a22-ottoscott-sacredfools

8/2/2019 A22-OttoScott-SacredFools

1/7

[This article appeared in the Spring/Summer 1999 issue of theLincoln Review, pp. 33-41.]

South Africa and the Sacred Fools: Otto Scotts Histories

Case Studies in the Modern Crisis of the West

Dwight D. Murphey

I first met Otto J. Scott during the summer of 1985 when we were both speakers inthe Freedom Foundations annual seminar at Valley Forge on Liberal and Conservative

Thought in America. Since Scott and I were among the conservatives, our common

ground helped provide the basis for an immediate friendship. I stayed to hear his lecture,

and was in no sense disappointed.Although it conveyed a message of deep pessimism reflecting his belief that the

secularization of the West has brought with it a profound crisis not simply within the West

but within all of modern civilization, Scotts lecture sparkled with a blend of personal

grace, broad learning, and quiet, patrician dignity. These qualities should not, of course,have been surprising: Scott, I soon learned, is widely known as a lecturer and as the author

of books on a variety of aspects of modern history.Since our meeting in 1985, it has been my pleasure to read several of Scotts more

important books. The enjoyment has been due in large measure, I am sure, to Scotts skills

as a story-teller. Whether he is relating the life of King James I in the context of theReformation, or of Robespierre within the framework of the French Revolution, or of John

Brown amid the Abolitionist movement prior to the American Civil War, Scott is a master

at holding the readers attention.

While, however, there is value in the sheer artistry of an historians telling a goodstory, the significance of Scotts books lies in their substance. This is so because each of

the histories serves, in effect, as a virtual case study in one or another aspect of the plight ofmodern civilization.His most recent book, The Other End of the Lifeboat, published in 1985, is a study

of South Africa. Were it not for the works broader dimension as indeed a commentary on

the world at large, one would be inclined to view it as a diversion from Scotts much largereffort: a four-volume series of biographies about James I, Robespierre, John Brown and

Woodrow Wilson called The Sacred Fool Quartet. The first three of these are already in

print, and Scott is now writing the Wilson biography. In another dimension of his career,

Scott has also served as a business historian: his books include The Professional: aBiography of J. B. Saunders, and histories of Raytheon and Ashland Oil.

In this article, I will discuss Scotts book on South Africa and his Sacred Fool

Quartet, but first it will be worthwhile to place his central themethe plight of moderncivilizationin perspective. It is a plight about which philosophers have been writing for

much of the past century. By exploring it through a series of studies focusing on particular

leaders and epochs, Scott is elaborating upon a theme that continues to deserve a great dealof attention.

During the first half of the twentieth century, the Spanish philosopher Jose Ortega y

Gasset wrote of civilizations alternation between epochs of concord and crisis. The

Middle Ages was in Europe a period of concord, during which the institutions of


2/7

feudalism and the worldview of Augustinian Christianity combined to form a tightly-knit

whole. As we all know, this unitary conception became unraveled over a span of centuries,

leading to what Ortega referred to as the period of crisis that typifies the modern age.What Ortega meant by this was that it is an age in which centrifugal forces lead to a vast

pluralism, an existential indeterminacy. There is no long a universal allegiance to a

common conception. Humanity struggles through a multiplicity of forms, seeking its waywithout preordained paradigms.

This is a theme upon which I have myself written extensively, beginning with my

bookUnderstanding the Modern Predicament. Without pretending to be exhaustive, Ipointed to three main elements in the modern crisis. The first is to be found in the

continuing immaturity of humanity. If we were to allow ourselves to see mankind through

the perspective of long expanses of time, such as if we were to imagine that we were

looking back on ourselves from ten thousand years in the future, we would have nodifficulty acknowledging that the present condition of humanity, even in the developed

countries with all their marvelous achievements, reflects only a partial ascent from the long

darkness of pre-history. In many ways, civilization remains a thin, though precious,

veneer. Such an observation may seem self-evident, but it is important as a reason toexercise caution about any utopian vision that would tear down an existing society to clear

the way for a mere hoped forstate of perfection.A second element has been the long-standing alienation of the intellectual, artistic

culture in the West, first from the institutions and worldview of the Old Regime in Europe

prior to the French Revolution and, most especially, since the early nineteenth century,from the predominant commercial, industrial culture. The alienation of the intellectual

has been profound in its effects and has received a great deal of attention during the past

century.

