Fanaticism: A Political Philosophical History 9780812298628

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Fanaticism

Fanaticism A Political Philosophical History

Zachary R. Goldsmith

Universit y of Pennsylvania Press Phil adelphia

Copyright © 2022 University of Pennsylvania Press All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations used for purposes of review or scholarly citation, none of this book may be reproduced in any form by any means without written permission from the publisher. Published by University of Pennsylvania Press Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-­4112 www​.upenn​.edu​/pennpress Printed in the United States of America on acid-­free paper 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 A Cataloging-in-Publication record is available from the Library of Congress Hardcover ISBN 9780812254037 eBook ISBN 9780812298628

For my parents

CONTENTS

Chapter 1. Answering the Question: What Is Fanaticism?

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Chapter 2. Three Moments in the History of Fanaticism

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Chapter 3. Kant Between the Schwärmer and the Enthusiast

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Chapter 4. Edmund Burke’s Critique of the “Philosophical Fanatics” Behind the French Revolution

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Chapter 5. Dostoevsky’s Demons: Encountering Political Fanaticism

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Conclusion. Confronting Fanaticism and Its Partisans

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Notes 165 References 173 Index 187 Acknowledgments 195

CHAPTER 1

Answering the Question: What Is Fanaticism?

For the errours of Definitions multiply themselves, according as the reckoning proceeds; and lead men into absurdities, which at last they see, but cannot avoyd, without reckoning anew from the beginning; in which lyes the foundation of their errours. —Thomas Hobbes (1985 [1651]: 105)

Passion, Michael Walzer (2004) claims, “is a hidden issue at the heart” of many of today’s most pressing political problems (110). Excessive passion in the political arena can impel a turn to irrationalism and engender an unbending conviction in the exclusive truth of one’s own belief. Often, this can further mean a refusal to compromise or admit any doubt and, all too often, the pursuit of violent means to realize one’s political aspirations. To put it too bluntly—fanaticism. But, as Walzer is quick to point out, a politics totally devoid of passion is also undesirable. Like Max Weber before him, Walzer argues that politics, in its best expression, comprises “conviction energized by passion and passion restrained by conviction” (120), an unstable combination redolent of what Weber (2004) famously called an “ethics of conviction” and an “ethics of responsibility” (83).1 Historians of political thought have long wrestled with this central problem of passion in politics, engaging with changing concepts and attendant terminology to understand and grapple with this central problem of social existence.2 John Passmore (2003) notes that, during the Enlightenment, when the forces of reason were arrayed in battle against those of passion, “two words entered the English language at almost the same time” to describe this struggle: enthusiasm and fanaticism (211). As we will see in this work,

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these two different terms—and the closely related concepts they are meant to denote—have undergone a long process of evolution as they have been used to understand certain types of social engagement, beginning with their earliest invocation in the ancient world, followed by their transformation into religious concepts, and, by the time of the Enlightenment, their ultimate refashioning as primarily political concepts. The Oxford English Dictionary defines “fanaticism” as “the condition of being, or supposing oneself to be, possessed,” or, “the tendency to indulge in wild and extravagant notions, esp. in religious matters; excessive enthusiasm, frenzy; an instance, a particular form of this,” as well as, “in a weaker sense: Eagerness or enthusiasm in any pursuit.” While the dictionary notes the first instance of the word (or a variant) in English as dating from 1652, Dominique Colas (1997) notes a usage more than a full century earlier in a 1525 version of the celebrated story of Robin Hood (14). Emerging in vernacular languages around the turn of the seventeenth century, “enthusiasm” is defined similarly by the Oxford English Dictionary, which offers a few related definitions, all variations on “possession by a god, supernatural inspiration, prophetic or poetic frenzy; an occasion or manifestation of these.” More recent attempts to define fanaticism focus on particular attributes of this concept. For example, H. J. Perkinson (2002) claims that the key attribute of fanaticism is a “flight from fallibility.” Such a rejection of fallibility, Perkinson argues, leads one to become “fanatical,” as well as “dogmatic,” “obscurantist,” and “authoritarian” (172). The psychologist Stanley Milgram (1977) reduced fanaticism to mere extremism, writing, “A fanatic is someone who goes to extremes in beliefs, feelings, and actions” (58). The philosopher A. P. Martinich (2000) identifies an obsession with transcendence as the crux of fanaticism, writing, “A fanatic is a person who purports to place all (or virtually all) value in things of some transcendent realm. This entails that either no or only derivative value is attached to this world” (419). Passmore (2003) extends these analyses, arguing that “hard-­core fanaticism” has three major attributes: “some objective of such consequences that all other ends must be subordinated to it even when this entails acting in ways which would normally be regarded as immoral,” as well as a belief that “it is possible to know by having access to some peculiarly authoritative source of knowledge what this objective is and why such means are possible,” and the further belief that “those who have this knowledge are entitled to suppress those who raise any questions about it, who oppose in a way its realization or, more generally, who do not show in their behaviour that they wholeheartedly accept it” (221).

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While these attempts at definition are no doubt helpful, they only tell us so much. Indeed, as many political philosophers and intellectual historians have pointed out, the central concepts of political life are difficult, if not impossible, to neatly define. As Nietzsche (1996) argues, such concepts exist “completely beyond definition”; they “no longer possess[] a single meaning, but a whole synthesis of ‘meanings’” (60). The influential German intellectual historian Reinhart Koselleck (2016) arrives at a similar view regarding such “foundational concepts” (Grundbegriffe), writing, “Concepts are thus concentrations of many semantic contents” (46). Accordingly, while the meaning of the words we use to denote certain concepts may be more or less clear, the concepts themselves can only ever be “interpreted.” This is no less the case with a concept like fanaticism. Combining insights from the field of “concept history” (Begriffsgeschichte), as well as related approaches including the Cambridge School of intellectual history, and the more recent methodological innovations of the philosopher Berys Gaut (2000, 2005), this work demonstrates the complexity and myriad transformations of the concept of fanaticism. Therefore, instead of proffering one simple and neat definition of fanaticism, I will provide a “cluster account” of the concept of fanaticism.3 Accordingly, after studying the history of the concept of fanaticism, especially its more modern political manifestation through analyses of the thought of Immanuel Kant, Edmund Burke, and Fyodor Dostoevsky, I will posit ten primary attributes of the concept of fanaticism that, in various permutations, hang together and create what we can recognize as fanaticism in its fullest sense. These core attributes are messianism, an inappropriate relationship to reason, an embrace of abstraction, a desire for novelty, the pursuit of perfection, an opposition to limits, an embrace of violence, absolute certitude, excessive passion, and an attractiveness to intellectuals. While throughout its history fanaticism has almost always held a normatively negative connotation, it has long existed alongside its more normatively ambiguous (or even normatively positive) twin, enthusiasm. Accordingly, to hope to understand the concept of fanaticism, its twin concept, enthusiasm, must also be explored. The history of these two concepts can be likened to two concurrent lines, sometimes intersecting and converging, where the terms enthusiasm and fanaticism could be understood as synonyms, and sometimes diverging, where the terms no longer denote quite the same referent. I will show that these lexical transformations reflect deeper changes within the concept of fanaticism, changes that correspond to the way the phenomenon of fanaticism has changed throughout the course of human history. Indeed,

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as we will see in the next chapter, the concept of fanaticism has existed in three relatively stable forms throughout its history. Referring in ancient times to a particular type of cultic practice, the concept was later understood primarily to denote a deviant type of religious belief and habitus with the rise of Christianity until the Enlightenment. Finally, around the time of the French Revolution, fanaticism became refashioned as a political concept, now referring to a type of political belief and behavior that, in many ways, replicated in political terms what its earlier religious mode denoted. Further complicating our efforts to uncover the history of this complicated concept is the fact that fanaticism, and its cousin enthusiasm, have both most often been understood—and used—in a pejorative context. Cartographers of these elusive concepts are no strangers to this complication. As the psychologists and analysts of fanaticism André Haynal, Miklos Molnar, and Gérard de Puymège (1983) note, “The concept of fanaticism enables us not only to place a value judgement on those who oppose our ideals, but also to condemn out of hand their mode of behavior, without delving deeper, simply by saying: ‘They are fanatics’” (4). Indeed, the appellation “fanatic” has often been used as a political smear to banish and condemn political views and actors with whom one disagrees. In the American context, to take one example, this rhetorical maneuver was commonplace in nineteenth-­century debates over slavery and abolition. John C. Calhoun, for example, a longtime South Carolina politician who rose to the station of vice president under John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson, often denounced abolitionists as fanatics in his efforts to defend slavery. In one of his most famous speeches to Congress “On the Reception of Abolition Petitions” in 1837, Calhoun (1992) defended slavery as “a positive good,” denouncing those who opposed it as “fanatics” (474–475). While some in the broad American abolitionist movement may indeed have been fanatics—John Brown comes to mind—most did not possess the unique combination of attributes needed to merit this label. As we will see, fanaticism, properly understood, means more than just devotion to a cause—more, indeed, than even extreme devotion to a cause. Rather, a fanatic assumes a unique way of being in the world, one that brings with it a host of characteristics that go beyond mere political engagement or even political extremism. Fanaticism, to truly merit the description, must possess some combination of messianism, an inappropriate relationship to reason, an embrace of abstraction, a desire for novelty, the pursuit of perfection, an opposition to limits, an embrace of violence, absolute certitude, excessive passion, as well as some

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intellectual pretension. While it is not necessary to possess every last one of the foregoing qualities—and certainly not each in equal measure—this analysis aims to show that the complex concept of fanaticism emerges from various and varying combinations of these noxious ingredients. Despite this complexity, however, Calhoun aims the pejorative fanatic at any opponent of slavery, adopting an indiscriminate and political usage of the term to describe anyone who sought to “raise the negroes to a social and political equality with the whites” (475). Yet, even though the terms fanatic and enthusiast can indeed be used as a political or religious cudgel, this does not mean that these terms cannot also be used to refer to real existing concepts which can be identified, studied, and tracked over time. By paying close attention to context, a careful historian will be able to disentangle the concept of fanaticism from political, social, and religious machinations, when the latter apply. The often-­fraught nature of such value-­laden concepts makes the job of the historian more difficult, to be sure, but not impossible. She must simply acknowledge this added complexity when seeking out the thread of fanaticism running through history and approach her task with even more humility than the treatment of other, less contentious concepts might require. While understood as synonymous for much of their history, as “fanaticism” came to be understood as a political vice by the eighteenth century, many thinkers looked to “enthusiasm” as they sought to salvage a more emotional or affective form of political engagement that avoided the excesses of fanaticism. Enthusiasm presented itself as a third way between fanaticism, on the one hand, and a bloodless rationalistic politics, on the other. The intellectual historian Dominique Colas (1997) notes, “‘fanaticism’ once designated religious fervor and zealotry, [but] was later distinguished from ‘enthusiasm,’ and thus came to encompass nihilistic or millenarian political violence” (9). As we will see in subsequent chapters, perhaps no thinker has done more to differentiate the concepts of enthusiasm and fanaticism and refashion the former into something like a political virtue than Immanuel Kant. While, for Kant, the fanatic is a “deranged person with presumed immediate inspiration and a great familiarity with the powers of the heavens” (2:267), enthusiasm represents “good with affect,” the “power of the mind to soar above certain obstacles of sensibility by means of moral principles” (5:272, 271). Kant held enthusiasm as a good mix of affect and politics, while fanaticism denoted a mixture that lacked proper balance. By the early nineteenth century, Germaine de Staël (1813) would argue in a similar vein, “Many people

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are prejudiced against Enthusiasm; they confound it with fanaticism, which is a great mistake” (388). Similarly to Kant before her, Staël maintains, “Fanaticism is an exclusive passion, the object of which is an opinion; enthusiasm is connected with the harmony of the universe: it is the love of the beautiful, elevation of the soul” (360). Clearly, if one wishes to understand fanaticism, it is necessary to study its fraught historical relationship with the related concept of enthusiasm.

Why Study Fanaticism? Given the great variety in meaning and uses associated with the term fanaticism, it is reasonable to ask how one could hope to get at the meaning of this concept; indeed, is there any there there at all? As well, one might ask the related question: Why bother? Why is a project seeking to “get at” the meaning of such a “stretched” and overworked concept like fanaticism important? A further potential criticism of this project could include the claim that, indeed, there is really no there there and that fanaticism is little more than a slur used to silence critics of the status quo (see Toscano [2010]). As we will see, while fanaticism is most often understood in a negative light, this does not mean that the concept is without positive content or analytic leverage. The concept of fanaticism, rather, even despite successive changes throughout human history, has maintained enough coherence and consistency that it can be tracked and understood in various historical contexts. Despite these potential objections, a work of this type is important for several reasons. While much scholarship has been devoted to the detailed study of enthusiasm and the history of the debates surrounding this concept,4 relatively little scholarship has focused on the concept of fanaticism, and even less from political theorists. Not only is the contemporary literature on fanaticism underdeveloped but hardly any attention has been paid to its political variant. As Joel Olson (2009), one of the few political theorists to study political fanaticism, notes, “Fanaticism presents one of the most important political problems since September 11, 2001. Curiously, however, this subject has largely evaded scrutiny by political theorists” (82). Psychoanalysis, and later psychology more broadly, was first brought to bear on this concept, primarily between the 1960s and 1990s (Rudin 1969; Haynal, Molnar, and Puymège 1983; M. Taylor 1991). While much was gained by this approach in terms of analytic rigor, these studies tended to treat fanaticism in a decontextualized manner,

Answering the Question: What Is Fanaticism?

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as an ahistorical phenomenon. Thus, fanaticism was treated, in many respects, as an immutable a priori concept impervious to the effects of vastly different times and places in which it makes an appearance. While the next wave of scholarship, now intellectual-­historical in method (Colas 1997), was much improved in this regard—paying close attention to the context and intellectual milieu in which instances of fanaticism emerged—this literature, perhaps precisely because of its detailed approach, tended to obscure the unique political modality of this concept and the context of its emergence, which, as we will see, occurred around the time of, and largely in reaction to, the French Revolution. A study of fanaticism that takes square aim at the concept—and especially its political modality—is thus sorely needed. Recognizing both the continuity and change in a complex concept like fanaticism (or enthusiasm) means that, to fully understand these real phenomena in political life, we must unearth their long and tangled histories. Works like this one—which aims to uncover the hidden history of fanaticism and illuminate its reemergence as a modern political concept—are in good company in this endeavor. In studying the concept of fanaticism—with special attention to its understudied political modality—I join a conversation with other scholars whose recent work in political theory examines closely related concepts and thus aims to help flesh out the rich “conceptual web” of concepts that populate our political world today. These related concepts include extremism, cruelty, messianism, passion, as well as opposing concepts like moderation, compromise, prudence, civility, humility, and toleration.5 This work, therefore, is part of a much broader current in contemporary political theory that aims to more deeply understand the political world we inhabit by more clearly understanding the concepts which constitute it. I maintain that this is a necessary project if we are to engage in politics in a meaningful way. For this reason, the political theorist James Farr argues, “the study of political concepts now becomes an essential not an incidental task of the study of politics” (Ball, Farr, and Hanson 1989: 29). Indeed, some important work has been done to lay the groundwork for a history of the concept of fanaticism. The French intellectual historian Dominique Colas’s magisterial 1997 work Civil Society and Fanaticism: Conjoined Histories is perhaps the best example. Providing an exhaustive compendium of the history of the idea of fanaticism, it pays special attention to its developmental tension with the oppositional concept of “civil society.” While the exclusively political variant of fanaticism is largely lost in this work—and thus composes the focus of the current volume—Colas provides a valuable

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defense of this way of doing the history of concepts. Arguing against those who might reasonably ask what ancient understandings of fanaticism have to tell us about modern and contemporary manifestations of this concept, Colas (1997) defends the utility of analyzing what he calls “thought systems” and “the long cycles in the history of political thought” (xvii, xv). Colas maintains that “such a study, both genealogical and structural, of the denotations and connotations [of these concepts] seems to me indispensable if we are to understand the widespread, even inflationist use of the term[s] today” (xv). Koselleck (2016) offers a similar methodological view, claiming that fundamental “basic concepts have remained in use since they were first coined in classical antiquity” and that studying their history of continuity and transformation can give us insight into “historical structures and major complexes of events” (31–32). Indeed, the school of Begriffsgeschichte, founded by Koselleck, has itself produced important histories of the concept of fanaticism, both in the German (Conze and Reinhart 1975) and French (Sleich 1986) contexts. While all of these works reveal important distinctions in their particular methodological approaches, all maintain that central “foundational concepts” inhere in the history of human social and political existence, with histories that can be unearthed, traced, and interpreted. This work aims to build on this foundation, examining in particular the political transformation of this concept around the time of the French Revolution while also providing a critique of those today who try to reclaim this concept as a political virtue. A study of fanaticism is also pressing given the times in which we live. Far from merely a matter of historical concern, there are, today, movements all over the world that seek to unite the City of God and the City of Man, movements of men and women who know the Truth and seek to instantiate it, by violence if necessary, come what may. The collapse of fascism and communism in the twentieth century hardly betokened a liberal end of history, as some predicted. Rather, fanatics of all stripes have reemerged as a global political force under various banners. Indeed, fanatical approaches to politics abound today: resurgent neo-­Nazism, populism, small left-­wing extremist groups, as well as the continued threat of global Islamist movements all threaten the freedoms and rights at the center of liberal-­democratic societies. Partisans of the extreme Left and extreme Right are increasingly turning to a politics of fanaticism, and liberalism as a political idea is increasingly under assault in word and deed from all sides. In the American context, one need look no further to see the potency of fanaticism today than the hitherto unthinkable riot that engulfed the U.S.

Answering the Question: What Is Fanaticism?

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Capitol on January 6, 2021. Drunk on a steady stream of grievances (both real and fictitious), a “blood-­dimmed tide”6 stormed the Capitol in a brazen paroxysm of rage and violence with little precedent in American history. But this act, as shocking as it was, should not have come as a total surprise if one was attuned to the intellectual ferment taking place on the extreme Right. Indeed, intellectuals coalescing around Donald Trump had long been laying the groundwork for just such an outpouring of fanaticism. In perhaps the most infamous, and among the earliest, pro-­Trump political texts, Michael Anton (2016), writing under the pseudonym Publius Decius Mus, eschews all nuance and measure in his estimation of contemporary America, invoking 9/11 as a fitting analogue to the 2016 presidential election and the prospect of a Hillary Clinton presidency. In “The Flight 93 Election”—a reference to the hijacked plane that crash-­landed when passengers overpowered the hijackers in control of the aircraft—Anton (2016) claimed in all seriousness that voters in the 2016 election must either “charge the cockpit,” that is, vote for Trump, “or die.” As we will see, this kind of thinking, which views the political world in absolutes and political disagreements as existential threats—bears all the hallmarks of fanaticism. Politics, in this estimation, is no longer an ordered contestation over competing definitions of the common good; it is, rather, a passion play, an apocalyptic battle between Good and Evil where enemies are to be exterminated and to be lukewarm in the endeavor is to merit damnation. What is more, we cannot just dismiss this type of thinking as unserious scribbling from the margins. In our increasingly interconnected and digital world, the space between word and deed is constantly shrinking and voices that earlier would have remained marginal and irrelevant now frequently don a mantle of respectability and are echoed and championed by multitudes. Indeed, it is no stretch to say that one can draw a direct line from this fanaticism in thought to the fanaticism in deed witnessed on January 6, 2021. Increasing fanaticism, however, is far from just an American phenomenon. Michael D. Weinman and Boris Vormann (2021) state the obvious when they note, “Liberal democracy is in crisis” and “illiberal forces [are] quickly seek[ing] to fill the ideological vacuum left by a hollowed out liberal idealism” (3–4). All throughout the Western world, once-­settled debates regarding the disjuncture between a reason-­and rules-­based public sphere and excessive passion in politics are again being reopened, a reality noted by many political theorists (Lomonaco 2005; Frank 2005; Poe 2010). To describe and understand such a fraught political scene, the term fanaticism has come back in vogue, being invoked in a variety of sociopolitical spheres with varying

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degrees of precision. The journalist David Brooks (2017), for example, has used the term to refer to unreasonable Trump supporters, while the political scientist Carol Joffe (2009) employed the term to refer to violent antiabortion activists, while also engaging in a lengthy explanation of her understanding of the term as well as why it accurately reflects her subjects. The political commentator Paul Berman (2016) has identified fanaticism as a unifying thread connecting the ideology of Mao Tse-­tung to that of Sayyid Qutb—arguably the father of contemporary Islamism—contending that both movements epitomize “virulent contagions of political fanaticism” (cf. Berman 2004, 2010). Even poets have engaged the term to describe recent political events. A few months after the terrorist attack against the French magazine Charlie Hebdo, Frederick Seidel (2015) compared the rise of Islamism in France to the Nazi invasion more than half a century earlier, writing, “My oh my. How times have changed. / But the fanatics have gotten even more deranged.” Whatever the proximal source, fanaticism poses a serious threat to liberal values and as such requires serious attention. In order to understand the danger fanaticism continues to pose to liberal democracy, it must be taken seriously as a political force in the modern world. We would not only be intellectually mistaken to treat these movements with simplistic and convenient labels or prejudices but we would also do so at our own peril. Understanding the nature of these ideas can help us not only to understand our own dangerous and fraught political moment better but can also point the way toward strategies to overcome these troubling clashes of ideas and values. Indeed, two of the authors closely examined in this work—Kant and Burke—each offer a unique antidote to the problem of political fanaticism. While Dostoevsky proves his worth as a uniquely insightful analyst of fanaticism, Kant and Burke go further, each proposing a way of engaging in politics that avoids the ruinous temptation of fanaticism. For Kant, this takes the form of “reflecting judgements,” which allow one to make strong and meaningful political claims without succumbing to fanaticism. Burke, on the other hand, champions moderation in his political thought (if not always in his political life) as a supreme political virtue that can shield those who cherish it from the siren song of fanaticism. Finally, despite the horror of fanaticism unleashed all too frequently in acts of violence around the globe, there are those in academe who see in fanaticism a noble idea. Two scholars from the left are at the forefront of this attempted revaluation of fanaticism: Alberto Toscano and Joel Olson. Toscano’s 2010 book Fanaticism: On the Uses of an Idea provides the most

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comprehensive and robust account of this position. In short, insofar as Toscano understands the term fanaticism to have any positive content at all (that is, insofar as he thinks there actually is such a phenomenon and not just a hollow pejorative smear deployed by liberals), he desires to liberate this phenomenon from the opprobrium of ages and discover in it a radical political program for what he calls “egalitarianism” and “emancipation.” Toscano (2010) writes that his “purpose is to mine a set of theoretical debates and controversies around fanaticism” so as “to reconstruct a theory of political abstraction not so easily dismissed as mere fanaticism” (xxvi). In so doing, he seeks to champion what he calls “a radically transformative and unequivocally antagonistic stance against existing society” (26). This transvaluation of fanaticism—and the related attributes of passion, abstraction, intransigence, and violence—is troubling and dangerous. In a series of published articles, the political theorist Joel Olson has also set out to reimagine fanaticism as a political virtue. Rejecting liberalism as the “‘official’ framework of political engagement,” Olson (2009) turns to fanaticism as “an approach to politics that seeks to establish hegemony” (82). Drawing largely on American abolitionists for case studies—while curiously yoking them to theories advanced by the Nazi legal theorist (or simply a “conservative legal scholar,” to use Olson’s language [84]) Carl Schmitt—Olson (2007) contends that we ought to seek out a new “ethico-­political framework” beyond liberalism, and that fanaticism is the tool to get us there. He thus argues for what he calls a “democratic form of fanaticism” (685). However, as we will see in the Conclusion, fanaticism is antithetical to democracy as well as liberalism (the latter a point Olson would surely agree with), and it is, at base, fundamentally opposed even to politics itself. By claiming an exclusive dispensation of Truth, by rejecting compromise, and by seeking merely to instantiate the one true model of sociopolitical existence and to thus short-­circuit the give-­ and-­take process of politics, fanaticism is a way of doing politics that is, in fact, antipolitical. Indeed, because fanaticism entails these necessary misunderstandings of the political process—including a messianic bent and a total, passionate conviction in the exclusive validity of one’s view—it is also never necessary, even in times of crisis. For one can be a committed political actor, even an extremist political actor, without adopting these unnecessary, irrational attributes of the fanatic. The arguments in favor of fanaticism presented by Toscano and Olson represent a frontal assault on liberalism, democracy, and politics itself. As

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will be seen, this is because any group with exclusive access to the Truth has no need for debate, an exchange of views and reason-­giving, with democratic fellows who may disagree. The Truth is known to the fanatic and merely waits to be implemented. Despite the fundamental attack on liberal democracy these arguments pose, they have not been met with rebuttal in academe. This work aims to fill this gap, presenting original arguments which show that fanaticism is fundamentally antidemocratic, antiliberal, antipolitical, and never necessary.

Looking Ahead Having outlined the basic ideas guiding this project, the rest of the work will unfold as follows: Chapter 2 will provide a basic overview of the major contours of the history of the concept of fanaticism. It will be seen that there are essentially three more-­or-­less distinct modes of it: the ancient understanding of cultic practice, the early modern Christian understanding of fanaticism as mistaken religious belief, and the late modern understanding, following the events of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution, of political fanaticism—that is, fanaticism now put toward political pursuits. The next set of chapters will explore more deeply this modern political turn in the concept of fanaticism, looking at three of the most thoughtful commentators on political fanaticism: Immanuel Kant (Chapter 3); Edmund Burke (Chapter 4); and Fyodor Dostoevsky, focusing on his novel The Possessed (Chapter 5). Each of these three thinkers was chosen to provide as comprehensive a view as possible of the many facets of the complex concept of fanaticism. Selecting such a diverse group of thinkers—diverse in their backgrounds, both temporal and national, as well as their philosophical views—provides a more nuanced and conceptually rich account of the concept of fanaticism. Each of them writing after the emergence of fanaticism as a political concept, these three authors bring to bear their own unique contexts and foci, revealing unique facets of fanaticism, all of which combine to form a more robust, and more insightful, composite. Immanuel Kant (Chapter 3), writing from the German context on the avant-­garde of a new Enlightenment philosophy, focuses his investigation of fanaticism on its relationship to reason and seeks to differentiate it from its cousin, enthusiasm. Also, in a rather unlikely place—his writing about aesthetics and beauty—Kant envisions a type of judgment ripe for transplantation into the realm of politics, so-­called

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reflecting judgments that allow for universally valid judgments in contexts, like politics and aesthetics, that are subjective and admitting of no catechisms or rule books. This form of political judgment, it seems, allows for a robust political arena, avoiding both a politics of fanaticism, on the one hand, and total relativism on the other. Thus, our analysis of Kant will also include one potential antidote to a politics of fanaticism. While Immanuel Kant can be understood as an “ideal” theorist, Edmund Burke (Chapter 4), although an august political thinker in his own right, was also a political participant, being involved in parliamentary politics in England for the majority of his adult life. Furthermore, Burke’s reflections on the concept of fanaticism crystallize around his observations of the French Revolution, an event that—in a way very dissimilar from Kant—evinced only horror and disgust in him. Thus, Burke’s philosophy can be understood within the “realist” camp, based on his experience of “shipwreck,” to use a metaphor from José Ortega y Gasset (1985), a view of France being plunged into terror and violence. Burke’s experience in politics—and his horror at the French Revolution—led to a dissection of fanaticism as based on abstract philosophizing and a philosophy without limits, which cares nothing for context or consequence. As well, like Kant, Burke also points the way toward a type of political engagement that avoids fanaticism—moderation. With this invocation of moderation, Burke will provide the second potential antidote to a politics of fanaticism. Finally, also within the “realist” camp, is a figure who is most often not given his full due as a serious political thinker, the novelist-­cum-­political actor-­cum-­philosopher Fyodor Dostoevsky (Chapter 5). Writing much later and, it is also true, in a vastly different context than either Kant or Burke, Dostoevsky nonetheless wrestles with the very same concept of political fanaticism, indeed, self-­consciously in the long shadow of the French Revolution (Morillas 2007). While taking inspiration from the political crises embroiling Russia, including his own brief stint in radical politics, the immediate impetus for Dostoevsky’s most sustained engagement with fanaticism, his novel Demons, resulted from his shock following the political murder of the student Ivan Ivanov at the hands of a little-­known radical Sergei Nechaev and his ragtag band of followers. This event provided the context for Dostoevsky’s thorough examination of fanaticism, through the lenses of philosophical abstraction, ideology, as well as passion and a thirst for novelty and violence. After having examined the concept of fanaticism through these various lenses, I will conclude by summing up what has been learned about political

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fanaticism by offering a “cluster account” of fanaticism—that is, ten distinctive features that combine, in various permutations, to make up fanaticism— as well as arguing against those who wish to “reclaim” fanaticism as a positive political program toward some sort of “egalitarian” political ideal, and finally providing a handful of reasons why fanaticism ought always to be rejected as a way of doing politics.

CHAPTER 2

Three Moments in the History of Fanaticism

In itself, every idea is neutral, or should be; but man animates ideas, projects his flames and flaws into them; impure, transformed into beliefs, ideas take their place in time, take shape as events: the trajectory is complete, from logic to epilepsy . . . whence the birth of ideology, doctrines, deadly games. . . . The result is fanaticism—fundamental defect which gives man the craving for effectiveness, for prophecy, for terror. —E. M. Cioran (2012 [1949]: 3–4)

As André Haynal, Miklos Molnar, and Gérard de Puymège (1983) note, fanaticism is “an elusive concept” (3). In order to understand this concept and its history, political theorists must venture into uncommon domains, including history, religion, and philosophy. This chapter will do just that, plumbing the depths of history in an attempt both to find the origins of the concept of fanaticism and then to trace its history up until its refashioning as a political concept in the eighteenth century. Our later examinations of political fanaticism will explore the thinking of three disparate modern thinkers, Immanuel Kant, Edmund Burke, and Fyodor Dostoevsky, each chosen to reveal unique facets of the complex concept of fanaticism. Exploring the thought of Kant, a philosopher and “ideal” theorist par excellence; Edmund Burke, both an astute political thinker and political actor; and the novelist-­cum-­philosopher Fyodor Dostoevsky will, I hope, prove the necessity and utility of this historical excursion as well as the complexity of this concept with many faces. The semantic drift undergone by the term fanaticism is vast. Common speech today often offers a strikingly different countenance of fanaticism than

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that which it has borne throughout history. In our own context, the term fanatic is used, more often than not, as more of an insult than a positivistic descriptor. To say that someone is a fanatic can mean as much and as little as “I do not like that person or her ideas.” While the use of the term fanatic or fanaticism abounds in popular discourse, such use is, ostensibly, seldom subject to reflection. The word fanaticism is often used to refer to someone who is religious, or whose religiosity runs against the grain of the larger society, as in Philip Roth’s (1959) short story “Eli, the Fanatic.” Or, the term fanaticism can be used to describe someone who seems to have lost control of their actions and behaves in an abnormal and unpredictable fashion, such as Saul Bellow’s titular character (Moses) Herzog who “wrote endlessly, fanatically, to the newspapers, to people in public life, to friends and relatives and at last to the dead” (1992: 3). While in both of these instances, the use of the word fanaticism is clearly pejorative, this need not always be the case. In some rare contexts, where a habitus of fanaticism is the norm and therefore normative, to be described as fanatical is a good thing. Thus, the philologist Victor Klemperer (2000) writes of how “the word ‘fanatical’ was, throughout the entire era of the Third Reich, an inordinately complimentary epithet” (60). And even in politically “normal” times, someone can be described as a “fan” of any number of pursuits, a locution without any particular pejorative connotation. Given the varied meanings the word fanaticism carries with it today, one would be forgiven in asking if there remains any there there. Has the concept of fanaticism become so hopelessly “stretched,” to borrow an idea from Giovanni Sartori (1970), as to be rendered meaningless and of no analytic power? As can be inferred from the preceding chapter, I think the answer to this question is “no.” Fanaticism is a useful concept through which to analyze various political and social phenomena. Studying the history and uses of this concept will reveal the rich history surrounding it and its utility in understanding contemporary political events. These first two decades of the twenty-­first century have shown that we live in dark times. Liberal democracy is under assault from particularisms, violence, intolerance, extremism, and messianic movements seeking to bring about heaven on earth—no matter the costs. These aspects of human behavior, however, are nothing new; indeed, they have always been present, or just beneath the surface, in human history and are among the key elements that constitute the concept of fanaticism. Fanaticism is a concept with a long history and in returning to this history one can make sense of this “elusive concept” and restore rigor to its usage in our contemporary context.

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In an effort to restore such rigor to our contemporary understanding of fanaticism, in this chapter we will examine the continuities and discontinuities of its meaning throughout its history—the path from disparate, varied meanings to crystallization and general agreement of meaning to fracture and dispersion and recrystallization and so on. In so doing, we will see that the history of the concept of fanaticism can be mapped onto three generally distinct and stable historical moments of conceptual agreement: (1) the ancient Roman understanding of fanaticism as cultic practice; (2) the premodern and modern understanding, crystallized during the Reformation, which places fanaticism within a theological realm, understanding it primarily as mistaken religious belief; and (3) a belief developed around the time of the French Revolution that fanaticism was a unique type of political and social engagement. These successive modes, however, are best conceived of as successive expansions of a conceptual horizon rather than ruptures creating and re-­creating wholly discreet conceptualizations. That is, while after the Reformation the concept of fanaticism could, and most often did, encompass an understanding of mistaken religious belief, it could also maintain its original meaning of referring to aspects of Roman cultic practice. In the same way, after the French Revolution, fanaticism could still be seen as referring to a certain type of religious engagement; thus one might encounter the use of the phrase religious fanaticism despite the primary sense of the concept now referring to political activity. This process of conceptual change, therefore, creates a constantly expanding concept of fanaticism. While the primary modality of the concept in a given historical moment might be cultic, religious, or political, successive moments continue to retain the conceptual content of the modality that came before.

Ancient Conceptions: Fanatics in the Temple The origins of the concept of fanaticism lie in the Latin fanum, meaning “temple” or “holy place.” The priests of these temples were known as fanatici, and all those attached to the temple where known to be fanaticus (fanatical). Francis Valpy (1828) tells us in his nineteenth-­century dictionary of Latin terms that these individuals were seen as “inspired, enthusiastical, fanatical,” and that this term was “especially used of those who are accustomed to celebrate as Bacchantes in sacrosanct locales.” Similarly, in their entry for Reinhart Koselleck’s influential encyclopedia of concepts, History of Basic

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Concepts, Werner Conze and Helga Reinhart (1975) write, “In Rome, ‘fanum’ and related concepts were value-­neutral and applicable to all deities. It was only with the Christian writers’ ‘cum not abominationis’ that ‘fanaticus’ was applied only to cults of non-­Rome based deities (Bellona, Mahna Mater, Isis, Kybele, Serapis)” (304). More specifically, the classicist Eric Orlin notes, “Fanum (pl. fana), is the Latin term for a consecrated place, not necessarily associated with a building (AEDES) or delineated as a TEMPLUM.” And in later Christian usage, Orlin observers, “Christians referred to pagan structures as fana” (Orlin 2016: 336). In this same vein, H. Rushton Fairclough, in his 1932 translation of Virgil’s Aeneid for Harvard University’s Loeb Classical Library series, renders the “temple sacerdos” of Sibyl as “the lofty fane” (bk. 6, line 40). Using the word in this original sense, Jacob Grimm (1882), the nineteenth-­ century German philologist and coeditor of the famous Grimm’s Fairy Tales, writes, “By fanum (whence fanaticus) seems often to have been understood a building of smaller extent.” This was contrasted in ancient sources to “templum,” which would refer to a larger temple (84–85). Thus, the term fanum and its derivatives were, in their original sense, merely technical terms, free of value judgments, used to describe a particular locale important to Roman religious practice. Despite its original descriptive and value-­neutral meaning, Conze and Reinhart note that the idea of fanaticism was also understood as related to phenomena like insanity, ferocity, and disease and stood opposed to the Roman notion of a balanced soul (1975: 304).1 Thomas Schleich (1986), in his entry “Fanatique, Fanatisme” for the Handbook of Basic Political and Social Concepts in France, 1680–1820, notes, “In antiquity, fanaticism denoted the suspicious outsider, from the perspective of state cults” (52). Thus, almost—though not quite—from the very beginning, there was a sense that the phenomenon of fanaticism was “other,” dangerous, and even, potentially, pathological. This ancient, original form of fanaticism took place in the type of religious association known as a “mystery cult.” A common phenomenon of premodern cultures in general, the classicist Richard Seaford explains, the mystery cult “involves the incorporation (or ‘initiation’) of an individual into a real or imaginary group which belongs at least in part to the next world” (Seaford 2006: 49). As the philologist Ulrich von Wilamowitz-­Moellendorf notes, “The purpose of cultus and of all its practices is union and interaction with deity” (quoted in Otto 1965: 14). Such attempts at human-­divine interface—and the experience it entails—is clearly illustrated in Virgil’s Aeneid, which provides a

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rich description of a Sibylline fanum and the state of telestic madness experienced by a “fanatic” priest when possessed by a deity. Virgil writes, The huge side of the Euboean rock is hewn into a cavern, whither lead a hundred wide mouths, a hundred gateways, whence rush as many voices, the answers of the Sibyl. They had come to the threshold, when the maiden cries: ‘’Tis time to ask the oracles; the god, lo! The god!’ As such she spake before the doors, suddenly nor countenance nor colour was the same, nor stayed her tresses braided; but her bosom heaves, her heart swells with wild frenzy [rabie fera], and she is taller to behold, nor has her voice a mortal ring, since now she feels the nearer breath of deity. (bk. 6, lines 40–50) The experience of entering such a space and encountering a fanatic—a priest possessed by a deity—is described as overwhelming for Aeneas and his coterie, an experience equal parts awe and terror. The fanatic priestess is physically transformed; she is no longer herself, no longer an autonomous, agentic individual. Instead, she is overcome with “wild frenzy,” her body convulsing while the god speaks through her, using her body as a medium through which to communicate with mere mortals. The Roman historian Livy described the “mysteries” (sacrorum), the “initiations into the Bacchic rites,” in a remarkably similar fashion: From the time that the rites were performed in common, men mingling with women and the freedom of darkness added, no form of crime, no sort of wrongdoing, was left untried. There were more lustful practices among men with one another than among women. If any of them were disinclined to endure abuse or reluctant to commit crime, they were sacrificed as victims. . . . Men, as if insane [velut mente capta], with fanatical tossings of their bodies [cum iactatione fanatica corporis], would utter prophecies. Matrons in the dress of Bacchantes, with disheveled hair and carrying blazing torches, would run down to the Tiber, and plunging their torches in the water . . . would bring them out still burning. (History of Rome, bk. 39, lines 9–14) As this passage illustrates, cultic experiences of the fanatical followers of Bacchus are marked by violence, antinomianism, excess, license, insanity, and a complete lack of control and proportion.

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One of the most explicit renderings of fanatical Roman cults comes from the famous Greek tragedian Euripides’s Bacchae, which depicts the cult of Dionysus as the Greeks understood it. Existing in both ancient Greece and Rome, the cult of Bacchus, or Dionysus, and the practices of initiates provide a compelling example of Roman cultic—and fanatic—practice. Indeed, Seaford (2006) writes of how, even despite its Greek, or even extra-­Greek, origins, the cult of Dionysus is in many ways prototypical of other well-­known mystery cults, like those of Demeter, Isis, and Attis. As a retelling of the myth surrounding the importation of the Dionysiac cult into Greece,2 Euripides’s Bacchae—written sometime before the author’s death in exile in 206 bce— is a bloody story about the power of Dionysus and the complete control he exacts over his fanatical followers. As well, we see what happens to those, like Pentheus, who try to stand in Dionysus’s way. The play begins as Dionysus enters Thebes and proclaims that all of Hellas “shrills and echoes to my women’s cries, their ecstasy of joy. I have stung them with frenzy, hounded them from home up to the mountains where they wander, crazed of mind and compelled to wear my orgies’ livery” (lines 21–22, 31–33).3 This passage reveals the essence of the earliest meaning of fanaticism: divine possession—being possessed by a god and losing all control of oneself, body, mind, and spirit. Crucially as well, fanaticism, in these mystery cults, has to do with excess—excess of pleasure in drunken orgies, excess of emotion, and excess of violence. Dionysus inspires and possesses his followers and commands recognition as a deity, forcing his “fanatical” followers to engage in all kinds of excessive, antinomian behavior. As the old man Teiresias says, after he himself has donned the cultic attire, “We do not trifle with divinity. No, we are the heirs of customs and traditions hallowed by age and handed down to us by our fathers. No quibbling logic can topple them” (lines 200–203). No quibbling logic can topple them. The compulsions of the possessed, the cult itself, is beyond logic, beyond reason. Already, then, fanaticism is understood in opposition to logic and ordered freethinking. As Pentheus observes, the worshippers of Dionysus are “like madmen,” they are “endowed with manic powers” (line 299). Indeed, the drama is wrapped up tightly around the opposition between the overawing new god Dionysus and Pentheus, the king of Thebes, who is trying to resist the onslaught of Dionysus and his growing band of fanatical followers. The story ends, of course, with the complete humiliation and destruction of Pentheus—who is made to debase himself in women’s clothes as he powerlessly falls under the spell of Dionysus—before he is ultimately ripped limb from limb by his own mother, herself, now, a fanatical disciple in this new cult.

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In this vibrant early account of fanaticism, we see the members of the cult of Dionysus, the Bacchantes, as prototypical fanatics—individuals possessed by a supernatural force, stripped of personal agency, and existing completely beyond the reach of reason, logic, or critical thought. In such a constant state of religious ecstasy and mania, a mother would even murder her own son in the most violent fashion without a moment’s thought. The fanatic is no longer herself, she is no longer a moral, agentic actor capable of exercising reason and her cognitive faculties to arrive at her own decisions. Indeed, she can no longer order her own actions at all. Rather, the will of the possessing deity completely determines an individual’s actions, thoughts, and being. As well, it is no accident that the fanatic Bacchantes in this tale engage in extreme violence—even against those closest to them. Fanaticism, from these early accounts onward, is closely associated with violence. Nothing matters for the fanatic except that idea or impulse for which they act. In this case, nothing matters for the Bacchantes except the will of Dionysus. Indeed, for those possessed, nothing else exists in that moment. While, for the ancients, fanaticism represented this type of harsh and total possession by a deity, as well as the state of telestic madness that went along with it, fanaticism existed alongside a gentler form of divine inspiration: enthusiasm. Indeed, for centuries in the early modern era the terms fanaticism and enthusiasm meant much the same thing, synonyms for a type of mistaken religious belief that transgressed societal norms (Passmore 2003). However, like the concept of fanaticism, enthusiasm too has ancient roots and the later common conflation of these two distinct concepts belies the major differences between these two types of divine possession. The word enthusiasm came to us from the Greek enthusiasmos, meaning “possession by a god, supernatural inspiration, prophetic or poetic frenzy; an occasion or manifestation of these” (Oxford English Dictionary). On this term, Andrew Poe (2010) writes, “Enthusiasm was originally the state Greeks would describe of their priests, and especially of those occupying a heightened place of consciousness during religious practices” (16–17). Indeed, such an understanding of enthusiasm abounds in the works of the most famous Greek philosopher, Plato. In his dialogue Ion, for example, Socrates distinguishes between art (based on knowledge) and poetry (based on enthusiasm). Whereas, Socrates says, “Each separate art . . . has had assigned to it by the deity the power of knowing a particular occupation,” poetry is “not an art; it is a power divine” (537c, 533d).4 Of poetry, its composition and recitation, Socrates claims, “The Muse . . . first makes men inspired, and then through

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these inspired ones others share in the enthusiasm” (534a). Like the fanatics just mentioned, poets too are “inspired,” “possessed,” “not in their senses”; they may even be “seized with the Bacchic transport,” and, in order to compose poems, the poet must be “beside himself, and reason is no longer in him” (534a–b). Indeed, it is not the poet at all who composes the poem; rather, “the deity has bereft them [poets] of their senses, and uses them as ministers, along with soothsayers and godly seers . . . in order that we listeners may know that it is not they who utter these precious revelations . . . but that it is the god himself who speaks” (534d). Similarly, in Plato’s Apology, Socrates tells us that, in confronting the poets of Athens, “it is hardly an exaggeration to say that any of the bystanders could have explained those poems better than their actual authors. So I soon made up my mind about the poets too. I decided that it was not wisdom that enabled them to write their poetry, but a kind of instinct or inspiration, such as you find in seers and prophets” (22b–c). Plato’s conception of enthusiasm makes his famous hostility toward poetry and the poets in the Republic much more understandable. Like a “magnet,” to use Socrates’s image in Ion, the gods inspire the poet to record and speak their words, and, in so doing, spread this enthusiasm among the poets and spectators, thus controlling them like a magnet controls iron. The poet enthusiast, in this understanding, excites the audience until, in a way not totally dissimilar from fanatic cultic ritual, personal agency is lost. What is especially worrisome about this for Plato is that, precisely because poetry depends on the gods and enthusiasm, it lies beyond the bounds of knowledge. Whereas each particular skill, including art, medicine, horse breeding—and even politics—has a particular knowledge associated with it, poetry is not an art and thus has nothing to do with knowledge. The poet and, by extension, those in thrall to her, cannot be reasoned with or brought under the dominion of reason. It is no wonder, then, that Plato had no room for poets in the Republic. Despite Plato’s hostility toward enthusiasm in its poetical form, enthusiasm played an integral role in the religious life of Ancient Greece. As Andrew Poe (2010) writes, “Enthusiasm was not a common experience to have felt, but rather something that one witnessed as part of the interaction between the gods and humanity. Because a ‘divine presence transfigured consciousness’ of the priests, their particular kind of religion was made possible” (17). In this way—and despite the common and long-­standing conflation of enthusiasm and fanaticism—at various periods in time, conceptions of enthusiasm can be distinguished from fanaticism. The ancient world provides one such example. During this time, enthusiasm was rarely associated with the type

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of violence and bloody endeavors associated with fanatic practices. Indeed, Socrates himself says of enthusiasm in Phaedrus, “In reality the greatest blessings come by way of madness [enthusiasm], indeed of madness that is heaven-­sent . . . the men of old . . . held madness to be a valuable gift, when due to divine dispensation” (244a–d). According to Poe, the ancient conception of fanaticism connoted a level of violence foreign to understandings of enthusiasm. He writes, “Fanaticism has taken on an entirely different and more violent meaning in history. In the original instantiation of the concept, the experience of the priests was meant to evoke and enrapture witnesses, literally transposing their minds towards violence, in preparation for the coming battle. Unlike the Greeks’ experience of enthusiasm, these witnesses were themselves supposed to be transfigured, enter into a similar state as those that initiated the frenzied process” (19). Dominique Colas (1997) notes a more recent instance in which these two concepts yielded distinct meanings, writing of the “distinction that came to be made in the course of the eighteenth century between an ‘enthusiast’—one who believed himself to receive God’s light—and a ‘fanatic’—one who was ready to ‘act out’ in the name of that illumination” (18). While enthusiasm and fanaticism have often been understood as synonymous, often as phenomena equally deserving of opprobrium, these two concepts have unique conceptual histories, which becomes more or less apparent at various moments in history. As we have seen, both fanaticism and enthusiasm have their origins in ancient religious contexts. Both connote possession by a deity and a corresponding lack of control, agency, and reasoned thought by the person possessed. The chief difference between them, however, is that fanaticism is more closely related to a possession that leads to violence, whereas enthusiasm more often leads to a possession that results in generally pleasant things—like beautiful poetry. We will see later on that the distinction between these two concepts will critically evolve into a more positive appraisal of enthusiasm contrasting with a thoroughly negative understanding of fanaticism. Indeed, during the eighteenth century, many thinkers will begin to salvage a more positive understanding of enthusiasm and contrast it with a negative view of fanaticism. More immediately, however, these ancient conceptions of enthusiasm and fanaticism, as we will see, were inherited by medieval thinkers wrestling with their own religious struggles and questions about the nature of man in a changing world. Accordingly, these thinkers, under the dominant rubric of Christianity, refashioned these concepts to meet their own needs and in ways that were relevant to the new prevailing social circumstances of

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the early modern and modern eras. Before we move forward to that historical moment in the evolution of the concept of fanaticism, however, one small detour is in order.

