterize the man for you in a single word. He is a voluptuary.”
...

P487 “...His physical frailty has nothing to do with it. And as for his vows, there is such a thing as mental reservations. I spoke, however, in a broader, more intellectual sense, a perspective I assumed you would understand by now...”
...

[When Settembrini visited Hans in his room at the beginning of the last chapter,]“...we started to chat... about higher things... in fact, we spoke about life and death, about the dignity of death, to the extent that it is a constituent and prerequisite of life, and about how it can degenerate into something grotesque if we commit the abominable error of isolating it as an intellectual principle... Imprint this on your minds: the intellect is sovereign, its will is free, it defines the moral world. If it isolates death in a dualistic fashion, then by that act of intellectual will, death becomes a force of its own opposed to life, an antagonistic principle, the great seduction -- and its kingdom is lust. And why lust, you ask? And I reply: Because it loosens and delivers, because it is a deliverance, and not deliverance from evil, but evil deliverance. It loosens morals and morality, it delivers from discipline and self-control, liberates for lust. In warning you about this man... I do so because all his thoughts are of lust; they stand under the aegis of death, a depraved force... “

What is Settembrini’s damage?

I can’t recall if this is my 3rd or 4th reading, but since I’ve read Faust, Dostoevsky, Pirenne, Doctor Faustus, and reread Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy since my last reading, I may as well be reading this for the first time. But thinking of Settembrini and his attitude toward “lust” -- with von Aschenbach and what we’ve seen here with the gender bent Clavdia in mind, I’m beginning to wonder if my seemingly random foray into Michel Foucault wasn’t as valuable as any of these more obvious sources. Foucault in San Francisco would seem to exemplify what Settembrini has in mind when he says “lust,” and what Castorp and Aschenbach are prone to. Both in terms of sex and the death wish. 

Settembrini represents the liberal Western tradition. There is an internal conflict between the socialist World Republic and the love of the nation-state, that would (had already in Mann’s experience) lead to the various forms of national socialism. 

Naphta represents the universalism of the Church or of international communism, take your pick. His voluptuousness is not unlike that of Father Ferapont in The Brothers Karamazov. He “protesteth too much” about the appeal of the flesh and of this life. (Though this is actually clearer with Ferapont.) Neither of our pedagogues are quite how they wish to appear. In truth, what Hans said in French about Naphta applies to all four of these men. 

I want to include yet another link to Pirenne. THIS describes the darkest of the Dark Ages, the period of European isolation following the rise of Islam. Even before the Carolingian, it is an age without a bourgeoisie but also without a strong Church.

And HERE is where Pirenne talks about Naphta's Pope Gregory.

And I find I must add a bit more about the City of God -- time spent riding buses is also good for "taking stock." Pirenne documents three attempts, during the centuries of European history he covers, of people (heretics, from the perspective of the Roman Church) attempting to realize the City of God on earth. The first were the Taborites -- in response to the Black Death see HERE (also a reference back to TMM and Naphta there). Then the Anabaptist at the very start of the Reformation, see HERE p563. And finally they got their way in Geneva with Calvinism, see HERE. Calvin actually sounds a lot like Naphta here, except that they part ways on usury, which is why Calvinism and capitalism strangely go together in Switzerland and the Low Countries.

What's interesting about these bouts of Christian fundamentalism is that they came from the bourgeoisie and from what passed for the proletariat at the time. I could never decide, while reading Pirenne, if these radical ideas gained traction because of the spread of literacy beyond the clergy, or because of the printing-press (the Taborites were before the press), or if, and I think Naphta would endorse this notion, it was a reaction against the bourgeoisiosity they were living with.

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