>Might and Right do differ frightfully from hour to hour; but give them centuries to try it in, they are found to be identical.
What does this mean?
>Might and Right do differ frightfully from hour to hour; but give them centuries to try it in, they are found to be identical.
>the more things change the more they stay the same
No.
A testament to his religious vision of the world that the good will always win out, which is, contrary to what secularists will tell you, not historiographically falsifiable.
Probably best read within the context of the whole essay but roughly along the lines of what this anon says , that good actions/people will tend ultimately towards positions of power. Conversely, although this is perhaps a lesser meaning, we can define what is good as what is most powerful within the longest timespan imaginable as opposed to merely powerful in the moment (ie opportunistic).
But it's also important to remember that he didn't have any prior-ordained moral schemata as his idea of 'right'. If humanity died in the coming centuries then he would say it was right for them to die.
?
is the reverse of what (you) suggest. Read it closely.
>is the reverse of what (you) suggest.
Do you think it's some sort of skeptical view of morality? Because that's not Carlyle.
What does it mean to say that Carlyle's vision is *not* historically falsifiable, whereas secularists 'say' it is? Would this not make 'the secularists' correct, given the nature of falsifiability? And if correct would it even matter? Would not serve as a *distinction* between religionist and secularist standpoints?
The imbedded 'problem' as I see it really concerns Catholic v. Protestant visions of 'morality' but this isn't expressed.
>Catholic v. Protestant
A Catholic *must* believe that things will get better, or are somehow getting better, whereas a Protestant *does* believe that things are getting worse, and must continue on a worsening course. In other words, a Catholic would be inclined to agree with Carlyle (now that the meaning has been clarified) a Protestant not so much. All the secularist can achieve in this situation is to find himself in one or the other of the two camps; i.e., it really doesn't matter what he thinks.
>A Catholic *must* believe that things will get better
Explain the catholic stance on postmillenialism in your own words
I can guess; probably, a political movement in religious dress (this is a Carlyle thread, after all).
My question to you: From a Roman Catholic perspective, is The Church the body of Christ on Earth?
>I can guess; probably,
I'm not even catholic but you're an embarrassment
Maybe. But (you) won't be able to explain why. Take comfort in your blessed 'non-embarrassed' state
>my blessed 'non-embarrassed' state
kneel
"good will always win out" is analogous in my mind to "good actions/people will tend ultimately towards positions of power", maybe you read the second part of my post prefaced by "conversely" which is indeed the reverse
Yeah, it confused me, which is why I asked the question
So...macro-decay's possible, macro-degeneration's possible, wrong may prevail, 'evil' become absolutely dominant, etc., through the 'non-coursing' centuries?
Geez, anon. I'm stunned. Never realized that 'secularists,' for instance, were/are of Carlyle's party without knowing it; being 'of the world,' I guess, must somehow necessitate having a 'religious view' of it, as opposed to the Christian view that it's been shit from the beginning --is now, and ever shall be until, of course, the resurrection.
OTOH, howsoever 'viewed,' no one should be surprised.
Am I misunderstanding something?
You're having an incensed reaction to an idea you haven't properly ingested. You're making no sense and need to read Carlyle to have any opinion on the matter.
Dude, I've read French Rev, the great man lectures, and Sartor (which I love) twice. I do own a copy of Past and Present which I have not read..
I just thought you were schizophrenic tbh.
Also, my reaction was intended to be ironic, not incensed
Basically Hegelianism. Socrates was right but the Athenian polis had the might to sentence him to death and so it did. However in the long run states recognized that Socrates was technically right and their might came to defend what he believed was right
It is true, all goes by approximation in this world; with any not insupportable approximation we must be patient. There is a noble Conservatism as well as an ignoble. Would to Heaven, for the sake of Conservatism itself, the noble alone were left, and the ignoble, by some kind severe hand, were ruthlessly lopped away, forbidden evermore to show itself! For it is the right and noble alone that will have victory in this struggle; the rest is wholly an obstruction, a postponement and fearful imperilment of the victory. Towards an eternal centre of right and nobleness, and of that only, is all this confusion tending. We already know whither it is all tending; what will have victory, what will have none! The Heaviest will reach the centre. The Heaviest, sinking through complex fluctuating media and vortices, has its deflexions, its obstructions, nay at times its resiliences, its reboundings; whereupon some blockhead shall be heard jubilating, "See, your Heaviest ascends!"—but at all moments it is moving centreward, fast as is convenient for it; sinking, sinking; and, by laws older than the World, old as the Maker's first Plan of the World, it has to arrive there.