Excursus: Phineas and the Zealots Clearly, the religious practices of ancient Greece and Rome are not the only religious contexts in which fanaticism is on display, merely the first. While the word zealotry is often meant, at least in common parlance, as a synonym of fanaticism,5 it too has a history that sheds light on the related concept of fanaticism. In his classic study, History of the Jews (1974), Heinrich Graetz writes of the first-­century ce “religious republican faction who called themselves the Zealots (Kannaim).”6 These Zealots were the radical wing of Judaens seeking to expel the occupying Roman forces and establish instead a republic “recognizing God alone as sovereign and his laws as supreme.” Eschewing any compromise or concessions, the Zealots maintained that “obedience to the Roman law was disregard of the Divine law, for God alone was ruler, and could alone demand obedience.” The Zealots, then, saw as their “clear and solemn duty to strain every nerve, and sacrifice property, and life, and family in the struggle against the usurper” (133). In their struggle, the Zealots took their inspiration—and their name—from the biblical figure of Phineas. As told in the Book of Numbers (25:10–18), Phineas (or Pinchas) was a particularly zealous Israelite who killed an Israelite man and a Moabite woman as summary punishment for their sacrilegious activity. Numbers 25:10–11 reads, “The Lord spoke to Moses saying, ‘Phineas, son of Eleazar son of Aaron the priest, has turned back My wrath from the Israelites by displaying among them his passion for Me [b’kano et-­kinati], so that I did not wipe out the Israelite people in my passion [b’kinati].’ ” The word that is translated here as passion is the Hebrew kina, from which the word zeal is derived. Phineas’s passion for God, expressed in the violent act of killing, seems to be richly rewarded in this biblical story. Indeed, this act of expiation successfully staved off the mass annihilation of the Israelites and satiated God’s desire to do so. For his actions, Phineas was granted by God a “pact of friendship” and a “pact of priesthood,” both of which will carry on to Phineas’s descendants in perpetuity. Given this, as Harold Kushner (2001) notes, “the Torah seems to approve of Phineas’ extreme act.” Interestingly, however, Kushner also notes, “some postbiblical commentators . . . have been uncomfortable with

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the zealous vigilantism of Phineas, criticizing his fanaticism as a dangerous precedent.” Indeed, the Talmud recounts a hypothetical situation wherein Phineas asks the rabbinical court if killing these individuals would be justified by Jewish law, to which the court replies, “The law may permit it but we do not follow that law!” (Talmud, BT Sanh. 82a). As for Phineas’s reward for committing violence out of “zeal for God,” Kushner cites an interpretation from a leading nineteenth-­century rabbi of Hungarian Jewry, which claims that the bestowal of priesthood is actually meant as an antidote to Phineas’s violence, not a reward. On balance, then, while the plain text of the passage seems to be an early endorsement of violence enacted out of a “zeal for God,” there exist within Judaism important, if minoritarian, criticisms of this position (918). In any event, this brief excursus demonstrates that fanaticism, seen here as a violent passion for God, is not just a phenomenon one finds in ancient Greece or Rome and in the religious practice native to those contexts. Judaism, during both its biblical and later rabbinic periods, also furnishes clear examples of fanaticism. A few general observations are noteworthy from these earliest accounts of the concept of fanaticism. First, from the beginning, fanaticism was associated with a loss of agency, a loss of individual will. Instead, the individual fanatic is possessed by a deity now completely in control of her actions. The fanatic was seen as a tool to be used by a deity, directed to fulfill the controlling deity’s wishes—often through violence. At least by the time this type of cultic religious practice came into contact with an ascendant Christianity, it was seen as other, dangerous, and deserving of opprobrium. However, as the case of Phineas makes clear, if fanaticism was adopted for the Abrahamic God, then it was possible to understand fanaticism in a more positive light. Indeed, in the orthodox telling, this type of “zeal for God” was to be praised and would earn one great reward. Further, the ancient conception of enthusiasm is, from the beginning, different and distinguishable from its fanatical counterpart. While enthusiasm is also seen as a type of inbreathing of a deity, it does not seem to have the common associations with violence or reckless behavior that one finds with fanaticism. Whereas fanaticism is associated with battles and bloody rituals, enthusiasm, as we see in Plato, is associated with poetry and rhapsody. While this understanding of enthusiasm has implications for ancient conceptions of political theory, such as Plato’s wariness of enthusiasm as a potential threat to a well-­ordered polity (see his Republic), it is also recognized as having the potential to lead to greatness, thus Plato’s praise of “madness” in the Phaedrus.

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Realizing the Kingdom of Heaven: Fanaticism as a Religious Phenomenon The social, political, economic, and ecclesiastic transformations experienced by European Christendom during the Middle Ages—including the traditions of Christian messianism, heretical schisms, and ultimately the Protestant Reformation—ushered in the possibility for the reemergence of the concept of fanaticism, but now in a slightly different formulation. Beginning in the sixteenth century and maturing partway through the eighteenth century, long-­standing and increasing dissatisfaction with the Catholic Church and with the religious message it offered—coupled with structural sociopolitical transformations affecting life in Western Europe—prepared the ground for radical heretical movements looking to display their “zeal for God” and bring heaven to earth. Thomas Schleich (1986) notes that, in the Middle Ages, fanaticism referred to “members of sectarian movements and those who deviated from the orthodox religious line,” often denoting the “expression of an unpredictable, even dangerous personal perception and exuberance of feeling in dealing with supernatural forces” (52). These new sects, complete with their antiestablishment teachings, often ran afoul of more moderate and orthodox theologians and religious institutions and thus earned themselves the appellation “fanatical.” Therefore, by the time the word fanaticism became, to use Norbert Hinske’s (1988) phrase, a Kampfidee in the fully developed religious conflicts from the sixteenth century onward, the fanatic was seen as someone who presumed to commune directly with God, understand His will completely, and instantiate His kingdom on earth, come what may. As Dominique Colas (1997) notes, fanatics “sought to destroy the established order so as to realize in the here and now the biblical message in all its political, social, and religious aspects. . . . They all called into question, with their words, but also by their violent deeds, the distinction between the Earthly City and the City of God. They desired civil society’s death and meant to apply the Bible to the letter toward that end, without delay and without compromise” (99). While these types of radical religious teachings—and the often-­violent acts they inspired—came to the fore during and after the Reformation, they are the fruit of long-­standing processes and tropes in religious thinking co-­original with Judaism and Christianity. Indeed, noting that such forces are inextricable components of Jewish religious thought, Gershom Scholem (1995) argues that rabbinic—that is, postbiblical—Judaism is composed of three “forces,” conservative, restorative, and utopian. Scholem argues that the unstable mix of

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these forces gives rise to Jewish messianism, apocalypticism, and eschatology, all of which “speaks of the re-­establishment of the House of David, now in ruins, and of the future glory of an Israel returned to God; also of everlasting peace and the turning of all nations toward the one God of Israel and away from heathen cults and images” (3–6). Such thinking necessarily entails an idea of an ultimate and cosmic battle, “a cosmic antithesis in which the realms of the holy and of sin, of purity and impurity, of life and earth, of light and darkness, God and the anti-­divine powers stand opposed” (Scholem 1995: 3). Because real people existing in actual political and social environments are experiencing life through such a prism, such an ultimate battle understood as playing out in the real world carries with it necessary political implications. Therefore, these larger cosmic ideas about the nature of history are combined with real-­world political developments, creating an unsteady mix of real and super-­real. Scholem writes, “A wider cosmic background is superadded to the national content of eschatology and it is here that the final struggle between Israel and the heathens takes place” (6). Believers, therefore, often interpret the real-­world political events unfolding around them within the larger cosmic struggle of good and evil presaging the end of days, imbuing political players and their acts with transcendental import. This way of thinking and understanding the world, apparent since at least biblical times, composed an integral part of what Norman Cohn (1970), in his classic work The Pursuit of the Millennium, calls “the common stock of European social mythology” and proved to be suitable ground for a new crop of fanatics in the Middle Ages and into the early modern era (109). As Cohn notes, these early modes of revolutionary eschatological thought informed a broader, long-­ standing, and highly malleable “apocalyptic tradition in medieval Europe” (29). Thus, Cohn notes, “The raw materials out of which a revolutionary eschatology was gradually built up during the later Middle Ages consisted of a miscellaneous collection of prophecies inherited from the ancient world” (19). The consolation of a revolutionary eschatology allowed the persecuted Jews—and later persecuted Christian sects—to psychically act out their ultimate revenge on their oppressors and imagine their just rewards in an everlasting paradise. Indeed, this mode of thinking spawned a whole literature: a proliferation of “apocalypses,” works foretelling the coming battle of light against darkness and the end of days appeared in the coming centuries, notably the Jewish Book of Daniel and the Christian Book of Revelation. The historian Reinhart Koselleck (1985) sums up this long-­standing crucible of expectation by noting, “Until well into the sixteenth century, the history of

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Christianity is a history of expectations, or more exactly, the constant antici­ pation of the End of the World” (6). Apocalypses, this new genre of esoteric texts—and the ideas they contained—contributed to a fertile humus of messianic and eschatological thinking that captivated the medieval minds of Christians and Jews—especially those of the lower strata of society—and provided succor to which an individual or community could turn in times of distress. Officially, however, the Catholic Church and orthodox theologians worked to suppress this strain of thought. As is well known, the church existed within a delicate balance among the various principalities of Europe, eager to maintain and expand its own political power when it could, but wary of overreaching and of earning the ire of its powerful neighbors. In order to head off restive forces among its flock and to maintain greater control over its position in this delicate balance of powers, the church largely adhered to the status quo articulated by Christ’s famous statement to Matthew, “Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s” (22:21). Such sentiment has further biblical precedent in the gospel according to Luke. While awaiting his arrest after his betrayal at the hands of Judas, Christ seeks out solitude in which to pray, rebuffing the offers of his apostles that he first be fitted with a weapon. Luke recounts, “And they said, Lord, behold, here are two swords. And he said unto them, It is enough” (Luke 22:38). Dominique Colas (1997) argues that these words from Luke “were to impel and animate Christian theopolitical reflection,” noting that since “the Middle Ages the allegorical exegesis according to which one [sword] represents temporal, the other spiritual power, has been almost universally accepted, and these two mysterious arms would be brandished in the incessant disputes about their respective powers between ecclesiastical and political authorities” (42). Famously, St. Augustine’s (1994) fifth-­century magnum opus The City of God draws a similar clear line between “the most glorious city of God” and the “earthly city” (3–4). Augustine exhorts Christian believers to focus their hopes and energies on the City of God, while giving obedience to whichever earthly political community they find themselves a part of. Augustine writes, God, the author and giver of happiness, because he alone is the true God, is the one who gives earthly kingdoms to both the good and the evil. He does not do this blindly or, as it were, fortuitously—because he is God, not fortune—but according to the order of things and times that is hidden from us but well-­known to him. . . . Therefore, he gives earthly kingdoms to the good or the evil so that his worshippers,

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who are still children as regards moral progress, may not desire these gifts from him as something great. (1994: 35) This idea of the “two kingdoms” is a fixture of Christian thinking, both before and after the Reformation, against which fanatics rebelled. This orthodox Christian understanding of temporal power existing alongside ecclesiastical power and the disputes it inspired formed the arena in which the boundaries of legitimate claims to power were demarcated and against which challenges to it were lodged—often now under the assigned banner of fanaticism. The orthodox understanding of “two swords” and “two kingdoms,” and the corresponding legitimacy of temporary authority this understanding entailed, was called into question by the more radical forces of the Reformation during the sixteenth century. By this time, the church had largely fallen out of step with the great structural changes taking place throughout Europe, including stirrings of nationalism, rational modes of inquiry, great transformations in philosophy and art, as well as the increasingly burdensome financial strain on principalities and taxpayers due to revenue collection from the church. Accordingly, the self-­appointed privileged position of the church, its teachings, and representatives began to be called into question. A particularly potent arena for such criticism was that of theological disputes, taking place directly within the purview of the church itself. While a detailed account of the ensuing Protestant Reformation is beyond the scope of this work, the crucial point here is that this movement quickly got away from the more cautious reformers, those looking solely to reform the church in various ways, and spawned a host of more radical revolutionary thinkers and teachings. For these radicals, mere reform was not enough. Indeed, for many, the church itself was the ultimate enemy, the Antichrist to be opposed by any means necessary, including violence. Thus, the “Wittenberg Reformer” Martin Luther and his allies found themselves engaged in a pitched battle on two fronts: against the church and the pope on one side, and against the more radical elements within their own movement on the other. This context of internecine religious dispute, which would roil Europe for centuries, laid the groundwork for the dramatic reemergence of concepts like fanaticism—this time, however, within the domain of theological disputation. The first instance of the reemergence of the term fanaticism within the crucible of the Reformation appears to be in 1529, when Luther’s friend and ally Philipp Melanchthon coined the term “Fanaticus homo” to refer to Anabaptists and others who refused, on religious grounds, to accept the

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legitimacy of civil society and political rule. Of the Anabaptists, Melanchthon writes, “[They] scorn both priests and their ordination and imagine it necessary to wait for new revelations and illuminations from God. . . . Their fanatic ravings should be abominated” (quoted in Colas 1997: 8–12). Martin Luther quickly translated the Latin-­derived term fanaticism into the German vernacular as Schwärmerei, evoking frenzy and a swarm of bees, deploying this new word against his enemies and those he considered to be “false prophets.” On Luther’s creation of this German noun, Anthony La Vopa (1998) writes, “When Luther wanted to castigate the mobs that followed field preachers or rampaged through churches . . . the verb schwärmen was ready at hand. It evoked bees swarming around the hive; a flock of birds zigzagging across a field; a pack of hounds straying off scent” (15). Similarly, in their nineteenth-­ century Deutsches Wörterbuch, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm (1971) note that Schwärmer was a Lieblingswort of Luther’s, which he used to “refer to one who harbors and proclaims divergent doctrines of faith.” Luther’s term of art was so effective precisely because of the images it immediately conjures up to those who hear it: one thinks of a swarm of bees and their “erratic” and “frenzied” buzzing. Peter Fenves (1998) notes, “The members of a swarm are . . . impossible to distinguish from one another,” they desire to make a swarm and thereby “disassociate themselves from civil society” and “collect into non-­civil (if not un-­civil), non-­social (if not anti-­ social), non-­natural (if not un-­natural) and always temporary, multiplicities” (120–121). Bees, like other creatures that swarm, cannot be controlled or organized, nor can their behavior be predicted according to available rubrics like reason. Further, like fanatics, swarming bees sting those they encounter, offering no other reason for doing so besides the fact that they can. There is an inherent danger, therefore, in things that swarm, a danger Luther certainly intended to connote in his creation of the term. Luther’s contemporary, the Reformation theologian Andreas Carlstadt— as well as other “false prophets,” like Thomas Müntzer—were frequent recipients of the label Schwärmer, which Luther used over and over again in his many attacks against rival theologians (see Colas 1997: 15; Steck 1955: 6). An erstwhile friend and ally of Luther in his agitation against the Catholic Church and the pope, the former Catholic priest Carlstadt is the prototypical figure of a critical reformer-­cum-­revolutionary overtaken by the events of the nascent Protestant Reformation. By the early 1550s, Dominique Colas (1997) notes, Carlstadt had taken the helm of the iconoclastic movement in Wittenberg and “justified iconoclastic action with a series of arguments that

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were not particularly original but were effective in the context of generalized rejection of the institutional framework and liturgical practices of the Roman Catholic Church” (111). Inspired by many of the same insights and concerns as Luther himself, the iconoclasts took these reformist positions to their ultimate conclusions. If a relationship with God is, in fact, attainable without the mediation and trappings of the Catholic Church, then all the intermediaries—saints, relics, artwork, religious objects, priests—so lauded by the church are unnecessary. This, essentially, was the position of Luther himself. However, the iconoclasts go even further: more than being unnecessary, or supererogatory, such intermediaries actually hinder a relationship between the individual believer and God; they impose a distance and a barricade where none need exist. In keeping with this insight, the iconoclasts thus sought to oppose and eliminate any such barrier, often using violence and destruction against these hated objects and persons. It was this extralogical extension—and the violence so often concomitant with it—that Luther opposed so stridently, including through frequent condemnation in his sermons and writings. A typical example of this can be found in Luther’s (1890) sermon on March 16, 1522, which, like many of his sermons around this time, is entirely devoted to attacking Carlstadt. One can imagine Luther bellowing from the pulpit: When Satan could not break off Luther’s teaching, neither by the scholars . . . nor by the Pope and Roman Emperor and the high schools in German lands and France, he thought to look at Luther in other ways, to harm him through false doctrines and sects, and to do so (in his old way) in the church of Wittenberg, in the place where the gospel first came to light again, and, in order to do so, needed Andreas Carlstadt, formerly Luther’s companion and assistant in the Leipzig Disputation. (vol. 20, col. 4) Luther later writes that Carlstadt, chief among the “falschen Propheten,” has a spirit that is “false [and] evil, a spirit that doesn’t satisfy him, so he leaves the exalted and right parts silent and laying and inflates the least, as if there were more salvation (Seligkeit) in the world than in Christ himself.” However, Luther warns, “this also forces us from such high and necessary parts down to the lowly ones, and we waste time with him and in so doing, forget the exalted parts” (vol. 20, col. 138). Carlstadt, as a leader of such “wretched Schwärmern,” is the subject of frequent attacks by Luther in this manner.7

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While, as Colas (1997) notes, Luther, and the other members of this loose band of anti-­Catholic reformers, believed in “the supremacy of the Word over works,” in opposition to the iconoclasts, he “concluded from the hegemony of the Word not that images were base but that the activity of image smashers was spiritually dangerous in that it privileged works over the Word” (113). As Luther argued, “We should give free course to the Word and not add our works to it. We have the jus verbi (right to speak) but not the execution (power to accomplish). We should preach the Word, but the results must be left solely to God’s good pleasure” (quoted in Colas 1997: 113). Among the many serious defects of the “false prophets” and Schwärmern, perhaps the most serious for Luther was that they refused to recognize the long-­held Christian principle of the “two swords” and “two kingdoms.” While Luther’s Reformation posed a direct assault on the legitimacy of the Catholic Church, its teachings, and the authority of the pope, it strongly defended the legitimacy of temporal authority. Thus, immediately after the “peasants’ rebellion” had been put down in 1525, much to Luther’s pleasure, he wrote, “There are two kingdoms, one the kingdom of God, the other the kingdom of the world. I have written this so often that I am surprised that there is anyone who does not know it or remember it” (Luther 1974: 92). According to Luther, Christians are obliged to follow the dictates of their respective leaders, the only exception being if such an order would directly cause one to commit a sin. While Luther rejected the dogmas of the Catholic Church and the notion of mediating institutions between the believer and God, he remained a faithful Augustinian insofar as he equally rejected the idea that the real possibility of such a relationship means that there is no separation between the earthly and the divine, the secular and the sacred. At odds with the church, Luther was also opposed to the fanatics around him who denied such a separation and thus rejected the authority and legitimacy of political order and civil society. Despite the vast differences in context and usage of the term fanaticism, we can already make out some more general similarities between the ancient and medieval religious conceptualizations that reveal an underlying, unified field. As with the Bacchantes, or any other fanatici, radical iconoclasts or nonaligned Protestants during the Reformation were perceived as imper­vious to reason, logic, or deliberation. They were unbending in their beliefs and in their religious devotion. Like their fanatical predecessors, who sought to unite with a deity though ecstatic religious ritual, these new fanatics rebelled against any idea of mediation between the City of God and the City of Man.

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Mediation in any fashion—whether religious imagery or iconography, or political temporal authority—was to be destroyed and somehow replaced with immediate religious experience and the forcing of the millennium. As in ancient times, the concept of fanaticism existed alongside that of enthusiasm. Indeed, while these two concepts would diverge sharply in the modern period—with enthusiasm increasingly praised as a positive form of enlightening as opposed to the destruction and madness of fanaticism, the medieval and early modern period largely saw these two concepts as identical, the terms used interchangeably. For the two centuries following the Reformation, moderate religious writers, both Catholic and Protestant, took up the pen in order to define and attack their more radical or unusual Christian brethren, typically with recourse to both terms, enthusiasm and fanaticism (see Heyd 1995). Indeed, drawing on cases from this time, Michael Heyd identifies multiple avenues of this general critique: theological, medical, philosophical, as well as certain thinkers’ advocating a more tolerant or even conciliatory approach. While there are clearly political implications to the religious convictions of a state’s citizens—a fact not lost on modern thinkers in political philosophy from Hobbes to Rousseau—the political implications of the concepts of enthusiasm and fanaticism were, as of yet, not clearly drawn out. Further, the understanding that these very concepts themselves could exist within the political realm, and not just the sphere of religion, was not yet on the scene. An enthusiast or fanatic at this time was still someone who was aberrant in religious matters—someone who, for example, claimed direct divine inspiration, experienced fits of ecstasy and physical spasms due to religious practice, and someone whose strident and unorthodox religious beliefs placed them beyond the pale of their community. The early modern, but post-­Reformation, literature on enthusiasm and fanaticism still conceived of these concepts within this firmly religious purview. Thus, the Anglican priest George Hickes, in a well-­received sermon in 1680, lambastes “the poison of Enthusiasm” as “the Spiritual drunkenness, or Lunacy of this Schismatical age,” which “so distempers the minds of men of the other Communions with extravagant phancies, as to make them more or less affect the extraordinary Gifts of the Spirit, and then conceit, like Poets in Religion, they have them, and are inspired” (2). This fairly typical treatment can be contrasted with two of the most rich and ambitious treatments of enthusiasm during this period: Meric Casaubon’s 1655 Treatise Concerning Enthusiasm and Henry More’s 1662 Enthusiasmus Triumphatus. Casaubon examines what he calls “enthusiasm in general,” as well as “Divinatory

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Enthusiasm,” “Contemplative” or “Philosophicall Enthusiasme,” “Rhetoricall Enthusiasme,” “Poeticall Enthusiasm,” and “Precatory Enthusiasm.” In this text, enthusiasm has chiefly to do with the claim of divination, being inspired by God (Casaubon 1970: 28). Manifestations of enthusiasm, as we have seen elsewhere, often took the form of extreme anger, irrational behavior, and the trancelike state characterizing the enthusiast (82). In a way foreshadowing much that was to come in the way of thinking about enthusiasm, Casaubon and his empirical, protoscientific analysis used the ideas of humoral pathology, common at this time, to argue that there may even be wholly natural explanations for some cases of enthusiasm, various “distempers” of the body for which there is a corresponding natural cure (see 226).8 However, Casaubon, as a believing Christian, maintains that not all divine inspiration is necessarily false and therefore that not all claims to miracles or more immediate divine experience are ipso facto mistakes or fraudulent. However, these truly exceptional cases do not preclude him from maintaining that most instances of (false) enthusiasm “proceed from the Devil” (37). Even so, while Casaubon is quick to denounce those he views as “mere fanatick[s],” he argues that only those cases of enthusiasm which pose a public danger ought to merit official sanction. Private vices, Casaubon maintains, ought to stay private matters. In the note to the reader at the beginning of the volume, he writes, “Yet where no manifest danger is, either of impiety towards God, or breach of peace, whether publick or private, among men: I never did think myself bound to oppose [such enthusiasm]” (9, A3 verso). Casaubon’s treatise admirably combines a careful study with a methodology that attempts to be both scientific and philosophical. While moving beyond the bounds of more narrow theological reflections on enthusiasm, he nevertheless continues in the tradition of treating enthusiasm and fanaticism as purely religious in nature. While this text provides a treatment of enthusiasm and fanaticism that is more rich and nuanced than much of these writings and sermons at the time, it was still not possible to conceive of this concept in a genuinely political mode. Fellow Anglican Henry More (1966) takes a similar approach as Casaubon in his pamphlet Enthusiasmus Triumphatus (1662), seeking, as he writes in the subtitle of his text, to understand the “Nature, Causes, Kinds, and Cure of Enthusiasm.” More defines enthusiasm as “nothing else but a misconceit of being inspired,” a “distemper” of the mind caused by imagination and melancholy (2–4).9 Such “distempers,” More believes, can result in the creation of “mad and fanaticall men” (4–5). These forces of melancholy and imagination are understood by More as the antipodes of reason. More writes that

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melancholy can become overpowering when it “reaches to a disease” and “sets on some one particular absurd imagination upon the Mind so fast, that all the evidence of Reason to the contrary cannot remove it, the parties thus affected in other things being as sober and rationall as other men” (8).10 Like Casaubon, More appeals to the dominant understanding of medicine and illness of his day, humoral pathology. Such an approach allows More to develop many of the associations and images that we still associate with the fanatic today: heat, drunkenness, spleen, frenzy. More writes that the enthusiast has “a strong and impetuous motion whereby they are zealously and fervently carried in matters of Religion.” The enthusiast also exhibits a melancholy that, “when it is heated, being like boiling water.” The enthusiast is therefore “like heated stone or iron when they are red hot, for they are then more hot by far than a burning Coal.” More’s medical diagnosis reaches its height as the reader is treated to the following (quite humorous) passage: The Spirit then that wings the Enthusiast in such a wonderful manner, is nothing else but the Flatulency which is in the Melancholy complexion, and rises out of the Hypochondriacall humour upon some occasional heat, as Winde out of an Aeolipila applied to the fire. Which fume mounting into the Head, being first actuated and spirited and somewhat refined by the warmth of the Heart, fills the Mind with variety of Imaginations, and so quickens and enlarges Invention, that it makes the Enthusiast to admiration fluent and eloquent, he being as it were drunk with new wine drawn from the Cellar of his own that lies in the lowest region of the Body, though he be not aware of it, but takes it to be pure Nectar, and those waters of life that spring from above. (12) While More clearly understands the “flatulence” of enthusiasm and fanaticism in a predominately religious sense, including identifying such maladies with the nascent sect of Quakers, he does provide one very short section on what he calls “Political Enthusiasm” (22). However, this account contains little of what will later become a genuinely political understanding of fanaticism. “Political enthusiasts,” writes More, are “those whose Temper carries them most to Political affairs, who love rule and honour, and have a strong sense of Civil rights, Melancholy heating them makes them sometimes fancy themselves great Princes” (22). More devotes only four short paragraphs to such people, who seem to exhibit a variant of enthusiasm that appears to be

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little more than an afterthought to him. Indeed, half of this section is taken up with More’s fond reflections and warm words for “political enthusiasts” he has met, describing one such man as a seemingly “very religious man, and a great hater of Tyranny and oppression, and very well in his wits to other things” (22). Political enthusiasm, for More, seems to be simply an inordinate drive that some people have to participate in politics; thus, this understanding bears no hallmarks of what will come to be understood as political fanaticism in the following century. Given the foregoing accounts, it seems clear that the seventeenth century closes without the possibility of a truly political understanding of the concept of fanaticism. Despite the lack of a political concept of fanaticism, More goes much further than his contemporary, Casaubon, in defending what he calls a “true and warrantable Enthusiasm” (45). In this way, More anticipates later attempts to salvage a conception of enthusiasm as a positive affect and thereby distinguish it from a wholly objectionable fanaticism. Like Casaubon, and one can only assume most people living during the seventeenth century in Europe, More was a believing Christian who did not want to foreclose the possibility that one may, in fact, be inspired by God. However, More believed that any such “true” form of enthusiasm, or what he also calls “Enthusiasm in the better sense,” conforms to “evident Reason or a Miracle,” and thus is most often distinguishable from false enthusiasm emergent from “some Hypochondriacall distemper” (21, 45). Remember, More’s definition of enthusiasm is the “misconceit of being inspired,” thus someone who is genuinely inspired—assuming with More that such a thing is possible—is not, in this strict definition, an enthusiast at all, a point More is quick to make in at least one place in his text (see 2, 21, emphasis added). However, this possibility seems so remote for More that he hardly addresses it at all, and what he does write lacks consistency. Therefore, it remains unclear just how More classifies someone who experiences a true revelation from God. At one point, More claims that such a person is not an enthusiast at all since his experience is true. However, elsewhere, More argues that such an individual ought to be considered a “true” enthusiast (cf. 21 and 45). In either case, such inconsistency reveals that the possibility of a true communion with God—and thus an experience of enthusiasm not caused by a physical or mental defect (or the Devil)—was not treated as something at all likely for More. In any event, More is certainly clear on at least one matter; he is a “professed enemy” of what he calls “vulgar fanatical Enthusiasm” (45). With this text, we see that the medieval and early modern conjoining of the twin concepts of fanaticism and enthusiasm has started to come undone;

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enthusiasm now stands opposed to a vulgar and fanatical variant, what will reemerge in the coming century as fanaticism proper.

The Liminal Period: Fanaticism Between the Religious and the Political As the foregoing brief look at typical treatments of the concepts of enthusiasm and fanaticism during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries makes clear, most commentators understood these two concepts as interchangeable and as equally deserving of opprobrium. However, the gradual expansion of these concepts meant that they began to abut other aspects of human life, besides the religious. By the end of the seventeenth century, some thinkers began to treat the concept of fanaticism within an expanding horizon of the political, including within debates concerning religious toleration. While this  period was still without an expressly political understanding of fanaticism, the political implications of (religious) fanaticism began to increasingly concern philosophers and politicians as Europe continued to be embroiled in religious conflict. The historian Reinhart Koselleck (1985) notes that, by the late seventeenth century and early eighteenth century, the Reformation had succeeded in wresting enough religious power away from the Catholic Church and into the court of sovereign states that a new field of “politics” emerged, along with new debates about inclusion, exclusion, and toleration of difference (11). In this vein, David Hume (1994) observers in the 1770s the advent of what he calls “parties of principle,” writing that these parties, based on “especially abstract speculative principles, are only known to modern times, and are, perhaps, the most extraordinary and unaccountable phenomenon, that has yet appeared in human affairs” (60). The genesis and development of a uniquely political public sphere during this time allowed for a rather unique treatment of fanaticism, a topic now discussed within a political purview yet still not quite understood as a political concept. In the English case, the beginnings of this gradual transformation in the concept of fanaticism from religious to political can already be seen in the sociopolitical arguments of Locke and others during the seventeenth century concerning extending the sphere of toleration to the so-­called fanatics of the new Protestant sects. While the usage of the term fanaticism in this context still resoundingly smacks of religion, as we will see, there does seem to be something new in these texts. Locke’s (1997b) “An Essay on Toleration,”

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written in 1667, begins a sort of meta-­analysis and critique of the concept of fanaticism and the uses to which it is often put. Locke writes, “Dissenters come under the opprobrious name of fanatics; which (by the way) I think might with more prudence be laid aside and forgotten than made use of.” What good, Locke asks, does such a label do? Such a term, according to Locke, serves only “to divide and keep at a distance” those who ought to unite in a common political community (153). Locke’s treatment here reveals that, while the concept of fanaticism still maintains its largely religious valence in this text from late seventeenth-­century England, a normative political critique concerning the way in which the concept is used within the public sphere is now possible. Based on some notes thought to be written in 1682, it seems that Locke (1997a) still prefers the term enthusiasm to fanaticism, described as “fancy” and “pretenses to supernatural illumination” that can “carry no knowledge nor certainty” and standing firmly opposed to reason (290). Despite his disapprobation, Locke’s discussion of the political implications of fanaticism brings us one step closer to a truly political understanding of the concept itself. The question of how to respond to the motley assortment of new Christian sects that emerged throughout Europe following the Reformation was one also tackled by the Third Earl of Shaftesbury, Anthony Ashley Cooper, in his well-­known “A Letter Concerning Enthusiasm,” written in 1707. Like Locke, Shaftesbury argues for a toleration of sorts as the best response to the inspired adherents of these new doctrines. “The magistrate,” Shaftesbury (1707) writes, “should have a gentle hand; and, instead of caustics, incisions, and amputations, should be using the softest balms; and, with a kind of sympathy, entering into the concern of the people, and taking, as it were, their passion upon him, should, when he has soothed and satisfied it, endeavor, by cheerful ways, to divert and heal it” (13).11 Harsh treatment and persecution, according to Shaftesbury, serve only to “blow up their zeal” and “stir afresh the coals of persecution” (22). Much like Locke, Shaftesbury maintains that the duty of the magistrate is not the “saving of souls,” or instantiating “uniformity of opinion,” but rather ensuring as best as possible the peace and safety of the community (15). Given this goal, the “best security against enthusiasm,” according to Shaftesbury, is what he calls “Good Humor” (18). To aptly counter the “rank enthusiast,” Shaftesbury proposes what he calls the “Bartholomew-­fair method,” recalling a contemporary puppet show performance at the English Bartholomew fair ridiculing “fanatic” Christian sects. Far from prison, torture,

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or other forms of state censure, Shaftesbury writes that this type of public ridicule is “the cruelest contempt in the world” and also provides all necessary “security to the national church, that no sect of enthusiast, no new venders of prophecy or miracles, shall ever get the start, or put her to the trouble of trying her strength with them” (22–23). The sociopolitical response of “good humor” is the recommended course in matters of fanaticism, Shaftesbury maintains, because it allows for the deft separation of true religion from false. “For if it be genuine and sincere,” Shaftesbury writes, “it will not only stand the proof, but thrive and gain advantage from hence; if it be spurious, or mixed with any imposture, it will be detected and exposed” (26).12 Toward the end of his letter, Shaftesbury ventures a few speculative claims about the nature of enthusiasm and fanaticism and even seems to suggest that there is such a thing as an “innocent kind of fanaticism” (42). Shaftesbury implies that a type of religious fanaticism expressed merely as scholastic pil-­ pul—interminable theological disputes that do not find expression outside of the church library—is a basically harmless and “innocent.” Thus, fanatics “are never better pleased, than in worrying one another without mercy” (42). The problem arises when such speculation turns toward action. Shaftesbury writes, “When the party is struck by the apparition, there follows always an itch for imparting it, and kindling the same fire in other breasts” (42). Such an “itch” to kindle flames in the breasts of others may, as Plato acknowledged long ago, produce beautiful poetry, but it can also produce passions inimical to life in common. Thus, like Henry More, Shaftesbury implies a distinction between a “false” enthusiasm, which mistakes a “mere spectre of divinity” for genuine divine inspiration, and “a noble Enthusiasm,” a superhuman drive for greatness “allotted to heroes, statesmen, poets, orators, musicians, and even philosophers” (44–45). Anticipating thinkers like Kant, and redolent of Casaubon and More, Shaftesbury seems to be arguing that a certain type of enthusiasm—as distinct from fanaticism—is necessary and laudable, at least on the part of a select few enlightened souls, to transcend the everyday status quo and to produce great things. Further establishing such a connection between Shaftesbury and Immanuel Kant in particular, Shaftesbury connects this type of “noble Enthusiasm” with a conception of the “sublime.” Like Kant, Shaftesbury argues that a feeling of the sublime, the sense of something “prodigious, and more than human . . . something vast, immense, and (as painters say) beyond life,” is related to a human desire to go beyond the boundaries of the

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ordinary, the expected, and the immediately attainable (44–45). Some ideas “are too big for the narrow human vessel to contain,” Shaftesbury maintains (45). For Shaftesbury—like for Kant—this human desire for the “beyond” is not ipso facto something to be eschewed or contained—but is still a type of enthusiasm that produces passions not unlike those of the most “rank enthusiast,” and of this we ought to be appropriately wary. Thus, Shaftesbury argues that we should “know it [enthusiasm] . . . and discern it in its several kinds, both in ourselves and others; this is the great work, and by this means alone we can hope to avoid delusion” (46). Though chiefly addressed in his 1741 essay “Of Superstition and Enthusiasm,” David Hume engages with the concept of fanaticism throughout his Essays: Moral, Political, and Literary, published in final form after his death in 1777. Hume further engages with enthusiasm and fanaticism in The History of England, the final version of which was published in 1778. Both superstition and enthusiasm, according to Hume (1994), are “two species of false religion” produced from “the corruptions of true religion” (73). Whereas Hume defines superstition as a depressed “state of mind” where “infinite evils are dreaded from unknown agents,” enthusiasm, while equally pernicious, is an exalted state of mind resulting from “unaccountable elevation and presumption” (73–74). Hume understood the domain of superstition as the church, the purview of priestcraft, while enthusiasm is the corresponding by-­product of the new Protestant sects. An experience of enthusiasm, Hume writes, results in the imagination swelling “with great, but confused conceptions,” as well as such typical hallmarks as “raptures, transports, and surprising flights of fancy.” At the height of enthusiasm, such “frenzy” is produced as to lead “human reason, and even morality [to be] rejected as fallacious.” At this point, the enthusiast assumes the role of “fanatic madman,” who “delivers himself over, blindly, and without reserve, to the supposed illapses of the spirit, and to inspiration from above” (74). While enthusiasm “produces the most cruel disorders in human society,” Hume argues, it is also short-­lived; “Its fury,” he writes, “is like that of thunder in a tempest” (77). While seeing no redeeming qualities in superstition, Hume does credit enthusiasm with the possibility of repelling autocratic impulses, whether from church or state. Indeed, Hume (1983b) goes so far as to credit the enthusiasm of Protestants with the preservation of English liberty, writing, “The precious spark of liberty had been kindled, and was preserved, by the puritans alone; and it was to this sect, whose principles appear so frivolous and habits so ridiculous, that the English owe the whole freedom of their constitution”

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(145–146). Hume argues that the Puritans were able to resist encroachments on liberty—much to the benefit of later generations of Englishmen—thanks to their “zeal which belongs to innovators, and by the courage which enthusiasm inspires” (1983b: 146). Once again, enthusiasm is here distinguished from fanaticism and, though kept at arm’s length, thought to have some positive and perhaps even redeeming qualities. The political potential of fanaticism that Hume came very near to discovering is also found to be nearly at hand in the work of Voltaire. Unlike Hume, Voltaire sees little possibility for a “good enthusiasm,” but he does come tantalizingly close to understanding fanaticism as a political phenomenon and as a phenomenon distinct from its less dangerous cousin, enthusiasm. While Voltaire (1962) writes in his Philosophical Dictionary of 1764 that the “disease of enthusiasm” is “above all the characteristic of misdirected piety,” he also notes that “Partisan spirit is a marvelous spur to enthusiasm,” further noting, “there is no faction that doesn’t have its fanatics” (252). Indeed, Voltaire provides an entry for both “enthousiasme” and “fanatisme” in his dictionary, illustrating the extent to which these erstwhile synonyms had diverged. In the latter entry he writes, “Fanaticism is to superstition what delirium is to fever and rage to anger. The man visited by ecstasies and visions, who takes dreams for realities and his fancies for prophecies, is an enthusiast; the man who supports his madness with murder is a fanatic” (267). These definitions proffered by Voltaire illustrate undeniably an understanding of these related concepts, previously held to be synonymous, as both substantively and normatively distinct. Enthusiasm is presented as a fairly harmless delusion, whereas a fanatic may very well go about “assassinating and butchering all their fellow citizens . . . throwing them out of windows, cutting them to pieces” (267–268). Voltaire’s understanding of fanaticism as violent and political is further evidenced by his writings on Islam, particularly his controversial 1741 play Le fanatisme, ou Mahomet le prophète. That Voltaire chose the figure of Mahomet as the subject of stinging satire and rebuke betrays the fact that Mahomet was seen during this time as the quintessential figure who combined both religion and politics together into a dangerous and quasi-­totalitarian form of governance (see Burton 2013: 13–24; Tucker 1972: 95–96). Mahomet was, so to speak, both pope and king, and Voltaire was wary of this trend developing in the Catholicism of his day, wary of the combination of political and ecclesiastical power. Voltaire further hints at a nascent understanding of fanaticism as political in this play in the fact that it is not Mahomet who is presented as

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the fanatic, far from it. Rather, Mahomet is depicted as a cynical and conniving figure who whips up fanaticism among his followers in order to further aggrandize himself. The real fanatic in the play is the tragic figure of Seid, a follower of Mahomet who is “drunk with zeal” and “nourished on fanaticism” (Voltaire 2013: 69–70). Mahomet, in love with his beautiful slave Palmira, orders Seid to kill the reigning king of nearby Mecca, who, it turns out, is actually the father of both Seid and Palmira, themselves long-­lost siblings. Heartbroken at receiving such an order but unable to disobey his master, Seid commits this crime and is in turn surreptitiously poisoned by Mahomet, leaving Palmira defenseless against his will. Once all of this is revealed, Palmira herself commits suicide via Seid’s dagger—the very weapon used to murder her father—and Mahomet’s plan is dashed. Distraught at this scene, Mahomet exclaims, “I’ve lost her, the sweetest of victims. . . . I, her hateful enemy, the victor, the all-­powerful; I am the one who is punished.” He continues, “God, beloved instrument of my dreadful machinations, whom I’ve used for human misery, whom I’ve blasphemed but still fear; I feel that I’m condemned while the universe adores me. . . . I’ve deceived mortals but cannot trick myself ” (97). Through such events Mahomet is portrayed as little more than a tyrant and deceiver who has succumbed to his own lusts, hardly the figure of a pious man of God. Thus, the play ends with his order to his most trusted confidant, “And you! Erase such shameful memories. At least hide my weakness and preserve my glory. I must govern this imprisoned universe as a god: my empire is destroyed if the man is known” (97). The fanatic here is not Mahomet, a man of no true conviction, but rather his follower Seid, who is ultimately willing to kill in his name. Voltaire’s play presents a picture of fanaticism as a tool wielded by a religiopolitical tyrant in order to accomplish his will, both personal and political. While the fanatic Seid may be inspired by a religious motivation, his strings are being pulled for purely personal and political reasons, by an operator concerned only with his own aggrandizement, not that of any God. The political implications of fanaticism, itself still understood as absolute religious conviction, are clear. The long history of thinking about fanaticism is also not without those who—at least in a qualified way—have attempted to defend this phenomenon. As we have seen, thinkers as diverse as Plato, Hume, and Kant have, to some degree, defended enthusiasm as a type of superhuman passion that can lead to great thoughts or actions, but some thinkers have gone even further, seeming to defend fanaticism itself. In several texts, Jean-­Jacques Rousseau makes a qualified defense of fanaticism—including in what seems to be a

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direct response to Voltaire and his Mahomet. In his “Essay on the Origin of Languages,” originally an excised portion of his Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men, written between 1753 and 1754, Rousseau (1997) seems to take aim directly at Voltaire’s play and provides a qualified defense of fanaticism, writing: A man able to read a little Arabic smiles as he leafs through the Koran, who, if he heard Mohammed himself proclaim it in that eloquent and rhythmic language, in that resonant and persuasive voice which seduced the ear before it did the heart, constantly animating his pithy sayings with the accent of enthusiasm, would have prostrated himself on the ground crying out, Great Prophet, Messenger of God, lead us to glory, to martyrdom; we want to conquer or die for you. Fanaticism always appears ludicrous to us, because it has no voice to command a hearing among us. Even our fanatics are not true fanatics, they are but knaves or madmen. (281) It is not enough, according to Rousseau, to read a text and thereby presume to know the entirety of what is being conveyed therein. In so doing, Rousseau claims, “we think that we are judging them in the light of reason, [but] we are only comparing their prejudices with ours” (281).13 To our modern eyes, Rousseau’s commentary strikes us as an early defense of what is today called “cultural relativism.” Voltaire is mistaken, Rousseau argues, if he thinks he can shine his light of reason into all the corners of the globe and have anything meaningful to say. He is even further mistaken if he thinks that reason can supplant religion and the fanaticism it can still inspire in more far-­flung parts of the world. A further qualified defense of fanaticism can be found in Rousseau’s Emile, published in 1762, where Rousseau writes, “Fanaticism [le fanatisme], though cruel and bloodthirsty, is still a great and powerful passion, which stirs the heart of man, teaching him to despise death, and giving him an enormous motive power, which only needs to be guided rightly to produce the noblest virtues” (276n1). Commenting on this passage, Zev Trachtenberg (2009) notes, “While acknowledging that religious fanaticism is problematic, Rousseau thus discounts it as an actual problem. His secular opponents use the prospect of fanaticism as a strike against religion; Rousseau holds instead that modern, better understood religion in fact mitigates that very prospect” (216). Whatever the extent of his endorsement, fanaticism, for Rousseau, is clearly still very much a religious phenomenon.14 His

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understanding seems remarkably similar to that of his contemporary Alexandre Deleyre (2017), who defines fanatisme in Diderot’s Encycopédie as “a blind & passionate zeal, which is born out of superstitious opinions, and leads to the commission of ridiculous, unjust and cruel actions; not only without shame & without remorse, but even with a sort of joy & of consolation. Fanaticism then is none other than superstition in action” (6:393). However, by the eighteenth century, centuries of religious strife and decades of debate over toleration and accommodating dogmatic difference had clearly revealed the political implications of fanaticism in matters of religion. Rousseau himself is acutely aware of such implications, due in no small part to his welding of the two in his concept of “civic religion” in the Social Contract. Thus, by the late eighteenth century, the groundwork has been laid for the maelstrom of the French Revolution to shake loose a new conception of fanaticism entirely—a truly political fanaticism.

Political Fanaticism: The French Revolution as “Sattelzeit” While these writers, contained more or less in the interregnum between the Reformation and the Enlightenment, approach the boundaries of enthusiasm and fanaticism as purely religious concepts, the boundaries themselves were not breached until world events made such a reconceptualization unavoidable. John Mee (2003) notes, “The 1790s was a decade in which many of the aspirations and anxieties bound up with the discourse on enthusiasm intensified and burst into political debates” (82). The French Revolution was an event so profound to those who lived during it and those who came immediately after that it would not be hyperbolic to say its disjuncture required new ways of understanding politics in toto. Indeed, Alexis de Tocqueville (2008) evinces just such an appraisal of the force of the revolution when, reflecting some decades later in 1856, he wrote that “it undermined the foundations of society and seemed, in essence, to aim at challenging God himself ” (19). After a period of ecstatic praise, knee-­jerk opprobrium, or, more often, “open-­mouthed disbelief ” at this utterly “new event,” Tocqueville writes quite correctly of the need on the part of European commentators to understand the enormity and novelty of this phenomenon and its import for all future political arrangements. As these events unfolded in France, many spectators understood the new political developments via recourse to the concepts of fanaticism and enthusiasm. The British politician and thinker Horace Walpole

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(1965) wrote in 1793 that the behavior of the “Parisian monsters” betrayed, for the first time, a politics of “enthusiasm without religion” (182). Similarly, the British publication the Anti-­Jacobin stated in 1799, “The French Revolution has proved, that Enthusiasm does not belong only to Religion; that there may exist as much zeal in blaspheming God as in praising him” (562). Following the Reformation, and despite the hanging on of a religiocentric worldview, “fanaticism came to seem,” as Colas (1997) writes, “less a deviation in the matter of religious faith and more a perversion in the activity of belief, a disturbance in one’s relation to truth” (18). We can see here the beginnings of the transition of this concept from a domain exclusively within “the arsenals of confessional and sectarian warfare” to a more properly political and philosophical concept (La Vopa 1998: 87). This is not to say that the concept of fanaticism—or any other concept, for that matter—experiences a process of semantic change where one modality is suddenly and completely replaced by another, with a hermetic boundary between them. Rather, through successive iterations and applications to various situations, experiences, and ideas, the meanings invested in a concept gradually change. Looking at the episodes described above in the history of the concept of fanaticism, one could well argue that the concept of fanaticism has never been totally free from religious and political meanings: this is true. However, the history of the concept reveals that one general category of meaning does predominate in a particular historical moment. Thus, while Luther’s usage of the word Schwärmerei in various theological disputations often carries with it political connotations and implications, the predominant valence of such a deployment of this concept is religious. As we will see, the events of the French Revolution allowed for the concept of fanaticism to be recast, with a new primarily political understanding emerging and supplanting the erstwhile religious paradigm. While a comprehensive treatment of the French Revolution is well beyond the scope of this work, what is of note here is that several observers of these events invoked the terminology of enthusiasm and fanaticism to describe them, thus transplanting these religious concepts squarely into the political realm. This presents a new development in the histories of these related concepts and a new modality within which they have been used and understood. No longer must a fanatic be known based solely on her religious beliefs; now, one’s political convictions and behaviors can result in admission into this dubious group. As Susie Tucker (1972) notes, “As the French Revolution intensified in violence . . . enthusiasm was now being used with no religious overtones, and the separation of the two spheres [religious and political] was

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plain” (97). Similarly, the eighteenth-­century British writer “Junius” observes, “There is a holy mistaken zeal in politics as well as religion” (quoted in Tucker 1972: 97). As we will soon see, the three thinkers at the center of this work— Immanuel Kant, Edmund Burke, and Fyodor Dostoevsky—all identified the French Revolution with either enthusiasm or fanaticism and thus this event is at the heart of the birth of the new concept of political fanaticism. Historians like Reinhart Koselleck operating in the tradition of Concept History (Begriffsgeschichte), can help us understand this transformation of fanaticism from a religious to a political concept. In addition to the proximate causes of this transformation, like the French Revolution, such transformation of fundamental concepts is, according to these historians, a larger trend during the eighteenth century in the more general transition to modernity. Koselleck (1972) notes, “Since the middle of the eighteenth century, a profound change of meaning of classical topoi has taken place.” This process of transformation, Koselleck maintains, means that historians can anticipate that many of the foundational social and political concepts which constellate our political world will have undergone significant conceptual change during this period. This “heuristic anticipation [heuristische Vorgriff ],” Koselleck writes, “leads to what can be called a ‘Sattelzeit’ in which the original concept changes to our present understanding” (xv). For the concept of fanaticism, this “heuristic anticipation” seems to bear fruit. In the middle of the eighteenth century—as evidenced by writings responding to the French Revolution and The Terror—the concept of fanaticism undergoes a disinvestment of much of its religious meaning and is reinvested with political meaning and understood in a new political fashion.15 In both England and on the Continent during this time, the concepts of enthusiasm and fanaticism began to be employed in discussions of political matters—the individuals and sects now treated to this appellation were no longer schismatic in terms of religion, but rather in terms of politics. Similarly, the trend beginning all the way back in the times of Plato of attempting to salvage at least some form of enthusiasm as noble and good against either a “false” type of enthusiasm or against an always false and dangerous fanaticism emerged as a major source of debate during the refashioning of these concepts into political categories. Foremost among those seeking to understand the French Revolution— or at least parts of the experience and spectacle of this major event—with recourse to the concepts of enthusiasm and fanaticism were two observers in Prussia and England, Immanuel Kant and Edmund Burke, respectively.

