The Paradox of the Freedom of the West

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The Contributions of Aldous Huxley, Simone Weil and Alexis de Tocqueville

Introduction

“The best way to keep a prisoner from escaping is to make sure he never knows he's in prison.” 

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Fyodor Dostoevsky 

The general conception is that people are governed and regulated through the wielding of pain or through threats of punishment. Such is an overt, conspicuous, manifest, or tangible reign, one which is discernible by its subjects. Through terrible and mighty efforts such regimes are often inevitably toppled and if not toppled then perpetually or eternally sought to be undermined, whether from within or without, by groups or by individuals, for they foster an all-pervasive contempt by its subjects. This dissertation will instead explore another, insufficiently investigated form of government, one whereby pleasure and rewards are used to tame its citizens. This work will argue that the modern ‘West’ instead, in a perverse manner uses such a form of government, bestowing unto its citizens all earthly pleasures. This way their citizens are rendered drunk, intoxicated and numb with pleasure; so comfortable in their shackles, they never seek to transcend them. Such is a clandestine, hidden and inconspicuous form of government, for such subjects are often oblivious to their incarceration, and precisely because of this, will this dissertation argue that the reign via pleasure is a much more formidable form of governance. The paradox of the West’s freedom lies in the belief by its citizens of their freedom. 

This dissertation will explore the works of Aldous Huxley, Simone Weil and Alexis de Tocqueville.

The literature on the dangers of Western liberalism is vast, thus the three thinkers that are analysed within this work are by no means the only thinkers to articulate such concerns. In fact as Georgios Varouxakis argues, Auguste Comte (1798 — 1857), French philosopher and mathematician, was the first to consciously use to term the ‘West’ as a ‘sociopolitical concept’ and to explicitly delineate the dangers of ‘Western’ individualism: ‘Comte’s diagnosis of the problem of modernity was that, in its recent revolutionary and “metaphysical” phase, the “vanguard of Humanity” had been victim to individualist neglect of the past and of historical antecedents, which he called the “Western disease” (“la maladie occidentale”).’  However the three thinkers chosen delineate the dangers in a particularly profound and captivating manner. They also approach the matter from differing angles, offering differing perspectives. Weil offers a philosophical and religious critique, Tocqueville a political analysis and Huxley tackles the dilemma through a dystopian novel, helping to animate the abstract conceptions of his intellectual peers. Thus looking at these three thinkers in tandem with one another is vital for an comprehensive understanding on the dangers of Western liberalism, especially pressing in an age in which the fears of such thinkers seem to be manifesting before our very eyes, whereby the very ‘liberty’ of the West seems to be that which is embondaging it. It is crucial to note however that whilst Huxley and Weil explicitly refer to the ‘West’, an established concept during the twentieth century, Tocqueville utilises the term ‘Christendom’, to refer to what we now refer to as the ‘West.

This work is thematically ordered rather than chronologically. Firstly, this dissertation will explore the works of Aldous Huxley, who prophesied that the technological and scientific advances of the West guaranteed the imminence of its servitude to despots who weaponised pleasure; his novel Brave New World helping to visualise the phenomenon. By drawing upon empirical psychological and neurological data this work will argue that the reign by pleasure is much more detrimental and dangerous than the reign by pain. Secondly, this dissertation will investigate the works of Simone Weil who helps to delineate the mechanisms by which the Western citizen paves its path to enslavement. She specifically emphasises the role of the individual in its imprisonment, arguing that with the very freedom the individual is granted, he abandons his responsibilities, past traditions and community. Instead he indulges in, in an idolatrous manner, present material lower pleasures, perversely becoming a slave to pleasure. This dissertation will add to her argument, arguing that the West’s rendering of pleasure its God so to speak, was an attempt by it to regenerate the spiritual order of its past. Lastly, this study will examine Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, which elaborates on how such a selfish addiction to private benefits by the West damns it to an unprecedented and uniquely treacherous despotism, namely a ‘Soft Despotism’. This dissertation will ultimately conclude that the very freedom of the West contributes to its imprisonment, for the reason that with such freedom, the citizens enslave themselves to their senses (which is what Weil explains) and in their intoxicated state, to governments (which is what Tocqueville explains, and Huxley animates), emphasising that it is a formidable reign for the reason of its illicit nature.   

Literature Review 

The historiography on the individual thinkers — Simone Weil, Aldous Huxley and Alexis de Tocqueville —  is vast. However, deep research within the academic field reveals that these three thinkers have not been directly or explicitly compared. This dissertation precisely seeks to address this gap in the given literature, aiming to connect these hitherto unconnected thinkers, to highlight the paradox of freedom of the West. To specify, a wealth of scholars have argued that Huxley's Brave New World was an imminent possibility for Western societies, such as Neil postman, who in his book Amusing Ourselves to Death (1985), compares the Orwellian and Huxleyan dystopias, arguing that the technological changes of the modern West — such as a shift from a print-based culture to a visual and digital media culture (the former requiring critical thought, the latter inducing passivity and stupidity) — facilitates the enslavement of its citizens. Yuval Noah Harari in his book Homo Deus (2015), builds upon this, emphasising that scientific advancements of the West increase the likelihood that its citizens will be biochemically conditioned, manipulated and subjugated, specifically through the maximisation of their happiness. 

