I don't remember ever noticing the word "soulcraft" before today, when I saw it in a David Brooks column. Writing about "the cultural transformation" that could be achieved through the Democrats' $4 trillion in spending, he declared: "Statecraft is soulcraft." I blogged that — with disapproval — here.
But what is "soulcraft"? If "statecraft" makes sense, it must mean the work of the state, so shouldn't "soulcraft" mean the work of the soul? But, in context, it seems to mean the state's work is to work on the soul. I think he's saying that the state ought to engage in massive spending with the aim of shaping the soul of the people who live under the power of the state, and the lack of parallelism in the use of the ending "-craft" is disturbing.
I try to think of other "-craft" words. "Witchcraft" is the work of witches, not the shaping of witches. It's done by witches, not to witches. It fits with "statecraft," not "soulcraft."
In the comments to my post, Lloyd W. Robertson and Peter Spieker independently bring up George Will, and Quaestor writes:
Will's phrase is statecaft as soulcraft, and it was the title of his book published in 1984 (the date is not insignificant). Will argued that the national government should function as a force for social change, which was a direct challenge to the then-dominant Reagan wing of the Republican Party which thought of governmental power as a necessary evil that should only be brought to bear when private conscience proves inadequate to the manifest national will....
Statecraft as soulcraft is conditional, the phrase admits the possibility that government can leave souls alone, that there is such a thing as private conscience. Brooks, however, corrupts Will's phrase into an unconditional statement. Statecraft is soulcraft is unalloyed fascism.
I suppose I ought to have noticed "soulcraft." I guess I've failed to read deeply in the Neo Con literature. Brooks is trying to sell the Democrats' spending package to conservatives, and I guess he thought the old buzzword would lure them in. I find that offensive, presenting government as a religion substitute, and I agree with Quaestor that that's fascism talk.
I searched the NYT archive for the word "soulcraft." It first appears in 1983, in a review of Will's book, "Statecraft as Soulcraft" (note the correct publication date, 1983, not 1984). From the review:
Viewing Western society as the flowering of ideas whose seeds have been planted over many centuries, Mr. Will, ''a lapsed professor of political philosophy,'' blames Hobbes and Machiavelli for much of the contemporary obsession with self-interest, narrowly conceived. He places himself in a different line of thinkers, from Aristotle to his special hero Edmund Burke, who have appreciated the organic nature of a good society. He dislikes modern politics for its readiness to accommodate to human passions rather than to encourage human potential. In this nation preoccupied with the material, he wants ''a politics that nurtures the spiritual.'' That's what he means by ''soulcraft.''...
Some readers are likely to find Mr. Will's exhortations for moral uplift quaint, and possibly a touch unsettling; the history of official efforts to purify souls has been a bloody one. Liberals in particular may be hard put to share his enthusiasm for school prayer or his abhorrence of abortion.
But, of course, liberals can do "soulcraft" just as well, in the opposite direction. They can offer to purify us of old religion and replace it with new pieties and promote abortion as the vindication of the rights of women.
"Soulcraft" — in the NYT archive — mostly pops up in the context of George Will, and sometimes it's Brooks talking about Will.
And then, beginning in 2009, there's another book, "Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry Into the Value of Work" by Matthew B. Crawford. The NYT has a long excerpt from it, and I blogged that at the time — here — so I had encountered the word before, just forgotten it.
Crawford is clearly talking about the work you do on your own soul. I wrote:
Crawford's hands-on real-world job is working in his own business as a motorcycle mechanic and his reward-for-going-to-college job was cranking out abstracts of scholarly articles that he couldn't understand for $23,000 a year. So the "real world" job was particularly good and the "information" job was particularly bad. You've got to concede that there are plenty of good, bad, and middling jobs in both categories and to match up 2 good ones or 2 bad ones or 2 middling ones to make a fair comparison about what different sorts of work do to your soul.
The Crawford meaning — working on one's own soul — sounds right to me. The George Will meaning bothers me, and I think David Brooks has taken that meaning and made it worse. It feels like a cheap slogan to lure conservatives away from the core belief in limited government.
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36 comments:
Modern progressivism and "wokeness" is very much a secular religion. And heretics must be cancelled and driven from the land. So of course if you are a high priest or acolyte of the secular religion (and or a committed long time swamp dweller) statecraft is "soulcraft".