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Indeed, Kant applied these concepts directly to the near contemporaneous events unfolding in France in his 1798 Der Streit der Fakultäten, particularly in the section where he seeks to answer the question, “Is the human race constantly progressing?” In this text, Kant points not to the Revolution itself, but rather to the sympathetic reception it received on the part of spectators the world over (itself a dubious empirical claim) as a sign that the human race is, in fact, morally progressing. Such a “disinterested sympathy,” according to Kant, approaches what he understands to be enthusiasm, an exaltation of the good, while avoiding fanaticism. In appealing to this world-­historical event, Kant applies his unique conceptualizations of these two intertwined concepts to concretely political events and thus allows for these concepts to take on purely political forms. Enthusiasm is used by Kant to describe the reaction of spectators to political, not religious events, and is thus recast as a political concept. This is far from surprising when one remembers that Kant’s entire moral and political project was concerned with delimiting the boundaries of the knowable and of reason, and thus it was necessary for him to sketch what lies beyond such a perimeter: fanaticism, beyond, as we will see in the next chapter, even the flights of the enthusiast who maintains at least a tenuous tether to reason. While, as we have seen, Kant was not the first to reimagine these concepts in political forms, his treatment of them is uniquely rich, nuanced, and often misunderstood—and thus a greater focus on his approach to fanaticism is well deserved. Kant’s contemporary in England, the philosopher and politician Edmund Burke, was similarly concerned with fanaticism in the political sphere. In his famous Reflections on the Revolution in France (1987 [1790]), Burke describes the “men of theory” instigating and riding the wave of the French Revolution and how “they temper and harden the breast in order to prepare it for the desperate strokes which are sometimes used in extreme occasions” (56). It is worth quoting Burke at length as he describes the motivations of the “present practical zealots and furious fanatics” (126): “Plots, massacres, assassinations seem to some people a trivial price for obtaining a revolution. Cheap, bloodless reformation, a guiltless liberty appear flat and vapid to their taste. There must be a great change of scene; there must be a magnificent stage effect; there must be a grand spectacle to rouse the imagination grown torpid with the lazy enjoyment of sixty years’ security and the still unanimating repose of public prosperity” (56–57). One can imagine the prescience of Burke’s critique, including observations about the “juvenile warmth” of the fanatic’s body, to use Burke’s phrase, and the fanatic rapture of the crowd

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when, during the height of the Revolution and The Terror in 1792, Robespierre (2007) proclaimed, “Peoples do not judge in the same way as courts of law; they do not hand down sentences, they throw thunderbolts” (59). In his furious condemnations of the revolutionaries in France, Burke makes use of the concepts of enthusiasm and fanaticism, excoriating “philosophical fanatics” and “enthusiasts” without scruples (130). Yet, as has often been pointed out, Burke’s apparent opposition to all affect in politics seems to be betrayed by his own purpled appeals and outpouring of spleen—especially in this, perhaps his most well-­known, text. As Isaac Kramnick (1977) begins his famous, if controversial, work on Burke, The Rage of Edmund Burke, “Edmund Burke was an angry man.” He describes Burke’s attack on the many people and ideas he opposed with such words as “rage,” “fury,” “contempt,” and “anger” (3). Kramnick even relates the fantastic story that, just before the publication of Burke’s Reflections, his own Whig colleagues in Parliament warned him—after what Kramnick describes as a particularly “extravagant outburst”—that they would have him committed as insane if he could not restrain himself (181). Far from seeing a calm, diplomatic statesman, Burke’s colleagues displayed open shock and dismay at his seemingly out-­of-­control behavior, publicly proclaiming him a “mad man,” and in one particularly artful phrase, “foaming like Niagara” (180–181). Yet, despite Burke’s own struggle with untamed passion in matters political, he has, as Ross Carroll (2014) writes, come to be seen as “a steadfast defender of moderation and a sceptic of enthusiastic excess” (318). Indeed, recent scholarship has sought to show that Burke’s relationship to passion in politics is actually far more complicated than it would appear at first blush. Ross Carroll, for example, argues that Burke actually wanted to “rehabilitate enthusiasm for politics over and against its detractors” (319). In order to do this, Carroll claims that Burke, like Kant and others, sought to distinguish a constructive form of enthusiasm from an always dangerous fanaticism (see Carroll 2014: 318–319). However, in yet a further similarity to Kant, Burke’s efforts in this regard remain the subject of only preliminary academic investigation, thus making his efforts another rich ground for further inquiry. In these works from Kant, Burke, and others engaging with the concepts of enthusiasm and fanaticism, one can glimpse a recurring constellation of related ideas: abstraction; theory at the expense of reality; a belief in utopia—and the understanding that this end justifies any means; and a belief in a supreme truth and the duty to instantiate it come what may. Whether existing in its original purely descriptive sense, its religious and sectarian

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manifestation, or as a political concept, fanaticism exists within this rich semantic field which has been identified and commented on—and therefore generated and regenerated—by centuries of thinkers. It seems that periods of acute human crisis, like the French Revolution, provide the opportunity for concepts like fanaticism to reemerge and regain their relevance in the complex web of political concepts that define our shared human experience. It is thus not surprising that we see an outpouring of thinking and writing about fanaticism related to this major historical event. The effects of such a profound world-­historical event as the French Revolution can be felt long after the Revolution itself. Writing a full century later, the French Revolution continued to cast a shadow over the philosophical and literary work of the Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky—especially his most political novel, Demons, published in 1872. As Jordi Morillas (2007) notes, “Dostoevsky castigates the French Revolution for not having fielded positive results in France, and for leading Europe, instead, into a state of chaos and social disintegration” (3). Dmitry Shlapentokh (2009) similarly argues that, as a “tragic thinker,” Dostoevsky saw “the French Revolution [as] represent[ing] a certain turning point in world history, with impending doom ahead” (52). By the time he wrote Demons, Dostoevsky was firmly of the view that, as Shlapentokh puts it, “the yearning of mankind to create a harmonious society was nothing but a devilish temptation that would eventually lead the human race to self-­destruction. In this philosophy, all revolutions, including the French Revolution, were nothing but bloody and fruitless ‘spasms’” (57). Indeed, the case of Dostoevsky illustrates how an exclusive focus on contemporary commentary on the French Revolution, and neglecting the reverberations that come after, risks losing an appreciation for some of the many facets of this complex phenomenon, as well as a proper appreciation of its enduring presence as a concept. As well, the phenomenon and concept of fanaticism, clearly, do not exist only in England, France, and Germany. By looking at a later text, of an almost entirely different sort and from a vastly different context, we can see how this new concept of political fanaticism is understood beyond the strict boundaries of Western Europe. A perfect means by which to do this is an examination of Dostoevsky’s Demons. This novel follows a real-­life figure, the Russian anarchist Sergei Nechaev (1847–1882), and employs Dostoevsky’s characteristic philosophical and psychological style. Nechaev, author of the infamous Catechism of the Revolutionist (1869), is seen by the modern political scientist Peter C. Sederberg (1994) as the “nihilist terrorist” par excellence, an individual who seeks “the

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destruction of the existing order” and “devote[s] little, if any, thought to what follows destruction, beyond some vague anticipation that a new and better order will spontaneously arise from the ashes of the old regime” (273). In Dostoevsky’s view, this is the world the French Revolution has wrought, the type of politics unleashed by the deluge of 1789. Morillas (2007) argues that, for Dostoevsky, “Russian and European Nihilism has its origins in the French revolution, which is the most important event in modern history” (22). Dostoevsky’s novel provides an excellent entrée into an exploration of the modern manifestation of political fanaticism, especially in such a starkly nihilistic form, which seeks a final, cosmic revolution simply to watch the world burn. As we will see, Dostoevsky’s account of fanaticism in the “Nechaev Affair” identifies many of the same hallmarks as Kant and Burke do, including intellectualism, an embrace of violence, an inappropriate use of reason, excessive political passion, as well as political messianism.

Summing Up: Major Trends in the History of Fanaticism This chapter has yielded some insights that are worth drawing out before moving on to a more in-­depth analysis of fanaticism in the works of Kant, Burke, and Dostoevsky. First, these three moments of crystallization in the conceptual history of fanaticism—ancient, religious, and political—reveal the complexity of many foundational concepts so often taken for granted in political, social, and cultural existence. All too often, terms like fanaticism are used in common parlance—and even in the more rarefied domain of academia—without adequate thought to what this concept actually means and has meant over time. A proper appreciation of such meaning and history, however, can ensure not only that we really mean what we say but that we can also constructively engage in politics by properly understanding the political world we inhabit. A proper study of the concept of fanaticism, therefore, can ensure that this concept, when invoked in political speech, as it often is, is better understood by, as Koselleck (1985) writes, “reveal[ing] layers which are concealed by the spontaneity of everyday language” (89). When one talks of fanaticism, a whole host of associations are perforce raised. Understanding the concept in all of its inherent complexity can help us better understand our own political reality and its relationship to the political reality we desire. Hopefully, by unearthing this concept in all of its vast complexity, we can better hope to live in a world with as little fanaticism as is possible.

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Second, this brief examination of fanaticism reveals that this concept is nothing new, and neither are efforts to understand and explain it. For this reason, any attempt to grasp and engage with fanatical ideology, in whatever form, should make use of the vast history of understandings of this concept, dissecting it into its different forms and looking for similarities, differences, and processes within this larger “black box” category. In doing this, scholars, policymakers, and activists should be able to find weak spots within contemporary fanatical ideologies and, perhaps, exploit them in order to combat this “oppressive passion” (Kant, 5:276). This historical overview has also yielded some important insights into the nature of complex concepts and their historical transformation. Looking back at the long history of the concept of fanaticism reveals a trajectory of conceptual change not unlike an approaching wave with both peaks and troughs. We can understand fanaticism, and many other concepts, in this way, as existing as the crest of a wave when a widely agreed-­upon understanding of a concept prevails (which can thus be conveyed with facility by agreed-­ upon terminology), and then sinking into a trough (perhaps between two peaks), corresponding to a historical moment when no widely agreed-­upon conceptualization exists and therefore the standard terminology is imperiled and disagreement abounds. An exploration of the concept of fanaticism reveals that complex sociopolitical concepts do, in fact, change, and move between peaks and troughs. Specifically, the concept of fanaticism has undergone several changes from ancient cultic to Christian religious valences and finally, around the time of the French Revolution, to its transformation into a political concept. Such dramatic transformations in meaning are hardly obvious today, when the concept of fanaticism in its fullest sense is often hidden under a dust of casual and imprecise usage. Accompanying these transformations is another change in the history of the concept of fanaticism, a gradual dissipation from an ontological concept to an analogical one. That is, as we have seen, the concept of fanaticism began as an ontological category; in the ancient world a fanatic was thought to be truly possessed by a deity that is causing him or her to do various things. As time went on and the term evolved and expanded in scope, the concept and its uses became analogical; by the early modern era the concept evoked only an analogical understanding, it is as if this person is possessed by a deity and thus acting in various ways toward various institutions, persons, objects, and constructs. This mode of “as-­if possession” entails many of the same attributes of the earlier understanding of actual possession inherent in earlier

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ideas about the nature and cause of fanaticism, except now the cause of this mode of behavior, thinking, or temperament is different. While the possibility remained that the fanatic was possessed by the devil or a demon, more often the fanatic’s behavior was now explained in terms of some endogenous process, a fault in logic or thought, stubbornness, or mental pathology, to name a few examples. A further examination of the concept of fanaticism—in its uniquely political mode—in the works of such disparate thinkers as Kant, Burke, and Dostoevsky will bring into greater relief the various faces of this phenomenon as its emerges on the political scene. The diversity among these thinkers, including their clashing views and even their disagreements about the nature of the French Revolution itself, far from imperiling an exploration of fanaticism will actually serve to enrich our examination—highlighting the similarities and differences in understanding this phenomenon across time, geographical space, and vastly different social and political contexts. However, even despite such differences, a fairly coherent view of fanaticism in its political mode will emerge from an examination of these three thinkers’ views on the matter. Fanaticism, for them, is a type of political passion characterized by excessive passion and conviction, unmoored from right reason, and often involving a highly intellectualized plan to remake the world according to some a priori plans. Such messianic political projects will undoubtedly encounter enemies, and so all our authors also understand fanaticism as involving at least the possibility of violence, as fanatics attempt to wage a great battle to instantiate their perfect society once and for all.

CHAPTER 3

Kant Between the Schwärmer and the Enthusiast

At least so as to mean what we say, it remains highly desirable that we should try to decide unanimously on meanings for all words whose definitions remain unclear. Therein, at least, we may begin a foundation by which to always be sure of our own meaning when we do speak. —C. M. Wieland, “Enthusiasmus und Schwärmerei” (1775)

By the time Immanuel Kant began building his philosophical system in the middle of the eighteenth century, he was already heir to a long tradition— especially in the German-­speaking world—of attempting to understand the twin concepts of enthusiasm (Enthusiasmus) and fanaticism (Schwärmerei). The Reformation two centuries earlier inaugurated a series of Christian confessional disputes attempting to come to terms with modes of religious and social life that went against the grain of accepted practices. From an early point in his intellectual life, Kant had engaged in these ongoing debates about the nature of enthusiasm and fanaticism and these issues would occupy a central place within his work for the rest of his life. In his role as a leading voice in the German Aufklärung, Kant was at the forefront of the debates of his day about the role of reason in understanding the natural and metaphysical worlds, including its limits in doing so. This latter question—the limits of reason—makes the problem of fanaticism unavoidable for Kant. That is, if Kant were eager to consolidate and thereby preserve a legitimate domain of reason, he was equally aware of, and apprehensive about, what lay beyond

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this legitimate domain: fanaticism. Thus, a consistent subterranean current running throughout Kant’s work, including both his pre-­and post-­Critical work, is a perennial preoccupation with the problem of fanaticism. On a foundational level, Kant and his interlocutors are concerned with the nature of knowledge and truth claims. The Enlightenment was quickly sweeping away traditional referents like religion and revelation, leaving Kant and others anxious to find new anchors and reference points in this time of flux and upheaval (see Beiser 1987). Answers to fundamental questions such as how we make judgments about what we know and what we claim to be true were now far from certain. Coming to terms with ascendant natural science and the waning purchase of religion, Kant and his contemporaries were looking for, as Allen Wood (2005) writes, “a general philosophical foundation for the emerging physical science” (24). Kant was anxious to understand how we can know both things about the natural world, things that are empirical and—an even more difficult question—how we can know, or even if we can know, about things that are not empirical. Whereas in previous centuries religion provided a more or less complete and comfortable set of answers to these questions, the disintegration of this foundation—the chief characteristic of modernity—was also the key development inspiring Kant’s project of a thoroughgoing critique of reason. For Kant, as Johnathan Israel (2011) observes, “pure reason may never produce knowledge of that basic architecture of reality which we would like to possess.” Kant’s position, however, as Israel tells us, was that “we cannot give up the search and must strive for glimpses” (731). But what of those who maintain their desire for more than glimpses? Kant’s intervention here cuts both ways—against those who, on the one hand, succumb to a sort of fatalism before the disenchantment of the Enlightenment, and, on the other, those who refuse to accept the new position our emergence from our “self-­ incurred immaturity” places us in. This latter camp embraces the troubling category of the fanatic, the Schwärmer, to use Kant’s term borrowed from Luther, a type of person who greatly concerned Kant and someone who threatened the new system of reason and morality that Kant thought suitable to an enlightened age. Kant’s powerful intervention during this unique moment in European history, when nothing was certain and everything was being questioned, thus provided both “unsettling and reassuring aspects,” Israel argues, greatly constricting the purview of various ways of knowing while, at the same time, “shoring up [the] older moral and belief structures” (729). This was not a fully “enlightened age,” Kant admitted; but by the

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middle of the eighteenth century he understood the world around him as existing within “an age of enlightenment,” an age that was becoming enlightened (1991a: 58).1 The blossoming “new age of enlightenment,” however, was not without its detractors, including those who refused to constrict their knowledge claims and instead sought to rely on their own intrinsic claims to know—in short, fanatics.

Enthusiasm and Fanaticism—Is There a Difference? As we have already seen in Chapter 2, by Kant’s time various epistemic communities in Europe were engaging with the related concepts of enthusiasm and fanaticism. As Lawrence Klein and Anthony La Vopa (1998a) note, “Although today a mild and innocuous word, ‘enthusiasm’ was, from the Reformation through the nineteenth century, a term of great power with a wide range of referents” (1). The historian Michael Heyd (1995a) similarly notes, “The critique of enthusiasm is indeed one of the recurring themes in seventeenth century discourse. Whether in religious, scientific, literary or political texts, in England, or on the Continent, the debate with the so-­called enthusiasts occupies an important place” (2). J. G. A. Pocock (1998) provocatively suggests that the concept of enthusiasm composed “the anti-­self of Enlightenment” (7), while Jan Goldstein (1998) maintains that “enthusiasm” was “an all-­purpose eighteenth-­century epithet,” no less in the German context (29). Despite notable differences in each case, Goldstein notes how in the eighteenth century, the term “enthusiasm . . . conjured up everything antithetical to, and rejected by, enlightened rationality” and, accordingly, “carried a primarily negative valence” in the national contexts of Britain, Germany, and France (29). Widespread agreement existed at this time about the synonymous nature of the words enthusiasm and fanaticism, and thus there was widespread agreement that both phenomena were deserving of opprobrium. However, despite this dominant paradigm, a few prominent European thinkers—including Kant, Christian Garve, and Christoph Martin Wieland, as well Germaine de Staël in France2—were attempting to salvage a concept of enthusiasm and differentiate it from fanaticism. These thinkers sought to disambiguate these concepts in order, at least in part, to make room for some sort of emotion and conviction in normative spheres of life, including politics. Despite his indisputable moral rigorism, a purely technocratic politics, one in which every input had a prescribed output, and in which human freedom, thought,

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and emotion played no role, is not the type of world Kant envisions. Echoing much later observations by thinkers like Michael Walzer (2004), Kant and this small cadre of philosophers were concerned with delimiting the proper role and proportion of affect in politics. Ultimately, then, Kant’s thought can be understood as a philosophy in search of proper limits: limits to reason and limits to passion. Accordingly, Kant maintained a committed engagement with understanding and disambiguating concepts, chief among them enthusiasm (Enthusiasmus) and fanaticism (most often called Schwärmerei by Kant). As Anthony La Vopa (1998) notes, “Within this dense semantic field, where binary opposites so easily became points of convergence, Kant made his contribution to the discourse of Schwärmerei. In the preparatory notes for his lectures on philosophical anthropology, delivered from 1772 to 1798, we find Kant clarifying the term Schwärmerei repeatedly” (105). Thus, even from his early days teaching natural sciences, Kant was concerned with understanding fanaticism and in distinguishing it from enthusiasm. This important aspect of Kant’s work has recently begun to gain traction among Kant scholars.3 Béatrice Allouche-­ Pourcel (2010) observes that the idea of fanaticism was a leitmotif for Kant, “a guiding thread in the Kantian oeuvre.” She further, and quite correctly, argues that understanding Kant’s engagement with the concept of fanaticism is a “capital enterprise for understanding Kant’s philosophy” (11). However, despite this growing acknowledgment of the centrality of the concept of fanaticism to Kant’s Critical project, many Kant scholars downplay, or even fail to recognize at all, Kant’s project to disambiguate a more normatively positive form of enthusiasm in contradistinction to an always dispreferred fanaticism. For example, one recent, characteristic work on Kant maintains that “the seemingly innocuous ‘enthusiasm’ (Schwärmerei) is a key word in early modern critiques of both knowledge claims and power structures founded on irrational needs” (Dicenso 2011: 39). In treating these two distinct words as interchangeable, this author makes the common claim that there is no substantive distinction in the Kantian lexicon between the concepts of enthusiasm and Schwärmerei. This position is further evidenced by similar, ubiquitous elisions in English translations of Kant’s oeuvre.4 In contrast to these common editorial decisions regarding translation, Peter Fenves (1993) rightly notes “how misleading it would be to translate Schwärmerei as ‘enthusiasm.’ ” As would surely have been known to Kant, “enthusiasm has a far nobler heritage than Schwärmerei” (xi). Indeed, recapturing this noble concept and salvaging it from the related but irredeemable concept of

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Schwärmerei was a key part of Kant’s philosophical endeavors. Thus, Fenves (1998) observes, “From his earliest writings onward Kant is drawn into the critical project of distinguishing an empowering enthusiasm from a debilitating Schwärmerei” (122).5 While editors like H. B. Nisbet, the editor of the classic Cambridge volume Kant: Political Writings, are right to be concerned with the fact—which, in many ways, is the whole point of this volume—that concepts, their meanings, valences, and connotations are all subject to contestation, and, because of their iterative nature, change over time, by allowing these semantic shifts to determine translation (and thereby elide Kant’s clear endeavor to disambiguate two related but distinct concepts), they do a disservice to Kant. Because the terms Schwärmerei/fanaticism do not necessarily carry the same connotations in Kant’s time as in our own does not mean that they refer to distinct concepts, or that the semantic change undergone by concepts over time cannot be discovered. Rather, such transformation opens up new possibilities for scholarship. These transformations can be mapped and explored, thus shedding light on the functioning and understanding of complex concepts through time. Exploring the reasons why Kant so clearly endeavored to distinguish these concepts and their related terminology can reveal new facets to both enthusiasm and fanaticism and help us understand these concepts—still very much with us today—in more sophisticated ways. This is not to mention the utility such study has for better understanding Kant’s thought and the broader Enlightenment project in general. In light of the common failure to recognize the conceptual differences Kant placed on enthusiasm and fanaticism, and the fact that most enlightened thought of his age held both concepts as equally distasteful synonyms, Kant’s attempt to firmly distinguish the two terms and to salvage a “true” and positive form of enthusiasm by use of his Critical method of philosophy is important and deserving of attention. In undertaking such a project, Kant went against the grain of many of his contemporaries, who maintained a distaste for any form of enthusiasm in political or religious engagement. That Kant tried to reimagine a form of affect in political matters that could avoid the many negatives associated with fanaticism is surprising and provides a critical moment in the evolution of the related concepts of enthusiasm and fanaticism. Indeed, the disentangling of these terms, and Kant’s seemingly positive appraisal of enthusiasm in politics, leads us to question the role of political affect today and its relationship to clear political ills like political violence and fanaticism since the question of affect in politics is still with

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us today.6 Like Plato’s praise of “madness,” Kant, writing before his Critical turn, goes so far as to offer an ebullient endorsement of enthusiasm, claiming “nothing great has ever been accomplished in the world without it” (2:267), a claim he seems to again endorse in his third Critique, published in 1790, writing, “It is commonly maintained that without it [enthusiasm] nothing great can be accomplished” (5:272). Such a comment is nothing short of astonishing coming, as it does, from the father of the German Enlightenment, revealing a partiality (to at least some degree) for a form of political engagement not completely within the purview of reason. While, because of their more immediate political implications, this chapter will be primarily concerned with remarks on Schwärmerei Kant makes in his third Critique and The Conflict of the Faculties; as has been noted earlier, this is a topic that occupied Kant throughout his works, including his earlier pre-­Critical work.7 Not surprisingly, then, there are a number of important passages from Kant’s earlier works that clearly anticipate his later remarks on the topic and are thus worthy of examination. Of particular interest is Kant’s early work “Essay on the Maladies of the Head.” Written in 1764, this early essay was composed in response to a rather extraordinary event that had recently shocked Kant’s lifelong hometown of Königsberg. In January 1764, Jan Pawlikowicz Zdomozyrskich Komarnicki, a self-­described prophet, barefoot and dressed in animal skins, took up habitation in a nearby forest, immediately inspiring impressionable locals to make pilgrimages to the “goat prophet,” so-­called by the local police after his large collection of livestock, especially goats (see Gulyga 1987: 61–62). Apparently, Kant was so fascinated by this unusual event that he wrote multiple articles about it in a local paper, including this one, concerned with the larger question of various “Krankheiten des Kopfes.” Observing the superstition and irrationality with which his neighbors embraced this “goat prophet,” Kant set out to understand the various psychic processes that can lead to disordered thinking, including fanaticism. As we will see later on, Kant’s early engagement with fanaticism in this text bears striking similarities to his later “mature” thoughts on the matter, further illustrating Kant’s perennial and serious treatment of fanaticism. In his “Essay,” Kant sets out to “sketch a small onomastic of the frailties of the head,” from mild and innocuous to serious and dangerous (2:260). Commenting on the “milder” maladies, including idiocy (Dummköpfigkeit), simplicity (Einfalt), and folly (Torheit), Kant arrives at a peculiar mental state he calls foolishness (Narrheit), a type of “reversed reason” (verkehrten Vernunft). The mental maladies involving “reversed reason” will become crucial

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in Kant’s typology of disordered thinking. Indeed, it is this class of maladies, those which take a cognitive property and misapply it, that is the most pernicious according to Kant. Of such a class of malady, Kant writes, “the predominant passion is odious in itself and at the same time insipid enough to take for the satisfaction of the passion precisely that which is contrary to the natural intention of the passion” (2:262). Thus, the proper passion becomes its inverse: reason becomes foolishness. The most serious maladies are of this type, maladies of “reversal” (Verkehrtheit), which lead to a “disturbed mind,” as opposed to the less dangerous class of “impotency” (Ohnmacht), which leads merely to “imbecility” (2:263). Of this more dangerous category, that of the “disturbed head” (gestörten Kopfes), Kant distinguishes three groups: (1) “derangement” (Verrückung), which involves “the reversal of the concepts of experience”; (2) “delusion of sense” (Wahnsinn), which Kant here calls “the power of judgment brought into disorder by” derangement; and (3) “delusion of mind” (Wahnwitz), or when “reason has become reversed with respect to more universal judgments” (2:264).8 Kant will return to these terms, Wahnsinn and Wahnwitz, in his Critique of the Power of Judgment (1790), where— crucially—he compares Wahnsinn to enthusiasm and Wahnwitz to fanaticism (5:275). There, as in this text, Wahnsinn means for Kant a mistaken application of sensual data, for instance errantly treating sensual experience as if it were reason. This is less dangerous, according to Kant, than Wahnwitz, which involves a mistaken apprehension of reason, often claiming to know what cannot be known. Though related to the more serious delusions of sense and mind, “derangement” is seen by Kant as relatively innocuous. The deranged person is “a dreamer in waking,” one who, “while being awake . . . is used to representing certain things as clearly sensed of which nevertheless nothing is present” (2:265). In a more extreme manifestation, when the “waking dreamer” is unable to dispel the illusion and recognize the misleading nature of her imagination and the chimeras it produces, then this dreamer experiences what Kant calls a “Phantast” (2:265). Such an understanding of these two types of delusions is in keeping with Kant’s later understanding of a crucial difference between enthusiasm and fanaticism. Whereas enthusiasm is most often a passing, temporary mental state, a sort of daydream that leaves an individual shortly after onset, fanaticism is a more deep-­seated and persistent mental condition. Such a distinction goes a long way in explaining Kant’s understanding of fanaticism as posing a far greater danger than enthusiasm. Fantasy plays a central role, in this essay, in Kant’s understanding of more severe cognitive maladies. On its own, the “fantastic mental condition” can

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produce a mania in the person, characterized by “a forceful drive in him to start something evil, the eruption of which he himself is anxiously apprehensive about, and which nevertheless never comes to pass.” This derangement, however, is “not deeply rooted” and usually resolves itself (2:266). Thus, even though this mania opens up a dangerous possibility for violence, it quickly burns itself out, thus mitigating the danger it poses. This type of derangement, characterized by fantastic mania, meshes well with our own contemporary commonplace and impoverished understanding of “fanaticism”—the commonsensical understanding H. B. Nisbet (1991) was wary of smuggling into Kant. This is the “fanaticism” of an individual discovering a new hobby, who pours all of their energies into this new passion, only to have his interest quickly dissipate. While this mental condition creates a moment of danger, the danger of this mania escaping dissipation, Kant maintains that it is most often relatively benign . As Kant notes, this “kind of fantastic mania . . . is attributed to someone only because the degree of the feeling through which he is affected by certain objects is judged to be excessive for the moderate, healthy head” (2:267). According to Kant, this is not a proper understanding of fanaticism. In fact, Kant sees such derangement as relatively normal and harmless, and as active in such characteristic human passions as melancholia and love. It is when such fantasy threatens to transgress the boundaries of reason and the moral law, however, that more serious problems can arise.9 Thus, when an individual makes claims to know what cannot be known, claims to knowledge about noumenal things marked off-­limits by a proper critique of reason, a much more dangerous mental state of fanaticism can arise. Reason can allow an individual, Kant maintains, to have “practical” faith in God or in other things that cannot be known, but this reason cannot produce knowledge per se, no more than “glimpses” of such things can be gleaned, to return to Israel’s (2011) phrase. In making such a claim to knowledge, the particular fault of the fanatic, an individual not only transgresses the proper boundaries of reason but also of the moral law. Further, this transgression is not temporary: the “reins” of reason are not there to pull the fanatic back down to earth, as they are for the enthusiast. Rather, the fanatic becomes untethered in his delusion of having direct access to God and the hidden noumenal world. Enthusiasm, Kant maintains, while in tension with reason, does not violate the moral law. Rather, enthusiasm is in the service of morality. Indeed, in this essay, Kant calls enthusiasm, an “appearance of fantasy in moral sensations that are in themselves good,” further exclaiming, “nothing great has ever been accomplished in the world without it” (2:267).

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While heaping praise on the enthusiast, Kant goes on to warn, “Things stand quite differently with the fanatic [Fanatiker] (visionary, Schwärmer). The latter is properly a deranged person with presumed immediate inspiration and a great familiarity with the powers of the heavens. Human nature knows no more dangerous illusion” (2:267).10 Fanaticism, in Kant’s understanding, is more than merely a mania, an excessive affect or interest. Rather, this excessive passion is concerned with knowledge claims, with claims about the noumenal universe, and also (at least potentially) with action and desires. The supersensible lies beyond the bounds of reason—as Kant will clearly articulate in later, Critical works—and thus it is only by an appeal to fanaticism that one can hope to make authoritative claims about this. Later on in this essay, Kant will identify this type of “delusion of mind” with rage, madness, raving, and frenzy, thus making a clear connection with the host of images that would have been conjured up for German intellectuals considering the term Schwärmerei after the linguistic innovations of Martin Luther. Throughout his corpus, Kant makes many further remarks that anticipate his mature reflections, which will soon occupy the bulk of our attention. Writing in the Berlinische Monatsschrift in 1783, for example, two years after the publication of his first Critique, Kant (2007c: 178) argues, “For once one concedes to pure reason in its speculative use the faculty to enlarge itself to insights beyond the boundaries of the sensible, then it is no longer possible to restrict it to this object and not enough that it will then find a wide field opened for all kinds of Schwärmerei” (8:151). This passage clearly anticipates the project that will concern Kant in the coming years in his subsequent Critiques, the shoring up of reason within certain boundaries, delimiting what can be known from what cannot. Clearly, any such project would have to take account of what lies beyond this boundary: “all kinds of Schwärmerei.” Similarly, in his Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View—published in 1798 but hearkening back to his earlier days as a natural scientist and lecturer in the 1770s—Kant writes of the “joyous and bold premonitions of the Schwärmer who senses the imminent revelation of a mystery for which the human being has no such receptivity of sense, and believes they see the unveiling of the presentiment of what, like the Epoptes, they await in mystical intuition” (7:187). Again, the Schwärmer appeals to (erroneous) “revelation,” to pretended individual knowledge beyond the bounds of reason. Based on this delusion of knowledge, the fanatic is certain he has the Truth—a truth beyond reason and the sensual world. Furthermore, the fanatic’s knowledge is an esoteric one, a knowledge of mysteries and the inner workings of the

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universe off limits to noninitiates and inaccessible by the normal channels of reason and logic. As Kant further writes, “To claim . . . that the real appearances of the world present to the senses are merely a symbol of an intelligible world hidden in reserve is Schwärmerei” (7:192).11 These earlier writings demonstrate the beginnings of Kant’s long-­standing fascination with the phenomenon of fanaticism as—no matter the most immediate project occupying his focus—he returns again and again to fanaticism and its relationship to reason and the supersensible. Indeed, among his unpublished notes and fragments, Kant left a small collection of preliminary notes for what was, presumably, to be a major project, later abandoned, titled “On Philosophical Fanaticism.” Thought to be written between 1770 and 1779, so before publication of the first Critique, Kant demonstrates the centrality of the concept of fanaticism for his Critical enterprise. “The reason for fanaticism is the lack of the critique of reason,” Kant writes (18:438).12 Abandoning reason and its limits results, according to Kant, in “the highest form of fanaticism,” when “we find ourselves in God and we feel our being and understanding in him” (18:438). This world is not the domain of the fanatic, who instead prefers to dwell in a delusion of the supersensible realms. This belief that “everything has its true nature only in God’s ideas” means that the fanatic dispenses with the natural, sensible world and with reason, the only means, according to Kant, by which one can have true knowledge. Thus, the fanatic invests his or her own unreliable sense experiences—of being connected with God, for example—with the power of reason. A proper understanding of reason and knowledge, Kant maintains in this text, is the antidote to fanaticism. The dichotomy between “enthusiasm” and “fanaticism” can be understood as a classic piece of Kantian Critical theory. As the Kant scholar Allen Wood (2005) observes, “Kant’s aim . . . is to legitimize the monarchy of Queen Metaphysics, while at the same time limiting the scope of its rightful claims to authority.” Thus, Kant is attempting to “transform metaphysics from a ‘random groping’ into a genuine science, by limiting it to its proper sphere and grounding it on a rationally well-­conceived method” (25). These core questions of ontology and epistemology are to be adjudicated through the faculty of reason. Thus, Kant’s Critical project aims to “systematize our knowledge and thus maximize the intelligibility of the world we know” (77). That is, to separate what can be known from what cannot be known, to restrict the scope of knowledge and reason, to find their boundaries, in order to better direct our efforts at knowledge accumulation. This is precisely, for Kant, the boundary beyond which one encounters fanaticism, the boundary

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of reason and knowledge beyond which lies the unknown, and, indeed, the unknowable. While, as we have just seen, Kant’s writing on the concept of fanaticism goes all the way back to the beginning of his academic career and his lectures on anthropology, the two key texts illustrating Kant’s thinking on the matter and its implications for politics are his Critique of the Power of Judgment (1790) (his third Critique) and his text The Conflict of the Faculties (1798), particularly the section from the second part entitled “An Old Question Raised Again: Is the Human Race Constantly Progressing?” (1992: 141–169). In The Conflict of the Faculties, Kant engages with the tectonic issue of the French Revolution, including the nature of affect and passion in political movements and their expansion into political violence and ultimately revolution. It is particularly his engagement with the sympathy of the spectators to this event that excited Kant and, in turn, yields his greatest engagement with the distinctly political aspects of enthusiasm and fanaticism. Furthermore—as we will see by the end of this chapter—Kant’s third Critique introduces his understanding of “reflecting judgments,” which have been taken up by political theorists (most notably Hannah Arendt) as a way of exercising political judgment that, on the one hand, avoids treating politics with an unsupportable rigorism while, on the other hand, avoiding the devolution of politics into absolute relativism. With Kant’s idea of “reflecting judgments,” therefore, we have an approach to politics and a way of making normative judgments that avoids the allure of fanaticism. Taken together, these two works from the mature Kant present an understanding of cognition that includes the role of reason—including its limits, as well as the limits of cognition itself—along with various atypical outcomes of the cognitive process (including enthusiasm) and the outcomes of errors in the cognitive process—chief among them, fanaticism. Furthermore, these two works illustrate a transition in Kant’s thought on enthusiasm and fanaticism from more abstract and philosophical consideration to understandings concerned more with the practical—and political—implications of these phenomena.

Fanaticism: Defendant in the Court of Reason Kant makes one of his fullest accounts of fanaticism in his third and final Critique, Critique of the Power of Judgment. While on its face Kant’s third ­Critique was concerned with the nature of taste and judgments about this

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matter, clearly Kant had a deeper purpose in mind. Indeed, as Allen Wood (2005) writes, “the main motive for writing the Critique of the Power of Judgment was to deal with the ‘immense gulf ’ that [Kant] saw between the theoretical use of reason in knowledge of the natural world and its practical use in morality and in moral faith in God” (16; see also Kant, 5:175–176). Therefore, in describing how rational beings experience beauty, Kant “wanted to understand how the workings of our cognitive faculties themselves, especially the harmony between sensible imagination and understanding required for all cognition, might play a role in generating an experience that was at once subjective and yet normative for all” (Wood 2005: 16). It makes sense, then, that Kant’s major attempt to reconcile theoretical reason with practical reason would be the same arena in which he engages most deeply with the concept of fanaticism, a concept with obvious theoretical and practical implications. Borrowing the term from Martin Luther, Kant most often refers to fanaticism as Schwärmerei, a term, by this time, rich in history and connotation in the German-­speaking world.13 Writing in his third Critique, Kant argues that while enthusiasm results in the faculty of imagination being “unreined,” by which imagination exercises a temporary control over reason, fanaticism completely severs such reins and the imagination is “unruled” (regellos) (5:275). Enthusiasm, in its similarity to affect, is disinterested, spontaneous, and temporary, whereas fanaticism is “a deep-­rooted and oppressive passion,” a “disease” that “destroys” one’s healthy cognitive functioning. Kant writes that enthusiasm can be compared to “delusion of sense” (Wahnsinn), but fanaticism is more akin to “delusion of mind” (Wahnwitz) (5:276). Enthusiasm, like an affect, frees the imagination and, momentarily, makes one feel as though one is not bound by the strictures of reason; it does not produce knowledge claims, nor does it take an interest in realizing some end. Schwärmerei, on the other hand, as a “delusion of mind,” is driven by passion, by the faculty of desire, and therefore does make knowledge claims and is desirous of some end. Fanaticism wants to acquire; it wants to act on the claims it makes beyond the bounds of reason. The philosopher Rachel Zuckert (2010) argues provocatively that, in this text and others, Kant actually identifies two forms of fanaticism: a “theoretical” and a “practical” fanaticism. The two constitutive elements of fanaticism—its faulty knowledge claims and its interestedness—produce two separate versions of fanaticism, according to Zuckert, theoretical and practical. While Zuckert maintains that Kant, on the one hand, views a theoretical fanaticism as primarily an epistemological error—claiming to know what

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one cannot know—there is a more practical form of fanaticism based on its nature as interested in outcomes and events, making this more practical form of fanaticism all the more dangerous because of its active orientation. This practical fanaticism, Zuckert argues, resembles “a practical attitude . . . a form of desire—of striving, or aiming to produce objects or attain ends” (309). Thus, Kant views Schwärmerei as not only a “delusion of being able to see something beyond all bounds of sensibility” but also a delusion that can often inspire action based on this faulty foundation (5:275). Because the fanatic trespasses the boundaries of the knowable and claims to know what cannot be known, his ability to properly cognize at all is compromised. The imagination is freed and reason is subdued, thus rendering any judgments made in such a state necessarily untrustworthy. The political implications for such a problem are obvious. In a political context, the fanatic cannot possibly form a proper judgment of the situation at hand. Moral claims are based on arbitrary criteria, whether dogma, caprice, or some other unsatisfactory metric. Indeed, even the empirical characteristics of the situation are likely to be misinterpreted, as passion clouds the mind. While Zuckert’s understanding of two Kantian forms of fanaticism, theoretical and practical, seems sound, there is no reason why one cannot further understand a form of fanaticism that, for Kant, combines the elements of both theoretical and practical fanaticism. Therefore, while one can find an understanding of both theoretical and practical fanaticism in Kant, one can also understand these two forms of fanaticism as merely two sides of the same coin, a form of fanaticism that, for Kant, is both theoretical and practical. Whether theoretical, practical, or both, fanaticism clearly runs afoul of Kant’s understanding of proper cognition as well as his understanding of moral law. The realm of the truly knowable has limits. Beyond the natural world, we can venture only a little further toward this realm, with reason as our guide, but, as in the Garden of Eden, sword-­wielding angels keep us from trespassing too far. The fanatic, by contrast, feels no such compulsion. In basing her views on such an epistemologically faulty foundation, the fanatic all too often lays the groundwork to pursue dangerous political action. As Zuckert notes, a fanatic “does not need, she takes it, to engage in rational reflection or to submit to the moral law in order to be worthy . . . the fanatical attitude furnishes a more radical ground, a heightening or intensification, for the immorality of such action: the presumption that one’s feelings are themselves imbued, one is oneself passively imbued, with moral, unconditional worth” (316). On this, Zuckert notes that “practical fanaticism arises from

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a conflation of sensibility with rational ideas, and arises in concert with the aspirations of reason (to identify the unconditioned)” (311). Similarly, Oliver Kohns (2006) notes, “The Schwärmer hears the voice of God. Through this supposed unmediated experience, he becomes one with God’s voice. Whereas the Schwärmer confuses his own subjectivity with that of the divine presence, the enthusiast, Kant clarifies, acts under the influence of a ‘moral sentiment.’ ” Thus, Kohns concludes, “The Schwärmer reacts on a feeling” while “the enthusiast reacts on a moral principle” (6). It is precisely in this understanding of the relationship of reason to fanaticism—that the fanatic foregoes a “critique of reason” as unnecessary because of his or her unique immediacy to something higher—that Zuckert understands Kant’s view of fanaticism as superior to those of his contemporaries, calling his “a persuasive and non-­reductive characterization of fanaticism” (316). But what of Kant’s own unbending moral rigorism? What of his own certitude about the extent of human knowledge? Is this not fanaticism? The political theorist John Christian Laursen (2012) has provocatively argued that “sometimes the most virulent anti-­fanatics are so precisely because they are closest to fanatics in some way, and (perhaps subconsciously) sensitive to their own vulnerability to the charge” (178). Is, as Laursen argues, Kant himself guilty of being such a “fanatical anti-­fanatic”? In fact, it seems not to be the case. On careful reflection, it seems that Kant was onto something when he charted the realm of the fanatic—the realm of the supersensible. The proper domain of the fanatic seems to be, to use Norman Cohn’s phrase, “revolutionary eschatology,” a concern with the supersensible and transcendent, whether in heaven or history. This is the type of fervor characteristic of the Bacchantes as they tore their victims limb from limb in religious ecstasy, the medieval millenarians as they prayed for the realization of the destruction prophesized in the Book of Revelation, the Jacobins who created a new man through terror, and, indeed, the contemporary Islamist as he murders in hopes of creating a global caliphate. Therefore, throughout its history, the chief characteristic of fanaticism has been its concern with the highest goods and ultimate ends. This was clearly understood by Kant who, as Rachel Zuckert (2010) reminds us, saw the main hallmark of fanaticism as being “a wrong relation to the supersensible” (297). In our own common contemporary parlance, the terms enthusiasm and fanaticism have undergone so much conceptual “stretching” as to not necessarily possess religious, philosophical, or political meaning at all. When used in their most extended senses—for example, to say that someone is a baseball

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fan or soccer enthusiast—these terms are merely shells, carrying little of the former meaning with which they were once imbued. However, for Kant, the concepts of fanaticism and enthusiasm imply much more than merely an extremism in thinking or behavior. Schwärmerei means claiming to know something that cannot be known due to the nature and limits of human cognition while also moving beyond disinterestedness and desiring to take some action or enact some end based on this epistemological error. Kant’s understanding, therefore, exhibits important differences from common contemporary understandings of fanaticism as “an aggressive and especially strong passion,” in that he conceptualizes fanaticism as more than just extremism (Conze and Reinhart 1975: 303). For Kant, it seems, one can only be a fanatic if one makes a knowledge claim about the unknowable, the supersensible. It seems, therefore, that one can, according to Kant, and contrary to our commonplace understanding today, hold “an aggressive and especially strong passion” about an issue of human cognition and not be a fanatic. The domain of enthusiasm-­fanaticism in the thinking of Kant seems only relevant in relation to objects and thought beyond the bounds of reason, an important and unique distinction marking a stark difference between Kantian and contemporary understandings of political thought.

Enthusiasm: A Delusion of Sense Not only is Kant’s work useful for understanding the concept of fanaticism— especially in its more modern political mode—but it is also notable for his attempts to salvage a concept of enthusiasm as a moral and almost laudable combination of affect and politics. While discussing fanaticism in his third Critique, Kant also embarks on a lengthy discussion of enthusiasm, rejecting the way many of his contemporaries treated these two concepts as synonyms and taking great pains to distinguish them. As we will see, while rejecting fanaticism as a dangerous delusion of reason and though wary of enthusiasm in general, Kant ultimately sees enthusiasm as a way to constructively marry affect and politics. During a long discussion on the sublime—that feeling of awe or wonder one gets primarily when viewing some impressive element of the natural world—in his third Critique, Kant writes that he would “like to dwell a little” on the issue of the sublime and its relationship, in his mind, to the moral law. The ensuing pages reveal one of Kant’s most extended engagements with

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the concept of enthusiasm. Here, Kant refers to “enthusiasm” as “good with affect” and likens enthusiasm to a sublime aesthetic experience (5:272). Like enthusiasm, Kant writes, the sublime can be understood as “a power of the mind to soar above certain obstacles of sensibility by means of moral principles, and thereby to become interesting” (5:271). Kant continues, “Enthusiasm is aesthetically sublime, because it is a stretching of the powers through ideas, which give the mind a momentum that acts far more powerfully and persistently than the impetus given by sensory representations” (5:272). Like the sublime, and unlike beauty, enthusiasm is related to the moral law (see Beiner 1983). Enthusiasm is a state of mind that combines affect with the good. Kant makes a crucial distinction in this text between affect and passion. Affects, according to Kant, “are related merely to feeling,” they are “tumultuous and unpremeditated,” and hamper “the freedom of the mind.” Passions, on the other hand, “belong to the faculty of desire”; they are “sustained and considered” with the result that the freedom of the mind is totally removed (5:272). Enthusiasm, then, is affect in conjunction with morality. Similarly, an experience of the sublime, whether mathematical or dynamic, is also related to the moral law. Defining the sublime in contradistinction to the beautiful, Kant writes, “The beautiful in nature concerns the form of the object, which consists in limitation; the sublime, by contrast, is to be found in a formless object insofar as limitlessness is represented in it, or as its instance, and yet is also thought as a totality” (5:244). Therefore, while an experience of beauty brings with it pleasure and an acknowledgment of the purposiveness of life, the sublime carries with it something else. As Kant writes, “The satisfaction in the sublime does not so much contain positive pleasure [like beauty] as it does admiration and respect” (5:245). Therefore, as Ronald Beiner (1983) observes, the sublime is ultimately ethical in nature, and related to the moral concept of respect. “In sublimity,” Beiner writes, “we project onto objects of nature the infinity of our own inner moral law. Respect for the noumenal subject is projected onto respect for sublime objects.” Thus, the sublime represents “our own transcendence of nature” and, in the final instance, “turns out to be no more than a sensuous representation of our own moral autonomy over against nature” (59). The “stretching” of the mind and our inadequacy to comprehend that which we take to be sublime—our futile efforts to cognize the limitless, formless, and infinite—result in the moral concept of respect. Kant writes, “The feeling of the inadequacy of our capacity for the attainment of an idea that is a law for us is respect” (5:275). In addition to pointing us toward the moral concept of

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respect, this feeling of mental inadequacy experienced during an encounter with the sublime produces “a feeling of displeasure from the inadequacy of the imagination in the aesthetic estimation of magnitude” but also “a pleasure that is thereby aroused at the same time from the correspondence of this very judgment of the inadequacy of the greatest sensible faculty in comparison with ideas of reason, insofar as striving for them is nevertheless a law for us” (5:257). In providing such a reminder of the moral law, despite the fact that this law cannot properly be cognized, the sublime, as Beiner notes, ultimately “pertains to respect for humanity” and is therefore a much more serious experience than that of the beautiful, which merely reminds us of the purposiveness of life. As Kant writes, “The beautiful prepares us to love something, even nature, without interest; the sublime, to esteem it, even contrary to our (sensible) experience” (5:267). Therefore, judgments of beauty can be understood as “play” while sublime experience as the conducting of “lawful business” (5:268). As Beiner notes, “The beautiful evinces the frivolousness of play; the sublime evokes the sternness of law” (60–61). Kant continues to describe enthusiasm as a sort of “pure elevating of the soul” (seelenerhebende), and not, as with fanaticism, a “visionary rapture, which is a delusion of being able to see something beyond all bounds of sensibility” (5:275). Even during this elevating and stretching of the cognitive faculties, the enthusiast does not trespass the boundaries of reason or morality. This is because this “pure elevating” contains “merely [a] negative presentation of morality,” it does not claim to cognize morality or the idea of freedom, things that cannot properly be known. Therefore, the enthusiast avoids Schwärmerei.14 A crucial difference between enthusiasm and fanaticism is how the experience of mental stretching is undergone. The enthusiast does not claim knowledge based on her experience beyond the bounds of reason; indeed, the enthusiastic experience evokes the moral law. The fanatic, on the other hand, misinterprets the experience he has in his flight of imagination and claims to know “something beyond all bounds of sensibility.” The difference is, as Kant writes, that for the enthusiast, “the imagination, although it certainly finds nothing beyond the sensible to which it can attach itself, nevertheless feels itself to be unbounded precisely because of this elimination of the limits of sensibility”; such a feeling “expands the soul” (5:274). The fanatic, on the other hand, claims that such an experience does provide knowledge beyond the supersensible, despite the fact that Kant’s Critical project precludes this. Thus, enthusiasm is merely a “delusion of sense” (Wahnsinn) according to Kant; it is an experience that compromises sensual

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experience, not a “delusion of mind” (Wahnwitz), like fanaticism, which completely compromises the cognitive faculties and destroys proper thought. Kant calls fanaticism in this passage from his Third Critique “brooding and absurd.” In contrast, he notes, “In enthusiasm, as in an affect, the imagination is unreined” (5:275). Enthusiasm allows the faculty of the imagination to rise above the sensual world—but only temporarily and only by retaining its tethers to reason. Crucially, this process does not pretend to make knowledge claims. Therefore, while enthusiasm allows an exercise of imagination to be “unreined,” the constant danger is that as the tension on the reins of reason tighten they may burst altogether. When this happens, according to Kant, the “disease” of fanaticism emerges. Before examining more closely Kant’s understanding of fanaticism, however, it will be helpful to further flesh out Kant’s conceptualization of enthusiasm by turning to his second classic text on the matter, The Conflict of the Faculties (1798), in particular the essay “An Old Question Raised Again: Is the Human Race Constantly Progressing?” Here, Kant engages directly with the French Revolution, a defining event in modern political experience, and he relates this event to the twin concepts of enthusiasm and fanaticism. In so doing, Kant provides his clearest engagement with these concepts in their political modality.

