Long-time readers will remember Rembrandt Clancy’s extensive scholarly translations from the German. The following essay is his own composition, and was occasioned by the passing of Queen Elizabeth II.

The Idea of the Monarchy

by Rembrandt Clancy
18 September 2022

While the marriages, ideological proclivities or political associations of individual members of the royal family matter, our purpose here, on the occasion of the end of the seventy-year reign of Queen Elizabeth II, is limited to exploring the meaning of monarchy as a symbol, mainly through the writings of Oswald Spengler and George Orwell, with the British monarchy serving as the primary exemplar.

Some hours after the death of the Queen, Jordan Peterson gave a rather conversational video talk honouring her long reign (cf. How the Queen’s Passing will affect the World). In the course of his remarks, he pointed to the many contributions the United Kingdom has made to representative governments such as those of Canada, Australia, the United States and India. His central focus, however, was on a single concept: the wisdom of the symbol behind the British monarchy.

In the United States, the checks and balances to power are accomplished in principle by three divisions of government: the executive, the legislative and the judicial. Peterson goes on to explain that in Britain there is a fourth division where

“the monarch holds the symbolic weight [of power], and that’s really smart, because it separates it to some degree from the political weight.” (6:17 min.)

For Peterson, the monarchy is an added bulwark against tyranny. In the American system, on the other hand, the executive and the symbolic weighting are combined in one branch, giving rise to “temptations” for a president to assume monarchical pretensions and thereby accumulate a surfeit of power to his own person. Peterson’s meaning is that while the president cannot help but carry these two weightings in his capacity of President, he may be tempted to cloak himself personally in the symbolic element, hence suffer from a type of psychological inflation, a puffed-up condition akin to l’état, c’est moi, or to Dr. Anthony Fauci’s claim, that “I represent science”: to damage him is to damage science (cf. The Washington Times, 28 Nov. 2021)

In the American executive branch, only the nomenclature changes: the King becomes President — rather than a Prime Minister — and the Queen becomes a First Lady; the White House is akin to a palace where on official occasions the President walks on and off stage to the equivalent of a trumpet fanfare. Moreover, there is a certain dynastic tendency attached to the presidency, which strives to come to the surface for recognition. In later years, for example, the Kennedy dynasty, the Clintons and the Bushes come to mind; but in practice, a hereditary presidential line has not been successful. Trump made a mockery of it when in 2016 he frustrated Hilary Clinton’s right of succession. Nevertheless, this dynastic tendency draws attention to the sense of entitlement among an entrenched nouveau riche called “the elite”.

Peterson says that “Trump, he’s King and President all rolled up into one, and that’s just too much” (7:24 min.). We understand that Peterson is trying to exemplify the dangers inherent in the office of President-King, but is Trump a good example? Why is the office of President-King “too much” for Trump and not for any other president? That Trump accumulated fame; first, as a nouveau riche businessman; then, in the TV series The Apprentice and finally in the presidency does not build a case for any of it going to Trump’s head by simply summing it all up as being “too much”. Having actually built something, having media savvy and experience with a variety of people are normally assets. Trump’s knowledge of the media contributed greatly to his handling of the legacy media. One wonders why all of Trump’s accumulated experience becomes dangerous in his case. The socially agreed, American, monarchical simulacrum was already awaiting Donald Trump as long-established ‘royal’ protocol when he entered the White House ‘palace’. All presidents have the opportunity to bask in that pseudo-royalty. On the other hand, instead of taking these displays seriously, Trump ridiculed the disingenuousness of acting presidentially multiple times through mime: “If I acted presidential, I can guarantee you this morning, I wouldn’t be here” (cf. PJ Media, 26 April, 2016). By bringing his case to the granular level of a particular president, Peterson buries his own lead, for his main purport was to show that in the United States, the very country that separated itself from the monarchy of George III through revolution, incorporated monarchical trappings in the office of the presidency itself.

Why has the monarchical tendency returned to the America despite her revolution against monarchy? Peterson says

“that’s partly because there is that demand for the symbolic weight that the leader should manifest, and you also see that to, some degree, in the United States, which is a star-worshipping culture obviously, with the glitterati and the royalty of Hollywood” (6:55).

But that begs the question of why there is a demand for the symbolic weight of monarchy in the first place.