Furthermore, a myriad of scholars have investigated Simone Weil’s concern on the modern West, such as Peter Winch who articulates that Weil provides a framework for understanding the notion of liberties and obligations morally, as opposed to legally or politically, which this dissertation emphasises. Or David McLellan, who in his biography of Weil, emphasises Weil's concern pertaining to capitalism and its inability to address spiritual emptiness and alienation of modern Westerners. Additionally, Palle Yourgrau and Robert Zaretsky build on this analysis arguing Western structures beget a disoriented and morally depraved existence. However none of these scholars, including Weil herself, conceptualises the materialism of the West as an attempt to regenerate order once more, which this essay will argue. Moreover Harvey C. Mansfield, a prominent Tocqueville scholar, investigates how the democracy of America can perversely beget a soft despotism. Seymour Drescher, expands upon this,  delving into how Tocqueville’s observations were generalisable to other democratic societies like England. No academics however compare all three in a manner aimed to in this dissertation to detail out the paradox of the freedom of the West. 

Methodology 

This essay oft references that which is commonly perceived as fantastical, imaginary, or illusory, such as mythological, religious or fictitious texts. Knowing, that though in actuality such texts are untrue, that they are metaphorically true; in a word that they are meta-truths. For, such fabricated stories can be thought of as stories in which several real kindred narratives are amalgamated; whereby petty irrelevancies unique to the individual narratives are eliminated and in which commonalities between the stories are identified, extracted and kept. Thus such chronicles embody the essence or the core or the deepest elements of all actual chronicles, consequently allying them with the truth. This is because the truth is that which underlies all or poses as the foundation for all (for instance, the universe is predicated upon certain mathematical truths without which it would not be). Moreover, although the truth is allied with that which is below, it is also allied with that which is above, hence why such narratives are meta-truths. The prefix ‘meta’, meaning beyond or transcendent, accurately describes such legends, for they transcend the ordinary stories which comprise them. 

CHAPTER I

Aldous Huxley

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A Plaything of Pleasure

Claudia Stocker, Brave New World - SOMA, Digital Illustration. 

Aldous Huxley (1894–1963), an English writer and philosopher, was undeniably influenced by advancements in the scientific domain of his time, indeed such findings animated his novel, Brave New World. Namely, the novel was predicated upon behaviourism — a branch of psychology predicated on the belief that humans are blank slates, products exclusively of their nurture or environments, as opposed to their nature or biology. In the 20th century, B.F. Skinner, the father of behaviourism, through a series of famous experiments on rats demonstrated that it is possible to manipulate the behaviour of organisms, through conditioning, characterised by the meting out of rewards or pleasurable stimuli (food and water) to strengthen certain behaviours and the introduction of punishments or painful stimuli (electric shocks or loud noises) to weaken other behaviours. Both Skinner and Huxley understood the potency of the discovery, regarding its generalisability to humans and its social, cultural and political ramifications. However, whilst Skinner believed that such a discovery could be used for good, believing that it could be used to actualise a scientifically managed utopia by social engineers, Huxley believed the discovery could and would be used for evil. Such a discovery would lay the foundation for the genesis of a dystopian future, a Brave New World. It is precisely this discovery that the World Controllers of Brave New World engage in and it is this dystopian future that Huxley feared would especially befall the West, which was increasingly using its liberty to pursue lowly pleasures. 

Nineteen Eighty-Four vs Brave New World

In order to highlight the difference between the dichotomous means of governance, the two contradictory dystopian novels  — 1984 and Brave New World —  will be compared. Although both novels are characterised by a despotism, whilst in the former novel, citizens are regulated using pain, in the latter, the populace are tamed using pleasure. Or in Aldous Huxley’s words —  ‘in 1984 the lust for power is satisfied by inflicting pain; in Brave New World, by inflicting a hardly less humiliating pleasure.’ Specifically, in 1984, those who dare to transgress are starved, beaten with fists and steel rods, stomped on with boots, electrically shocked and condemned to solitary confinement. They are also exposed to their greatest fears as exemplified in the protagonist Winston Smith’s encounter with rats, or psychologically tormented through the torture of their loved ones, such as Julia’s abuse. Such acts of torture ensure the populace’s capitulation to the tyranny, epitomised in Winston’s infamously tragic conceding to the state ordained lie that ‘2+2=5.’ On the other hand, in Brave New World, the populace is systematically made to drown in an endless supply of stimuli that appeal to their primal, carnal and animalistic senses. Such pleasurable stimuli, in inducing a state of bliss, crucially and strategically diverts people’s attention from personal and political dissatisfaction, ensuring that they never rebel. As Huxley notes, ‘a really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which... most men and women will… love their servitude and will never dream of revolution.’

To specify, Huxley’s citizens are inundated with three key sources of pleasure: sex, leisure and soma. The World Controllers of Brave New World abolish the traditional institutions of family and monogamy — ‘they're plagued with no mothers or fathers; they've got no wives, or children, or lovers to feel strongly about’ — instead, drilling into the minds of their citizens, from a young age, the motto that ‘everyone belongs to everyone else,’ thereby propagating widespread promiscuity. Moreover, state-sanctioned entertainment such as ‘the feelies’ (theatre), organised sports, and consumer-driven shopping experiences constitute an important role in constructing what Huxley terms the ‘painless concentration camp’, engulfing the bodies, minds and souls of its citizens in a ‘sea of irrelevance.’  Furthermore, soma, the psychotropic drug — intended to extinguish any misery, despondency and sorrow, offering refuge from depressive feelings, and instead inducing a state of bliss (essentially serving the function of a narcotic)  — was dispensed liberally by the state. Prescribed as a pill or powder, but also released as an aerosol, soma acted to sedate, pacify, and stupefy citizens. With all citizens indoctrinated to think that ‘a gramme is better than a damn’, soma was taken at the slightest feeling of unease ensuring that almost all citizens at all times were intoxicated with ecstasy. In all three of these instances, through all three vectors of pleasure, the people are anaesthetised and numbed, rendered psychologically and physically weak so that they are unable to protest. But more dangerously, their desire to revolt is stolen from them, for so comfortable are they, that they notice not the chains which bind them, rendering them the mere playthings of the state. Hence there is no mention of protests in Brave New World, unlike the plot of 1984 which is typified by Winston's insurrection against Big Brother. 