Enthusiasm and the French Revolution Having bridged this gulf between metaphysical knowledge and practical morality, Kant turns in later works, including The Conflict of the Faculties, to more practical and eminently political questions, including the nature of progress in human history. For any thinking person concerned with such a question—and writing in the 1790s no less—the French Revolution was the cataclysmic event constellating political thought of the era and therefore an event demanding a reckoning. Hannah Arendt (1982) notes that this event “played a central role” in Kant’s later work, further relaying an anecdote about how Kant “waited with great impatience every day for the newspapers” so he could follow the latest happenings in France (15). Just as David Hume had awakened Kant from his “dogmatic slumber,” so, Arendt argues, had the American and especially the French Revolution awakened him from his “political slumber” (16). Kant’s reckoning with the French Revolution is surprising. Despite his well-­known and categorical rejection of the right of

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revolution as a violation of the moral law, Kant offers a sympathetic reading of events, even invoking the concept of enthusiasm. While a complete account of Kant’s political philosophy is beyond the scope of this work, a brief excursus into his thought on the nature of political obligation, progress, and morality is necessary to understand his apparently counterintuitive interpretation of the French Revolution and its relationship to the concept of enthusiasm. According to Kant, the end of the state is not to ensure the “greatest good” or the happiness of its citizens; rather, it is to protect the rights of its citizens— namely, freedom, equality, and independence. In his 1793 essay “On the Relationship of Theory to Practice in Political Right,” Kant (1991c) explains his thinking as follows: “We are not concerned here with any happiness which the subject might expect to derive from the institutions or administration of the commonwealth, but primarily with the rights which would thereby be secured for everyone” (80). Such a conception of the end of the state places the ultimate duty of the legislator within the realm of ensuring the continued existence of the commonwealth—thus precluding the possibility of revolution. Kant maintains, “All resistance against the supreme legislative power, all incitement of the subjects to violent expressions of discontent, all defiance which breaks out into rebellion, is the greatest and most punishable crime in a commonwealth, for it destroys its very foundations” (1991c: 81). Kant’s treatment of the French Revolution is especially interesting in that, despite this categorical rejection of the right of revolution, he offers a sympathetic reading of events. As these passages suggest, the existence of a republican commonwealth is critical for Kant’s political theory and his understanding of human social progress, including his progressive, teleological view of humanity. These ideas are most clearly expressed in Kant’s essays “Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose” (1784) and “Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch” (1795). In “Universal History,” Kant (1991b) writes that the “greatest problem for the human species, the solution of which nature compels man to seek, is that of attaining a civil society which can administer justice universally” (45). Before such a “cosmopolitan system of general political security” can be achieved, however, Kant argues in “Perpetual Peace” that all existing states must adopt a republican form of government (1991b: 49; 1991d: 99). Humans experience their freedom and moral existence most fully in such a state and therefore the defense of the commonwealth is a prerequisite for humanity’s continued and future moral advancement. The safeguarding of rights and freedoms requires a state capable of providing such protection—by coercion

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if necessary. Resistance to government action would destabilize the commonwealth, according to Kant, and thereby threaten to “put an end to the only state in which men can possess rights” (1991b: 81). Given this categorical rejection of the right of resistance and revolution, Kant’s sympathetic treatment of the French Revolution is all the more deserving of close attention. In The Conflict of the Faculties, written eight years after the third Critique, Kant writes of the French Revolution: The revolution of a gifted people which we have seen unfolding in our day may succeed or miscarry; it may be filled with misery and atrocities to the point that a sensible man, were he boldly to hope to execute it successfully the second time, would never resolve to make the experiment at such cost—this revolution, I say, nonetheless finds in the hearts of all spectators (who are not engaged in this game themselves) a wishful participation that borders closely on enthusiasm [eine Theilnehmung dem Wunsche nach, die nahe an Enthusiasm grenzt], the very expression of which is fraught with danger; this sympathy, therefore, can have no other cause than a moral predisposition in the human race. (1992: 153) Notice that Kant does not endorse the French Revolution. Further, Kant does not say that the revolution is moral. In fact, in this very text he restates that revolution “is always unjust” (1992, 157). To do otherwise, as we have seen, would contradict his moral and political theory about the citizens’ duty to obey and the “irresistibility” of the law. However, Kant does invoke the concept of enthusiasm as a proxy for the type of “wishful participation” that characterizes the experience of the spectators of this event around the world. Notice that it is not, strictly speaking, the French Revolution itself which demonstrates the moral tendency of the human race, but rather the near enthusiasm of the disinterested spectators. Kant argues that it “is simply the mode of thinking of the spectators which reveals itself publicly in this game of great revolutions, and manifests such a universal yet disinterested sympathy for the players on one side against those on the other.” While the French Revolution, moving France from an aristocratic to, ultimately, a republican form of government, is not, according to Kant, morally defensible, the sympathy (bordering on enthusiasm) for this event on the part of those watching it from around Europe reveals “a moral character of humanity . . . which not only permits people to hope for progress toward the better, but is already

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itself progress” as it reveals movement in accordance with the moral law— namely, that all states be republican (1992: 153). Enthusiasm is the correct concept in the Kantian lexicon here because the impartial witness to the French Revolution is, in her very sympathy for it, combining this feeling (“affect”) with “the good,” that is, the moral law which impels humanity toward republican forms of government. Since only a republican form of government can be properly understood to be based on right, it is necessary that all states adopt a republican constitution in order to achieve the highest purpose of humankind—which, according to Kant, is ultimately a cosmopolitan pacific federation. This is the ultimate arc of the human species, according to Kant, and an examination of history and—in the case of the French Revolution—current events can illuminate such a trend. Even though, according to Kantian morality, the French Revolution (or any revolution) is impermissible, Kant identifies a “moral cause” responsible for inspiring enthusiasm in the spectators of this event precisely insofar as it corresponds to this understanding of ineluctable human progress. The advance of republicanism and the concomitant principles of freedom and equality, the decline of the incidence of offensive wars, the realization of international and ultimately supranational bonds of justice—this, according to Kant, is the highest purpose of humanity and the near enthusiasm spectators experience for the French Revolution provides a sign for this trend and humanity’s continued fidelity to it. With the move from the more abstract realm of judgments of taste to the consideration of the life-­and-­death situation of revolution, it is not surprising that Kant’s remarks here on enthusiasm contain more than a healthy dose of qualification. As should already be clear, Kant does approve of the near enthusiasm spectators feel for the French Revolution. Indeed, he writes that the very experience of such enthusiasm is “itself progress” and demonstrates “passionate participation in the good” (1992: 153, 155). However, Kant is quick to maintain that enthusiasm is “not to be wholly esteemed, since affect as such deserves censure” (155).15 It seems that when the matter under consideration is no longer aesthetic judgment but revolution, Kant has less patience for affect and the flights of fancy it contains. Yet it still seems from the foregoing discussion that Kant does incontestably sympathize with and praise enthusiasm in this case. Here, Kant recognizes “genuine enthusiasm (der wahrer Enthusiasm),” which, as opposed to false enthusiasm, “always moves only toward what is ideal and, indeed, to what is purely moral, such as the concept of right, and it cannot be grafted onto self-­interest” (1992: 155). From

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such an explication, we can understand fanaticism as akin to a degenerate form of enthusiasm—a form that is partisan and detached from the moral law, a form of enthusiasm moved by passion, not affect.

Kant’s Political Judgment as an Antidote to Fanaticism Kant’s oeuvre—especially his Critique of the Power of Judgment (1790) and The Conflict of the Faculties (1798)—does not just contain an incisive account of fanaticism, as well as a corresponding attempt to salvage a more positive and noble understanding of enthusiasm. As is well known, thanks to the work of Hannah Arendt, these two works also gesture toward a form of political judgment that leaves room for affect and enthusiasm while avoiding the trap of fanaticism. Arendt argues, [Kant] expounds two political philosophies which differ sharply from one another—the first being that which is generally accepted as such in his Critique of Practical Reason and the second that contained in his Critique of [the Power of] Judgement. That the first part of the latter is, in reality, a political philosophy is a fact that is seldom mentioned in works on Kant. . . . In the Critique of [the Power of] Judgement freedom is portrayed as a predicate of the power of imagination and not of the will, and the power of imagination is linked most closely with that wider manner of thinking which is political thinking par excellence, because it enables us to ‘put ourselves in the minds of other men.’ (quoted in Beiner 1983: 14) Arendt powerfully argues that, in Kant’s understanding of aesthetic judgments—that is, judgments about beauty—there exists a form of judgment that is immediately relevant to political life and the type of judgment needed in this domain. Further, Arendt shows that Kant deploys this new form of political judgment in his discussion of the French Revolution in The Conflict of the Faculties. This form of judgment allows for the existence of a type of political judgment and agreement that is both universally valid and also avoids the errors associated with fanaticism. Kant defines judgment as “a faculty for subsuming the particular under the general”—that is, what Kant calls a “determining judgment”—but also, a faculty for “finding the general for the particular”—this latter form, Kant

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calls a “reflecting judgment” (20:210). For Kant, aesthetic judgments, specifically the determination of what is beautiful, are of this latter sort, reflecting judgments. Reason is not at work in such judgments; indeed, there are no prescriptions or rules to follow at all—rather, the object is represented to the faculty of imagination and this process either produces pleasure or displeasure. This judgment that something is beautiful produces a pleasure at the contemplation of this object represented by the imagination (5:203). On describing the unique nature of aesthetic judgments, as opposed to determinate judgments, Hannah Arendt (1982) provides the following example: “If you say, ‘What a beautiful rose!’ you do not arrive at this judgement by first saying, ‘All roses are beautiful, this flower is a rose, hence this rose is beautiful’” (13). Such a judgment has no recourse to a formula of what is beautiful; rather, this aesthetic judgment relies only on the pleasure or displeasure produced in the contemplation of the object in question. While the adage “to each his own” applies well enough for Kant in the sphere of the “agreeable,” where one person may like this or that color, this or that meal—anything from which a person feels gratification and therefore entwines interest and desire—beauty is altogether different (5:209–213). Experiences of beauty, according to Kant, are purely “contemplative” and are “indifferent with regard to the existence of the object” (5:209). Beauty, apart from concepts, interests, or desires, is what inspires a feeling of pleasure emerging from the free play of the cognitive faculties. Insofar as cognitively normal individuals are endowed with cognitive faculties that are similar and function in the same way, judgments of taste, therefore, even though they are not objective, do not inhere in the object itself, are subjectively experienced the same way by everyone, and are therefore normative for everyone. This normative element inherent in judgments of taste has clear implications for Kant’s understanding of other types of normative judgments. The Kantian dichotomy between “agreeableness” and “taste” introduces the difference between judgments that are private and gratifying, such as those of agreeableness, and judgments that are “inter-­subjectively valid,” like judgments of beauty. One can potentially understand fanaticism, at least in part, as missing such a distinction. That is, the fanatic makes judgments (based on mistaken knowledge claims) and makes the mistaken claim that these personal judgments are valid for everyone, which in this case violates Kant’s moral law. Such a mistaken understanding of theoretical judgments can have dangerous practical implications. Crucially, however, even though this aesthetic judgment of the beautiful is entirely subjective and takes places entirely within the cognitive faculties of

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a given individual, the determination it produces contains a universal validity. Kant calls this a “subjectively universal validity,” that is, as Kant writes, “if [someone] pronounces that something is beautiful, then he expects the very same satisfaction of others; he judges not merely for himself, but for everyone” (5:215, 5:213). That is, even though such judgments are entirely subjective, they involve the subject and not the object per se; they still occur as if they were objective. At the same time, these types of judgments are not determinate judgments; they do not occur by recourse to a set of rules or concepts. Such subjective universal validity is possible, according to Kant, because all humans are presumed to be endowed with “common sense” (sensus communis) (5:293). The recognition of such a universal component to judgments of beauty means that these judgments are not parochial and private, but rather public judgments that are universally communicable expressly because of this communal sense. Because reflecting judgments attempt to arrive at the general by means of the particular, there are no a priori rules or roadmaps available to aid in the act of judging. Therefore, in order for one to make a proper reflecting judgment that ought to be universally binding, Kant sets out a robust set of criteria. Chiefly, reflecting judgments depend on Kant’s understanding of “communal sense” (sensus communis), which takes the form of “a faculty for judging that in its reflection takes account (a priori) of everyone else’s way of representing in thought, in order as it were to hold its judgment up to human reason as a whole and thereby avoid the illusion which, from subjective private conditions that could easily be held to be objective, would have a detrimental influence on the judgment” (5:293). In making reflecting judgments, therefore, one needs to “think for oneself,” that is, to be unprejudiced. One must also “think in the position of everyone else,” to be what Kant calls “broad-­ minded.” Finally, one must also always “think in accord with oneself,” that is, be consistent in thought (5:294). These judgments must also be disinterested; there can be “no interest for its determining ground.” These judgments must be “pure”; they cannot aspire to be universally valid if they are prejudiced or biased. “Taste is always still barbaric,” Kant writes, “when it needs the addition of charms and emotions for satisfaction, let alone if it makes these into the standard for its approval” (5:223). Rather, Kant maintains, we “must take it, as we see it” (5:270). These judgments are also inherently public, as Kant writes; like politics, the “beautiful interests empirically only in society,” and therefore judgments about beauty (and politics) must be universally communicable (5:296–297).16 Judgments of taste necessarily take place in public, as art is a

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social product that necessitates spectatorship. Kant maintains, “For himself alone a human being abandoned on a desert island would not adorn either his hut or himself . . . rather, only in society does it occur to him to be not merely a human being but also, in his own way, a refined human being” (5:297). Thus, art objects necessarily involve two parties: the “genius” who creates it, as well as the spectator who judges it. The spectator-­critic is needed because the artist cannot judge her own work: she lacks the ability to be disinterested in it; she lacks the proper distance. Thus, the public sphere in which art is created and judged is populated by both the genius artists who make art, as well as the spectator-­critics who judge it. Such is also the case in politics, the act of living together in community with agreed upon laws. One should already be able to intuit how Kant’s understanding of aesthetic judgments, as well as the symbiotic relationship between artist and spectator, naturally lends itself to an understanding of the political world. If one seeks a form of political judgment that avoids, on the one hand, adherence to a preordained dogma against which all political decisions are made, while, on the other hand, preserves standards of validity and avoids a descent into total relativism, a mode of judgment that is both subjective yet also universally valid is appealing. As well, one can easily reinterpret Kant’s categories of genius and spectator as political actor and citizen, thus opening up a domain of spectatorship and “critiquing,” which is civic participation and law/norm formation in the public sphere. Indeed, this is precisely the reinterpretation of Kant’s third Critique that Arendt and others bring to their understanding of politics and political judgment. In order to facilitate such a transition, these theorists take recourse to Kant’s remarks on the political engagement of spectators observing the French Revolution, which we have already encountered in The Conflict of the Faculties. In order to understand the transition of Kant’s reflecting judgments from aesthetic to political judgment, it will be necessary to briefly revisit this text with this new understanding in mind. The spectators to the French Revolution, Kant writes, manifest “a universal yet disinterested sympathy,” which is also “public,” and favors “the players on one side against those on the other” (1992: 153). Instead of judging a natural feature or a work of art, these spectators are making a uniquely political reflecting judgment on this major political issue, a political judgment that bears all the hallmarks of a reflecting aesthetic judgment. The spectators to the French Revolution, according to Kant, are each making their own judgment in a disinterested way; that is, they are not participants in this drama themselves and thus they have the necessary distance with which to make an

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unbiased judgment. They are also making a judgment that they understand to be universal—Kant argues that “the hearts of all spectators . . . [contain] a wishful participation.” This judgment, like aesthetic judgments of beauty, is also public, while also favoring one side over the other. As we have already seen, it is not the French Revolution itself that has any ultimate moral or political meaning for Kant—he says, it “may succeed or miscarry”—but rather this act of judging on behalf of the spectators to this event. In revealing a “sympathy” and a “wishful participation which borders closely on enthusiasm,” the reflecting judgment of the spectators, Kant believes, reveals an underlying “moral predisposition in the human race” (1992: 153). What the spectators ultimately sympathize with—nearly to the point of enthusiasm—is the moral arc revealed by the French Revolution, the transition toward universal republican government and ultimate human sociability. Arendt (1982) glosses Kant on this point: “The spectator, because he is not involved, can perceive this design of providence or nature, which is hidden from the actor” (52). Further, Kant invokes the concept of enthusiasm for this particular instance of judging because, as we have seen, enthusiasm is a moral concept in accord with the moral law. This judgment of the spectators observing the French Revolution—their sympathy for the revolutionaries—also references the moral law and, even further, reveals an underlying moral predisposition in human nature, or at least so Kant believes. As Arendt is quick to caution, this judgment on the part of the spectators yields “no practical consequence for action,” yet it reveals a hope in the implacable nature of progress (53). Many scholars have been inspired by this “hidden” political theory lurking in Kant’s work. John Rawls (1971) and Jürgen Habermas (1984, 1987) have famously attempted to build their broad theories of political activity atop a Kantian foundation of political judgment undertaken by deliberating, transcendental, “broad-­ minded” subjects. Beiner (1983) summarizes such an approach in a way that is equally fitting to Rawls or Habermas: “The transcendental subject is a universal subject” and “the only way for [him] to win a rationally compelling basis for [his] principles of judgement is by ascending to a universal standpoint detached from all contingent empirical conditions” (31). Only such an “original position” (Rawls 1971) or “ideal speech situation” (Habermas 1984) can yield political agreement—these theorists maintain— that has the proper legitimacy and authority to be considered universally valid. Another recent interpretation of Kant’s understanding of political judgment by Jeffrey Lomonaco (2005) returns to Kant’s remarks on the spectators to the French Revolution in The Conflict of the Faculties and, with a few

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necessary tweaks, arrives at what he argues is a “conception of citizenship as political agency in a representative democracy” that closely reflects “the rough-­and-­tumble, part-­time character of politics” characteristic of modern democracies (393). Lomonaco sees a remarkably contemporary and familiar understanding of politics at work on the part of Kant’s spectators. “What these citizens do,” he writes, “is react and respond to the great political spectacle and, affectively inspired by a vision of the good—often involving claims about what democracy demands—that has no objective guarantee, they make claims as to the direction in which political and moral improvement lie” (395). Such claims are universally valid because, as Lomonaco observes, they “seek and fully expect the agreement of everyone else, while the citizens who make such claims never for an instant actually assume that all others will, in fact, agree” (395). Like Kant’s spectators, the political deliberation of contemporary democratic citizens is “irreducibly partial and affective, an expression of partisan sympathies and enthusiasm, and yet”—because they are not direct political actors themselves—“are simultaneously unselfish and universal” (410). Furthermore, Kant’s concept of enthusiasm enters here insofar as the deliberation of democratic citizens puts forward multiple views of how to improve their democracy and deepen their republican commitments, all revealing, as Kant would say, a moral predisposition and a long arc of the moral law. Thus, in Lomonaco’s view, democratic citizens produce various “enthusiastic” claims about the nature of the good in their societies and, as the product of a process of reflecting judgment, they believe everyone ought to assent to their view, even as they fully acknowledge that this will not be the case. Lomonaco’s provocative rereading of Kant’s political theory as something eminently familiar to contemporary democratic citizens reveals the contemporary relevance of a Kantian mode of political judgment that avoids total relativism while also avoiding fanaticism. While one need not accept Kant’s hidden political theory as entirely applicable to contemporary complex societies, it shows one way forward toward a way of doing politics that avoids fanaticism.17 The relationship between enthusiasm and fanaticism is complex. At some points, enthusiasm was understood as distinct from fanaticism, as something more noble and less dangerous and violent. For many centuries in the premodern era, however, this distinction disappeared and the two concepts were treated synonymously. Kant’s contribution to this debate is so important precisely because he is one of the leading thinkers in the modern age who sought to reopen this space between enthusiasm and fanaticism, to distinguish these concepts, and, in so doing, find a proper balance between affect and

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reason, and thus allow for a form of politics that avoids both bloodless technocracy and fanaticism. Kant also offers a unique understanding of fanaticism, allowing us to distinguish it from mere extremism by showing that its proper domain lies beyond reason in the supersensible. Properly speaking, the fanatic, then, is not merely an extremist in this or that pursuit, but someone who imbues her passions with transcendental importance and tries to live in the supersensible realm. Finally, in addition to providing robust reconceptualizations of enthusiasm and fanaticism—and distinguishing the two—Kant also offers an antidote to political fanaticism within his “hidden” view of political judgment, pointing the way toward a politics with a proper dose of affect without transgressing the bounds of reason.

CHAPTER 4

Edmund Burke’s Critique of the “Philosophical Fanatics” Behind the French Revolution

The convulsions of a civilized state usually compose the most instructive and most interesting part of its history. —David Hume (1983a [1778]: 3) They who have made but superficial studies in the Natural History of the human mind, have been taught to look on religious opinions as the only cause of enthusiastick zeal, and sectarian propagation. But there is no doctrine whatever, on which men can warm, that is not capable of the very same effect. The social nature of man impels him to propagate his principles. . . . The passions give zeal and vehemence. —Edmund Burke (1999a [1796]: 170)

If Immanuel Kant can be understood to provide an epistemological and deontological critique of fanaticism—that is, a critique based on an understanding of the limits of human cognition as well as a richly constructed moral framework—his English contemporary Edmund Burke takes a decidedly different tack. One of the fiercest critics of the French Revolution—an event that Kant actually came very close to praising—Burke understood this event as the apogee of a new type of fanaticism—political fanaticism—and launched an all-­out rhetorical offensive against it. Unlike Kant, however, Burke’s critique is based on a deep appreciation of context and contingency, not morality and abstract theory. What was, for Kant, an unmistakable sign of human

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progress, the French Revolution and the broad European and British praise it garnered was a clear sign for Burke of exactly the opposite—a new form of fanaticism menacing freedoms well beyond the borders of France. Despite their radically different interpretations of the French Revolution, however, both Immanuel Kant and Edmund Burke provide two of the strongest critiques of modern political fanaticism, while also uncovering different facets of this complex phenomenon. Taken together, despite—or even because of— their differences, these two thinkers’ examinations of fanaticism complement each other and can greatly enrich our understanding of this concept. As we saw in the previous chapter, Kant’s critique of fanaticism emerged primarily from his long-­standing project of developing a comprehensive moral system within a properly chastened understanding of reason. Exploring the boundaries of human reason would naturally lead one to face what stood beyond those boundaries—fanaticism. In Kant’s exploration of fanaticism, then, the events of the French Revolution demonstrated a cast of mind on the part of global spectators that Kant took to point toward inevitable human progress. He therefore interpreted this world-­historical event in light of the related concept of enthusiasm, which he took great pains to reconceptualize as a positive form of political and moral affect, while distancing it from a type of political behavior that could overstep the bounds into fanaticism. This approach from theory to practice, applying comprehensive moral systems developed in a study of real-­world events when they emerge on the scene, is far from the approach adopted by Burke. Indeed, while producing important philosophical work in domains as disparate as aesthetics and politics, Burke, a statesman for most of his adult life, was perhaps first and foremost a political actor himself. As such, Burke always displayed a distaste for abstract theorizing, preferring an approach to politics where context and tradition were front and center. Yet, despite their many significant differences, Kant and Burke yield understandings of fanaticism that complement each other and move us closer to a more unified conceptualization of political fanaticism. As well, while Kant articulates a form of political judgment that can serve as an antidote to fanaticism, Burke also points the way to a politics that avoids fanaticism—moderation. While Buke often failed in his own storied political life to exemplify this virtue, his thought nonetheless presents both a stinging critique of fanaticism and an impressive defense of moderation. Born in Ireland in 1729 to a Catholic mother and Anglican father, Burke entered the House of Commons in 1765 as the chief member of the Whig

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faction, led by his friend and mentor the Marquis of Rockingham. Thus began Burke’s long political career—marked along the way by innumerable noteworthy speeches in which Burke displayed the full range of his impressive rhetorical skills. It was the French Revolution, however, and, much to Burke’s horror, the less than hostile reaction it received from the majority of his Whig comrades, that brought Burke’s career in politics crashing down from its high peaks. Indeed, Burke’s denunciation of the Revolution in France, bringing him into alliance with the Tories, split the Whig Party, many of whose members supported the Revolution. So important was this issue for Burke, and so fractious for his party, that his implacable opposition to the Revolution finally forced Burke’s retirement from politics in 1794 after he was expelled from the party and subjected to widespread ridicule by detractors both at home and abroad. Indeed, the events in France occupied the near-­exclusive focus of the final years of Burke’s political life, inspiring a series of damning texts and speeches denouncing the Revolution and warning anyone who would listen about the grave dangers it portended for England and Europe more broadly. However, the true import of Burke’s words is to be found not so much in the actual denunciation of the French Revolution—which he did, in fact, despise—but in the analysis and rejection of the particular mindset and political ethos behind it, which Burke understood as fanaticism. The English context of Burke’s observation of the events unfolding in France is crucial to understanding his thinking on the matter. Specifically, he was observing the turmoil in France in the long shadow of two revolutions in Britain, the Civil War (1642–49), which pitted Parliament against the king, and the “Glorious Revolution” (1688–90), which, at least in Burke’s more conservative estimation, restored the justly famous British mixed constitution, the delicate balance that existed between the estates. “The Revolution [of 1688–1690],” Burke (1987) argues, “was made to preserve our ancient, indisputable laws and liberties and that ancient constitution of government which is our only security for law and liberty” (27). The “revolutions” were actually restorations, in Burke’s view, restoring the freedom and form of government necessary for it that was under threat.1 What was happening in France was another thing, Burke thought. Whereas, as Ian Hampsher-­ Monk (2005) notes, the slightly earlier “American Revolution provoked a political reform debate in Britain,” a debate that, “for the most part, focused on legislative, parliamentary and taxation reform,” the events unfolding in France concerned immeasurably broader questions, a fact that was not lost on British observers (4). Freedom—and rightly understood—was at the heart of the American

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colonists’ grievances with Britain, according to Burke. A “love of Freedom,” Burke (1999b) argued before Parliament, “is the predominating feature which marks and distinguishes” the American people; a “fierce spirit of Liberty” prevails in America. Further, Burke argued that this form of liberty was “Liberty according to English ideas, and on English principles. Abstract Liberty, like other mere abstractions, is not to be found” (237).2 As Hampsher-­Monk (2005) notes, the French Revolution concerned “a single society seeking to reconstitute itself on the basis of new norms and principles,” a form of revolution which—at least in the eyes of Burke—differed markedly from earlier “revolutions” in Britain and America (5). Whereas the other revolutions mentioned could more accurately, in Burke’s eyes, be understood as restorations— restorations of freedom against absolutism—the Revolution in France was something different, an attempt to create a society de novo. And “the very idea of the fabrication of a new government,” Burke (1987) argues, “is enough to fill us with disgust and horror” (27). From the very earliest stirrings of the Revolution, Burke (1987) claimed to observe a singular trend—as he writes, “the cause of all was plain from the beginning” (35). Indeed, the very creation of the National Assembly, the act led by Abbé Sieyes and undertaken by fiat of the Third Estate on June 17, 1789, was, for Burke, tantamount to the murder of French society. This was the “unforced choice” that replaced a mixed regime of aristocracy, clergy, and property owners with a society reimagined as only legitimate within the body of “the people” of the Third Estate. The declaration that created this body and started the Revolution reads in part, “It [the National Assembly] and it alone, may interpret and present the general will of the nation.” With such a new understanding of French society and the locus of political power, the resolution continues: “Accordingly, the Assembly declares that the common work of national restoration can and must begin immediately by the deputies present, and they must pursue it without interruption or hindrance” (quoted in Stewart 1951: 87). This act of self-­creation and redefinition of the French polity was cemented by the so-­called “Tennis Court Oath” three days later, where the new deputies of the assembly dedicated themselves to the creation of a new French constitution. The following month the Bastille was stormed and hostilities were underway. The events of the 1789—the creation of the National Assembly, the creation of a National Guard, the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen, the abolition of hereditary nobility and titles, and the storming of the Bastille, among other early events of the Revolution—convinced Burke that

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a new political force was at work in France. These several developments all pursuing a common aim convinced Burke (1992b) that, as he wrote at the time, “a theory concerning government may become as much a cause of fanaticism as a dogma in religion” (italics original). Whether in matters of theology or politics, Burke maintained, “When men are thoroughly possessed with that zeal, it is difficult to calculate its force. . . . There is a boundary to men’s passions when they act from feeling; none when they are under the influence of imagination” (182). For Burke, the ideas animating the French Revolution were new and dangerous, a form of fanaticism that had heretofore only been on display in religious matters. Thus, Jon Mee (2004) notes, “for conservatives such as Edmund Burke, both religious millenarianism and political Utopianism were equally guilty of ‘enthusiasm’” (538).3 Nowhere is Burke’s political wisdom more apparent than in perhaps his most famous text—and certainly his most famous treatment of the French Revolution—his 1790 Reflections on the Revolution in France.4 Alternately hailed as “a classic of English conservatism” by a modern commentator and “rhapsodies in which there is much to admire, and nothing to agree with” by Burke’s contemporary Prime Minister William Pitt, this work, though met with near universal condemnation and even bafflement from Burke’s Whig comrades, has nonetheless since entered the canon of great works in Western political thought (Pocock 1987: vii; quoted in Canavan 1999a: xix).5 Despite the great diversity in reception since Burke penned this text—and despite the great personal and political toll it exacted on him—the importance of it as a near complete distillation of Burke’s political views can hardly be overstated. As George Sabine (1937) states, “It was the Revolution in France that forced [Burke], much against his will, to state in general terms the principles upon which he had been accustomed to act” (611). Whether or not this was in fact the case—that is, whether Burke’s criticism of the French Revolution can be properly understood as containing within it a political-­philosophical argument against what we will call “fanaticism” is not without its doubters, however. Indeed, much of the debate about Burke’s thinking concerning the French Revolution has more to do with disagreement concerning how to understand Burke himself, whether as political philosopher, politician, both, or something else entirely. One school of thought holds that “Edmund Burke was not a philosopher at all.” Therefore, in order to properly understand Burke’s political interventions, including those related to the French Revolution, one needs to recognize that “Burke’s thought was not systematic” (O’Gorman 1973: 11). Rather, the Burke

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scholar Frank O’Gorman (1973) maintains, “it was articulated as a series of responses to a set of political issues.” This means that Burke “developed his ideas whenever the occasion required him to do so, but at no time did he outline a detailed and systematic political philosophy” (11–13).6 This view holds that Burke was first and foremost a political animal, not a political philosopher; Burke was a “practitioner, not [a] theorist” (Macpherson 1980: 14–16). In keeping with this understanding, many scholars of Burke hold that he has nothing meaningful to say about revolution. For example, John Plamenatz (1963) maintains, “Burke’s conception of society, as a well-­integrated whole with long-­established institutions supported by venerable prejudices, made it impossible for him to give a convincing explanation of anarchy and revolution” (362).7 In his characterization of Burke’s Reflections, Richard Bourke (2015) argues that Burke “was presenting a defense of a particular political order, as anyone might be when confronted with a fundamental challenge to what seemed to them necessary to preserve” (679). While there is certainly some truth to this understanding of Burke’s denunciation of the French Revolution, it is far from the whole picture. In his opposition to the Revolution, Burke was certainly providing a defense of the established European order, of tradition, and property, but he was primarily arguing against a new political ethos that he understood to be emerging in France and threatening an entire way of life—namely, fanaticism. In some ways these positions are two sides of the same coin; however, the primary thrust of Burke’s arguments and concerns was to first oppose what was happening in France—that is, the unleashing of a new ethos of political fanaticism—and only then to defend a politics of moderation, including a reliance on tradition and prescription, with British constitutionalism as a model. With this understanding in mind—that in his writing on the French Revolution Burke is first and foremost critiquing the ethos of political fanaticism as expressed, in his mind, in the events in France—we can begin to disentangle Burke’s critique of fanaticism from the empirical reality of the French Revolution. That is, to at least some extent, we can separate Burke’s insights into fanaticism from the proximate cause that impelled them, the French Revolution, and thus add greatly to our understanding of the concept of political fanaticism. Indeed, many aspects of Burke’s characterization of the events of the French Revolution might arouse our skepticism, and many of his political views, including his defense of monarchy and inequality, might properly arouse our opposition. I want to argue, however, that to focus on these particularities, as is often done in academic treatments of Burke, is to miss a

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strain of argument running throughout these texts that is of enduring value— Burke’s analysis and critique of fanaticism. Whether we agree or disagree with Burke’s characterization of the French Revolution is beside the point here. What I want to draw out is Burke’s understanding of the intellectual forces at work behind the particularities of the French Revolution, the mindset and ideas that he saw as animating these events. We need not accept all of Burke’s political views, nor even his historical understanding of the French Revolution, to engage with and learn from his powerful critique of fanaticism in politics, an approach Burke characterized as an intellectualization of politics based on boundless abstract theory attempting to perfect society with little regard for means or consequences.8

Burke’s Critique of Fanaticism As revealed in the pages of Burke’s writings against this “monstrous tragicomic scene,” Burke understood fanaticism as an unshakable belief and confidence in abstract theory, and as a delusional conviction that humanity can be bent to accommodate the dictates of these all-­encompassing political theories, by force if necessary. These theories are without limits: they can explain and affect every aspect of human life, both individual and collective. The fanatic, according to Burke, believes that society is corrupted and therefore must and can be remade whole cloth. His mission is to “perfect” society and create a race of “new men,” a goal pursued by the fanatic with a stridency previously only seen in religious crusades. Regrettably, however, Burke’s engagement with the concept of fanaticism has largely been ignored by scholars concerned with understanding his political thought. Notable exceptions to this oversight include J. G. A. Pocock (1992), who, while generally skeptical of Burke’s merit as a political theorist or theorist of revolution, does credit Burke with redefining “enthusiasm,” along with other “defenders of religious and social structure in eighteenth-­ century Britain” (26). According to Pocock, Burke was a conceptual entrepreneur, seeking to transplant the concept of enthusiasm from its confessional domain and refashion it as a political concept, defining it as “any attempt to establish the reasoning mind’s ascendancy over the contexts in which it reasoned” (26). Pocock’s understanding of Burke’s critique of fanaticism at work in the French Revolution holds that, with the subversion of the intermediaries and institutions that make society intelligible (tradition, classes, property,

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moral sentiments, the church), “ideas flourish unchecked and become fantasies; enthusiasts combine and become factions capable of seizing the power of states. Fanaticism—and the fanaticism of anti-­fanaticism which corrupts the moderate in power—becomes politically, where formerly it was religiously, important” (30–31). In a similar vein, Stephen K. White (1994) argues that Burke’s Reflections attempts to link the champions of the French Revolution, including Burke’s compatriot Richard Price, to “the heirs to that dangerous and familiar disease of religious fanaticism or ‘enthusiasm’” (73). As well, Anthony La Vopa (1998) writes of the effect Burke’s Reflections had on the German thinker Friedrich Gentz, including its “subtle process of adaptation—the recasting of a weapon of Protestant polemic to meet the needs of an emerging arena of modern ideological contestation” (103). Finally, Jon Mee (2003) understands Burke, especially in his Reflections, as recasting “enthusiasm”—previously, as we saw in Chapter 2 of this work, thought of as a purely religious phenomenon—as “hav[ing] nothing to do with religion as such,” and rather using it to “produce a monstrous image of revolutionary zeal” (85). However, despite this recognition of Burke’s conceptual innovativeness, most of these treatments still contend that Burke had nothing analytically useful to say about fanaticism or revolution, maintaining instead that his invocation of the term was little more than rhetorical sophistry. Even exciting recent scholarship from Ross Carroll (2013, 2014) stops short of delving into Burke’s invocation of the concept of fanaticism, preferring instead to investigate Burke’s critique of a “new atheistic enthusiasm” (2014: 338).9 As Chapter 2 of this work made clear, enthusiasm and fanaticism are two distinct—though related—concepts. In failing to recognize and explore Burke’s purposeful invocation of the latter, scholars have missed an important part of his argument about the dangers of a certain type of political engagement. In his writings on the French Revolution, Burke is clearly utilizing the concept of fanaticism as well as its associated terminology. Not only does Burke use the word fanaticism and its derivatives in a consistent and purposeful manner (with a consistency, for example, conspicuously lacking in his usage of the term enthusiasm) but his treatment of this now political phenomenon also comports well with the history of how this concept was understood and used up to this moment. When he invokes the concept of fanaticism, Burke is describing a mindset, an approach to politics that carries with it certain ways of understanding the world and one’s place in it. The concept is used in a consistent manner and is described with certain definable attributes and as emerging from certain causes and having certain effects.

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Thus, Burke’s use of this concept is too careful for it not to be purposeful and it is too robustly defined and utilized for it not to be analytically meaningful. Burke’s Reflections and other criticisms of the unfolding situation in France can be best understood, therefore, not as a disjointed set of polemics consisting of wild and blind hostility, as some have seen them, but rather, as a powerful and coherent critique of a particular type of political ethos. Michael Freeman (1980) calls this critique Burke’s critique of “radicalism.” However, radicalism is not the term—or concept—that confronts the reader over and over again in Burke’s commentary on the Revolution. Rather, the concept Burke purposively employs is fanaticism. As we saw in Chapter 2, this concept has a long and varied history and had already begun to be employed with regard to political matters, including in reference to (at least by way of the related concept of enthusiasm) the French Revolution. In his Reflections, Burke (1987) uses this concept again and again to refer to the intellectual passions driving the Revolution, calling it a “spirit of fanaticism” (135). Burke talks of the intellectual leaders of the Revolution as having “a certain inward fanatical assurance and illumination upon all subjects,” a “fanatical confidence” that encouraged them to engage in their efforts to a “fanatical degree” (190, 205, 97). He writes that they are possessed by “a violent and malignant zeal, of a kind hitherto unknown in the world,” with the result of “render[ing] their whole conversation . . . perfectly disgusting” (97– 98). These people are “demagogues,” Burke argues, overtaken by passions and “errors and excesses of enthusiasm” (140). Like the fanatics before them all the way back to the Bacchantes, it is “rage and frenzy” that animate the French revolutionaries according to Burke, as well as their unbending and absolute confidence that they alone possess the Truth and therefore possess a duty to impose it (147). In denouncing the real existing events of the French Revolution, Burke was, in fact, denouncing far more than a series of current events; the true object of his critique was an entire fanatical approach to politics, one that was epitomized and symbolized by the events in France. As Freeman (1980) notes, “Political thinkers do not respond to situations and problems from nothing” (5); rather, they bring to bear on particular issues their own more general views, fitted however imperfectly, to the issue of the day. As we will see in this chapter, Burke’s writings on the French Revolution reveal a political-­ philosophical rejection of fanaticism, a concept he explicitly employed to understand the French Revolution. In so doing, Burke shows himself as more than a pragmatic politician responding this way or that to any given issue

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of the day and as more than a gifted rhetorician. Despite his skepticism of abstract theory, Burke’s robust and sustained critique of fanaticism—located chiefly in his writings on the French Revolution—reveals him to be a political philosopher (and opponent) of fanaticism.

The Problem of Abstract Theory A certain reluctance to understand Burke as a political philosopher is understandable on multiple fronts. First, it is, of course, true that Burke was a politician for most of his adult life, a station understood since the time of Socrates to be, if not in outright opposition to, then at least in tension with, political philosophy. Even more acutely, Burke’s understanding of politics—including his rejection of fanaticism—contains within it a deep skepticism of what he frequently calls “abstract theory.” While no less strident in his condemnation of fanaticism, Burke’s attack is from the opposite position as that of Kant. While, as we saw, Kant’s rejection of fanaticism was based on epistemic and deontological grounds, Burke’s conception of politics, perhaps due in no small measure to his experiences as a politician, takes context and circumstance to be crucial elements in a proper understanding of politics. Indeed, such a defense of context over abstraction is among the very first principles Burke (1987) lays out in his Reflections. Burke writes, “I cannot stand forward and give praise or blame to anything which relates to human actions, and human concerns, on a simple view of the object, as it stands stripped of every relation, in all the nakedness and solitude of metaphysical abstraction. Circumstances (which with some gentlemen pass for nothing) give in reality to every political principle its distinguishing color and discriminating effect” (7). According to Burke, politics deals not with matters of formal logic, covering laws, or even entirely comprehensible matters, but real, existing people. Therefore, in contradistinction to one of the major claims of the Enlightenment, it is not possible to, strictly speaking, have a “science of politics” (consider, for example, that claim as laid out in Alexander Hamilton’s Federalist No. 9, “The Utility of the Union as a Safeguard Against Domestic Faction and Insurrection”). Burke (1987) maintains that “liberties and restrictions vary with times and circumstances and admit to infinite modifications, they cannot be settled upon by any abstract rule; and nothing is so foolish as to discuss them upon that prin­ciple” (53). Not only do particular places and peoples vary in such fundamental ways, according to Burke (1999c), but further, “every age has its own manners,

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and its politicks dependent upon them” (77). In serving to simplify the messy terrain of politics by erasing differences and traditions, abstraction serves also to obfuscate import particularities and realities, with dangerous consequences. Burke stresses the “many diversities amongst men” due to birth, education, profession, era, whether they live in rural or urban environs, and their relationship to property. Such diversity, Burke (1987) claims, results in the relationship of various groups of people to one another as “so many different species of animals” (162). Given this inherent diversity among individuals within the same political community, one can only imagine how diversity is brought into even greater relief when one considers its role for people living within altogether different political communities and environs. Due consideration of human diversity, according to Burke, undermines the value of grand theories to provide anything like a “science” of politics, capable of providing general covering laws to explain human behavior in the abstract, and reveals attempts to do so as little more than quixotic—and dangerous—folly. One of the chief—and most dangerous—abstractions of the early days of the Revolution, according to Burke, was the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizens, passed by the National Assembly on August 27, 1789. The “rights” proclaimed in this document in France and equally proclaimed by its partisans, including Richard Price and others affiliated with the recently formed London Revolution Society, were held by Burke (1987) to be “fictitious” (14). Rights, so important for Burke, are secure only when they are recognized as hereditary, their true source being prescription from age to age. Severing this line of succession, the only secure mode of transmission and preservation of rights according to Burke, and merely proclaiming rights as given imperils the continued existence of rights. As Hampsher-­Monk (2012b) notes, “Once this accumulated reason,” including long-­standing and traditional communal understandings of rights, “is broken, individuals are dislocated from the matrix of supportive, shared belief and become vulnerable to a range of motivational pathologies: naked self-­interest, the pursuit of—or susceptibility to—unchecked power, irrational (and, more strikingly, rationalist) ‘enthusiasm’ of all kinds” (201–202). Burke’s conception of society emphasized its precarious nature, built up over generations of accumulated reason and mores; the undesirable elements of society (which always exist) ought therefore to be reformed with the utmost care because, according to Burke, if this traditional structure of society were to be lost—as in the substitution of a hereditary conception of rights with an abstract ex nihilo conception—this wisdom of the ages would be lost forever.10 We “assert our

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liberties as an entailed inheritance,” Burke (1987) writes, “derived to us from our fore-­fathers, and to be transmitted to our posterity” (29, italics original). As this line of transmission is, for Burke, the only sure preservation of rights, it ought to be protected at all costs and kept secure from the pruning scissors of abstract theorizing. This quixotic political naivete which holds that societies can be refashioned out of whole cloth is precisely what Burke is criticizing is his fiery polemics against the French Revolution. Indeed, according to Burke, this approach to political engagement is one of the chief characteristics of the fanatic mentality. As Pocock (1987) observes, Burke “took the view that the Revolution was a destructive movement of the human intellect, aimed at the utter subversion of the codes of manners and social behaviour which had grown up in the centuries of European history,” a movement in which one of the chief protagonists was “irresponsible intellectuals” (xxxiii). Elsewhere, Pocock (1998) argues that Burke’s primary target in his anti-­Revolution writings is the novel approach to history and politics that he saw as violently instantiated in these events, namely, a claim to a “freedom of discourse to create the world unilaterally” (20). In this altogether new approach to politics, history, tradition, and context were eschewed for a total belief in and reliance on ideas, the thinking behind this approach being that these ideas could fundamentally reshape the world for the better according to any metric desired. All the moorings of society—social and cultural institutions so important to Burke—were of little consequence and should be dissolved in the acid of ideas and criticism. While the French revolutionaries and many “enlightened” sympathizers saw this as initiating a new age marching beyond the musty trappings of history, superstition, and unfounded traditions, Burke, instead, saw an approach that was fundamentally flawed and dangerous. The new understanding of politics and society informed by the so-­called Enlightenment, according to Burke, increases speculation and loose theories about political organization to the detriment of wisdom and the combined store of centuries of cumulative human reason—tradition. Rather than an increase in justice, Burke (1987) argues, “the philosophy of this enlightened age” has merely brought about a “refinement in injustice” (123). Against the “stable” and “solid ground” of tradition, property, religion, and established habits and customs, the metaphysicians of the French Revolution opened up a Pan­ dora’s Box, letting loose “the evils of inconstancy and versatility” (84). In an impassioned defense of tradition, Burke writes, “By this unprincipled facility of changing the state as often, and as much, and in as many ways as there are

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floating fancies or fashions, the whole chain of continuity of the commonwealth would be broken. No one generation could link with the other men. Men would become little better than the flies of a summer” (83). Burke’s fundamental critique of the Enlightenment, and what he saw as its operation in the French Revolution, was that it places a given individual’s reason above the “collected reason of ages” (83). This “new conquering empire of light and reason” strips away “all the pleasing illusions which made power gentle and obedience liberal, which harmonized the different shades of life.” This “decent drapery” now removed, the “defects of our naked, shivering nature” are laid bare, with a corresponding coarsening of human intercourse and manifestations of political power. Contrasting the French enlightened understanding of reason to a much-­embellished (and hopeful) English traditionalism, Burke maintains that, even “in this enlightenment age,” the British remain “generally men of untaught feelings” and that, “instead of casting away all our old prejudices, we cherish them to a very considerable degree.” One ought, Burke argues, to be “afraid to put men to live and trade each on his own private stock of reason” because “this stock in each man is small” and therefore “individuals would do better to avail themselves of the general bank and capital of nations and of ages” (76). However, despite Burke’s particular critique of reason, or perhaps more properly, a particular type or usage of reason, it would be incorrect to understand Burke’s critique of the Enlightenment and abstract theorizing as producing an irrationalist political theory. Rather, Burke’s theory holds reason to be a political virtue, but one in need of necessary aid and guidance from tradition and experience. Like Kant, Burke was wary of reason when it was loosed from any bounds and strictures, in this case, the guiding lights of tradition and moral sentiments. Reason, in cases like the French Revolution, can be perverted; it is this perverted and imperious reason that is the true target of Burke’s critique. Burke’s (1992a) is a critique of reason perverted by its use in “a braggart philosophy,” a new “enlightened” understanding of politics, of “doctrines [that] admit no limit, no qualifications” (192–193). Burke (1987) saw such a perversion of reason at work in the French Revolution, where instead of tradition and prudence, “passions instruct our reason,” with the necessary result that all moral sentiments and common sense are overturned, allowing “this method of political computation” to “justify every extent of crime” (70–71). Surely, the fact that this dogmatic and unbending form of logic is recognizably at work in the subsequent revolutionary movements of the twentieth century has borne out Burke’s observation. Stripped

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of context and tradition, untempered reason provides little succor or guidance. Relying only on “this barbarous philosophy,” Burke argues that society will have little more than “cold hearts and muddy understandings” devoid of “solid wisdom” and “destitute of all taste and elegance.” This type of reason “banishes the affections,” leaving us with “no compass to govern us” (68–69). However, just as it is not reason per se, or reason in toto, that is the true object of Burke’s critique, it is also not theory per se, or in toto, that Burke derides. Again, it is a certain type of theory, a theory without limit, which is the object of Burke’s ire. Indeed, Burke (1887) often contrasts “barren” theory with “sound” theory, arguing, I do not vilify theory and speculation: no, because that would be to vilify reason itself, Neque decipitur ratio, neque decipit unquam. No,— whenever I speak against theory, I mean always a weak, erroneous, fallacious, unfounded, or imperfect theory; and one of the ways of discovering that it is a false theory is by comparing it with practice. This is the true touchstone of all theories which regard man and the affairs of men,—Does it suit his nature in general?—does it suit his nature as modified by his habits. (97) At base, here, is an epistemological argument. How do we know what we claim to know about politics, human nature, and how people behave? Is politics, as many Enlightenment thinkers held, susceptible to the same type of scientific methods as objects in the natural world? Or, is there something unique about human beings and the ways they interact with each other? Burke held that human interaction, and thus politics, is indeed unique, and therefore not susceptible to the same kind of “scientific” analysis suitable for much of the natural world—at least not without causing great harm in the process. E. J. Payne (1999a) summarized Burke’s entire philosophy thus: “Die Politik ist keine Philosophie.” Rather, politics “is a matter of observation and of practice, and its laws are those of individual human nature enlarged. Abstract principles, like most things, have their use and their abuse: and the confusion of these has been a main difficulty to the thinking world” (23). Or, as Burke (1999c) himself explains in his 1770 essay “Thoughts on Cause of the Present Discontents”: “It is the business of the speculative philosopher to mark the proper ends of Government. It is the business of the politician, who is the philosopher in action, to find out the proper means towards those ends, and to employ them with effect” (150).