According to Oswald Spengler in his great intuitive work, ‘The Decline of the West’ (Der Untergang des Abendlandes)^[1], Faustian (Western) nations owe their very existence to the “dynastic idea” (Vol. II, p. 179):

“The dynastic idea derives from the sensitivity to distance in Time… Faustian peoples are historical peoples, communities that feel themselves bound together not by place [Classical culture] or consensus [Magian-Mohammedan], but by history; and the eminent symbol and vessel of the common Destiny is the ruling ‘house… Here what it signifies, as a will and an activity, is Time.’ All that we have been, all that we would be, is manifested in the being [Dasein] of the one generation [noble house]; and our sense of this is much too profound to be upset by the worthlessness of a regent.” (Ibid.)

The dynastic Idea for Western man operates along a time dimension; which is to say, within a generation (Geschlecht)^[2] but also within one ruling house, such as the Hanovers or the Windsors (formerly Saxe-Coburg and Gotha). It is the ethos that matters, the Idea in the Platonic sense, which gives us, on the surface play of events, our sense of history, and meaning in history. Again,

“What matters is not the person, but the idea, and it is for the sake of the idea that thousands have so often marched to their deaths with conviction in a genealogical quarrel. Classical history was for Classical eyes only a chain of incidents leading from moment to moment;… but Faustian history is in our eyes a single grand willing of conscious logic, in the accomplishment of which nations are led and represented by their rulers. It is a trait of race [Rasse]” (Ibid.)

Race as used here is a concept of fruitfulness rooted in the soil of a nation. Hence, in Spengler’s language, it is a bodily succession “carried on by procreation, in a narrow or wide landscape” (Ibid. p. 113).

As for Spengler’s concept of race and blood, these are virtually interchangeable and are synonyms for what today we call the collective unconscious. And to be in possession of language is to be in possession of consciousness. Spengler articulates this distinction poetically as follows:

“But, further, we shall never understand man’s higher history if we ignore the fact that man, as constituent of a race and as possessor of a language, as derivative of a blood-unit and as member of an understanding-unit, has different Destinies [Schicksale], that of his being [Dasein] and that of his waking-being [Wachsein]. That is, the origin, development, and duration of his race side and the origin, development, and duration of his language side are completely independent of one another. Race is something cosmic and psychic (Seelenhaft), periodic in some obscure way, and in its inner nature partly conditioned by major astronomical relations.” (Ibid,. p. 114).

Spengler in his day did not have the readily available language to express his understanding of what always remains unseen. “Race side” and “language side”, “blood-unit” and “understanding-unit”, “being” and “waking-being” are virtually equivalent, complementary and independent oppositions which in different cultures carry, in their Within, different Destinies. The different cultures are periodic, meaning they unfold obscurely in their own unique cycles. To describe “race” as cosmic, is to say it is collectively unconscious, hence it transcends the consciousness of every individual, yet it still has the character of psyche; or in more traditional language, it is spiritual or eternal (outside of time). Astronomical relations refer to the relation of the archetypes in the collective unconscious to each other. In the background of eternity, the person of a regent is only incidental:

“All great symbols are spiritual and can be comprehended only in their highest forms. The private life of a pope bears no relation to the idea of the Papacy.” (Ibid., p. 180)

Again, there is an emphasis on the separation of the private person from the spiritual aura behind the office; and we note once more that Spengler’s use of the words “psychic” and “spiritual” are interchangeable here. The infallibility of the Pope-King, for example, rests in the symbol of the Papacy. One way the pope exercises his infallible teaching authority is to make a pronouncement on faith or morals ex cathedra (lit. from the throne). Teachings proclaimed in this way are binding on the faithful, but they are extremely rare.^[3] In Spengler’s language, the pope makes a pronouncement ex cathedra only when his person disappears such that he is in perfect harmony with the Idea of the papacy, when he is in the realm of the psychic-spiritual. One criterion for the recognition of an infallible teaching is that it must already be evident from scripture or tradition (handed down apostolically from generation to generation — Geschlecht). Here again, the emphasis is on history, for “Faustian Peoples are historical peoples” (see above). Implied in this history, in the Faustian sense, is meaning.

As for the person of the pope, while he, as a person, may be well-known as a reliable witness to Truth, he is never personally infallible. Even a pope may be tempted to personally identify himself too closely with the symbolic weight of the magisterial aura of his office. It is much more common, however, for the faithful to confuse the person of the pope with the infallibility attached to the Papacy. This is just as dangerous as any other form of being puffed up; and especially in today’s climate, the situation is out of control before the faithful finally recognise their inflation.