Pleasure More Pernicious 

Crucially, Skinner discovered that rewards or reinforcements were more potent and efficient at moulding behaviour than punishments were; irrefutably consolidating the notion that the form of reign that Huxley cautioned against is more dangerous. For, whilst punishments temporarily or fleetingly put an end to undesirable behaviours, they did not remove or obliterate the animal’s motivation to engage in such behaviours in the future. ‘Punished behaviour’, writes Skinner, ‘is likely to reappear after the punitive consequences are withdrawn.’  Conversely, behaviours that were conditioned through positive reinforcement, were enduring and permanent, leading to long-term changes in the animal’s behavioural patterns. As Skinner notes:

‘Now that we know how positive reinforcement works, and why negative doesn’t, we can be more deliberate and hence more successful, in our cultural design. We can achieve a sort of control under which the controlled…nevertheless feel free. They are doing what they want to do, not what they are forced to do. That’s the source of the tremendous power of positive reinforcement—there’s no restraint and no revolt. By a careful design, we control not the final behaviour, but the inclination to behave—the motives, the desires, the wishes. The curious thing is that in that case the question of freedom never arises.'

This is possibly attributable to the fact that positive reinforcement/rewards ‘make the person or animal feel better’ imbuing the entity with positive emotion. But is also due to the organism associating positive emotions not just with the stimuli that it is conditioned to, but the person meting out the reward, leading to the willingness by the conditioned to preserve the behaviours taught to it by such an authority. This explains Huxley’s prophesy that the West would be destined to a ‘dictatorship without tears’ , ‘whereby ‘people will in fact have their liberties taken away from them, but will rather enjoy it. Too distracted from any desire to rebel by propaganda and brainwashing, enhanced by pharmacological methods.’

Current neuroscientific data further consolidates the assertion that the rule by pleasure is significantly more formidable than the rule by pain, for such a rule maliciously seizes the willingness and ability of the subject being ruled to protest such a reign. The empirical data specifically pertains to brainwaves — electrical impulses emitted by the brain. Compartmentalised according to their frequency, certain brainwaves are associated with certain mental states. Vitally, the brainwave (alpha wave, 7-12 Hz)

emitted when one is engaged in pleasurable, tranquilising and passive endeavours facilitates suggestion —  the manipulation of a person to uncritically accept an idea, belief or condition (including a tyrannical government). In other words, when alpha waves (7-12 Hz) are dominant —  such as when one is watching TV, taking drugs, daydreaming, fantasising, or taking a stroll down the park — critical thought is suspended. As neurosurgeon Adam Lipson explains, ‘EEG studies… demonstrate that television watching converts the brain from beta wave activity to alpha waves, which are associated with a daydreaming state, and a reduced use of critical thinking skills’, ‘placing the individual in a hypnotic-like trance – primed for suggestions and ready to be programmed.’ He further expands that slogans, moral values, propaganda or ideological principles from shows, movies, mainstream media, commercials, politicians, celebrities, and state-sponsored propaganda ‘bypass the critical faculties and seep into the foundations of the mind.’  Ultimately the individual is rendered a plaything of both his tyrannical senses and desires (forever craving pleasure) and of the despotic state willing to leverage the weapon of pleasure.

Orwell Contends

George Orwell, in his review of Mein Kampf repudiates the Huxleyan conception that 

that people simply yearn to be coddled. Although Orwell admits that the economic crisis of the Weimar Republic facilitated the rise of Hitler, ‘with its seven million unemployed,  ‘obviously’ favouring ‘demagogues’, he ultimately argues that the genesis of the totalitarian regime, and of all other totalitarian regimes of the twentieth century (including ‘Stalin’s militarised version of Socialism’), are primarily attributable to such regimes’ grasping of the ‘falsity of the hedonistic attitude to life.’ Unlike ‘all western thought since the last war, certainly all “progressive” thought’ which ‘has assumed tacitly that human beings desire nothing beyond ease, security and avoidance of pain,’ Hitler knew ‘that human beings don’t only want comfort, safety, short working-hours, hygiene, birth-control…they also, at least intermittently, want struggle and self-sacrifice, not to mention drums, flags and loyalty-parades.’ Such is evidenced, by the disappointment of the Socialist ‘who finds his children playing with soldiers’ and who is yet unable to find a ‘substitute for the tin soldiers’ for ‘tin pacifists somehow won’t do it.’ Moreover, such is what ultimately rendered ‘Fascism and Nazism…psychologically far sounder than any hedonistic conception of life’, ‘however they may be as economic theories.’ Perversely, proclaims Orwell, ‘the great dictators have enhanced their power’ not by offering their people ‘a good time’, as capitalism has, but ‘by imposing intolerable burdens on their peoples.’‘Hitler has said to them, “I offer you struggle, danger and death,” and as a result a whole nation flings itself at his feet.’

There is great truth in Orwell’s contention that people are beyond superficial dionysians. 

For there does reside within all humans a deep intrinsic desire to contend with something. To grapple, to toil, to sacrifice, to wrestle, to bleed, to sweat; to become as opposed to merely just be. This is in accordance with the Dostoyevskian observation, that people are more than rational utilitarians in search of utopia, elucidated in Notes from Underground: 

‘Shower upon him every earthly blessing, drown him in a sea of happiness, so that nothing but bubbles of bliss can be seen on the surface; give him economic prosperity, such that he should have nothing else to do but sleep, eat cakes and busy himself with the continuation of his species, and even then out of sheer ingratitude, sheer spite, man would play you some nasty trick.’

