Abraham Rotstein, Weekend Notes

Overview

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Part	Date	KPA
I	February 25, 1956	45/02
II	May 5, 1956	45/03
III	July 14, 1956	45/04
IV	August 25/26, 1956	45/05
V
VI
VII
VIII
IX	April 6, 1957	45/06
X
XI	May 25, 1957	45/07

I

The Reality of Society

[5] The characteristic of Christianity was there in the beginning-compulsive and looking to the future, eschatological. Jesus thought that the end of the world was imminent, but it is not imminent.

The Dead Sea Scrolls change the position of Jesus. If Christianity was really the Essenes, he wasn't the founder, and Christian doctrines are undermined. It is of no great importance whether the founder was Jesus or another Jew, except it will make some Jews proud of their history if it is proved that they originated Christianity. The mystery of Jesus' mission is greater than before. Now he is not "one man" who created out…

P. doesn't believe in Jesus as the son of God. There is no clear meaning in this statement. The christological aspects: Christianity not based on the teachings of Jesus, but who he was.

By man resigning himself to society a new concreteness is born. Man's objective is to reform society and change it to its limits. Unless we do that we have the whole responsibility which recognition puts on us. The first two revelations of physical and eternal death are no less true, as they lead to the restriction of an illusion. The first two are not invalidated by the reality of society.

That man must die doesn't do away with his concern for his soul. Man's eternal soul doesn't permit him to be rid of all moral bonds, and if he denies these he loses it. Eternal doesn't refer to time, but timelessness - of infinite value. (Greek "ions" - timeless). This is not a speculative or metaphorical question. (Life after death is a theological speculation.)

Jesus pointed out that there things you are yourself responsible for and not the tribe. Existence is personal and is different from what happens with things. That which makes it so different can't be said about a lamp or a table. This personal existence is the only one man is interested in, and the only one man can mean when we say: the things that matter is his relationship to other persons. The very heart of life is the personal existence. This assumes persons and personal interest.

Mind and power are the same thing. Thinking is a creative power. When we say mind we mean the compulsive element in thought.

The modern consciousness of society is comparable to the revelation of the finiteness of life and the revelation of the individual's moral existence. There is not even a hint of this consciousness in Plato. The third revelation did not come through particular persons, e.g. Marx, Sorel, Hitler, etc.

This is an insight which the technological environment created through the new conditions of life in a complex society.

It is childish to think that a person follows his own conscience alone, since this is limited by the reality of society. It is like a child who doesn't know that life is finite - like a tribal member who has corporate and collective responsibility. Ultimately man is responsible.

It is the institutional bent that puts order into Polanyi's moral world.

Christians rest their case on an inner absolute freedom. It doesn't mean that man is released from responsibility. It doesn't mean that man is released from responsibility. (My question on the relation of Hobbes and Locke to the idea of the reality of society):

[…]

Robert Owen held that the individual was not responsible and therefore denied Christianity. Society was real and responsible.

Comte had a vision that Society was real.

Quetelet - 1837 - the founder of statistics, held that society was real.

Marx, through economic determination believed almost in the elimination of the individual.

Hegel had the elimination of the individual in another way.

Spencer had the organic concept of society, but at the same time it was ridiculous to argue for liberal competition.

[…]

Society should be thought of like Hamlet (ie the play).

You don't start with the individual but with internalized values and mutual role expectations. Their relationship creates …

[…] [12] An English philosopher said to Polanyi of the G.T. that P. was able to link up the economics and politics of the era with the actual facts.

• We must recognize the inherent limitation of anarchistic freedom.
• We must waive the efficiency principle (e.g. the Russian can offer foreign at low interest rates, good terms).

The Market and a Theory of Nationalism

[19] Jews: one hears of chosenness more and more. Their guilt is not in the death of Jesus but with rejecting the teachings of Jesus which are superior. There are their own teachings but [20] why don't they claim it? The idea of love is frontally directed against selfishness. It is not clear what it is, but if you get rid of selfishness, you are happy, and these are the laws of inner life. You are happier if you forgive your enemy. If in your own heart you reject the truth of this directive it means you exclude yourself and are in the wrong gratuitously. In this interpretation of life is the hope of mankind.

