Cinema: The Circus (1928)

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Uncertainty and Acting

The uncertainty of the future is already implied in the very notion of action. That man acts and that the future is uncertain are by no means two independent matters. They are only two different modes of establishing one thing.

We may assume that the outcome of all events and changes is uniquely determined by eternal unchangeable laws governing becoming and development in the whole universe. We may consider the necessary connection and interdependence of all phenomena, i.e., their causal concatenation, as the fundamental and ultimate fact. We may entirely discard the notion of undetermined chance. But however that may be, or appear to the mind of a perfect intelligence, the fact remains that to acting man the future is hidden. If man knew the future, he would not have to choose and would not act. He would be like an automaton, reacting to stimuli without any will of his own.

Some philosophers are prepared to explode the notion of man's will as an illusion and self-deception because man must unwittingly behave according to the inevitable laws of causality. They may be right or wrong from the point of view of the prime mover or the cause of itself. However, from the human point of view action is the ultimate thing. We do not assert that man is "free" in choosing and acting. We merely establish the fact that he chooses and acts and that we are at a loss to use the methods of the natural sciences for answering the question why he acts this way and not otherwise.

Natural science does not render the future predictable. It makes it possible to foretell the results to be obtained by definite actions. But it leaves unpredictable two spheres: that of insufficiently known natural phenomena and that of human acts of choice. Our ignorance with regard to these two spheres taints all human actions with uncertainty. Apodictic certainty is only within the orbit of the deductive system of aprioristic theory. The most that can be attained with regard to reality is probability.

It is not the task of praxeology to investigate whether or not it is permissible to consider as certain some of the theorems of the empirical [p. 106] natural sciences. This problem is without practical importance for praxeological considerations. At any rate, the theorems of physics and chemistry have such a high degree of probability that we are entitled to call them certain for all practical purposes. We can practically forecast the working of a machine constructed according to the rules of scientific technology. But the construction of a machine is only a part in a broader program that aims at supplying the consumers with the machine's products. Whether this was or was not the most appropriate plan depends on the development of future conditions which at the time of the plan's execution cannot be forecast with certainty. Thus the degree of certainty with regard to the technological outcome of the machine's construction, whatever it may be, does not remove the uncertainty inherent in the whole action. Future needs and valuations, the reaction of men to changes in conditions, future scientific and technological knowledge, future ideologies and policies can never be foretold with more than a greater or smaller degree of probability. Every action refers to an unknown future. It is in this sense always a risky speculation.

The problems of truth and certainty concern the general theory of human knowledge. The problem of probability, on the other hand, is a primary concern of praxeology.

(Ludwig von Mises, Human Action, Chapter VI. Uncertainty)

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Leisure and Culture: Rugby

In the last quarter of the nineteenth century, while it was growing the industrial economy, emerged different kinds of Sport. One of them (maybe the most important) was the Rugby. On the one hand it showed us the new aristocracy from Oxford, Eton, etc. and on the other hand served as cultural event for many people and lifestyles all over the world. 

The picture above is a great example of this: The Roses Match (painted by William Barnes Wollen)

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If This is a Man

• You who live safe
• In your warm houses,
• You who find, returning in the evening,
• Hot food and friendly faces:
• 
  

• Consider if this is a man
• Who works in the mud,
• Who does not know peace,
• Who fights for a scrap of bread,
• Who dies because of a yes or a no.
• Consider if this is a woman
• Without hair and without name,
• With no more strength to remember,
• Her eyes empty and her womb cold
• Like a frog in winter.
• 
  

• Meditate that this came about:
• I commend these words to you.
• Carve them in your hearts
• At home, in the street,
• Going to bed, rising;
• Repeat them to your children.
• 
  

• Or may your house fall apart,
• May illness impede you,
• May your children turn their faces from you.

Primo Levi, 1947

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Borgen: Politics in the 21st Century

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Pietism

Pietism (/ˈpaɪɨtɪsm/, from the word piety) was a movement within Lutheranism that began in the late 17th century, reached its zenith in the mid-18th century, and declined through the 19th century, and had almost vanished in America by the end of the 20th century. While declining as an identifiable Lutheran group, some of its theological tenets influenced Protestantism and Anabaptism generally, inspiring the Anglican priest John Wesley to begin the Methodist movement and Alexander Mack to begin the Brethren movement. The Pietist movement combined the Lutheranism of the time with the Reformed emphasis on individual piety and living a vigorous Christian life.^[1] Though pietism shares an emphasis on personal behavior with the Puritan movement, and the two are often confused, there are important differences, particularly in the concept of the role of religion in government.^[2]

Full reading / Picture below: Der breite und der schmale Weg

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Baroque: Georg P. Telemann

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If ...

