Modern European Intellectual History

1. Modern EuropeanIntellectual History Lecture 2 The Enemy: The Bourgeoisie January 28, 2008

2. outline • intro: did the bourgeoisie exist? • the emergence of the bourgeoisie • bourgeois culture • bourgeois philosophy • traditions of dissent • conclusion

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

4. Flaubert’s axiom • “Hatred of the bourgeoisie is the beginning of all virtue.”

5. “the discreet charm of the bourgeoisie” (Luis Buñuel)

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

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

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

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

10. the two-front war of the bourgeoisie • threat of aristocratic reversion • meritocratic/rationalistic elitism • François Guizot: “Enrichissez-vous!” (Get rich) • bourgeois liberalism v. mass democracy • the threat of the workers and the specter of revolution

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

12. the gospel of work • Thomas Carlyle • Guizot: “…par le travail et l’épargne.” • Samuel Smiles, Self Help (1859) • survival of the market fit • supplemented by charitable humanitarianism • “sabbathless pursuit of wealth”

14. sexual repression (?) • the most infamous stereotype about bourgeois manners • the “Other Victorians” (Steven Marcus) • “the repressive hypothesis” (Michel Foucault)

15. ouch

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

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

18. the church of humanity 3, rue Payenne

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

20. scientizing social life • Social Darwinism • Cesare Lombroso • Hyppolite Taine • “race, moment, milieu” • “vice and virtue are products like vitriol and sugar”

21. aesthetic dissent • Romanticism • Bohemianism • Friedrich Nietzsche