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It is when the “speculative philosopher” usurps the role of the “philosopher in action” and seeks to supplant due caution and observation with abstract theory that problems arise and fanaticism is given due aliment to flourish. When philosophy becomes imperious and intoxicating, seeking to build for itself castles in the sky at the expense of real human lives, freedom is imperiled. This is precisely how Burke understood the French Revolution: a revolution as neither necessary nor just, but rather an exercise in fanaticism.

“Braggart Philosophy” and Political Theory Without Limits Not only does the fanatical mind eschew context and particularity in favor of abstract universal theorizing but it also theorizes without limits. This type of political philosophy is imperious, seeking to affect all manner of human life. Burke writes that such philosophizing, which he sees at work in the French Revolution, produces “savage theories” that are “avowedly going to the utmost extremities.” “In their theories,” Burke (1992a) writes, “these doctrines admit no limit, no qualification whatsoever” (193). This rejection of extremism and limitless theory speaks also to Burke’s belief in moderation, even if Burke the man and orator does, on occasion, fall short of this lofty goal. This overriding concern for limits to political theorizing, for placing a boundary between the “speculative philosopher” and the politician, or “philosopher in action,” is closely linked with Burke’s fundamental critique of perfectionism. For Burke, the summum bonum is not the proper goal of a true statesman, rather, this is the goal of prophets and theologians. Such perfection is simply not achievable when the raw material is the crooked timber of mankind, and necessarily futile attempts to force its instantiation are bound to produce great destruction. Therefore, talk of utopias must be left to the consolation of religion and a due Augustinian hope in a perfection to come in the City of God. The proper concern of the statesman, however, one whose business is the City of Man, is rather to avoid the summum malum, which, for Burke, is tyranny. Like the successive waves of fanatics before the French Revolution, the barbarous philosophers of this event sought to erase the distinction and gap between City of God and City of Man by attempting to turn the latter, with all of its necessary imperfections and ugliness, into the former. This, according to Burke, is not only impossible, but undesirable, as it will necessarily bring with it a whole host of evils. Thus, for Burke, the proper realm of the political is a circumscribed one. Politics, properly conceived, is

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a place wherein citizens are free to pursue their own particular endeavors, free from arbitrary rule or restrictions on their freedoms—free, that is, from tyranny. According to Burke (1992b), a properly ordered society is one in possession of “internal freedom, security, and good order.” Only such a system, ensured by “wise laws” and “well-­constructed institutions” is capable of securing true freedom (8). As we have already seen, the rights and freedoms of citizens were so important for Burke that he labored to discover a firm foundation for them— airy talk about the “Rights of Men” would not do. This led to Burke’s (1987) famous understanding of rights as prescriptions, as “an entailed inheritance derived to us from our forefathers and to be transmitted to our posterity” (29-­ 31), and bolstered his concomitant support for the various social institutions and intermediaries that provide the integuments and connective tissue of society, thereby ensuring, in his view, an uninterrupted inheritance between generations. Because of this process, Burke maintains that “the spirit of freedom, leading in itself to misrule and excess, is tempered with an awful gravity” (30). This “awful gravity” is the realization of just how fragile freedom is, protected against human passions and avarice by a delicate and complex mixture of “moral sentiments,” social institutions, and political arrangements. Revolutionary and imperious approaches to politics threaten to upset this delicate balance, in Burke’s understanding, and thereby directly imperil freedom and rights. Within Burke’s argument for the primacy of context over abstraction and for political theory within limits is a great plea for humility in politics. Burke (1987) brings our attention to the fact that in politics we do not work on inanimate matter; in his words, “the subject of our demolition and construction is not brick and timber but sentient beings, by the sudden alteration of whose state, condition, and habits multitudes may be rendered miserable” (148). In a particularly moving phrase, Burke (1992b) argues that, in matters of public concern, we ought to “dare to be fearful.” Writing to his young French contemporary Charles-­Jean-­François Depont, later the original recipient of his Reflections, Burke invokes the “virtue of moderation,” which “requires a deep courage, and full reflection, to be temperate when the voice of the multitudes . . . [and t]he impetuous desire of an unthinking public will endure no course, but what conducts to splendid and perilous extremes.” In such cases, Burke implores, one ought “to dare to be fearful, when all about you are full of presumption and confidence, and when those who are bold at the hazard of others would punish your caution and disaffection” (16). In Reflections,

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Burke (1987) writes similarly: “We must always see with a pity not unmixed with respect the errors of those who are timid and doubtful of themselves with regard to points wherein the happiness of mankind is concerned.” The proper statesman—given the gravity of his vocation and the precariousness of the matters with which he is concerned—ought to possess a “tender, parental solicitude which fears to cut up the infant for the sake of an experiment” (146). Prudence, the ability to judge when and what intervention is appropriate in a given situation, is accordingly paramount for Burke. Understandably, then, Burke (1992a) writes, “Prudence is not only the first in rank of the virtues political and moral, but she is the director, the regulator, and the standard of them all” (91). Prudence and political judgment, as we will soon see, are central to Burke’s understanding of moderation in politics, a crucial antidote, in his view, against fanaticism. Burke’s understanding of the fragility and precise balance necessary to secure freedom and rights, and his corresponding embrace of moderation and prudence, clearly point to why Burke would be so skeptical of revolution in general, and the French Revolution in particular. Revolutions, by definition, remake political communities, often refashioning social and moral structures as well. Thus, whatever we might make of the French Revolution with the benefits of hindsight and the intervening centuries of political developments, Burke understandably saw it as an assault on all the necessary and long-­ standing political and social institutions, as well as moral sentiments, that had served to safeguard a way of life that Burke saw as far more than merely tolerable. As Pocock (1987) writes, Burke “took the view that the Revolution was a destructive movement of the human intellect, aimed at the utter subversion of the codes of manners and social behavior which had grown up in the centuries of European history” (xxxiii). Revolution—at least in instances like the French case, where, according to Burke at least, it was unnecessary—is the epitome of an unbounded approach to politics, the attempt to destroy an existing society utterly and create a new one in its place according to theory alone. We can see here that underneath the surface of Burke’s critique of actual world events, like the French Revolution, is a critique of a particular, totalizing approach to politics, a politics of fanaticism. As Pocock (1987) observes, the French Revolution represented to Burke the ultimate outcome of “human intellect set free from all social restraints, so that it is free to be constructive or destructive as it chooses, and it frequently chooses the latter in sheer assertion of its own power” (xxxvii). Elsewhere, Pocock (1992) writes of Burke’s understanding of the French revolutionary impulse as “unchecked

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intellectual and political energy, existing of and for itself, as a force altogether new in the world” (34). For someone like Burke—who sees politics not as an exacting science composed of discernible laws of motion, but rather as a subtle art necessitating great prudence, patience, humility, and the tentative approach of the trimmer and reformer—the devastating effects of this unchecked frenzy of wild political and intellectual energy is obvious. Political arrangements are fragile, according to Burke, requiring care and attention in order to preserve what one has. Even if substantially better arrangements exist in some possible universe, the danger of an unforced revolution is ­simply too great, the price of failure too high to abandon our own “little platoon.” The perfect is the true enemy of the good. Burke makes it clear in his writings on the French Revolution that, unlike Kant, he is not opposed a priori to every revolution as a fundamental moral principle. Indeed, we saw Burke’s praise of the English and American revolutions as necessary in restoring liberties under threat. However, the French case, in Burke’s estimation, is a perversion of this tool of last resort, a revolution not of necessity but of hubris. Citing a host of authoritative “old Whigs” to rebut the shock and outrage directed against his increasingly hostile criticism of the French Revolution, Burke’s (1992a) 1791 essay “An Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs” contains a clear articulation of Burke’s view that a revolution can be justified under certain—albeit stringent and narrowly defined—conditions. Burke cites approvingly an argument by Baron Lechmere which holds that the “limited monarchy” of Britain provides laws ruling both the Crown and subjects and that “if the executive part endeavors the subversion and total destruction of the government, the original contract is thereby broke, and the right of allegiance ceases” (125, italics original). Revolution is appropriate, Burke says, in such a state of affairs, assuming that no other remedy is available and, to avoid the ultimate evil of tyranny or arbitrary rule, revolution stands alone as a necessity. Clearly, however, Burke’s conception of such a legitimate—because necessary—revolution is far removed from more permissive views, including John Locke’s famous right of revolution. Far from allowing for a reconstituting of the political community on whatever grounds the people see fit, citing another well-­respected Whig, Burke (1992a) maintains that a legitimate revolution of last resort has only one legitimate end: “to rescue and secure” the laws and form of government extant before the usurpation occurred (131). Rather than such a revolution of last resort (how, as we have seen, Burke understood the English “Glorious Revolution” a century prior), a last-­ditch

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effort to restore freedom (however imperfect) that existed before profound and fatal executive usurpations, the French Revolution was an elective revolution. According to Burke, this event was little more than a destructive outburst of untempered hostility toward all existing modes of political and social existence based on mistaken understandings of the role of philosophy to remake the world. Burke (1987) was not, however, a mere apologist for the ancien régime. As he writes in his Reflections, even though the “government in France [was] usually, and I think justly, reputed the best of the unqualified or ill-­qualified monarchies, [it] was still full of abuses” (111). These abuses, however, were not, in Burke’s estimation, fatal or immutable. Burke continues, “I do not recognize in this view of things the despotism of Turkey. Nor do I discern the character of a government that has been, on the whole, so oppressive or so corrupt or so negligent as to be utterly unfit for all reformation” (115, italics original). While Burke’s extreme hostility toward the French Revolution came as a shock and served as an increasing irritation to his Whig colleagues, its motivation and felt urgency become clearer with the realization that Burke was not only criticizing a series of events that he saw befalling a neighboring country and threatening his own. Burke was also—and perhaps chiefly— criticizing what he believed to be a new and dangerous approach to politics: fanaticism. Previously only seen in matters of theological and confessional disputes, this approach to politics saw individuals rejecting compromise, humility, reason, and skepticism and insisting that the world could be reborn here and now through mere human might. Indeed, this new position was represented as The Truth, and anyone who dared to question or oppose it, the thinking went, ought to be dealt with as an enemy of Truth. Political fanaticism embraced a particular way of thinking about politics; it was no longer seen as the domain of the dealmaker, the pragmatist, the conciliator, or the compromiser. Like the flowering natural sciences growing under the rays of the Enlightenment, politics too was now seen as a domain of natural laws, testable theories, and as altogether one large laboratory. It mattered little to this new breed of political animal that the subjects of experimentation were real living people. Abstract theory, then, arrived at in studies or debate societies, was to replace messy compromises and long-­standing tradition. And with this new and superior approach came a new standard. No longer was politics to be understood as one of the many facets of life, an inherently imperfect facet to an imperfect worldly life at that. Rather, politics was to be the arena for individual existence, self-­creation, and expression. This new

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approach would see the expansion of the political arena and desire for it to totally eclipse any private or otherwise foreign domain of life. This new, total political existence, the thinking went, could be and would be perfect. Any desires and wishes can find their satisfaction in this new, properly constituted political arena. In addition to his criticism of actual events unfolding in the course of what we now call the French Revolution, it was this mindset, this approach to politics—what Burke called “fanaticism”—that was a central target of his critical work.

Moderation: Another Antidote to Fanaticism Despite the impression that might be given in the foregoing pages, Burke’s writings on the French Revolution are not all shock, outrage, and opprobrium. Constantly—and especially in his letters, including the Reflections, to his French friend Depont—Burke recommends an approach to politics altogether different from fanaticism: moderation. Burke’s moving letter to Depont penned in November 1789 is itself a paean to the virtues of moderation. Burke (1992b) writes that “moderation is a virtue, not only amiable but powerful.” He continues: “It is a disposing, arranging, conciliating, cementing virtue” (16). Such a virtue, Burke insists, is desperately needed in a country like France seeking to adopt a new constitution. Indeed, Burke argues—with reference to the French situation—that, without it, “their acts will taste more of their power than of their wisdom, or their benevolence. Whatever they do will be in extremes; it will be crude, harsh, precipitate” (16). Unlike fanaticism, moderation requires not prophecy but prudence, which Burke calls “the first of virtues” in politics (15). A moderate approach to politics recognizes a “radical infirmity in all human contrivances” and therefore does not seek an elusive perfection in politics (15). Such an approach rejects perfectionism in politics as impossible—and the purported means to achieve this utopian goal as always unacceptable. As Burke reminds us, “An imperfect good is still a good” (15). As Aurelian Craiutu (2012)—the foremost theorist of the concept of moderation—observes, moderation can be at least partially understood “as a superior form of ‘civility’ and an antithesis to all forms of monist politics” (5; cf. Carrese, 2016). Craiutu continues, “Moderates refuse the posture of historical generalizations and predictions. Anti-­perfectionists and fearful of anarchy, they endorse fallibilism as a middle way between radical skepticism

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and epistemological absolutism, and acknowledge the limits of political action and the imperfection of the human condition” (15). For this reason, the moderate is less a revolutionary than a modest reformer, one who seeks to trim the sails of our common ship only if and where appropriate. Those seeking potentially disruptive changes to our common mode of life must always keep foremost in their minds that in so doing they are dealing with “man in the concrete,” as Burke (1992b) tells us; “it is with common human life, and human actions, you are to be concerned” (13). This central realization mandates, as Burke writes, that political actors “ought not to be so fond of any political object, as not to think the means of compassing it a serious consideration” (13). Further, to responsible political actors, Burke writes, you ought “never [to] wholly separate in your mind the merits of any political question, from the men who are concerned in it” (13). Indeed, the moderate not only recognizes the destructive consequences radical political action often entails in human terms but also its frequent futility in bringing about any positive changes. As Burke (1987) writes in his Reflections, “Rage and frenzy will pull down more in half an hour than prudence, deliberation, and foresight can build up in a hundred years” (147). None of this is to say that Burke—or moderates for that matter—slavishly seeks to maintain the status quo in all situations. In this very same letter to Depont that we have been exploring, Burke (1992b) states, “I admit that evils may be so very great and urgent that other evils are to be submitted to for the mere hope of removal” (14). Indeed, the contemporary moderate Craiutu (2012) is quick to caution that “under certain circumstances, moderation might be ineffective and inappropriate and ought to give way to a certain form of ‘creative’ extremism” (5).11 The central matter here is one of the proper approach to the messy business of politics. Prudence is the chief virtue of the moderate, who seeks to understand the political situation at hand and provide the appropriate response (or no response) to the given context. Some contexts, Burke admits, may in fact call for radical responses—including revolution. However, a moderate would arrive at such a conclusion only after a due appreciation for the complexity of the political situation and the occasional necessity of dirtying one’s hands that politics sometimes requires. Politics it not all convulsion, passion, and spectacle; rather, it is hard, consistent work. Reform—not revolution—is the method of change preferred by Burke and other moderates. Burke (1987) describes political reform as a process whereby “the useful parts of an old establishment are kept, and what is superadded is to be fitted to what is retained”—difficult and slow work

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requiring “a vigorous mind, steady, persevering attention, various powers of comparison and combination, and the resources of an understanding fruitful in expedients” (148). Rather than great upheavals, this method promises “slow but well-­sustained progress” (149). Finally, just as it would be a mistake to understand Burke and his fellow moderates as slavish defenders of the status quo, it would be equally mistaken to understand moderation as solely a conservative virtue, or an approach to politics that is itself either inherently conservative or championed only by conservatives. As Craiutu (2012) reminds us, “While it may be tempting to equate centrism with moderation, an identification between the two must not be taken as a universal axiom, for we can find moderates on the left, at the center, and on the right of the political spectrum” (15).12 Paul Carrese (2016) similarly argues that moderation “is not only a conservative virtue,” noting that, while moderation does value conservation (including of such important institutions as liberal democracy), “both liberal and conservative views of political theory can be more or less doctrinaire” and thus more or less in sync or at odds with a politics of moderation (15). Indeed, while moderation does aim at the conservation of certain political elements, such elements are only those worthy of preservation. Reform of political realities in need of reformation is equally important to the moderate. Thus, this moderate approach to politics can be found on both the left and the right. Neither Burke’s critique of the events of the French Revolution—nor his critique of fanaticism therein—are offered without constructive advice. In rejecting the fanaticism Burke perceived at the heart of the French Revolution, he encouraged his French—as well as British and European—readers to embrace a moderate approach to politics and reject the abstraction and hubris of fanaticism. The sociopolitical effects of the French Revolution, however, cast a long shadow over political thinking, crucially affecting not only Immanuel Kant and Edmund Burke but also other political thinkers farther afield, including the nineteenth-­century Russian thinker and novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky. As Jordi Morillas (2007) argues, Dostoevsky “castigates the French Revolution for not having yielded positive results in France, and for leading Europe, instead, into a state of chaos and social disintegration.” Indeed, Morillas claims that Dostoevsky believed that “Russian and European Nihilism has its origins in the French Revolution, which is the most important event in modern history” (3, 22). Such a full-­throated criticism of nihilism and fanaticism reaches its heights in Dostoevsky’s novel Demons— serialized and published in full in 1872—which in many ways provides a

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critical meditation on revolutionary fanaticism between the French and Russian revolutions. Called “the greatest of all political novels” by Irving Howe, Demons is Dostoevsky’s attempt to understand the political climate convulsing 1860s Russia, complete with revolutionary agitation, violence, and political murder (Howe 1987: 22). Edward Wasiolek (1968) captures the pith of Dostoevsky’s enterprise thus: “The earth has opened up in a small provincial town and monsters—little, grotesque, comic, serious, and awesome—have scurried to take possession of the surface. The Possessed is about men who have forgotten who and why they are. It is both fact and prophecy” (1).13 Cushioned within a story of social intrigue, the crux of the novel is Dostoevsky’s adaptation of the real-­life political murder of the student Ivan Ivanov at the hands of the Russian terrorist Sergei Nechaev and his acolytes in 1868. Through this event that shocked and scandalized a nation, Dostoevsky attempts to understand a much broader problem rising quickly to the forefront of Russian political culture: fanaticism.

CHAPTER 5

Dostoevsky’s Demons Encountering Political Fanaticism

It was not you who ate the idea, but the idea that ate you. —Pyotr Verkhovensky to Kirillov, Demons (1995 [1870]: 558) The revolutionary is a doomed man. He has no interests of his own, no affairs, no feelings, no attachments, no belongings, not even a name. Everything in him is absorbed by a single exclusive interest, a single thought, a single passion—the revolution. —Sergei Nechaev, “Catechism of the Revolutionist” (2004 [1869]: 71)

In Moscow in 1868, a young student named Ivan Ivanov was murdered by a small group of conspirators led by a little-­known radical Sergei Nechaev. This event, which shocked and scandalized the Russian public, provided the basis for Fyodor Dostoevsky’s 1872 novel Demons. The figure of Nechaev, fictionalized in the novel as Pyotr Stepanovich Verkhovensky, is at the core of Dostoevsky’s political drama in Demons. Around him, intrigue, crime, and violence revolve. At one point in his preparatory notebooks for the novel, Dostoevsky (1968) writes, “Everything is concentrated in the person of Nechaev” (350).1 Dostoevsky’s project is to understand this “type,” the type of person who “has only one idea: organized destruction” (361). In other words, we can understand Dostoevsky’s project in Demons as an effort to understand fanaticism and the fanatical political actor.

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In describing the type of person Nechaev/Pyotr is, Dostoevsky makes liberal use of the same kinds of ideas we have been exploring with respect to the concept of fanaticism. In his preparatory notebooks, Dostoevsky (1968) frequently refers to his character Pyotr by the name Nechaev, writing that this figure “is firmly convinced of everything before-­hand. He cares for nothing but how to start burning things” (246). These elements of fanaticism, total conviction and a propensity for destruction, are also observed with reference to Nechaev by Mikhail Bakunin, a one-­time close associate of Nechaev and far from a liberal, antirevolutionary voice. About the real-­life figure of Nechaev, Bakunin writes, “When it is a question of serving what he calls the cause, he does not hesitate; nothing stops him, and he is as merciless with himself as with all the others. . . . He is a devoted fanatic, but, at the same time, a very dangerous fanatic” (quoted in Frank 1990: 142). “Destruction for the sake of destruction”; this, according to Dostoevsky (1968), is the crux of Nechaev’s philosophy and the mindset he explores in Demons (358). In addition to this fundamental animating principle, Dostoevsky locates additional now-­familiar constituents of fanaticism within the figure of Pyotr Verkhovensky and in many of his followers: monism and a myopic focus on “the cause,” a preference for abstraction and universalism instead of bounded and context-­specific political projects, a predilection for violence and extreme measures at the expense of conventional morality, as well as an intellectualism that favors such extremism. The primarily political message in Dostoevsky’s Demons is a potent criticism of these attributes, which combine to form political fanaticism. Despite Dostoevsky’s clear engagement with the concept of fanaticism in particular and broader political topics more generally, in this novel especially but in others as well, there remains a dearth of scholarship treating Dostoevsky as a serious political thinker—especially among political theorists. This inattention is especially unfortunate given his astute analysis of myriad pressing contemporary political issues, including the nature of modernity, the role of religion in a modern society increasingly stripped of traditional referents and belief systems, political extremism and violence, as well as more general topics like human nature and the human condition in modern “disenchanted” societies. One of a few notable exceptions to this oversight is a recent work by the philosopher James P. Scanlan (2002), who argues that readers ought “to take [Dostoevsky] seriously as a philosophical thinker.” Scanlan maintains that Dostoevsky ought to be recognized “as a philosopher whose fundamental convictions were voiced and rationally defended in both literary and nonliterary works” (ix).

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The political-­ philosophical import of Dostoevsky’s work is clearly revealed by his method, an attempt to distill the essence of the fanatical “type” from this real-­life historical example. On this approach, Dostoevsky himself notes, “I act by analysis, not synthesis, i.e. I go to the depths, and by investigating the atoms, I seek the whole” (quoted in Carter 1991: 22). Dostoevsky’s method has not gone unnoticed by Scanlan (2002), who notes, “Fiction allowed Dostoevsky to present provocative incarnations of philosophical concepts and positions and to use forms of argumentation that are not available to the writer of a traditional philosophical treatise” (4). For this reason, Albert Camus (1961) identified Dostoevsky as one of the great “philosophical novelists” (74). The most comprehensive account of Dostoevsky’s political thought to date is Stephen Carter’s (1991) Political and Social Thought of F. M. Dostoevsky, in which he seeks “to elucidate the political philosophy of the novel The Devils,” while also examining the author’s changing political thinking over the course of his life (3).2 However, in this admirable work, Carter makes no mention of Dostoevsky’s conceptualization of fanaticism—an unfortunate omission. Demons is a rich, complex novel. It is a novel of intertwining rivulets, dozens of characters, lives, and beliefs, all swept into a charging current, the main thrust of the novel. That charging current is Dostoevsky’s overarching political message, his critique of fanaticism. Demons displays the full gamut of human experiences; scenes of love, heartache, betrayal, faith, disbelief, jealousy, pride, ennui, hate, and murder are all ornately crafted. The text is obviously too monumental to be comprehensively treated in this chapter; however, at its core is Dostoevsky’s political philosophical critique of fanaticism. This political core of the novel revolves around the figure of Nechaev and allows Dostoevsky to sketch out his thoughts on fanaticism and provide a damning critique of it. Around this central element, as we will see, Dostoevsky illustrates multiple “faces” of fanaticism through various characters, illuminating this concept in a complexity rarely found in the literature on the topic. Nechaev makes a suitable case study for Dostoevsky to explore the concept of fanaticism, as he—both the real-­life individual and his fictional expression in the character of Pyotr Verkhovensky—exhibits many of the attributes we have already found to be constitutive of fanaticism: a tendency to abstraction, a longing for utopia and an embrace of any means (typically violent and revolutionary) to instantiate it, a Manichaean view of the world,

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and a monistic, all-­consuming faith in “the cause” that is impervious to considerations of external reason or conventional morality. As Irving Howe (1955) observes, Verkhovensky’s “role in the book, as Nechayev turned buffoon, is to bring the fantasies and fanaticisms of the Russian intelligentsia into visible motion” (59–60).

The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters Thinking about the historical context surrounding the “Nechaev Affair,” and the context richly furnished and stylized by Dostoevsky in the novel, one is reminded of Goya’s famous etching The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters, created sometime between 1797 and 1799. Abandoned by his critical faculties and left to the torments of his own subconscious, the anonymous figure in Goya’s etching is slumped over in sleep and surrounded by frightening animals. In Demons, Dostoevsky argues that societies as a whole can suffer a similar sort of fate. Russia in the 1860s was undergoing great changes, politically and intellectually, and during this time of transition new ideas and new passions, Dostoevsky seems to argue, overtook the better judgment of many Russian citizens, who sloughed off their previous attitudes for the new, fashionable views of the day, undermining and imperiling society in the process. Indeed, perhaps Dostoevsky is such a powerful chronicler of this process because he himself underwent something very similar. A man of intense passion and belief, Dostoevsky underwent many conversions in his life, both political and religious. As a young man, Dostoevsky was affiliated with a Fourierist group known as the Petrashevsky Circle, which he left after a few years to join an even more radical splinter group. For his activities, Dostoevsky was arrested in 1849 and sentenced to death, a sentence commuted to a term in prison before he was ultimately granted amnesty by Alexander II in 1856 (see Carter 1991: 38). Dostoevsky had a long flirtation with radical politics, including an earlier affiliation with a rather mysterious and little-­known group organized around the figure of Aleksey Beketov in the mid-­1840s. Prone to extremes of emotion and longing for the transcendent—not unlike many of the fanatical characters we will meet in Demons—Dostoevsky waxed rhapsodically about his new circle of comrades. As he wrote to a friend at the time, “I am reborn, not only morally but also physically. Never have I felt in myself so much abundance and clarity, so much equanimity of character, so

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much physical health.” Dostoevsky explained this newfound appreciation for life with reference to this new group, writing, “I am indebted for much of this to my good friends Beketov, Zalyubetsky and others for whom I live; they are sensible and intelligent people, with hearts of gold, of nobility and character” (quoted in Frank 1976: 199).3 As is common among radical splinter groups, the life of the Beketov Circle, which had revivified Dostoevsky, was over almost as soon as it had begun, dissolving in 1847. Months later, however, Dostoevsky began to associate with a new group, the so-­called Petrashevsky Circle, a group, it seems, primarily devoted to reading banned books, especially those of the French socialist Charles Fourier. Already on the radar of the secret police since 1844, Dostoevsky was placed under direct surveillance in 1848 over his agitation on the issue of the proposed emancipation of the serfs. Arrested in 1849 and sentenced to death, he escaped execution when his sentence was commuted at the eleventh hour. Clearly, these experiences had a profound effect on Dostoevsky himself, as Howe (1955) writes, “split between God-­seeking and God-­denying, Pan-­ Slavic reaction and Western radicalism” (51). As Howe notes, Dostoevsky came to despise “the ideas of the revolutionary intellectuals, [even though] he had been soaked in the atmosphere that nourished them” (47). Indeed, his long association and friendship with the Russian radical literary figure V. G. Belinsky is indicative of his journey in the radical underground of Russian intellectual life in the mid-­nineteenth century. Originally enamored of this figure, a fellow associate of the Petrashevsky Circle, by the decade’s end Dostoevsky had completely rejected Belinsky, his “great revolutionary forefather,” to use Frank’s (1976) phrase, as the epitome of everything he saw wrong with Russian society (183). As Frank writes, “By the 1870s, Dostoevsky had come to see Belinsky as the symbolic source of the Russian Nihilism that the novelist had battled with all through the 1860s, and against which he had just launched his most violently anti-­radical work, The Devils [Demons]” (183). As this observation intimates, Dostoevsky came to see Belinsky, his erstwhile friend and intellectual ally, as the type of person at the heart of the rot of Russian society. Frank continues, “Even though Belinsky did not play the role in Dostoevsky’s life that the latter desired his readers to imagine, the enormous importance of their encounter should by no means be minimized. This importance, however, is more symbolic than historical, more literary than literal” (196). In this vein, in a letter to a friend in 1871, Dostoevsky writes, “I insulted Belinsky more as a phenomenon of Russian life than as a personality” (quoted in Frank 1976: 183). This character type and its insidious

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intellectual influence on Russian society suffuses Dostoevsky’s Demons, his direct assault on political fanaticism. Carter (1991) identifies six periods of transformation in Dostoevsky’s political views, starting his early political life as a Westernizer and adopting the fashionable views of European socialists before breaking with this view totally during his years in prison in the 1850s (215–218).4 By the time Dostoevsky composed Demons in the 1870s, he had reached, according to Carter, his “high tide” of conservatism (224). He had, by this time, totally rejected his early fascination with socialist politics and grown convinced that the Westernizing intellectuals with whom he consorted in his youth had totally misunderstood the Russian people and their relation to them. Turning instead to the Orthodox church as the source for Russian revival, Howe provocatively argues that Dostoevsky “‘translated’ the political radicalism of the 1840s, the radicalism of fraternity and utopia, into Christian terms” (47). Howe (1955) contends that, despite the significant transformation of Dostoevsky’s political and philosophical views, “it would be false to say that his early radicalism was replaced by reaction.” Dostoevsky “did not change his ideas as much as add onto them; the radicalism did not disappear, it became encrusted with layers of reaction” (54). This, then, is the Dostoevsky of Demons, a man disillusioned with Westernizing intellectuals and dispirited about the direction Russian society was headed in. Dostoevsky prefaces Demons with two revealing and evocative epigraphs, which, taken together, capture much of the central political message contained in the work. The first epigraph is an excerpt from the 1826 poem “Demons,” from the celebrated Russian poet Alexander Pushkin. This poem, on the face of it about a man’s carriage ride made difficult by inclement weather, contains the sinister image of demons conspiring with natural forces for malign purposes. The language of the text can easily be read—as Dostoevsky intends his readers to do—in a metaphorical way. Taken in this light, the “demons” harassing and leading travelers (Russia) astray are to Dostoevsky the very same fanatics about which the political intrigue of the novel will revolve. The selection Dostoevsky chose for an epigraph reveals as much: Upon my life, the tracks have vanished, We’ve lost our way, what shall we do? It must be a demon’s leading us This way and that around the fields. How many are there? Where have they flown to?

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Why do they sing so plaintively? Are they burying some household goblin? Is it some Witch’s wedding day? This sentiment of dislocation and being led astray, like that famously found in Yeats’s “Second Coming” a century later, captures a common understanding of disruption and unease many Russians felt living through the 1860s, a feeling shared by Dostoevsky. Stephen Carter (1991) notes that the Russia of the 1860s was characterized by “an atmosphere of politicization and intellectual excitement,” including a great “confusion of the political scene” (85). On the other hand, Isaiah Berlin (1978) identifies a more “harsh, materialistic and ‘nihilistic’ criticism of the 60s and 70s” coming from Russian intellectuals, “a general toughening of fibre and exacerbation of political and social differences” (20). As we will see, the emergence of a much more radical Russian intelligentsia in the 1860s, clearing the field of more moderate liberal reformers prominent a few decades earlier, is the main target of Dostoevsky’s opprobrium, illustrating his mistrust of grand social and political schemes. The Russia of the 1860s, Dostoevsky seems to say, has lost its way; it no longer knows whither it is going and, indeed, it has been and continues to be misled by “demons,” understood, no doubt, in the metaphorical sense of fanatics, individuals acting as if they were possessed by their single-­minded schemes. The pessimistic sentiment is perhaps made even clearer in the second epigraph chosen to set off the novel, a passage from the Gospel of Luke describing Jesus’s act of casting out demons from a man and into swine. Dostoevsky thought that the Russia of his day was in need of just such an exorcism, a casting out of the “demons” in its midst. Given his firm Christian beliefs and his sense that the good life and a good social and political existence in Russia necessitated an Orthodox church having pride of place, the role of Jesus in metaphorically casting out these demons also holds. Russia, in Dostoevsky’s estimation, is sick. It was weakened and led astray by the naive, if well-­meaning, liberals and reformers of the 1840s (of which Dostoevsky himself was one) who eschewed tradition and Christianity for grand designs and utopian visions. Leading Russia from the right path, she strayed further and further into the desolation of the 1860s radicalism, the dark underbelly of earlier attempts at reform. By the 1860s the social and political situation in Russia was so bad, the intellectual class so enthralled by radicalism and violence, that mindless rogues like Nechaev could collect enough of a following to end lives and visit destruction on whole towns. The chain of effects,

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according to Dostoevsky, set into work by the reformers of the previous generation, animated as they were by ideologies imported from the West, came home to roost in the deranged antiphilosophy of Nechaev. Nechaev has no philosophy, no plan for the future; he wishes only for violence in the present. As Dostoevsky (1968) writes in his notes, “Nechaev is not a socialist, but a rebel. His ideals are insurrection and destruction, after which ‘let happen what will’” (349). As we have seen, Russia in the middle of the nineteenth century was a country of intellectual effervescence turned sour. By the 1860s, the period with which Demons is concerned, the excitement of intellectuals and reformers, both socialist and liberal, had become disfigured into, at least in this small corner of Russia, a world of secret societies, murder, arson, and terrorism. Isaiah Berlin (1978) writes glowingly of the vibrancy of the Russian intellectual scene of the 1840s: These “discontented and rebellious Russian intellectuals,” although insulated in their own scholastic world apart from popular society, sought “to learn and more than learn—to become the most devoted and assiduous disciples of the most advanced thinkers of western Europe” (5). Increasing social isolation and governmental persecution, according to Berlin, resulted in the “new class and new tone” of the new crop of radicals in the 1860s, of which Nechaev become one of the most infamous (20). It is into this heady world of a growing radicalized intellectual climate that Dostoevsky (1995) places his novel. “By way of an introduction,” the narrator of the novel begins by attempting to “describe the recent and very strange events that took place in our town, hitherto not remarkable for anything” (8). The narrator further describes the atmosphere by writing, “It was a peculiar time; something new was beginning, quite unlike the former tranquility, something quite strange but felt everywhere” (21). This exciting time of new ideas was embraced by many of the central characters of the novel. There was the grande dame Varvara Petrovna Stavrogin, a wealthy widow at the heart of the social and cultural scene of this provincial Russian town. A widow and mother of the enigmatic and spiritually confused Nikolai Stavrogin (often just referred to as Stavrogin in the novel), she is also the benefactor of the hapless and mercilessly caricatured Stepan Trofimovich Verkhovensky, an effete, weak-­hearted liberal and father (not only in the biological sense but, for Dostoevsky, very much the metaphorical sense as well) of the character of central concern for us—Pyotr Stepanovich Verkhovensky. Pyotr is Dostoevsky’s fictionalized version of Nechaev, meant to express the type of person that Nechaev himself was. Edward Wasiolek

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(1968) writes of how Dostoevsky sought to go beyond the headlines of the real-­world events inspiring the novel to explore the larger “universal, mythic battles of will and faith, fall and redemption.” Accordingly, Wasiolek continues, “he was not interested in the historical Nechaev, as he himself stated, but only in what Nechaev represented. He was interested in the type and not the individual” (7).5 When read in this way, Demons betrays a clear attempt to understand fanaticism and the fanatical character type, as well as a damning condemnation of this mode of being, which, by novel’s end, is seen to leave only death and destruction in its wake. According to Dostoevsky, the fanatical type does not exist in isolation or emerge ex nihilo. This fact is clearly displayed by the motley cast of characters Dostoevsky creates in this novel. Pyotr (our fictionalized and stylized Nechaev) has a story, a beginning. He is the son of Stepan—another character after a type—based largely on the historical figure Nikolai Granovsky, a history professor and leading Westernizing reformer of the earlier 1840s generation. Berlin (1978) describes Granovsky as “a gentle and high-­minded historian who studied in Germany and there became a moderate Hegelian and came back to lecture on western medieval history in Moscow” (146). Dostoevsky’s view of Granovsky, on the other hand, is much less mild. In his notebooks, sketching out the character who would become Stepan, Dostoevsky described Granovsky as “a pure and idealistic Westernizer in his full splendor,” complete with “that aimlessness and lack of firmness in his views and in his emotions.” He is, Dostoevsky (1968) continues, “a man of the forties” and, having published a few disparate and obscure articles, “places himself on a pedestal, as a sort of holy relic to be worshiped by pilgrims” (82–83). Stepan, therefore, represents for Dostoevsky the typical Westerner/liberal reformer of the 1840s whose progeny—metaphorical and actual—is Pyotr/ Nechaev and the fanatical type. On Stepan and Pyotr, Dostoevsky asks, “But what has Granovsky [Stepan] to do with this story?” The answer, “He is there for the purpose of letting two generations of what really are the same Westernizers, those of pure vintage and the nihilists, meet each other” (87–88). As Carter (1991) writes, Dostoevsky “wanted to show the connection between the flabby older generation (Stepan Trofimovich, Barbara Stavrogin), and the vacillating or subversive younger generation” (157). As the above passage from Carter indicates, Stepan is not the only member of an earlier generation to be caricatured by Dostoevsky and held to be responsible for the new, degenerate philosophy of Nechaev and his cohort of angry young men. Stepan’s benefactor Varvara is also very much to blame for

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Nechaev’s success in infiltrating the inner circle of high society in the village. Varvara is the grande dame of the village, the gatekeeper and authority of high society. Dostoevsky’s (1995) narrator tells us, “There was eternal talk in town that it was . . . Varvara Petrovna who ruled the province” (44). Yet Varvara is also naive and susceptible to fashions, including the new ideas forming the intellectual and social environment around her. Indeed, very early on in the novel, Varvara and Stepan are both so taken, within the “peculiar time” they found themselves, in the feeling that “something new was beginning, quite unlike the former tranquility,” that they both headed off to Petersburg, the hub of avant-­garde thinking and agitation (21). Forever tilting at windmills, Stepan is inspired. “A dream began burning in him,” Dostoevsky writes, “to join the movement and show his powers.” Varvara too is depicted as susceptible to this desire to go with the crowd, to be fashionable, and to strive for the new. Dostoevsky writes, “Varvara Petrovna instantly believed again and in everything.” “It was decided,” the narrator continues, “that they should go to Petersburg without the least delay, to find out everything in reality, to go into it all personally, and, if possible, to involve themselves wholly and undividedly in the new activity” (21). Much to the eager duo’s chagrin, they soon find that the avant-­garde of Petersburg is hardly their scene: Varvara’s “Professor,” as she often called Stepan, was mercilessly ridiculed by the new generation of radicals and they were both derided as “retrograde cronies” (24). Varvara and Stepan—mushy liberals that they were—did not leave Petersburg in disgrace and embarrassment until after suffering one “final fiasco,” as Dostoevsky puts it. In his final presentation to the radicals of Petersburg, Stepan’s display of “civic eloquence” and this last-­ditch attempt to “touch people’s hearts” led the crowd to “hiss so mercilessly that he burst into tears right there, publicly, before he even got off the platform.” “On m’a traité comme un vieux bonnet de coton!” he bemoans to a maternal, consoling Varvara (24–25). Indeed, their varying reactions to the new scene drive a wedge between Stepan and Varvara. While Varvara falls under the spell of the charming, oleaginous Pyotr, Stepan is horrified by what his son has become. While Pyotr is all flattery and artifice toward Varvara, he bares his teeth to his father, unable to suppress his disdain for the pathetic, timid, and outmoded liberal. This cursory look at the tableau surrounding Pyotr reveals Dostoevsky’s conviction that fanaticism thrives in moments of crisis and disruption. Russia at the middle of the nineteenth century was turning a corner; the older, reactionary mode of politics under Nicholas I was giving way to the more open, and progressive environment of Alexander II, who assumed the throne

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in 1855 and is famously known for his emancipation of Russian serfs in 1861. Dostoevsky’s (1995) narrator describes the Russia of the 1860s, the period of Demons, as marked by a “certain frivolity” of mind, where “several extremely casual notions spread as if on the wind. . . . A certain disorderliness of the mind became fashionable” (319). Such fashionable society types as Varvara and the new administrators of the district—Lembke and especially his wife, Yulia—assumed almost without thinking and without resistance the new ideas creeping unnoticed into the political common sense of the day. Yulia, the narrator tells us, “picked up the gloss of the latest indispensable liberalism” (311), all the while her husband was amassing a large, illicit collection of radical tracts, a secret he relished and that, it is clear, filled him with the thrill of the forbidden and subversive. There is much to take issue with in Dostoevsky’s at times cruel caricature of the generation of reformers from the 1840s. Stephen Carter (1991) notes, “Dostoevsky’s perception of ‘Liberals of the 40s’ at the time of writing The Devils was an ideologically distorted caricature” (176). However, he was onto something. Like Burke and Kant before him, Dostoevsky identifies periods of critical junctures in a society as moments when fanaticism can emerge. Dostoevsky, more specifically, identifies these moments as pregnant with a desire for the new, with societal unlearning and boredom as key ingredients for the development of fanaticism (see Avramenko 2004). Much after Dostoevsky, Eric Hoffer (2010) will identify this desire for change as a key motivator of the “true believer—the man of fanatical faith who is ready to sacrifice his life for a holy cause” (xii). The desire to throw off the oppressive mantle of reality for something—anything—new opens up a critical juncture in society where circumspection is absent; reform is derided as reactionary; and thoughts of consequences and the ethical realities of the means are dismissed as of no consequence when compared with the glory of “the cause.” This fanatical mindset, the monistic and total pursuit of “the cause” and the adoption of any means necessary to realize it, is precisely the approach to politics that Dostoevsky illustrates in Demons, through the characters of Nechaev and confederates, and the type of politics he critiques as morally and practically indefensible.

The Unbearable Lightness of the Cause As has already been noted, the type of politics Pyotr and his associates engage in is, strictly speaking, no type of politics at all. If politics is understood as

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argument, debate, and compromise about, as the famous adage goes, who gets what, when, and how, then Pyotr indeed does not advocate for, or engage in, politics at all. His “politics,” or antipolitics, brooks no argument, debate, or compromise; rather, it merely seeks to impose his will, to impose absolute power, and to ultimately tear down and destroy. Bernard Crick (1993) writes of this sort of antipolitics as a kind of “student politics”: “it is the style of the amateur (who avoids real political work),” he argues, “joined to that of the enthusiast (who wants a doctrine and ‘a cause’ more than he wants criteria for judging between doctrines and causes)” (134). From the earliest days of the project that would produce Demons, Dostoevsky began to explore this evasion of politics and the imperious impulse to power. In his notes for “The Life of a Great Sinner,” written between 1869 and 1870, a project he quickly abandoned and partially folded into Demons, Dostoevsky (1968) envisions a character who “dreams of power and of reaching exorbitant heights so as to be above everything” (57). Dostoevsky continues, writing of this character’s “fantastic vagaries, boundless dreams, to the point of dethroning God, putting himself in His stead” (59). As we will see, this element—the desire to become God, to overthrow him and place oneself in his position—emerges as a central tenet of the philosophy of the character Kirillov in Demons, who, in a way similar to that of Pyotr, “rejects morality itself outright, and holds to the newest principles of universal destruction for the sake of good final goals” (Dostoevsky 1995: 94). The goal of Pyotr—like the historical Nechaev—is to destroy society. ­Pyotr’s plan is most clearly revealed at the fateful meeting of his “cell” at the home of the members Virginsky and his wife. Pyotr is the charismatic leader of the group. He has also scrupulously created a revolutionary mystique around himself. Rumors are all around—he has connections to the International, to revolutionary groups in Europe; he is here in this small Russian town on assignment from a larger network. The historical Nechaev played much the same role: he informed his small band of followers that they were merely one small piece in a system that could shake the world. Pyotr later tells his followers, “You are merely one knot in an infinite network of knots, and you owe blind obedience to the center” (Dostoevsky 1995: 546). And what is the message “from the center”? At the meeting at Virginsky’s house, two options are advanced: first, “a gradual resolution of our task by propaganda” is proffered, as a way to achieve some undefined better future. As can be expected, Pyotr immediately rebuffs this proposal. He explains to his followers: “I ask you which is dearer to you: the slow way that consists in the

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writing of social novels and bureaucratic predetermining of human destinies on paper for thousands of years to come . . . or do you hold with a quick solution, whatever it may consist in, which will finally untie all hands and give mankind the freedom to organize socially by itself, and that in reality, not on paper” (407–408). On the other hand, there is the “quick way,” mass murder, excitedly described as “quick resolution by means of a hundred million heads” (406). At least one incarnation of this approach is offered by Shigalyov, who, in a large tome presented to the group maintains that he has the one and only answer: “Everything expounded in my book is irreplaceable, and there is no other way out; no one can invent anything” (403). What is this one and only way? One member of the group, an admirer of Shigalyov, summarizes: “He suggests, as a final solution of the question, the division of mankind into two unequal parts. One tenth is granted freedom of person and unlimited rights over the remaining nine tenths. These must lose their person and turn into something like a herd, and in unlimited obedience, through a series of regenerations, attain to primeval innocence, something like the primeval paradise” (403–404). As destructive as this approach is, it remains too theoretical for Pyotr, who just wants to watch the world burn. This approach is like all those that speculate on “future social organization,” which are mere novels “of which a hundred thousand can be written,” Pyotr argues; they are merely an “aesthetic pastime” (405). Pyotr urges the group to forget about masters and slaves and talk of what may be and focus on what comes first: “universal destruction” (405). Enough with talking, Pyotr says, “for we can’t babble for another thirty years as we’ve been babbling for the past thirty.” The way is not “slow,” gradual change through political agitation and reforms, but rather— as the scattered group of misfits in Virginsky’s house declares—“a hundred million heads” (406–407).6 The fanaticism of Pyotr, like that of the historical Nechaev, is primarily one without a substantive goal. Universal destruction, in this case, overshadows any understanding of utopias to come or a brighter future to be instantiated here and now. The cause, insofar as there is one, is merely to destroy. Talk of theory, plans, and the complicated stuff of politics is, to Pyotr, just so much hot air. What matters is the act—violence and destruction. Dostoevsky (1968) confirms this reading in his notes by writing of Pyotr, “He doesn’t care much for debating, is rarely interested, and usually indifferent. He has only one idea: organize destruction” (360–361, italics original). Pyotr is “stupid,” Dostoevsky continues, “but his whole strength lies in the fact that he is a man of action” (364). As Pyotr tells Stavrogin, “I’m

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a crook, not a socialist” (Dostoevsky 1995: 420). Eric Hoffer (2010) captures the essence of the revolutionary ideology of the Nechaevists when he writes, “In their fanatical cry of ‘all or nothing at all’ the second alternative echoes perhaps a more ardent wish than the first” (76). Pyotr’s goal of the immediate and total destruction of civilization requires followers who themselves are totally committed to realizing this end. As one can imagine, achieving the conversion of followers from normal human beings with petty wants and desires to “true believers” concerned only with “the cause” can often be easier said than done. It is this quirk of human nature that forces the convergence of fiction with historical fact in Dostoevsky’s novel. Pyotr, like the historical Nechaev, is worried that those in his orbit lack his absolutist conviction and desire for destruction; they are, rather, interested in ideas, plans, debates, and the messy world of politics. The question before Pyotr is how to cement the desire among his followers for “one hundred million heads”? As Pyotr complains to Stavrogin, “Obedience must be set up. Only one thing is lacking in the world: obedience” (Dostoevsky 1995: 418). The solution to this problem presents itself to Pyotr in the form of Shatov (based on the actual historical figure of Ivanov who became caught up with the historical Nechaev). A one-­time fellow traveler who has since rejected the radicalism of Pyotr, Shatov has expressed his desire to leave the cell and end his affiliation with the illicit radical groups it is supposedly in cahoots with. The presence of this turncoat presents Pyotr with an opportunity to ensure the cohesion and obedience of his cell—mutual participation of all members in a political murder. Realizing his plan, Stavrogin announces his understanding, “All this officialdom and sentimentality—it’s good glue, but there’s one thing better still: get four members of a circle to bump off a fifth on the pretense of his being an informer, and with this shed blood you’ll immediately tie them together in a single knot. They’ll become your slaves, they won’t dare rebel or call you to accounts” (385–386). The act of murder jointly undertaken, Pyotr maintains, will mean that the members of the cell will become “terribly afraid and become obedient, like wax” (626). Similar to the organization of later Soviet society, the social relations of the members of the cell will themselves be transformed; their guilt in such a crime and their fear of sanction will mean that they will “watch over and observe each other,” ready to inform on any member they think is ready to divulge their shared secrets (607).7 While it is clear that Pyotr, like the historical Nechaev, is described as a man of action—he is someone concerned with the deed, with great battles

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and conflagration as opposed to plans and designs—he does advance a few scattered ideas of his own, gesturing about what he might have in mind for the future. In Dostoevsky’s (1968) notebooks, Pyotr, known here as “the student,” is castigated by his father, who rightly observes, “You even haven’t got the excuse of a Utopia” (97). Destruction, first and foremost, is what matters. After the great battle—after, as Pyotr says, “one or two generations of depravity . . . an unheard-­of, mean little depravity, that turns men into vile, cowardly, cruel, self-­loving slime”—civilization will be returned back to its origins, the slate wiped clean, the page blank and suitable now for a totally new story to be written (Dostoevsky 1995: 420). At such a time, Pyotr says, “Russia will be darkened with mist, the earth will weep for the old gods” (421). Then, Pyotr prophesizes, people will clamor for a hero, a savior—one he will be ready to provide in the figure of Stavrogin, stylized as “Ivan the Tsarevich.” Directly channeling ancient apocalyptic myths about final battles between good and evil and the emergence of hidden saviors to win the day, Pyotr announces his plan to build up such a mystique around Stavrogin. Pyotr raves to Stavrogin, “You are a leader, you are a sun, and I am your worm” (419). “Oh, what a legend we can get going!” Pyotr exclaims, “He exists, but no one has seen him, he’s in hiding,” a new messiah on earth, “Ivan Filippovich God-­of-­Sabaoth” (421–422). Such messianic themes abound in the annals of history and have their origins in ancient and medieval religious belief, but they can also be removed from that context and supplanted directly into the service of “secular ideologies.” Such transplantations have happened before; similar belief and cults have surrounded historical political figures from Charlemagne and Frederick II to the great tyrants of the twentieth century. As we saw in Chapter 2, revolutionary eschatology has a long history, stretching back to the ancient world, and is central to traditional Jewish and Christian theology. In the modern world, however, such belief can be transplanted from the realm of religion and into that of politics. In describing the role of this millenarian belief in the Middle Ages, Norman Cohn (1970) notes how “in almost every new monarch his subjects tried to see that Last Emperor who was to preside over the Golden Age” (35). This mode of understanding the world had deep roots. In Pyotr’s vision, Stavrogin is the perfect candidate for such a role, a secular messiah at the helm of this secular second coming. Belief in the final consummation of history following an ultimate cataclysm speaks powerfully to the human desire for certitude and retribution and this desire is on display in an especially impassioned Pyotr. “The earth will groan a great groan,” he says, “‘A new just law is coming,’ and the sea will boil up

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and the whole showhouse will collapse, and then we’ll see how to build up an edifice of stone. For the first time! We will do the building, we, we alone!” (Dostoevsky 1995: 422, italics original).

