Stoenescu Radu

Ma traduction de "Discrimination et disparités" de Thomas Sowell vient de paraître. RDV sur editions-carmin.com

Petite vidéo du collègue @Le_Hussard_ sur le dernier livre de Thomas Sowell : youtube.com/watch?v=mY0pox…

We hear much today about modern books which "make you think." In my experience it is rather rare to find a modern book that even allows you to think. Modern books perpetually present, not the wrong answer, but the wrong question.

“The modern world has forgotten that it was made. It imagines itself to have arisen spontaneously, without cause or ancestry. It forgets the great tradition from which it sprang, and because it has forgotten that tradition it no longer understands itself.” — Hilaire Belloc

“People crushed by law, have no hopes but from power. If laws are their enemies, they will be enemies to laws; and those who have much hope and nothing to lose, will always be dangerous.” Edmund Burke

“The future… for the socialist, is simple: pull down the existing order, & allow the future to emerge. But it will not emerge… These philosophies of the “new world” are lies & delusions, products of a sentimentality which has veiled the facts of human nature” Sir Roger Scruton

@JAsensio Merci encore pour cette mise en avant.

Ah, tiens, c’est le moment de faire mon habituelle publicité des très belles Éditions Carmin, puisque je viens de recevoir l’appétissant volume de Roger Scruton intitulé Le visage de Dieu, comme toujours une vraie leçon d’amour des livres en tant qu’objets, en sus bien sûr de l’intérêt propre de cette réflexion que je vais essayer de m’empresser de lire. Longue vie aux Éditions Carmin de l’ami @StoenescuRadu1 qu’il faut, je le répète, soutenir !

"Shortly after Oxford, Roy Campbell began frequenting this circle. He met and married Mary Garman, a bohemian artist who was the love of his life. After a spell in South Africa they settled in the English countryside, there to discover that Harold and Vita Nicolson were neighbors. The Campbells were at first welcome guests at the Great Barn where the Nicolsons lived, and it was not long before the newcomers were fully part of a world that included the entire left establishment, from Auden to Woolf. Campbell liked these people less than Mary did, however, and, while enjoying their hospitality, he lampooned them in satirical verses that made many enemies. But it was through his proximity to the new elite that Campbell acquired his own philosophy. Learning that his wife had been conducting a passionate affair with Vita (to the enraged jealousy of Vita’s other lover, Virginia Woolf), Campbell began to see the three aspects of the new elite—sexual inversion, anti-patriotism, and progressive politics—as aspects of a single frame of mind. These three qualities amounted, for Campbell, to a refusal to grow up. The new elite, in Campbell’s opinion, lived as bloodless parasites on their social inferiors and moral betters; they jettisoned real responsibilities in favor of utopian fantasies and flattered themselves that their precious sensibilities were signs of moral refinement, rather than the marks of a fastidious narcissism. The role of the poet is not to join their Peter Pan games but to look beneath such frolics for the source of spiritual renewal. Others too were reacting with reserve or ridicule to the new establishment—notably Evelyn Waugh and C. S. Lewis. But none accused the bohemian aristos as harshly as Campbell and none saw their homosexuality as Campbell saw it, as an expression of their nihilistic view of human life."

