[SIZE=+2]Twenty Years After[/SIZE]
[SIZE=+2]Common Sense About the Recent Past[/SIZE]
[SIZE=+2]By CARL G. ESTABROOK[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1]It was a revelation to my youthful insouciance that the characters in the sequels were even more interesting as the vicissitudes of their lives accumulated -- and the history, in the sense of past politics, became even more important, to them and to me. A detailed knowledge of the politics of the Fronde (1648-53) may not have been much use to me, then or now, but the picture of the interaction of the personal and the political never left me.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1]Graham Greene remarks somewhere about the definitive intellectual influence of youthful reading, even if not always of the best sort. Just as Dumas' romances led on to an interest in early modern ecclesiastical and political history, so Isaac Asimov's use of Arnold Toynbee in his science fiction led to my finding Toynbee's study (in the abridged two volumes), and that led to the Master of Those Who Know historical changes, Karl Marx.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1]Marx and Engels attempted to descry the determinants on politics and the person in the modern economic order, and so of course had very little to say about socialism. The collapse of official Marxism-Leninism in the last twenty years means that we can attempt to understand those determinants again. As Perry Anderson wrote more than thirty years ago, "The immense intellectual and political respect we owe to Marx and Engels is incompatible with any piety towards them." He noted for example that "Engels's historical judgments are nearly always superior to those of Marx. He possessed a deeper knowledge of European history, and had a surer grasp of its successive and salient structures."[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1]An important change in the past twenty years is that there is now no danger that Marx and Engels be taken as religious texts, and so the questions that they raised may be considered again.[/SIZE]http://www.counterpunch.org/estabrook02202007.html
[SIZE=+2]Common Sense About the Recent Past[/SIZE]
[SIZE=+2]By CARL G. ESTABROOK[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1][There's an independent quarterly journal at the University of Notre Dame called "Common Sense," which was founded twenty years ago by faculty, students, and alumnae/i. I taught history there briefly almost forty years ago; I enjoyed it and didn't intend to leave. The following piece was written for the anniversary issue of "Common Sense." --CGE][/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1] "...what an Aristotelian would recognize as education still does go on in homes, churches, political groups, charitable organizations, and even to some extent in universities. Such a tradition can be the starting-point for establishing some understanding of the good life, in terms of which we can reappraise and criticize the whole tradition that we have received." [/SIZE]
[SIZE=+3]S[/SIZE][SIZE=-1]omeone gave me a copy of *The Three Musketeers* when I was a boy, and I was captivated by Dumas' tale, and by the historical setting, although I knew nothing about 17th century France. I read that there were sequels, and was shocked to find that the first was called *Twenty Years After* -- and that the next, *The Vicomte de Bragelonne* was set another ten years on! An impossibly long period of time, I thought. How could the characters still be interesting, once they'd become so old?[/SIZE][SIZE=-1] "...what an Aristotelian would recognize as education still does go on in homes, churches, political groups, charitable organizations, and even to some extent in universities. Such a tradition can be the starting-point for establishing some understanding of the good life, in terms of which we can reappraise and criticize the whole tradition that we have received." [/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1]--Herbert McCabe, OP[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1]It was a revelation to my youthful insouciance that the characters in the sequels were even more interesting as the vicissitudes of their lives accumulated -- and the history, in the sense of past politics, became even more important, to them and to me. A detailed knowledge of the politics of the Fronde (1648-53) may not have been much use to me, then or now, but the picture of the interaction of the personal and the political never left me.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1]Graham Greene remarks somewhere about the definitive intellectual influence of youthful reading, even if not always of the best sort. Just as Dumas' romances led on to an interest in early modern ecclesiastical and political history, so Isaac Asimov's use of Arnold Toynbee in his science fiction led to my finding Toynbee's study (in the abridged two volumes), and that led to the Master of Those Who Know historical changes, Karl Marx.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1]Marx and Engels attempted to descry the determinants on politics and the person in the modern economic order, and so of course had very little to say about socialism. The collapse of official Marxism-Leninism in the last twenty years means that we can attempt to understand those determinants again. As Perry Anderson wrote more than thirty years ago, "The immense intellectual and political respect we owe to Marx and Engels is incompatible with any piety towards them." He noted for example that "Engels's historical judgments are nearly always superior to those of Marx. He possessed a deeper knowledge of European history, and had a surer grasp of its successive and salient structures."[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1]An important change in the past twenty years is that there is now no danger that Marx and Engels be taken as religious texts, and so the questions that they raised may be considered again.[/SIZE]http://www.counterpunch.org/estabrook02202007.html