True Libertie Is lost, which alwayes with right Reason dwells 

Twinn'd, and from her hath no dividual being: 

Reason in man obscur'd, or not obeyd, 

Immediately inordinate desires

And upstart Passions catch the Government

From Reason, and to servitude reduce Man till then free. 

Therefore since hee permits 

Within himself unworthie Powers to reign

Over free Reason, God in Judgement just

Subjects him from without to violent Lords;   

Who oft as undeservedly enthrall His outward freedom:

Tyrannie must be,   

Though to the Tyrant thereby no excuse.

 

John Milton, Paradise Lost

 

 

Zossima

To transform the world, to recreate it afresh, men must turn into another path psychologically. Until you have become really, in actual fact, a brother to every one, brotherhood will not come to pass. No sort of scientific teaching, no kind of common interest, will ever teach men to share property and privileges with equal consideration for all. Every one will think his share too small and they will be always envying, complaining and attacking one another. You ask when it will come to pass; it will come to pass, but first we have to go through the period of isolation.... For every one strives to keep his individuality as apart as possible, wishes to secure the greatest possible fullness of life for himself.... true security is to be found in social solidarity rather than in isolated individual effort.

Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

Per Spinoza

The human mind is not simply an instrument of conscious cognition that can be detached from its organic base. It is a locus of feeling, conscious and unconscious, flowing directly from a somatic foundation.... Where humans differ most from other animals may be in our capacity and need for illusion.

John Gray, The Mind’s Body Problem (NYRB, December 2, 2021)

Men do not know the natural disease of the mind; it does nothing but ferret and inquire, and is eternally wheeling, juggling, and perplexing itself like silkworms, and then suffocates itself in its work;  It thinks it discovers at a great distance, I know not what glimpses of light and imaginary truth: but whilst running to it, so many difficulties, hindrances, and new inquisitions cross it, that it loses its way, and is made drunk with the motion.

Montaigne

It is a marvel that our perceptions are so often correct, given the rapidity, the near instantaneity, with which they are constructed.

Oliver Sacks, The River of Consciousness

 

Nothing is so firmly believed, as what we least know; nor any people so confident, as those who entertain us with fables.

Michel de Montaigne

Weber was wrong: the modern world is not disenchanted (even if secularists pretend otherwise) but a continuation of Christianity by other means. Whether liberal, communist, fascist, or authoritarian, every polity relies to one degree or another on the persistence of charismatic authority and the (usually disguised) theological legitimation of political power.


Benjamin Nathans on Yuri Slezkine'd  The House of Government: A Saga of the Russian Revolution in the New York Review of November 23, 2017

See also Freud and Plato - The Politics of the Soul (Pt 1)