The third element to which I have pointed has been the rise of the comprehensivesocial philosophiesthe so-called modern ideologies. In a world in which nothing is

pre-ordained, the complexities of existence and of human interaction can only be grasped

by comprehensive systems of thought. In effect, these systems interpret and organizereality for us. What is more, they come to constitute a central ingredient in reality in their

own right, since they become manifested in action when people live and act according to

the ideas they hold.My purpose in this article is not, however, to discuss my own views, but to

elucidate Otto Scotts. To Scott, the root cause of the crisis of the West (and through it,

of all mankind) is the gradual de-Christianization of the West. As we have grown more

and more secular, we have lost our fundamental relatedness to the truest reality, and with itboth our understanding and our will.

To appreciate his perspective most fully, it is helpful to compare it with my own

analysis. The reader will have noticed that I see modern history through the eyes of theclassical liberalism of the Enlightenment. To me, the crisis of the West is to be found in

all that challenges and renders problematical the fulfillment of the ideals of ordered liberty.

The fateful turning point in modern history was the abandonment of those ideals by theWests predominant intellectual culture when in the early nineteenth century it threw itself

into alienation and into the resulting anti-bourgeois and often anti-modernist philosophies.

The adoption of those philosophies by so many in the Third World, beginning with their


3/7


4/7

socialisms of all varieties; and he values those societies that he sees as repositories, albeit

imperfect, of the heritage of the Christian West.

When all of this is applied by Scott to the history of South Africa in The Other Endof the Lifeboat, the result is a richly textured discussion of one of the worlds more difficult

situations. He does not write as a narrow partisan for one side of the other; his breadth of

perception makes him able to see in the most genuine way both the defaults in Westerncolonialism and the weakness and fragmentation within black Africa.

First, he quite admirably refuses to join in the fashionable clamor that holds

Western colonialism to have been an unmitigated evil. He sees much that it did that wasvaluable. (He takes issue, for example, with Franklin D. Roosevelts glib comment that the

French never did anything for Indochina.) Applied to South Africa, this means that he sees

real value in the advanced civilization that exists there.

Second, however, Scott is at the same time acutely conscious of the elitism,secularism, hubris, inconstancy, brutality and cultural insensitivity that marred the

European experience in the Third World. He points out that the Berlin conference in 1884-

5 divided Africa according to the pleasure of the European nationswithout regard to the

existing tribal units! He looks with suspicion upon the elitist do-goodism of the upper-class British group that for so long guided British colonialism: To expect the group to

have realized its errors and abandon its attempts to direct the lives of others is to expectgreat pride to grow humble while it still lives in comfort and luxury (p. 130).

Third, he sees that the islands of Western culture, such as in South Africa and as

existed in what was once Rhodesia, have offered much but have been seriously flawed. Hepoints, along these lines, to the striking similarity between Apartheid and the controls on

movement and residency within the Soviet Union, with their racial and ethnic

classifications and internal passports (p. 140). He observes, too, that within South Africa

organized labor and the Labour Party have historically been among those who have mostmilitantly pushed for the exclusion of blacks (p. 34).

