"For Hallerism does not intend to counter ideology with more ideology still... retaining and raising whatever is valid or salvageable in it to the level of scientificity."
This paragraph is awesome. I especially like the last part of salvaging what is true in the Liberal empire. I consider Austrian economics as more or less unassailable, and the libertarian political philosophy as explicated by Hans Hoppe as nearly so. But libertarians who advocate for freedom of the vices under Leviathan or those who think the NAP will result in a Utopia of no authority whatsoever are sadly misguided or mistaken. The result of the former group's activism would likely result in more not less absolutism (Brave New World), and as to the latter position, it is just absurd to think society could function without authority or power. The most likely result of a society founded at root upon the NAP would be a polycentric political order of private law republics and principalities a la Haller and Hoppe.
What do you think of Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn's work, especially his analysis of right and left? I love his definition of the right:
"The true rightist is not a man who wants to go back to this or that institution for the sake of a return; he wants first to find out what is eternally true, eternally valid, and then either to restore or reinstall it, regardless of whether it seems obsolete, whether it is ancient, contemporary, or even without precedent, brand new, "ultramodern." Old truths can be rediscovered, entirely new ones found. The Man of the Right does not have a time-bound, but a sovereign mind. In case he is a Christian he is, in the words of the Apostle Peter, the steward of a Basileion Hierateuma, a Royal Priesthood"
There is another interesting analysis of right and left by an Orthodox Christian and icon carver named Johnathan Pageau. He sees governments as being comprised of both authority (auctoritas) and power (potestas), the former being connected with the right which has a focus on the center, and the latter being connected with the left which has a focus on the margin. Auctoritas is sort of like prestige which commands voluntary obedience, and potestas is like ability which commands obedience by way of superior martial potential. I can provide a link to a video if you are interested.
Glad you like it! Re: Libertarians, it's always exasperating to see them set off on the right track and then get dragged down into the errors of anarchist thought time and time again, as though so many crabs in a bucket. You can even see Mises, who really should have known better, slipping into it here and there. If more of them could only encounter Haller, a staunch advocate of small government, flat income tax, or none at all, sound money, and the highest respect for property rights, things could really start going places for the Libertarians (who, having convinced themselves that power is immoral in itself, predictably don't have any).
Yes, Kuehnelt-Leddihn's definition captures exactly how I myself think, not just about politics, but things in general. I'm ever-given to trying to improve things I do, and thinking about how this or that could be improved; but you can't improve upon perfection, and shouldn't fix things that aren't broken (or trust those who say you can or should). And sometimes improvement entails reviving a past way of doing things that was abandoned, because too old and boring, but turns out to have been superior to the novelty that replaced it.
I've heard the auctoritas-potestas distinction before, but didn't know about Pageau until just now. By all means post a link.
It was Kuehnelt-Leddihn who first introduced me to Haller's existence in an offhand comment made in his book Leftism regarding right wing opponents of monarchical absolutism in the Revolutionary era. That got me thinking that maybe there was as much diversity of thought in the pro-monarchy right as there was in the revolutionary left (socialists, democrats, classical liberals, atheists, deists, Protestants, etc), and just maybe there was a figure or two advocating a return to Medieval kingship with its natural, limited and private nature based on familial and personal bonds, rather than territorial jurisdiction based on the people's sovereignty and social contract theory.
Interesting story, in the summer of 2018, I went looking for an English translation of The Restoration, because I'm an uncultured American who only knows one language, and could not find one. So I emailed Stephen Kinsella, whom I had met before, and the Mises Bookstore, and asked around if anybody knew of this guy and any English translations of his work. I got responses back but either they hadn't heard of him, or didn't know of an English version. Finally I reached out to Hans Hoppe via email, and presented all that I had found on Haller that I thought would pique his interest. Turns out he had heard of him and hadn't read him yet, but my email convinced him to finally do it, and shortly thereafter it was announced on the Property and Freedom Society website that he was going to give a presentation on Haller. This was in 2019. Sadly, next year's PFS was cancelled due to the Covid insanity, and so I had to wait another whole year to hear Hoppe's thoughts on Haller. The wait was definitely worth it though. I'm sure you heard/read it, but if not, a here is a link to the text of his lecture: https://mises.org/wire/idea-private-law-society-case-karl-ludwig-von-haller
I wanted to tell you that I purchased and read your translation of The Restoration recently, and I loved it. It's one of my favorite books now. I think I added a pound of highlighter ink to it. Your intro by itself was worth the price of the book. Been promoting it like crazy on Twitter. Keep up the good work man.