In Central Europe tje Jewish community claimed that at the heart of Christianity there was nothing but a lie - that their behaviour was full of hypocrisy. But the teachings can be accepted. History runs on subtle distinctions. In America the Jewish Community is internalizing the gentile attitude. Civic behaviour of Americans is based on the church meeting. This is called American without knowing that American means the Christian way of life. It is a question of higher standards.

Discussion oy My Letter of Dec. 17/55

[18] Barbara Ward's discussion of the gold gap is utter nonsense.

II

The Reality of Society [II]

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My Essay (April 30/56) has linked the concept of the Reality of Society with the new institutional theory. P. used the concept only metaphysically. I used it naturally in a sociology which is not atomistic.

[…]

[9] Owen said… […]

Bernard Shaw is the only thinker who thought of it in this way, that society was limited in the possibility of its ideals but he never drew the conclusion to leave things as they are - on the contrary.

[…]

[11] There are two rationalities, the survival of society, and that of the individual, and here you have the general problem of political theory.

[…]

In Paul: what does he mean when he brings in the idea of Christian freedom? It has something to do with the opposite, with death of sin. It is a metaphor of emancipation. The slave, when {fread} ceases to be a slave. It is a metaphysical experience.

[10] In Westermann: description of emancipation through the Delphic temple - Paramonai.

The Christian idea of society is that it is a relationship of persons. The revelation of the reality of society impiges on Christian freedom. It takes away the immediate topicality of the second revolution. (The latter was about 1935, the reality of society about 1942.)

In the "Essence of Fascim”, Polanyi didn't have the position he reached later. He was strongly influenced by Macmurray's Personalism - the individual in the community is real, the isolated individual doesn't exist. Personalism is not individualistic, but from the point of view of sociology it is.

In 1936 P. was under a strong religious influence in viewing the reality of society. P. had presented such an idea to his English friends in Vienna in the late '20's', so that it wasn't new. The ideal was of a community of persons which was instituted. The there was a society which broke up this ideal. The idea was to achieve a community of persons - which was naive. It took a complex society to reveal the concept of inevitable alternatives.

The "individual-in-community" concept protects one from slipping into an atomistic conception. The Christian conception is that the individual doesn't exist outside the community. He exists through others in the community. No one is alone, because then the concept of life would disappear.

[13] There is nothing of this penetration in the Jewish position. The the people as a whole exists in relation to God. In the Christian position the individual has his being in and through the other. It is not the same as loving one's neighbour as oneself. Loving is not clear unless it means selflessness. […]

[14] Alle personal faith consists in knowledge that things have a meaning.

This is what John's epistle says. John starts, "In the beginning there was the logos”. The Dead Sea Scrolls are along John the Evangelist line. This was a Jewish line of thought, not the Synoptics. The sentences are similar to the Essenes. Tolstoy regarded John as the essence of Christian teachings. (See book by Toltstoy on the reconstruction of John). The Synoptics are the rest of the teachings. The nearest translation of "logos" is meaning. Cf. John: "In the beginning was the Word (logos) - the meaning of things. (Without meaning there would be no persons). "The light shineth in darkness: and the darkness comprehend it not". (i.e. did not encompass it). The first five sentences sum up what must have been the Essene creed. "The light shineth in darkness is not like the Zoroastrian creed of light and dark. Life was like light. The more life the more light. Life equals light equals meaning. These are metaphors for the happy being of inner life. Darkness is passive and doesn't put out or take in light. It is not a matter of belief or faith-moanig is reality. It is what consciousness means. Meaning means getting it and passing it on. No principle can create forms meaning because that principle itself must have a meaning.

[15] Modern positivism… […]

The Messianic aspect in Jewry was not in the Prophets. It existed in strong movements in the third and second century B.C. revealed by the Dead Sea Scrolls. A messianic leader in the past lost his life like Jesus. But in the turn which things take in Jesus, it is doubtful that anything of the kind was present before. The Essenes belief was eschatological, otherwise he banning of women was not possible.