If you can keep your head when all about you

Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

But make allowance for their doubting too;

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,

Or, being hated, don't give way to hating,

And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;

If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

And treat those two imposters just the same;

If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken

Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,

And stoop and build 'em up with wornout tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings

And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings

And never breathe a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

To serve your turn long after they are gone,

And so hold on when there is nothing in you

Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on";

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,

Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch;

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;

If all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

With sixty seconds' worth of distance run

Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,

And - which is more - you'll be a Man my son!

Rudyard Kipling

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Political Theory: Hobbes

.

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The Bruges Speech

Prime Minister, Rector, Your Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen:

First, may I thank you for giving me the opportunity to return to Bruges and in very different circumstances from my last visit shortly after the Zeebrugge Ferry disaster, when Belgian courage and the devotion of your doctors and nurses saved so many British lives.

And second, may I say what a pleasure it is to speak at the College of Europe under the distinguished leadership of its Rector [Professor Lukaszewski]. The College plays a vital and increasingly important part in the life of the European Community.

And third, may I also thank you for inviting me to deliver my address in this magnificent hall. What better place to speak of Europe's future than a building which so gloriously recalls the greatness that Europe had already achieved over 600 years ago.

Your city of Bruges has many other historical associations for us in Britain. Geoffrey Chaucer was a frequent visitor here. And the first book to be printed in the English language was produced here in Bruges by William Caxton.

Britain and Europe

Mr. Chairman, you have invited me to speak on the subject of Britain and Europe. Perhaps I should congratulate you on your courage. If you believe some of the things said and written about my views on Europe, it must seem rather like inviting Genghis Khan to speak on the virtues of peaceful coexistence!

I want to start by disposing of some myths about my country, Britain, and its relationship with Europe and to do that, I must say something about the identity of Europe itself.

Europe is not the creation of the Treaty of Rome. Nor is the European idea the property of any group or institution.

We British are as much heirs to the legacy of European culture as any other nation. Our links to the rest of Europe, the continent of Europe, have been the dominant factor in our history.

For three hundred years, we were part of the Roman Empire and our maps still trace the straight lines of the roads the Romans built. Our ancestors - Celts, Saxons, Danes - came from the Continent. Our nation was - in that favourite Community word - "restructured" under the Norman and Angevin rule in the eleventh and twelfth centuries.

This year, we celebrate the three hundredth anniversary of the glorious revolution in which the British crown passed to Prince William of Orange and Queen Mary.

Visit the great churches and cathedrals of Britain, read our literature and listen to our language: all bear witness to the cultural riches which we have drawn from Europe and other Europeans from us.

We in Britain are rightly proud of the way in which, since Magna Carta in the year 1215, we have pioneered and developed representative institutions to stand as bastions of freedom. And proud too of the way in which for centuries Britain was a home for people from the rest of Europe who sought sanctuary from tyranny.

But we know that without the European legacy of political ideas we could not have achieved as much as we did. From classical and mediaeval thought we have borrowed that concept of the rule of law which marks out a civilised society from barbarism.

And on that idea of Christendom, to which the Rector referred - Christendom for long synonymous with Europe - with its recognition of the unique and spiritual nature of the individual, on that idea, we still base our belief in personal liberty and other human rights [...]

Full Text and Video

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Interwar: Alt-Berlin

Picture: Alt-Berlin, Waisenstraße, 1927
Artist: Hans Baluschek

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Claude Oscar Monet

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On Liberty

[...] Like other tyrannies, the tyranny of the majority was at first, and is still vulgarly, held in dread, chiefly as operating through the acts of the public authorities. But reflecting persons perceived that when society is itself the tyrant - society collectively, over the separate individuals who compose it - its means of tyrannizing are not restricted to the acts which it may do by the hands of its political functionaries. Society can and does execute its own mandates: and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with which it ought not to meddle, it practises a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself. Protection, therefore, against the tyranny of the magistrate is not enough: there needs protection also against the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling; against the tendency of society to impose, by other means than civil penalties, its own ideas and practices as rules of conduct on those who dissent from them; to fetter the development, and, if possible, prevent the formation, of any individuality not in harmony with its ways, and compel all characters to fashion themselves upon the model of its own. There is a limit to the legitimate interference of collective opinion with individual independence: and to find that limit, and maintain it against encroachment, is as indispensable to a good condition of human affairs, as protection against political despotism. [...]