It's always a pleasure to hear people say they enjoyed my Haller translation and my attempt at an introductory exposition of his thought. Thank you also for spreading the good word on social media, since I'm afraid I'm a total loss when it comes to publicity, and for the Pageau video, which provides me with enormous food for future thought (I'm used to thinking the about authority-power distinction in terms of legitimacy and potency, of legality and morality as opposed to raw power, to military or economic capacity, but it never until watching the video occurred to me to think of power in terms of *law* and authority as the authorizing principle of the law, and I think the insight will prove very fruitful once I think all the implications through). I didn't know you were the guy who hipped Hoppe to Haller; I would have thought his own reflections from the turn of the present century would have led him there. I'd love to see to more Libertarians get interested and finally cut the cord that binds them to Liberalism and holds them back so much.
I'm also looking forward to hearing your thoughts on Pageau once you've had time to ruminate. His association of the book with power seemed almost counterintuitive to me at first, but upon further reflection it made more sense to me: a book represents fixity, permanence, i.e. "by the book; by the letter," whereas authority has leeway, room for exceptions. I see this exact dynamic in my own profession. There is the fixed written code or standard that must be followed to the letter, and then there is the authority having jurisdiction, which may grant reasonable allowances.
The Bible warns against the dangers of excessive numbering or accounting in 1st Chronicles 21, where King David is inspired by Satan to conduct a census, and is punished by God for his lack of faith.
No prob for the long responses, I like reading and talking about these subjects. Re: Pageau: It seems that "authority" would denote the supreme and final power, which is an *authorizing* power: the general will of the citizenry which authorizes the power of the President in a Republic (in the case of Rome), or the Divine grace that authorizes the power of earthly Kings. Inasmuch as authority is the final and supreme Sovereign authorizing power, it can of course make exceptions to its own rules as it sees fit (in America, every single President and every Governor makes exceptions to Federal or State-level criminal law by pardoning various convicts before leaving office, in order to to prove they that can) while those who receive and apply them (power) can't (judges are expected to apply the criminal law uniformly and without exception when somebody is convicted of a crime, and can't just let him off the hook, except to the extent that the written law some sentencing discretion).
I agree. And we see that even in our artificial system, which proves Haller's point that the natural order persists, to some degree, regardless of the noise of systems built on pseudoscience.
Power I believe is well ordered or natural so long as it is subservient to good authority. As you say, authority should be in the supreme position. Might doesn't make right (Niezsche), but it is required to sustain and defend what is. Haller being a sort of Niezsche for adults is such an interesting observation in your intro to the Restoration. In the same way that the margin threatens to overtake the center (in Pageau's terms), if it hasn't already, power threatens to supersede authority, and when it does it is mob rule (popular sovereignty), like the Jacobin Terror. And maybe the mob focuses its power in a figurehead (Robespierre), perhaps as an unconscious lurch back toward a natural order, but if the figure is made by the mob, he does not have true authority, only artificial authority buoyed by mob power and subject to its whim.
Do you think this is the distinction between the popular or one party dictatorships of the 20th century (Nazis, Soviets, Maoists, etc.) and the natural authority Haller points toward? I'd love to learn more about from a Hallerist perspective on this difference.
Hoppe mentioned that Haller's works had always been very expensive and out of print when he had looked in the past, so I think this is the only reason he had not looked into him before.
Pageau has a ton of interesting insights at the intersections of symbolism, religion, mythology, pop culture, and politics.
I consider Hoppe the vanguard of libertarian thought, even more so than Rothbard (who in error regarded the liberal state, despite its many flaws, as an improvement over the "despotism" of the ancient regimes of the past). Hoppe's achievement was basically to use what was good and true in the Enlightenment toolbox, to undermine the major achievements of this revolutionary period itself by exposing its falsehoods and hypocrisies, and to point back to the Middle Ages as a much better approximation of liberty than what irresponsible constitutional democracies would later provide. (Gerard Casey's book, "Freedom's Progress?" is good on this topic as well.)
