Karl Jaspers (emphasis added):
The alternative method of renouncing a true political life is to surrender to a blind political will. One who does this is discontented with his life, and complains of environing circumstances … He is inspired, now with hatred, now with enthusiasm … Although he does not know what he might know if he would, and does not know what he really wills, he talks, he chooses, and he acts as though he knew. By a short-circuit he passes abruptly from a quarter-knowledge to the licence of fanaticism. Such vociferous would-be participation is the most widespread manifestation of a reputed political knowledge and will. Persons of this kidney stumble along through the times, able to make trouble and to stir up strife, but utterly incapable of discovering the true path.
Contrast that with some guy named James:
Who is wise and understanding among you? By his good life let him show his works in the meekness of wisdom. But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast and be false to the truth. This wisdom is not such as comes down from above, but is earthly, unspiritual, devilish. For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there will be disorder and every vile practice. But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, without uncertainty or insincerity. And the harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.
“License to fanaticism” meets its opposite. No excuses. No “short-circuits” justified.
And, for those not inclined to be or follow the fantastics, Jaspers listed another way “along which man may renounce his political possibilities” — by refraining from participation:
No doubt we are constantly brought up with a jar against the effects of force as used in the existing order. We find this or that unjust or unmeaning. But those who have adopted the evasion of responsibility I am now considering, look upon it as something foreign to themselves, something which is no business of theirs. … Indifferent to the course of events, they do not allow their feelings to become involved. … Their ‘unpolitical’ behaviour is the renouncement effected by those who do not want to know what they will, because they have no will but that of realising themselves in an unworldly selfhood—as if they existed apart from time and space.…
This, not unlike the first mentioned above, is a “no compromise” stance, as much an “us and them” dichotomizing as any short-circuited fanaticism: They are of the world, but not me.
It should go without saying that for James, to be pure, peaceful, gentle, reasonable, merciful, good, requires an involved presence. Jaspers knew this as well, in his own way:
Now that the charm has been dispelled… the contemporary mental situation enables every one to enter this region of human community life. To every one the dreadfulness of the world of human activity in the domain of State reality will appear in its full inexorability. But he who is not paralysed with terror by the vision, he who does not forget and does not turn his eyes away from reality, will press onward to the point of a participating knowledge in this reality of human action and human self-determination—to the point at which it will become clear to him what he really wants, not in general and universally, but historically and in conjunction with those of his fellows who appear to him truly human.
This gets really overlappy with the the liberal-conservative-socialistic business. And I can’t think about this sort of thing without thinking about the other Karl:
“When he saw the multitudes, he was moved with compassion” (Mt. 9:36). And the fact that He was moved with compassion means originally that He could not and would not close His mind to the existence and situation of the multitude, nor hold Himself aloof from it, but that it affected Him, that it went right to His heart, that He made it His own, that He could not but identify Himself with them. Only He could do this with the breadth with which He did so. But His community cannot follow any other line.