(On Liberty, John Stuart Mill, 1869 - Chapter I: Introductory - Link to the photo above)

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The Interwar Years: La Joie de Vivre

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The Transcendent Profane

[...] In other words, we humans, even we bourgeois humans, cannot get along without transcendence - faith in a past, hope for a future, justified by larger considerations. If we don’t have religious hope and faith, we’ll substitute hope and faith in art or science or national learning. If we don’t have art or science or national learning or Anglicanism, we’ll substitute fundamentalism or the Rapture. If we don’t have fundamentalism or the Rapture or the local St.Wenceslaus parish we’ll substitute our family or the rebuilt antique car. It’s a consequence of the human ability to symbolize, a fixture of our philosophical psychology.

We might as well acknowledge it, if only to keep watch on transcendence and prevent it from doing mischief, as did once a Russian hope for the Revolution and as now does a Saudi Arabian faith in an Islamic past. The Bulgarian-French critic Tzvetan Todorov, who has seen totalitarianism, warns that 'democracies put their own existence in jeopardy if they neglect the human need for transcendence.' Michael Ignatieff put it well: 'The question of whether . . . the needs we once called religious can perish without consequence ... remains central to understanding the quality of modern man’s happiness.' Evidently the answer is no, religion cannot perish without consequences. There are bad consequences and there will be more. That is not a reason to return to the older sureties. It is a reason to take seriously the transcendent in our bourgeois lives.

(The Bourgeois Virtues, Deirdre N. McCloskey, 2006)

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The Cardsharps

The Cardsharps, Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1594)

What I really love when I look at this painting is the evidence of everybody can be corrupted and, meanwhile, a corrupt. If you pay attention on the boys playing cards, is likely you find the same inference as me: not only the one on the left is being a victim, but also the one on the right. One final question to reflect: can we say the last one is an innocent ... or not?

More: Kimbell Art Museum

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Berlin, 13th August 1961

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The Belle Époque: Jacques Henri Lartigue

One thing I discovered when I read The Vertigo Years (Philipp Blom, 2010) was the work of Jacques Henri Lartigue, a french painter and photographer who has beautifully ilustrated the first years of the 20th century. Maybe, It was because of his time that he focused his objective on social changes such as the rights of women or also on several technical advances and inventions. In addition, he portrayed, among others, celebrities like Marlene Dietrich, Greta Garbo or Renée Perle who, by the way, became his favorite model and lover. 

His early works coincide in time with the era commonly known as Belle Époque in which he wanted to highlight the happiness of the people, the economic strength and the progress of the society. However, people are not often aware of how weak is the world stability. I really think images always explain things we frequently ignore. This time, with the choice of the picture below, I prefer to show one example of what I have just said instead of writing on gold standard or even about the dangerous diplomacy between Germany and other european countries.  I strongly believe that both paths can tell us the same.

Image below: Automobile, 1912 (Jacques Henri Lartigue)

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Convention of Kanagawa

In Japan, one of the most important facts in the second half of the nineteenth century was the signing of the Convention of Kanagawa in 1854 between the Commodore Perry, on behalf of the United States, and the Tokugawa Shogunate. Because of the weakness of its army, Japan was forced to accept trade relations with western lands.

What did this event? Firstly, opened the ports of Shimoda and Kakodate to the United States trade. Japan, as you know, had been isolated since 1633 and, therefore, this step helped the country to improve and to extend its commercial relations with other nations. Secondly, drove it to enhance its way of living by, for instance, setting up enterprises (without real competition, though) and leaving, gradually, feudal policies. Finally, it triggered upheaveals within the country and, as a result, marked the arrival of the Meiji period.

More: Black Ships

Picture below: Com. Perry carrying the 'Gospel of God' to the Heathen, ca. 1854 (James G. Evans)

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The Recovery of Bahía

The Recovery of Bahía de Todos los Santos (Juan Bautista Maíno)

The picture shows one episode of the Thirty Years War in which Spain got back Bahía from Netherlands. It was time of mercantilism and rivalries between european nations, although not only because gold and silver but also about religion (the same issue, actually). You can see on the right side Felipe IV, Olivares (his Primer Minister) and Victoria. Felipe is submitting 'misbelievers'. On the left, the scene is representing peace, piety and other catholic values. The rest explains the aftermath of the battle. That image is a good example of the history of the first half of the 17th century.

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