OTOH as one who is not a congregant in the secular church, I'll take care of my own soul thank you very much. As a sort of lapsed Methodist--with a tragic view of life (Evil exists in the world and there are some people who are just no damned good), I expect to meet my Maker standing up on judgment day. As the old shape note hymn "A Beautiful Life" goes, at the end you'll go to meet the deeds you've done.
The practitioners of the modern secular religion will be well to heed the old admonition--don't do the crime if you can't do the time. They'd better carry asbestos underwear.
It feels like a cheap slogan to lure conservatives away from the core belief in limited government.
There are multiple conservatisms including National Greatness conservatism and Blood-and-Soil conservatism. With the election of Trump I would say Limited Government conservatism is ailing if not in critical condition.
Ann,
The copyright date is 1983, but the publication date is May 1984, per Amazon. I graduated HS in June '84, and the book was brand-new then.
I believe that the poster you are referring to is Lloyd W. Robertson, not "Robinson." Since you've made a tag of his name, maybe you ought to fix?
The idea that statecraft is soulcraft seems to me to be the very basis for the 1st Amendment.
The idea that politicians have this work, that they can and should compel citizens with different beliefs about how the soul should be crafted, is much more dangerous than the idea that religious folks might vote with their religion in mind. It's what drove so many to these shores to begin with and continues to draw people from all over the world, out of situations of oppression where the state thinks it is in charge of the very being of the people.
Of all the people in this world, I'd say those who have sold their souls to politics are the least able to engage in soul crafting. The result ends up being a lot like that old woman in Spain who wanted to fix the fresco by Elias Garcia Martinez.
No, statecraft is not soulcraft, not in the United States according to the very basis of our nation.
Ecce Homo not Ecce Imperium.
Perhaps "soulcraft" would be the creation of a political and social environment where people (all people) would be encouraged and enabled to develop their own abilities, opinions, and spirituality, and to discuss and express them freely. In other words, the opposite of what our elites seem to have in store for us.
It's fascists All the way down
Statecraft is the art of using the state. It might seem like soulcraft should be the art of using the soul, but more likely it refers to the art of shaping souls. Shaping one's soul -- is that possible? What does it involve? Shaping other people's souls -- that sounds a little dangerous. Stalin spoke of artists as the "engineers of human souls," and many applied the title "Engineer of Human Souls" to Stalin. The idea of education as the engineering of human souls is still current in the Chinese Communist Party.
"Soulcraft" has some benign connotations. "Soul" is good. The word manages to be earthy and spiritual and deep. "Craft" is a nice contrast with today's manufactured and engineered world. And indeed, the idea of education as Bildung or formation goes back a long way. But that was something that artists and teachers were supposed to do, and one could accept their teaching and example or reject it. Rulers and politicians crafting souls can't help but have disturbing connotations after the totalitarianism of the 20th century.
Quit worrying. The people who did the Obamacare website are gonna do just great with souls.
Look deep into my soul.
While I lift your wallet.
That's "Soulcraft".
Our Professor said...
he's saying that the state ought to engage in massive spending with the aim of ...
I really think you can just stop there. Or, really; even leave of the 'with the aim of'
You'll get his point Perfectly,
if you just say: he's saying that the state ought to engage in massive spending
from then on, it's all just unneeded ink
With the election of Trump I would say Limited Government conservatism is ailing if not in critical condition.
The election of Trump elected, finally, a libertarian with the exception of open borders. Many years ago it was said, truthfully, that open borders cannot coexist with the welfare state. We are about to get a practical demonstration of that. Good and hard.
Earnest Prole,
There are multiple conservatisms including National Greatness conservatism and Blood-and-Soil conservatism. With the election of Trump I would say Limited Government conservatism is ailing if not in critical condition.
Which may be why Will is now taking the line he is. He was, in 1983/4, a national-greatness conservative so far as I can recall, definitely not a "neocon" (no one using that word seems to have the foggiest idea what it means or who it encompasses). And as for "Blut-und-Boden" (heck, let's put it in the Ursprache, OK?) they have no point of contact with one another. Now he has become, shall we say, a bit more skeptical about government and what it can do. (The subtitle of Statecraft as Soulcraft is "What Government Does.")
My corrected version predated Quaestor's by 11 minutes. Just sayin.
All the buzzwords of our 'racial awakening' are just uber-precious.