Such is the ‘Myth of Sisyphus’ as Albert Camus puts it. Sisyphus, who in Greek mythology, attempted to cheat death, was damned by Zeus for an eternity in Hades, to roll an immense boulder up a hill, only for it to roll back down every time it neared the peak. But what Zeus knew not when punishing Sisyphus was that meaning is evoked not in the attainment of the goal, but in pursuit of it. In other words ‘the struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.’

Nonetheless, Orwell erroneously assumes that most people can resist the temptation of pleasure,

if given the opportunity to indulge, as the modern West has through its individualism, democracy and capitalism. But history elucidates like nothing else can that only a minority do. It is why Socrates the ‘gadfly’ was condemned to death via hemlock, by the majority who could not tolerate the discomfort induced by his truth seeking.  It is why only one individual escapes Plato's shadowy cave, signifying enlightenment, and why he is consequently ostracised by the rest of society who wished to remain comfortably in the realm of illusion. It is why Buddha only attained Nirvana, from the myriad yogis; why Jesus was the only biblical figure who could resist the temptations of Satan and why only Dostoevsky’s Alyosha walked the ascetic path in Brothers Karamazov. It is also why only one individual, John ‘the savage’, protests in Brave New World. Born in a savage reservation outside of the grasp of the World Controllers, unadulterated and primal, he resembles Rousseau's noble savage. But even John is overcome by temptation, taking the soma which he once labelled a ‘poison to [the] soul as well as [the] body,’ engaging in an orgy and committing suicide in shame, disgust and regret. Ironically even Orwell yields to such a proposition in Nineteen Eighty-Four through the character Winston, in turn, invaliding and nullifying himself. The insurgent, despite initially willing to undergo torment in the name of the truth, utterly capitulates to the state to evade painful torture and attain  respite and security in its stead. This acts as a testament to the notion that pleasure, comfort and ease are irresistible temptations; very difficult entities to free oneself from the domination of. 

CHAPTER II

Simone Weil

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The Disease of Uprootedness 

Wenzel Peter. The Fall of Man. n.d. Oil on Canvas. Vatican Museum Room XVI. Rome. 

Simone Weil (1909-1943), a French philosopher, makes notable comments on the dangers of Western liberalism and individualism, namely, on such attitudes’ inevitable birth of materialism, hedonism, and superficiality and the people’s consequent shackling to such maya. Such is the paradox of liberty of the Occident. Weil’s contempt for the subjugation to lower material pleasures first manifested in her acquaintance with communism, a reaction to capitalism, a political and economic system predicated upon consumerism. However, her empathetic understanding of affairs, as a consequence of volunteering to work with the proletariat in mines and factories, gave her deeper insight into matters, prompting her to abandon such an ideology and her faith in the political realm altogether. Instead, she gravitated towards the religious, the spiritual, namely towards Christianity, although she never joined the Catholic Church, instead she became an ascetic mystic, dying a saintly death in 1943, renouncing the temporal, the flesh, in the name of that which lies beyond it, the transcendent.  

This work will particularly explore three of her works — her essay on colonialism, the Iliad and her final book, The Need for Roots — whereby she elaborates on her contempt for the materialism of the West. In her essay on colonialism, Weil posits that such materialism is a product of the abandonment of past traditions, customs, and rituals, which she posits to be a sacred depository encompassing divine wisdom. Such wisdom acts as a means of navigation, as a map. Without such guidance, modern Westerners are rendered lost and adrift. The implication of such a derailment is to sin, for the word sin is derived from the old English ‘synn’, translated from the Greek word ‘hamartia’, which means to ‘miss the mark’ or ‘to err’. Thus, initially utilised in a martial context, the term was later used theologically. Weil elaborates on such moral ramifications in the Iliad or the poem of force. She argues that the materialism of the modern West — ‘we are only geometricians of matter; the Greeks were, first of all, geometricians in their apprenticeship to virtue’ — results in ignobility, corruption, and decadence. In The Need for Roots, her last piece, Weil describes such a degenerate and misguided state as being characterised by ‘uprootedness.’ 

Uprootedness 

Akin to Comte, Weil maintained that the Occident suffered from a malaise. Indeed, Weil likened the war-afflicted Western civilisation to a critically ‘sick’ person, ‘whose limbs’ were ‘already cold and whose heart alone’ was ‘beating.’ Weil conceptualised the disorder as a ‘disease of uprootedness.’  It is precisely this that she speaks of in Need for Roots, 1943, in which she argues that we should speak less about the rights of the person and more about the ‘needs of the soul.’ Listing the needs of the soul, she highlights the importance of one in particular, rootedness, which she defines as the connection to one’s society, culture, past, heritage, ancestors, traditions, etc. — ‘a  person is rooted through their real, active and natural participation in the life of a community that keeps alive treasures of the past.’ The choice of the word ‘rootedness’ is highly apt, for roots grow into that which is beneath, below and before one. Into that which one stands upon, one’s foundations, without which one would not be. Thus, it is allied with one’s ancestors.

Moreover, it is no coincidence that Weil gravitated towards using such a term instead of ‘homelessness’ like the phenomenologist Martin Heidegger, or ‘alienation’ like the revolutionary Karl Marx, or ‘nihilism’ like the philosopher Fredrick Nietzsche to describe the severement of the modern atheistic technologically-engulfed Westerner from its origins. Because despite Weil seeing veracity in all religions, she was fundamentally of the Abrahamic faith, which is typified by the tree of knowledge of good and evil, rooted in the celestial paradise. Thus, implicit in the term rootedness is a union with one’s spiritual home or origins or God. Hence her proclamation that ‘the tree is truly rooted in the sky.’