The Many Faces of Fanaticism Neither Pyotr’s obsession with a final universal battle, nor his messianic view of what might come after, furnish the only portraits of fanaticism on display in Demons. Indeed, even a cursory reading yields at least three clear fanatics, each with their own unique brand of fanaticism. In addition to Pyotr, the figures of Shigalyov and Kirillov are clear fanatic types, while the character Erkel provides a portrait of what could be understood as a “little fanatic,” an obsequious factotum whose only desire is to do the will of his superiors in the revolutionary struggle (cf. Rudin, 1969: 78). A distinct difference between the fanaticism of Pyotr and Shigalyov emerges when one considers their respective causes, the goals of their fanaticism. As has been shown, what comes after the great battle is no more than an afterthought for Pyotr, who entertains some vague notions of messianism and a society created totally anew. While destruction remains critical for Shigalyov, he focuses more extensively on what comes next, on his own vision of earthly paradise. What Pyotr largely dismissed as “novels, of which one hundred thousand can be written,” the planning of a future society after the great battle of good against evil, is for many fanatics, including Shigalyov, of paramount importance (Dostoevsky 1995: 405). Unlike Pyotr, who maniacally seeks destruction above all else, most well-­known fanatics throughout history have focused all of their energies on a utopian vision of society, where, admittedly, violence often serves as the midwife, responsible for the transformation from what the world is to what it might be. This is clearly the case for Shigalyov. As we have already seen, Shigalyov offers a terrifying dystopic image worthy of Orwell, claiming, however, that this dreamt-­of society represents, in fact, “not vileness, but paradise” (404). Shigalyov’s “final solution” envisions nine-­tenths of the world enslaved to the remaining holy remnant, cast off and remade into “something like a herd”; these unfortunate masses will be engineered to accept “unlimited obedience” as they obtain a state of “primeval innocence” (404). In such a scheme—redolent of Plato’s infamous closed society—human nature itself is to be remade as the vast majority of humanity is to be

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reeducated and remolded to accept as natural their stunted state.8 Such a shocking conclusion, we are told, is “based on natural facts” and is “extremely logical” (Dostoevsky 1995: 404). Indeed, it is argued that there is “no other way.” The similarities between this way of thinking and the great fanatical movements of the twentieth century—Soviet Communism and Nazism—is apparent. We are reminded of what Arthur Koestler (1975) in Darkness at Noon calls “the running amuck of pure-­reason,” the perverted calculus of ends and means when humanity and perfection are placed on the opposite scale of man in the singular (209). In such a society, the greatest crime—the crime committed by Koestler’s protagonist Rubashov, Shatov, and countless others—is the crime of “having placed the idea of man above the idea of mankind” (153). Such a crime seeks to subvert the implacable working out of history toward its final end, a belief that was alive and well from the time of Joachim of Fiore through the great prophets of history: Plato, Rousseau, Marx, Lenin, Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and on and on.9 To stand in the way of the inexorable march of history is to stand in the way of progress, of truth, and all that is right. It is one’s just fate, therefore, to fall under the righteous tread of the “cunning of reason.” After all, as Rubashov’s jailer asks, “We should shrink from sacrificing a few hundred thousand for the most promising experiment in history?” (131).10 Richard Pevear (1995) locates within Shigalyov’s philosophy a fanaticism par excellence. He writes that, in Shigalyov’s vision of the end of history, “we have the voice of the demonic idea in its pure state,” epitomizing, as in Dostoevsky’s epigraph of the Gadarene swine, “the possibility of an evil or alien idea coming to inhabit a person, misleading him, perverting him ontologically, driving him to crime or insanity” (xviii–xix). In such an understanding, the overarching continuity in the concept of fanaticism is made clear: just as the ancient fanatici were possessed by a deity, utterly controlled by a god and driven to perform its will, the political fanatics of the modern age are similarly possessed, this time by an idea, utterly controlled by it and driven to perform its will. When there is, as Kant would say, a failure to properly critique reason, reason runs amok; it becomes perverted and subservient to an idea. Without a proper critique of reason, or, for Dostoevsky, without a proper appreciation for the relative merit of things—like God and man, philosophy and religion—ideas can fester, grow, and mutate until they become dangerous. Ideas can become obsessions and affect can turn into passion. Stepan, the fainthearted liberal, describes just such a process, how his liberal philosophy of the 1840s has been perverted into the monstrous philosophy of the

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generation of angry young men of the 1860s, of which his son Pyotr is a typical example. Stepan laments: “You cannot imagine what sorrow and anger seize one’s whole soul when a great idea, which one has long and piously revered, is picked up by some bunglers and dragged into the street, to more fools like themselves, and one suddenly meets it in the flea market, unrecognizable, dirty, askew, absurdly presented, without proportion, without harmony, a toy for stupid children” (Dostoevsky 1995: 25–26). This sentiment, represented as a melancholic lament from the comic-­tragic Stepan, represents Dostoevsky’s conviction that the free-­thinking liberalism of the 1840s paved the way for the radicalism of the next generation. This historical process, however, also represents a mental process, the calcification of ideas into doctrines, a process at the heart of fanaticism. The mental process whereby an unchecked idea becomes a fanatical obsession is further illustrated in a telling remark by the mayor of the fictional provincial town that serves as the setting for Demons. At the peak of the chaos brought about by Pyotr’s plan to ruin a grand fête being celebrated by local notables while also setting fires around town to conceal a spate of murders, von Lembke, the mayor remarks, “The first [fire] is in people’s minds, not on the rooftops” (Dostoevsky 1995: 516). This incredibly incisive comment, smuggled almost imperceptibly into a raft of dialogue, encapsulates Dostoevsky’s understanding of fanaticism: the greater chaos and mayhem engulfing this small Russian town—and by extension the chaos and mayhem engulfing Russia and the West—is ideological. The “demon” of fanaticism, the ideas that have run amok, is the cause for the outward devastation on display. Therefore, it is the “fire” in people’s minds that is the true problem at hand in Dostoevsky’s reckoning. This exact sentiment is put another way by Dostoevsky in any equally incisive comment by Pyotr. After Kirillov explains his personal ideology and conviction to commit suicide, a puzzled Pyotr responds, “It was not you who ate the idea, but the idea that ate you” (558). Ideas can be dangerous, Dostoevsky tells us. If they are not properly situated by a due regard for proportion, they threaten to “possess” he who subscribes to them, just as those men who came upon Jesus in Gadara were possessed and sought to have their demons cast out into swine. At such a point, as Pyotr rightly says, it is not you who ate the idea, but the idea that has eaten you. While Pyotr is “eaten” by the idea of destruction, and Shigalyov by that of a dystopian future society where the many serve the few in total obedience, there remains another fanatic in the story with two distinct animating passions. As we have just seen, the reclusive and taciturn Kirillov is obsessed with

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an entirely different idea: suicide, and somehow thereby the idea of becoming God. Early on in the novel we are told of Kirillov: “He even rejects morality itself outright, and holds to the newest principle of universal destruction for the sake of good final goals” (Dostoevsky 1995: 94). While Kirillov—like the other fanatics we have encountered in the novel—does indeed embrace universal destruction, his is a universal destruction of a different sort, an individually self-­inflicted omnicide in which all humans realize the unsatisfactory nature of human life and voluntarily kill themselves. This act, Kirillov maintains, encompasses true human freedom. He argues, “There will be entire freedom when it makes no difference whether one lives or does not live” (115). Life, according to Kirillov, is not worth living. He contends that “life is pain, life is fear, and man is unhappy,” and continues, “man loves life because he loves pain and fear. That’s how they’ve made it. Life now is given in exchange for pain and fear, and that is the whole deceit. Man now is not yet the right man. There will be a new man, happy and proud. He for whom it will make no difference whether he lives or does not live, he will be the new man” (115). Kirillov’s view here is absolute—there is no redemption in this life. Pain and fear are the sole constituents of life and the only recourse, the only remediation, is to end it—suicide. While such a view of life no doubt exists, and has existed throughout human history—“futility, futility, all is futility” writes King Solomon in Ecclesiastes—in the character of Kirillov, Dostoevsky tries to capture and distill a prevailing mood in the Europe and Russia of his day of a general malaise and dissipation, of which Kirillov’s view is just the logical extension. In Dostoevsky’s view, the Russia of the nineteenth century has been overrun with both foreign and homegrown ideologies, which have eroded the traditional Russian way of life and the Orthodox church. Dostoevsky inserts something akin to this view through the character of Shatov, the same character who is killed at the hands of Nechaev and his confederates. One can understand this empirical event (the actual murder of Ivanov by Nechaev and company) as representative of the larger fear animating Dostoevsky’s work, the fear that the Shatovs of Russia and their ideas will be killed at the hands of the Nechaevs and their fanaticism. In the novel, Shatov, an erstwhile fellow traveler, originally enthralled and taken in by the siren song of fanaticism, has since rejected the view and wants to sever all ties with Nechaev and his cell. In a speech that seems to represent something like Dostoevsky’s own view, Shatov explains, “Not one nation has ever set itself up on the principles of science and reason. . . . Socialism by its very essence must

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be atheism, because it has precisely declared, from the very first line, that it is an atheistic order, and intends to set itself up on the principles of science and reason exclusively” (Dostoevsky 1995: 250). Despite the fact, already evident, that the views of the fanatics in Demons, including Shigalyov, Nechaev, and Kirillov,11 are hardly the products of “science and reason,” Shatov (and likely Dostoevsky too) sees these new ideologies as rejecting the traditions of Russian society, the very same traditions that have made Russia into a great civilization. Shatov continues in his Slavophilic oration, “Nations are formed and moved by another ruling and dominating force, whose origin is unknown and inexplicable” (250). Ultimately, this original nationalism is properly grounded in religion, and, for Dostoevsky, the Russian church. Shatov concludes, “The aim of all movements of nations, of every nation and in every period of its existence, is solely the seeking for God, its own God, entirely its own, and faith in him as the only true one” (250). Instead of a return to the Russian church, the “true God” of Russia, the new generation, taking over from their misguided parents, seeks an entirely new God altogether; they seek to dethrone the God of Christianity and replace him with Man. Indeed, this is precisely the view expressed by Kirillov. He maintains, “He who overcomes pain and fear will himself be God. . . . God is the pain of the fear of death. He who overcomes pain and fear will himself become God” (Dostoevsky 1995: 155). At this moment—the moment of the act of suicide—Kirillov believes, “there will be a new life, a new man, everything new” (115). The desire for novelty, as we have seen throughout this work, is a constant refrain of the fanatic. As Eric Hoffer (2010) observed, “It is a truism that many who join a rising revolutionary movement are attracted by the prospect of sudden and spectacular change” (3). This desire to start the world anew has been at the forefront of fanatical movements from ancient times, from religious cults and millenarian movements, through the totalitarian movements of the twentieth century.12 These new, totalizing doctrines seek to raze the field of existing beliefs, values, and authorities. The common sense of the era is to be replaced by new beliefs around which humankind is to be remade. “Man will be God and will change physically,” Kirillov believes; there will be a new world for a new man (Dostoevsky 1995: 115). For this to happen, for man to experience true freedom and thereby become God, he must kill himself, thus proclaims Kirillov. This doctrine, like those of other fanatics, is absolute and unbending. Kirillov is obsessed with this idea of his own death or becoming God. He does not reason; he does not debate or engage with other ideas; he has seen

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the truth and there is nothing more to say. “I cannot think something else,” he says, “I think one thing all my life” (Dostoevsky 1995: 116). While Dostoevsky believes that Russia requires a recommitment to Christianity and tradition, Kirillov’s philosophy proposed exactly the opposite, a complete inversion of Christianity. Kirillov sees in the crucifixion of Christ an act of suicide, further extrapolating that, just as Jesus, who in this view committed suicide, became God, man too can become God through his own suicide. As we saw, in Shatov’s view, if not Dostoevsky’s as well, all societies define themselves by their search for their own God—Dostoevsky sees his own country pursuing a complete perversion of such a quest. Instead of returning to Russian Orthodoxy and the one true God, the demons haunting Russia hold up man himself as God. Whereas the previous examples of fanatical types in Demons have all been what Josef Rudin (1969) calls “great fanatics”—fanatics in the traditional sense with a maniacal obsession with a grand design for a future utopian society— the final fanatic of the novel, known simply as Erkel, is a fanatic of a different type. Unlike the other fanatics already examined, Erkel has no grand visions; indeed, he has no visions at all. Rather, Erkel is merely an obsequious factotum, what Rudin calls a “little fanatic” (78). Indeed, Dostoevsky (1995) himself uses just this term to describe Erkel: the narrator of Demons describes him as a “little fanatic” who is “childishly devoted to the ‘common cause’” (575). He is a “shallow, scant-­reasoning character, eternally longing to submit to another’s will”; he is “sentimental, tender, and kindly,” something like a little Eichmann, as Hannah Arendt would famously portray the latter.13 Erkel does not believe in the cause; his support is less cerebral than that. Rather, Erkel subsumes the cause with the person holding the banner. The narrator explains, “Erkel simply cannot understand service to an idea otherwise than by merging it with the very person who, in their understanding, expresses this idea” (575). Rounding out Dostoevsky’s cast of fanatics in Demons, Erkel stands alone, displaying none of the classic characteristics of fanatics in the fullest sense: no great vision, no cause however light, no obsession with his dreamed-­of utopia. Rather, Erkel is defined by his inner weakness of soul and character. Utterly feckless, he loses himself in the powerful brotherhood and solidarity formed in the crucible of an illicit secret society. He longs to lose his own individuality and be seamlessly united in a composite, something bigger than himself. Therefore, while, strictly speaking, Erkel ought not be understood as a full-­fledged fanatic himself—unlike the characters Pyotr, Shigalyov, and Kirillov—he nonetheless exhibits an important type of fanatic: the weak

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person especially susceptible to the great fanatic, eager to succumb to the siren song of a new doctrine that promises the answers to all of life’s problems and necessary pitfalls. Indeed, the history of all fanatical movements are populated by a few Pyotrs at the front and hordes of Erkels following behind, eager to do what needs to be done.

The Captive Mind Taken together, this examination of the various fanatical types in Dostoevsky’s Demons produces a fairly comprehensive picture of the phenomenon of fanaticism. All of our fanatics—Pyotr, Shigalyov, Kirillov, and Erkel—share an unshakable certitude in their beliefs. Their beliefs are immutable, beyond reason, beyond any criticism, and immune to falsification. Like Burke’s portrayal of the revolutionaries of the French Revolution, these fanatics seek nothing less than to re-­create the world. Everything must go. All the foundational institutions of civilization—the state, the church, the family, mores and customs, traditions, morality and values—all of this must be destroyed. Only after humanity is thus laid bare, stripped of every vestige of culture and history, can a “new man” be created. Like Nietzsche’s Übermensch, this new man will be perfect and will have overcome all the faults and weaknesses of the feeble man of today. Indecision, subtlety, diversity—all of these must shrink in the overpowering light of the one Truth, finally achieved. The vanguard of the revolution knows this Truth and has a solemn duty to see it brought to life on earth, wiping away the idols mankind clings to that stand in the way. Just as the demon of fanaticism is impervious to the critique of reason, it is also imperious, existing without limits. And why should there be limits? Fanaticism claims sole possession of the truth. The truth cannot be circumscribed; it is the Truth, after all. After opening Pandora ’s Box, Stepan urges his son—the fruition, Dostoevsky maintains, of Stepan’s own errant ideas— to moderate his political program. Stepan, on behalf of the earlier generation of the 1840s, explains, “We say to you: go forward, progress, even shake— all that’s old, and has to be remade—but when need be, we will keep you within necessary limits, and save you from yourselves” (Dostoevsky 1995: 314). Without such a moderating influence, Stepan maintains, the radicals “will only set Russia tottering, depriving her of a decent appearance” (314). For this reason, Stepan argues that both generations are actually necessary

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in order to keep each other in check Needless to say, Pyotr does not share his father’s view. Responding to his father, “Well, that’s as you like, but all the same, you’re paving the way for us and preparing our success” (315). Dostoevsky makes it clear that this attitude toward existing society—that it merely stands in the way of what can be—contains an unmistakable enmity. There is a hatred of society as it is and of the people who cling to their lives in the shadow of utopia. Being presented with salvation, these heretics turn the other check, or worse, denounce this gospel as apocryphal. Of Pyotr and his followers, Shatov observes, “There’s hatred there too,” arguing, “They’d be the first to be terribly unhappy if Russia somehow suddenly got reconstructed, even if it was in their happy own way, and somehow suddenly became boundlessly rich and happy. They’d have no one to hate then, no one to spit on, nothing to jeer at!” (Dostoevsky 1995: 137). Like all fanatics, Pyotr and his followers see existing society as if it were an impediment standing in the way of a new, glorious world. They stand on the threshold, ushering in the millennium in the wake of the destruction of the fallen society around them. A final facet of Dostoevsky’s sketch of fanaticism is a familiar view of the relationship between a certain way of thinking, a certain kind of intellectualism, and fanaticism—a view that has appeared again and again in the works of Kant, Burke, and others. The characters of the novel are always reading and discussing the latest fashionable ideas. The high society here is always eager to reflect the “latest convictions” (Dostoevsky 1995: 31), eager to acquire “the gloss of the latest indispensable liberalism” (311). Dostoevsky—like Burke—emphasizes that an intellectualism that slides into fanaticism crucially embraces abstraction. Abstraction is necessary for the commission of revolutionary acts that, when considered in their immediate human context, would inspire revulsion. Dostoevsky observes, “Abstraction of thought . . . may be, in some persons, the cause of extraordinary cruelty toward people, as well as of a prejudiced view of people and things” (199). Abstractness in thinking can lead men, Dostoevsky (1968) believes, to act in ways that are “malicious, cruel, unjust, and onesided—even vengeful” (199). While this phenomenon is in no short supply in the novel, it is presented in an especially moving scene where, in setting out to visit the mystic Semyon Yakovlevich, a company of youths, including our narrator and Stavrogin, decide to make a diversion, visiting a local hotel where “they had just found a guest who had shot himself.” Members of the party, the narrator tells us, were eager to have a look at the suicide. One young woman complained, “Everything has become so boring that there’s no need to be punctilious about entertainment, as long

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as it’s diverting” (Dostoevsky 1995: 326). Upon arriving at the location of the corpse, the members of the party “all stared with greedy curiosity,” the narrator explaining, “Generally, in every misfortune of one’s neighbor there is always something that gladdens the outsider’s eye—and that even no matter who you are” (327). Following this diversion, on the remainder of the journey to see the prophet Yakovlevich, “the general merriment, laughter, and brisk chatter became almost twice as lively” (328). Clearly, Dostoevsky is seeking to describe a certain callousness that emerges from an abstract intellectualism, the same type of callousness that allows one to observe a corpse with no feelings other than “greedy curiosity.” This examination of Demons reveals a nuanced portrait of fanaticism with remarkable similarities to the observations already encountered in the works of Immanuel Kant and Edmund Burke. Taken together, these three authors provide a detailed account of the “fanatic type,” a way of thinking and of being characterized by absolute conviction. Great causes are devised, often with great complexity and abstraction, and feature utopian dimensions. Such causes are pursued with a passion and conviction that carry with them a felt need to destroy the old for the sake of the new, while also cutting down any and all enemies standing in the way. Intellectuals too, “men of letters” to use Burke’s phrase, are also at the avant-­garde of such movements, supplying the ideology under which the cause is pursued. Such a battle is fought without limit or quarter; it is, after all, nothing less than a holy mission to create the heavenly Jerusalem on earth.

CONCLUSION

Confronting Fanaticism and Its Partisans

Philosophically, I could never accept any rigid dogma of ideology, whether it’s Christianity or Marxism. One of the most important things in life is what Judge Learned Hand described as ‘that ever-­gnawing inner doubt as to whether you’re right.’ If you don’t have that, if you think you’ve got an inside track to absolute truth, you become doctrinaire, humorless and intellectually constipated. The greatest crimes in history have been perpetrated by such religious and political and racial fanatics. . . . Nobody owns the truth, and dogma, whatever form it takes, is the ultimate enemy of human freedom. —Saul Alinsky (1973: 150)

Unlike an empirical object—a rock or a book, say—concepts are often contested, evasive, and difficult to pin down. Like many of the contested and mutable concepts that compose our shared political existence, the concept of fanaticism is no different in its refusal to be weighed and measured. Concepts cannot be held in the hand. They have no physical properties: no color, texture, mass, or shape. Instead, they must be sought in words and deeds. The terminology used to define a concept must be identified. The referents to which such terminology is applied must be studied. In our own case, we can ask what kinds of terms have been used to describe what we would call “fanaticism.” What kind of ideas and actions have been called “fanatical”? What are the other concepts that overlap and interact with the concept of fanaticism? Given such inherent difficulty in understanding sociopolitical concepts, it is difficult, if not impossible, to fully encapsulate such concepts within one

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simple definition or explanation. This is no less the case since, as we have seen over the course of this work, the meaning of “fanaticism” has changed over time and has reflected various interpretations and usages, often responding to different historical events that, due to their gravity, compel a reappraisal and refashioning of this concept. In the ancient world, fanaticism emerged as a concept to describe a certain type of cultic practice—the possession of a member of a religious cult by a deity. Completely evacuated of any personal agency, the ancient fanatic would often behave in ways that betrayed a lack of reason and pursue violent ends at the bidding of the controlling deity. These early fanatics were understood to be acting from within a trance, unable to understand or explain their behavior, driven to act in ways that were completely beyond their control. The emergence and growing prominence of Judaism and later Christianity provided new terrain for the concept of fanaticism to sprout and grow and thus take on new forms and meanings. No longer reflecting actual—that is ontological—possession, a fanatic still displayed irrational behavior, but now acted merely as if she was possessed. This analogical type of possession, no longer encompassing an actual ontological claim about the state of the fanatic, led the individual to behave in similar ways and operate within similar mental states as the ancient fanatic. Irrational, acting with a degree of intensity incommensurate with the situation at hand, totally certain of mission and actions—these original characteristics of fanaticism remain as the concept is taken up and recast, first within early Jewish sources and, later, in Christian circles. As Norman Cohn (1970) illustrates, by the Middle Ages, the Judeo-­ Christian worldview surrounding myth, superstition, and ever-­present millenarian expectation provided a fitting crucible for further development of fanaticism. By the time of the Reformation, the concept of fanaticism was well-­developed and most often used in uniform, consistent ways, bringing with it the usual associations of lack of agency, a carryover from the divine possession; a lack of reason; an absolute certitude in one’s beliefs and actions; as well as an unquenchable passion to achieve one’s mission. Drawing on and expanding ancient myths of a Golden Age, fanaticism found in the millenarianism of Judaism and especially Christianity a new, or at least greatly expanded, raison d’être: to hasten the end of time and bring heaven down to earth. The apocalypse promised a total perfection sorely lacking on earth, but one that existed and could be reached—if only one had the passion, faith, and will to achieve it. Given the stakes, nothing less than the end of human

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civilization and all the trials and travails that go along with it in exchange for Eden, for a type of human-­cum-­divine society both absolutely new and perfect—nothing was thought to be beyond limits to the fanatic. Humanity’s fallen, quotidian existence, so often typified by pain, suffering, and humiliation, could be replaced by something previously only dreamed of: a new Golden Age of perfect communion with the divine, a time of total peace and deliverance from all pain and suffering. Given that the object at hand was nothing less than sheer perfection and goodness, as well as the corresponding end of all bad things, it is no wonder that the fanatic would use any means at his disposal to achieve this end—including violence, a means so often adopted by fanatics that its presence is inextricable from the concept itself. Slow, long-­developing shifts in human civilization yet again led to a new environment of human existence for fanaticism to adapt to and remerge within following the French Revolution. As with other foundational concepts or, indeed, any subject of human cognition, how humans understand the world and their place in it determines how they understand and use the concepts that populate and constitute their social existence. The gradual and uneven process of European Enlightenment came to create a new sociopolitical environment and, correspondingly, resulted in a recasting of fundamental concepts used both before and after this titanic transformation in order to understand and describe the world. Accordingly, the gradual, slow-­moving process of Enlightenment, as well as the much more acute and cataclysmic events of the French Revolution, worked to recast a decidedly religious concept of fanaticism into a secular and political concept. Fanatics no longer—or at least now not only—pursued religious doctrines with irrationalism, passion, and unlimited certitude, often employing violence to attempt to achieve a totally new society, a heaven on earth. Following the French Revolution, fanaticism more and more often marched under the banner of a “secular religion,” an ideology, and exhibited all of the same behaviors associated with earlier forms of fanaticism, but now directed toward a secularized millennium, not a Garden of Eden but a “Dictatorship of the Proletariat,” for example (cf. Talmon 1952, 1960; Voegelin 1986; and Aron 2002). This transition from religious to “secular religious” motivation introduces the corresponding innovation of political fanaticism. From cultic, to religious, and now to political, the concept of fanaticism has changed over time in response to a changing social world. Most often with a certain type of intellectual at the vanguard, or at least in the wings offering a more muted support, political fanatics have been called Schwärmern by Kant, “men of letters” by Burke, and anarchists

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and terrorists by Russian commentators during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Whatever the name, these political fanatics formed a new class of people who claimed to know, who claimed knowledge of political matters no longer thought to be matters of opinion or the domain of “reasonable pluralism.” No longer pretending to knowledge provided from on high, as in an earlier religious fanaticism, this knowledge seemingly emerges from some sort of internal conviction, often supported by or expressed in philosophical texts and manifestos.

In Lieu of a Definition: A Cluster Account of Fanaticism The three authors composing the core of this volume—Immanuel Kant, Edmund Burke, and Fyodor Dostoevsky—offer crucial insights into the transformation of the concept of fanaticism from a primarily religious to a political phenomenon. Their various starting points—their unique contexts, backgrounds, nationalities, and their reaction to major events in human history, including the Enlightenment, the French Revolution, and the birth of Russian anarchism—allow for the revelation of many important facets of the complicated, elusive concept of fanaticism. However, rather than revealing a precise catchall definition, taken together, their insights into the concept of fanaticism—especially its political manifestation—paint a picture of a complex, interconnected conceptual matrix. Indeed, given the complexity of this concept and its long history of adaptation and change, it seems of limited utility to provide—as many commentators, philosophers, and etymologists, attempt to do—a final definition of fanaticism, as if it were a hermetically discrete object that could be detached from its history of contestation and change. Rather, following an approach used by Maxwell Taylor (1991) in a previous study of fanaticism and a similar method employed by Aurelian Craiutu (2012) in a study of the related concept of moderation, and as an invitation for future work, I would like to offer what I will call a “cluster account” of fanaticism, a list of ten criteria that, in at least some combination(s), constitute fanaticism.1 The idea of a “cluster account” of complex concepts was first explicated by philosopher Berys Gaut (2000, 2005) as an attempt to explain the concept of art but seems a natural method for understand othering complex concepts. In so doing, I do not mean to imply that this list is some magic formula, much less a recipe for fanaticism. I also do not wish to introduce this “conceptual web” for the purpose of providing some sort of rubric to

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proclaim this or that philosophy to be fanatical. Rather, these criteria represent aspects of human thought and experience that, throughout the concept of fanaticism’s long history—and especially its history as a political concept— have been associated and linked with fanaticism. Fanaticism, then, emerges, sometimes in various forms, from a complex web of attributes, a sort of semantic field. Understanding fanaticism in this way attempts, on the one hand, to display the diversity of the many faces of fanaticism, while also pointing to an underlying unity, to the “family resemblances” among various examples of this phenomenon. Using as a guide to at least its political form the authors at the heart of this book—Kant, Burke, and Dostoevsky—the following ten criteria, in at least some combinations, produce what these authors—and we, their students, understand as fanaticism in its fullest sense. Messianism The belief in the end of history—the apocalypse, the final triumph of the forces of good over evil, where the evil are forever damned (as is their due) and the good are exalted and enter a life free of all the pain and annoyances of life on earth—has been a staple of fanaticism since ancient times. Apparent in the preceding analyses from Kant, Burke, and Dostoevsky, of all the attributes composing this cluster account of fanaticism, messianism, it seems to me, is the most central. Subterranean Jewish and Christian teachings about the possibility of hastening the passing away of our own fallen world for the sake of the new have intoxicated the minds of believers for centuries, and continue to do so. This is, clearly, no less the case for many followers of Islam, or even other non-­Abrahamic religions (Lifton 2000). While the human need for a belief in a world free from the pains that characterize our own may very well be an inherent part of the human condition, this need was originally met by the “consolation of religion.” Eric Voegelin described this deeply ingrained human trait as a “pneumopathology,” a disordered desire to replace our “common reality” with a “second reality” composed of our own hopes and dreams (quoted in Cooper 2004: 42). The problem with such castles in the sky is that they inherently lead to a growing dissonance with reality, an increasing friction whose cause must be sought out and eliminated. Various individuals and groups, therefore, are exterminated as the supposed cause of the inherent gap between our “common reality” and our longed-­for “second reality,” killed for

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a cause that can never be attained. The seismic changes in human technological, cultural, economic, and political existence opening up the possibility of the Enlightenment and culminating in the great totalitarian political movements of the twentieth century allowed for the translation of millenarianism into political programs. No longer the sole domain of religion, this new form of “political messianism” achieved full bloom in the eighteenth century and, as we have seen, continues to this day. Raymond Aron (2002) famously diagnosed such “secular religions,” calling them “doctrines that . . . take the place of the faith that is no more, placing the salvation of mankind in this world, in the more or less distant future, and in the form of a social order yet to be invented” (178). Thus, while religious fanatics seek to bring heaven down to earth, political fanatics, under the banner of secular religions, seek to create their own heaven according to their own gospels and with their own hands. Against Reason From its earliest manifestations in the ancient world, the concept of fanaticism has been associated with a loss or misuse of reason. While people might not always order their behavior and thinking according to purely rational criteria—and, indeed, such a mechanical type of behavior is not necessarily even desirable—human behavior is normally thought to be appropriate when it exists in some sort of clear relationship to reasoned, logical thought and behavior. This has never been the case for the fanatic. The dictates of logic would not recognize the validity of the claim—made by figures like Dostoevsky’s Pyotr, Shigalyov, and Kirillov—that humanity would be improved by “universal destruction” and that anything emerging from the ashes of such destruction would inherently be better than what currently exists. This type of thinking eschews all reason. How could the status of humanity possibly be improved as a result of universal destruction? For the fanatic, in any period, reason does not provide a metric by which to order one’s thoughts or actions. At the same time, however, as Taylor (1991), Burke (1987), and others observe, fanatics often seem to behave according to a very strict reason of sorts, a deformed and idiosyncratic form of reason that makes sense only to them and their sect. This often expressly instrumental form of reason is refracted through the particular dogma of the fanatic in question and used to justify the cause undertaken, as well as the means adopted in its pursuit. Fanaticism, then, can be noted for its disjointed relationship to reason. It

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can either be rejected wholesale, as when Kirillov proclaims, “I don’t reason about these points that are done with. I can’t stand reasoning. I never want to reason” (Dostoevsky 1995: 95), or it can be twisted, forgoing any critique, and result in a mere stultified handmaiden to dogma, as with Burke’s “men of theory” and their “barbarous philosophy.” Thus, it is most apt to say that the fanatic does not necessarily abandon reason, so much as misapprehend it. Embrace of Abstraction Another common attribute of fanatics is their marked preference for abstraction, as opposed to the messy reality of the world as it is. The project of reform is difficult. Social organization is complex, muddled by overlapping social, economic, political, and cultural modes of existence. Instead of grappling with such a complicated reality, the fanatic often prefers a solution that appears to be simple, neat, and sterile. The misery and poverty of the masses of the Middle Ages ought to give way before heaven on earth. But what would that look like? How, precisely, is that to come about? No one knows. As Jesus himself remarked, “But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only” (Matthew 24:36). The inherent mystery and formlessness of utopia holds true for secular utopias as well, which were often the ultimate goal of later political fanatics. Marx famously wrote very little about what communist society would actually be like. All we know is that communist society, once achieved, would be “the riddle of history solved.” And, despite constant refrains about the necessity of revolution from Marx and Marxists, he also wrote relatively little about how to achieve a revolution at all. There is a rejection of the world in fanaticism, which contains within it a rejection of complexity, nuance, and the messiness that often defines human existence. As usual, Burke (1987) has the mots justes to describe such an embrace of abstraction: he writes of the “philosophical fanatics” who “commit the whole to the mercy of untried speculations” and “abandon the dearest interests of the public to those loose theories to which none of them would choose to trust the slightest of his private concerns” (146). Such “grand theories”—quoting Burke again—to which the fanatics “would have heaven and earth bend” (179), are clearly on display in the musings of Shigalyov, Pyotr, and Kirillov in Demons. Kant was also intimately aware of the fanatic’s embrace of abstraction. In an unusually poetic fashion, he describes this “demand for the extension of knowledge” which “recognizes no limits”; Kant (1963) observes, “The light dove, cleaving the air in her free

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flight, and feeling its resistance, might imagine that its flight would be still easier in empty space” (47). Roger Kimball (2007) comments on this moving image from Kant: “A fond thought, of course, since absent that aeolian pressure the dove would simply plummet to the ground.” Such is the often derided and rejected nature of reality, Kimball reminds us: “Like Kant’s dove, we are tempted to imagine that our freedoms would be grander and more extravagant absent the countervailing forces that make them possible.” Desire for Novelty This rejection of the world lends itself to a view that the world is fundamentally fallen, irreparably broken. Both Burke’s understanding of the leaders of the French Revolution and Dostoevsky’s Pyotr and company desire a fresh start for humanity, a blank slate. As Mao (1967) famously wrote of the Chinese people, “On a blank sheet of paper free of any mark, the freshest and most beautiful characters can be written, the freshest and most beautiful pictures can be painted” (36). These views reflect the belief that the world is so much accumulated rubble. Fanatics share the perspective of Walter Benjamin’s (2019) “Angel of History,” who looks at civilization and sees only “one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage” (201). While previously those with such views also found consolation in religion and in the promise of the afterlife, fanatics as a type have little patience. Man, as Kirillov argues, can himself become God, creating a new world while erasing the old. And this new world is not to be arrived at through piecemeal reforms, or trimming around the edges; rather, wholesale destruction of the old for the sake of the new is what is required. Further afield than either French revolutionaries or Russian anarchists, Robert Jay Lifton (2000) even locates such a phenomenon at work in the beliefs and actions of the Japanese terrorist group Aum Shinrikyo, the perpetrators of the infamous sarin gas attack on the Japanese subway in 1995. “No truth was more central to Aum,” Lifton writes, “than the principle that world salvation could be achieved only by bringing about the deaths of just about everyone on this earth” (8). The City of Man is irredeemable in the mind of the fanatic and it must be destroyed for the sake of something new. Pursuit of Perfection In such an estimation, not only can the world be made anew, but it—and the humans who compose it—can be perfected as well. Gone is all thought

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of the “crooked timber of humanity” from which “nothing can be made straight.” Gone is Burke’s (1992) sage view that “an imperfect good is still a good” (15). Such quaint views pertained only to men as they have been—not as they could be, so the fanatic maintains. Fanatics speak of a “new man,” redolent of Nietzsche’s Übermensch. After having shaken off the “muck of ages,” man can be free of the disfiguring effects of the world as it is. No longer composed of faults, weakness, indecision, and all the other traits that define mere mortals, such traits can be aufgehoben, allowing humanity to reach a higher state where such problems are overcome. In this vein, Roger Scruton (2010) has recently written about what he calls “unscrupulous optimists,” who, he argues, “believe that the difficulties and disorders of humankind can be overcome by some large-­scale adjustment” (5). Such a process, however, may entail great social disruption and coercion, but, the fanatic maintains, this is all toward the greater good. In order to create the “new man,” it may be necessary for the old man to be “forced to be free.” Of the doctrines of such “armed prophets,” Isaiah Berlin (1998b) notes, “The notion of the perfect whole, the ultimate solution, in which all good things coexist, seems to me to be not merely unattainable—that is a truism—but conceptually incoherent.” He concludes, “Those who rest on such comfortable beds of dogma are victims of forms of self-­induced myopia” (11). The impossibility, and indeed danger, of this search for such “perfect wholes” was laid bare by the horrors of the twentieth century: Any faith in Endlösungen died in Auschwitz. Against Limits Clearly, such an auspicious goal as the wholesale re-­creation of society and man requires that nothing be beyond the reach of these efforts. For humanity to be perfected and a “new man” to be created, everything must be open to transformation. There is no domain of the private in this view; there are no inalienable rights. Fanaticism, in this sense, aspires to totalitarianism. All of society, every aspect and every member, must bend on command for the massive projects of social reorganization to be effectuated. Furthermore, no realm of potential human knowledge, no mystery of the universe or intractable question of values remains outside of the grasp of the fanatic. There is no “critique of reason” here; rather, the fanatic stands ready and able to answer any question with the Truth. Reasonable difference and the value of pluralism wither before the fanatic. Without a proper appreciation for limits, for a due humility before what we cannot know, fanaticism abounds. As Kant observes,

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“For once one concedes to pure reason in its speculative use the faculty to enlarge itself to insights beyond the boundaries of the sensible, then it is no longer possible to restrict it to this object and not enough that it will then find a wide field opened for all kinds of Schwärmerei” (8:151). In his “Catechism of the Revolutionist,” Sergei Nechaev (2004) states unequivocally that there are no limits standing in the way of the true revolutionary and his cause. “In the very depths of his being,” he writes, “not only in words but also in deed, he has broken every tie with the civil order and the entire cultured world, with all its laws, proprieties, social conventions, and its ethical rules” (71). Dedicated and merciless, nothing can stand in the way of the fanatic. “All the worse for him if he has family, friends, and loved ones in this world,” Nechaev writes, “he is no revolutionary if they can stay his hand” (73). Burke (1992a) notes an incredibly similar rejection of limits in the French revolutionaries, relying, in his view, on their “savage theories” which they follow “to the utmost extremes” and which “admit no limit, no qualification whatsoever” (193). Embrace of Violence While Sheldon Wolin (1973) observes that “man is not unique among the animals in resorting to violence,” he also notes man’s “unique talent . . . for systematically experimenting with violence and for justifying the results.” Wolin continues, “To man alone belongs the ability to compose elaborate systems of religious values, political ideologies and scientific myths that, by the beauty of their poetry and the cleverness of their reasoning, have succeeded over long periods of time in legitimizing violence and concealing its otherwise ugly profile” (23–24). Fanaticism almost always entails an embrace of violence, often as a means for attempting to realize the utopian eschaton desired by the fanatic, and sometimes as something even more—a type of spiritual experience. Pyotr and his coconspirators undertook multiple acts of violence in Demons, all for the furtherance of their cause. Kirillov, on the other hand, employed a self-­oriented form of violence, suicide, in order to realize a more spiritual end, to become God himself. As was the case for Pyotr, fanatics often view their violence as either wholly justified or, indeed, beyond the need for justification, above the fray of good and evil. A typical view holds that the world as it is is violent—riven with “systemic violence”—and that, therefore, any violence one commits in opposition to the status quo is ipso facto defensive, and

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therefore justified (see Žižek 2008). Another common view holds that notions of morality are of no consequence when one has Truth on her side. This view was famously advanced by Leon Trotsky (1973) in his 1938 essay “Their Morals and Ours.” Here, Trotsky dismisses what he calls “moral effluvia” and argues that politics and ideology underpin all conceptions of morality (17). “Morality is a product of social development,” he claims; “there is nothing immutable about it” (26). There is a “democratic morality” of the bourgeoisie and a “revolutionary morality” where “the struggle” dictates the morality of the means (29). Such a view of “morality” takes nothing off the table. Trotsky argues that, “even in the sharpest question—murder of man by man—moral absolutes prove futile. Moral evaluations, along with political ones, flow from the inner needs of struggle” (56). When one possesses a monopoly on the Truth, often one views any means necessary as appropriate to realize it. Certitude Fanaticism requires certitude. The belief that one possesses the one and only Truth requires a great degree of certitude—especially if one is going to shed blood for it. Dostoevsky’s Pyotr recognized this fact, and thus sought to supplement the ailing certitude of his followers by uniting them together in a joint murder. When one acquires the long-­sought-­after, hidden Truth, one clings to it and fears losing it. As Leon Festinger, Henry Riecken, and Stanley Schachter (1956) show in their seminal work When Prophecy Fails, the certain belief in salvific religions and ideologies is so central to the holder’s understanding of herself and her place in the world that she would do practically anything not to give it up, including dismissing any disconfirming event and dismissing any logical rebuttal or skepticism, no matter how well founded. Indeed, such opposition often has precisely the opposite effect, resulting in the fanatic doubling down on his certitude. There is, after all, no salvation outside of the church. Kant’s conception of reflecting judgments, which we have already encountered, provides a useful counterpoint to this illusion of certitude. One could well understand those who approach matters of politics with certitude within the mode of what Kant called determining judgment; they seek to judge the matter at hand with recourse to a preordained set of rules. The fanatic, therefore, makes the mistake of smuggling this mode of judgment into the messy realm of politics—where there exist no catechisms or formulae capable of informing one about the biggest questions of life. Indeed, most of the political

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and moral decisions one is faced with throughout life are not stark choices between an obvious good and an equally obvious evil. Rather, most of the difficult choices we face are between competing goods and are thus decisions taking place within a world of gray, which forces us to make tough choices and balance various goods against each other. Context and nuance matter. “Circumstances,” according to Burke (1987), “give in reality to every political principle its distinguishing color and discriminating effect” (7). Contrary to the wishes of the fanatic, our ethical and political world is not meant for much certitude. Our world is just too complicated. Passion Passion, sometimes referred to as “affect intensity” by psychologists (Larsen and Diener 1987; Larsen, Diener, and Cropanzano 1987), is a healthy and natural part of human life. As the psychologist Robert J. Vallerand (2008) notes, “People engage in various activities throughout life in the hope of satisfying the basic psychological needs of autonomy (a desire to feel a sense of personal initiative), competence (a desire to interact effectively with the environment), and relatedness (a desire to feel connected to significant others)” (1). According to Vallerand, passion is the desire to engage in such activities, which bring people pleasure and help them define themselves. While passion, therefore, is completely natural and, indeed, necessary for a contented life, it can also take on a pathological dimension. “Obsessive passion,” Vallerand notes, can occur when an individual identifies his passion with his own identity and that passion becomes a compulsion, a felt necessity (1). When this is the case, when an individual develops an obsessive and unrestrained passion, the potential for violence and violent political activity is obvious. Indeed, Vallerand observes a “strong positive relationship between obsessive passion and extreme forms of political behaviour” (10). Instead of  “obsessive passion,” Mark Lilla (2001) uses the idea of eros, noting that many of the greatest minds of the twentieth century were unable to control their minds and resist the temptations offered by communism and fascism. Such a philosopher-­cum-­tyrant, Lilla writes, “is not the ruler of his aspirations and desires, he is a man possessed by love madness, the slave of its aspirations and desires, rather than their ruler” (210). As with many of the attributes that combine to create fanaticism, it is not the individual attribute per se that is dangerous or problematic; rather, it is the lack of proportion or restraint relative to the attribute in question.

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Whether as “obsessive passion” or excessive eros, passion abounds in Demons—passion for destruction, for new orders, for an end to everything and a new beginning. Passion is also a crucial component of fanaticism in Kant’s estimation. Whereas its noble cousin enthusiasm partakes of affect in combination with morality, acquisitive and imperious, fanaticism employs passion to pursue it ends. Indeed, Kant calls fanaticism “a deep-­rooted and oppressive passion,” a “disease” that “destroys” one’s healthy cognitive functioning (5:276). Burke (1987) similarly noted “a violent and malignant zeal, of a kind hitherto unknown in the world,” possessing the revolutionaries in France and serving to “render their whole conversation . . . perfectly disgusting” (97–98). An Opium for Intellectuals Finally, there is something about fanaticism that appeals to a certain type of intellectual, a reality noted by both Burke and Dostoevsky. In the 1950s, Raymond Aron (1957) famously argued that Marxism was an “opium” for intellectuals, an intellectual narcotic dulling their rational faculties and lulling them into a comfortable conformity. The foregoing exploration, it seems, provides strong evidence that Aron only grasped part of the picture, and in fact Marxism was only one of many “opiates” for “men of theory,” for whom a fanatical way of thinking has long been an “opium” of choice. Scholasticism, comprehensiveness, the discovery of esoteric truths, and the promise of solving life’s most intractable problems—all of these great endeavors appeal to intellectuals. Taken together, these allures can create a “philotyrannical” impulse—to borrow a phrase from Mark Lilla (2001: 197)—an intellectual tendency nearly ever-­present in the history of philosophy: from the tragedy of Plato at Syracuse to the contemporary farce of Slavoj Žižek and his celebration of Linksfaschismus (Žižek 2000: 326). There seems to be a powerful desire in human nature to understand, to eradicate mystery, and to replace mere opinion with Truth. Erich Fromm (1990) notes, “Man is the only animal for whom his own existence is a problem which he has to solve and from which he cannot escape” (40). There is a natural temptation to think that one can arrive at such an answer to the ultimate questions of life and a deep-­ seated human desire for certitude in this discovery. This perennial human desire is the great temptation of science and human intellect. We long to say, with Hegel (1997), that the Truth is “known to myself because I already know the whole,” yet such a Truth is inevitably proselytized by the tip of the sword

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or the barrel of a gun, a reality that more recent partisans of this view, like Herbert Marcuse, explicitly recognized (12). In matters of common sociopolitical concern, Marcuse (1965) argues, “there is an objective truth which can be discovered,” if only the liberal notion of toleration were eliminated (89). Given the “totalitarian” and “one-­dimensional” nature of contemporary liberal-­democracy, he maintained, in order to instantiate this Truth and to have a more appropriate understanding of toleration, it is necessary to “re-­ examine the issue of violence and the traditional distinction between violent and non-­violent action” (102). Living in the long shadow of the horrors that fanaticism has wrought on the world stage—the concentration camps, the Gulag, 9/11—it is surprising and unfortunate that there would be an appetite, and within the West no less, for such illiberal approaches to politics. But, as we have seen, the academy is an unusual place, where intellectual opiates abound. William Scheuerman (1991) has written on this phenomenon: “As a social group that still maintains a privileged place in the market-­place of ideas, intellectuals are not only crucial to society’s ‘learning processes,’ as Jürgen Habermas calls them, but also provide numerous instances of societal ‘unlearning’ and forgetting’” (71). Any “ethics of responsibility” has disappeared in such cases and political theorists have few qualms about unearthing political thinkers, long rejected because of their dangerous ideas, and dressing them up for broader public consumption.