“ The copyright date is 1983, but the publication date is May 1984, per Amazon. I graduated HS in June '84, and the book was brand-new then. ”
The NYT review is date May 1983, so clearly it was out in 1983.
Maybe you’re looking at the paperback edition and the hardcover was a year earlier.
Fixed Robertson. Thanks.
Soulcraft may indeed be George Will's own coinage, which in the context of Statecraft as Soulcraft must mean work performed on the soul, much as woodcraft can refer to carving or fashioning objects from wood.
Whatever its origin or exact meaning, it is clear from history that absolutism of the sort opposed by the great minds of the Enlightenment is as much soulcraft as statecraft. Enforcing orthodoxy, both religious and political, soulcraft in its most pure form, was a preoccupation of tyrants and monarchs since at the reign of Akhenaten right through to Leonid Brezhnev and most recently the so-called caliph of ISIS.
Soulcraft. We should have no truck with it.
I think a lot of Progs see doing things with government power as a moral imperative they feel, i.e. working on their own souls.
Matt Taibbi posted a column yesterday at his Substack page on America's New Religion.
another take on crafting own soul
Living organisms possess the power of self-initiated motion, which inanimate matter does not possess; man’s consciousness possesses the power of self-initiated motion in the realm of cognition (thinking), which the consciousnesses of other living species do not possess. But just as animals are able to move only in accordance with the nature of their bodies, so man is able to initiate and direct his mental action only in accordance with the nature (the identity) of his consciousness. His volition is limited to his cognitive processes; he has the power to identify (and to conceive of rearranging) the elements of reality, but not the power to alter them. He has the power to use his cognitive faculty as its nature requires, but not the power to alter it nor to escape the consequences of its misuse. He has the power to suspend, evade, corrupt or subvert his perception of reality, but not the power to escape the existential and psychological disasters that follow. (The use or misuse of his cognitive faculty determines a man’s choice of values, which determine his emotions and his character. It is in this sense that man is a being of self-made soul.)
Philosophy: Who Needs It “The Metaphysical Versus the Man-Made,”
we could say of the Founders that they had crafted their souls (by identifying individual rights) leading them to arrange affairs of state in a specific way : Declaration and Constitution : consent of similarly crafted souls
It's just more the lefty speak 'You shall worship the government, or your soul will rot in hell.'
re-education crapola
Welfare recipients optimize their cost functions.
Just look at how many of our sturdy minorities moved from Chicago to Milwaukee.
in search of more money, and perhaps less risk of murder, but not much less risk.
I don't really consider Milwaukee to be part of Wisconsin. But I had a friend couple there in the 80's and the police were pretty cool.
Shop Class as Soulcraft by Matthew Crawford, interesting book and this--I'll bet--is where Brokks got that word.
To explain, a friend couple is two husband wife non sexual interactive groups. and the Police were cool as we walked back to our place while drunk.
Narr,
My corrected version predated Quaestor's by 11 minutes. Just sayin.
Heh. You and me both; I said that it was "Statecraft AS Soulcraft," and gave a few grafs' worth of quotes from the actual book in question, which I have to hand, as I have had for thirty-seven years. That book has gone through (counting rapidly) eleven moves with me, not counting the summer I spent at Rochdale in Berkeley. I don't think we'll be moving again, but still . . .
Ann's right, btw: what I bought was the first paperback edition, preceded (as per usual) by the hardcover a year earlier.
Brooks has not been writing his columns for years, and it is not even his newish young wife who writes them. It is hired out to a bright young woman of about 25, last I heard.
The Soul Train goes from nowhere to nowhere.
One thing to add: Will may have been talking about "school prayer and abortion" -- and who calls the latter "quaint" now? -- but his biggest "cultural conservative" issue in the 80s was neither of these, but the treatment of Down Syndrome children, before and after birth. That his son Jonathan was such a child probably had something to do with it. But the passion he gave to cases like "Infant Doe" (who starved to death after her parents refused necessary -- and free -- surgery b/c she was Downs) and Philip Becker (who died age 12, after his parents likewise refused surgery, though there was a couple eager to adopt him) I have never seen him devote to any other subject, except possibly victims of Communism like Walter Polovchak.
Here's a message for Mr. or Ms. Pants Crease (I don't know how he or she self-identifies) --
Caesar is not god. And we can look to the One who is God for the state of our souls.
Tom Colicchio is working for the final word on ‘craft.