On Colonialism

Simone Weil’s essay on colonialism was written during World War II, whilst she was working in London for the services of the French Forces, the allies. The Nazis, whom she was warring against, inspired her to do so, since to her, such an entity embodied the spirit of colonialism: ‘Hitlerism consists in the application by Germany to the European continent, and more generally to the countries belonging to the white race, colonial methods of conquest and domination.’ Within such an essay, she contends that ‘Europe is in danger of total spiritual annihilation’ fundamentally because it has lost its past due to two key principal forces — present and future forces. Nazism and its colonial spirit constituted the present force, whilst ‘increasing Americanization’ comprised the future force, which in Weil’s eyes was almost as terrifying.  

The present force, colonialism, contributes to the destruction of the past because colonials care not for the past of the nation that they invade. ‘French colonials are not generally curious about the history of the countries where they are based’ —‘except for Morocco, where certain Frenchmen have fallen truly in love with Arabic culture’  —  and ‘even if they were, the French administration does nothing to render such a study possible.’ Rather, they sought to impose their own culture, traditions, customs, and norms onto the natives.  Furthermore, she maintains that the French especially contribute to such an incineration of the past, for whilst the English ‘are there to trade and that’s it … the French, whether they like it or not, carry everywhere with them the principles of 1789.’ Thus akin to the French colonials who sought to incinerate the past of their colonies, so too did the Nazis seek to uproot Europe through the destruction of its ancient foundations. The future force, the incremental and increasing Americanisation of Europe, further serves to sever Europe’s connection to its past. ‘Americans have no past other than ours; they hold onto it, through us, by extremely tenuous threads.’ This is because America is a relatively new, infantile, youthful, and immature nation. It is also predicated upon Enlightenment principles such as positivism, materialism, logic, rationality, and secularism. Such principles are inherently characterised by a neglect of the past, which, as mentioned above, Weil regards as a ‘depository of all spiritual treasures.’ Thus, the loss of the past is equivalent to the loss of the supernatural.’

Weil asserts that it is detrimental to destroy the past, for without it, one cannot prevail, is unstable and unanchored, thrown hither and thither. ‘The substance of the question is simple. If man’s purely human faculties suffice, there is no disadvantage in obliterating the past and counting on the resources of will and intelligence in order to overcome all kinds of obstacles.’  Paramountly, however, the destruction of the past is pernicious because it induces nihilism, chaos, and immorality. For although the religious are ‘tempted to love’ colonialism ‘since colonisation constitutes a favorable environment for the missions’, proselytism, or evangelism, so too do atheists 'for a diametrically opposed reason.’ Namely for the reason that it chiefly serves as ‘an eradicator of religion.’‘The number of people whom it makes lose their religion is far greater than those to whom it brings a new one.’ Tragically, such a ‘loss of belief’ or to utilise Nietzschean terminology’ death of God’ induces ‘skepticism’:

‘What is most serious is the fact that, like alcoholism, tuberculosis, and certain other illnesses, the poison of skepticism is much more virulent in an environment previously unexposed to it… We are creating a species of men who do not believe in anything.’

The Iliad

In her essay on the iliad, Weil elaborates on the consequences of such cynicism or disbelief. Firstly Weil describes the Iliad as a chronicle of force — ‘the true hero, the true subject, the center of the Iliad is force.’ Hence the work’s alternative name ‘the poem of force’. Weil defines force as ‘that x that turns anybody who is subjected to it into a thing.’ Thus force is that which vanquishes, subdues, and ravishes; force is the bringer of pain, misery, and despair. ‘No one in the Iliad is spared by it, as no one on earth is.’ ‘Even to Achilles the moment comes’ to which he must ‘bow his neck to force.’

Weil further contends that the modern West — liberal, free, and unburdened, having abandoned religion and consequently moral and ethical responsibilities — is barren and deprived of principles of retribution, justice, reprisal, karma etc. Hence the conclusion: 

“This retribution...which operates automatically to penalise the abuse of force, was the main subject of Greek thought. It is the soul of the epic…Wherever Hellenism has penetrated, we find the idea of it familiar. In Oriental countries which are steeped in Buddhism, it is perhaps this Greek idea that has lived on under the name of Kharma. The Occident, however, has lost it, and no longer even has a word to express it. 

To elaborate, such an honouring of force, which is what ‘endows Greek tragedy and the Iliad with all their value’… ‘never jumped the borders of Greek Civilisation.’ ‘Both the Romans and the Hebrews believed themselves to be exempt from the misery that is the common human lot.’ ‘In Rome gladiatorial fights took the place of tragedy [and] with the Hebrews, misfortune was a sure indication of sin and hence a legitimate object of contempt.’ ‘In spite of the brief intoxication induced at the time of the Renaissance by the discovery of Greek literature … in the works of ‘Villon, in Shakespeare, Cervantes, Moliere, and… Racine’…there has been, during the course of twenty centuries, no revival of the Greek genius.’

Idolatry 

The notion that the abandonment of past spiritual traditions is followed by an anarchic wandering and a consequent indulgence in and enslavement to the lower earthly pleasures is highlighted in the story of Exodus. Exodus, the second book of the bible, details the departure of the Israelites from Egypt, a tyranny in which they were slaves. Such a fact is highly pertinent since Westerners who seek to flee from their past do so because they judge it to be despotic. Contrary to expectation, the people of Israel did not initially stumble into the promised land, the land of milk and honey or the land of higher order (as opposed to the lower autocratic order of the past) upon escaping Egypt. Rather, they found disorder and disorder found them. Indeed, they were made to cross the Red Sea, archetypically embodying the belly of chaos, for the sea is that which is fluctuating, uncharted and unpredictable. The ‘red’ nature of it emphasises its treachery, being the colour of blood and the father of the great shedder of it — the god of war and his corresponding planetary body, Mars.

