Here are MY THREE PICKS OF THE WEEK, ready to be devoured at the weekend. They are on three different themes: 1) THE NEW POPE. 2) POPULISM. 3) CHARLES DICKENS.
I hope you enjoy reading/listening to these pieces. Have a good weekend!
Who is the new Pope, how does he think, and what can we expect of him? As an agnostic of Protestant extraction who is interested in all things religious, and who supports the Church, I’m hardly an expert on Catholicism, let alone the Pope. Yet the subject is important because, love it or loathe it, the Pope and the Vatican exert influence in the world. And I don’t just mean the tourists in Rome who clog up the alleys and annoy the waiters by ordering half a pizza and tab water. Here is an entertaining attempt, by the editors of Unherd, to make sense of his philosophy.
A provocative essay by the Dutch philosopher Frank Ankersmit that’s well worth reading. Here is a quote that will hopefully induce you to reading it from start to finish. The quote comes at the very end: “In the third place, should we do something against populism? The answer is a simple ‘no’. Populism was born from the discovery that representative democracy is, in fact, an elective aristocracy. It is understandable that this was the cause of disappointment, frustration and anger. But the insight is perfectly correct. And it is better that people face reality than that they continue to believe in an illusion.”
Terrific essay about Charles Dickens that appeared a few years ago. I’m not an expert on Dickens (but have read quite a few of his books) so I learned a lot reading this. The essay about this literary giant of the Victorian era starts like this:
“Charles Dickens took cold showers and long walks. His normal walking distance was twelve miles; some days, he walked twenty. He seems to have never not been doing something. He wrote fifteen novels and hundreds of articles and stories, delivered speeches, edited magazines, produced and acted in amateur theatricals, performed conjuring tricks, gave public readings, and directed two charities, one for struggling writers, the other for former prostitutes.” In other words, it is cleverly constructed, and you will want to read on.
Good essay by Ankersmit. I agree with him that populism is not 1930s-style fascism; in contrast to the latter, European populism continues to advocate democracy - actually they demand a return to democracy. We may debate about what democracy exactly emans - and what they mean by democracy -, but the principle is undisputed. Where I disagree with Ankersmit is that ideology is dead. I understand he means what this that establishment political parties have effectively abandoned their traditional ideologies (liberalism, democratic socialism, conservativism) in favour of a pragmatic, middle-of-the-road TINA where essentially all buy into. But "woke-ism" and (Trumpian) populism are clearly ideologies, as are any sort of radical nationalism. Of those we have no lack. Rather, it is a power struggle between the establishment who wants to keep the populists out who represent new forces, and each side claims to represent common sense, decency and other moral authorities while the other does not. That's pretty ideological as well.