Fourth, he traces the demise of Western colonialism in the twentieth century,

attributing the collapse to several factors. This leads Scott to review in fascinating detailmuch of the history of Europe between the world wars and during the forty years after

World War II. He points out that it was the withdrawal of the British that gave the

Afrikaners, who are descendants of the Dutch, the opportunity for their present role. Heobserves, too, that it was the collapse of Western colonialism that led to the change in

American policy toward South Africa in the early 1970s when Henry Kissinger and others

became aware that black Africa would not be placated unless the white government of

South Africa was brought down (p. vii).Fifth, Scott is a realist about the Third Worldwith black Africa as the case in

point. Thus, he does not sweep under the rug the deficiencies and fragmentation. We

discover from him that with seven hundred fifty tribal tongues and a half-dozen Europeanlanguages, black Africa cannot even speak to itself. Zaire alone has seventy-five

languages (p. 153). In South Africa itself, there are forty-eight black tribes and

languages (p. 169). He points to the prevalence of a worldview that is deeply at odds withadvanced civilization: that the world is governed by chance and magic. In this belief, the

success of a neighbor is always obtained at someone elses expense. Hence, the achiever is

an enemy of the people, and must be cast out (p. 238). This animus against individual


5/7

differentiation struck him especially, he says, when I became aware that the huts were all

exactly the same size (p. 293.

With these divergent factors in mind, Scott is unwilling, therefore, to offer a facilesolution. Necessarily, he must draw upon the civilizational roots that he deems worth

cherishingthe Christian heritage of the West. Thus, he calls upon the West to reassert its

commitment to its own survival and to its finest values. The book closes with theadmonition that both South Africa and the United States should ponder the example of the

Israelis, a people with thousands of years of experience in dealing with self-appointed

critics (p. 329). He sees in this not only the best hope for the West, but also for blackAfrica and the Third World, which will be best served by a world in which the Wests

heritage continues to make a vital contribution. This is a course that, in the South African

context, calls for moderation. It clearly puts Scott at odds with those who, in the two-

centuries-old pattern of the French Jacobins or the century-old example of the Russiannihilists, would tear frantically at the existing structure of a society in the expectation,

however little it may be justified, that something more humane will arise from the burning

hulk.

In the series of four biographies that Scott is calling The Sacred Fool Quartet, heis going back as far as the sixteenth century in tracing the fatuity of the modern temper. He

perceives a pattern of arrogance and self-pride, through which one historical figure afteranother has taken upon himself the powers of God over men.

In his first book,James I: The Fool as King, Scott speaks of James cunning and

intelligence. Scotts interpretation of James life is that James unhinged the Reformationby a life-long plotting of revenge against the reformers who had overthrown his mother,

Mary, Queen of Scots, and who in fact had raised him as a child. With secret delight,

James turned England back toward the Catholic Church and, in so doing, ended the great

hope and grand dream of Calvinist Europe. James, to Scott, was a fool in a personalsense: He threw away a tremendous inheritance and a superb opportunity for the basest of

motives, while indulging himself in the comforts of the sewer. In addition, James was a

fool in the Biblical sense, in believing that there is no God. He called himself the Princeof Peace, and dreamed of sitting down with the Pope to rule the minds of all mankind

[H]e sought the power of God over other men (Prologue to 1986 reprint).

I must confess that I am not sufficiently a student of that era to have a fixed opinionabout whether Scott is right about James motives or about the significance he attaches to

James policies. What I find especially interesting about the book is the portrait it paints of

the times. It was a period of almost incredible turbulence, as Popes, Protestants, Kings and

advocates of the submission of all of these to the Rule of Law contended with each other inthe most violent fashion.

I have long made the point that the enormities that human beings have committed

against one another in the twentieth century are not best to be understood as aberrations,but as atavistic carry-overs from the brutalities that have seemed so normal a part of earlier

epochs. Scott recounts in details the horrors of the sixteenth and early seventeenth

centuries; he speaks of a dreary round of burnings and stranglings. He describes theprocedure then in vogue: It called for the condemned to have his genitals cut off and

burned before his eyes, to be strangled to the edge of death and then resuscitated, and

finally to have his head chopped off and his body divided into four quartersand for these

parts to be displayed in prominent public places (p. 105). This gives us some historical


6/7

perspective; we see that Hitler, Stalin, Mao and the butchers of the Cambodian killing

fields represent a level of civilization characteristic of much of our human past, during

which even the most horrible sufferings of others were below the threshold of commonsensibility.