The Conservative Conscience, an article by Scruton originally published in The Salisbury Review in 1994: We live in troubling times for the conservative conscience. The West is adrift without leadership, anarchy is spreading through Asia and Africa, while the political process in Europe has been absorbed by the fantasy of European union. Almost everywhere in the civilised world we encounter the signs of social decay; the decline in religious observance and local customs; the rise of crime and violence: the pornocratic culture of the mass media; the desecration of love and marriage; the collapse of education and the retreat of the individual into his private pleasure dome. These things threaten to populate the world with a new human species—cold-hearted, disloyal, promiscuous, uncultured and godless whose sole pursuit is present pleasure, and who looks on the sufferings of fathers with indifference or delight. In the face of this prospect those of us who were brought up in the old dispensation might be tempted to despair and the more so when we see how many of our own generation are prepared to accept or justify the reigning trivialities, and to preach the forward-looking gospel that sees nothing to be criticised in women priests, Sir Richard Rogers or the new Radio Three. Cultural despair has been with us, however, for many decades, and writers who have no other message, or who seek to comfort us with fantasies of a life outside civilisation, merely illustrate what they condemn. The exasperated writings of men like Leavis and Lawrence are also exasperating. We live only once and that once is now. The choice lies before us, as it has lain before every being in history, to live well or badly, to be virtuous or vicious, to love or to hate. And this is an individual choice, which depends on cultural conditions only obliquely, and which no other person can make in our stead. If our culture is demoralised, it is in part for want of good examples. A good neighbour, loving parent, conscientious teacher, loyal friend or faithful spouse is an object not only of admiration, but of emulation too. Nobody likes, still less admires, coldness, idleness or infidelity, even when he finds these qualities in himself. It is in our nature as social and moral beings to be drawn to virtue and repelled by vice, and society can never degenerate to the point where vice alone has a following. By living well we help others to live well, and this is a source of joy for us and for them. Indeed, if we were to view the matter sub specie aeternitatis, we might be persuaded that it is good to have been born in this time of decay. Our generation was granted a privilege which future generations may never know—a view of Western civilisation in its totality, and a knowledge of its inner meaning, were given the pure truths of the Christian religion and the morality of sacrifice which turns renunciation into triumph, and suffering to a secret joy. We also had the chance to see what will happen, should we lose these gifts. We had an opportunity to work on their behalf which no previous generation has been granted, and no future generation may desire. If our political leaders disappoint us, it is either because they have no inkling of this opportunity, or because they regard it with the kind of bored cynicism that prevents them from setting an example. But there is more to life than politics, and even those who lack the deep restfulness that comes from true religion may still find themselves surprised by joy. For consider what has not been destroyed: music, poetry and art; the sacred texts amid the secular knowledge which derives from them; the impulse to love and to learn, which will vanish only with the human species, the still-warm habit of association and institution-building, into which all our better impulses may feed. These are the counters to despair, and the source of hope in any age. Society depends upon the saints and heroes who can once again place these things before us and show us their worth. This is not a task for the politician, whose proper role is not to create a society, but rather to represent it. It is a task for the educator, the priest, and the ordinary citizen whose public spirit is aroused on behalf of his neighbours. Such people are reluctant to come forward, largely because the mass media, dominated by trivialising materialists and sarcastic cynics, will cover them with ridicule. But the great merit of our civilisation and of the Christian religion upon which it is founded, is that it teaches us to accept ridicule, to know that the best is always mocked by that which feels condemned by it, and to take comfort in handing on knowledge to one person, regardless of the scorn of those who could never receive it in any case. Of course, it is hard to feel the full confidence which those teachings require. But they are addressed to each of us individually, and their validity is not affected by what others think or do. We have within ourselves the source of our salvation: all that is needed is to summon it, and to go out into the world.

Writing in 2010: "Throughout my adult life governments around the Western world have been propagating the gospel of multiculturalism, which tells us that immigrants, from whatever part of the world and whatever way of life, are a welcome part of our 'multicultural' society. Differences of language, religion, custom, and attachment don't matter, they have reassured us, since all can form part of the colourful tapestry of the modern state. Anybody who publicly disagreed with that claim invited the attentions of the thought police, always ready with the charge of racism, and never so scrupulous as to think it a sin to destroy the career of someone, provided he was white, indigenous, and male. To be quite honest, living through this period of organised mendacity has been one of the least agreeable ordeals that we conservatives have had to undergo. Keeping your head down is bad enough; but filling your head with official lies means sacrificing thought as well as freedom".

"Le visage de Dieu" de Roger Scruton a été imprimé. Bientôt dans votre boîte postale. Sinon, on peut toujours le commander ici editions-carmin.com

"We discriminate between people on grounds of their height, their age, their strength, their virtue, their looks. Just when is this an injustice? And if it is not an injustice, when would it be justifiable, in the interests of public policy, to prevent it? It seems to me that the anti-discrimination legislation with which our Western jurisdictions abound has gathered momentum without any real attempt to answer those questions."