Await the issue. In all battles, if you await the issue, each fighter has prospered according to his right. His right and his might, at the close of the account, were one and the same. He has fought with all his might, and in exact proportion to all his right he has prevailed. His very death is no victory over him. He dies indeed; but his work lives, very truly lives. A heroic Wallace, quartered on the scaffold, cannot hinder that his Scotland become, one day, a part of England: but he does hinder that it become, on tyrannous unfair terms, a part of it; commands still, as with a god's voice, from his old Valhalla and Temple of the Brave, that there be a just real union as of brother and brother, not a false and merely semblant one as of slave and master. If the union with England be in fact one of Scotland's chief blessings, we thank Wallace withal that it was not the chief curse. Scotland is not Ireland: no, because brave men rose there, and said, "Behold, ye must not tread us down like slaves; and ye shall not,—and cannot!" Fight on, thou brave true heart, and falter not, through dark fortune and through bright. The cause thou fightest for, so far as it is true, no farther, yet precisely so far, is very sure of victory. The falsehood alone of it will be conquered, will be abolished, as it ought to be: but the truth of it is part of Nature's own Laws, co-operates with the World's eternal Tendencies, and cannot be conquered.
The dust of controversy, what is it but the falsehood flying off from all manner of conflicting true forces, and making such a loud dust-whirlwind,—that so the truths alone may remain, and embrace brother-like in some true resulting-force! It is ever so. Savage fighting Heptarchies: their fighting is an ascertainment, who has the right to rule over whom; that out of such waste-bickering Saxondom a peacefully coöperating England may arise. Seek through this Universe; if with other than owl's eyes, thou wilt find nothing nourished there, nothing kept in life, but what has right to nourishment and life. The rest, look at it with other than owl's eyes, is not living; is all dying, all as good as dead! Justice was ordained from the foundations of the world; and will last with the world and longer.
The man they fear the most is Carlyle.
History is written by the winners.
Why are all Anglos arrogant utlitarian scum? What makes them cold weirdos like this?
Carlyle was as anti-utilitarian as you can get.
So he didn't believe might is right, the pinnacle of utilitarian thought, then?
It's not some atheistic, Darwinian formulation a la Ragnar Redbeard, it's a mystical confession of faith. If you don't get it you don't get it.
It's utilitarian. Might and right are independent of one another.
What you mean to say is 'I disagree with how Carlyle is using these terms', instead of insisting on your own understanding of terms being the only possible one.
There's nothing magical about what he said. It's clear in the OP and right here:
>right is the eternal symbol of might
Carlyle is known for believing that great men were moral and that morality was the expression of might. But he was wrong on all accounts. Great men are NOT moral, and what is right is not always related to might.
Hitler was morally right
That may be true, but he was not a great man.
I'm actually willing to entertain this but please explain beyond "he lost"
He was an actor. Spectacle was his forte, not greatness.
In other words his philosophy was not utilitarian, yet you still disagree with it.
"Might is right" is a utilitarian expression at its root. A non-utilitarian expression acknowledges that what is right may not always be healthy, desirable, attractive, powerful, etc.
Once again you're confused as to how Carlyle is using these terms. If he says something is powerful, it may be an application of that term to someone or something that no materialistic individual would ever describe as powerful, since Carlyle believes in the spiritual and its ultimate victory.
You're misunderstanding me. It makes no difference what he's referring to with the word "might." Conflating this with what is right / true is still utilitarian at its core. The truth is sometimes horrible, disgusting, painful, depressing — sometimes it's evil and corrupting. Acknowledging this is the real non-utilitarian approach to truth.
>The truth is sometimes horrible, disgusting, painful, depressing
According to YOU. Why can't you understand that you and Carlyle have different world views?
Carlyle's is smaller than mine.
Stop
he wasn't even anglo he was scottish
Idk but might needs right to legitimate itself.
Carlyle always denied that he confused ‘‘might’’ with ‘‘right.’’ In the margins of a German biography of himself that he received in July 1866 he wrote, ‘‘What floods of nonsense have been and are spoken & thought (what they call thinking) about this poor maxim of Carlyle’s! C. had discovered for himself, not without a satisfaction of religious kind, that no man who is not in the right, were he even a Napoleon I at the head of armed Europe, has any real might whatever, but will at last be found mightless, and to have done, or settled as a fixity, nothing at all, except precisely so far as he was not in the wrong. Abolition and erosion awaits all ‘doings’ of his, except just what part of them was right’’ (Clubbe 98–99).
>Reality in the fullness of apodictic actuality is both the Word and the Physis of God-- things can be compelled against Divine Order only temporarily, and the intrusion thereof is necessary (ananke) as a matter of course in the way of things as part of Absolute Freedom.
Oxford University is the only major publishing house to reprint his works (they did Past and Present last year)
Shit. That's not good. One gatekeeper increases the probability of corruption.
No normie has any chance of embracing Carlyle any time soon.
I didn’t actually know this, thanks for making me aware. Now we just need some publishing house to reprint his Frederick the Great in an affordable edition (never going to happen). Penguin has a decent collection of his essays but there could still be one with a bit of a wider selection, I think that’s more realistic
Can a christian believe in that, considering their prophecies say the world walks towards the kingdom of the "Antichrist"?
Because even if the Antichrist is ultimately defeated by God, that implies earthly might will be arranged towards something not right.