This is a point that can just as well be made about the next epoch Scott studies, the

period of the French Revolution, vividly described inRobespierre: The Voice of Virtue.Here, the cast of characters is different: the excesses are those of the presumptively

enlightened, but nevertheless thoroughly fanatical, Jacobinical representatives of the

Enlightenment. Scott uses the occasion to delineate with sharp perception the traits thatcan lead to such a warping: Robespierre, he says, lived in a world in which words

clothed all deeds and masked all motives from himself as well as from others, a world in

which noble words alone mattered and in which a casual remark was justification to kill a

man (p. 219).Years ago, I enjoyed Plutarch for the descriptions he gave of the leading figures of

Greek and Roman times. A good book on the French Revolution has much the same

quality; everything is larger than life, as though all eternity were packed into a brief span.

As one of the very readable histories of the Revolution, Scotts book is similarly a valuablestudy in human nature.

The third book in the series, The Secret Six: John Brown and the AbolitionistMovement, changes the scene to the United States and to the middle of the nineteenth

century, but is necessarily a description of much the same characteristics. John Browns

fanaticism arose, again, out of an excessive pride in virtue, and provides still anotherexample of how lofty aspirations can, if there is a loss of balance, serve as vehicles for

brutality. Scott sees Brown as a new type of political assassin He did not murder the

mightybut the obscure. He did not pursue officials; he murdered at randomamong

the innocent. Yet his purposes were the same as those of his classic predecessors: to forcethe nation into a new political pattern by creating terror (p. 3). Surely we would like to

think that high moral goals insulate a crusader from barbarism; but if we think that, we fail

to learn from history and have no hope of understanding the modern terrorist.As to the larger issue of slavery and abolitionism, Scott again puts himself on the

side of a moderation that would cure the disease without bludgeoning the patient to death.

The British, he points out, had shown the way to eliminate slavery without eitherbloodshed or arguments among whites. In the British program to emancipate the blacks of

their West Indian colonies, they compensated the slaveholders, and mandated a program of

apprenticeship and graduated freedoms. Scott compares this with what occurred in the

United States: The radical abolitionists scorned the British example. Despite theknowledge that slaves constituted financial assets to the South, the radicals refused to

consider their purchase They argued that slavery was asin (p. 73).

Scotts point is extremely valid, but the truth of it is obscured for us in light of theNorths eventual victory in the Civil War. Since the Union was kept together and the

slaves emancipated, history seems to have justified the moral absolutism of the radical

abolitionists. We should be reminded, though, that prior to the Civil War there could havebeen no certainty that the North would win. An outcome in which the United States

became divided into two hostile, warring nations, one of which would then have been even

more adamant in its commitment to slavery, was not at all unlikely. (As a matter of fact,

the victory of the South, at least to the extent of preventing a forcible reunification by the


7/7

North, would almost certainly have been the outcome if the South had had a military

commander such as North Vietnams General Giap instead of the gentleman-commander

Robert E. Lee.) The single-minded fanaticism of the radical abolitionist preferred civilwar, even if the result might prove unfavorable, to the more moderate British example.

The analogy to the current situation in South Africa is inescapable.

I am looking forward to the final volume in the Sacred Fool Quartet, the book onWoodrow Wilson. If Scotts already-existing works are any indication, it will not be a

narrowly-drawn description of Wilson; it will, instead, provide a panoramic view and

careful analysis of the human foibles and civilizational deficiencies that led up to thehorrors of World War I ad that then produced the follies of the inter-war period. In a great

many ways, World War I set the state for what has followed in the twentieth century. The

Bolsheviks would not have seized power in Russia without it, with all the consequences

that that has entailed; and both the National Socialist phenomenon in Germany and thewaging of World War II itself were, in effect, continuations of World War I.

For the culmination of his series, Scott has picked one of the more fateful periods in

human history. And with Wilson, Clemenceau, Lloyd George and other like personalities

on hand to people his pages, Scott again will be able to exercise his considerable talents asan observer and chronicler of human nature.

a22-ottoscott-sacredfools

Documents