/lit/ - Literature

>>15899337
>the only one that mentions de Jouvenel is the namefagging lesbian that nobody likes, obliquely, in a list she didn't make
What a world. But I'm seconding this just so all you retards know - de Jouvenel's On Power is the most important work on political philosophy that very few people have read, and even fewer understand. Wanna have your mind fucking blown? Read it. People say there's no good political philosophy written beyond the 19th century, but that's because nobody has read this guy.

>>15081533
"On Power: Its Nature and the History of Its Growth" by Bertrand de Jouvenel. It's the most important book on political economy that nobody has read.

I asked about this a few months ago and found pic related enjoyable. Coming back to see if anyone else had any books that deal with the nature and properties of power. Anything from individual self-actualization to the competition between seedlings in a forest is welcomed here. Barring that, I have a few questions on the matter that a few of you might be able to answer. How has the etymological use of the term "power" evolved? How has Nietzsche's Will to Power changed the understanding and usage of the term? What are the distinctions between various forms of power- if any?

>>12619172
Bertrand de Jouvenel, specifically "On Power". Low-key the most important book on political philosophy written in the 20th century. Will probably make your head explode from cognitive dissonance.

ITT: We discuss this book. Has anyone here besides me actually read it, and what do you think? I think it's the most important book on political philosophy from the entire 20th century and that nobody pays it any attention because if they did their heads would explode from cognitive dissonance. Also it's very easy to read and doesn't fall into any clearly delineated political catergories. Truly a fascinating book.

ITT: We discuss this book, because I've never seen it discussed here before, and yet it's probably low-key one of the most important books on political philosophy ever written.

I've already read it once, and am currently re-reading it for pleasure, since Jouvenel (or at least this translation of him) is so succinct and easy to read. Here's a random excerpt to pique your interest:

>The High School of our species, curiosity, requires the unusual for its awakening. Just as it took prodigies, eclipses, or comets, to start our distant ancestors inquiring into the structure of the universe, so in our time crises have been needed for the birth of an economic science, and thirty millions of unemployed for it to become widespread. If they happen everyday, then the most surprising events do not act on our intelligences. Hence it is, no doubt, that so little thought has been given to the amazing faculty for obedience of groupings of men, whether numbering thousands or millions, which causes them to obey the rules and orders of a few.
>It needs only an order for the tumultuous flood of vehicles which throughout a vast country kept to the left to change sides and keep to the right. It needs only an order for an entire people to quit their fields, their workshops, and their offices, and flock to barracks. "Discipline on such a scale as this [said Necker] must astound any man who is capable of reflection. The obedience on the part of a very large number to a very small one is a thing singular to observe and mysterious to think on." To Rousseau the spectacle of Power recalls 'Archimides sitting calmly on the shore and effortlessly launcing a large ship."
>Anyone who has every started a small society for some special object knows well the propensity of its members, even though they have entered of their own accord into a voluntary engagement for a purpose to which they attach importance, to leave the society in the lurch. We may, then, feel surprise at the docility of men in their dealings with a large society.
>Someone says "Come", and come we do. Someone says "Go", and go we do. We give obedience to the tax-gatherer, to the policeman, and to the sergeant-major. As it is certain that it is not before them that we bow down, it must be before the men above them, even though, as often happens, we despise their characters and suspect their designs.
>What, then, is the nature of their authority over us? Is it because they have at their disposal the means of physical coercion and are stronger than ourselves that we yield to them? It is true that we go in fear of the compulsion which they can apply to us. But to apply it they must have the help of a veritable army of underlings. We have still to explain where they get this army and what secures them their fidelity: in that aspect Power appears to us in the guise of a small society commanding a larger.
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