Christianity reached a low again and again but had the power of retrieving itself - St Augustine, the Monastics, the Benedictines, Cluniac, the {friurs} Reformation, Counter-Reformation, then [16] the various secular movements that came with the Enlightenment.

In America, Porestantism created novel movements in Western christianity of the pioneer type from the 18th century on - Benjamin Franklin (?), the Mormons, Shakers, Quakers.

The was an incredible capacity of the Christian church to start afresh being covered with crime and slime, through an expansion or an inward movement. There were frequent mystic periods.

Science revolutionized Christianity. Calvinism was an outgrowth of the scientific spirit, a turning against supernaturalism, the priesthood and miracles. The beginning of the scientific turn was about 1530 and hasn't stopped for a day. Protestant Calvinism as its height was anything but enlightened, but the scientific spirit caused an explosion of a general religious kind. We have to be cautious here, since the more you look into the more puzzling it is. Only in the present you can speak about certainties. (As long as you're sincere you can't go astray).

[…]

Politics and the Current Crisis

[21] Clausewitz' book is still the best one written on power.

The danger in the post-war…

Background of the Great Transformation [II]

[24] … P. wrote in 1909 (or 1912) that growing monopoly capital would bring a ruling class sociology instead of an atomistic sociology and develop a ruling class morality. …

The Exchange Triad and the Gold Standard

… [28] P. got his gold standard position from Keynes.

[…]

[29] Bishop (c.f. G. Trans.)

Remarks

World Religion

All World religion developed within about 500 years of each other. Jesus doesn't st this date but the Essenes do 200 years earlier. The Jews set the date in Palestine in the 6th century. One relates the Essenes to the Prophets and one gets this range from 8th century - Buddha to the 6th century - Lao-Tze.

What caused this great religious epoch throughout the whole world? It may be a cosmic event, such as cosmic rays. The earth may have got a cosmic shot in the arm. More probable than not something happened and you cannot exclude the whole realm of the earth being influenced from outside.

III

Religion and Revelation

[4] Christianity was not understood by the Apostles or since. It was carried along by the Christological element. Only exceptionally did we get Christian heresies such as communism? The Apostles met Jesus alive after the crucifixion and then preached that he was the son of God and this story spread. There is nothing of the meaning of Christianity in the Crusades which was long sustained movement.

Amon the Jews there was an intolerant eradication of their idolatrous sects to the extent where no trace of them remains although they are referred to in the Old Testament. This seemed to go with a strong religious sense.

The Essenes didn't with to continue. They didn't marry nor have children. There is a strong feeling in Christianity that the end of the world was imminent. The Acts was the only contemporary recounting of events.

Polanyi has spent several years in all of the world religions. Then Well's Outline of History came out. Each religion talked about the 'Path', the 'Way', 'the 'Road'. This leads to the question of whether there was a common problem for the world at this time.

Confucius had no notion of theism or God. He was in the great Chinese liberal tradition - not to label. The English also have this aversion to labelling - it is limiting. This Chinese idea of [5] allowing and wanting all opinions is an expression of the reality of society.

The teachings of Christ were not understood - were called the interim ethics.

P. Thinks my last draft (July 12/56) reveals that my grasp of the revelations is complete

IV

G[eorge] B[ernard] Shaw

[2] Every major thinker has two opposite ideas e.g. Marx, Hegel, Rousseau, and also Jesus and Paul state opposites in an indissoluble unity of temperament.

[6] P. once wrote on Shaw, just about fifty years ago in 1906, ”The Drama of the Economic Interpretation of History”. He read all that Shaw had then written.

Technology and Utopia

P[olanyi] doesn’t take Owen as Utopian. He was full of realism but in one of his sentences he said that there are limitations and these would have to be accepted. [23]

The Revelations

(From P.'s discussion of the dangers of science, my comment of Eve's apple to Adam).

[…] The one sentence of Owen’s says that we cannot appeal to the reality of society for disregarding the Christian commitment until the we try to see if the reality of society is a limitation for equality and justice. The reality of society is the third horror we are confronted with – being a number of society and not doing anything about it. [38-39]