La trahison des clercs It has been nearly a century since the first publication of Julien Benda’s (1969) famous La trahison des clercs (The Treason of the Intellectuals), where he argues that intellectuals have given up on their noble mission and now offer little more than support to the dominant trend in society, “the intellectual organization of political hatreds” (27). “Thanks to the ‘clerks,’ ” Benda writes, “humanity did evil for two thousand years, but honored good.” “Now,” he maintains, “at the end of the nineteenth century a fundamental change occurred: the ‘clerks’ began to play the game of political passions” (44–45). Some of the intellectuals of our own time hardly fare better. These “clerks” flirt with the most dangerous ideas without regard to consequence. They look at the liberal democracies of the West with scorn and derision. They see the West not as a beacon of freedom, but as a harsh light seeking to illuminate the entire globe with its imperialism. Democratic norms and liberal rights

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are only so much claptrap, turning citizens against other, better worlds. Some of these “clerks” still cling to communism as their preferred political regime (Badiou 2010; Dean 2012), while others are less clear (Hardt and Negri 2000). Whatever their prescription, these intellectuals on the fringes have given up on liberal democracy and liberal democratic norms about rights, freedom, and equality. This view of the world—where the primary enemy is, somehow, liberal democracy—has even inspired some contemporary intellectuals to embrace fanaticism, revaluing this concept as a political virtue. The two main intellectuals working toward such a revaluation of fanaticism are Joel Olson and Alberto Toscano. Joel Olson’s “Critical Theory of Zealotry” In a series of articles, Olson (2007, 2009, 2011) develops a research program wherein he attempts to create a “critical theory of fanaticism” (2007: 686).2 Focusing on a small group of American abolitionists, Olson reimagines fanaticism (used interchangeably with zealotry) as “a political activity driven by an ardent devotion to a cause, which seeks to draw clear lines along a friends/enemies dichotomy in order to mobilize friends and moderates in the service of that cause” (2007: 688). Apart from the normatively problematic elements of such a view of politics, which will be discussed later, this definition, and thus the project of building a political program from it, is deeply flawed. Indeed, Olson’s view of fanaticism bears little resemblance to any of the historical understandings of this concept, as explored in this work. Rather, Olson’s understanding is based on an anachronism. Instead of trying to understand the concept of fanaticism and its history, Olson merely attaches the term to “the conservative legal scholar”3 Carl Schmitt’s infamous “friend-­enemy distinction.” Evacuating any substantive content from the term fanaticism, Olson merely fills this empty vessel with this new, unrelated twentieth-­century idea. In reality, such an understanding of fanaticism marks a total rupture in the complicated ways this term has been understood throughout human history. The idea that the rich and contested concept of fanaticism can be condensed into Schmitt’s neat formulation of the political as the “friend-­enemy distinction” is ahistorical, anachronistic, and unsupportable by any historical examination of this concept. Further, Olson’s definition suffers from a misunderstanding of Schmitt’s “concept of the political,” which smuggles into his definition even more dangerous implications than he may have intended. I will say more on this later.

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Perhaps Olson’s particular re-­understanding of fanaticism owes some of its shortcomings to his narrow case selection. In attempting to unearth “a strong strain of zealotry” which, according to Olson, “has always marked American political discourse,” he relies on an exclusive focus on the American abolitionist movement (until a final article from 2011, which will be discussed later) (2007: 685). Indeed, the previous centuries of interpretation and reinterpretation of this concept is flatly dismissed as part of a “pejorative tradition” (2007: 686). Rejecting such a tradition of attempting to understand this concept, Olson essentially pins his entire project on the American abolitionists Wendell Phillips and William Lloyd Garrison. The problem here is that, even if Phillips and Garrison did understand themselves as fanatics, it is not at all clear that this is an apt description. Returning to our cluster account of fanaticism created from a broader examination of the history of the concept of fanaticism, it seems, in fact, that there is little overlap. Phillips and Garrison were certain about their aims and were passionate about the abolition of slavery. They were extremists in this position—that much is true. But they did not, as far as I am aware, offer a type of revolutionary eschatology typical of the fanatic. They did not long for a “final battle” presaging the millennium. They did not preach an ideology solving all of life’s myriad complexities or seek to re-­create the world. They were abolitionists who sought the end of a pernicious institution and refused to compromise on this issue. Phillips and Garrison were even committed to the principle of nonviolence, a strange characteristic for a fanatic. It is curious that a contemporary figure like John Brown, someone who would fit closer to historical understandings of fanaticism, plays such a small role in Olson’s analysis of fanaticism, only appearing in Olson (2011) where he is used not to conceptualize fanaticism, but to deploy a new, radically permissive view of violence. In sum, figures like Phillips and Garrison are poor choices on which to build a theory of fanaticism, precisely because they are not typical fanatics, or really fanatics at all, for that matter. They are like Dostoevsky’s Erkel or Melville’s Bartleby, extreme in a certain position, but lacking most of the other attributes by which we would understand fanaticism. By 2009 Olson had expanded his understanding of fanaticism by combining the doctrines of Carl Schmitt with those of Antonio Gramsci and Chantal Mouffe. Now, “fanaticism is an approach to the political that seeks to establish hegemony in a struggle between competing ethico-­political frameworks” (Olson 2009: 82). Such an ahistorical definition of fanaticism implies that there exists some Platonic idea of fanaticism that is immutable. However, we

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have seen that this is not the case. Fanaticism, like other contested concepts, is subject to repeated iterations, interpretations, and reinterpretations over time, resulting in a constantly changing concept. Olson’s conceptualization of fanaticism, however, is not the only problematic aspect of his program. His reliance on a dubious reading of Carl Schmitt’s work results in a “democratic form of fanaticism” (Olson 2007: 685) that is far from innocuous. Indeed, this revisionist reading of Schmitt smuggles into Olson’s theory an incredibly permissive view of violence and little normative guidance as to when violence is appropriate—a dangerous combination. The Nazi legal theorist Carl Schmitt lays out his famous “concept of the political” in 1932, writing, “The specific political distinction to which political actions and motives can be reduced is that between friend and enemy” (1996: 26). This distinction, Schmitt argues, “denotes the utmost degree of intensity of a union or separation,” the enemy is “the other, the stranger”; he is “existentially something different and alien” (26–27). The crucial aspect of this unique understanding of politics is that politics is not defined here by disagreement, by debating different “ethico-­political frameworks,” as Olson (2009) maintains, but rather by the constant shadow of “whether the adversary intends to negate his opponent’s way of life” (Schmitt 1996: 27). That is, “The friend, enemy, and combat concepts receive their real meaning precisely because they refer to the real possibility of physical killing” (33). Physical violence and killing are at the heart of Schmitt’s understanding of politics—a reality elided by the many recent exponents of Schmitt, like Olson and Mouffe. Schmitt himself argues against such deracinated rereadings, writing, “The friend and enemy concepts are to be understood in their concrete and existential sense, not as metaphors or symbols, not mixed and weakened by economic, moral, and other conceptions, least of all in a private-­individualistic sense as a psychological expression of private emotions and tendencies” (27–28). Schmitt cannot be clearer: politics is about the constant, ever-­present possibility of one group killing the other. In order to realize the station of “friend,” a state must be totally unified and ready to define its enemy through war. This extreme degree of national unity requires homogeneity within nations—thus Schmitt’s conception of friend and enemy necessarily entails a racial connotation. As William Scheuerman (1993) writes, “Schmitt argued that an authentic variety of politics, in contrast to Enlightenment-­inspired politics, needs to rest on a significant degree of ‘sameness’ in the political community” Accordingly, Schmitt held that “the well-­being of the community may imply the need to eliminate—as Schmitt himself writes—exterminate (vernichten)

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heterogeneous minorities” (106; Schmitt 1988: 9). Such a “unification” of the German nation was already underway at this time, with the corresponding extermination of heterogeneous minorities soon to follow. Schmitt’s friend-­ enemy distinction, therefore, is not meant to describe political disagreements between parties; rather, it describes politics as the possibility of an existential antagonism between different ethnically homogeneous people or nations. Olson (2009) further claims that fanaticism can actually “expand democracy rather than threaten it” (82). However, a conceptualization of fanaticism based on Schmitt’s friend-­enemy distinction can do no such thing. It should come as no surprise that little aid in expanding democracy will come from one of democracy’s most strident critics. In his scathing condemnation of liberal democracy, The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy, Schmitt (1988) argues that the central fault of modern democracy lies in “the contradiction of a liberal individualism burdened by moral pathos and a democratic sentiment governed essentially by political ideals” (17). Put another way, liberal democracy suffers, Schmitt contends, from “the inescapable contradiction of liberal individualism and democratic homogeneity” (17). At odds with the demand of national homogeneity and absolute unity, liberalism aims to insert normativity, what we might call “moral effluvia” into the concrete reality of the political. The democratic institution of parliament, as well, is ill equipped to recognize the concrete friend-­enemy distinction, structured as it is about the ever-­present possibility of existential negation. Parliamentary democrats are romantics, according to Schmitt (1986), and a romantic “withdraws from reality”; he is a person “who, instead of creating new realities, plays one reality off against another in order to paralyze the reality that is actually present and limited.” In such a way, the romantic “avoids the constraints of objectivity and guards himself against becoming committed to anything” (72). This is precisely Schmitt’s critique of parliaments—they produce endless talk about fuzzy ideals when what they should be doing is deciding, deciding who is friend and who is enemy. Thus, already by 1922, Schmitt has illustrated what his “concept of the political” entails when it is taken to its logical conclusion. Writing in Political Theology, Schmitt (2005) dispenses with such empty concepts as legitimacy and democracy. Instead, he talks about last battles where, “in the face of radical evil the only solution is dictatorship” (66). In such a situation there is no room for normativity, no room for rights, rather, the friend-­enemy distinction reaches its apex: “a reduction of the state to the moment of the decision, to a pure decision not based on reason and discussion and not justifying itself, that is, to an absolute decision created

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out of nothingness” (66). Schmitt’s view of politics is fascistic; it is a view where nations are totally unified and minorities exterminated, and where all that matters is the decision, in the final hour by a dictator, about who lives and who dies. In this account, there is no room for norms, debate, or rights. Therefore, to use this view of politics in an attempt to argue for a particular view of egalitarian politics makes little sense. By deracinating Schmitt and recasting him as merely a “conservative legal scholar,” Olson attempts to elide these necessary—if uncomfortable—implications of his coherent political theory. About the nonviolent abolitionists Wendell Phillips and William Lloyd Garrison, Olson (2007) quite correctly writes, “They did not see slave owners as personal enemies whom they wished to destroy, but a collectivity they sought to defeat” (697). While such a view may very well have been held by Phillips and Garrison, it is not a Schmittian view of politics—which necessarily entails “the real possibility of physical killing.” It goes without saying that, although the demarcation of the thick line between friend and enemy may change for Carl Schmitt, depending on circumstances, his understanding of enemies was not what Olson provides on behalf of Phillips and Garrison, “as potential brethren” with the possibility of “moral transformation” (697). Perhaps the most normatively troubling aspect of Olson’s valorization of fanaticism, however, occurs in his final article from 2011, where he presents a puzzling and incredibly permissive understanding of violence. Not surprisingly, he relies more heavily on John Brown; however, he also uses violent American antiabortion terrorists as a comparable case, offering little in the way of a normative framework to differentiate between the goals of John Brown or someone as heinous as Timothy McVeigh. Borrowing from such prophets of violence as Marx and Frantz Fanon, Olson argues that these radical actors believed that violence is not only instrumental, but rather apocalyptic, redemptive, and ontological (it is less clear whether Olson shares this view).4 Olson rejects mainstream views of violence as a political instrument of last resort (Coady 1986), opting instead for an expansive “structural” definition of violence along the lines of that offered by Johan Galtung (1969) and Frantz Fanon (2004). In Olson’s (2011) view, violence is “ontological,” by which he means a particularly strong identification with a party experiencing violence “turns sympathy into ontology”; the sympathetic bystander herself becomes the victimized party and, therefore, in responding to the abuser’s violence with violence, the bystander dons the mantle of self-­defense, the sine qua non of justified, legitimate violence. Such a view of violence, as one can

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imagine, entails an incredibly permissive view of when violence is justified. As Olson writes, “Any violence committed by or on their behalf [that is, on the behalf of the party experiencing violence, “the oppressed”] is self-­defense, even if the defender strikes first. Violence is simultaneously a means to fight one’s oppression, a part of one’s identity, and an act of redemption” (486). It seems to me that this view of violence is, frankly, absurd. Its presumption of a sort of transubstantiation between bystander and “oppressed” is, on its face, irrational and indefensible. One may sympathize with someone on whom violence is being committed, surely. One can empathize—that is identify—with this person, thinking to oneself, “That could be me.” One can even intervene, based on considerations of justice or other generalizable criteria. However, one cannot ontologically become that person. Such a relationship between these two people cannot—by the laws of physics—exceed analogy. Furthermore, this view of violence necessitates that one believe that violence is, or at least can be, structural—that somehow a system, a mode of economic production, or a society itself can somehow be violent. Such a view seems to me a clear category error. Violence is an action. We could call violence, for example, an act by one person that physically degrades another person (or potentially physically degrades property or nonhuman animals, but such distinctions are not relevant here). As such, as a behavior, an action, a system—which is not a physical entity, but rather a collection of physical entities, traditions, mores, and operating procedures—cannot commit violence. A system cannot commit a discrete action. A system may produce all kinds of undesirable externalities; it may produce or compound many incommodious aspects of life, but this does not mean that, somehow, the system commits violence. Given, therefore, that an identification with a person experiencing violence, no matter how acute, does not, in fact, result in the witness being transformed—in any physical or metaphysical sense—into the party experiencing violence, violence perpetrated on behalf of the party experiencing violence is not self-­defense. Such violence intended to protect this party may, indeed, on the face of it, seem perfectly justified, as an act of protection, but it is not self-­defense. Further, since oppression—or other incommodities one may experience in a society—is not the same thing as violence, violence committed in response to perceived oppression of a third party is clearly also not self-­defense. Once this coveted mantle of “self-­defense” is removed, the violence Olson describes is opened to the possibility of much harsher criticism, thus revealing the reason why defenders of violence in politics are so eager to appeal to self-­defense.

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Given the respective ends of someone like John Brown or Timothy McVeigh, one might naturally have very different evaluations of the justness of their respective actions. Conceivably, society and the legal system might view these actions, although both involving violence, as qualitatively distinct. The common moral understanding of society might very well lead individuals to look at the ends of these respective actors and cast two different judgments. Olson’s understanding of violence and morality, however, does not allow him to distinguish between ends in such a way, or at least not in a robust manner. Morality for Olson is relative, subject to a Gramscian “war of position” and attempts to establish a new “hegemony” and thus recast “common sense” (see Gramsci 2000). Everything is up for grabs in this view. There are no absolutes, and nothing is off the table. In such a view, Olson can do nothing more than declare a moral position by fiat; he can stand by the position and “do no other,” but he cannot engage in deliberation or reason-­ giving for such a position because he rejects any normative rubric by which such activity could be undertaken. How, then, can we reject the atrocities committed by a Timothy McVeigh? An Osama bin Laden? Olson’s (2009) answer—again an answer without normative grounding—is that we ought to base any judgment of political action (and violent political action) on the question “Does it expand the ability of ordinary people to participate in those affairs that affect their daily life?” (94). That is, does this activity work toward augmenting democracy? Such a question, at first blush, seems reasonable. However, when applied, one quickly realizes it has little analytic power and much room for interpretation. Using Olson’s framework, McVeigh could very well argue that his actions did expand democracy. A conceivable effect of his efforts to stop abortions was to allow more fetuses to come to term and, eventually, gain political rights, thus expanding democracy and democratic rights to those for whom it would otherwise be denied. By the same token, I imagine bin Laden could make a similar argument, albeit on a more global scale. Muslims around the world are oppressed by American imperialism and attacking America in the hopes of staunching such imperialism and returning self-­government to the Muslims of the Middle East would, therefore, expand “democracy” of a sort. These arguments do not seem exceptionally strained to me. Assuming, then, that one finds the normative outcomes of these arguments unacceptable—even though in both cases democracy, or something like it, has potentially been expanded—such a normative metric fails to accomplish any sort of meaningful distinction between acts of political violence.

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The topic of fanaticism is important and relevant in our increasingly unstable political world. Olson’s work is commendable for engaging with this question. However, as we have seen, his work suffers from several fatal errors. First, his conceptualization of fanaticism is ahistorical and anachronistic, capriciously collapsed into Carl Schmitt’s friend-­enemy distinction. Furthermore, in exclusively relying on a narrow case of a few American abolitionists (and later the inclusion of American antiabortion activists), Olson identifies fanaticism only with extremism. As we have seen throughout this volume, in its full sense, (political) fanaticism is much more than mere extremism in political pursuits. Second, Olson fails to appreciate the coherence and consistency of Schmitt’s political thought, attempting to sever the inextricable fascistic elements in an attempt to put Schmitt to work toward ends he would never have supported. Schmitt’s understanding of politics had little to do with “converting” enemies into friends and increasing the brotherhood of man in truer egalitarianism. Rather, in Schmitt’s view, enemies (minorities and their supporters) were to be eliminated so the Volk could be totally unified, and decisions based on “nothingness” were to replace the endless talk and reason-­giving going on in parliaments. Action, decisions, and decisive battles are the stuff of politics, and thus liberalism, with its mushy attempts to elide these brutal realities, must be replaced. Such an individual—with such a total and strident critique of democracy—makes a strange interlocutor to turn to in attempts to “expand” democracy. Third, Olson’s view of violence is illogical (in terms of its “ontological” aspect) and far too expansive to be philosophically justifiable (its “structural” aspect). The notion of “structural” violence serves only to obfuscate and thereby create an incredibly permissive view of justified violence, eliminating the ability to make distinctions between undesirable social realities or actions. Oppression, inequality, unrealized political or civil rights are all collapsed, in this understanding, under the heading of “violence.” As we have seen, this would seem to be attempted for the sake of justifying a priori the violence committed in alleged opposition to these social problems, allowing it to be cast as self-­defense. This view of violence is not only normatively problematic in its permissiveness and in its effect of stretching the category of self-­defense but it is also analytically problematic insofar as it makes it difficult or impossible to make important distinctions about social phenomena. Finally, many of these problems boil down to the fundamental antimony of a normative political theory in search of a normative foundation. Olson clearly has a normative position— his defense of American abolitionists makes that clear. In an interview in

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2010, Olson (2010) made this explicit: “I got to thinking that maybe [Wendell] Phillips was right; maybe extremism is useful for those of us seeking a free society.” However, given his embrace of certain ideas like those of Carl Schmitt and Antonio Gramsci, Olson is put in the tricky situation of seemingly maintaining that there is no such thing as an inherent morality in life, no matter how thin. Rather, our commonsense understanding of morality is merely a reflection of the prevailing status quo and the balance of power. In short, Olson’s philosophical system puts him in the position of staking moral positions without being able to defend them except through power, a wholly unsatisfactory view of politics that should unsettle his readers. Alberto Toscano’s Defense of Fanaticism Alberto Toscano’s (2010) Fanaticism: On the Uses of an Idea offers a formidable reclamation of fanaticism, fundamentally recasting it as a political virtue. Toscano’s aim is to “tie fanaticism to emancipation” and to pursue an “egalitarian politics” and “a theory of political abstraction not so easily dismissed as mere fanaticism” (xxiv, xxvi). Fanaticism, he argues, has been misrepresented by “self-­avowed liberals” who produce little more than “demonizing and superficial treatments of fanaticism,” which “rarely analyze or define, an invariant core” (xxiii, xix, xx). From such a starting point, several elements ought to be addressed. First, one can ask if Toscano’s characterization of the centuries of attempting to think about fanaticism is a fair one. Surely, much, if not most, of the commentary about fanaticism that we have seen in this work has taken a decidedly negative view of this phenomenon. However, I would argue that much of the critical analysis of fanaticism we have explored has not been “demonizing or superficial.” Of the many appellations Immanuel Kant has garnered in the centuries of interpretation and commentary of his work, superficial is not among them. While Burke and Dostoevsky are full of invective for fanaticism (as is Kant, for that matter), this does not make their analyses “superficial,” nor does their strident tone constitute an unfair demonization. Rather, it seems to me that in attempting to reduce the kinds of analyses that have been applied to fanaticism over the centuries—much of which has been explored in this volume—as merely “demonizing or superficial,” to use Toscano’s phrase, or as a merely “pejorative tradition,” to use Olson’s, Toscano and Olson are themselves committing the same sin they are accusing the critics of fanaticism of having perpetrated (Toscano 2010: xix; Olson 2007: 686).

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A hasty dismissal of the serious arguments of the critics of fanaticism ought not take the place of logical rebuttal. Second, while Toscano does engage to a great extent with the arguments advanced by the critics of fanaticism, his treatment of these positions is consistently tendentious and serves merely as a successive series of straw men, which he proceeds to knock down one after the other. This is revealed, for example, in Toscano’s early claim that critics of fanaticism have not been able to demonstrate an “invariant core” within this phenomenon—ergo, their criticisms must be superficial and dismissible. Such a criticism, as this work demonstrates, is unfair precisely because many concepts simply do not possess an unchanging, stable “invariant core.” Socially and linguistically constituted concepts like fanaticism are subject to continuity and discontinuity, interpretation and reinterpretation. While, therefore, fanaticism as a social phenomenon—like many related social phenomena—resists easy definition, this does not mean it does not exist or cannot be meaningfully investigated. Indeed, while it is true that this chapter does not offer a discrete and all-­encompassing definition of fanaticism, it does offer a collection of ten related elements that analyses of political fanaticism seem to imply are closely related to fanaticism as a social phenomenon. The fact of the matter is simply that—outside of the Platonic realm of ideal forms—the explication of “invariant cores” of complex social phenomena is not a reasonable standard, and thus dismissing analyses of fanaticism that fail to meet an impossible standard is unfair. In addition to this early, and fairly well hidden, maneuver to stack the deck against “self-­avowed” liberals who reject the virtues of fanaticism, Toscano’s work is also subject to a profound tension that runs throughout. He calls this tension the “constitutive ambivalence” of the concept of fanaticism (2010: 249). The argument seems to be that, in failing to define a sort of “invariant core” which composes fanaticism as a phenomenon, critics of fanaticism have wide latitude to attack fanaticism for myriad attributes it may or may not possess. This overdetermination renders fanaticism an “unreliable concept,” which often serves as a mere catchall for political behavior that liberals do not like (249). The problem here is twofold. First, Toscano’s argument that fanaticism is an unreliable concept because no “invariant core” can be identified by critics is, as we have just seen, an unfair standard against which to judge complicated and mutable socially and linguistically derived concepts. As Koselleck (1985) notes, “A concept unites within itself a plenitude of meaning. Hence, a concept can possess clarity but must be ambiguous” (84, emphasis added). Second, it seems to me that Toscano himself relies on his assertion

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of “constitutive ambiguity” to advance his own argument. In reading his book, one gets the impression that Toscano himself is not convinced of the existence of fanaticism as a phenomenon. Yet his argument throughout the book is—at the same time—that, insofar as it exists, fanaticism is a political virtue. These two, mutually exclusive propositions cannot logically coexist. Fanaticism cannot not exist as a phenomenon while at the same time being a real existing political virtue. This tension runs through the heart of the argument without resolution. Arguments of critics of fanaticism are presented by Toscano in a manner that implies they all miss the mark—he seemingly goes so far as to imply that, in doing so, they bring into doubt the very existence of fanaticism as a social phenomenon. The entire text of the book, in fact, is composed of a series of chapters that chronologically present criticisms of fanaticism and attempt to explain how they miss the mark. At one point, Toscano asks, “Is there no history of fanaticism, or only, at most, a catalogue of its crimes and delusions?” (2010: xx). By the time the reader reaches the conclusion, she is left with the impression—or at least the gnawing suspicion—that fanaticism as a social phenomenon does not, in fact, exist. Rather, it is simply a boogeyman invented by liberals—an empty signifier devoid of any positive content— which is invested with the liberal bête noire du jour. Despite this impression, however, Toscano’s conclusion seems to imply that there is such a thing as fanaticism and that, in fact, it is a good and noble phenomenon which ought to be taken up in our time. Indeed, only two paragraphs after ostensibly dismissing the existence of fanaticism as a boogeyman due to its alleged “constitutive ambivalence,” Toscano (2010) tells the reader: “This book has been concerned above all with fanaticism as a politics of abstraction, universality and partisanship” (250). Toscano goes on thereafter to praise these attributes, as he does in the introduction and at various points throughout the book. Several pages later, Toscano casts fanaticism as “a politics of passionate and unconditional conviction”—again, a ringing endorsement in his estimation (252). The book ends with the following admonition: Cognizant of the long history of fanaticism as a term of abuse for emancipatory efforts, we should be wary of simply dismissing or pathologizing them [fanaticisms]: the refusal of compromise, the affirmation of principle and passionate partisanship are moments of any politics that seeks the radical transformation of the status quo. But politics is not reducible to the cry, and clash or the axiom. Urgency and intransigence must be coupled with patience and strategy, if there is ever to be a history without fanaticism. (253)

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By the end of the book, it seems, any ambivalence about the existence of fanaticism has melted away. Critics of fanaticism have either failed to properly understand fanaticism or have rejected it on misplaced normative grounds. Fanaticism exists, it seems, and is a laudable tool in the worthy pursuit of “radical transformation of the status quo” (253). Such a politics of fanaticism—ostensibly with the now-­revealed “invariant core” of “refusal of compromise, the affirmation of principle and passionate partisanship”— will, it seems, bring about the “negation of the negation.” Toscano argues that the “radical transformation of the status quo” will usher in “a history without fanaticism.” There will no longer be a need to refuse to compromise, to affirm principle and passionate partisanship. In whatever utopia Toscano has in mind (speculation is our only map here), politics will not exist. Disagreement, it seems, will cease. As is always the case, however, the only outcome such projects guarantee is human and cultural destruction, the eradication of difference and of an open society capable of embracing a reasonable plurality of ideas and different modes of living.

No Cheers for Fanaticism Apart from the particular problems in the respective defenses of fanaticism proffered by Joel Olson and Alberto Toscano, there are good and more general reasons why a politics of fanaticism ought to be rejected. While an analysis of why fanaticism is not a constructive method of political engagement seems superfluous, as the demerits of this approach are self-­evident, it is still important to explore topics which seem obvious to most, so that we are not caught off guard when even these basic, foundational tenets of everyday life are attacked. This point has been powerfully argued recently by Ronald Beiner (2018a), who notes, “If something is dangerous, we need to be aware that it’s dangerous” (13). Beiner argues that we ought to be seriously concerned with what appears to be a growing rejection of the liberal status quo. He writes, “If ferociously antiliberal views of life are still very much in play (and much of what we are seeing in contemporary politics would have to be a kind of optical illusion in order for us to think otherwise), the enterprise of contemporary liberal theory may have to be rethought at a deep level to take account of the manifestations of anti-­liberal backlash” (123). History does not favor liberalism; indeed, the course of human history—recent history being in no way an exception—clearly demonstrates that pluralism, a respect for difference, and notions of equality and political freedom are not the norm.

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Rather, our recent postwar era of liberal consensus is a happy exception, and an exception that must be buttressed and defended in word and action. This requires that we seriously examine the forces seeking to upend the liberal-­ democratic consensus in order to refute them and to demonstrate to the wider public the dangers inherent within them. As much as the partisans of fanaticism might like to disagree, politics is a difficult enterprise. All but “political infants,” Max Weber (2004) famously maintains, recognize that “politics means a slow, powerful drilling through hard boards” (93). Politics takes skill, perseverance, and perhaps even enthusiasm, but it also requires a sense of proportion, humility, empathy, and a willingness to compromise for the greater good. Michael Oakeshott (1991) famously argued that, in politics, “men sail a boundless and bottomless sea; there is neither harbour for shelter nor floor for anchorage, neither starting-­place nor appointed destination. The enterprise is to keep afloat on an even keel; the sea is both friend and enemy; and the seamanship consists in using the resources of a traditional manner of behaviour in order to make a friend of every hostile occasion” (60).5 Politics, as this passage eloquently expresses, is about keeping the ship of state afloat, about ensuring that it does not run ashore. Politics, therefore, is about making sure the political community functions and avoids the many rocks and shoals always on the horizon. This requires trimming the sails, adjusting course when necessary, and staying the course when prudent, all the while avoiding shipwreck. Clearly, this is not a utopian account of politics. This is because, as Oakeshott observes, utopias are mirages. They are sirens beckoning the ship toward rocky shores where it is sure to founder. It takes skilled and prudent sailors—political leaders, I have suggested, using judgment and moderation—to avoid such certain errors and to always keep the ship afloat. Indeed, there is similarly no final terminus in politics; the realm of eschatology is religion, not politics. In a world of legitimate value pluralism, the ends—the destinations we could legitimately aim at—are legion, and the ship of politics cannot set out for one without compelling many to relinquish their own reasonable claims to another. In such a sober assessment of politics as Oakeshott’s, there is no room for “final battles,” a “final dénouement,” or the “end of history”; rather, politics is an ongoing process, requiring constant effort to keep the ship afloat. Many things are necessary to keep a political community in good stead in the modern world, including a healthy democracy (variously defined), a strong liberal tradition, including a respect for individual rights, a healthy

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and open political sphere, and an egalitarianism that approximates an equality of opportunity for all members of society and allows for free and equal political participation. As we will see, fanaticism works in opposition to all of these vital elements of modern, well-­functioning political communities. As well, the final argument against fanaticism offered here is simply that it is never necessary. There very well may be an occasional time and place for a moderate approach to politics to give way to a more extreme orientation, but this does not mean that there is ever a time and place for fanaticism. As our examination of fanaticism makes clear, fanaticism is not reducible to extremism. Rather, it carries many other attributes that make it especially pernicious and qualitatively different from extremism. Extremism, then, is a necessary but not sufficient component of fanaticism. In the final analysis, we will see that fanaticism ought always to be rejected as an approach to politics because it is fundamentally antidemocratic, antipolitical, antiliberal, and never necessary.

Fanaticism Is Antidemocratic Fanaticism is antidemocratic because it dismisses democracy as a legitimate way to do politics. Democracy as a political system assumes that there is no ultimate, specific agreement on the “big questions” of life, including the ultimate ends of society. There are, to return to Oakeshott’s metaphor, no maps and final destinations. Fanaticism, on the other hand, maintains that one such final end exists. There is a known Truth in the world of values and politics, and it remains to be instantiated once and for all by sheer will. Fanaticism, whatever banner flies over it, is always monistic. There is one view of The Good and the goal of politics is to achieve it. Apart from the narrow-­gauge questions about this or that specific policy—the domain of technocrats—the major stuff of politics, questions of values are what Isaiah Berlin calls “philosophical questions.” Unlike empirical questions or questions of formal logic, Berlin (1998a) writes, “it is not only that we may not know the answers to certain questions, but that we are not clear how to set about trying to answer them” (61). These types of questions do not go away. They are by their nature intractable. Despite the claims of ideologues and fanatics, they admit no easy solution. This is even more true because, as Berlin rightly states, free societies offer no official blueprint for answering these central questions. Rather, it is up to each and every person to decide for

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themselves what The Good Life is and how they ought to live. Today, Plato’s “philosopher king” seems not only impossible in the realm of politics, but undesirable. As John Rawls (2007) notes, “Political philosophy has no special access to fundamental truths, or reasonable ideas” (1). An intellectual, whether political philosopher or otherwise, is not a prophet. She can merely present her view and argue for its merits, but that view remains one among many reasonable views which evade ultimate judgments about whether they are “right” or “wrong.”6 Fanaticism is not only antidemocratic in its claim to know the ultimate ends toward which society must incline, nor only from its insistence that this end must be accepted and realized, by force if necessary. Fanaticism is also antidemocratic in that it is fundamentally opposed to the democratic process. For the fanatic, there is no need for deliberation, for the sharing of ideas, for debate, for questioning, and certainly not for changing one’s mind. The democratic process, therefore, including the exchange of ideas, of give and take, and the difficult work of keeping the ship afloat, is not necessary. The answers have already been given and the only work left is to implement them. Seyla Benhabib (1996) offers the following helpful definition of democracy: “Democracy,” she writes, “is best understood as a model for organizing the collective and public exercise of power in the major institutions of society on the basis of the principle that decisions affecting the well-­being of a collectivity can be viewed as the outcome of a procedure of free and reasoned deliberation among individuals considered as moral and political equals” (68). Whether one subscribes to a deliberative, procedural, institutional, or some other particular understanding of democracy, the underlying assumptions hold true: Democracy as a modern political regime is predicated on the idea that free and equal citizens deliberate on and have a hand in making the laws which govern them. In this way, democracy as a political system gains legitimacy. Fanaticism fundamentally rejects this notion of politics. The Truth is the Truth and, therefore, there is nothing to deliberate about; no input from citizens is necessary, and no legitimacy is needed or desired except that already bestowed by more nebulous concepts like “God” or “the people.” Reason and speech, Cicero tells us, are what makes humans unique among all the animals. This ability to come together, to live a life in common despite our differences, and to exercise a common concern and engagement for the res publica is the foundation of our relationships with each other. “Teaching, learning, communicating, debating and making judgements,” Cicero (1991) writes,

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“unite [us] in a kind of natural fellowship,” one with another (1.50). Without this “sociability” and this “bonding between humans,” Cicero continues, society “would become a kind of brutal savagery” (1.157). In whichever tradition—republican, democratic, deliberative, participatory, procedural, communitarian—democracy requires that citizens possess free and equal rights to engage in the public exchange of political views, in other words, rights to engage in the political process that governs them. This fellowship and mutual respect, characteristic of healthy democracies, is rejected by fanaticism. Our fellow citizen, in the eyes of the fanatic, is not our fellow but rather either our ally in the struggle or our enemy. Our democratic fellow is not someone with whom we can share and debate and hope to sway with reason and rhetoric, but someone who is given the ultimatum: recognize the Truth of my position or perish. This way of doing politics is fundamentally antidemocratic. In a democracy as just described, we must, as Albert Camus (2006) notes, “acknowledge the right of people on both sides to assert their version of the truth while denying those same people the right to impose that truth by murder, either individual or collective” (259). Further, fanaticism is also antidemocratic because it eschews the fundamental equality that democracies presuppose citizens to have when they participate in politics. By claiming an exclusive dispensation, fanatics reject the existence of multiple reasonable views on matters of values and political ends and, instead, claim to possess the only reasonable doctrine themselves. This exclusive grant is taken as an a priori truth and therefore is beyond the realm of reason-­giving, reasoned debate, or deliberation. By precluding such deliberation and the use of reasoned engagement on matters of politics from other citizens who have not accepted the fanatic’s doctrine, fanaticism jettisons the fundamental democratic regulative ideal of equal political participation among citizens. In such an arrangement, the public sphere is closed; indeed, it has been superseded. When all the questions of values and ends have been settled, the only thing left to do is to act, to realize ends in practice. Fanaticism, therefore, does not recognize the liberal-­democratic prin­ciple that, by dint of the fact that multiple equally reasonable worldviews exist about the biggest questions in our lives, we must bracket these particularistic views in order to participate politically with others who are different from us, who hold different comprehensive worldviews from us, and respect this reasonable pluralism and thus allow free and equal political participation to all those who possess reasonable comprehensive doctrines, even when they are not our own.

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Fanaticism Is Antipolitical The same attributes that make fanaticism antidemocratic also make it antipolitical. At its base, fanaticism has no use for politics. As Bernard Crick (1993) notes, “Genuine political doctrines . . . are the attempt to find particular and workable solutions to [the] perpetual and shifting problem of conciliation” between competing groups and interests (22). Therefore, he continues, politics “chooses conciliation rather than violence and coercion, and chooses it as an effective way by which varying interests can discover that level of compromise best suited to their common interest in survival” (30). When we reject this view, we reject politics altogether for an antipolitics of force and imposition. Understanding politics as a process of give-­and-­take, where citizens and their representatives exchange ideas and political proposals and ultimately have a say in the laws that govern their lives, we can see by the same token that fanaticism poses a fundamental objection to this way of doing politics. In a similar vein, Habermas (1996) calls politics, “the medium in which the members of somehow solitary communities become aware of their dependence on one another and, acting with full deliberation as citizens, further shape and develop existing relations with reciprocal recognition into an association of free and equal consociates under law” (21). Again, even if stripped of its heavy “deliberative democracy” jargon, the fundamental idea of politics as an activity undertaken by equals and involving deliberation about the way their lives will be governed is central and common to all modern understandings of politics—except those like Carl Schmitt’s, which seek merely to dispense with notions of equality and deliberation and live according to the arbitrary decisions of a dictator. The realities of human difference and of human freedom necessarily imply the reality of different viewpoints. Politics, therefore, takes as its starting point the existence of different points of view, some of which can coexist and some of which cannot. The goal of politics is to tame the conflict between these ideas and to channel it constructively with a minimum of violence and social enmity. Such a fundamental starting point is not shared by the fanatic, who believes himself in possession of the one Truth. Fanaticism closes societies and causes people to stop up their ears to other views. Albert Camus (2006) observes that, when we see ourselves merely as pawns in the implacable march of history toward some definite end, then man “can no longer turn toward that part of himself which is as true as the historic part, and which he discovers when he confronts the beauty of the world and of

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people’s faces” (259). Camus rightly notes that, without the openness and freedom to examine ourselves, to live a life apart from a totalizing system provided by this or that ideology and within which we exist only as nameless cogs in a great machine, we lose what it means to be human. We no longer relate to each other as humans, seeing the beauty in each other’s faces. A reliance on fanaticism, rather, means we treat others with recourse to prefashioned categories: class traitors, enemies of the revolution, social scum, or, to use more recent language, “deplorables” and “enemies of the people.” True human fellowship is no longer possible amid such stark division, and through our callousness and self-­cultivated inhumanity great crimes become possible. As Bertolt Brecht (1979) well knew, Hatred, even of meanness Contorts the features. Anger, even against injustice Makes the voice hoarse. (320)

Fanaticism Is Illiberal Liberalism is a particular type of political arrangement that limits the power of the state via recourse to political rights granted to citizens (Bobbio 1990). More specifically, Judith Shklar (1989) explains that “liberalism refers to a political doctrine, not a philosophy of life such as has traditionally been provided by various forms of revealed religion and other comprehensive Weltanschauungen.” Because of this, she notes, “liberalism has only one overriding aim: to secure the political conditions that are necessary for the exercise of personal freedom” (21; cf. Gray 1986). The goal of liberalism, its only “comprehensive doctrine,” is to ensure that no comprehensive doctrines are imposed on anyone without their consent. Because of this central principle, liberalism is antithetical to fanaticism. Indeed, following the horrors wrought by grand political experiments in the twentieth century—and renewed attempts to implement similar designs today—my view is that liberalism, understood in a capacious sense, fixes the boundary of legitimate politics. Fanaticism, clearly, stands outside the bounds of liberalism and the type of open and decent society it affords. More than just rejecting the primacy of personal freedom, fanaticism further denies the need for political rights, which are required for free and equal

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political and democratic activity. In this way, it is fundamentally illiberal. Whatever their stripe, fanatics view the idea of rights as so much claptrap. Either rights serve to pacify a public that should be demanding even more radical change (the classic Marxist view), or they serve to erect a sphere of the private and thus inhibit total social cohesion (the fascist view). However, rights are a crucial feature of modern democracies, endowing citizens with a full political and social existence while also ensuring the possibility of a private life free from political intrusion—a sort of “inner citadel.” Rights also allow democratic citizens to hold their governments accountable, providing agreed-­upon norms for intercourse between government and citizens, as well as citizen and citizen. In liberal democratic societies, citizens have recourse, ideally, to an impartial judicial system where claims involving rights, the nexus between citizens and the government, can be fairly adjudicated. However, despite their critical function in structuring and ensuring freedom and equality for citizens in modern democratic states, fanatics see no need for rights. Indeed, both of our defenders of fanaticism, Joel Olson and Alberto Toscano, make their rejection of liberalism explicit in their work. Olson (2007) argues that fanaticism holds the key to finding new “ethico-­political frameworks” beyond liberalism, whatever that means. Alberto Toscano (2010) similarly notes that his work “is not written from a prior acceptance of liberal democracy as the only legitimate horizon of politics” (xxiv, n. 33). Rights are hollow for them, mere halfway houses to a “truer” freedom that will be achieved when the political ship docks at its final harbor. We should be wary of this type of talk, however, about “true” or “truer” forms of freedom. As Alexis de Tocqueville (2008) reminds us, “What has tied the hearts of certain men to freedom throughout all history has been its own attractions, its intrinsic charms. . . . It is the pleasure to be able to speak, act, and breath without restriction under the rule of God alone and the law. Whoever seeks anything from freedom but freedom itself is doomed to slavery” (167–168).

Fanaticism Is Never Necessary As we have seen, fanaticism is undesirable as a way of doing politics because it is itself opposed to politics, democracy, and liberalism. Beyond all these good reasons, however, is the overarching proposition that fanaticism is never necessary, even in extremis. This is easy to see when fanaticism is properly understood as more than mere extremism, and rather, as the foregoing

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pages make clear, a form of politics that entails a whole host of undesirable characteristics. It is my contention, therefore, that even though, in extremis, extremism concerning this or that issue may well be justified, legitimate, and reasonable, fanaticism in this fuller sense is not. One can be a fully political animal adapted to any political context without recourse to fanaticism. Indeed, one can be engaged in politics on the left, on the right, anywhere in the political spectrum without resorting to fanaticism. Just as fanaticism is not found exclusively on the left nor the right, a rejection of fanaticism is also neither inherently left-­wing or right-­wing. As Craiutu (2017) demonstrates, prominent intellectuals of both the Right and the Left have made a point of rejecting fanaticism. Indeed, one of the most prominent “radicals” from the modern American Left, Saul Alinsky (1973), writes at length about his rejection of fanaticism. “The greatest crimes in history,” he remarks, were perpetrated by “fanatics” (150); dogma is an enemy to someone who truly cares about political issues and wants to make a difference. “In the heat of conflict,” Alinsky (1971) observes, “ideologies tend to be smelted into rigid dogmas claiming exclusive possession of the truth, and the keys to paradise.” This is a tragedy, he says. Indeed, Alinsky powerfully argues that “dogma is the enemy of human freedom. Dogma must be watched for and apprehended at every turn and twist of the revolutionary movement” (4). One can engage in politics and one can passionately support causes without becoming a fanatic. Fanatics, as we have seen, are absolutely certain that they have discovered the Truth. They often view this truth as bound up with some religious or political utopia, and there is an obsessive passion with which they pursue this ultimate goal of creating a totally new, perfect heaven on earth, a process that often leads to violent political action. The fact of the matter is that there is simply no need to misunderstand one’s political activity in this way. Once one relinquishes this fanatical outlook and the characteristics it entails, one can participate in politics, even in an extreme manner, without succumbing to fanaticism. A person can be an abolitionist in the nineteenth century, for example, completely committed to the abolition of slavery and brooking no compromise on this issue. But that does not necessarily make this person a fanatic—contrary to what Joel Olson maintains. A fanatic way of doing politics involves much more than this type of extreme political commitment. It is an extreme commitment that is also intertwined with other attributes, like messianism, a desire for novelty (a “new man” and “new world”), an obsessive passion for a utopian end of a future perfect society, and a belief that whatever can be done to pursue this elusive end must

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be done, no matter the cost. Again, while extremism is a central and crucial component of fanaticism, it is not sufficient to understand fanaticism in its fullest sense. The extremist might be a “little fanatic”—an Erkel, to return to Demons—but not a “great fanatic,” which implies the fuller sense of fanaticism that this work has primarily been concerned with. Having dispensed with our “comfortable beds of dogma” (Berlin 1998b: 11), with the dangerous delusion that politics is eschatological, we see that there is no cause or justification for understanding politics as an activity which requires fanaticism; rather, this approach to living in the world has brought with it the worst horrors humanity has ever known. Living in the shadow of the bloody twentieth century, replete with fanaticism, it is past time to recognize that such an approach to politics is undesirable and predicated on a mistaken understanding of epistemology and the nature of politics. It is time to recognize, with Theodore Adorno (1990), that a “new categorical imperative has been imposed by Hitler upon unfree mankind: to arrange their thoughts and actions so that Auschwitz will not repeat itself, so that nothing similar will happen” (365).

Fanaticism: A Problem for Our Time In many ways, despite a hopeful moment in the 1990s with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the ostensible victory of Western liberalism, the long twentieth century has not ended. Contrary to Eric Hobsbawm (1994), it seems to me that the “age of extremes” did not come to an end in 1991 but rather continues to this day. The events of 9/11 make a powerful case that we still live in a world, as Camus (2006) observed in 1946, dominated by fear, “fear of a war” and “fear of lethal ideologies.” As Camus starkly says, “We live in terror” (258). This is true; we ought not be ashamed of this very reasonable fear. This fear is the justified and sensible reaction to the global context we find ourselves in today—characterized by the resurgence of fanaticism. Such a context requires that we return to liberalism as it was originally conceived. As Shklar (1989) argues, “Liberalism’s deepest grounding is in place from the first, in the conviction of the earliest defenders of toleration, born in horror, that cruelty is an absolute evil, an offense against God or humanity.” This is a “liberalism of fear,” she writes, and this is a liberalism for our age (23). Shklar contends that we ought to pursue a politics which—at its most fundamental—is constellated not around a desire for a summum bonum, but rather the

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necessity to avoid the summum malum, which she rightly understands as the evils of “cruelty and the fear it inspires” (29). Taking this understanding of liberalism to heart in today’s context means that we ought to take seriously the threats we face that bring us closer to the summum malum. Fanaticism is—and long has been—one of those forces. As the heinous attacks of 9/11—as well as countless other events of violence and terror perpetrated in recent years under the banner of various causes—make clear, fanaticism is still with us today and poses a fundamental threat to our way of life. The liberal-­democratic consensus that emerged after the horrors of the Holocaust and the recognition of fundamental human rights which ought never to be violated are actively threatened by fanaticism and the process of “unlearning” unfortunately taking place among a small handful of intellectual and cultural leaders who are assiduously engaged in forgetting the lessons of the recent past. This volume has been devoted to the view that ideas can be dangerous. As Isaiah Berlin (1998c) observed, “Philosophical concepts nurtured in the stillness of a professor’s study could destroy a civilization” (192). Ronald Beiner (2018b) has more recently warned, “Theory, it is clear, can create monsters.” We ought to recognize this fact and combat it. Berlin (1998c) is quick to remind us—“If professors can truly wield this fatal power, may it not be that only other professors, or, at least, other thinkers . . . can alone disarm them?” (192). Fanaticism, human history attests, is a natural temptation in the human condition. However, while it may be a siren song constantly calling us, fanaticism is not our fate. Throughout the history of fanaticism, there have been those who have resisted it, analyzed it, and in their way combatted this destructive force. In an age when liberal democracy is once again under threat from radical politics—including fanaticism—a renewed attempt to understand this concept and its political implications is critical. In my own way, I have attempted in this volume to do just that by shedding some light on the history of this concept and bringing to bear on it some of the most incisive analyses and critiques of it in modern political thought. Finally, I have provided my own arguments against fanaticism and attempted to show the shortcomings of those contemporary voices calling for its revival. A rejection of fanaticism entails a realistic view of human life, a recognition of the fundamental reality of the pluralism of ultimate ends, and a rejection of the idea that there exist political visions for which the ends justify the means. As Arthur Koestler (2001) has passionately argued, the terrible lessons of recent human history have demonstrated that “man is a reality, mankind

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an abstraction” (68) and we ought never to sacrifice the former for the pretended sake of the latter. In sum, this work has been an attempt to illuminate a dangerous feature of human nature and thinking, as well as a cri de coeur for a return to what Albert Camus (2006) once called “modest political philosophy, that is, philosophy free of all messianic elements and devoid of any nostalgia for an earthly paradise” (261).

NOTES

Chapter 1 When available, references to Kant’s work use the Prussian Academy notation (volume:page). When Prussian Academy information is unavailable, references to Kant include the citation year followed by the page number. 1.  See also Michael Oakeshott’s (1996) distinction between a “politics of faith” and a “politics of scepticism.” In Oakeshott’s view, modern politics can be understood as a “concordia discors of these two styles . . . which are in abstract opposition to one another, but which together compose our complex and ambivalent manner of government and our complex and ambiguous understanding of what is proper to the office of government” (30–31). 2.  While it is not always easy to do, I seek to distinguish between phenomena, concepts, and words and terms. As Koselleck (2016) notes, “A concept may be attached to a word, but it is simultaneously more than that word” (45). For a similar and representative understanding of the difference between words and concepts held by the Cambridge School, albeit with some important differences, see Ball, Farr, and Hanson (1989). In short, I maintain that a concept is a collection of meanings that is related to, but ultimately exists apart from, the thing it refers to, with this connection between concept and thing being bridged (always imperfectly) by words and terms. In practice, this means that to understand a concept like fanaticism, it is not enough to uncover instances of the use of the word fanaticism; rather, the uses and meanings of these terms must be interpreted to understand the concept. Also, apart from locating the term itself, the concept must be sought where the normal words and terms are not found but where, nonetheless, the concept is present. 3. On Begriffsgeschichte, see Koselleck (1972 [English translation 2016], 1985, 2006); Müller (2014); and Richter (1995). On the Cambridge School, see Ball, Farr, and Hanson (1989); and Skinner (1966, 2002). For related methodological reflections, see Pernau and Sachsenmaier (2016); Gaus (2000); and Hampsher-­Monk, Tilmans, and van Vree (1998). 4.  Including Persky (1959); Knox (1961); Tucker (1972); Heyd (1995a); Farr (1988); Klein and La Vopa (1998b); Mee (2003); Poe (2010); and Carroll (2013, 2014). 5.  Relevant explorations of these concepts include works on extremism (Backes 2010), cruelty (K. Taylor 2009), messianism (Talmon 1952, 1960; Katz and Popkin 2000; Gray 2010; Landes 2011), passion (Walzer 2004), as well as works on opposing concepts like moderation (Clor 2008; Craiutu 2012, 2017, 2019; Caresse 2016), compromise (Margalit 2009; Gutmann and Thompson 2012; Fumurescu 2013), prudence (Hariman 2003), civility (Bejan 2017), humility (Button 2005), and toleration (Heyd 1996; Bejczy 1997; Walzer 1999; Gray 2000). 6.  From W. B. Yeats’s 1919 poem “The Second Coming.”