But libertarian thought has proven to be such a trap for what Pageau calls the margin of society (the freaks, fringe, druggies, vagrants, atheists, Satanists, witches, moochers, trannies, pedos, sexual deviants, etc.), and as such, it has become a "stench in everyone's nostrils," in the words of Rothbard. After spending about a year interacting with the libertarian community on X (Twitter), I can confidently say that I have no interest in building a community with libertarians if our only common link is the libertarian philosophy. Sounds like a nightmare actually. Rothbard's "Why Paleo?" essay in RRR, more or less captures my thoughts on this.
The problem, I think, lies in a major mistake in strategy from the beginning. Libertarians, like Haller, rightly see in the modern state a fundamentally unjust property rights violator which maintains its authority by deception, coercion, and violence. The modern state violates the NAP as a matter of survival and definition. In light of this, many libertarians, following in Rothbard's footsteps, advocated for the state to legalize all manner of social ills and vices under its authority so long as these behaviors did not violate the NAP. So naturally, if libertarians are promoting the legalization of prostitution, porn, heroine use, and sexually deviant lifestyles, they are going to add a lot of deviants, drug addicts, porn addicts, and prostitutes to their ranks. Having a movement full of socially chaotic and self-destructive people is not a recipe for success.
The solution then is to abandon the licentiousness under the state paradigm, and to embrace extreme localism, as a way of approximating and approaching consensual and natural governance, or in libertarian lingo: a private law society. And a private law society (or the sovereign of such) may impose all manner of social and economic restrictions, prohibitions, or even duties on willing members, without violating the NAP. In this way, conservative libertarians can approach the ideal without surrounding themselves with the degenerate flotsam left in the wake of the Leviathan state and the toxic culture it promotes.
"For Hallerism does not intend to counter ideology with more ideology still... retaining and raising whatever is valid or salvageable in it to the level of scientificity."
This paragraph is awesome. I especially like the last part of salvaging what is true in the Liberal empire. I consider Austrian economics as more or less unassailable, and the libertarian political philosophy as explicated by Hans Hoppe as nearly so. But libertarians who advocate for freedom of the vices under Leviathan or those who think the NAP will result in a Utopia of no authority whatsoever are sadly misguided or mistaken. The result of the former group's activism would likely result in more not less absolutism (Brave New World), and as to the latter position, it is just absurd to think society could function without authority or power. The most likely result of a society founded at root upon the NAP would be a polycentric political order of private law republics and principalities a la Haller and Hoppe.
What do you think of Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn's work, especially his analysis of right and left? I love his definition of the right:
"The true rightist is not a man who wants to go back to this or that institution for the sake of a return; he wants first to find out what is eternally true, eternally valid, and then either to restore or reinstall it, regardless of whether it seems obsolete, whether it is ancient, contemporary, or even without precedent, brand new, "ultramodern." Old truths can be rediscovered, entirely new ones found. The Man of the Right does not have a time-bound, but a sovereign mind. In case he is a Christian he is, in the words of the Apostle Peter, the steward of a Basileion Hierateuma, a Royal Priesthood"
There is another interesting analysis of right and left by an Orthodox Christian and icon carver named Johnathan Pageau. He sees governments as being comprised of both authority (auctoritas) and power (potestas), the former being connected with the right which has a focus on the center, and the latter being connected with the left which has a focus on the margin. Auctoritas is sort of like prestige which commands voluntary obedience, and potestas is like ability which commands obedience by way of superior martial potential. I can provide a link to a video if you are interested.
Glad you like it! Re: Libertarians, it's always exasperating to see them set off on the right track and then get dragged down into the errors of anarchist thought time and time again, as though so many crabs in a bucket. You can even see Mises, who really should have known better, slipping into it here and there. If more of them could only encounter Haller, a staunch advocate of small government, flat income tax, or none at all, sound money, and the highest respect for property rights, things could really start going places for the Libertarians (who, having convinced themselves that power is immoral in itself, predictably don't have any).