George Orwell (1903-1950) expressed his ideas on the symbolic “function” of monarchy in a short essay entitled “The Monarchy” (Partisan Review, Spring 1944 — at Harry’s Place). Whereas Peterson refers to the “symbolic weighting” of the monarchy and Spengler refers to its “spiritual” or “psychic” valence, Orwell describes it as possessing “the feeling of royal sanctity”. Orwell thought this sanctity may have been weakened by the Abdication of Edward VIII after he renounced the Crown in favour of the American socialite and divorcee, Wallis Simpson: “It brought home to people the personal powerlessness of the King”. In other words, Edward chose his personal associations over his duty to the “sanctity” of the symbolic, hence threatening to break its spell in the eyes of the people. We shall leave aside the fact that Edward and Wallis Simpson were also understood to have had National Socialist sympathies. Then Orwell makes the most remarkable prediction:

“At the least I should say it would need another long reign, and a monarch with some kind of charm, to put the Royal Family back where it was in George V’s day.”

George Orwell missed the beginning of the long reign of Elizabeth II by only two years.

In light of the aura of “sanctity” surrounding the monarchy, Orwell outlines the “function of the King”. The King, Orwell says,

“also has, or can have, the function of acting as an escape-valve for dangerous emotions. A French journalist said to me once that the monarchy was one of the things that have saved Britain from Fascism. What he meant was that modern people can’t, apparently, get along without drums, flags and loyalty parades, and that it is better that they should tie their leader-worship onto some figure who has no real power. In a dictatorship the power and the glory belong to the same person.”

Thus Peterson is not the first one to notice the danger of combining the symbolic with power in the same office. That Spengler points to the dynastic idea as a basis for Faustian culture-feeling is yet another testimony to the powerful emotions contained by such symbols. Orwell describes the trajectory of such emotions with the expression “tie their leader-worship onto some figure who has real power”. ‘Tying onto’ is a synonym for projection, a concept which was contemporaneous with Orwell; which is to say, psychic-, symbolic- or sanctity-contents can be projected onto the State, or a leader with real power embodying the State. The monarchy serves to harness dangerous emotions by allowing their projection onto the monarch.

Orwell lays out his “division of function” between executive power and monarchical power in his description of the “unprepossessing men in bowler hats” who have the “real power” and “the creature who rides in a gilded coach behind soldiers in steel breast-plates” and who “is really a waxwork”.

Orwell thought it possible that as long as a “division of function” siphons off dangerous collective emotions “a Hitler or a Stalin cannot come to power”. He even attributed such a siphoning to other much weaker constitutional monarchies. And then Orwell makes a statement, which, except for some minor anachronisms, he could well have written for us today:

“If you point these facts out to the average left-winger he gets very angry, but only because he has not examined the nature of his own feelings towards Stalin. I do not defend the institution of monarchy in an absolute sense, but I think that in an age like our own it may have an inoculating effect, and certainly it does far less harm than the existence of our so-called aristocracy.” (Emphasis added)

The operative words are in italics: a failure of introspection, at least among those amenable to ideological indoctrination. To be precise, one’s strong feelings toward the leader do not belong to the individual subject, but to the collective, and these are then further alienated in that they are projected, unconsciously, onto the leader; or, to use Orwell’s idiom, they are tied onto some figure, thrown forward, as it were, onto a suitable target: monarchy serves as an “escape valve” to the extent that the individual is lacking in self-reflection.

Notes:

1.		Spengler, Oswald. The Decline of the West, trans. Charles Francis Atkinson (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1979 [1923].
2.		Geschlecht is overdetermined in meaning here. In this context, it can mean ‘noble’ or ‘royal house’ or it can suggest “generation”, as from generation to generation. The immediate context of “ruling house” gives it the first meaning and the “sensitivity to distance in Time” lends it its second. The royal house runs in genealogical time, as it were.
3.		There are only two papal pronouncements ex cathedra: the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption of the Virgin Mary. The former was declared by Pius IX in Ineffabilis Deus (1854) and the latter in Munificentissimus Deus (1950). The contents of these two pronouncements in the modern era were already present in Church tradition (history). In Spengler’s idiom, the Virgin Mary is an Idea in the Platonic sense: the Immaculate Conception, the Assumption and Mary’s virginity together carry the meaning of “under the aspect of eternity”. To be immaculately conceived (be without original sin) is to be at once earthly and ever eternal. Mary is a paradox. Her fulfilment is in her Assumption to her heavenly thalamus — in thalamis caelestibus habitare: “to dwell in her heavenly (bridal) chamber”. There is the implication that she is a feminine complement to the Trinity. We are reminded of Goethe’s Eternal Feminine and the apotheosis of the Queen of Heaven at end of Dante’s Paradiso, as if the Idea manifests itself persistently over time, yet as if nothing has changed.