This traversing was crucially followed by the roaming of the desert; ‘He made them wander in the wilderness for forty years.’ Such a predicament further illustrates the chaos in which those who forsake their past find themselves, since the desert is a frequent scriptural motif, synonymous with darkness, degeneracy and sin. Perhaps this symbolism is attributable to the physically imposing essence of the given terrain, typified by the scolding wrath of the sun. It is also where Adam and Eve fell from the Garden of Eden, representing separation and isolation from God. In Islamic folklore, deserts are ‘unclean places believed to be inhabited by djinn, malevolent spirits who take the form of animals, to lead others astray.’ It is also the abode in which Jesus was ‘engaged in spiritual warfare with Satan, who tried to tempt Him.’

Importantly, the disarrayed and aimless wandering of the Israelites was characterised by idolatry  —  the worship of the temporal as if it were the celestial —  which is in alignment with Weil’s claim that ‘uprootedness breeds idolatry.’ This is because directionlessness facilitates the veering from the righteous path, hence Weil’s proclamation: ‘Sin is not a distance, it is a turning of our gaze in the wrong direction.’  Such sin manifested as the violation of the Mosaic covenant (the conditional agreement Between God and the Israelites, whereby the Israelites obey commandments in turn receiving protection), including the injunction against idolatry. Such is evidenced by the veneration of the infamous ‘Golden Calf.’ This is of utter significance, for it demonstrates, like nothing else can, that indulgence in and servitude to materialism prevails when the past is shed. Thus, the Israelites flee from the slavery of the past, only to become slaves to the materialism of the present. The language used to describe the state of the Israelites upon liberating themselves, reinforces this: ‘the Jews are “entangled,”’ “trapped,” or “hemmed.” Such renewed bondage echoes the bondage of modern Westerners by the very freedom which was to liberate them. 

The committing of idolatry by the Israelites can also be seen as an attempt to remedy the entropic nature of their situation, as an attempt to regenerate order once more. The veneration of matter, which is solid, concrete and tangible, was erroneously perceived as the cure for the contrasting instability that the Israelites found themselves in. Such a yearning for order is elucidated in their nostalgic utterances, craving and demanding the return to the tyrannical order of the past — ‘let us appoint a leader and return to Egypt.’’ Though they were slaves in such a realm, in their slavery was comfort, for it was essentially characterised by predictability and familiarity, unlike the unknown terrains which they were made to inhabit. They were expectedly whipped, degraded and overworked but also routinely physiologically provided for, fed, clothed and sheltered, their fundamental necessities according to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs accounted for. Pressingly, in a kindred manner, the intention of modern Westerners who immerse themselves in materialistic hedonism parallels that of the Israelites. Having forsaken their tradition, that which they stand upon, in turn stumbling into a sea of chaos, they find refuge in the palpable. 

This brings us to the next point, which is that man would rather be a comfortable slave than free. This assertion is consolidated by Fyodor Dostoevsky’s writings in his novel, Brothers Karamazov —  “In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, make us your slaves, but feed us.” Namely, such a phrase is from the chapter, Grand Inquisitor, a poem recited by Ivan Karamazov to his younger brother Alyosha. The quote is part of the speech given by the Grand Inquisitor —  a high-ranking official of the Spanish Inquisition —  to the newly resurrected Christ, whom he had arrested and imprisoned. Ironically, the inquisitor incarcerates Christ for rejecting the worldly temptations posed by Satan and instead claiming that ‘man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word…of God’. In rejecting such temptations, the inquisitor argues, Christ had unreasonably and cruelly overlooked human nature, the fact that people were intrinsically feeble, idle and complacent. That they eternally and consistently preferred material security and comfort over the treacherous and burdensome freedom (free will) that God bestows and the responsibilities (morality) which follow, in other words that they preferred ‘bread’. It is this preference, argues the inquisitor, that consequently leads man to relinquish his freedom to paternalistic tyrants who promise ease. Hence his remark: ‘man is tormented by no greater anxiety than to find someone quickly to whom he can hand over that great gift of freedom with which the ill-fated creature is born.’ 

Huxley’s likening of the Westerner to the dodo bird who was so ‘so blankly uninterested in freedom’  buttresses the inquisitors or Dostoevsky's proclamation that man prefers ‘bread’:

‘Allas... the dodo. Any bird that has learned how to grub up a good living without being compelled to use its wings will soon renounce the privilege of flight and remain forever grounded. Something analogous is true of human beings. If the bread is supplied regularly and copiously three times a day, many of them will be perfectly content to live by bread alone-or at least by bread and circuses alone.’

Indeed he stresses that only when material comfort is removed, is man incentivised to rebel; ‘when things go badly, and the rations are reduced, the grounded dodos will clamor again for their wings-only to renounce them, yet once more, when times grow better and the dodo-farmers become more lenient and generous.’ Hence, not despite or in spite of, but precisely because of the West’s exclusive obsession with rights —-  as demonstrated during the French revolution whereby rights were chosen over obligations as the ‘chief source of inspiration’ —- does the modern West perversely and willingly capitulate its freedoms. For it recognises that responsibilities, which it had renounced long ago, inevitably follow such rights. Such a surrender of rights in the name of comfort engenders what Tocqueville termed ‘soft despotism.’ 

CHAPTER III

Alexis de Tocqueville

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Soft Despotism 

Antoni Brodowski, Oedipus and Antigone, 1828, National Museum in Warsaw.