"All European legislation is now subject to open-ended anti-discrimination provisions which have simply assumed that 'sexual orientation' belongs with race, sex, and religion in the list of things that are to be disregarded. But disregarded when, and why? Sometimes a reference is made to 'human rights', implying that to discriminate is to violate the 'human rights' of the one who loses on the deal. But what about the one who gains? When an employer asserts his freedom to employ whom he chooses, is he asserting his 'human rights'? And if so, is he also denying the 'human rights' of the one whom he refuses to employ because race, ethnicity, or faith are not to his liking? Clearly the concept of a 'human right' is doing no work here, but merely underlining the conflict."

Une nouvelle traduction de Thomas Sowell, "Discrimination et diparités" est en préparation et en précommande. Tous les détails ici: fr.tipeee.com/sowell-en-fran…

Gustave Thibon, Retour au réel

@Le_Hussard_ Carlyle.

La Giberne lance sa collection "Héritage" ! Son but ? Remettre des textes introuvables à disposition ! Et pour ce lancement, 3 textes sur... Les Héros ! 👉 Thomas Carlyle en philo 👉 Walter Scott en littérature 👉 Antoine Albalat pour façonner les vôtres Vous prenez lequel ?

"We human beings live naturally in communities, bound together by mutual trust. We have a need for a shared home, a place of safety where our claim to occupancy is undisputed and where we can call on others to assist us in times of threat. We need peace with our neighbours and the procedures for securing it. And we need the love and protection afforded by family life. To revise the human condition in any of those respects is to violate imperatives rooted in biology and in the needs of social reproduction. But to conduct political argument as though these factors are too far from the realm of ideas to deserve a mention is to ignore all the limits that must be borne in mind, if our political philosophy is to be remotely believable. It is precisely the character of modern utopias to ignore these limits – to imagine societies without law (Marx and Engels), without families (Laing), without borders or defences (Sartre). And much conservative ink has been wasted (by me among others) in rebutting such views, which can be believed only by people who are unable to perceive realities, and who therefore will never be persuaded by argument."

"The conservative task in the modern world is to scoff at the scoffers, to ridicule the prejudice against all that Burke promised under the rubric of 'prejudice', and to support the institutions in which piety is born. What, in modern life, carries the spirit of history? To what school or club or college should our children belong, in order to acquire the deep-down awareness that the world was not born with them, and that their happiness depends upon the approval of people who are no longer living? Conservatives in America are beginning to confront these questions, whether or not they conceive them in religious terms. They are beginning to recognize the damage done to their country by the liberal prejudice in favor of the living and their 'rights'. They know that crime, drugs, illegitimacy, and divorce all stem from a single cause: the inability to recognize obligations that are stronger than desire. But they also know that the old religions will not take an effective stand against these things. Rather than retreating from the Enlightenment, therefore, conservatives should confront liberal ideas on their own ground. The real question is not 'How do you justify authority?' but 'How do you justify rights?' Maybe there are no rights; and maybe the whole idea of equality is an illusion. If that is so, then the liberal assumption of the moral and intellectual high ground is spurious. We are faced with a confrontation not between enlightenment and prejudice, but between two kinds of prejudice. The conservative policy in this encounter should be to support the prejudice of ordinary people. Liberals will be contemptuous of such a policy, since the prejudices of enlightened people never seem like prejudice to those who entertain them. But the contempt of liberals is something that conservatives must learn to endure."

"The principal damage done by liberalism has not been intellectual—for the loss of religious belief could hardly be avoided, once the habit of inquiry had grown in us. The principal damage has come from the relentless scoffing at ordinary prohibitions and decencies, and the shrill advocacy of “alternatives” that ordinary people are unable in their hearts to recognize. The moral legacy of liberalism is typified by the Satanism of the Parisian Left Bank, by the play-group egoism of the Californian campus, and by the patrician complacency of the New York Review of Books. This moral legacy could be discarded tomorrow, were there not such a vested interest in preserving it. Liberal sarcasm is the ideology of a ruling class—the class of 'advisors', who inhabit the universities, the government commissions, and the state bureaucracies, and whose control over the channels of communication ensures that their superfluousness will never be publicly acknowledged."

Christianity never promised that it would impose universal peace. It had a great deal too much respect for personal liberty.