Yes, Kuehnelt-Leddihn's definition captures exactly how I myself think, not just about politics, but things in general. I'm ever-given to trying to improve things I do, and thinking about how this or that could be improved; but you can't improve upon perfection, and shouldn't fix things that aren't broken (or trust those who say you can or should). And sometimes improvement entails reviving a past way of doing things that was abandoned, because too old and boring, but turns out to have been superior to the novelty that replaced it.
I've heard the auctoritas-potestas distinction before, but didn't know about Pageau until just now. By all means post a link.
JV
Here is the link I mentioned:
Authority on the Right, Power on the Left - Johnathan Pageau
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9b4DXTrsFuk
It was Kuehnelt-Leddihn who first introduced me to Haller's existence in an offhand comment made in his book Leftism regarding right wing opponents of monarchical absolutism in the Revolutionary era. That got me thinking that maybe there was as much diversity of thought in the pro-monarchy right as there was in the revolutionary left (socialists, democrats, classical liberals, atheists, deists, Protestants, etc), and just maybe there was a figure or two advocating a return to Medieval kingship with its natural, limited and private nature based on familial and personal bonds, rather than territorial jurisdiction based on the people's sovereignty and social contract theory.
Interesting story, in the summer of 2018, I went looking for an English translation of The Restoration, because I'm an uncultured American who only knows one language, and could not find one. So I emailed Stephen Kinsella, whom I had met before, and the Mises Bookstore, and asked around if anybody knew of this guy and any English translations of his work. I got responses back but either they hadn't heard of him, or didn't know of an English version. Finally I reached out to Hans Hoppe via email, and presented all that I had found on Haller that I thought would pique his interest. Turns out he had heard of him and hadn't read him yet, but my email convinced him to finally do it, and shortly thereafter it was announced on the Property and Freedom Society website that he was going to give a presentation on Haller. This was in 2019. Sadly, next year's PFS was cancelled due to the Covid insanity, and so I had to wait another whole year to hear Hoppe's thoughts on Haller. The wait was definitely worth it though. I'm sure you heard/read it, but if not, a here is a link to the text of his lecture: https://mises.org/wire/idea-private-law-society-case-karl-ludwig-von-haller
I wanted to tell you that I purchased and read your translation of The Restoration recently, and I loved it. It's one of my favorite books now. I think I added a pound of highlighter ink to it. Your intro by itself was worth the price of the book. Been promoting it like crazy on Twitter. Keep up the good work man.
It's always a pleasure to hear people say they enjoyed my Haller translation and my attempt at an introductory exposition of his thought. Thank you also for spreading the good word on social media, since I'm afraid I'm a total loss when it comes to publicity, and for the Pageau video, which provides me with enormous food for future thought (I'm used to thinking the about authority-power distinction in terms of legitimacy and potency, of legality and morality as opposed to raw power, to military or economic capacity, but it never until watching the video occurred to me to think of power in terms of *law* and authority as the authorizing principle of the law, and I think the insight will prove very fruitful once I think all the implications through). I didn't know you were the guy who hipped Hoppe to Haller; I would have thought his own reflections from the turn of the present century would have led him there. I'd love to see to more Libertarians get interested and finally cut the cord that binds them to Liberalism and holds them back so much.
I'm also looking forward to hearing your thoughts on Pageau once you've had time to ruminate. His association of the book with power seemed almost counterintuitive to me at first, but upon further reflection it made more sense to me: a book represents fixity, permanence, i.e. "by the book; by the letter," whereas authority has leeway, room for exceptions. I see this exact dynamic in my own profession. There is the fixed written code or standard that must be followed to the letter, and then there is the authority having jurisdiction, which may grant reasonable allowances.
The Bible warns against the dangers of excessive numbering or accounting in 1st Chronicles 21, where King David is inspired by Satan to conduct a census, and is punished by God for his lack of faith.
Sorry for the long responses!