Alexis de Tocqueville (1805 – 1859),  the French historian and political philosopher, 

delineates that the Westerners’s addiction to private benefits, whims and passions, paradoxically begets a servitude in his magnum opus, Democracy in America, published in two volumes in 1835 and 1840 respectively. Such a work was published after his travels to the United States, which he conceptualised as the pinnacle of democracy. Being of aristocratic origins, for Tocqueville democracy was not an aesthetic or familial taste  — indeed he had reason to despise democracy, given the suffering him and his family were made to endure during the bloody transition towards it (during the French Revolution) —   but it was just, God given and inevitable. This stance is attributable to his teleological view of history, intended towards a specific end or telos, which was equality. Tocqueville observed that the course of history increasingly gravitated towards equality. The ‘gradual development of the equality of conditions’  was ‘a providential fact’ possessing ‘all the characteristics of a divine decree’ being ‘universal’ and ‘durable’, ‘constantly’ eluding ‘all human interference.’ Therefore democracy, being a state of equal conditions, was to be accepted rather than contested. However, despite appreciating democracy, he warned of its hidden dangers. 

Atomisation 

Tocqueville warns firstly that the individualism and liberty of democratic provinces precipitates an atomisation of society. This is due to the individuals invariably liberal pursuit of what it desires. In other words, Tocqueville argues that the modern West facilitates a pervasive and all-encompassing selfishness, narcissism, egoism and solipsism, whereby people relinquish consideration for anything but themselves. This segregates one from one’s cultural, social, political and historical domains, a sentiment echoed by Weil decades later. This leads to unprecedented fragmentation, as elucidated in the extract: 

I see an innumerable crowd of men, all alike and equal, turned in upon themselves in a restless search for those petty, vulgar pleasures with which they fill their souls. Each of them, living apart, is almost unaware of the destiny of all the rest. His children and personal friends are for him the whole of the human race; as for the remainder of his fellow citizens, he stands alongside them but does not see them; he touches them without feeling them; he exists only in himself and for himself; if he still retains his family circle, at any rate he may be said to have lost his country.

Such a proclamation parallels Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky’s (1821 – 1881) observation regarding the ‘fraternity’ of the Occident, in Winter Notes on Summer Impressions, 1863, which he wrote after visiting Europe. Famously contemptuous of the Occident, Dostoevsky highlights the dissonance and falsity which riddles it; observing that whilst the modern West is predicated upon principles of ‘fraternity,’ brotherhood and fellowship, that its opposite reigns:

‘Westerners speak of fraternity as of a great motivating force of humankind, and does not understand that it is impossible to obtain fraternity if it does not exist in reality…  in French nature, and in Occidental nature in general, it is not present; you find there instead a principle of individualism, a principle of isolation, of intense self-preservation, of personal gain, of self-determinism of the I, off opposing this I to all nature and the rest of mankind as an independent, autonomous principle entirely equal and equivalent to all that exists outside itself.

Soft Despotism 

It is precisely this atomisation which births an unprecedented despotism: ‘the nations of Christendom will suffer a new type of despotism’ ‘unlike that of nations of the ancient world’ —  ‘Soft despotism’. Whilst Hard Despotism was characterised by the exercise of absolute authority in a cruel, oppressive and harsh manner, soft despotism was typified by the exercise of total power in a kind, compassionate and sweet manner. As Paul Rahe emphasises, this despotism prevailed due to the collaboration of the individual and the state, the former abdicating responsibility, the latter taking it. ‘Very slowly, incrementally and subtly, the government ends up helping in a thousand ways.’ Crucially, the help entails the attachment of strings, in turn rendering the citizens the mere marionette of its state.  Or as Tocqueville explains:

The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.

Feigning Benevolence 

Soft despotism is much more formidable than hard despotism, for the reason that it feigns and postures benevolence, virtue and compassion, ensuring the utter oblivion and ignorance of its subjects to the warm embrace which binds them. As Tocqueville notes, ‘above these men stands an immense and protective power which alone is responsible for looking after their enjoyments. It is absolute, meticulous, ordered, provident, and kindly disposed.’ Such a despotism, by virtue of its kindness, is an inconspicuous and elusive force, which is neither perceived nor acknowledged by its subjects. For never in his wildest imaginations or dreams, does the subject equate such niceness with evil; never does he conceptualise such a ‘protective’ embrace to be a chain or a shackle which seizes his liberty. ‘This ensures an inertia or passivity with regards to the subject's attitudes towards such a tyranny, namely, an absence of a desire to be free.’ Although Tocqueville asserted that the old words ‘despotism’ and ‘tyranny’ were inappropriate in describing the novel dictatorship which would come to engulf democratic realms, perhaps Tocqueville was inspired by his predecessor Aristotle, in deciding that the word despotism should follow the word ‘soft’, in the term ‘soft despotism’, as opposed to tyranny. For as Nadia Urbinati contends, Aristotle differentiated between despotism and tyranny despite the fact that in ‘both cases the ruler’ acted ‘with complete discretion.’ Whereas a tyranny was involuntary and hence often epitomised by resistance, despotism was voluntary and ‘accepted by its subjects.’ Tocqueville understood that a soft despotism was ultimately and irrefutably embraced back so to speak, for its ‘kindly’ persona, which acted to mask its dark and dangerous interior. Thus soft despotism, in feigning nobility, deceives its subjects into only being half seen but fully accepted. Blind to the truth, its subjects see not and transcend not, its shackles, rendering such a reign treacherous.