I read Brooks's column, and I'm reminded of an old joke. At a party, an egotist speaks about himself without a pause, till his listener's eyes glaze over. Finally noticing this, he says "But enough about me, let's talk about you. What do you think of me?"
Brooks can talk about dignity, but it's a concept he clearly doesn't understand. He talks about resentment. He wants to send a message saying "I see you. Your work has dignity. You are paving your way. You are at the center of our national vision." He avers that Robert Kagan is "talking about a group of people so enraged by a lack of respect that they are willing to risk death by Covid if they get to stick a middle finger in the air against those who they think look down on them."
OK, let's show that we respect the choices many of them have made by making spending the money be conditional on a LACK of covid vaccination mandates. Your state, county, city, township, school district, whatever has a mandate, not a penny of the money can be spent there, directly, or indirectly by subcontracting. A company has a mandate? It's not eligible for any of the moolah. And to cap it, if any court accepts any suit challenging the constitutionality of said anti-mandate provisions, the funds for the entire program are instantly frozen until the constitutionality of the requirement is upheld. Requirement unconstitutional = entire program is cancelled. That would show respect for the autonomy and ideas of those who do not want to get vaxxed.
But we all know such provisions have zero chance of being included in these bills. Because the plain, cold truth is that the ruling class DOES hold the proles in contempt. They intend to force the majority to live the way they, their betters, think they ought to.
Yes, we are on the brink of "violent national rupture." But it won't be avoided by yet another campaign to con the masses. Brooks has a bit more respect for the people who voted for Trump than a con man does for the marks he swindles. But he doesn't have enough to realize most of the 'resentful' have seen through him.
The election of Trump elected, finally, a libertarian with the exception of open borders.
Right, that explains why he was such a strong proponent of free trade, balanced budgets, and reducing the size of the federal government.
Right, that explains why he was such a strong proponent of free trade, balanced budgets, and reducing the size of the federal government.
In his defense, Trump did do more deregulating than any previous president, and he appointed decent judges. He also refrained from starting new wars. On trade, his rhetoric was mercantilist, but he didn't actually do much.
But overall, Trump was a mediocrity. The reason he lost in 2020 was previewed when he failed to get Obamacare repealed. Trump mostly sat on his hands and tweeted (on further reflection, that actually was quite a feat) during the Obamacare repeal fight. He could have prevailed if he'd been willing to do the hard work of intensely lobbying the Senate.
It was intellectual laziness, not mean tweets, course language, or belligerent rhetoric that led to his 2020 defeat. Had Trump educated himself on vaccines, immunity, and the institutional failings of the FDA and CDC, human challenge trials could have been started in April 2020 and concluded by mid-summer. Vaccines could have been approved in August and the vaccination campaign saving thousands of lives would also have served nicely as a reelection campaign.
So, although Trump was a better President than Hillary would have been or Biden currently is, it was still a wasted opportunity. He could have been so much more.
Trump did lose because of laziness. He didn't prepare properly for the debates. You can call that intellectual laziness or incuriosity. He didn't have the preparation that a stint in political office might have given him and he didn't or couldn't assemble at team that could have filled in the gaps.
"Abolishing Obamacare" though, was something that appealed only to hard-core Republicans who wanted to deny Obama something after he left office. It wasn't really part of Trump's agenda or something swing voters were dying to see happen. Government has been embroiled in health care one way or another for decades and that wasn't going to change. Congress got rid of the penalties and that was something desired and something that could be counted as a victory.
I would agree that Trump was better than Biden is or better than Hillary would have been, but I stopped wishing that politicians would change to be what I hoped they could be a long time ago. Some things they just don't have in them.
Per Steven F. Hayward's review of George Will's "The Conservative Sensibility" in the Claremont Review of Books (Summer 2019), "The Conservative Sensibility" repudiates the main argument in "Statecraft as Soulcraft": "Will now believes that he was 'quite wrong' to think 'that the American nation was "ill-founded" because too little attention was given to the explicit cultivation of the virtues requisite for the success of a republic.'"
George Will's father was a philosophy professor, and Will read Philosophy, Politics, Economics at Oxford, so perhaps he thought of himself as philosopher manqué and felt that he had to develop some comprehensive theory of human governance. He was also trying to walk a fine line between the positive aspects of libertarianism and the negative aspects of laissez-faire. I suspect that he didn't succeed, so he adopted a more modest view of humanity and governance, without losing his own personal immodesty and pretentiousness.
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