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Chapter 2 1.  This description of the earliest understandings of fanaticism in the ancient world, complete with connotations about the potential “pathological” nature of fanaticism, puts to bed the erroneous claim by Toscano (2010) that the “medicalization of fanaticism” is merely another recent liberal maneuver meant to quash attempts at radical change (5). Indeed, almost from the very beginning in the ancient world, fanaticism has connoted a sense of medical pathology. 2.  While the claim in this chapter is that we can understand the evolution of concepts (like fanaticism) over time as they coalesce into “ideal types,” in the Weberian sense, I do not wish to argue that these conceptualizations, or types, are pure types (Weber 2011). Therefore, when the prevailing conceptualization is merely a descriptive term, this is not to say that there was no political valence. Indeed, the political authorities in Greece and Rome were wary of the Cult of Dionysus and its potentially destabilizing effects on a polity (see Seaford 2006: 58). However, at this time, there was no conception of political fanaticism, that is, a fanaticism that was inherently political. 3.  All passages are taken from Euripides (1959). 4.  All quotations from Plato are taken from Hamilton and Cairns’s (1961) Plato: The Collected Dialogues. 5.  For example, Olson (2007). 6.  Interestingly, like the etymology of zealotry, many other similar words owe their existence to historical personages or movements, including assassins and thugs (Laqueur 1999: 11–12), as well as chauvinists (Haynal, Molnar, and Puymège 1983: 112). 7.  For the complete collection of Luther’s attacks against Carlstadt, see Luther’s (1890) Sämmtliche Schriften, vol. 20. See also Heyd (1995b). 8.  A reliance on an understanding of distemper among the “humors” was common at the time; see, for example, Locke’s influential Essay Concerning Human Understanding, the first edition of which was released in 1690. 9. Hobbes writes similarly of inspiration; see Hobbes (1985), Leviathan, pt. 1, chap. 8, “Madnesse.” 10.  For another contemporary account of melancholy, see R. Burton (2001 [1621]), Anatomy of Melancholy. 11.  In addition to the word enthusiasm and its variants, Shaftesbury also employs the word fanaticism (see 42). The two words still seem to be used synonymously in this text. A fuller treatment of Shaftesbury’s and Hume’s understanding of enthusiasm can be found in Carroll (2013). 12. The contemporary Israeli writer Amos Oz (2006) makes a very similar argument: “I think I have invented the remedy for fanaticism. A sense of humor is a great cure” (64). 13.  For more on Rousseau’s response to Voltaire’s critique of fanaticism, see Kelly (2009). 14.  Trachtenberg (2009) argues that Rousseau also conceives of a far more secular and even political form of fanaticism, what he calls “civic fanaticism,” although he admits Rousseau’s “reluctance to embrace” this idea (215). However, Trachtenberg shows that the concept of fanaticism, for Rousseau, remains anchored in the domain of religion, specifically, “the political status of religion, in which the specific issue of fanaticism arises” (217). Deleyre (2017) similarly adumbrates a quasi-­political form of fanaticism in the final lines of his article, writing about what he calls “fanaticism of the patriot,” a “type of fanaticism in the love of country” (6:401). However, as Trachtenberg notes, these few lines read “almost like an afterthought” and remain largely unexplored (214).

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15.  In a similar vein, J. G. A. Pocock (1987a) writes, “The decades from 1790 to 1830 form the true Sattelzeit in the history of English-­British political discourse. . . . Many changes in the vocabulary, content, style of anglophone discourse occurred in the course of that Sattelzeit.” However, he claims that “the response to the French Revolution was only one major factor occasioning them” and that Burke “did not himself ” belong to this period (19).

Chapter 3 Note to epigraph: Translation from Poe 2010: 47. 1.  Essays in Reiss (1991), Gregor (1992) and Guyer (2000) do not include the standard Prussian Academy volume and page number notation, so I have not provided it in in-text citations. 2.  See Garve (1985 [1802]); Wieland (1840); and Staël-­Holstein (1813). Unfortunately, a proper treatment of these writers cannot be undertaken here. For a recent treatment on the thought of Wieland as it pertains to enthusiasm and fanaticism, see Poe (2010). A brief account of enthusiasm in Staël’s thought can be found in Craiutu (2012: 194–197). 3.  Notable examples are Fenves (1993, 1998); Colas (1997); La Vopa (1998); Pocock (1998); Clewis (2009); Allouche-­Pourcel (2010); and Zuckert (2010). 4.  In the glossary appended to Kant’s CPJ in Guyer (2000), appearing in the Cambridge Editions of the Works of Immanuel Kant, the authoritative English translations, Schwärmer is rendered “enthusiast,” Schwärmerisch as “enthusiastic,” and Schwärmerei as either “enthusiasm” or “fanaticism” (see CPJ, 540). These translation decisions, as one can imagine, render an unreliable English translation and obscure the surprisingly systematic way in which Kant discussed these concepts. Similarly, in his notes to the popular Cambridge volume Kant: Political Writings (in the Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought series), H. B. Nisbet (1991) writes the following: “Kant uses the term Schwärmerei to denote extravagant thinking in a philosophical or religious context. Its closest equivalent in English is the term ‘enthusiasm’ as it was used in the eighteenth century.” However, Nisbet maintains that because the word enthusiasm carries many “different connotations” today that were not present in Kant’s time, it proves an unsuitable translation for Schwärmerei. Nisbet further claims that fanaticism is also an unsuitable translation, writing, “‘fanaticism’ is scarcely adequate either, since it suggests rather the extreme emotional commitment with which the belief is held than the irrationality of belief itself ” (284). As we examine more closely what Kant has to say about Schwärmerei, the reasonableness of Nisbet’s justification of his translation will be clear. However, the distinct limitations of his decisions will also become evident, especially if one is concerned with understanding complex concepts and how they change over time. 5.  This position is also taken by Poe (2010: 58-­62). 6.  To revisit the history of the concepts of enthusiasm and fanaticism before and during this time period in Europe, see Chapter 2. 7.  Another major engagement with the concepts of enthusiasm and fanaticism occurs in Kant’s Religion Within the Boundaries of Mere Reason, published in 1793. However, since the treatment of the concepts in that work is within a larger discussion of religion, it is less relevant to the political modality examined in this chapter. 8.  Compare Kant’s conceptualization of Wahnsinn and Wahnwitz in CPJ; see the following section in this chapter. 9.  For Kant’s understanding of moral law, and its distillation in the Categorical Imperative, see his Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, first published in 1785 (Kant 2012).

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10.  In the above passage, Schwärmer is translated in English as “enthusiast.” Also, Kant writes a few lines later, “Schwärmerei leads the exalted person to extremes”; the translators have rendered Schwärmerei here as “enthusiasm.” Both of these substitutions render Kant’s meaning, and his Onomastik enterprise, unclear. 11. Unfortunately, Schwärmerei is rendered here in the English-­language Cambridge Edition as “enthusiasm” (CPJ, 299). 12.  Kant writes essentially the same thing in a long note in his essay “What Does It Mean to Orient Oneself in Thinking?” (1786). Writing how “The Critique [of Pure Reason] clips the wings of dogmatism,” Kant continues, “the only sure means of rooting zealotry [Schwärmerei] out completely is the delimiting of the faculty of pure reason” (8:143, 246). 13.  For more on the term Schwärmerei, its origins and uses, see Chapter 2 in this work. See also La Vopa (1998). 14.  Schwärmerei is rendered as “visionary rapture” in the English CPJ (157). 15.  It is unfortunate that Mary J. Gregor’s translation here inexplicably translates “affect” as “passion” when, as we have seen, for Kant these two terms are hardly the same . 16.  See Beiner (1983) for a comprehensive list of all eighteen “theses” on Kant’s political judgment. The influence of Kant’s understanding of political judgment on later liberal views of politics is obvious, including John Rawls’s (1971, 2005) concepts of the “original position” and “veil of ignorance” as well as Jürgen Habermas’s (1984) understanding of an “ideal speech situation.” 17.  Indeed, a recent work by Douglas Casson (2011) locates a third way between relativism and fanaticism in the work on John Locke and the latter’s pioneering work around “probable judgment.”

Chapter 4 1.  See also Burke’s (1992a [1791]) “An Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs” for a similar account of (legitimate) revolution as restoration, specifically 124. On the nature and legitimacy of the Revolution of 1688, Burke quotes the Whig politician Joseph Jekyl, writing, “In NO case can resistance be lawful, but in case of extreme necessity, and where the constitution cannot otherwise be preserved . . . and this was the case at the Revolution [of 1688]” (132). 2.  Burke’s (1987) understanding of rights deriving from prescription, as opposed to rights in the abstract, will form a major portion of his critique of the French Revolution, as we will see. For a succinct summation of Burke’s view, see Burke (1987: 14-­31). In Burke’s (1999b) “Speech on Moving Resolutions for Conciliation with the Colonies,” he offers six reasons why Britain ought to conciliate: descent; form of government; religion, in the north; manners, in the south; education; and the remoteness of the American colonies from Britain (243). 3.  While I agree that this view of a fundamental similarity between religious and political messianism may be “conservative” in a philosophical sense, I (at least potentially) depart from Mee, who is very critical of this view and of Burke in general, that such a view is “conservative” in any partisan sense. Indeed, the idea that Burke could be understood as a conservative thinker at all in our own context has been rebutted by some recent scholarship (consider Bromwich (2014: 19); Bourke (2015: 17), cf. Kirk (2009); Levin (2014). Further, of the many eminent political thinkers who have since argued a similar position concerning the similarities between religious and political messianism—Norman Cohn, Isaiah Berlin, Raymond Aron, Jacob Talmon, and John Gray—only Gray and potentially Aron could be seen as a conservative. Perhaps, following Craiutu (2012, 2017), such a view should most properly be called “moderate.”

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4.  Indeed, of the eight extant texts authored by Burke in response to the French Revolution, the Reflections was the only one authored with the express intent of publication (see Hampsher-­Monk [2012b]). 5.  On the contemporary reception of Burke’s text, see Pendleton (1982); Hampsher-­Monk (2005); and Goodrich (2007). 6.  For a similar position, see O’Brien (1968). 7.  Cf. also Canavan (1960); Cobban (1960); O’Gorman (1973); and Pocock (1992). For a persuasive rebuttal of this position, see Freeman (1980), chaps. 9–12. 8.  Indeed, Burke got much wrong about the Revolution. One example of a misapprehension of the early events of the Revolution by Burke was his lack of appreciation for the moderate revolutionary Monarchiens (see Craiutu [2012, chap. 3]). 9.  While Carroll’s (2013, 2014) recent work on Burke is meticulously researched and well-­ argued, his novel and surprising argument that Burke sought “to rehabilitate enthusiasm for politics over and against its detractors” ultimately strikes me as unconvincing (2014: 319). Unlike Kant, Burke does not seem to embark on any “onomastic” projects vis-­à-­vis enthusiasm and fanaticism, nor does he use either of these terms in a way that would allow for a normative distinction between the two. 10.  One might well ask what of the American Revolution and the “Bill of Rights”? In defending, or at least explaining, Burke’s position, Hampsher-­Monk (2005) argues that “despite the Declaration of Independence’s claim to the self-­evidence of human equality, no deductions were drawn from this about the status of individuals within the states.” He further argues that the U.S. Constitution “guaranteed to each colony the various customs, rights, and laws” of the hereditary English variety, while also allowing for the continued existence of individual communities within the various states (4). For a rebuttal of this understanding, consider, for example, G. S. Wood (1992). Finally, for a rather unexpected endorsement of Burke’s understanding of rights, see Arendt (2004: 380-­384). 11.  However, clearly this “‘creative’ extremism” need not, as Craiutu (2012) curiously writes in the next sentence, comprise “a small dose of fanaticism sui generis,” which, Craiutu again curiously claims, “might be a good thing in pursuing worthy political goals” (5). Surely, the pursuit of worthy political goals, however and by whomever defined, need not involve the defects described in this chapter. 12.  See Craiutu (2017) for portraits of such a broad spectrum of moderates. 13.  Bésy, the Russian title of Dostoevsky’s novel, has been variously translated into English as Demons, The Devils, or The Possessed.

Chapter 5 1.  A brief biographical sketch of the historical Nechaev can be found in Carter (1991), app. 1. 2.  Carter’s translation of Dostoevsky’s Bésy refers to the novel as The Devils. Following Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky’s 1995 translation (Dostoevsky 1995), I will refer to the novel as Demons. Besides Carter (1991), the only other substantial work on Dostoevsky’s political thought undertaken by political theorists seems to be found among the followers of Eric Voeglin, including Sandoz (1967), Avramenko (2004), and Avramenko and Trepanier (2013). 3.  This brief biographical sketch is based almost entirely on Joseph Frank’s masterful five-­ part biography of the author, which, to my knowledge at least, is the authoritative biography of Dostoevsky. This period in the author’s life is covered in Frank (1976).

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4.  “Westernizers” here refers to the major cultural and political debate roiling Russian intellectuals at this time, that between the “Westerners” and “Slavophiles.” While, as Michael Florinsky (1947) notes, Westerners looked to “European science, favored constitutional government, freedom of thought and of the press,” Slavophiles, on the other hand, promoted “a highly romantic nationalism which extolled the imaginary virtues of the truly-­Russian national ways as greatly superior to those of the decadent West” (78–79). Throughout his life, Dostoevsky remained difficult to categorize along this spectrum, sometimes aligning himself more with one camp, only to shift toward the other. On this debate, see also Edie, Scanlan, and Zeldin (1965), as well as Raeff (1966). 5.  Wasiolek (1968) quotes Dostoevsky, “I do not know Nechaev, or Ivanov, or the circumstances of this murder. Even if I knew, I would not use them. I take only the completed act. My imagination can in the highest degree differ from what actually happened, and my Peter Verkhovensky can in no way resemble Nechaev; still, I believe that my imagination has created that person, that type, which corresponds to the crime” (7, emphasis added). Despite the claim to near total ignorance of the actual “Nechaev Affair,” Pyotr is referred to as Nechaev throughout most of the notebooks, and, at least according to his wife at the time, Dostoevsky followed the events in the foreign newspapers and learned much of the actual event thanks to a visit from her brother in October 1869 (Carter 1991; see also Pevear 1995). 6.  The similarity of this number with the actual death toll of communism around the globe is eerily exact, estimated by the historian Stéphane Courtois (1999) to be approximately 100 million individuals (4). Reading such a “statistic,” however, ought to give us pause. Of course, we can never know the exact number of those individual lives lost or maimed due to communism, let alone cognize the enormity of this tragedy. However, we ought to try; this attempt can serve as a small act of resistance against Stalin’s infamous aphorism “one death is a tragedy; a million is a statistic.” 7.  André Gide (2001) paints a similar picture of Soviet society, writing that already by 1936 “a treachery of a new sort” had arisen in Russia. “An excellent way of earning promotion,” Gide saw, was “to become an informer, [this] puts you on good terms with the dangerous police which protect you while using you.” However, Gide goes on to note, “Once you have started on that easy, slippery slope, no question of friendship or loyalty can intervene to hold you back; on every occasion you are forced to advance, sliding further into the abyss of shame. The result is that everyone is suspicious of everyone else” (185). 8.  The famous understanding of Plato’s Republic as a “closed society” comes from Popper (1971a). Popper (1971b) further identifies Hegel and Marx as later enemies of the “open society.” 9.  For readings that find such an authoritarian, or indeed, totalitarian impulse in Rousseau, see Crocker (1968) and Talmon (1952). 10.  In his now infamous interview with Michael Ignatieff in 1994, the Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm made a similar argument excusing the murder of millions under the Soviet regime. When asked by Ignatieff, “Had the radiant tomorrow actually been created, [would] the loss of fifteen, twenty million people have been justified?” Hobsbawm responded, “Yes” (see Herman 2012: 17). 11.  Kirillov himself proclaims, “I don’t reason about these points that are done with. I can’t stand reasoning. I never want to reason” (Dostoevsky 1995: 95). Shigalyov affirms, “There is no other way out” than my plan (403), while Pyotr simply maintains “one hundred million heads.” There is little “science and reason” here. Rather, these extremist positions are merely stated as self-­evident and, indeed, beyond the reach of reason itself.

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12.  Cf. Katz and Popkin (2000); and Cooper (2004). Unfortunately, this long-­standing desire for “universal destruction” on the part of fanatics has been made all the more concerning given the advent and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. The novel combination of fanaticism’s desire for the end of the world and now the availability of weaponry that could go a long way toward achieving such an end leads Walter Laqueur (1999) to write about a “new fanaticism”—alternately called a “new terrorism”—where fanatics are “aiming not at clearly defined political demands but at the destruction of society and the elimination of large sections of the population” (79–81). 13.  While Hannah Arendt’s (2006) famous concept of the “banality of evil” may, in fact, be apt and useful in describing a fictional figure like Erkel, recent scholarship has cast tremendous doubt on its appropriateness for characterizing the figure for whom it was originally intended, Adolf Eichmann (see Stangneth 2014).

Conclusion 1.  As Gaut (2005) explains, “the cluster account—holds that something is art by virtue of satisfying a range of criteria” none of which is individually necessary (275). While, ultimately, my project is at odds with Gaut’s analytic (Wittgensteinian) understanding of abstract concepts, I share his recognition that many concepts that seem to escape definition could be more fruitfully understood as being composed of combinations of criteria, with a result that different “clusters” can be constitutive of various modes of the same concept. I wish to thank Sandra Shapshay for bringing this literature to my attention. 2.  Sadly, Joel Olson died suddenly and prematurely in 2012. His death has the additional sad consequence of cutting short his growing research program on fanaticism, especially in the American context. According to a moving tribute by George Ciccariello-­Maher, Olson left behind an unfinished manuscript titled American Zealot: Fanaticism and Democracy in the United States. It is unclear whether this work will ever be published (Ciccariello-­Maher 2014). Olson’s work and untimely death led to special issues of two journals: Theory and Event 17(2): 2014, and New Political Science 36(2): 2014. 3.  It is a disturbing trend in academe that scholars and works once thought to be dangerous and beyond the pale, and treated with due caution and circumspection, over time casually slip closer and closer toward the mainstream. Carl Schmitt is one such figure. Rejected after the war in his home country of Germany for his unrepentant Nazi beliefs—complete with virulent antisemitism—Schmitt underwent a renaissance in the Anglophone world after he was discovered by left-­wing American scholars beginning in the 1970s (see Watkins 2015). While such early appropriation was cautious, often with more than a tinge of taboo, it speaks volumes about the state of academic “unlearning” that, by the start of the new millennium, Schmitt can simply be referred to with the appellation “conservative legal scholar” (Olson 2009: 84). Even Chantal Mouffe (2005), one of the leaders in the new Schmitt renaissance, refers to him as an “adversary” (not an “enemy”), which in her jargon means someone she disagrees with and opposes politically, but not someone she wants to kill, albeit “an adversary from whom we can learn” (57). For an excellent rebuttal of the disturbing reacceptance of Schmitt in Anglophone academe, see Scheuerman, 1991, 1993. 4.  It seems to me that Olson most likely does share this view of violence. In keeping with his earlier work, he glosses the normative differentiation of someone like John Brown and the antiabortion activist-­cum-­murderer Paul Hill as hinging on the question of the ends. “When extremism is put toward democratic ends,” Olson (2011) writes, “we recognize its agents as

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martyrs and heroes. When it is put toward a theocracy, we see villains and failures” (494). The problem, however—given Olson’s completely relativistic view of morality—is that his understanding of politics offers no normative ground to make such a distinction. Olson (2007) writes elsewhere, “‘legitimate’ is a normative question that is ultimately settled through political struggle rather than empirical evidence” (695). In another place, Olson (2009) writes, “ethico-­ political frameworks are politically and historically contingent constructions that are subject to renegotiation when the involved parties are willing to do so” (94). The view of morality one gets here is that there is no such thing. The world is fundamentally amoral and moral “common sense”—a Gramscian category Olson makes liberal use of—is merely the product of the strongest faction of the day. In short, might makes right. This view, it seems to me, creates an antimony with his obvious moral position in favor of the American abolitionist movement. If the world is fundamentally amoral, on what grounds does Olson make any moral claims? Another question raised by the above passage concerns the euphemism “renegotiation” in regard to “ethico-­political frameworks.” The idea of (re)negotiation necessarily implies that both parties participating in the (re)negotiation do so on free terms without coercion. Olson admits as much by writing that such renegotiation occurs “when the involved parties are willing to do so.” But this is clearly not the case with fanaticism in political contexts, where one side attempts to coerce the other and rejects free and equal terms on which both parties consent to negotiate or not. 5.  Oakeshott’s justly famous restatement of the ship of state metaphor seems to be a political application of Pascal’s (1958) more general characterization of the human condition (see Pensées 72, specifically pp. 19-­20). 6.  It should be noted, however, that this “reasonable pluralism” (Rawls 2005: 58–66), is different from relativism. Berlin (1998b) defines pluralism as “the conception that there are many different ends that men may seek and still be fully rational, fully men, capable of understanding each other and sympathizing and deriving light from each other” (9). However, pluralism and toleration require a sense of the intolerable; this is what differentiates pluralism from relativism. Berlin notes, “There are, if not universal values, at any rate a minimum without which societies could scarcely survive.” On these values, Berlin maintains, “There is no justification for compromise” (15).

R EFER ENCES

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INDEX

9/11 attacks, 162, 163 abolition, 4, 11, 143, 146, 149, 161 abortion, 10, 148 abstract theory, 87, 90–95, 126–27, 134–35 academia, trends in, 171n3 Adams, John Quincy, 4 Adorno, Theodore, 162 Aeneid (Virgil), 18–19 aesthetics, 12–13, 68, 75 affect, 5, 36, 57, 67–68, 73, 80. See also enthusiasm affect intensity, 139–40 “A Letter Concerning Enthusiasm” (Shaftesbury), 38 Alexander II, 107, 113–14 Alinsky, Saul, 128, 161 Allouche-Pourcel, Béatrice, 56 ambiguity, constitutive, 151–52 American contexts, 8–9 American Revolution, 83–84, 169n10 Anabaptists, 29–30 “An Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs” (Burke), 98 Ancient Greece, 22 “An Essay on Toleration” (Locke), 37–38 anger, 48 Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View (Kant), 61 anti-abortion activists, 10 anti-fanaticism, 88 Anti-Jacobin, 45 antipolitics, 115 Anton, Michael, 9 apocalypses, 27–28 Arendt, Hannah, 70, 74, 75, 77, 78, 171n13 Aron, Raymond, 133, 140 art, 77 Aufklärung, 53

Aum Shinrikyo, 135 autocratic instincts, 40–41 Bacchae (Euripides), 20 Bacchus, 19–20 Bakunin, Mikhail, 105 Ball, T., 165n2 banned books, 108 “Bartholomew-fair method,” 38–39 battle, final universal, 118–19 beauty, 64, 68–69, 158–59. See also aesthetics Begriffsgeschichte, 8, 165n3. See also concept history Beiner, Ronald, 68–69, 78, 153, 163 Beketov, Aleksey, 107, 108 Beketov Circle, 108 Belinsky, V. G., 108 Bellow, Saul, 16 Benda, Julien, 141 Benhabib, Seyla, 156 Berlin, Isaiah, 110, 111, 112, 136, 155–56, 163, 172n6 Berlinische Monatsschrift, 61 Berman, Paul, 10 bin Laden, Osama, 148 Book of Daniel, 27 Book of Numbers (25:10–18), 24 Book of Revelation, 27 boundaries, 44, 60–61, 65, 82, 136–37 Bourke, Richard, 86 “braggart philosophy,” 93 Brecht, Bertolt, 159 British Parliament, 48 Brooks, David, 10 Brown, John, 4, 143, 146, 148 Burke, Edmund: on abstraction, 134; advocating for moderation, 100; conceptions of society, 91–92; as critic of French Revolution, 81–83, 86–87, 92–93; critique

188

Index

Burke, Edmund (continued) of fanaticism, 87–90; English context of, 83; ideas compared to Kant, 10, 12, 46; on importance of context, 139; on limits, 136–37; overview of views on fanaticism, 13, 81; on passion, 140; on perfectionism, 136; personal background of, 82–83; on political philosophy without limits, 95–100; as a practitioner not philosopher, 85–86; on reason, 133–34; seeking understanding of French Revolution, 47–48, 97–98; understanding thinking of, 85–86 Calhoun, John C., 4–5 Camus, Albert, 106, 157, 158–59, 162, 164 captive minds, 125–27 caricature, 114 Carlstadt, Andreas, 30–31 Carrese, Paul, 102 Carroll, Ross, 48, 88 Carter, Stephen, 106, 109, 110, 112–13, 114 Casaubon, Meric, 33–34, 36 Catechism of the Revolutionist (Nechaev), 49–50, 137 Catholic Church, 26, 28, 30–31, 32, 41 certainty, 138–39 Charlie Hebdo attack, 10 choices, 138–39 Christ, 28, 31, 124 Christianity, 27–29, 38, 110, 123–24, 129 Cicero, 156–57 Cioran, E. M., 15 citizenship, conceptions of, 79 City of God, 8, 26, 28, 32, 95 City of Man, 8, 32, 95, 135 civil society, 7–8, 30, 71, 81, 91, 96 Civil Society and Fanaticism: Conjoined Histories (Colas), 7 Civil War, British, 83 clerks, 141 Clinton, Hilary, 9 cluster account of fanaticism, 131–32, 171n1 cognitive processes, 63, 64, 75, 81, 121 Cohn, Norman, 27, 66, 118, 129 Colas, Dominique, 2, 5, 7–8, 23, 26, 28, 30–31, 32, 45 common sense, 76 communism, 134, 170n6, 171n10 complexity, 5, 50, 131, 134, 139 concept history, 3, 7–8, 17–23, 46, 48–52, 129–30

concepts, foundational, 3 concepts, nature of, 128–29, 165n2 concepts, unreliable, 151–52 conservatism, 85, 102, 109 constitutive ambivalence, 151–52 Conze, Werner, 18 Craiutu, Aurelian, 100–101, 102, 131, 161 Crick, Bernard, 115, 158 Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy, The (Schmitt), 145 criteria for fanaticism: certainty, 138–39; desire for novelty, 135; embrace of abstraction, 134–35; embrace of violence, 137–38; intellectualism, 140–41; against limits, 136–37; messianism, 132–33; passion, 139–40; pursuit of perfection, 135–36; against reason, 133–34 Critique of the Power of Judgment (Kant), 58, 63–64, 74 cults, 18, 20–21, 118 danger, 10, 34, 59–60, 121 Darkness at Noon (Koestler), 120 death sentence, of Dostoevsky, 107–8 Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen, 84, 91 definitions, 2–3, 36, 131, 142, 156 Deleyre, Alexandre, 44, 166n14 democracy, 11–12, 16, 79, 148, 154–57 Demons (Dostoevsky): abstraction in, 134; characteristics of, 106; characters in, 111–13; descriptions of, 106; differing portraits of fanaticism in, 119; obsessive passion in, 140; overview of, 13; political context of, 49; preface of, 109–10; premise of, 104; summary, 102–3; violence in, 137–38 “Demons” (Pushkin), 109–10 Depont, Charles-Jean- François, 96, 100, 101 de Puymège, Gérard, 4, 15 derangement, 59–60 Der Streit der Fakultäten (Kant), 47 de Staël, Germaine, 5–6, 55 destruction, 105, 115–17, 118, 121, 133, 171n12 de Tocqueville, Alexis, 44, 160 Deutsches Wörterbuch (Grimm and Grimm), 30 Devils, The (Dostoevsky), 106 dictatorships, 145–46 Diderot, Denis, 44 Dionysus, 20, 21 Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men (Rousseau), 43

Index diversity, 90–91, 158 “Divinatory Enthusiasm,” 33–34 dogma, 85, 128, 161–62 Dostoevsky, Fyodor: on accuracy of Demons, 170n5; on the French Revolution, 102; overview on views on fanaticism, 10, 12, 13; personal conversions of, 107–8, 109; as a philosophical novelist, 106; as a philosophical thinker, 105–6; as a political thinker, 105; preparation for Demons, 105, 112; reflections on French Revolution, 46, 49–50; views on fanaticism through Demons plot, 113–14; views on Russian society, 109–11, 114 “Eli, the Fanatic” (Roth), 16 Emile (Rousseau), 43 Encyclopédie (Diderot), 44 Enlightenment, 1–2, 54–55, 99, 130 enthusiasm: Burke redefining, 87–88; compared to fanaticism, 5–6, 21–23, 53, 55–63, 64, 79–80; connotations of, 23, 47, 55, 57–58, 60–61, 82; in defense of, 42; definition, 1–2; as a delusion of sense, 67–70; experiences of, 40–41; false vs. noble, 39; political, 35–36, 48; religious, 25, 33–35; scholarship on, 6 Enthusiasmus. See enthusiasm Enthusiasmus Triumphatus, 33, 34–35 Erkel, 119, 124–25, 171n13 eschatology, 27, 66, 118, 143, 154 “Essay on the Maladies of the Head” (Kant), 58 “Essay on the Origin of Languages” (Rousseau), 43 Essays: Moral, Political, and Literary (Hume), 40 ethics of conviction, 1 ethics of responsibility, 1 etymology, 17–18, 21 Euripides, 20 excess, 20 experiences, 61, 64, 68 extremism, 2, 7, 80, 149–50, 155, 160–62 Fairclough, H. Rushton, 18 false prophets, 32 fanaticism: as antidemocratic, 155–57; as antipolitical, 158–59; as an unreliable concept, 151–52; Burke’s critique of, 87–90; cluster accounts of, 3, 131–32; compared

189

to enthusiasm, 21, 55–63, 64, 69, 79–80; complexity of concept, 131; criteria of, 132–41; danger in, 60, 65, 85; in defense of, 42–43; definition, 2, 143–44; Demons as an effort to understand, 104; evolution into politics, 37–38; history of concept, 3–4, 129–30; as illiberal, 159–60; as inherently political, 166n2; medicalization of, 166n1; moderation as antidote to, 97; modern examples of, 8; as a modern problem, 162–64; modern relevance of, 9–10; as more than extremism, 155; negative connotations of, 3, 41; as in a new passion, 60; origins of concept, 1–2; qualities of, 4–5; reasons for rejection, 153; reasons for studying, 6–12; reduced to extremism, 149; during Reformation, 30–35; reimagined by Olson, 142–50; reimagining as political, 44–50; reimagining as positive, 10–12; as a religious phenomenon, 43–44; represented by Shigalyov, 120; shades of meaning of, 16; shifts in meaning of, 15–17; as a sociopolitical concept, 128–29; as a temptation, 163; Toscano’s views on, 150–53; two versions of, 64–65; understood through judgments, 75; as unnecessary, 160–62; views of Toscano and Olson, 11; as a virtue, 152 Fanaticism: On the Uses of an Idea (Toscano), 10–11, 150–53 “Fanaticus homo,” 29–30 Fanon, Frantz, 146 fantasy, 59–60 fanum, 17–18 Farr, James, 7, 165n2 Fenves, Peter, 30, 57 Festinger, Leon, 138 “Flight 93 election,” 9 Fourier, Charles, 108 freedom, 71, 83–84, 96, 99, 158–60 Freeman, Michael, 89 French Revolution: as an elective revolution, 99; Burke’s criticism of, 81–82, 83; Burke seeking understanding of, 47–48, 95; Dostoevsky’s reflections on, 49–50; enthusiasm and, 70–74; key events of, 84–85; lasting impacts of, 102; reflection on impact of, 44, 48–49; role in reshaping fanaticism, 45–46; secularization of fanaticism and, 130; spectators of, 77; studying fanaticism in context of, 8; as symbol of political fanaticism, 89–90; view of fanaticism during, 17

190 friend-enemy distinction, 144–45, 149 Fromm, Erich, 140 Galtung, Johan, 146 Garrison, William Lloyd, 143, 146 Garve, Christian, 55 Gaut, Berys, 3, 131, 171n1 genius, 77 Gentz, Friedrich, 88 German language, 30, 53, 64 Gide, André, 170n7 “Glorious Revolution,” 83 God, 66, 115, 123–24 Golden Age, 118, 129–30 Goldstein, Jan, 55 “good humor,” 38–39 Gospel of Luke, 110 government, 71–72, 73, 83–84, 94, 98 Goya, Francisco, 107 Graetz, Heinrich, 24 Gramsci, Antonio, 143, 148 Granovsky, Nikolai, 112 Greece, 19–20, 22 Grimm, Jacob, 18, 30 Grimm, Wilhelm, 30 Habermas, Jürgen, 78, 141, 158 Hampsher-Monk, Ian, 83, 84, 91 Handbook of Basic Political and Social Concepts in France, 1680–1820 (Schleich), 18 Hanson, R.L., 165n2 Haynal, André, 4, 15 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 140–41 hegemony, 32, 143, 148 Herzog, 16 heuristic anticipation, 46 Heyd, Michael, 33, 55 Hickes, George, 33 Hinske, Norbert, 26 historical events, intellectual impacts of, 48–49 History of Basic Concepts (Conze and Reinhart), 18 history of concepts, 7–8, 15, 17–23, 103 History of the Jews (Graetz), 24 Hitler, Adolf, 120, 162 Hobbes, Thomas, 1, 33 Hobsbawn, Eric, 162, 171n10 Hoffer, Eric, 114, 117, 123 House of David, 27

Index Howe, Irving, 103, 107, 108, 109 Hume, David, 37, 40–41, 42, 70, 81 humility, 7, 96, 98, 99, 136, 154 humor, 166n12 humoral pathology, 35 iconoclasts, 31–32 “Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose” (Kant), 71 ideas, 15, 121 imperfection, 100–101 inequality, 86, 149 Ion (Plato), 21, 22 Israel, Jonathan, 54 Ivanov, Ivan, 13, 103, 104 Ivan the Tsarevich, 118 Jackson, Andrew, 4 January 6 2021 Capital riot, 8–9 Joachim of Fiore, 120 Joffe, Carol, 10 Judaism, 24–25, 26, 129 Judeo-Christian worldview, 129 judgment, political, 74–80 “Junius” (British writer), 46 jus verbi, 32 Kant, Immanuel: on abstraction, 134–35; as an influential thinker on fanaticism, 5; on boundaries, 136–37; comparing enthusiasm and fanaticism, 55–58, 62–63, 67–70; context of work, 53–54; on enthusiasm, 42, 46; on fanaticism as a danger, 59; on fanaticism in German context, 12–13; on the French Revolution as progress, 81–82; on mental maladies, 58–61; moral rigor of, 66; on passion, 140; on political judgment, 74–80; on reflecting judgments, 10; seeking to understand French Revolution, 47–48; themes in work, 12–13; work compared to Shaftesbury, 39 Kantian Critical Theory, 62 Kant: Political Writings (Nisbet), 57 Kimball, Roger, 135 Kirillov, 115, 119, 121–24, 134, 137 Klein, Lawrence, 55 Klemperer, Victor, 16 knowledge, 54, 60–61, 64–65, 67, 94, 131, 138–39 Koestler, Arthur, 120, 163–64

Index Kohns, Oliver, 66 Koselleck, Reinhart, 3, 8, 17, 27–28, 37, 46, 50, 151, 165n2 Kramnick, Isaac, 48 Kushner, Harold, 24–25 language, shades of meaning, 50–51, 53, 55, 56, 66–67, 128–29, 143–44, 165n2. See also definitions; translations Latin, 17–18 La trahison des clercs (Benda), 141 Laursen, John Christian, 66 La Vopa, Anthony, 30, 55, 56, 88 Lechmere, Baron, 98 Le fanatisme, ou Mahomet le prophète (Voltaire), 41 Lembke, 114, 121 Lenin, Vladimir, 120 liberal democracy, 8, 16, 141–42, 145, 163 liberal individualism, 145 liberalism, 11, 120–21, 126, 153–54, 159–60, 162–63 liberals, 114, 150, 151 Liberty, 84 “Life of a Great Sinner, The” (Dostoevsky), 115 Lifton, Robert Jay, 135 Lilla, Mark, 139–40 limited monarchy, 98 limits to reason and passion, 56, 61, 65, 125, 136–37 Livy, 19 Locke, John, 37–38 Lomonaco, Jeffrey, 78, 79 London Revolution Society, 91 Luther, Martin, 29–32, 45, 54, 61, 64 Mahomet, 41–42 Mahomet (Voltaire), 41–42, 43 maladies, mental, 58–59, 61 mania, 60 Mao Tse-tung, 10, 120, 135 Marcuse, Herbert, 141 Marquis of Rockingham, 83 Martinich, A. P., 2 Marx, Karl, 120, 134, 146 Marxism, 140 McVeigh, Timothy, 146, 148 meaning, loss of, 66–67 Mee, John, 44, 85

191

Melanchthon, Philipp, 29–30 mental maladies, 58–59, 61 messianism, 7, 118–19, 132–33, 169n3 metaphysics, 62 methods, philosophical, 106 Middle Ages, 26–28, 129 Milgram, Stanley, 2 millenarianism. See messianism minorities, heterogeneous, 144–45 moderation, 7, 82, 97, 100–103 Molnar, Miklos, 4, 15 monarchy, 86, 98 moral boundaries, 60, 65, 66, 138 morality, 68–69, 138, 148, 172n4 More, Henry, 33–36 Morillas, Jordi, 49, 50, 102 Moscow, Russia, 104 Mouffe, Chantal, 143 Müntzer, Thomas, 30 naivete, political, 92 National Assembly, 84, 91 National Guard, 84 nationalism, 123 natural world, 54, 64 Nazism, 120 Nechaev, Sergei, 13, 49–50, 103–7, 110–12, 115, 122, 137 Nicholas I, 113 Nietzsche, F., 3, 125 nihilism, 50, 102, 108 Nisbet, H. B., 57, 60 nonviolence, 143 novelty, desire for, 135 Oakeshott, Michael, 154, 165n1 obedience, 117 “Of Superstition and Enthusiasm” (Hume), 40 O’Gorman, Frank, 86 Olson, Joel, 6, 10, 11, 142–50, 160, 171n2, 172n4 “On Philosophical Fanaticism” (Kant), 62 “On the Relationship of Theory to Practice in Political Right” (Kant), 71 ontology, 51 oppression, 147 Orlin, Eric, 18 Ortega y Gasset, José, 13 Orthodox church, 109, 122 Oxford English Dictionary, 2

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Index

parliaments, 145 participation, political, 154–55. See also democracy “parties of principle,” 37 passion, 1–2, 7, 58–59, 68, 139–40 Passmore, John, 1, 2 Pawlikowicz Zdomozyrskich Komarnicki, Jan, 58 Payne, E. J., 94 perfectionism, 95, 135–36 Perkinson, H.J., 2 “Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch” (Kant), 71 Petersburg, Russia, 113 Petrashevsky Circle, 107, 108 Pevear, Richard, 120 Phaedrus (Socrates), 23 Phillips, Wendell, 143, 146 Philosophical Dictionary (Voltaire), 41 philosophy, political. See political philosophy Phineas, 24–25 Pitt, William, 85 Plamenatz, John, 86 Plato, 21–22, 25, 42, 58, 120, 156 pleasure, 75 pluralism, reasonable, 131, 136, 153, 154, 157, 172n6 pneumopathology, 132 Pocock, J. G. A., 55, 87, 92, 97–98, 167n15 Poe, Andrew, 21, 22–23 Political and Social Thought of F. M. Dostoevsky (Carter), 106 political fanaticism, 6–7, 33, 41–42, 44–50, 81–82, 86, 99, 130–31 political judgment. See judgment, political political messianism, 133 political participation, 154–55. See also democracy political philosophy, 85–86, 90, 95, 106, 156 political process, 11 political rights, 148, 159–60 political spectrum, 102, 161 Political Theology (Schmitt), 145 political theory, 79, 95–100 politicians, 95 politics: definition of, 77, 95–96; embodied in Demons, 114–15; emergence of, 37; fanaticism and, 12–13; fragility of, 154; passion

in, 1–2, 67; role of emotion in, 55–56, 57–58, 63; violence and, 144–45 practical fanaticism, 64–66. See also fanaticism prejudices, 43 Price, Richard, 88, 91 progress, questions of, 47, 71, 81–82 prudence, 7, 97, 100, 101 psychoanalysis, 6–7 public ridicule, 38–39 Publius Decius Mus. See Anton, Michael Pushkin, Alexander, 109 racism, 144–45 radicalism, 89, 110–11, 120–21, 125–26 Rawls, John, 78, 156 realism, 13 reason: against, 133–34; as antidote to ­fanaticism, 61, 82, 156, 171n11; critiquing, 120; Kant on, 54, 58–59, 63, 75; Rousseau on, 43; theoretical vs practical, 64; untempered, 93–94 reasonable pluralism. See pluralism, reasonable reflecting judgments, 63, 65, 75–78 Reflections on the Revolution in France (Burke), 47, 85, 88–89, 96–97, 99, 101 reform, 101–2, 114 Reformation, 17, 26, 28–32, 37, 129 Reinhart, Helga, 18 religious fanaticism, 17, 24–25, 26–37, 66 Republic (Plato), 22, 25 republicanism, 73, 78 respect, 68–69 revolution: appropriate reasons for, 98, 101; attraction of, 123; Burke’s views on, 83; as end goal in Demons, 125; Kant’s views on, 72; mystery of how to achieve, 134; Nechaev on, 104; providing a fresh start, 135; as reckless, 97–98 revolutionary eschatology, 66, 118, 143 Riecken, Henry, 138 rights, 91–92, 96 rigidity, 123–24 Robespierre, M., 48 Robin Hood, 2 Roman cults, 19–20 Roth, Philip, 16 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 33, 42–43, 44, 120, 166n14

Index Rudin, Josef, 124 Russian malaise of modern life, 109–11, 122 Russian Nihilism, 108, 109–10 Sabine, George, 85 Sartori, Giovanni, 16 Sattelzeit, 46, 167n15 Scanlan, James P., 105–6 Schachter, Stanley, 138 Scheuerman, William, 141, 144 Schleich, Thomas, 18, 26 Schmitt, Carl, 11, 142–46, 149, 158, 171n3 Scholem, Gershom, 26–27 Schwärmer, 54, 61, 66 Schwärmerei, 30, 45, 56–57, 58, 61–62, 64, 67; translations, 167n4, 168n10, 168n11, 168n14 Scruton, Roger, 136 Seaford, Richard, 18, 20 “Second Coming” (Yeats), 110 secularization of fanaticism, 130–31 seelenerhebende, 69 Seid, 42 Seidel, Frederick, 10 self-defense, 147 semantics, 15–16, 56, 57. See also language, shades of meaning serfs, emancipation of, 114 Shaftesbury, Anthony, 38–40 Shatov, 117, 122–23, 126 Shigalyov, 116, 119, 120 Shklar, Judith, 159, 162–63 Shlapentokh, Dmitry, 49 Sieyes, Abbé, 84 slavery, 4 Social Contract (Rousseau), 44 socialism, 122–23 social phenomena, 151 Socrates, 21–23 Solomon, King, 122 Soviet Communism, 120 Soviet Union, 162 spectators, 77–78 speculative philosophers, 95 Stalin, Joseph, 120 state, role of, 71, 73 status quo, 101, 102 St. Augustine, 28 Stavrogin, Nikolai, 111, 116–17, 118 Stavrogin, Varvara Petrovna, 111, 112–13

193

subjectivity, 75–76, 77 sublime, 39–40, 68–69 suicide, 121–22 summum malum, 95 supersensible, 61, 62, 66, 67, 69, 80 superstition, 40, 44, 58 systems, 147 Talmud, 25 Taylor, Maxwell, 131, 133 “Tennis Court Oath,” 84 Terror, The, 46, 48. See also French Revolution The City of God (St. Augustine), 28 The Conflict of the Faculties (Kant), 58, 63, 70, 72, 74, 78 The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy (Schmitt), 145 The History of England (Hume), 40 “Their Morals and Ours” (Trotsky), 138 theory, 93–94 The Pursuit of the Millennium (Cohn), 27 The Rage of Edmund Burke (Kramnick), 48 The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters (Goya), 107 Third Estate, 84 “Thoughts on Cause of the Present Discontents” (Burke), 94 thought systems, 8 toleration, 7 Tory Party, 83 Toscano, Alberto, 10–11, 142, 150–53, 160, 166n1 totalitarianism, 136 Trachtenberg, Zev, 43, 166n14 translations, 167n4, 168n10, 168n15, 170n2 Treatise Concerning Enthusiasm (Casaubon), 33 Trotsky, Leon, 138 Trump, Donald, 9, 10 Truth, 11–12, 61, 89, 99, 125, 138, 140–41 Tucker, Susie, 45–46 two kingdoms, 28–29 Übermensch, 136 “Universal History” (Kant), 71 utopia, 134, 154, 164 Vallerand, Robert J., 139 Valpy, Francis, 17

194

Index

Verkhovensky, Pyotr Stepanovich: anti­ politics of, 114–15; destructive goals of character, 115–16, 119; as a figure of fanaticism, 105, 106–7; ideas of, 117–18; as Nechaev in Demons, 104, 111–12; relationship with Varvara, 113; role in Demons, 107; Stepan’s views on, 121; views on his father Stepan, 126; violence as justified for, 137–38 Verkhovensky, Stepan Trofimovich, 111, 112–13, 120–21, 125–26 violence: in Dostoevsky’s Demons, 104, 105, 115–17, 119; driven by fanaticism, 10, 21, 23, 31; driven by mania, 60; embrace of, 137–38; in French Revolution, 45; from obsessive passion, 139–40; Olson’s view of, 146–49, 172n4; relationship to politics, 144–45 Virgil, 18–19 Virginsky, 115, 116 vision, lacking, 124 Voegelin, Eric, 132 Voltaire, 41–43 von Wilamowitz-Moellendorf, Ulrich, 18 Vormann, Boris, 9

Wahnsinn, 59, 69 Wahnwitz, 59, 70 Walpole, Horace, 44–45 Walzer, Michael, 1, 56 Wasiolek, Edward, 103, 111–12 Weber, Max, 1, 154 Weinman, Michael D., 9 Westernizers, 170n4 When Prophecy Fails (Festinger, Riecken and Schachter), 138 Whig Party, 48, 83, 99 White, Stephen K, 88 Wieland, C. M., 53, 55 Wolin, Sheldon, 137 Wood, Allen, 54, 62 Yakovlevich, Semyon, 126–27 Yeats, W. B., 110 Yulia, 114 Zalyubetsky, 108 zealotry, 24–25, 142–50 Zealots, 24–25 Žižek, Slavoj, 140 Zuckert, Rachel, 64–66

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The work before you has benefited from the assistance of myriad individuals and institutions to whom I owe a debt of gratitude. Inevitably, some names will be left out, and to those individuals I extend both my thanks and apologies. This book began as my dissertation and, accordingly, I would first like to thank the members of my dissertation committee: Russ Hanson, Jeff Isaac, Chris Laursen (at the University of California, Riverside), and Sandy Shapshay (then in the Department of Philosophy, and now at CUNY). Each of these fine scholars has demonstrated a willingness to engage in a robust debate about ideas while also providing crucial feedback and assistance. This work is immensely improved due to their help. Above all, I wish to think Aurelian Craiutu, my teacher, mentor, and—I am most proud to say—friend. Never dogmatic or aloof, always engaged and interested in ideas, Aurelian has provided me with an ideal role model for what a political theorist ought to be. More than this, Aurelian remains one of the few people in our contemporary world still concerned for the humane virtues that make life worth living. At the heart of his work and thought is a belief in human dignity and freedom, fundamental values that are all too often lacking in our advanced and “enlightened” age. He is, in short, a mensch. Many others have generously given their time and help, contributing in various ways to make this project a success. Accordingly, I wish to thank other colleagues at Indiana University, particularly Huss Banai, Oliver Eberl, Les Lenkowsky, and Bill Scheuerman. At Purdue University, I wish to thank Fritz Davis, Elise Frketich, Cherie Maestas, David Reingold, Molly Scudder, and Melinda Zook. Earlier portions of this work were presented at the annual conferences of the American Political Science Association and the Midwest Political Science Association and during colloquia in the Departments of Political Science at Indiana University and Purdue University; I wish to thank the participants at these convenings for their comments. Some of the most challenging and constructive comments that have forced me to think

196

Acknowledgments

hard about my argument and how best to make it have come from the anonymous reviewers selected by the University of Pennsylvania Press. This book has greatly benefited from their insightful comments and I owe them many thanks. I also wish to thank my editors at Penn Press: Damon Linker and Jenny Tan. Their faith in this work has meant a great deal to me and has been instrumental in seeing this book through to publication. While I alone am responsible for any errors remaining in this book, my copyeditor Karen Carroll has eliminated countless mistakes, for which I am immensely grateful. For their financial support, I would like to thank Indiana University for providing funding throughout the course of my graduate study, as well as the Rumsfeld Foundation for a fellowship during the 2018–19 academic year. Above all, I wish to thank my family—my parents, Rick and Robin, and my brother, Mitch. I would also like to thank Kyle Swanson. Without their unconditional love and support, the publication of this book, and much else, would have been impossible to achieve. I would especially like to thank Kyle for his constant support and love, to which I have cleaved during the at times trying period during which this book was produced. Through the trials of graduate school—and then the previously unimaginable anxiety and disruption caused by the Covid-­19 pandemic—Kyle has been a rock and refuge without parallel. Finally, I wish to thank my parents. At every step—every achievement and every disappointment—my parents have been by my side offering their love and support. Whatever success I may achieve in life is due wholly to them and their sacrifice, which I could never hope to repay. It is to them that I dedicate this book.