No prob for the long responses, I like reading and talking about these subjects. Re: Pageau: It seems that "authority" would denote the supreme and final power, which is an *authorizing* power: the general will of the citizenry which authorizes the power of the President in a Republic (in the case of Rome), or the Divine grace that authorizes the power of earthly Kings. Inasmuch as authority is the final and supreme Sovereign authorizing power, it can of course make exceptions to its own rules as it sees fit (in America, every single President and every Governor makes exceptions to Federal or State-level criminal law by pardoning various convicts before leaving office, in order to to prove they that can) while those who receive and apply them (power) can't (judges are expected to apply the criminal law uniformly and without exception when somebody is convicted of a crime, and can't just let him off the hook, except to the extent that the written law some sentencing discretion).
I agree. And we see that even in our artificial system, which proves Haller's point that the natural order persists, to some degree, regardless of the noise of systems built on pseudoscience.
Power I believe is well ordered or natural so long as it is subservient to good authority. As you say, authority should be in the supreme position. Might doesn't make right (Niezsche), but it is required to sustain and defend what is. Haller being a sort of Niezsche for adults is such an interesting observation in your intro to the Restoration. In the same way that the margin threatens to overtake the center (in Pageau's terms), if it hasn't already, power threatens to supersede authority, and when it does it is mob rule (popular sovereignty), like the Jacobin Terror. And maybe the mob focuses its power in a figurehead (Robespierre), perhaps as an unconscious lurch back toward a natural order, but if the figure is made by the mob, he does not have true authority, only artificial authority buoyed by mob power and subject to its whim.
Do you think this is the distinction between the popular or one party dictatorships of the 20th century (Nazis, Soviets, Maoists, etc.) and the natural authority Haller points toward? I'd love to learn more about from a Hallerist perspective on this difference.
Hoppe mentioned that Haller's works had always been very expensive and out of print when he had looked in the past, so I think this is the only reason he had not looked into him before.
Pageau has a ton of interesting insights at the intersections of symbolism, religion, mythology, pop culture, and politics.
I consider Hoppe the vanguard of libertarian thought, even more so than Rothbard (who in error regarded the liberal state, despite its many flaws, as an improvement over the "despotism" of the ancient regimes of the past). Hoppe's achievement was basically to use what was good and true in the Enlightenment toolbox, to undermine the major achievements of this revolutionary period itself by exposing its falsehoods and hypocrisies, and to point back to the Middle Ages as a much better approximation of liberty than what irresponsible constitutional democracies would later provide. (Gerard Casey's book, "Freedom's Progress?" is good on this topic as well.)
But libertarian thought has proven to be such a trap for what Pageau calls the margin of society (the freaks, fringe, druggies, vagrants, atheists, Satanists, witches, moochers, trannies, pedos, sexual deviants, etc.), and as such, it has become a "stench in everyone's nostrils," in the words of Rothbard. After spending about a year interacting with the libertarian community on X (Twitter), I can confidently say that I have no interest in building a community with libertarians if our only common link is the libertarian philosophy. Sounds like a nightmare actually. Rothbard's "Why Paleo?" essay in RRR, more or less captures my thoughts on this.
The problem, I think, lies in a major mistake in strategy from the beginning. Libertarians, like Haller, rightly see in the modern state a fundamentally unjust property rights violator which maintains its authority by deception, coercion, and violence. The modern state violates the NAP as a matter of survival and definition. In light of this, many libertarians, following in Rothbard's footsteps, advocated for the state to legalize all manner of social ills and vices under its authority so long as these behaviors did not violate the NAP. So naturally, if libertarians are promoting the legalization of prostitution, porn, heroine use, and sexually deviant lifestyles, they are going to add a lot of deviants, drug addicts, porn addicts, and prostitutes to their ranks. Having a movement full of socially chaotic and self-destructive people is not a recipe for success.
The solution then is to abandon the licentiousness under the state paradigm, and to embrace extreme localism, as a way of approximating and approaching consensual and natural governance, or in libertarian lingo: a private law society. And a private law society (or the sovereign of such) may impose all manner of social and economic restrictions, prohibitions, or even duties on willing members, without violating the NAP. In this way, conservative libertarians can approach the ideal without surrounding themselves with the degenerate flotsam left in the wake of the Leviathan state and the toxic culture it promotes.