Ben Rogers

This is the second book from this series that I have read and I must say I am quickly becoming a big fan of what Ray Monk and Frederic Raphael have done with its production. The books are short and accessible introductions, while at the same time holding its audience with tremendous respect. The books seek to tell a certain story or make a specific argument, but do so in such a way as to by the way provide a reasonably good overview and introduction into the subject thinker's work. They are not pretentious nor patronizing, nor ploddingly slow and academic.

Pascal didn't exactly grab me at first. His kookie religious transformation, the fact that his main work was never completed and is open to endless academic interpretation. But I am glad I persevered because this little essay just gets more and more enriching with each passing section.

More to the point, this essay from 1998, about an incomplete book from the 1600s, is incredibly relevant to today's crisis in the Western institutional order, with implications for today's issues of inequality, privilege, democracy and late capitalism. Through a style of argument that resembles the contemporary writing of The Economist magazine (a repeated loop of 'on the one hand' and 'on the other hand' with each round further softening into nuance and sharpening towards one's position), Pascal comes out in defence of the people. He breaks down so much elitist sneer towards the supposedly irrational behaviour of the unwashed masses. Pascal makes clear that the populace, subordinated under a regime that is ultimately by force, must adapt themselves to their uncomfortable reality as a question of mere psycho-social survival. A collusion of delusion is thus created between the powerful and the plebs to allow the people their diversions and for all to pretend that social norms are just and social standing is merited. Pascal warns elites, however, to beware of actually believing their own propaganda. "It is power that makes opinion," he reminds us.

Here is Rogers on "Pascal's conservatism: his conviction that political power is founded on force and that, if people are to be rendered operative, this foundation has to be hidden from view... the crowd's ignorance and vanity work to transform a coercive order into a voluntary, peaceful and remarkably prosperous one." In a way Pascal affirms many of the premises of conservative philosophers of his time. "But his conclusion differs from theirs: by devoting themselves to the social roles in which chance has cast them, men effectively find some consolation for their nothingness and a shield from ennui."

There is here so much more than a just a wager about whether or not god exists. There is as good a definition of liberalism as any well before the liberal order; a theory of the state being based in violence well before Weber; and a map for the role of culture/dissent in the reproduction/destruction of institutional orders well before Said, the post-colonial critique, and the development of institutional economics.

And all that in just 57 pages! This book's offering is, dare I say it, rather democratic. It is a wonder this series did not go on to wider acclaim and distribution. Perhaps because the plebeians have been too busy coping with their awful realities, and elites too busy enjoying feeling superior.… (meer)

This is a fascinating history of English food, and how it is inextricable from the nation's history. Using myriad examples & anecdotes, such as Hogarth’s Roast Beef of Old England & the cartoons of Gilray, he proves that the hearty, battling spirit of the English yeoman is because of our great diet of beef & puddings, and the enfeebled & surrender prone French can blame their weak, cloudy broths. One that every vegetarian, continental & aspiring John Bull should read.
4/3/08… (meer)