This treacherous nature of the compassionate despot crucially aligns with the feminine aspect of the villain as exemplified in myths, folklore and fairytales. To elaborate, the villain archetype consists of a masculine and feminine facet. The masculine aspect is typified by the tyrant or the cruel king, who is the ‘opposite of the humble or benevolent leader.’ Rather he is explicitly draconian, ruthlessly crushing and conquering. Pharaoh Ramses II, or Kings Minos, Ahab  and Vortigern  are but a few examples of this facet of such an archetype. The tyrant defeats his victims by starving, malnourishing and weakening them, as exemplified by real life manifestations of such an archetype, such as Mao Zedong, Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Pol Pot and Kim il Sung. On the other hand, the feminine aspect is epitomised by the devouring mother or the witch, who is ‘the opposite of the nurturing mother.’ Rather she is illicitly abusive, controlling, and avaricious. Examples include Circe (Greek mythology), Baba Yaga (Slavic Folklore), the Witch of Endor (Hebrew Bible), Morgan le Fay (Arthurian Legend) or the fairytale witches in Hansel and Gretel, Snow White or Rapunzel. Importantly, such an archetype destroys her subject by affecting sweetness. This is demonstrated by Circe luring her victims in with her seductive voice, Grimhilde in Snow White with tasty apples, and Rosina Leckermaul in Hansel and Gretel with an irresistible gingerbread house. Unlike the tyrant, the witch kills by feeding her victims, fattening them up, only to devour them. Thus the tyrant and the witch are two sides of the same coin, united by their darkness, but opposed by the differing nature of their malice, with the masculine aspect being openly malicious and the feminine aspect clandestinely so; with the tyrant killing by starvation and the witch by obesity. The latter is the nature of Tocqueville’s soft despotism. 

Oedipus Complex 

Many, if not all historians such as Sheldon Wolin, Seymour Drescher, Roger Boesche, Jon Elster, Jacob Levy or Arthur Goldhamme, explicitly acknowledge soft despotism as a form of paternalism, however, it would perhaps be more accurate to liken such a despotism to the Oedipus Complex. Paternalism, based on the Latin word pater translating to father, is the practice on the part of people in authority, of restricting the freedoms and responsibilities of those subordinate to them, in their supposed interest, akin to that of a father. This is of course a valid observation, considering Tocqueville’s claim that he has ‘no fear that they will meet with tyrants in their rulers, but rather guardians.’ Nonetheless, it would be more convincing, given the mythological analysis above, to liken soft despotism to the Oedipus Complex, which is crucially characterised by a feminine authority as opposed to a masculine one. The Oedipus Complex is a psychoanalytic concept coined by Sigmund Freud, and inspired by the ancient Greek myth of Oedipus, who killed his father and sacrilegiously married his mother. As lecturer Julian David argues, for both Freud and Carl Jung, the myth of Oedipus lay at the heart of psychology, though they gave it opposing interpretations. Freud had a crude, rudimentary and unsophisticated interpretation of the myth of Oedipus, utilising it to describe the literal incestuous desire and bond between a mother and child. His theory was later developed by his colleague Carl Jung, who offered a more sophisticated, evolved and metaphorical interpretation. To Jung, Oedipus’ mother was an embodiment of the feminine inclination to coddle, overprotect and overly nurture. Tragically, in her overbearance, the Oedipal mother keeps her child an infant for eternity, robbing her child of his being. This brings us to the next reason for the treachery of soft despotism; its undermining of its subject’s humanity.  

Soft despotism is more treacherous than hard despotism for the reason that it robs its subjects of their ‘humanity’. In relinquishing their responsibilities, such subjects engage in the Faustian bargain — characterised by the receiving of material comforts for the price of one’s spirit or soul. The soft despot, in mercifully taking the responsibilities of its citizens — providing ‘for their security’ foreseeing and supplying ‘their necessities’, facilitating ‘their pleasures’ or managing ‘their principal concerns’ or directing ‘their industry — leaves them with nothing to do. With nothing to contend with, man is rendered weak, feeble, pathetic, atrophied, debilitated and foolish. He is gradually robbed ‘of all the uses of himself.’  Such is why Tocqueville undermines the despotism’s truly parental nature, asserting that ‘the despot would be like a fatherly authority, if, fatherlike, its aim were to prepare men for manhood, but it seeks only to keep them in perpetual childhood.’ Ultimately Tocqueville concludes, ‘the democratic nations which have introduced freedom into their political constitution, at the very time when they were augmenting the despotism of their administrative constitution, have been led into strange paradoxes.’  For, the citizens of democracy  ‘are alternately made the playthings of their ruler, and his masters – more than kings, and less than men.’ Here, Shakespeare’s words through Hamlet — ‘I must be cruel, only to be kind’ — could not be truer. True mercy is granting man responsibility, cumbersome though it may be, and in turn, granting him his humanity, his essence, his soul.

Conclusion 

In conclusion, this dissertation has argued that the very freedom of the West is that which shackles it. Firstly Huxley’s novel, which was a reaction to the technological advancements of his time, was explored to understand the nature of such a servitude. Behaviourist as well as neurological findings were utilised to argue that the reign through pleasure was more detrimental and formidable than the government by pain. Through Weil it was argued that with the freedom that the Western citizen is granted, he pursues his individual selfish whims and wants. Lacking divine guidance which his past offered, he becomes lost in chaos, worshipping matter for stability, therefore becoming a slave to materialism. Lastly, Tocqueville and his magnum opus was utilised to describe how governments weaponise the addicted state of the Westerner, begetting a novel despotism. Such is the irony of John Jacques Rousseau, who famously proclaimed that ‘Man is born free, but everywhere he is in chains’.  For the very freedom movement that he inspired with such words, is the very movement that binds man in a manner he has never been binded before. So softly, sweetly and comfortably, birthing a bondage, so formidable by virtue of its imperception.