Thought Experiment

Here's a fun thought experiment from David Wootton's review of J.C.D. Clark's book, Our Shadowed Present. Clark puts forward this theory in earnest.

"in 1688, James II fled England to escape the advancing army of William of Orange; had he stood his ground, he would never, Clark believes, have been deposed. James had already demonstrated a policy towards the American colonies quite different from that later pursued by the Hanoverians �Eunder a Stuart dynasty, according to Clark, there would have been no American Revolution. It was the American Revolution which destabilized the finances of the French monarchy; without it there would have been no French Revolution. And without the French Revolution (here I follow the logic rather than the letter of Clark's argument), no Marxist idealization of revolution, and no Russian Revolution. Had James stood firm, then, had he not cut and run, divine-right monarchy would be the established form of government throughout Europe and the English-speaking world. Stuarts, Bourbons, Hohenzollerns, and Romanovs would still rule over obedient and adoring subjects. In every society that was Christian in the seventeenth century, Church and State would still cling to each other in an intimate embrace in the twenty-first. Hierarchy and deference, not democracy and equality, would be the values universally acknowledged. A moment's cowardice, and the future was transformed."

Wootton is skeptical: "Can one take seriously someone who blames James II for the French Revolution?"

Another interesting note from the review: Clark argues that postmodernism is in the final analysis Whiggism redux. The whole history of the West has been a history of oppression, from which the postmodernists are now graciously delivering us. In Clark's words, "In this sense Whig history has returned under the name of postmodernism, and with renewed moral indignation."

Which provokes another thought experiment: What would Derrida or Fish or Rorty do if you charged them with being Whigs? I don't know the answer to that, but I do suggest that, should you try the experiment, you immediately duck.

posted by Peter J. Leithart on Monday, September 15, 2003 at 11:54 AM

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